The Verdict (9 page)

‘Sonia Lawrence?’

‘Very good, but a full calendar this year.’

‘Janice Brown?’

‘She hates me.’

‘Lynne Brown?’

‘She hates me too. They’re sisters. And she doesn’t believe in private law firms.’

‘Prabjit Khan?’

‘Her life’s a circus.’ Kopf shook his head and winced. ‘A
barrister
on a reality TV show, for God’s sake.’

‘It was a
gameshow
, Sid,’ Janet said.

‘Same damn difference. Idiots making bigger idiots of themselves.’

They fell silent as they racked their brains. I looked down at the table. There were patterns in the wood, Munch-like faces staring up at me through hollow eyes.

‘How about Christine Devereaux?’ Kopf suddenly suggested.

‘I thought she’d retired?’ Janet said.

‘She stepped down due to illness. She’s since reconsidered and is back at work.’

‘But she’s still ill?’

‘Christine is one of the best barristers ever to step inside a courtroom. She’s ideal for this. An absolute fighter. Lethal in cross-examination, and her summaries are grand opera.’

‘Sid, she’s
dying
.’

‘Aren’t we all, Janet?’ he said.

‘No, Sid.’

‘What’s wrong with her?’ I asked.

‘What’s it matter?’ Janet said.

‘If she’s back at work, she must be functioning. Besides, that can only play to our advantage,’ I said.

‘We’re not using her. Now, who —’

‘
How
can that benefit us, Terry?’ Kopf interrupted.

‘Ailing barrister gets off her sickbed to fight for justice,’ I said.

‘Are you being
serious
?’ Janet asked me, angrily.

I was about to apologise and withdraw, when Kopf spoke up.

‘Terry’s got a point,’ he said.

‘Are
you
being serious?’

‘I may sometimes laugh at the law, Janet, but I
never
joke about it,’ Kopf said. ‘Yes, Christine’s ill. And obviously so. But think about it. You’ll have Carnavale doing his usual routine – flashy, sharp, all withering one-liners and knock-out putdowns. Then you get Christine. Every time she gets to her feet to defend our client, the jury will see and hear the effort she’s making, just to even be there. And it’ll be almost too painful to watch, but all their attention will be focused on the grand old dame who’s using her last thousand breaths to defend our client. And that’s before she even speaks. And when she does, she’ll wipe the floor with Franco. She’ll be flashier, sharper, a lot more withering. And the jury’ll love it. And they’ll love her. And – who knows? – they might even acquit our client out of sympathy.’

It sounded callous, even cruel. But when the last meal was gone and the cavalry wasn’t coming because all the horses had been eaten, people turned to cannibalism.

‘You really
do
want her on this, don’t you?’ Janet said.

‘If it goes to trial, then yes, I do,’ Kopf said.

After another rummage through her notebooks, Janet reluctantly nodded her assent.

‘OK. I’ll call her. What about a junior?’ Janet asked.

‘In-house for that. We just need a backstopper. Liam Redpath springs to mind. He finished up something last Thursday.’

‘Don’t you want another woman?’ Janet asked sarcastically, giving me a cutting look.

Now I wish I’d stayed out of this. Janet was my boss.

‘That’ll look too deliberate,’ Kopf said. ‘Juries are often dumb, but never stupid.’

‘Liam’s a safe pair of hands,’ Janet said. ‘But no more than that. What if Christine falls ill? He hasn’t got the experience to fill her shoes.’

‘Then we’ll have another trial. Start again.’

Liam Redpath wouldn’t have been my first choice either. I’d been in a couple of meetings with him. He was a born yes-man, a middle manager on the make, someone whose entire career seemed to consist of standing with his wet finger in the air, judging which direction the wind was blowing and going with the flow.

‘Next. Investigators?’ Janet said. ‘Terry, any suggestions?’

No, she wasn’t being sarcastic now.

Some of the bigger private law firms had their in-house investigators, their PIs, their muck-rakers. KRP didn’t. It kept them at arm’s length. Payroll snoops were convenient but also potential PR disasters waiting to happen. Investigators work in a grey area, where legality and illegality get blurred and often entwined for the sake of expedience. It was condoned as long as none of it came to light.

One of my first jobs had been to hire an investigator to look into the boyfriend of a client’s daughter.

‘I’ve worked with Colin Bromfield twice,’ I said. ‘Very good, very discreet. He’d be my first choice. If he’s booked up, there’s Stan Dommett, then Mike Egan. Not much between them in terms of quality.’

‘Call Bromfield,’ Janet said.

‘No, don’t,’ Kopf said.

Janet sighed loudly.

‘You know the problem with today’s investigators?’ Kopf continued. ‘Like most of the under-forties in this country, they don’t get out enough. They do everything by computer. And they’re too literal. You tell them what you want and that’s all you’re going to get. They’ll overlook all extras, no matter how important. Why? Because you didn’t ask. You have to do their thinking for them.’

He looked at Janet. ‘You’re not going to like this one bit, but I want the old-school touch on this…’

Her face dropped.

‘Sid,
no
…
’

‘I want to roll the dice.’

‘Tell me you’re not thinking of —’

‘Yes. I am.’

‘Not Andy…
Swayne
?’ Janet as good as shouted.

I’d never met him, but Andy Swayne was a byword for fuck-up in the company.

‘Sid, you
fired
him,’ Janet said, once she’d calmed herself down.

Kopf nodded and shrugged.

‘He’s a fucking
alcoholic
.’

‘A
recovering
alcoholic,’ Kopf reminded her.

‘Crawling between wagons,’ Janet said.

‘Mr Kopf…’ I said. ‘This case is far too delicate, and too high-profile to take a chance on someone like him.’

‘Andy Swayne was – even on a bad day – head and shoulders above any of these ex-military, disgruntled coppers, chronic voyeur types who do a correspondence course in surveillance and pass themselves off as investigators these days,’ Kopf said. ‘You said your people are very good, Terry? Well, Andy was
brilliant
. He saved our hide more than once.’

Kopf looked at Janet when he said that.

‘Past tense,’ I said.

‘Sorry?’

‘You said he
was
brilliant. That’s not good enough for this,’ I said. ‘I haven’t read the files, but from what Janet’s been saying they could convict our client right now on what they’ve got so far. If there’s any chance we have of proving his innocence, we need solid people on this. Besides, I thought I was your only wild card.’

‘Andy isn’t a wild card,’ Kopf said. ‘He’s a straight arrow who flew into a hurricane. I’ve heard he’s back to his best now.’

‘Did
he
tell you that?’ Janet asked.

‘Trust me on this. This trial – should it happen – is going to generate a lot of publicity. We need someone who won’t be fazed by that. Someone who won’t blink in the glare,’ he said.

‘Have you forgotten that burglary?’ she said.

‘No, of course not,’ Kopf said, keeping his absolute cool. ‘I haven’t forgotten
anything
about Andy.’

I didn’t want to get in the middle of them. There was ancient history I didn’t know about, nor really want to know.

They stared at each other, Janet glowering, Kopf calm and steely, yet faintly amused too. I could sense the telepathy, Janet cursing Kopf, Kopf taking the barrage, but standing his ground and enjoying himself.

After a moment, Janet broke the stare-off with another long loud sigh and nodded, but with great effort, like her neck was in plaster. Kopf turned to me.

‘Terry, you’ll be managing him.’

‘Sure,’ I said.

‘Some dream team we’ve got here, Sid. A dying barrister and an alkie investigator,’ Janet said. ‘I really hope this
doesn’t
go to trial.’

‘They’re brilliant, that’s their problem,’ Kopf said. ‘Brilliant people tend to pay a steep price. Andy drank because of the things he saw and did. Christine was too busy turning around impossible cases to take care of her health. Sometimes I think it’s better to be merely good at what you do, instead of brilliant. Mediocrity always outlasts genius.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ Janet said.

‘I just did,’ Kopf smiled. He had the best smile money could buy.

Janet shook her head. She was pissed off. I couldn’t understand the dynamic here. It was her case and she was senior partner, head of the criminal division, yet she was letting Kopf pick the key players. And not only was he not a practising lawyer any more, he’d never been a criminal one.

‘You said it yourself, Janet, this one’s a loser. And it is. One way or another Vernon James is going to prison. But we’re still going to defend him. And I believe these are the best people to do it. You know why? Talent aside, they’re both hungry. Andy wants to redeem himself and, as this’ll probably be Christine’s last trial, she’s going to make it count.’

Janet stared at him for a long moment. I could see her trying to think of a way round it, and for a moment I thought she’d found it. But then the tension left her face and she conceded with a blink of the eyes.

‘Let’s move on,’ she said.

For the next hour we discussed other experts we’d use in rebuttal. I had a shortlist of contacts to call when we were done. We tried to anticipate as much as we could, but we were stabbing in the dark. VJ had yet to be charged and we didn’t know what other evidence the prosecution would come up with.

I got so involved in what I was doing, that for a sweet moment, I forgot it was VJ we were defending, and I forgot all about the deep water I was in.

After the meeting I went back to my office to start making calls. It was a full house. Everyone was in: Iain, Michaela and, of course, Adolf.

They’d been talking about me an instant before, as they often did when they thought I wasn’t around. I heard my name followed by laughter as I came down the stairs. When I walked through the door all conversation died instantly. Michaela’s stunned embarrassment made her grin wilt into a crinkled oval, Iain looked down at once, and Adolf went into multitask mode, picking up the phone with one hand, tapping at her keyboard with the other, while simultaneously avoiding my gaze and pulling her best pissed-off pout.

My situation wasn’t anything new. Nor was it exclusive to my profession. You’ll find someone like me in every office in every country everywhere in the world: the one no one likes.

It was entirely Adolf’s doing. She was a dab hand at backstabbing in numbers. She’d turned the office against me, and they were too scared for their jobs – and of her – to resist.

In some ways, I didn’t blame her. From the outside looking in, I even empathised. Adolf had worked her way up from office assistant to senior clerk. She was good at her job, and, by rights, should have been in pole position for promotion. Instead I’d been dropped right in front of her like a boulder in a thin gorge. I was an obstacle she had to either blast through or bypass.

It hadn’t always been bad between us. We got on fine in my first week, when I was temping. She didn’t think I’d be there long, so she went out of her way to be helpful, showing me the office systems and giving me tips about note-taking in court. But when Janet offered me the job on the Friday and we’d all gone out for a welcome-to-the-company drink, her attitude shifted from hospitable to hostile, and my new colleagues got in line.

Adolf now knew I’d caught the Big Case. It was up on the office whiteboard. The clerks’ names were grouped in seniority, and then arranged alphabetically, with our respective cases written up alongside them. Red for new, green for ongoing. I was top of the board, over Adolf. The salt had been rubbed in and it was burning like hell. She’d also got a brand-new case, by the looks of things. Someone called Regan – but that wasn’t going to make any difference. I’d bagged the Big One, which meant I was an even greater threat to her career ambitions now than ever. In other words: we were at war.

I turned on my computer. As it powered up and the hard drive started humming and whirring, my stomach threw in a little accompaniment of its own: deep growls followed by high-pitched mewlings. Adolf looked at me in disgust.

‘Afternoon, Bella,’ I nodded and smiled. That was the way I handled her, with passive-aggression, wind-ups and a unique ingredient of my very own. Confronting her or trying to sort out our differences amicably would have been a complete waste of time. The only thing that would make her happy was if I resigned, got fired, or – preferably – was hit by a bus.

‘Where’ve you been?’ she asked, tapping away, looking at her screen.

‘Client visit,’ I said, even though it was actually none of her business.

I could tell she wanted to know more about VJ but was too proud to ask. She had a fascination with the rich. Always buying
Hello!
magazine,
Harpers & Queen
,
The Lady
and
Tatler
to see how the other half lived, those ennobled debutants with their triple-barrelled names and in-bred connections to the Royal Family. I once overheard her tearfully telling Michaela how she and her fiancé had been invited to a rich friend’s wedding, and she’d got so depressed at the ostentation she burst out crying, realising that they’d never ever be as rich as that.

‘Who’s your client?’ I asked.

‘Pepe Regan,’ she said.

‘Who’s he?’

‘The Chelsea player.’

‘Pass,’ I said. I didn’t follow any sport – especially not football. ‘What’s he done?’

‘He’s
alleged
to have assaulted a bouncer.’

I’d read about that in yesterday’s
Standard
. Regan hadn’t just beaten up said bouncer, he’d pissed on him afterwards too. That was this year. Last year he’d shagged his best mate’s wife, got her pregnant and was now denying the kid was his. The year before that he’d wrapped £350,000’s worth of Porsche around a lamp-post outside a school. The same month he’d also been charged with racially abusing the goalkeeper of an opposing team. He’d called him a ‘snowflake bitch’. He’d been acquitted when his defence team had successfully argued that the comment had been directed at the cold weather not the keeper: ‘
It’s
a snowflake, bitch.’ Then, as now, he was represented by KRP.

Adolf’s phone rang.

‘Hi babe!’ she beamed.

‘Babe’ was Adolf’s fiancé, Kev Dorset. Kev had recently landed his dream job, as a reporter for the
Daily Chronicle
. Except he was in a precarious position, because they’d started him as they did all their new reporters, on a twenty-four-hour contract. If he didn’t come up with the goods, he was out on his ear without ceremony. He called Adolf every day at roughly the same time to tell her he hadn’t got the chop. She’d congratulate him and tell him how good he was. If I hadn’t known her better, I would have found her loyalty and devotion quite touching.

They made a very odd couple, Kev and Adolf. Kev was six foot five, Adolf almost one and a half feet shorter in heels, a midget manqué in flats.

I went to the kitchen to get my sandwich.

I brought the Tupperware container back to my desk and took out my sandwich. It was a wholemeal bap with a tinned tuna, pesto, lemon juice and caper mix. It was layered between lettuce, cucumber, onions, tomato and spinach. I watched Adolf’s eyes widen as she said sweet nothing-kins to the poor bastard who’d agreed to marry her next year.

I took my first bite, savouring the clash of pesto and capers, and brought up the contacts database on my monitor. I tapped in Andy Swayne’s name.

Adolf finished her call and I sensed her looking in my direction.

I dialled Swayne’s number. The phone started ringing.

Adolf came over to my desk, picked up the other half of my sandwich and took a big bite, eyeballing me as she chewed, daring me to say something, knowing full well I wouldn’t. Then she turned and looked over at the juniors’ section, standing on tiptoe and holding up my half-bap, her trophy. She was showing it to Iain, her main ally.

‘This is
so
nice.
Much
better than yesterday’s,’ she said, without looking at me.

This had been going on since the start of my second week at the company, when Adolf helped herself to half a sandwich I’d left on my desk when typing up my trial notes. I reached for it and it was gone. I looked around, on the floor, under my desk, and then I saw Adolf in her chair, looking at me defiantly, munching.

I’d immediately clocked what she was up to, trying to provoke a confrontation, luring me into her comfort zone. So I didn’t say anything. I simply closed the empty container and went back to work.

The next day, she did it again. I’d left the half-sandwich in exactly the same place. This time she didn’t wait until my back was turned. She got out of her chair, came over, took it and bit into it.

It was a crude and very blatant power play. By taking half of what was mine, she was asserting her authority, showing me who was boss. It was also a test to see how I’d react, whether I was aggressive or passive, a fighter or a flea.

Now she thought she had my number. When we’d last had anything close to a civil conversation, she told me she had a degree in psychology from some flyblown university I’d never heard of. In other words, she was a failed shrink.

What Adolf didn’t know, and hadn’t actually considered – today, or any day since she’d officially declared hostilities open by eating my sandwich – was that I’d spat in the tuna mix. In fact, the only time in the last two and a half months Adolf hadn’t ingested my flob was the first time she’d helped herself to my food. I had thought of spiking one half of the sandwich with a volcanic dose of Scotch Bonnet pepper, elephant laxative or worse, and be done with her once and for all, but why ruin a perfectly good sandwich? So this was better. My secret, my laugh on her.

Swayne’s phone rang into double figures before he answered.

‘Swayne.’

‘Hello, my name’s Terry Flynt,’ I said. ‘I’m a —’ I saw Adolf looking at me, listening as she chewed, pretending to work. ‘I’m a clerk at KRP.’

‘April Fool’s two weeks away. Christmas was last year. And I no longer count my birthdays,’ was the response. His voice was deep and croaky.

I thought he was pissed. Then I realised he was kidding.

‘This isn’t a joke,’ I said.

‘Flynt, did you say your name was?’

‘Yes.’

‘You must be new.’

‘I started a few months ago. Why?’

‘Herr Kopf dispensed of my services last century.’

‘He’s reconsidered,’ I said.

‘Well, he’s either desperate – which I doubt – or he’s got a very tricky trial coming up,’ he laughed. I wondered how far he and Kopf went back.

‘Can we meet up to talk the case over?’

‘You can give me the details right now, if you want.’

‘Our client’s going to be charged with murder.’

‘You mean Vernon James?’ Swayne asked.

‘As you know, we never reveal a client’s name until the investigator has signed our confidentiality agreement.’ I smiled. ‘Are you free on Monday?’

Swayne laughed and the laugh provoked a cough which ended in a retch and spit. I glanced over at Adolf. She’d finished her tuna, pesto and flob special.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Where do you want to meet?’

‘The Cedars of Lebanon café on Edgware Road,’ he said. ‘Say, two o’clock?’

‘See you then,’ I said.