Authors: Nick Stone
Sunday:
I went home, back to Stevenage, for the first time in twelve years.
Old Stevenage dates back to medieval times, a quaint little place with period houses, homely shops and a whiff of gentility. Linked to it via metal bridges and underpasses, is the New Town; a cheerless sprawl of small, near-identical houses corralled into estates, purpose-built in the 1950s and 1960s, and added to in the ensuing decades, to accommodate the London population overspill.
My parents still lived in one of these houses, the same two-up two-down in Wexford Grove I’d grown up in.
Mum opened the front door.
I take after her the most. We’re both tall, pale-skinned, blue-eyed and have the same dark-russet hair. We’re also cursed with expressive faces, the kind that let you know what we’re thinking.
A miscellany of emotions washed over Mum’s face when she saw me standing there, a bunch of cheap flowers in my hand. Surprise. Confusion. A little consternation, and then, at the end of it, joy.
She smiled, put her arms out and hugged and kissed me.
‘Come on in. We’re just going to eat.’
There was astonishment all around the dinner table. That and the smell of booze. Dad had been down the Naseby like always on a Sunday. My brothers Aidan and Patrick had joined him. They’d both moved back home, temporarily they’d each said then, two and three years ago respectively.
‘Look what the mangy cat dragged in,’ Ade said, standing up unsteadily, for a hug.
‘Drink, Terry?’
That was Dad, waving a can of Guinness Draught.
‘No thanks,’ I said.
We shook hands, as we’d always done, even when I was a kid. Dad wasn’t big on displays of emotion. But I knew from the twinkle in his eyes that he was glad to see me.
‘Still off the sauce, then?’ asked Pat.
Sober for sixteen hours, I thought.
‘You look good, man.’
‘Wish I could say the same for you.’
Pat laughed. He was a state. Two chins, with another on the way; a dome of a belly straining the stripes of his Celtic football shirt.
He’d been the sporty one in the family. He wanted to be a boxer, but he didn’t have the right mentality. Too short-tempered. He’d been kicked out of every gym in the county. He took up bodybuilding instead. Then he met an Irish woman called Molly and followed her back to our ancestral homeland. Once there he went the whole hog and became Irish, right down to developing a mannered brogue and a line in blarney to go with his Cork address and Irish passport. Somewhere along the line he decided that he couldn’t call himself fully Irish without drinking himself stupid too. He lost his job, then Molly and their daughter, before retreating here. The brogue was long gone now too. But not the drinking.
‘Get y’self a plate and a seat,’ Mum said. ‘I’ve made stew.’
The living room hadn’t changed. The plastic-coated map of Ireland still hanging on a string holder on the wall; and photos of us as kids, then all our kids too – my nephews and nieces. I had six, two of them mixed race like Ray. The only daughter-in-law on the wall was Karen. She was the last one standing.
‘What brings ye back, son?’ asked Dad.
Impulse. Fear. I hadn’t really thought about it. As soon as I woke up this morning, hungover and dry-mouthed, I decided to come here.
‘Been a while,’ I said.
‘Bollocks!’ Ade said.
‘Guilt more like,’ laughed Pat.
Mum didn’t say anything.
‘How’s the family?’ asked Dad.
‘Good.’
‘Karen ain’t kicked you out yet, then?’ Pat said. He’d never met Karen or the kids, just knew them through photos and family gossip.
‘No,’ I smiled.
‘Give it time,’ Ade chimed in.
‘You’d know, right?’
This was brotherly banter. We’d always taken the piss out of each other. Although it had been well over a decade since we’d all last sat at this table, eating together, it was like yesterday.
OK, some explaining to do.
My family are alcoholics. All of them.
My parents wouldn’t label themselves as such. They both started drinking young and never stopped. They’re disciplined daily drinkers, with strict limits on what they knock back. Dad’s is five pints of Guinness and a whisky to round off. Mum likes her three cans of Mackeson’s stout and a couple of brandies in-between. I’ve never seen either of them drunk, or even tipsy.
That doesn’t go for the rest of us. Alcohol has blighted our lives.
Me, you know about.
Ade had been my hero. I’d looked up to him, wanted to be him. He used to be lithe and wired, all style and dash: the Jam fan who dressed like Paul Weller and tooled around town on a Lambretta. He was the only person I’ve ever known who could pull off the Weller look. Everyone else always got it wrong, Sta Press imitators with crap mullets.
Ade and Pat had been the local hardnuts. Everyone in town was wary of them. They never met a scrap they didn’t like. I had an easy time growing up because of them and their rep. That extended to VJ too, once we became friends.
But Ade was fucked now. He couldn’t keep his spoon still. His hair was all grey and thinning, and his face looked like a dirty handkerchief after a nosebleed.
He used to run a nightclub in Brighton but it was closed down after a girl took Ecstasy and went into convulsions on the dancefloor. Turned out Ade was getting backhanders from a dealer who sold in the toilets. There was a trial. Ade was acquitted through lack of evidence, but he lost a civil lawsuit brought by the girl’s parents. He hit the skids soon after, winding up homeless and sleeping on park benches when his wife kicked him out after one drunken row too many.
That was why I’d stayed away all these years, and why I’d never brought my kids here. I was scared. Alcoholism may not be genetic or hereditary, but it felt that way to me. I didn’t want Ray or Amy being exposed to it; and yeah… I didn’t want to be reminded of what I’d escaped.
But you know what?
Sitting here with them, joking and laughing, I wish I’d been stronger than that. I loved my family, each and every one of them, warts and all – especially the warts.
‘D’he do it, then?’ Pat asked me.
‘Eh?’
‘VJ. D’he kill that girl? You’re his brief, right?’
I hadn’t even spoken to my parents since VJ’s arrest. How did…?
‘Lorraine told me,’ Mum said.
Lorraine was VJ’s mother.
‘Didn’t know you two were talking again,’ I said. As far as I knew, Mum hadn’t said a word to Lorraine since she’d insisted I’d stolen her son’s diary. They’d had a full-on row, right in the middle of the town shopping centre. Ireland vs. Trinidad. Two forces of nature, neither yielding.
‘You should come ’ome more often then, shouldn’t ya?’ Ade said.
‘Let’s talk in the kitchen,’ Mum whispered to me.
‘You know he never comes back neither, does Vernon? Hasn’t been back since he moved to London. Not once. He supports Lorraine, but never sets foot here. I see Gwen around, though, now and then. She’s got a family in Norwich.’
I was helping Mum dry the dishes. The kitchen was new, flagstones instead of lino on the floor, and the appliances all modern, but it still looked and smelled exactly the way I remembered.
‘So,
did
he do it?’ she asked.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Positive.’
‘Funny how things keep coming around, isn’t it? Him in big trouble, you still defending him,’ Mum said.
There was some truth in that, but it wasn’t the
whole
truth.
‘Why d’you get us to lie for him?’ I asked.
When VJ had come to the house, terrified and tearful, after getting grilled by Detective Quinlan, neither me nor my brothers had known what to do. We’d been watching
Top of the Pops
. We all gawped at him like cows distracted from grazing. It was Mum who took charge. She turned off the telly and got him to repeat what he’d said. Then she told him not to worry, she’d tell the cops he was with us that night. She gave him his alibi, and we backed her up. That’s what really happened.
‘Rodney used to beat Lorraine all the time.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ I said.
And I hadn’t. VJ never told me. Not even a hint.
I didn’t see Mrs James all that often when Rodney was alive. I was never invited into their house. She was little more than an outline in the kitchen window, waving us off to school.
‘He used to hit her,’ she said. ‘And Vernon and Gwen used to see him do it. Lorraine told me he tried to strangle her once or twice too – with his belt. We went to the cops about it. Know what they told her? “We don’t interfere in domestic matters.” So Rodney got what was coming to him. All tyrants fall, one way or another.’
‘Did VJ kill him?’
‘I don’t know about that,’ she said. ‘But I’ll tell you this much. If I had to do it over, I wouldn’t change a thing. I’ve never regretted it. Not even when you and him fell out. Men shouldn’t hit women.’
I stayed a few hours more.
The trial was starting tomorrow, and I had to get back to prepare, but I didn’t want to go. I kept on putting off leaving by an hour, then another, until the rain that had been falling in London this morning made its way to the house.
We all sat around the living room. The cans came out. They all toasted my health and put the telly on and we sat there watching a film, barely speaking.
Dad and Mum sipped their beers. Ade and Pat seemed to be in competition over who could drink four cans the fastest. They both had jobs to go to tomorrow, but you wouldn’t have known it. Ade was working on the railways, Pat on a building site.
Yeah, I felt the urge to join them for a brew or ten. I’d kicked open those gates yesterday and it would take a while to get them closed again.
After nine I knew I had to go. The trains would run less frequently, and then they wouldn’t run at all.
I said my goodbyes and see you soons and headed for the door, Mum right behind me.
I stood on the doorstep, looking at the wet road and the rain falling orange against the streetlights.
‘I don’t think I ever told you this, Mum, but I appreciate what you and Dad did for me back then – when things were really bad,’ I said.
Mum looked me over.
‘Are you in trouble?’ she asked.
‘I’m OK,’ I said.
She knew I was lying. She always had.
‘Come see us when you can, Terry. Bring the family.’
‘I’ll do that. Soon as this thing’s over. Promise.’
‘Say hello to Vernon for me. Tell him I’m thinking of him.’
Here’s what I now believed:
Sid Kopf had masterminded the whole set-up.
Scott Nagle wanted VJ out of the way for whatever reason, but he couldn’t use his old methods, either because suspicion would fall on him, or because VJ was too rich and too high-profile. Some squatter’s murder would be quickly forgotten, blamed on drugs or bad luck, but not a financier handling powerful people’s money. Nagle needed a whole new approach.
Enter Kopf.
He got Swayne to research VJ. Swayne discovered VJ’s penchant for escorts and S&M.
The narrative of the fit-up fell into place. Frame VJ for killing an escort, by strangulation.
Find him his type of woman (Fabia), get her to be noticed with him (the green dress), drug him and go up to his room. Then kill her. He’d wake up and find her dead. He’d get arrested for murder.
The case against him would be textbook.
You’ve got:
Mens rea
– motive/intent. VJ intended to slap and choke Fabia when he took her up to his hotel room. It’s what he liked doing. He’d done it before, to others.
And you’ve got:
Actus reus
– death by strangulation.
Hard to argue against a clear behavioural pattern – and the body in the bed.
But that wasn’t
quite
enough.
And here’s what jarred, what separated this from an ordinary fit-up.
Rudy Saks.
He was in on it, part of the team. Assassins don’t hang around the scene of the crime. They always disappear.
VJ had been locked up for murder. Mission accomplished, surely? Why give the police a witness statement two days after his arrest?
Because their job wasn’t quite finished.
Saks’s statement was pivotal to the case against VJ. It was clear proof that he’d been in the room with the victim close to the time of her death. It would ensure a conviction.
So the purpose of the set-up wasn’t simply for VJ to get arrested for the murder of a woman, but for him to be
convicted
for it too.
Kopf had designed this as only a lawyer could – with a trial in mind, and a guilty verdict as the objective.
What about Swayne?
Why had he broken rank and started dropping hints – Silver Service, Oliver Wingrove, the White Ghosts?
Why hadn’t he simply come clean, and told me what he knew?
Swayne was scared of Kopf. Scared enough to keep his mouth shut and do eight years in jail, when he could have given him up and walked. Maybe he was implicated too, or maybe he’d feared for Steff’s life.
Now he was dead. And that was on me.
As was Fabia’s death. I led her killers right to her.
Not strictly my fault, I know, but I
was
to blame.
So what were my options?
Go to the police?
With what? Attempted kidnapping? Yes, but I had nothing else to give them except unsubstantiated conspiracy. I’d lost the drawing I found in Swayne’s locker when I was grabbed.
Which left Janet.
How much did she know?
She was the senior partner in the firm and had Kopf’s ear. But, ultimately, he called the shots.
Ahmad Sihl had contacted her out of the blue, not to represent VJ, but to recommend a lawyer. She’d fought to get the case because it was high profile and would put KRP on the map as a criminal law firm.
She’d been genuinely pissed off about Christine and
especially
Swayne being brought in on the case.
So, that meant she didn’t know.
The phone rang and rang. I hoped I wouldn’t get the answering machine.
I didn’t.
I got a snarling yawn.
‘Janet? It’s Terry.’
‘Terry? It’s one o’clock in the fucking morning.’
‘We need to talk. Now. In person.’