The Verdict (46 page)

That was when I told Janet how I’d spent my Saturday – minus the drinking.

That
got her attention.

She fished her copy of the
Sunday Times
out of the recycling. She recognised me, even though my face was a blur. When she found out that one of Rudy Saks’s housemates was the gunman, she told her husband to fetch the whisky.

But that wasn’t what swayed her.

What did it was when I came clean about my past – VJ, Stevenage, Rodney, Melissa, Cambridge, the Lister.

‘But Sid had you vetted,’ she said. ‘I read the report. It matched your CV.’

‘Who did the vetting?’ I asked.

Only one person it could have been:

Andy Swayne.

I’d been part of Kopf’s plan too.

Janet drained the whisky I hadn’t touched in a single gulp.

Then she asked me to go over my theory again. Out had come her notepad.

‘This changes everything,’ she said, when I finished.

And that’s how we’d left things.

Carnavale stood at his lectern and looked briefly at the judge, and then slowly over the faces of the jury as he began to speak in a precise and even tone, pitching his voice at just the right volume to carry around the court.

‘On the morning of Thursday, March 17th this year, the body of a young woman was found in the bedroom of a hotel suite. The woman’s name was Evelyn Bates. She was twenty-seven years old. She worked as a receptionist at a hairdresser’s. She was loved by her family, to whom she was daughter and granddaughter, sister and aunt. And she is sorely missed by all her friends, who called her “Evey”.

‘Evelyn was strangled to death. She fought for breath as hard as she fought her killer. But he was much bigger and far stronger. He crushed her windpipe with his bare hands. Her last few moments of life must have been absolutely agonising.’

He paused there. Good beginning, I thought. He’d told the jury that this was about justice for the victim first and foremost. And the victim could be one of their friends, their daughter, their sister. In short, one of them.

He’d also fired the first class warfare salvo, by establishing what she did for a living. And – above all – he’d started with the strongest bit of evidence against VJ: the body in the bed.

‘Later the same day, the police arrested and charged the person you see in the dock before you. His name is Vernon James.’

Another pause. All the jurors looked at VJ. Some stared at him, others glanced. I scanned their faces for a reaction. None. Early
early
days.

‘The reasons he was arrested are straightforward,’ Carnavale continued. ‘He was the only guest in the room at the time of Evelyn’s murder. He was present in the room at the time of her murder. And several eyewitnesses saw him with Evelyn in the hours leading up to her murder.’

Carnavale methodically went through the evidence against VJ, in the order he intended to present it. The autopsy report establishing time of death, forensics, eyewitnesses, the police interviews, the note Evelyn had left for Penny Halliwell. He would be taking the jury through his case chronologically, telling them what he believed happened that night at the Blenheim-Strand. Most took notes, pencils scratching away at pads.

I had to hand it to him. Carnavale knew how to spin a yarn and hold attention. He varied tempo regularly. He focused on a different block of the jury, yet didn’t make eye contact with anyone specific. And he completely avoided looking at VJ, or mentioning him by name. He was ‘the accused’, ‘the man in the dock’, ‘the man the police arrested’.

‘Members of the jury, I can imagine what you’re thinking, because I thought the very same thing,’ he said. ‘How is it that someone clever enough to be a multimillionaire before the age of forty could be
stupid
enough to walk away from a hotel room where he’d just murdered someone, without even making an effort to conceal the body? He left Evelyn Bates where he killed her. Naked, on top of the bed. He didn’t even cover her with a sheet. No. He simply checked out of the room the next morning and went to his office.

‘Yet, over the course of this trial, you will learn enough about the accused’s character to understand, if not
why
he did this, then
how
he could do this. You will see that the accused is no ordinary man. He is a self-made millionaire. He can buy practically anything he wants. Maybe even, in his mind, any
one
he wants. He’s someone who has created his very own personal exclusion zone. A golden bubble where he believes he’s beholden to no one. That he can do what he wants, when he wants,
to whom
he wants. He is no ordinary man, so to him, the rules that bind others – that bind you and me, that bound Evelyn Bates – simply do not apply to him.

‘You will also understand his state of mind. You will hear how he’s done this sort of thing to women before. How he was violent with them, how he indulged in
extreme
sado-masochistic practices for his own sexual gratification. The consequences may not have been fatal then, but had he been reported to the police, he would have been held to account in a court of law. That he wasn’t, is because of one thing and one thing only. His money. He paid off his previous victims. He bought their silence. And he bought the freedom to continue his depraved acts. And, by extension, in his mind, he bought himself the right to kill Evelyn Bates.’

Carnavale sat down.

The court was absolutely silent. Silent like it was empty. Silent like all the air had been sucked out of it. Both female jurors sneaked a look at the dock. This wasn’t good.

‘Mrs Devereaux. Would you like to proceed now or shall we have a break?’ Judge Blumenfeld asked.

Christine put one hand on her stick, and I took her arm and helped her stand. She was slow and let the effort and pain play a little on her face. I took a quick look at the jury. No reaction.

I was hoping we’d have a recess, so we could put some distance between what we’d heard, let people forget a little.

‘My Lord, I’d like to proceed. I won’t take as long as my learned friend,’ Christine said.

She looked at the jury.

‘I don’t like Vernon James,’ she said.

What?
 

‘I don’t like him one bit. I don’t think he’s what you’d call a “nice person”, or a “good person”. Over the course of this trial, I expect you’ll agree. He’s been physically abusive to women. He’s a sexual sadist, a serial adulterer, a habitual user of prostitutes. He’s betrayed and shamed his family. He’s also shamed the venerable institution that elected him Ethical Person of the Year the night before he was arrested for murder. In short, Vernon James is an absolute disgrace as a human being. Yet, he is not on trial for any of these failings. And neither is he on trial for being rich. He is on trial for murder. The murder of Evelyn Bates.’

A pause. So far so dreadful.

What the hell was she doing?

‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I will ask only one thing of you. Please consider the evidence against Mr James very
very
carefully and ask yourselves if it really adds up, if it
really
proves he killed Evelyn Bates. I do not for a moment believe it does. Thank you.’

‘What the
fuck
was that about?’ VJ said to Christine when we met him in the cells, half an hour after the judge had dismissed us for the day.

I didn’t blame him for being angry. Neither did Redpath. Janet wasn’t even there. She’d torn out of the courtroom, her phone already on.

‘Did you see the jury’s faces?’ he asked.

She hadn’t, but I had. Universal confusion. As in: w
here’s the defence
?

‘You didn’t even say I didn’t do it,’ VJ went on.

‘Because that’s what they were expecting me to say,’ Christine said, finally.

‘No kidding! That’s what
I
was expecting you to say!’

Me too.

‘Did you follow the prosecution’s opening statement?’ she asked.

‘Yeah…’

‘I wrote two very different openers – “Dry” and “Dramatic”,’ she said. ‘If Carnavale had gone the melodramatic route, acted like every lawyer always does in American films, my response would have been “Dry”. I would have laid out the facts of the case bit by bit and explained how I was going to dismantle them. But that was the direction he took.

‘Never bore a jury. Always give them something to talk about, something to remember you by. Carnavale took almost an hour to say he thinks you’re guilty. I was brief. I gave them drama. And I stole the prosecution’s thunder.’

‘How?’

‘I told the jury the worst thing they’ll hear about you – that you’re into rough sex with prostitutes. It won’t come as a surprise when they hear it. And I’ve also sided with them, distanced myself from you as a person, but not as a client.’

None of us were buying it. It was a clever enough tactic in theory, but she hadn’t pulled it off. The jury didn’t get it. They’d heard a defence lawyer say she didn’t like her client, that she found him despicable. And they hadn’t heard her state his innocence either. They’d heard her say the evidence against him was flawed. In other words, he did it, but the prosecution can’t prove it.

‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ VJ said.

I went down the road to Ludgate Hill to hail us a taxi.

As I was standing there waiting, it started to rain. Not heavily; a few stray droplets peeled off the clouds and fell on the pavement and on my face.

Then Sid Kopf turned the corner. He’d been in court, watching from the public gallery, I guessed. He was with a much younger woman in a dark-grey suit and sunglasses.

I didn’t recognise her until they got closer.

Melissa.

She hadn’t left the country after all. She was standing by her man.

I ignored them and looked up the road. A cab was coming along. I held out my hand. The taxi stopped in front of me.

‘Do you mind if we grab this one?’ Kopf said, catching up to me.

‘Be my guest,’ I said.

He asked the driver to take them to Kensington Roof Gardens and opened the door for Melissa.

‘Oh, sorry – have you two met?’ he asked me.

I looked at Melissa, saw my double reflection in her opaque glasses, caught there like twin locusts in an oil slick.

‘I don’t believe we have,’ she said, holding out her hand. ‘I’m Melissa
James
. Vernon’s wife.’

‘Terry Flynt,’ I said, shaking her hand, which was as cool and smooth as a flat stone in a stream.

‘Terry’s the clerk,’ Kopf said to her.

‘Not a paralegal, then?’ she said.

Nice
…
 

She got in the cab. Kopf followed her in. Then he stopped mid-stoop and looked over his shoulder at me. He shifted his eyes to the taxi and then back to mine. And he winked.

‘Miriam Zengeni?’

‘Yes?’ a woman’s voice answered the Archer House intercom.

‘I’m a friend of Andy Swayne’s.’

‘Andy? You mean
Andrew
?’

‘I’d like to talk to you about him and Michael.’

There was a long pause.

‘Number 75, third floor,’ she said and buzzed me through the gate.

She brewed up a pot of ginger tea and carried it with cups on a tray into the living room. We both sat either end of a light-brown leather couch.

The conversation started small; about the ruined, rainy summer; then how the building had changed in the last fifty years, going from a state-owned working-class council estate to the private, exclusive gated community it was today. She said the joy had gone out of the area. Poverty had bound people together. Wealth divided them. There’d once been a school just outside the block, which her daughter had gone to. It had been converted into luxury flats too. She missed the sound of children playing.

I took in the room, the grey porcelain praying hands and red rosary beads on the mantelpiece, a variety of snow globes from all over the world, and the photographs – so many photographs.

I noticed, in a frame on the shelf, the same black-and-white photo Swayne had pinned to his corkboard, but larger and clearer. Miriam was pregnant there and just starting to show.

‘I thought Andrew had stopped with the drinking nonsense long ago. Especially after —’ She caught herself. ‘How well did you know him?’

‘Only a few months. He told me about his time in prison, if that’s what you mean,’ I said.

‘He must have trusted you. He didn’t make friends easily. If at all.’

She spoke in a surprisingly strong, clear baritone for someone her age. And her accent was pure bygone English, all clipped and proper, what used to be known as BBC English. She’d banished any and every hint of Mother Africa.

‘We weren’t friends exactly, more work colleagues,’ I said.

‘
Work?
I thought Andrew was retired.’

‘He was helping me with a case.’

‘A case? You mean an investigation?’

‘Yeah,’ I said, sipping the tea. It was sweet and spicy and surprisingly good, considering I wasn’t a tea person.

‘He didn’t tell me anything about that.’

‘Did you see him often?’

‘I saw a lot of him this year. He’d come by once a week, usually Tuesday or Wednesday. We’d have lunch, sometimes go for walks when the weather was good,’ she said, looking out of the window. ‘Before that our contact was irregular.’

‘When did you last see him?’

‘He came twice last week, Monday and Tuesday. He borrowed that photograph you see there,’ she said, pointing to the picture of the three of them on the shelf. ‘He brought it back on Tuesday.’

The day before he’d died.

She sipped her tea.

‘Are you a private detective as well?’

‘I’m with a solicitors’ firm – Kopf-Randall-Purdom.’

‘You work for
Sid Kopf
?’

‘Do you know him?’

‘Of course. My daughter – Bridget – works for him.’

Now this was awkward.

‘Which division?’ I asked.

‘Commercial. She’s a partner there. Done well for herself,’ she smiled, proudly.

My turn to stare out the window, at the moored barges bobbing on the rusty grey Thames, then Chelsea Harbour and the brass pagoda-like roof of the Belvedere.

‘The reason I came to see you is that Andy – Andrew – died quite suddenly, just as I was getting to know him. I was curious about his past. He talked a bit about you and Michael.’

‘What did he say?’

‘Him and Michael were good friends.’

She frowned and shook her head. ‘They only met twice.’

‘Oh…’ I was a little thrown, but not surprised. Typical Swayne; still messing with me from the grave. ‘Did they meet in Zim — in Rhodesia?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘What do you know about Michael?’

‘He was Thomas Nagle’s son.’

‘Michael’s father brought him over to England when he was four. In South Africa, mixed race children were rejected by both sides of apartheid. So he pulled some strings, got Michael a British passport and sent him to live with a couple who had a young son about his age. Thomas paid for his upkeep and education. Michael went to boarding school.

‘Apart from that, his father had no involvement in his life. There was no contact, and he never recognised Michael as his own. He simply wrote cheques. Which, I suppose, is a lot more than most men would do in the circumstances.

‘Michael lived in England until he graduated. Then he cut all ties and moved to Rhodesia. He had ambitions. He was interested in farming.’

She fetched a photo album down from a shelf, sat closer to me and opened it on her lap. Michael as a young boy, in shorts, cross-legged in a back garden next to a slightly older white boy. Michael and the boy at the seaside, building a sandcastle together. The pair outside a small terraced house, in cowboy outfits, aiming toy sixshooters at the camera. Michael at a school prize-giving, Michael holding up a silver cup.

‘I met Michael when he was out buying feed in the market one day. Not the most romantic of encounters. I was a teacher. We married, moved to a farm. I fell pregnant. And then, one day, Andrew turned up with a letter from Michael’s father.’

‘Was that the first time you met Andrew?’

She nodded. I glanced up at the picture on the shelf.

‘My mother took that with her camera. We’d bought her one for her birthday. She was trying it out.’

Swayne knew I’d come here too. He’d
wanted
me to talk to Miriam.

‘What did the letter say?’

‘Thomas wrote that he was dying of cancer and wanted to make amends. He wanted to meet Michael in London as soon as possible,’ she said. ‘Michael didn’t want to go. He’d grown up knowing he was illegitimate, that his father was white and rich and British. He had a lot of anger about all that.

‘He said his father didn’t want to know him all his life, so why should things be any different now? But I insisted he went. He was about to become a father himself, and I thought it was only right he make peace with his own. I’ve regretted that ever since.’

She wasn’t sad when she spoke those words, but I felt sorry for her. She’d unwittingly sent her husband to his death. From the other photos on the walls, I don’t think she’d remarried, maybe never even had another significant relationship since. There were no other men in the pictures. Only her, her daughter, and two young, light-skinned girls I took to be grandchildren.

‘Michael agreed to fly to London to meet his father,’ she said.

‘Where was Andrew?’

‘He left after he delivered the letter. Went back to England. He telegrammed Michael to say he’d meet him at Heathrow when he got off the plane.’

‘So, on November 27th, 1960, Michael left for Salisbury airport in his Land Rover. He never made it. They found his body a month later, hands tied behind his back. He’d been shot. We’ll never know what happened. Maybe the whites killed him because they were jealous of how well the farm was doing. Maybe the blacks killed him because he was a traitor. Or maybe it was just a robbery.

‘Scott Nagle – Michael’s half-brother – came to Rhodesia a week after he disappeared. He got the police to investigate. If he hadn’t come, nothing would have happened. The white police weren’t interested in blacks going missing. The more the merrier. They found the car two weeks later, with the body in the back. Badly decomposed.

‘Michael was identified by the officer in charge of the investigation. Wingrove. He had to use dental records from England.

‘Thomas Nagle pushed for an inquest and a full investigation. He was determined to bring his son’s killer to justice. But he died and they never caught Michael’s killers.

‘Scott arranged for me and Bridget to come to London for the inquest. That was forty-nine years ago. We’ve never left.’

I finished my tea.

‘Do you know Scott Nagle well?’

‘Bridget’s Uncle Scott – of course,’ she smiled. ‘He’s been very good to us. Thomas didn’t leave anything for Michael in his will, but Scott took care of us. Always has. We’ve wanted for nothing.’

Thomas Nagle’s will. I’d seen a draft version in Kopf’s office. The father had split his estate equally between his sons. Maybe it had never been ratified because Michael failed to show; because he’d been murdered.

‘You know, it’s strange to hear that Andrew talked about Michael with you. He never did with me. Not until he asked to borrow the picture.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He said he thought about Michael all the time, that he hadn’t stopped thinking about him from the day he died. And if there was one thing he could take back and undo, it would be the letter he brought.’