Authors: Nick Stone
She always tried her best to give me the silent treatment, but she could never stay quiet long enough to pull it off. She wasn’t a natural hoarder of hurts. She liked to clear the air immediately, settle things and move on. The complete opposite of me, in other words.
‘Where’ve you been?’ she asked.
‘Work,’ I said.
‘You’re on
holiday
, Terry.’
‘Something came up.’
I’d left Swayne and wandered over Battersea Bridge.
Cheyne Walk was close by. I’d gone down to VJ and Melissa’s house. I stood outside the gate and thought about ringing the bell. If she answered I would say I was in the neighbourhood and thought I’d drop by and see how she was doing. Or something like that. My index finger hovered over the buzzer, trembling. It felt like the first step to adultery. Then a car pulled up at the house next door, and two little blond boys bounced out. I remembered it was the school holidays and realised Melissa’s kids might be home. It would be awkward, meeting those little VJ-ettes. I’d start imagining how our kids might have looked, the ones Melissa and I might have had if…
So I’d moved on, headed into Chelsea, drifted aimlessly; up King’s Road to Sloane Square, back down King’s Road to the redbrick high-rise estate called World’s End, where Joe Strummer had written
London Calling
while looking down at the river he lived by.
I’d thought about what Swayne had told me. Although it seemed like complete rubbish at the time, he was utterly serious about it. No snideness in his tone, no smirk. He could have been putting me on, but I didn’t think so.
And, of course, I thought about David Stratten too. Was his death a murder, like Swayne seemed to have implied? He’d been robbed the day he was going to give Ahmad Sihl information for VJ. Some people would call that a coincidence. Others would call it a conspiracy.
I’d found an internet café and looked up Oliver Wingrove. There were only a few scraps of information about him, which I printed off and brought back.
But first there was Karen to get past.
‘I don’t know what’s going on with you, Terry, but I don’t like it,’ she was saying. ‘Ever since you started working on this case, I’ve been seeing this whole side of you I never knew existed. If you’d shown it sooner, I’d have run a mile.’
This was unexpected.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You’re turning into a stranger, you know that? You’re shutting me out, shutting
us
out. You don’t tell me anything. You barely talk as it is. You come home and say three words if you say that much. Ray says you don’t even come in and see him any more after work.’
I hadn’t realised. Yeah, I’d been coming home late. The kids would be getting ready for bed or already fast asleep. And when I got home in time for dinner, my head was on the case. It was always on the case.
But what was I supposed to do? Share all that stuff with them at the dinner table? About how I was helping a man who may or may not have murdered a young woman? Or explain what my job actually consisted of? The hours of phone calls, the interviews where I’d impersonated a cop, the day I’d spent finding out about Evelyn Bates’s sad life? Besides, it was illegal to discuss a case with an outside party. Not that that ever stopped anyone.
Karen was spoiling for a fight I wanted to avoid.
‘This’ll be over soon,’ I said. ‘When the verdict’s in, I’m still quitting. That hasn’t changed.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ she said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’re not acting like someone who’s quitting.’
‘How am I acting?’
‘Have you been looking for another job?’
‘No.’
‘Have you updated your CV?’
‘No.’
‘Course you haven’t,’ she said. ‘’Cause you’re not coming to the end of anything. You’re in the middle, you’re in
deep
–
and you
like
it. You’re like a pig in shit.’
OK. She had me.
Like
was the wrong word. But I
was
enjoying the job – and I’d
loved
it on Tuesday, playing a big part in that court win. It was the first time in a good long while I’d taken pride in something I’d done. Not since school, in fact.
I hadn’t told her about the bonus Kopf gave me. I hadn’t even told her what happened in court. It would’ve confirmed what she suspected – that I really
didn’t
want to leave. And I didn’t. I was getting a taste for the law, getting to like it. I could even see myself doing it for a living.
Kopf had sent out ambiguous signals yesterday. Why give someone a ‘
very
friendly warning’ – and a bonus – if you’re planning to fire them? All he had to do was keep quiet and then use my infringements to justify getting rid of me.
What if they intended to offer me the paralegal’s job and the degree – except I resigned before they got round to it?
‘Have you got anything to
say
, Terry?’ Karen said.
Here was the thing. Although I was genuinely sorry I’d been neglecting them all, I couldn’t just come out and say so yet. Karen and I didn’t argue all that often, once or twice a year, if that. Yet when we fought, there were rules of engagement. Ours were simple. Karen had to have her say, make and score her points, and then leave the room with a dramatic slam of the door. That was the way things worked. That was our balance.
So I couldn’t apologise before she’d done that because, to her, it wouldn’t be sincere. She’d think I was trying to avoid a tongue-lashing, duck a conflict altogether or – worst of all – stop her from saying what she had to say.
She’d said she was feeling shut out, so I had to let her in a little way.
‘This case
is
getting to me, you’re right. I can’t help it. Given the circumstances. It’s brought things back, dredged up things I never thought I’d have to face.’
‘Like what?’
‘It’s made me see things in a different light. A
harsher
light.’
‘What things?’
‘Myself, mostly,’ I said. ‘I had opportunities once, and I never took them, never made the most of what was right in front of me, on a plate. It’s like I took a wrong turn a long time ago, and just kept going.’
‘
A wrong turn
?’ She frowned. ‘Does that “wrong turn” include us? The family you made along the way – the daughter you brought into this world, the son who loves you? Does that include
me
?’
Talk about putting your big fat foot in it.
‘No… of course not, Karen. I… I didn’t mean that.’
She took a couple of steps back, her face furious and pained, her eyes shining with tears.
‘Everyone means what they say, Terry. They just don’t mean to be understood so
fucking clearly
!’
‘I’m sorry, Karen, I —’
She left, slamming the door.
In the spare room, I looked over the stuff I’d got on Oliver Wingrove.
There were several short reports on the failed attempt to extradite him from Britain in 1997. No reasons were given for the extradition. Wingrove’s lawyer had issued a statement saying his client had been a South African Embassy employee in London from the mid-1980s, and denied any wrongdoing.
The other pieces dated back to the early 1960s. Wingrove had been in the Rhodesian police when the country was still under British rule. He’d been in charge of an investigation into the suspected kidnapping of a farmer called Michael Zengeni.
Zengeni was a British citizen. In November 1961, he’d been due to visit his family in Britain, but disappeared on his way to the airport.
A month later his body was found in the back of his Land Rover. He’d been shot. The remains were too badly decomposed for identification, but Zengeni’s passport and plane ticket were found at the scene.
In 1962, Wingrove appeared at an inquest into the kidnapping in London. The very short article had the only photograph I’d found of Wingrove – a big, dark-haired man with a full beard. He was shown arriving at the inquest with his wife, Beverley. She was wearing a raincoat, headscarf and wraparound sunglasses. She’d been very attractive then, like a young Britt Ekland.
I compared that photograph with the one Swayne had put through my door. Despite its poor quality, I could see the woman holding the gun was definitely
not
Beverley Wingrove.
What was Swayne playing at?
Tuesday morning. The holiday was over. Back to work.
I was relieved. Things had been tense in the house all weekend. Karen sparing with her conversation, the kids surly – especially Ray. I’d stayed away from the case, and done my best not to think about it; put the family first. I took the kids out to Battersea Park on Sunday, and then for pizza. Karen didn’t come, told me she had work to do. Yeah,
right
.
I went to the kitchen, put a pot of coffee on and started making my sandwiches.
I was buttering a roll when the phone went. Not my mobile, the landline.
I dashed out and grabbed it.
Janet.
‘We’re in serious trouble,’ she said.
‘Why, what’s happened?’
‘I’ll tell you on the way to Belmarsh.’
VJ knew something was wrong as soon as he saw us. Janet and Redpath were there with me, but I was the only one looking at him. Janet had her head down over the stack of papers she’d brought with her, and Redpath, who was facing me, didn’t turn round.
‘We’ve had new disclosure from the prosecution,’ Janet said.
‘I thought we’d passed the cut-off date,’ VJ said, frowning.
‘Technically, yes. Practically, there’s no such thing,’ she said. She slid across a couple of sheets of paper. ‘First, your toxicology report.’
She let him read it.
He took off his glasses and brought the paper up close to his face.
‘Flunitrazepam…’ he muttered. ‘That’s —’
‘Yes, Rohypnol,’ Janet said.
He put the paper down, smiling.
‘What did I tell you? I was set up. I was drugged. This helps the case, surely?’
‘It might have done.’
‘What do you mean? Evelyn Bates had Rohypnol in her body. If I’d really killed her, I wouldn’t have taken the same stuff I’d used on her, right?’
‘That’s one way of looking at it,’ Janet said.
He stared at her, then at me, then Redpath; his smile fading as he passed from each of us.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked.
She pushed more papers his way.
I watched him, watched his expression change as he read, his eyes tracking back and forth along the lines. Confusion, trepidation, consternation and, finally, fear. His eyes widened. He started blinking and breathing deeply through his nose, making a sound like dry leaves being stuffed into a plastic bag. That was a variation of how I’d reacted, reading the very same thing on the train. Except I’d also been disgusted. Sickened.
‘Well?’ she asked, when he’d finished.
‘What is this?’
‘You tell me.’
He went back through the pages. He separated the colour photographs that came clipped to every other page and set them out in a row before him.
‘There are no names here,’ he said. ‘Witness A, Witness B, Witness C, Witness D… Who are they?’
‘That’s called Special Measures. Witnesses are granted anonymity in certain circumstances, sexual offence cases being one of them,’ she said.
Now he was confused again – or acting that way. Still studying the pages, looking at the photos, shaking his head, frowning.
‘When did you get this?’ he asked.
‘Carnavale biked it over to me yesterday afternoon. You know what this means in terms of the trial?’
‘No,’ he said.
What was he doing? Had he turned stupid in here, or was he too shocked to tee up another few lies?
Janet laid it out for him:
What it meant was this – the prosecution had its motive back; all the motive it needed, and then some.
Welcome back to square one.
Of the three laptops the police had taken from VJ’s office, two had been for work, the other for play – if you can call what he did for kicks ‘play’.
‘Do you know the surest and safest way to delete something on a computer?’ Janet said. ‘You smash it up, take out the hard drive and throw it in the river. What you don’t do is press “Delete” and “Empty trash”. That just takes something away and buries it – in your machine.’
‘The police found the pictures?’ he said, quietly, almost whispering.
‘And the emails,’ Janet said and sighed. ‘Why didn’t you tell us you’d been blackmailed?’
‘I… I didn’t think it… I didn’t think they’d find out.’
‘Well, they have,’ she said.
VJ had used his personal laptop and the mobile phone they’d found with it to set up meetings with escorts. He contacted them via email. He kept their names, contact details and photographs in a database on the laptop.
The women were all the same type – tall, blonde, athletic, well proportioned. High-class hookers, working out of expensive rented flats in expensive parts of town. Yet they weren’t the standard courtesan types. They were into S&M.
The police had tracked down and interviewed eight of the eleven women he’d been with. All told a similar story. VJ’s thing was ‘rough sex’, specifically slapping and choking. Fine, but not the way he did it, they said. He’d always start gently, testing the boundaries the first few times, then he’d go further and further – and then
way
too far. He liked using his belt to choke them.
Four of the witnesses had agreed to testify in court, on condition of anonymity. They’d been codenamed Witness A, B, C and D.
VJ had been rougher with them than with the others, and they’d decided to do something about it. They’d each originally threatened to go to the police and report him for assault. They’d emailed him pictures of their swollen faces and bruised necks. He’d offered to pay them off. They’d made a deal.
Witness A had received £20,000 for her silence.
Witness B, £15,000.
Witness C, £30,000.
Witness D, £100,000 – in three instalments.
All the women said the money was delivered by an intermediary – a man they met somewhere public. Witness D had a friend photograph her meeting, ‘just in case’.
The man was David Stratten.
To make the point absolutely clear, Carnavale had reincluded the autopsy photos of Evelyn Bates, along with the ones of the battered women they’d dredged up from VJ’s laptop. All the women had bruising around their necks.
VJ put the statements down.
‘It’s not what it looks like,’ he said.
Janet pulled an expression of mock-surprise. Or maybe it was genuine surprise with an overtone of mockery.
‘This was about sex not violence. It was consensual. They knew the risks. That’s what I paid them for.’
When she didn’t reply, when the harsh stare she was giving him started to burn, he looked at me. I glared at him. I was thinking about Melissa. She was all I’d been thinking about since the second I started reading the witness statements. Had he done these things to her too – slapped her, choked her, battered her? He clocked the disgust on my face and turned his head away quickly.
‘I never meant to hurt them – beyond what we’d agreed,’ he said. ‘I might have got a little carried away on occasion. I may have squeezed a little too hard, once or twice. I could have slapped them a bit harder than they… than we’d agreed. But it wasn’t deliberate. It was
never
deliberate. It was an accident. Heat of the moment. We were having sex – intense sex – and I… maybe I didn’t hear the safety word.’
‘Because your belt was around their throats?’ Janet said, calmly and quietly, but her tone was pure ice, sharp at both ends, frozen in-between.
He didn’t answer.
‘Who arranged the pay-offs? You?’ Janet asked.
‘Ahmad Sihl, through a private investigator.’
‘David Stratten?’
VJ nodded.
‘So Ahmad knew?’
He nodded.
Janet scribbled something. Why hadn’t Sihl told her?
‘Did you kill Evelyn Bates?’ she asked him.
‘No,’ he said.
‘The jury’s going to see this.’
‘I know,’ he said, slowly.
‘Do you want to change your plea?’
‘To what? “Guilty”? I’m not. I didn’t kill her. I’m innocent,’ he said, but without any kind of force or energy, or much in the way of emotion, a non-believer reciting a creed from memory.
What had happened to him? When had he started doing these things to women? And why? Did it have something to do with his childhood, something he’d seen or gone through and never told me about? Had Rodney abused him? I was repelled, sure, but I really wanted to know how he’d got so twisted.
‘Do you only go with prostitutes?’
‘No.’
‘So you’ve slapped and choked non-professionals too?’ she said, her voice all serrated edges.
She’d never told me, never given it away, but she’d never liked him.
Now she flat-out hated him – hated him for what he was, and what he liked doing to women. And she hated him because she had to represent him. We weren’t just going to lose this trial, we were going to lose it
big
. We were going to have to defend the indefensible, and look stupid doing it. This would get KRP noticed for all the wrong reasons.
‘Not the way you mean it,’ he said.
‘How do I mean it?’
‘Like it’s an act of violence.’
‘I do retort,’ she said, sarcastically. ‘Let me rephrase that: did you ever
lovingly
slap and choke women you didn’t pay for the privilege of doing so?’
‘Not unless they were into it. If it’s not consensual, it’s assault and battery. And that’s not me,’ he said, through clenched teeth. And without a
hint
of irony.
She could have had fun with that one, but at that moment the guard outside banged on the door. We had five minutes left.
‘Where does this leave us?’ he asked.
‘About a hundred miles up shit creek,’ she said. ‘Not only does the prosecution now have all the motive it needs, but we’ve also lost any possibility of impartiality from the judge. He must feel like a bit of a tit right now. He made the wrong decision in excluding the thong from evidence. He’ll make us pay for that in court. And when it comes to his summary, at the end of the trial, just before he sends the jury away, he’ll direct them to find you guilty.’
‘Can he do that?’
‘In so many words, yes. He can’t tell them what to do, but he can drop big hints as to what he thinks. The smarter juror will know he has the evidence in front of him – used and unused, admissible and inadmissible, and that he’s made his mind up.’
VJ looked at the wall next to him, then the ceiling.
‘What are my options?’ he asked.
‘Much narrower than they were at the start,’ she said. ‘You can go to trial and say you’re not guilty, or you can change your plea and take your chances. The sentence will now be the same either way. With this new evidence, you’re looking at a minimum of twenty-five years.’
For a split second I swore I saw his soul leave his body; and he became an upright, unkempt shell in a baggy white T-shirt, waiting for his brain to switch off the rest of him.
‘The defence is client-led. We can only be as good as you make us,’ Janet said. ‘If you withhold vital information from us – as you’ve done twice now – we’re going to get blindsided by the prosecution. So I’m going to ask you again, for the last time, is there anything else we need to know?’
‘That’s it,’ VJ said.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘What about his dad’s murder?’
That was Redpath, talking to Janet like VJ wasn’t in the room.
My mouth went dry. And my heart stopped and my blood froze in my veins.
‘He was questioned but neither arrested nor charged,’ Janet said. ‘It’s completely irrelevant. It won’t come up.’
I let out the breath I’d caught and held.
‘What do you think, Terry?’
That was VJ, looking right at me with a blank expression.
Both Janet and Redpath turned to me, puzzled and questioning.
‘About…?’ I managed.
‘The case,’ he said. ‘How does it look to you? What do you think?’
Here’s what I
really
think:
I
wanted
you to be guilty, not so you could be punished for killing Evelyn, but so we could be even. That was hatred corrupting my judgement.
Yet, I wasn’t sure you actually were.
I had a reasonable doubt.
It shrank, then it grew again. Then it shrank back.
But now, with all this evidence
…
I think you’re guilty. I think you’re
fucking
guilty.
I think you took Evelyn Bates up to that suite of yours, with its two huge rooms and its devil’s-eye-view of London. You spiked her drink with Rohypnol, and then you strangled her.
And here’s what else I think.
You’re a sick depraved twisted fuck who deserves to go away for life meaning life.
But, do you know what else I think?
You killed your dad too.
We lied for you.
We kept you free
…
so you could kill again.
So you could kill Evelyn Bates.
I wish I’d listened to Quinlan.
He said you’d do it again.
And he was right.
You did.
That’s what
I think.
‘I think I’m going to need all the information you can remember about Witnesses A to D,’ I said. ‘Names, descriptions, where you met, how you met, any phone numbers and email addresses that come to mind. Everything.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’m going to put our investigator on this. Christine’s going to cross-examine those witnesses on the stand. She’s going to need to know everything about them.’
Janet looked at me, surprised but a little impressed.
To her, to VJ, to the outside, it looked like I was keeping my cool in the face of mounting pressure.
‘You didn’t answer my question,’ VJ said.
‘It doesn’t look good,’ I said. ‘But when did it ever?’