The Verdict (58 page)

Evening Standard
, September 5th, 2011

‘We all set for tomorrow?’ VJ asked me.

It was just us in the Belmarsh visiting room.

‘Good to go,’ I said.

Tomorrow morning his appeal would be heard. A mere formality, and then he’d be free.

You’d have thought they’d have released him the instant the Israelis were convicted, but the decision had to be ratified by the courts, and the process took time. Free slots had to be found, other cases juggled and moved. If anything, I was surprised at how quickly this had happened.

‘What are my chances?’ he asked, smiling.

‘Best not get your hopes up. This game is played one move at a time,’ I quipped.

‘Spoken like a true lawyer,’ he said.

We laughed. We could do that now.

Yeah, you guessed right…

I was still at KRP.

Everyone has their price. Mine was the lives of my children, an easier life for my wife and, yeah, a second chance at a future.

So, I’d taken the job.

I was working as a paralegal and studying for a law degree at UCL.

I was done being a fool.

It was different at the firm now that Kopf was gone. Janet had moved into his office, and expanded the criminal division.

I was Janet’s right-hand man. I had her ear, and she was mentoring me. I didn’t know what to make of her. And I still don’t know how she got Kopf to quit and hand her the keys to his kingdom. Was it blackmail, or something they’d planned?

On the one hand, justice had been done. Evelyn Bates’s killer was dead, Fabia Masson’s were in jail, and an innocent man would soon walk free.

Yet the real culprits, the ones who’d instigated this, were also free – for now.

I’d given evidence in court about my attempted kidnapping by the Israelis; and also – finally – recounted what Fabia had told me in Southend nick before they killed her.

But I wasn’t the star witness. Rudy Cohen – aka Rudy Saks – was.

He spent two days on the witness stand, reeling off the whole story of VJ’s fit-up, from his team’s recruitment to the moment of his arrest at Gare du Nord in Paris.

It was chilling. How they selected Fabia Masson as the ‘ideal victim’ based on their intel on the type of woman VJ liked. How Evelyn Bates was brought up to the suite when they were forced to improvise after Fabia fled. Why her? ‘She was convenient. A woman on her own, no friends.’ Daniel Bronstein (aka Jonas Dichter) had strangled her on the suite floor. They hadn’t even noticed the colour of her dress.

Normally they should all have split the country once the job was done, but Fabia was a loose end they had to tie up first. Why had they bothered? ‘We wouldn’t get paid in full, and our reputations would be damaged. Just like in any other job,’ Cohen had said.

He admitted the group raided David Stratten’s house posing as taxmen, but denied killing him. He also denied killing Andy Swayne, but admitted they’d ‘wasted’ two days ‘following him’.

The two surviving members of Cohen’s team got life, with a minimum of thirty years. Cohen got life with a minimum of fifteen – for his cooperation.

That wasn’t the whole story.

The police had raided the Silver Service Agency and arrested Beverley Wingrove, but they’d let her go because there wasn’t enough evidence to charge her. She said she didn’t know the Israelis’ true identities. As for Oliver Wingrove, her husband had never talked about the work he did back then, she said. There was no proof either way.

Scott Nagle had been released on bail and was under house arrest, pending the ongoing investigation into Michael Zengeni’s murder. KRP wasn’t representing him. Janet cited a ‘conflict of interest’. Nagle may have allowed himself a wry laugh, if he found humour in irony.

The critical piece of evidence linking him and Zengeni, and thus providing the motive for his murder – their father’s second will, dividing his estate and businesses between them – had disappeared from Sid Kopf’s filing cabinet. Kopf had covered both their tracks.

As for Kopf himself, he’d voluntarily gone to the police for questioning, and been released without charge three hours later. Janet accompanied him. Not that he needed her.

VJ, now knowing Scott Nagle had bought the warehouse, suspected it was him who’d had him framed, but he hadn’t made the connection with KRP. Not yet, anyway.

Andy Swayne:

Everyone now thinks he killed Michael Zengeni.

Everyone except me.

I don’t think he had it in him. I don’t even think he knew what was going on. He thought he was delivering a letter. Just as he thought he was picking Michael up from Heathrow and taking him to a building site in Stratford to meet his dad.

He witnessed the murder, though. Of that I was sure.

He’d been traumatised and guilt-ridden for the rest of his life, which is why he turned to drink.

Why hadn’t he simply confessed, told me everything?

He couldn’t. He was as implicated as Kopf and Nagle were. And he was scared of Kopf. Kopf had a hold on him.

So he needed me – a KRP employee, a clerk just going about his job – to blow the whistle. He was pushing me towards the truth all along, and I didn’t realise it.

‘What happens tomorrow, then?’ VJ asked.

‘I expect the verdict will be ruled unsafe, your sentence will be quashed and you’ll be set free.’

‘But I won’t be acquitted?’

‘You need a retrial for that, which won’t happen because the CPS won’t seek one. Trials cost taxpayers’ money. Why acquit an innocent person when they can send a guilty one to jail?’

‘So my name won’t be cleared?’

‘Technically, no,’ I said.

‘I’ll always be the guy who killed Evelyn Bates?’

‘To people who don’t know any better, yeah. But at least you’ll be free.’

‘It’s not fair,’ he said, with a sigh of disgust.

Finally, the right moment had come – the moment I’d been waiting for, ever since I first found myself in the same room as him again: the opportunity to bring up the past – our past.

‘It’s like what happened to me with your diary,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘Your diary, remember? The one you accused me of stealing?’

He gave me a puzzled look; a look that stayed on his face for so long I wondered if he hadn’t completely forgotten what he’d done.

‘Oh…’ he said after close to a minute of silence. ‘
That
.’

‘Did you ever find it?’ I asked.

He shook his head.

‘Did you ever find out who took it?’

Another shake of the head.

‘But you know I never stole it, right?’

‘I can’t believe we’re even talking about this.’

‘It was a pretty big deal to me,’ I said.

He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. He’d bulked up quite considerably over the past year, said he took out his frustrations on free weights.

‘That was twenty years ago, Terry.’

Yes, it was. And it was petty and trivial; and – in the current circumstances – totally insignificant. But not to me. This was my one and only chance to put the matter to rest, to ask him the question that had been bugging me for… yeah, ‘
twenty years
’. Tomorrow he’d be free.

‘Didn’t you figure out what happened?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I said.

‘I thought you would’ve done by now. I thought you
had
. I thought you’d understood.’

‘“Understood”?’

I really didn’t know what he was on about. And, suddenly I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. But if I left it here, I’d never stop thinking about it. No closure, no peace. No peace, no progress.

‘You might as well tell me,’ I said.

‘Do you remember what you were like at Cambridge? What you turned into?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You were pissed the whole time. An embarrassment.’

‘To who?’

‘Me, of course – and people I knew.’

‘Your fancy new friends, you mean?’

‘There you go again,’ he sighed. ‘You haven’t changed a bit, have you? Still balancing a chip on each shoulder. Still with that small-town mentality of yours – suspicious of anything and everything beyond the end of your nose. The world’s flat and you’re too scared to go too far in case you drop off the end.’

His contempt cut deeper than it should have. He’d looked down on me then. He was still looking down on me.

‘At least I wasn’t a social climber,’ I said.

‘You don’t get it, do you? People like us – state school kids, no connections, no rich parents – if we’re not climbing, we’re sinking. And I didn’t get into Cambridge to sink. That wasn’t me. But, most of all, that never used to be
you
.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘What do you
think
I’m saying?’ he said.

I knew.

I didn’t want to believe he would have gone that far, been that ruthless. I thought I knew him, knew his limits.

‘You never had a diary, did you?’ I said.

‘No.’

‘You made it up – the theft?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Why?’

‘Why d’you think?’

‘Tell me.’

‘What’s it matter? It’s trivial. Kids’ stuff,’ he said.

‘It matters to me.’

‘All right, then,’ he said. ‘I wanted you out of my way and out of my life. You were holding me back. I’d be talking to people, making those all-important contacts you do in places like Cambridge. And what would happen? You’d turn up. Pissed out of your skull, lairy, aggressive, insulting everyone. And it’d reflect badly on me. You’re known by the company you keep. And I was known by
you
. My pisshead twat mate from
Stevenage
. I couldn’t have that.

‘But I couldn’t just cut you off. That wouldn’t have looked good. It would’ve looked weak. So I needed a good excuse to get rid of you, a convenient incident.’

That hit me like a wrecking ball to plywood. I’d never guessed I was holding him back.

‘You lied to the college,’ I said. ‘You told them I’d stolen from you.’

‘I didn’t want it to go
that
far, believe me,’ he said. ‘But I didn’t have a choice.’

‘Yes, you did.’

‘What? Take it back? Have you been listening to a word I said? I wanted you out of my life.’

‘You got me kicked out of Cambridge.’

Anger flashed across his face and his eyes narrowed to shiny black slits.

‘No, I didn’t, Terry. You know why you got sent down? It wasn’t for stealing my non-existent diary. They wouldn’t have cared about that. You got kicked out because you failed your exams. It wasn’t because of me or anything I did. It was because of you and everything you
didn’t
do.

‘And that was work. You never did any the whole time you were there. I kept on telling you. I kept on warning you. You didn’t listen. You didn’t want to know. You were too busy going down the pub. All those essays you never wrote, or when you did, you dashed them off an hour before they were due. You just couldn’t be arsed. Life was a drink and you got drunk.’

I didn’t answer. I
had
no answer.

I was angry and I was disgusted. Disgusted with him – even if he was fundamentally right in everything he’d said.

Yes, I
had
thrown my life away then. I’d messed up an opportunity people like me barely even catch a glimpse of. And for that, I deserved what had happened.

But that didn’t make it all right. Not one bit.

And I hadn’t even mentioned Melissa.

Over the past few months, working on his appeal, talking to him regularly, I’d managed to separate the person he was now, from the one he’d been. It had been easy. The man across the table from me had been sent to prison for a crime he hadn’t committed. He wasn’t a person, he was a cause. I even started to like him…

Not any more.

I sensed those old wounds that had finally started healing starting to open again.

I sensed that dormant anger turning over, opening an eyelid.

I suddenly wanted to bring up Rodney’s murder and the alibi… Kev Dorset’s story never did run in the
Chronicle
. The riots and their aftermath had ensured VJ’s conviction wasn’t even news.

But right then I heard Karen’s voice, loud and clear, ringing around my head like church bells tolling across a flat, frozen meadow:

‘You can’t cheat karma.’

Over and over, like a mantra.

You can’t cheat karma.
 

She was right.

VJ
hadn’t
cheated karma.

All my life I’d wanted him to pay for what he’d done to me.

In a roundabout way, he had.

My life had been damaged by a lie he told. And his life had been ruined by a frame-up – a different kind of lie, but a lie all the same.

You can’t cheat karma. No one can. It’s not instant, but it always gets you in the end.

I could have pointed that out to him, but what would have been the point?

He’d be a free man tomorrow, sure. But what would that freedom look like? He’d lost his business. Melissa was divorcing him. And everyone knew what kind of person he was. He’d get back on his feet, without a doubt, but he wouldn’t stand quite as tall, nor be looked at the same way. And yes, there’d always be someone who thought he was a killer.

‘If you’d known about the diary, would you still have helped me out the way you did?’ he asked.

Good question

Very
good question.

Would it have made a difference?

I thought about that.

The person I was on March 17th, 2011, wouldn’t have raised a finger to help him.

The person I was now would have helped him regardless.

‘I’m not a lawyer yet,’ I said. ‘But I started becoming one the minute I got given your case. The law is founded on the abiding principle that everyone is entitled to a fair trial, irrespective of who they are and what they’ve done – to others, or to yourself.’

He chuckled.

‘You hate me, don’t you?’

‘No.’ I shook my head. And I meant it too. For the very first time. I didn’t hate him at all. Not any more. We were even. Life had redressed the balance. I saw that now.

‘I had a friend, a long time ago,’ I said. ‘He was a good friend. My best friend. We were really close, like brothers. Then we grew up and went our separate ways. I never saw him again. I don’t know where he is or what happened to him. Chances are, if we passed each other in the street a month, a year from now, I wouldn’t even recognise him. But you know what? That’s OK. Because this way I’ll always remember him for what he was, not what he became.’