The Verdict (20 page)

Sunday afternoon and I was sat at the bedroom computer, staring at the screen, trying to make a decision between the lesser of two evils.

I’d written two versions of the investigation report. One was the truth, the other my take on it. Or Evelyn with and without the dirt. I liked the truth better, from a professional point of view – it was solid work; an investigation that had yielded a definite result, the kind of thing that made me look good. But the abridged version was the one I could live with.

If I went with the truth, Swayne and I would have to confirm the affair with Richard Ellis by interviewing some of her family, conning our way into their lives, walking in on all that grief and pain and torment, pretending to be people who cared, who wanted to make things right and fair and just. We’d weasel out Evelyn’s secrets and intimacies, and then turn them on her – and her loved ones – in court. I wanted no part of that.

It would have been different if I thought VJ was innocent, or that we had even a halfway chance of getting an acquittal. But I didn’t. Yes, he was entitled to a fair defence. But this was neither a defence, nor was it fair. It was pointless, gratuitous damage.

At that moment, Karen came in the room. She had my chiming phone in her hand.

Tales of the Unexpected
.

‘How are your inquiries going?’ Janet asked.

Never mind the formalities, the pleasant smalltalk, the apologies for today being Sunday…

I gave her the summary, but stuck strictly to the facts.

‘We had some new disclosure on Friday afternoon,’ she said, when I was done. ‘Evelyn’s phone records. Have you got a copy?’

‘No,’ I lied. Again, the CPS had released the information fast.

‘Makes for interesting reading,’ she said. ‘The list goes on for half a dozen pages, but says the same thing over and over.’

‘What?’

‘That she spent the last two weeks of her life calling and texting the same number. She made more than eighty calls to it, none longer than a minute. Which means she left messages, or kept getting voicemail and hanging up. And she was calling at unsociable hours too. Early morning was her favourite time – 3, 4 a.m.’

Janet let that hang, inviting me to offer an opinion. Even if my thoughts hadn’t been scrambling every which way and my mouth wasn’t as dry as salt on a hotplate, I wouldn’t have said anything for fear of giving myself away.

‘Evelyn Bates was a stalker. A restraining order just waiting to happen,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t all one way. The person she was harassing did call her back. Once. At 11.08 p.m., on the night she died. They were the last person she ever spoke to on her phone. The police didn’t look into it, because they’ve got their man. But I have looked into it.’

She paused there. I heard a conversation in the background.

‘What’ve you found out?’ I asked.

No answer. A tap was running. I heard her filling a receptacle, maybe a kettle.

‘Sorry about that,’ she said. ‘The number she was calling was pay as you go. Vodafone. Next to impossible to trace if they’re one-off or casual users, because they rarely register on the website. But they tend to if they’re regular customers. So I gave it to Dean.’

‘Dean?’

‘Our computer guy. He has this system that matches mobile numbers to handsets. Took him under an hour to find the person in question.’

‘Oh…’ I said.

‘The handset belongs to Richard Ellis,’ she said.

I played the ignorant-savant card.

‘Hazel Ellis’s husband?’

‘Yes.’

‘We met him on Friday. He sat in on the interview.’

‘I bet he did,’ she chuckled. ‘He’s a worried man.’

So was I. I was just glad we weren’t having this conversation face to face, because Janet would’ve picked up on my edginess.

‘I’m guessing what happened is, he had a thing with Evelyn and broke it off as the wedding got closer. Evelyn didn’t accept it and went berserk,’ she continued.

‘That figures,’ I said. I realised I was coming across as clueless: I’d sat right there in front of the victim’s lover, and Janet would think I hadn’t picked up on anything. I had to salvage a little dignity here.

‘Have you seen her Facebook page?’ I asked.

‘No,’ she said.

‘I was going to put this in the report – strictly as a supposition. No one we interviewed from the hen party knew Evelyn very well. They all thought she was someone else’s friend,’ I said. Then I told her how she’d used Facebook to invite herself to the hen party.

‘Do you think she was going to tell the bride to be all about her husband to be?’ Janet asked.

‘Possibly. But she didn’t do that. She walked out of the party at around 10.30.’

‘Either lost her nerve or came to her senses.’

‘Could be. Not sure we’ll ever know.’

A longer silence at the other end of the phone.

‘So what do you want me to do now?’ I asked.

More silence. Then the rustle of paper. I’d never been inside her house, but I imagined she had her own office there, away from the road, overlooking the back garden, few distractions.

‘Forget Evelyn,’ she said.

‘But —’

‘I know Christine loves to bring this kind of thing into the defence, but Evelyn’s behaviour is irrelevant. It doesn’t prove our client didn’t kill her. It’s not even enough to raise a reasonable doubt,’ she said. ‘But I can still put what we’ve got in the bank, as potential leverage with Carnavale.’

‘How so?’

‘You know what a filibuster is?’

‘Yeah. Talking until the clock runs out.’

‘Right,’ she said. ‘We employ similar tactics in court. When you want to make a jury forget some damning testimony, you introduce a semi-relevant piece of evidence to cushion the impact. You spend a day or two on it, bring in your experts. Bore the jury to sleep.

‘In this particular case, we could wheel on a rent-a-shrink to explain that Evelyn displayed obsessive behaviour – stalking an ex-lover – which means she was suffering from some kind of dissociative mental disorder. And, at a push, we can say she was possibly suicidal.’

‘Asking for it, in other words?’

‘To coin a phrase.’

Normally I would’ve been appalled, but at that moment I was relieved to be off the hook. My conscience was turning into a delayed luxury.

‘You ready for tomorrow?’ she asked.

The lot of us were seeing VJ in the morning. He didn’t know about the forensics report yet. I wondered what the hell he was going to say, confronted with the evidence. Was he going to confess and change his plea?

‘Yeah,’ I said.

‘Good. Send me and Christine your report,’ Janet said. ‘Add in a theory by way of a conclusion. Reference Evelyn’s SIM card information, and say it all suggests she’d had an affair with Richard Ellis. Say you noticed the number – obviously – and called it up. In fact, do exactly that for the record. Speak to him, get him to confirm his name. That way we’ll have this ready to submit, if necessary.’

I wanted to laugh at the irony. I really did.

‘How’s Andy Swayne working out?’ she asked.

‘Fine.’

‘He’s not drinking?’

‘Not that I know.’

‘Has he talked to you at all?’

‘About…?’

‘Himself. His past.’

‘No. It’s strictly professional between us,’ I said. ‘Why, what’s his story?’

‘Alcohol, a divorce, more alcohol, a daughter who doesn’t talk to him, even more alcohol, prison…’ she said.

‘
Prison?
’

I knew she hadn’t meant to say that. It had just slipped out. I remembered her mentioning a burglary in the meeting we’d had with Kopf, when we were choosing the defence team.

‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘Enjoy the rest of your weekend.’

After I’d emailed the report I went to the lounge. Ray was out with his friend Billy, but Amy and Karen were in there, on opposite ends of the couch, reading.

I stood and watched them. My wife and our daughter held their heads over their books exactly the same way, leaning into them like they were listening to whispers, their eyes following the lines back and forth down the page with the same transfixed gaze.

My phone rang again and broke the spell. Karen and Amy looked up at me, accusingly, ordering me out of their zone.

‘Hello.’

‘Terry? It’s Mel.’

I looked at Karen a moment, her finger saving her place in the book, her expression impatient to borderline irate.

I stepped out into the corridor.

‘Melissa?’ I asked, lowering my voice.

‘You used to call me Mel, remember? Sorry, is this a bad time?’

‘What can I do for you?’

‘I’m in the neighbourhood. I was wondering if you were free to meet up.’

‘Now?’

‘I’m in a French place on Battersea High Street.’

There was only one. Chez Manny’s, practically over the road.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I can be there.’

I stuck my head into the lounge.

‘I’ve got to pop out for a second,’ I said to Karen. ‘Work thing. Won’t be long.’

‘Who’s Melissa?’ Amy asked.

I left before I lied.

It could have been the bright light, but Melissa was already starting to take on the appearance of a con’s wife. Tired and harassed, shadows under her eyes and that frayed restlessness where too little sleep meets too many worries.

She was dressed, possibly deliberately, definitely appropriately, in black – jeans, polo shirt, shoes. She was sitting close to the back, a cup of coffee and her phone on the table.

‘Does this count as work?’ she asked.

‘Depends what you want to talk about,’ I said. I’d ordered a single espresso. I didn’t intend to stay long.

‘I saw Vern yesterday,’ she said.

‘How is he?’

‘He thinks this’ll all be sorted soon.’

Still in denial. Or still holding out hope. Or both.

‘Have you talked to Janet?’ I asked.

‘Did that yesterday too,’ she said. ‘She doesn’t share his optimism.’

Lawyers are like doctors. You get the bad news as soon as the results are in. And then they tell you how long you’ll get.

‘Do you think he did it?’ she asked me.

‘My job is to believe he didn’t,’ I said.

‘You used to be so direct, Terry. Always spoke your mind.’

‘Not a good quality in an aspiring lawyer,’ I said.

‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘Please.’

‘Why?’

‘We should be honest with each other.’

I knew what she was after now, why she’d called. She wanted a friend. She had plenty of those, sure, but none who bridged the gap between her life and her husband’s present situation; someone to explain things, someone who cared.

There was a lot I could’ve said to that, aired some archived resentment and recrimination. But this wasn’t the time or place. For all intents and purposes, I was on duty.

‘It’s above my paygrade,’ I said. ‘You should ask Janet.’

‘Please. As a… a friend.’

Whose
friend, I felt like asking. The question rolled to the tip of my tongue, poised for launch.

But no…

‘I can’t. I’m sorry.’

I could’ve told her about the lab report, but that would’ve been unethical, because we hadn’t discussed it with VJ yet. I could’ve told her about the personal laptop and the separate phone and three SIM cards.

But no. I couldn’t go there either.

She’d soon find out. Like tomorrow.

I could have told her it wasn’t looking good.

But she knew that.

She looked at her cup of coffee. The sugar and little biscuit were still in the saucer, both wrapped. She was beautiful, even at this, her lowest ebb. I wished I wasn’t thinking like this. She was vulnerable.

The café was lively with laughter. Early evening drinkers, all of them well-heeled but catalogue-styled. That was the thing that hurt most about London; everyone around you seemed to have a better life than yours, and by extension a better time.

‘I knew he cheated on me,’ she said, looking up. I noticed how long her lashes were. I don’t think I had when we were together. Too busy being swept away to remark the small things.

‘I never asked him, and we never talked about it. But I knew,’ she said.

No surprise, obviously. Just bewilderment.

‘How…’ I started, then clammed up because I couldn’t finish. I’d meant to ask, ‘How could he cheat on
you
?’

‘Female intuition,’ she said, saving me from a potentially awkward moment. ‘It wasn’t anyone steady, like a mistress or something. That’s not his style. He said he never understood the point of mistresses. Why swap one wife for another?’

I smiled, but I didn’t find it funny or clever. He’d married my first love, and then gone and cheated on her… over and over. How much more could I hate him?

‘And you were all right with it?’

‘Realistic, not all right. He was away a lot. Always abroad. He likes women. And they like him.’

There was bitterness in her resignation. Why had she accepted it? Out of love, for the sake of the kids, because she was too used to the lifestyle? I wanted to know more, much more.

But no… that was yet another place I couldn’t go.

I had to keep a professional distance, stay uninvolved.

Act
.

Fake it.
 

‘Vern used to say that everyone wants a piece of you when you’re successful, and no one wants any of you when you fail.’

‘Have people started staying away?’

‘Some. Torrents always start as trickles.’

‘Well, at least, when it’s over, you’ll know who your real friends are. And there’s an upside too.’

‘What?

‘Fewer Christmas cards to write.’

She laughed. Our eyes met again, properly. Then she scanned my face, as if she were trying to read me, figure me out; or maybe compare her memories to the present, as I was doing.

‘Do they know… at work?’

‘Know what?’

‘About you and me, you and Vern…’

‘No,’ I said. ‘And I’d like to keep it that way.’

‘We will,’ she said.

We will
… They’d talked about me yesterday. That was obvious. She was here to sound me out.

‘How’s your mum doing?’ she asked.