The Verdict (57 page)

I’d planned my exit. No face-to-face goodbyes, no announcements.

I’d written a resignation letter to Janet, which I was going to leave in her in-tray as soon as I’d finished typing up and filing my court notes.

Then I’d walk out.

And never come back.

That was it. Bland and formal. No details. No fuss. And absolutely nothing whatsoever about jumping before I was pushed (or
got
pushed… in every sense of the word). A real damp squib of a thing. But what else could I do?

There was a massive bunch of flowers on Adolf’s desk. A mushroom cloud of blue and white blossom, garlanded with pine sprigs and dried leaves, wrapped in shiny blue paper and tied up in white bows.

Thanks for everything.
 

Love, Pepe
 

My soon to be ex-colleagues were standing in the middle of the office, toasting Adolf with plastic cups. They’d opened a bottle of champagne. Pepe Regan’s case had collapsed a few hours earlier and he’d been discharged. A key witness hadn’t turned up. He was probably hanging out with Rudy Saks.

But I guessed that wasn’t all they were celebrating.

Adolf must have heard she’d got the paralegal’s job and the degree – and all about my reunion with Quinlan, and looming tabloid infamy.

All things being equal, I wasn’t as upset about that as I would otherwise have been. I was still reeling from the verdict. Still mostly numb.

The jubilation dipped a little when the Gang of Three saw me walk in, then sprang back with force. The voices rose. Iain giggled.

My phone rang as I turned on my computer.

‘Terry?’ It was Edwina.

‘Yes.’

‘Sid wants to see you .’

Kopf was sitting at his desk, watching the riots on his flatscreen. Hackney, Enfield, Brixton, Croydon… It had spread, and it was still spreading. Shops, buildings, buses and cars wrecked and torched. The police were either nowhere to be seen, or cowering behind plastic shields in thin lines, getting driven back by hails of projectiles.

‘It’s 1981 all over again,’ Kopf said, motioning me to a chair opposite his desk. ‘A recession, a Royal Wedding and a riot.’

I didn’t say anything, just glared at him. He’d tried to have me killed. I owed him that much.

‘Thirty years ago, I empathised. They had a cause or two. Something worth fighting for,’ he continued. ‘But now? Look at them! Nothing but vandals and thieves. Stealing things they don’t even need. Stealing just to steal. Mark my words, this generation here will make exactly nothing of itself. It won’t leave a mark on history. It won’t create, it won’t invent, it won’t leave anything behind. It’ll pass through time like it never existed.’

He turned off the TV, leaned back in his chair and studied me. He had a small, inscrutable smile on his face.

My eyes strayed to the photo of the Quaker warehouse above him, on the wall. It looked more striking in black-and-white; more decrepit and desolate, forbidding even.

And then I slowly brought my gaze back to his. He understood.

And he smiled at me a little more, flashing a hint of pearly white veneer. Suddenly I realised we weren’t alone.

Janet was sitting in the chair next to mine.

I’d been so focused on Kopf, I hadn’t noticed her.

So it was the three of us, exactly like the first time I was summoned here.

Janet spoke first.

‘Everyone loses in this game, Terry. It doesn’t matter how brilliant your argument, how straight your facts, how credible your witnesses, the surest things often go to hell. The thing to remember is, it’s never about winning or losing. It’s about
how
you lose.’

‘An innocent man is in jail. I’d say we lost pretty fucking badly, wouldn’t you?’

Janet was about to counter, but Kopf beat her to it.

‘I know this isn’t how you saw things ending, Terry. But what do you want me to say? That you’ll get over it? You
won’t
. That it’ll pass? It
won’t
. That things’ll get better? They
won’t
. What you’ve been through these past few months, what you’ve experienced, what you’ve seen and learned, it’ll stay with you. It’ll probably haunt you. But it will also define you and therefore guide you in the future. So accept this defeat. Embrace it. Learn from it. Just don’t go expecting a happy ending next time, because the law – like life – is not a movie. Good guys lose. The innocent get convicted, the guilty walk free. Everyone dies, and everyone cries. Happens all the time. You’ve just got to accept that. And move on. That’s very important.
Always
move on. And keep moving.’

OK, I thought. This is the bit where you tell me I’m fired.

Hurry up and get it over with. I’ve got to get home before the intifada hits Clapham Junction.

But Janet still had things to say.

‘There’ll be some big changes here over the next few months. The criminal division is going to expand. I’m going to be running it as before, but some new people will be coming in, and there’ll also be some moves.’

She was looking right at me, smiling broadly.

Kopf was smiling too.

‘The hours’ll be gruelling,’ Janet continued. ‘You’ll be expected to balance full-time study with paralegal work…’

Eh?
 

‘And, as you’ll see in your contract, you’ll be expected to qualify with at least an upper second – preferably a first. Anything lower and you’ll have to repay your tuition fees.’

What the HELL was this?

Had I just… been
offered
…
the
…

PARALEGAL JOB?
 

Kopf stood up and held out his hand.

‘Welcome to the firm, Terry.’

Surprises obviously come in fives. First the verdict, then Redpath, then Quinlan, then Kev, and now
this
—

‘You’re offering me
a job
?’

‘No,’ Janet said. ‘You’ve already got a job here. We’re promoting you to paralegal, and the firm’s putting you through university so you can qualify to be a solicitor. You also get a payrise.’

‘But…’

‘Do you accept?’ Kopf asked me.

‘I… I’m… I’m going to need to think about it,’ I said.

‘What’s there to think about?’ he said. ‘It’s a gift horse. You either throw a saddle on it or look it in the mouth.’

I was still sitting down.

So I stood up. Janet too.

‘Take tomorrow off,’ she said. ‘Let us know on Wednesday.’

‘All right.’

‘I’m sure you’ll make the right decision,’ Kopf said, nodding at his still extended hand.

I shook it. And as I did, I felt something small and sharp and metallic pressing into my palm.

When I pulled my hand away, I saw what he’d just given me.

Or, rather,
given me back
.

And I was confused as to why he’d had it in the first place.

Then I remembered.

It was one of my lucky four-leaf clover cufflinks – the ones my kids had given me. I thought I lost it at Melissa’s house that time, but it must’ve come off when I went through Kopf’s filing cabinet.

That
was why he put the Israelis on to me.

Because he thought I’d found something out.

And why had he just given it back to me?

For the same reason I’d been offered the job.

He didn’t know what I had on him and Nagle, what Swayne had told me, what I might be sitting on.

So he was buying me off, offering me a future – a career, for my silence.

Him, I understood. I knew exactly where he was coming from.

But what about Janet? She knew what I did.

Whose side was she on?

‘Mind yourself getting home,’ Kopf said as I left. ‘It’s dangerous out there.’

I didn’t know what I was going to do.

If I accepted the job I was a criminal. If I turned it down I was a fool. And I had to be one or the other. No in-betweens, no grey areas, no sitting on the fence.

Did I want to sleep at night, or did I want my kids to eat in the morning?

That was the question.

What would you do?

The back exit of Clapham Junction station had been closed, and two worried-looking security guards were blocking the barriers. I had to go out the front way.

I stepped out into mayhem. People were running down St John’s Hill, heading for the intersection where all the big stores were. Groups had formed around shop entrances, trying to lever up the metal shutters. Windows were being battered with bars and bats, or kicked and body-slammed. So far nothing had been broken into, but it was only a matter of time.

No police around at all.

Someone ran past me in a Spider Man mask. I thought it was one of the fancy dress clubbers from the Clapham Grand, except they wore the whole cape and tights clobber. This passer-by only had the mask on. Was he a vigilante? How funny would that be?

I turned left on to Falcon Road. And stopped dead in my tracks.

Both pavements were choked and teeming with people, coming at me fast in regimented bobbing flows of hoodies and baseball caps, faces covered in bandannas and balaclavas, like a pair of parallel mass marathons for the underclass. It was way too dangerous to go forward.

I doubled back and ducked into the Falcon pub. Moments later the staff bolted the doors and pushed big chairs against them. Then they dimmed the lights and killed the music.

The place was rammed. Regulars and refugees, all flat-out terrified. Everyone moved away from the windows and huddled in the centre.

For the next two hours we had front-row seats to the mass looting and all-round destruction that followed, as our once-safe familiar high street was overrun and trashed by the rampaging mob.

They got past the metal shutters in the big Debenhams department store, bending and peeling and wrenching back a corner, making enough of a gap to crawl through. Bodies disappeared so fast inside, it was as if they were being sucked in by some centrifugal force.

They smashed their way into the two sports shops. They tenderised front windows with constant hammering, beating and kicking, until the panes gave up their resistant properties and came away whole from their frames, flopping softly to the ground like disembodied sails. People poured in with a triumphant roar. We watched them tearing down armfuls of clothes and then trying to fight their way out of the influx with their loot. Some slipped and fell on the glass and scattered their spoils, which were suddenly snatched up by fast hands.

Those who hadn’t come with facial disguises raided a party shop. That was when the superheroes and supervillains started joining in the riot. Batman had a flatscreen TV under his arm. Wonder Woman was cradling a coffee machine. Beetlejuice was making off with a brand-new microwave. Frankenstein’s monster had a Dyson over his shoulder.

The women were the most proactive, the most sensible and organised. They’d headed straight for the luggage section in Debenhams and grabbed the biggest suitcases they could find and stuffed them to splitting. Then they walked out of the shop, wheeling or dragging their loot through the crowds, as if they’d just got back from a long holiday.

By now, in the pub, fear had given way to morbid jokes. The ashtrays had come out and smokers were chugging away on cigarettes, and the Falcon was like all pubs used to be ten years ago. People had their phones out, filming, clicking, or reassuring family and friends, babbling away excitedly. Some were giving running commentaries.

A single police car appeared on the corner of Falcon Road. Then it reversed sharply and shot up a sidestreet, followed by a storm of bottles and an almighty cheer.

The mood in the pub swiftly changed when the party shop went up in flames. First the ground floor, then the first floor, the second and finally the third. There were mutterings that the building could blow up because there were helium canisters inside. Everyone moved even further back from the windows, cramming into the lounge, cowering.

A round metal table came flying out of nowhere and slammed into one of the windows, cracking the glass straight across in a diagonal streak. A load of people jumped and quite a few screamed and shouted. We braced ourselves for an all-out assault. The barstaff brandished knives and rolling pins from the kitchen. Bottles and chairs were grabbed. Someone shouted, ‘What if they fuckin’ petrol bomb us?’ Nobody answered.

Karen kept on calling, and I kept on reassuring her that I was OK, that it would be over soon, not to worry, I’d be home in one piece. It didn’t even occur to me to drink.

Sometime after midnight the police arrived in big numbers, kitted out in riot gear, armed with truncheons and German Shepherds. They cleared the streets by driving armoured vans up and down at high speed. Then they moved in on the defiant stragglers.

The crowds vanished.

And then it was all over.

Clapham Junction, swathed in thick grey smoke from the burning shop, was ringing with the sound of pointless shop alarms. The streets were glittering with so much smashed glass they looked like frozen rivers after a deep frost.

‘Thank God!’ Karen screamed when I finally got home.

We hugged and kissed and hugged some more.

The kids were fast asleep.

The TV was on, the volume low.

I watched the replay.

London burning.

London erupting.

London turning in on itself and spitting out the pieces.

Clapham Junction hadn’t come off too badly, compared to other places. Parts of Croydon looked like they’d been drenched in lava. There’d been home invasions and arson attacks in Ealing. Hackney had been a warzone. Peckham another. A picture of a woman jumping from the window of her burning building was shown on every station.

Outside, on the estate, there was an eerie quiet, a desolation wrapped in emptiness, as if a plague had passed over the area. It was a warm, dry summer’s night, a rarity this year. The kid posses would have been congregating on the benches now with their bullshitting and their tinny hip-hop, but they weren’t there tonight. They had better places to be.

The silence was intermittently broken by screaming sirens, and, for nearly an hour we heard the thrum of a police helicopter circling the vicinity, its searchlight beam splicing through the darkness.

‘I knew something like this was coming,’ Karen said. ‘You could just feel it, you know? These kids around here ain’t got nothing better to do with themselves.’

We watched TV. The carnage and fires and street battles were on a loop. There were first-hand accounts. Fingers were already being pointed, most of them at the police for their slow response.

At around two, Karen said she was off to bed.

On her way out, she stopped in the doorway.

‘D’you get the verdict today?’ she asked me.

No surprise it hadn’t made the news.

‘Yeah,’ I said, yawning. ‘Guilty.’

She wasn’t shocked or baffled or puzzled, or even curious.

‘That’s that, then,’ she said and closed the door behind her.

I stayed up until the early morning, staring at the TV, standing guard.

I didn’t think anything more would happen, but you never knew around here.

Downstairs I heard the Serbs talking loudly among themselves. They were doing the same as me. Not a peep from Arun next door. I bet he’d been out in the Junction.

At around dawn, with the night starting to fade and birdsong coming through the window, I closed my eyes and fell asleep, thinking that was two riots I’d been mixed up in this year.

When I woke it was broad daylight.

The kids had had breakfast. I could hear Amy and Karen in the kitchen.

The TV was still on.

I rubbed my eyes and yawned.

The morning after…

Images of:

Clapham Junction – the centre completely shut down, the streets cordoned off with police tape.

A burned-out car –
WELLCOM 2 HACKNEY
– spray-painted in green capitals on the charred hood.

West Croydon – House of Reeves, a 150-year-old furniture store, had been burned to the ground by an arsonist.

Stratford…

A huge pile of charred, still smoking rubble filled the screen. Firemen were hosing it down.

I turned up the volume.

‘It’s still far too early to determine exactly what happened here,’ a male reporter was saying. ‘It’s thought a group of rioters attempted to raid the nearby Olympic Village, but they were driven back by armed police. They targeted this building instead. Until recently it was a shelter for the homeless run by a local Quaker group. The land had been sold to a property developer. Ironically, the building was due to be demolished today.

‘Rioters are believed to have commandeered a digger that was already on site, and driven it into the building. Firefighters think the building was set on fire by the rioters and subsequently collapsed. Police sources tell me there were no casualties.’

The camera pulled back. There was nothing left standing of the warehouse. It had collapsed into a rectangular crater, a blackened mound of smashed masonry, brick and tile. A fire engine, two police cars and a couple of press vans were parked on the wasteland.

And then, in the background, a familiar figure appeared, still dressed in the grey suit she’d worn in court yesterday.

It was DCI Reid.