The Verdict (55 page)

‘I will conclude by reminding you that our legal system punishes people for things they have done, not for things they may yet do. Vernon James did not kill Evelyn Bates. I firmly and
wholeheartedly
believe that. And I have every good faith that when you re-examine the evidence in your deliberations, you will come to the same conclusion. Thank you.’

I helped Christine sit down. For once, she actually needed my help. She was exhausted, sweating and shaking. She’d given it her all.

I wanted to pat her on the back, but it had to wait.

Judge Blumenfeld gave his directions, the final summary.

We knew he wasn’t going to tell the jury whether to convict or acquit, but he could strongly hint at what he thought their verdict should be – in so many words. And the general rule of thumb, when predicting a verdict, is:

As goes the judge, so the jury
.

We listened carefully.

Judge Blumenfeld highlighted the pros and cons of both arguments, giving each equal time and weight. Then he said this to the jury:

‘The prosecution had access to all the evidence it needed to make a convincing case, but you should ask yourselves whether you were presented with enough of it to be convinced of the defendant’s guilt. The fact that Evelyn Bates was murdered in the defendant’s hotel room may be enough to convict him in the court of public opinion, but it is
not
enough to convict him in a court of law.’

In other words…

He didn’t think the case was as strong as it
should
have been.
 

Christine allowed herself the slightest of smiles.

Carnavale couldn’t hide his dejection.

‘All rise!’

We got out of court at 12.30 and were going to go straight down the cells to see VJ.

But DCI Reid marched straight up to me, ignoring Christine and Redpath.

‘Can I have a word, please?’

‘Remember we took your fingerprints in Southend nick? They were all over this,’ DCI Reid said, tapping on an evidence bag on the table between us.

We were in a windowless cubbyhole on the second floor. Nothing but a table, and a couple of plastic chairs.

She opened the bag and unfolded the contents. The first thing I noticed were yellowy brown oval smudges on the surface, where the paper had been iodine-fumed by forensics.

It was the building plan I’d found in Swayne’s locker in Frant station.

‘It was in the Renault Megane you were in two weeks last Saturday,’ she said.

‘Took your time getting to me,’ I said.

‘We
bided
our time. We didn’t want to disrupt the trial in any way,’ she said.

‘I’m sure you didn’t,’ I said, sarcastically. She ignored that.

‘Now, about what happened that day. As I’m sure you know we have two people in custody —’

‘And another in the morgue.’

She paused long enough to skewer me with a glare.

‘There have been some significant developments,’ she continued. ‘But before I go there, I need you to promise me that whatever’s said here, stays here. Is that understood?’

‘Yes.’

‘We have a man and a woman in custody. We believe the man was the driver. He’s being treated for third-degree burns and a wound to the back of his neck,’ she said. ‘In the next twenty-four hours, we’re going to charge the woman with the murder of Fabia Masson in Southend. It was her on the station CCTV. She’ll also be charged with your attempted kidnapping. You’re our main witness. I’m going to need a statement from you.’

Before I had time to react, DCI Reid had placed a digital tape recorder in front of me.

‘Ready?’

And off I went, spilling in an unchecked freeform blurt:

Meeting Swayne on Wellington Arch… the woman we’d seen standing by the Australian War Memorial… Sid Kopf rigging the defence team to lose the trial (she didn’t so much as blink at that)… exchanging coats… going to Swayne’s flat, being followed… ditching my tail at Tunbridge Wells… the drawing in the railway locker… getting bundled in the car by the woman and Jonas Dichter… the syringe, the gun, the petrol bomb… being rescued by rioters… running away.

DCI Reid pressed stop.

‘Who were my kidnappers?’ I asked.

‘Ex-Israeli Special Forces, now working for the private sector as killers for hire. Well trained, highly skilled, very dangerous. We’re finding out more and more about them as we go along,’ she said. ‘They were based in a house in Ealing. Two of them had – very briefly and until fairly recently – been working at the Blenheim-Strand. One in security, one in housekeeping. They got the jobs through Beverley Wingrove at the Silver Service Agency.’

I stayed calm.

‘When did you find all this out?’ I asked.

‘Over the course of the past week,’ she said.

I thought back to what Swayne had told me on Battersea Embankment:

The Wingroves – the White Ghosts –
Mossad
…

He’d been trying to tell me where to look.

‘When we searched their place in Ealing, we found fake passports, stacks of money, and a gun. We also found vials of the same poison used on Fabia.’

A chill travelled from the edge of my neck to my toes at lightning speed. I shuddered.

‘This changes everything, right?’ I said.

‘What does it change?’

‘You know Vernon didn’t kill Evelyn Bates.’

‘No, we don’t,’ she said. ‘All the evidence says he did.’

‘Come on!’

‘For an apprentice lawyer who’s just sat through a trial, you’re pretty stupid, Terry. You should know how things work in court by now. It’s not how things are, it’s how they look. And, above all, it’s about what you can prove.’

I could’ve got angry, but there was no point. This was ultimately all about the law; about what did and didn’t stand up in court.

‘Did you ask the Israelis who they were working for?’

‘I don’t think you have anything more to worry about now, Terry.’

‘And what was I worried about?’

‘You don’t have to fear for your safety – or that of your family. They can come home now.’

My family?
 

How did she know they were away?

Had the police been watching me?

I wanted to ask her, I really did… But I didn’t want to know.

Let it go, walk away. And be grateful you can. She’s telling you this is over.
 

She folded Swayne’s drawing up and handed it to me.

‘You can go back to work now.’

Something had happened in the Great Hall. A small crowd was gathered in the middle. Admin staff, security, uniformed cops all mingling with the legals, as if there’d been a drill or an alarm had gone off.

I spotted Janet and Redpath off to one side. Redpath was on his phone.

‘Christine’s collapsed,’ Janet said.

‘
What?
’

‘We were standing here talking and she keeled over. She was unconscious when the medics got here. I thought she’d fainted. But it could be a stroke.’

‘Jesus.’

‘She’s on her way to hospital. We’ve informed her family. They’re on their way there.’

Christine had seemed well all through the trial – her health even improving with each passing day, especially when things had gone our way. But when she finished her summing-up she looked ashen.

‘What’s going to happen now?’ I asked.

‘He takes over,’ she said, hiking her thumb in Redpath’s direction.

Great, I thought. Our mute barrister.

‘I doubt the jury’ll come back today,’ Janet said. ‘They won’t start deliberating until two. We might know tomorrow morning.’

‘How’s the rule go again?’ I asked. ‘Quick – you’re nicked/Slow – you can go.’

The faster the jury comes back, the likelier a guilty verdict.

Janet shook her head.

‘It’s a myth,’ she said. ‘But I’ve got another rule for you: “Expectation is the mother of disappointment and the father of resentment.” You’d best remember that if you decide to continue in the legal profession.’

I started heading off.

‘Where are you going?’ Janet called after me.

‘Lunch,’ I said.

For my sins I found myself going back to Croydon. That was where the headquarters of the Land Registry department was situated.

The receptionist made me wait as she phoned to see if anyone was around to help me. I was in luck. I paid £15, gave my details and got given a visitor’s pass and a name to ask for on the first floor.

My designated official was a pale blond man in his fifties with translucent eyelashes. I showed him Swayne’s drawing and explained that I had neither an address nor a postcode, just the reference number in the legend.

He looked at it for all of five seconds.

‘The postcode’s right here,’ he said, pointing to the first part of the legend in the box. ‘See? E15 1LW. The other numbers – 1960 – probably correspond to the year the drawing was made, and the others – 0507… I dunno. Company code maybe?’

‘E15? That’s east London, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. Stratford,’ he said.

As with the last time I’d come here, there was a van parked outside the Stratford Friends House, but it wasn’t serving soup to the homeless now. It was a removal van.

I recognised Fiona, pushing a box inside. When she’d finished she massaged her upper arms.

‘It’s Terry, isn’t it – Terry from Kopf-Randall-Purdom?’ she said, offering me her hand and then withdrawing it almost as quickly and wiping it on the side of her jeans.

We stood there awkwardly for a moment, clueless in the vacuum of aborted decorum.

She’d been much friendlier before, when I was a stranger.

‘I see you’re moving out?’ I said.

‘Last bits and bobs. We’ve got a centre in Walthamstow,’ she said. ‘The diggers are coming in tomorrow. They’re knocking it down Tuesday. Hard to believe it’ll be gone this time next week.’

She turned to look at the decaying building, its layers of grime mixing with the early afternoon shadows to make it resemble something that had been dredged up from a peat bog, dragged here and left behind.

‘So the sale went through, then?’ I said.

‘Oh, it went through all right,’ she said, sarcastically.

‘What happened?’

‘Don’t you know?’

Yes, I did, but not the way she was implying – as in: I’d known all along, from when we’d first met. I only found out when the man in Land Registry told me the postcode.

But I wanted to hear it from her. Her take.

‘No,’ I said, feigning ignorance and confusion.

A man came out of the building with two boxes stacked one on top of the other. She waited until he’d gone back into the warehouse.

‘Remember how we wanted to sell the building to a reputable buyer? Someone who’d carry on some of our tradition here, helping out the less fortunate? Hal Peterson, the Canadian, seemed ideal.
Too
ideal, as it turned out.’

‘How so?’

‘He…’

She couldn’t bring herself to say it, so I did.

‘He was dodgy?’

‘Not exactly… I mean, yes. It was our fault for being too… too trusting. But how were we to know? Everything seemed on the level. Peterson submitted his bid. One of our board had been to school with him and vouched for his integrity. He came in and met everyone. He told us what he’d do with the land. He told us exactly what we wanted to hear,’ she said. She sighed and shook her head. ‘We should’ve seen it. It was right there, in front of us. All we had to do was
look.
Look past him,
into
him.’

She wiped sweat off her brow with the back of her hand.

‘Hal Peterson was a Trojan Horse,’ she said.

‘A front?’

She nodded slowly and sadly.

‘For someone you would never have sold to?’ I said.

Another heavy nod.

‘It was Scott Nagle, wasn’t it?’ I asked.

I thought back to when I’d gone to the newspaper archive and looked up Nagle. He’d been exposed using a frontman and a shell company to try to buy Battersea Power Station, because the owners wouldn’t have sold to him directly on account of his reputation. But how much had he got away with; how many principled, unsuspecting sellers had he duped before?

‘I thought you said you didn’t know, Terry?’

‘How come
you
didn’t?’

‘It never occurred to us to double-check. All we had to do was go on the Companies House website and look up Hal Peterson Associates. If we had, we’d have seen that it was a shell company not even a year old, and that one of those “Associates” was Scott Nagle. He was listed as a director. And we
definitely
wouldn’t have sold to him,’ she said. ‘I
cared
about this place, this area. It turned my life around.’

‘So how did you find out?’ I asked.

‘Because of you.’

‘
Me?
’

‘The last time you came, you gave me your card,’ she said. ‘After the deal went through, I was asked to photocopy all the paperwork – the contracts and lawyers’ letters. I recognised the name of your firm on some of the letters – Kopf-Randall-Purdom.’

‘
They
did the deal for Peterson?’ I asked. ‘Do you remember the name of the lawyer?’

‘Yes, Kopf. Sid Kopf.’

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but it did. I’d have thought Kopf would stay in the background, not get directly involved.

‘You
really
didn’t know, did you?’ she said, scrutinising my face.

‘It’s a big firm with separate divisions. And I’m little people,’ I said. ‘Scott Nagle’s father – Thomas Nagle – built this place, didn’t he?’

‘He left it to us in his will.’

His
will
? I’d seen it in Kopf’s office. There’d been no mention of Quakers.

‘Thomas was a good man, by all accounts,’ she continued. ‘He grew up in Stratford, you know? His family were poor. Quakers looked after them. He never forgot that.’

‘I didn’t know that,’ I said.

‘You wouldn’t believe it from the way his son turned out, would you?’ she said. ‘Scott Nagle’s been trying to buy this land for decades.
Decades
. I suppose if you hang around long enough you get everything you want.’

‘Or learn how to take it,’ I said.

‘You know what else I found out?’ she said. ‘Vernon
was
going to put a bid in after all. One of the directors told me he’d booked a meeting with them.’

‘Do you remember when it was supposed to be?’

‘March 17th.’

The day he was arrested.
 

A short while later we said our goodbyes. I shook her hand and wished her the best. She told me to ask VJ to come visit them in their new place when he was free – in both senses of the word. I said I would. I’d never told him I’d come here, never told him they’d been praying for him.

It was warm going on hot as I set off back across the baked ground, with the rattle and thudding reports of construction work from the nearby Olympic Village strafing the air.

I stopped and turned back to look at the building.

The first thing I noticed was that I couldn’t make out the massive mural of Quaker Oats man at all, not even the faintest outline. The afternoon sun was falling on the building selectively, brightening up the left side but leaving the right deep in deep shadow.

There was something suddenly very familiar about the warehouse, something that hadn’t registered the last time I was here. That was because I’d seen it in the morning, when the sun was at its highest.

Then it came to me.

I’d seen this place before I ever visited it.

On Kopf’s office wall. It was the most prominent of the dozen framed photographs he’d hung behind his desk – the heart of the display, larger than the others, pride of place. Everyone who sat facing him would notice it. He’d photographed the warehouse from roughly where I was standing now, and at almost the same time of day.

What was that Swayne had told me?

KRP is the house Scott Nagle built
.

A few things started connecting.

Kopf had had VJ framed and arrested to get him out of the way, so Scott Nagle could buy this building and the land it stood on.

It’s very likely VJ would have won the bid, had he been around to place it. He was the ideal buyer. He’d built up a good relationship with the centre over the years –
and
he’d just been crowned Ethical Person of the Year. He couldn’t lose.

He’d also researched his rival bidder. Ahmad Sihl had put David Stratten on the case. Stratten was due to give Sihl his report on March 17th. Except he never made the meeting. He got raided by the Israelis, posing as tax inspectors. They took away his computers and hard drives containing all the information he’d gathered. He’d found out Peterson was a Scott Nagle proxy. VJ would have mentioned that in his pitch for sure.

Swayne knew this
all along
.

He told me oblique clues:

The Israeli hitmen, the Wingroves, Michael Zengeni, the building.

I had all the pieces, but how did they fit together?

Scott Nagle had been trying to buy back the land for
decades
…

He wanted it badly.

But why?

VJ owned the rest of the land.

What was worth killing four people over?