The Verdict (16 page)

The next morning, I was about to add the finishing touch to my sandwiches when my mobile rang.
Tales of the Unexpected
.

‘Hello, Janet.’

‘Did I wake you?’

It was 6.15. I’d gone to bed early and slept better than I had all week.

‘No,’ I said. ‘What’s up?’

‘Vernon’s PA left me a message last night. She can’t face the idea of going to the prison. So you’re going to have to drop off his clothes.’

‘Sure.’ It only meant going to the visitors’ centre. I wouldn’t have to see him.

‘It has to be now-ish.’

‘What’s the address again?’

‘Clemons House… no Clemons
Mews
, Cheyne Walk.’

‘
Cheyne Walk?
’ I repeated.

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise. He’d given his address out in court, and it was in the file, yet I’d totally missed it. He lived a mere fifteen minutes’ walk from my flat, right over Battersea Bridge.

All this time we’d been as good as neighbours.

Again.

Cheyne Walk is a genteel exclusion zone, a gated community in all but name, where the British establishment live cheek by jowl. You can’t simply buy a house there and move in. Your money has to be old, your pockets deep, and/or you have to know the right people.

The road is quiet and sombre, sheltered by trees and bushes on the right, which mute the view of Chelsea Embankment and the river beyond. The houses are mainly eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Georgian, set back from the road and enclosed by black wrought iron railings, many of them wreathed in ivy. Almost all are listed, and several have blue plaques honouring their most famous inhabitants.

VJ’s home was about halfway down. A detached redbrick townhouse, four floors high, with bay windows and a converted attic space. The front garden was pale pebbles and controlled explosions of red barberry bush, crossed by a granite flagstone path to the front door.

I buzzed the intercom in the gatepost.

‘Yes?’ a woman’s voice crackled through the speaker almost immediately.

‘I’m from Kopf-Randall-Purdom,’ I said.

‘Come in.’

The gate unlocked with a click that sounded like a sharp ‘
Tut!
’ and I followed the path to the door, which started opening moments before I reached it. A woman with short red hair, a blue skirt suit and white blouse stood there to greet me.

She extended her hand as soon as I was within range.

‘Nikki Frater, Vernon’s PA,’ she said.

‘Hello,’ I said, shaking her hand. I didn’t give my name.

She ushered me into the hallway, which was tiled in brown and white mosaic and ended at a broad staircase, midway into the house. I smelled fresh coffee and the rich warm tones of mahogany.

‘This way, please,’ she said before I could take in any more.

We went to a reception room on the right. It was high-ceilinged, cream-walled, varnished wooden floors decorated with a pair of red Kashan rugs. There was a bronze statue of Shiva on the marble mantelpiece, but no other decorations save a large gilt-framed antique mirror. The decor was tasteful, but thoroughly impersonal. There were no self-celebratory awards, mounted magazine covers, or personal portraits. That wasn’t VJ’s style at all. He’d never been flash.

‘It’s there,’ she said, pointing to a black bin liner by the fireplace. Suitcases weren’t accepted in prison.

Nikki Frater hadn’t quite met my eyes. She had the same air of defensive embarrassment you see on well-to-do parents accompanying their law-breaking kids to court.

I picked up the bag and followed her back out of the room. I now had to get to Belmarsh in the rush hour, which was going to be grim.

‘Terry?’

The voice had come from the stairs, behind me.

I knew who it was.

She wasn’t supposed to be here. She was supposed to be in America.

I stopped. I didn’t want to turn round. I wanted to keep on walking, out of the door, out of here, and well away.

But, of course, I couldn’t. For all kinds of reasons. Professional… and personal.

So turn round, I did.

And there she was, coming tentatively down the steps.

Mrs James. Mrs
Melissa
James – née Sylford.

‘My God, it
is
you,’ she said. ‘I saw you from the window, but I… I wasn’t sure. I… I… What are you doing here?’

‘I work for your husband’s solicitor,’ I said.

‘Hello Melissa’ would’ve been the thing to say, but that moment had passed.

I was calm. The shock of seeing her again hadn’t hit home yet.

She was dressed down – albeit very expensively – in a black pullover, skinny blue jeans and leather trainers. Her once long black hair now stopped above her shoulders, in a swaying bob. She still had her high cheekbones.

‘This
is
a surprise,’ she said, drawing up to me.

‘I thought you were out of the country,’ I said.

‘I got back this morning. The children…’

She wasn’t wearing any make-up, and was even more beautiful than I remembered. Flawless caramel skin,
those
hazel eyes,
that
broad, bee-stung mouth. Yet there was now a remoteness to her, something not just unattainable, but utterly out of reach, like a photograph of a long dead model or film star. The Melissa I’d known and fallen in love with at Cambridge, the one who drank Newkie Browns, smoked roll-ups and swore in a broad Leeds accent was long gone. She’d become a Society lady.

‘It’s been
such
a while,’ she said, crossing her arms.

‘Hmmm.’ Almost two decades was more than ‘a while’. I wondered if she’d counted the years as I had. Of course she hadn’t. Better things to do. Like marry my nemesis and have his kids.

‘How are you?’ she asked.

‘OK.’ I shrugged, tightening my grip on the bag, which made a dry munching sound in my fist.

‘You’re looking so…
well
.’

Was she as nervous and thrown as I was? If so, she was doing as good a job at hiding it as I hoped I was.

I’d last seen Melissa on August 16th, 1992. I remembered the date because they were playing Elvis songs all over Stevenage that day in honour of the fifteenth anniversary of the King’s death. I’d barely been out of my bedroom in close to two months when she’d come round, unexpectedly.

She broke up with me that October, by letter:

Dear John… well, Dear Terry. She was splitting up with me because she couldn’t have a one-way relationship. She hoped I got better. She hoped I got myself together and sorted myself out. There was so much about me that was great and lovable, and I had so much to give and so much to live for. She’d miss me and she hoped that in time we could be friends. Love Mel.

I later locked the letter away in an old metal box my dad had used to keep the household tools in. The letter rested at the bottom, pressed down by all the other letters and postcards and notes and cards she’d given me, or sent me, or slipped in my pockets or under my door. Every single one of them, from the very first scribble, thanking me for the three espressos I’d bought her at Don Pasquale’s café on Cambridge Market Square, right after we’d had our matriculation photo taken. I still had the letters. Locked up in the box, and hidden in my trunk. I’d thrown the key in the Thames so I couldn’t read them like I used to. And I’d had the box shrinkwrapped in black plastic.

Melissa Sylford – now James – was my first love.

And yes – and no – I’d never got over her.

I took the break-up badly. I went out and got seriously tossered. I picked three different fights with three different groups of people and they all united and chased me down the road. I got away by climbing up a tree and staying there. The idiots wound up beating each other up instead.

I’d cut ties with everyone I knew at Cambridge after I got kicked out, so I didn’t know Melissa had got together with VJ until I read they were married.

That was in
Business Age
magazine in 1999. They’d done a big feature in the colour supplement on potential movers and shakers of the twenty-first century. ‘Faces of the New Millennium.’ VJ was there under ‘Finance’.

James is married to television producer Melissa Sylford. The two met when they were students at Cambridge University.
 

That had ruined the rest of my year, and some of the next.

I was shocked. Devastated, if you will. And hurt. And pissed off like you wouldn’t believe.

‘We’re old friends,’ Melissa said, past my shoulder, to Nikki, with a hint of reproach.

‘Oh,’ the PA said. She quietly slipped by us and went back into the reception room.

Now it was just us. I desperately wanted to get out of here, out of this. Out of her presence. Nineteen years later and it was all still so damn raw.

I looked at my watch.

‘I really have to get going,’ I said.

‘Let me walk you out.’

I wanted to say no, it’s OK, please don’t. But we were five steps from the door, so what difference did it make?

Except she walked me to the gate.

‘How’ve things been for you, Terry?’

‘What do you mean?’ It was a strange question. She hadn’t even asked about her husband.

‘Since we last saw each other?’

‘Your path’s too short,’ I said.

She let out a one-note chuckle.

‘So you’re a lawyer now?’

‘Not quite. Paralegal,’ I lied. ‘Halfway there.’

Would the truth have mattered?

We were now at the gate. She looked through the bars, across the road, at the bushes, as if trying to see the river through the gaps in the leaves.

‘Do you live locally?’

‘Not around here,’ I said.

It was a weak attempt at a bitter joke – or a bitter attempt at a weak joke. Either way it missed its mark.

‘Do you have a family?’

‘Yeah. Two kids. A boy and a girl,’ I said.

‘We should get together when this is all sorted out.’

Get together
, I thought. Why and what for? What could you
possibly
want with me? And what the hell did I have to say to you? You, who’d made a life with the man who’d ruined mine. How
could
you?

But I couldn’t even bring myself to say something noncommittal. I just looked at the gate, willing it to open.

‘Will Vern get bail?’ she asked.

Vern
…
?
She used to call him
B
J. She never liked him when we were together. And the feeling was mutual. Or so it seemed then.

‘You don’t get bail on a murder charge,’ I said.

‘So he has to stay in prison?’

‘Yeah,’ I said, and looked at my watch again.

She pushed a red button in the wall and the gate clicked open.

‘I’m glad it’s you,’ she said.

‘
What?
’

That came out too sharply, too aggressively.

‘I’m glad you’re involved,’ she said.

‘Why?’

‘You were good friends.’

Once
, I felt like adding and emphasising. But, naturally, I said nothing.

I pulled the gate open and stepped out to the street and started walking. I didn’t look back, but I could feel her watching me as I hurried away. Or I thought I could. Or maybe I wished it.

I handed the bag in at Belmarsh visitors’ centre.

The receptionist tapped away at a keyboard and printed off a label, which she stuck to the side. The bag would be taken over to the inmate’s wing, where its contents would be emptied, searched, scanned and dog-sniffed before being passed on to their intended recipient.

‘Can you take a seat, please?’ the receptionist said.

‘Why?’

She nodded at her computer screen. ‘There’s a note on the system, says you have to wait.’

‘What for?’

‘Take a seat and you’ll find out.’

I sat among the lawyers and listened to courtroom gossip and mumbled smalltalk about holidays.

A prison guard walked in, went to the receptionist’s desk and was pointed in my direction. Short, stocky and strictly no neck.

‘You James’s brief?’ he asked.

‘I work for the firm representing him, yeah.’

‘He wants to see you.’

‘Me?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Me
specifically
?’

‘You
are
his brief, right?’

‘I don’t have a visitor’s order.’

He leaned in closer and lowered his voice. ‘Don’t worry ’bout that.’

VJ had already started spreading his money around.

Same room as yesterday.

I wasn’t remotely nervous, or even apprehensive. It was just me and him now. Nothing to hide and no one to hide it from. Besides, seeing Melissa again had wrung me dry. I’d thought I was long over her. But I wasn’t. Not even close. On the way here, she was all I thought about.

She was the reason I could neither look at the college photo – nor throw it away. She was on the row behind us, exactly – and appropriately – between VJ and me, smiling demurely. Of all the new faces that morning, she’d stood out the most, in her leather jacket, jeans and monkey boots. Her Ramones look. Everyone else had come in their finest formal clothes. When she got up on the tier behind me, she put her hand on my shoulder briefly, for balance. That was how we first got talking. And that was why I was smiling in the photo.

VJ arrived, still dressed in green and white. But he’d shaved and looked rested. He had his file with him, tucked under his arm, ready to work.

‘Hi,’ he said as he sat down. Again, not a hint of recognition in his face. I guessed he hadn’t spoken to his wife yet.

‘Thanks for bringing my things.’

‘No problem,’ I said.

He opened his file, turned over a few pages until he came to what he wanted – the list of crime-scene evidence.

‘I’ve remembered something about that night, something I didn’t mention in any of my interviews,’ he said.

I opened my notebook. ‘Go on.’

‘The watch I wore at the event. A Rolex. I’ve been through the evidence log twice. And it’s not there. It’s not listed.’

‘Why didn’t you mention it before?’

‘I didn’t remember until this morning,’ he said.

‘Were you wearing it when you left the hotel the next morning?’

‘No.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Positive.’

‘When did you last have it?’

‘You know the woman I met – Fabia?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘I think she took it. In fact, I’m sure she did,’ he said. ‘When we were having that drink at the Circle bar, she noticed the watch and asked if she could see it. She told me her father was a watchsmith. So I gave it to her –
handed
it to her, I mean.’

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Why not? A beautiful woman asks to try on your watch, you wouldn’t turn her down, would you?’ he said, smiling.

‘If it was a Rolex, I would,’ I said. ‘Which hand did she put it on?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Which hand did she put the watch on?’

He squinted, frowned, racked his brains.

‘Left, I think.’

Whenever clients add to their statements, they’re usually lying. They’ve had their first taste of prison and started panicking. I’d just used a classic interrogation tactic on VJ, something I’d seen in every suspect interview video, something Quinlan had used on me – and him too.

They’d let a suspect talk for a while, get into a comfortable flow, and then they’d interrupt him, make him go back over seemingly trivial points – colour of shoes, what the weather was like that day, what was on TV. Then they’d let him carry on with his story, find his rhythm again, and then they’d ask him the same questions they’d asked before, only in a different order. If the suspect gave different answers, they had him.

‘Carry on,’ I said.

‘The watch didn’t fit her. It slid up and down her forearm. I joked about it. I told her she looked like a rapper. And that’s the last time I remember seeing the watch.’

‘So you’re saying she kept it on the whole time you were with her?’

‘I suppose so. She must have. I don’t remember seeing it again.’

‘Did she have a handbag with her?’

‘Yes.’

‘So you gave someone – a stranger – a piece of your property, and you forgot all about it?’

‘Yes. My mind was on other things.’

‘Like what?’

‘Getting laid,’ he said.

I thought of Melissa. How long had he been cheating on her? This didn’t sound like it was the first time. Did she know?

And how
could
he?

‘Consider the circumstances,’ he said. ‘I was going up to my room with this
really
hot chick. The last thing on my mind was what she had
on
– if you get my drift.’

‘So you’re basically saying that this woman – Fabia – had your watch on when she was in the room with you? Which means she would have had it on when she attacked you?’

‘That figures, yeah.’

‘And when she left the room she was still wearing it, or had slipped it in her bag?’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘The only other explanation I have is that the maids or the police stole it.’

‘Unlikely on both counts,’ I said. ‘The maids walked in on a trashed room and a dead body. The only thing they’d be thinking of was raising the alarm. As for the police, we’re not talking loose cash or something that could be easily missed. Tell me about the watch itself.’

He cleared his throat.

‘It’s a 1951 Datejust Rolex. One of the earliest models in that range. Stainless steel, with a gold rim around the glass. Ivory face, jubilee bracelet. Serial number is 7353.’

I froze a second and stopped writing.

I knew the one he meant.

It was his dad’s Rolex.

I carried on writing fast. If I stopped, my hand might start shaking. And I thought of what I’d say to him next, about how I’d look for it. I’d handle the official channels – the jewellers’, watch shops, eBay – and get Swayne to ask around the fences.

‘The watch was my grandad’s, originally. He passed it on to my dad,’ VJ said. ‘You remember my dad, don’t you…
Terry
?’

Now I stopped writing. My head had been bowed over my notebook, as I was scribbling down the details.

I blinked a couple of times. Dry swallowed.

I finished what I was writing, put my pen down and looked up at him.

He was sitting back, arms crossed, wearing a sardonic smile – and black-framed specs.

That’s why he hadn’t recognised me yesterday.

‘I didn’t know you wore glasses,’ I said.

‘It’s been contacts for the last twelve years,’ he said. ‘They won’t let me have them in here. I only got these last night.’

‘I see,’ I said, close to a whisper.

He chuckled at my unintentional pun. Or maybe it was the shock on my face that amused him. Or maybe how my hand was trembling.

I suddenly couldn’t think any more. My head was blank. I didn’t know what to say, what to ask him, where to begin, where to go. I was lost and intimidated. It might as well have been me in his shoes, him in mine.

‘I thought I recognised you yesterday, but I wasn’t sure,’ he said.

‘Is that why you got me here?’

No reply. Instead he looked me over, inspected me, his eyes dashing back and forth over my face like a pair of fat wet flies. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but I knew he was seeing my frozen panic.

‘They don’t know about you, do they – your firm?’ he said.

‘No.’

‘I didn’t think so.’

What did that mean? Was that a threat or an observation, or a bit of both? Then the guard who’d walked me in opened the door.

‘Sorry, gents,’ he said to VJ. ‘Time’s up.’

No.
 

We needed more time.
I
needed more time.

VJ closed his file and stuck out his hand.

‘It’s good to see you again,’ he said.

I stood up like some summoned zombie and remotely shook his hand.

The guard cleared his throat.

‘Best move it along now,’ he said.

VJ leaned in closer.

‘I didn’t do this, Terry. I know what it looks like, but I didn’t do it. You
know
I didn’t do it.’