Conviction, page 15
‘Am I to believe you didn’t have these tucked away for this precise moment before the trial?’
‘Some trick,’ Niall adds.
‘No trick,’ I reply. ‘Just a scared client who has finally opened up with the right counsel.’
‘What sort of man tries to bury evidence that could get him let off bloody murder charges?’ Niall asks with a scoff.
I turn my eyes to the judge, refusing to reply. If Niall wants to know the answer to that, he’ll need to discover it when cross-examining my witnesses, if he gets the chance.
‘I might ask you what sort of police investigation doesn’t uncover a lousily covered-up affair and a clear alternative suspect to boot,’ Judge McConnell rebuts.
Niall and I both sit in silence, waiting for the judge to continue.
‘This isn’t… ideal,’ he says. ‘In fact, it’s a bloody nightmare. The CPS will look like a laughing stock. The press and the public will inevitably go mad.’
‘And an innocent man will go free,’ I add.
‘Don’t push it,’ he snaps, and sighs once more, his eyes falling on the binder of text messages on his desk. ‘I will need to think about this.’
‘Of course,’ I reply, and turn to glance at Niall. He can’t even meet my eyes any longer. His hands are curled into fists in his lap.
‘We will go ahead as planned tomorrow unless I say otherwise,’ Judge McConnell says. ‘My office will leave word in the morning.’
‘Yes, Your Honour,’ Niall and I reply in unison.
The judge glances towards the door and back again – our time is up. As soon as we step out of the judge’s office, Niall is on me.
‘That was so fucking dirty, Harper. You could have given me a heads-up.’
‘If you’d done your job properly, I wouldn’t have had to.’
His face boils red, cheeks the colour of pigskin.
‘He won’t pull it,’ he says, stepping so close to me I can smell his breath. ‘You really think he’ll dismiss the trial, after all this time? Right before it’s set to start? He’d look a fool, we all would.’
‘Not all of us.’
He is practically shaking now, his livid eyes set firmly upon mine. I can’t say it doesn’t please me to see him so rattled. He is one of those men who need to be knocked down a peg or two every so often to keep them falling victim to their ever inflating ego.
I watch as he storms off towards the doors, and huff out a relieved sigh.
McConnell has to throw out the trial. He’ll look like a crony if he doesn’t.
All I have to do now is wait.
‘Ms Harper?’
I open my eyes. The judge’s clerk is stood in the doorway of the office.
‘Sorry, I have a man on the phone for you. He said he’s been trying to contact you at your chambers, but keeps missing you.’
‘Who is it?’ I ask.
‘A Mr Hurst.’
Fredrick.
‘You can take it in my office.’
‘Thanks.’
I follow her inside, my palms tingling by my sides. What could be so urgent for him to call me through the judge? The clerk holds out the phone, and I rest it to my ear.
‘Neve Harper.’
‘Neve, I’m glad I’ve tracked you down.’ I had expected his usual cool tone, but there is an unusual buzz of excitement to his voice. ‘I’ve found something.’
22
I arrive at the decided meeting spot, a bench looking out at Tower Bridge on the north side of the Thames, and find that I am the first one there.
The air is sharp, and the evening is dark with that unmistakable tang of winter on the breeze, similar to burning cinder. The path along the river is quiet. Only the odd person passes me by. The majority of the time I am alone, watching the bustling city reflect its light in the chopping river. Fredrick, however, is nowhere to be seen.
I wait for ten minutes, then fifteen. The chill of the bench has leached into my thighs until I am shivering beneath my coat, and the sound of my chattering teeth fill my ears.
My phone makes me jump. I had meant to turn it off, to keep from being followed. I silently curse myself as I slip it from my pocket. It’s Artie.
‘How’s my favourite barrister?’ he asks when I answer.
‘Busy,’ I reply.
‘I’m sure you’ve got time to run an update by me, after your not-so-subtle brush-off this morning. I’ll get one of the lackeys to go and get you a coffee tomorrow if you’re nice to me.’
I warm to his playfulness and lean back in my seat.
‘Well, if you must know, I might have just successfully ended the trial before it’s even begun.’
There is a beat of silence before he speaks. When he does, the playfulness has gone from his tone. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, the CPS screwed up. The police investigation ignored a clear alternative suspect in the murders, placing all of their bets on our client, and the CPS failed to spot it. I ran the evidence by the judge and he’s contemplating whether to throw the trial as we speak.’
‘What evidence?’ he asks.
‘Text messages between the defendant’s business partner, Alex Finch, and the defendant’s wife Yolanda, revealing an affair. She ended it – to his dissatisfaction – and then there’s the clincher: Finch’s wife filed for divorce just before the murders. A motive for his business partner to enact revenge is just as strong as the case of familicide against our client, and the police failed to investigate it. At this point there’s no case to try, it shouldn’t have even got this far.’
Artie doesn’t react like I might expect. I had expected him to laugh, or speak through his usual grin. But the silence rings out on the other side of the phone.
‘Don’t you lot run anything by me anymore?’
‘I thought you’d be pleased.’
‘Well, it’s hardly a victory, is it? All this momentum, fizzling out at the last second due to what, a technicality? It’s a win by default.’
‘Well, I’m sorry if the defence of my client’s best interests is disappointing to you, Artie, but I have to say I didn’t really consider your score card when I was weighing up the thought of striking three life sentences from my client’s future. What’s the problem? Put a bet on us for the win, did you?’
‘I’m not saying it wasn’t the right decision, miss – you know best – but these big decisions, surely you’d want to run it by one of us before jumping into action?’
‘Who’s the advocate for the defendant, Arthur, me or you?’
He clears his throat.
‘You are, miss.’
‘Would you like the job instead?’
‘No, miss.’
‘Then I suggest you let me get on with it.’
I hang up the phone and sigh the frustration out of me. Whatever I do, whatever I say, I have a man giving me his two cents. If it isn’t Antony, it’s Artie. If not the judge, then Niall. There is Wade, and then there is the Messenger. The only man I truly want to hear from is Fredrick, and he is still nowhere to be seen.
I check my watch. Almost twenty minutes late. As long as I’ve known him, he has always been on time. My imagination runs rampant, thinking of all the things that could have held him up.
Stop panicking. He said he’d be here, so he’ll be here.
I turn off my phone and dislodge the battery. There had been nothing from him, but then there wouldn’t be, with the risk of the Messenger keeping track of me. What if Fredrick has left me a message at chambers changing the location? What if I got the time wrong? My thoughts continue like this, round and round, my shoulders knotted with nerves.
I wait until thirty-five minutes have passed and my fingers appear almost blue, until I cannot bring myself to wait another minute more.
Maybe he’s found something about the Viklunds that scared him off.
I walk back the way I came and towards the main road, my eyes down and bracing myself from the cold. That’s when I see the flash of headlights behind me, and look up.
That must be him.
I sigh with relief, and instantly feel my heart begin to calm, as I pick up the pace and head towards the roadside. I reach the driver’s window and watch the glass lower.
The Messenger stares back at me.
‘Get in,’ he says.
* * *
Thirty minutes have passed by the time we enter the abandoned industrial estate. I am sat in the back of the Messenger’s car, with a large burly man squeezed in beside me. In the front sits another man, with the Messenger behind the wheel. No one has said a word since I got inside the car.
The estate sits a stone’s throw from the Thames. A landscape of grime and discarded oil drums, bronze with rust, with the teasing gleam of central London in the distance, which is quickly enveloped by the fog creeping in from the water; I can smell it on the breeze from the driver’s open window: the faint lingering scent of salt and scum.
The buildings have been graffitied and vandalised, and every pane of glass has been smashed. As the car turns in, the headlights cast over the glint of broken bottles and rusting beer cans, the red beady eyes of pigeons peering through the windows from their perches in the rafters. The car moves at a crawl over the potholes pitted in the tarmac, making my racing heart jolt out of sync with each jutter.
I hear a thud from the boot behind my seat. It isn’t the first time I’ve heard this sound. Every few minutes, I feel the sensation against my back; hear it at each stop light as we squealed to a halt. I think of a cannister of fuel rolling back and forth, sloshing its stink into the fabric. Or maybe it’s a gun and a shovel chiming against one another in a morbid death call.
I should have run.
The car passes warehouse after warehouse, driving at a crawl towards the water’s edge. As we get closer, two men appear through the mist, stood before a dock that slowly peters out into the fog. They are dressed entirely in black, their faces void and their eyes seemingly on me, piercing through the windscreen to where I sit in the back seat, crammed between the door and the wide-shouldered stranger. The view of the city has been engulfed by the fog.
I feel my bladder clench. My kneecaps are chiming together like teeth and my pulse is so fast that a wave of nausea ripples up my throat. Fear has a scent to it: the salt of sweat, tinged with something sweet and rotten. I taste it in my mouth, smell it on my breath.
The car pulls to a stop and rocks back and forth with the shifting weight as the doors open and close. I am led out roughly, the man’s grip pinching at my arm through my sleeve, but I don’t make a sound. Despite the terror coursing through me, I have the overwhelming need for them to think me stronger than I am.
The air smells of rotten fish and pollution, and at my feet, oil shimmers in the puddles in the pitted concrete ground. As we near the men, I feel the mist wet my face.
The Messenger stops in his tracks and turns to face me, that familiar smile cutting into his cheeks.
‘Do you know why I brought you here?’
I hear another bang from the boot of the car and think of the cannister of fuel, the gun and spade.
I shake my head.
‘Let’s remind her,’ he calls behind us.
I hear the boot door open. The click of the lock and the air-pressured whine of the mechanism as it rises. It is hard to see through the slips of mist drifting in our path, but I hear a bang, a grunt. Shadows move amid the fog. And then they appear.
Fredrick is dragged into view by the two men the Messenger and I made the journey with, his feet trailing beneath him. His hands are zip-tied in front of him and his eyes are wide with shock. I have never seen someone so pale. I know in an instant that I have killed him by bringing him into this. More blood on my hands. Adrenaline courses through me with such ferocity that I feel it tingling all over my skin, in my eyes, my tongue. When Fredrick parts his lips and coughs, blood splutters down his chin. The banging I had heard had been him, locked inside the boot. So close yet out of reach.
‘Still not sure?’ the Messenger asks with a grin. ‘Do you remember what I told you about Adrian Whittaker? About him trying to outsmart us?’
I try to swallow, but my mouth is bone-dry.
‘…Yes.’
The Messenger thrusts me towards the dock, the shock of it forcing all of the air from my lungs. I find my footing and look out at the mist.
‘Walk,’ the Messenger says.
So I walk. I head into the fog in a death march; the dock creaks with each step, the cold brown water lapping around its pillars, spitting up through the cracks. I can hear the Messenger behind me; the calm pattern to his breathing. The planks are so rotten that I fear each slab of wood will give beneath my feet, and can feel the dock shifting with our weight. Ahead is nothing but a thick wall of mist, until I approach the end, and shadows appear, black shapes morphing into silhouettes. Two more men stand at the edge, with indecipherable objects at their feet. I slow as I see them, and feel a prod in my spine as the Messenger urges me on. At their feet, I realise, are concrete cinderblocks and chains.
My heart leaps. I instinctively step back, only to turn and meet the Messenger’s chest with a thud. I feel the heat of him, the thrum of his heart beneath his clothes. His musk gets stuck in my nostrils. Behind him, Fredrick is being dragged along the dock, his feet strumming against the planks until they pass us and reach the edge, and he is thrust down to his knees. He is eerily silent, as if he too is trying to appear braver than he is. Death chops in waves before him, and still, he doesn’t beg. He doesn’t ask why. He stares off into the fog as the men jostle about him, looping the chains around his torso, through his bound limbs and over his neck.
‘He didn’t know…’ I stutter. Fear has me in a chokehold. The words come out strained. ‘This was all my doing. He didn’t know what I was getting him into—’
‘Neve,’ Fredrick warns, urging me into silence. One of the men punches him in the back of the head. I yelp at the sound of the brain-juddering thwack, and bite my lip to stop myself from speaking in case I cause him more pain.
The chains rattle as they criss-cross around Fredrick’s body, as the waiting water chops incessantly. The cinderblocks are pushed to the very edge of the dock.
I want to tell them to stop, to allow me a moment to catch my breath and think of ways to reason with them. But as I go to speak, the words lodge in my throat. I’m too terrified to utter a word, even as I beg my lips to part.
The two men drag Fredrick to his feet, and I look up at the Messenger towering by my side. He meets my eyes with a grin. This is my opportunity to say something, to stop this from happening. But just as I finally part my lips to speak, and as a desperate croak slips up my throat, he turns away and with a nod of his head says, ‘Do it.’
The men kick the blocks from the edge.
‘No!’
Fredrick is yanked from the dock. A quick flash, and then he is gone. The dark water envelopes him whole.
The Messenger grabs the nape of my neck and propels me towards the edge, a splintered scream bursting from my lips. I am led with my head down, hair whipping into my eyes, until my face is held directly over the water where Fredrick fell.
He is going to make me watch.
The water is choppy and wild, bubbles rising from Fredrick’s lungs, but I can’t see him from the filth in the water, only the tips of his fingers breaking through the surface as he tries to claw himself up and draw breath. But I know that beneath, he will be staring up with those stark blue eyes, kicking and thrashing helplessly against the chains.
‘This is what happens when you don’t listen,’ the Messenger whispers.
The bubbles grow scarcer and scarcer. From the thrashing in the water, I sense Fredrick’s movements slow. I wait as life leaves him, and his body falls still, until finally, it’s clear he has passed, lolling against the pull of the chains beneath the surface. My tears splash silently into the water.
I am shaking violently from shock, as if in spasm. I can’t stop staring at the surface, imagining those lifeless blue eyes staring back at me.
Then they start fitting chains to me.
I am thrust upwards, and the chains looped over me, through me. My hands are yanked behind my back and tied. I always thought I would beg for my life. Kick and scream and bite. Do all I could to live. But I am frozen to the dock, staring out at the shifting mist, as silent tears run down my cheeks and the chains tighten and tighten, pinching me where they meet at my chest, my back, my thighs.
‘Did you think we wouldn’t find out about your little trick, trying to have the judge throw the trial?’
The metal weighs me down, and the blocks are moved towards the edge of the dock. I hear a sound, like a puppy’s yelp, or a distant siren, and realise it came from me.
How could he possibly know that? I was so careful.
The realisation hits me square in the chest, voiding my lungs of air.
It’s over. It’s really over.
‘You still have a choice,’ he says from behind my back. ‘You can still get yourself out of this. Wade Darling or you and Hannah, remember?’
I stand before death, biting the flesh of my cheeks to keep from crying out.
Him or us.
Whoosh. Thwack. Whoosh. Thwack.
‘Do it,’ the Messenger says to the men.
I feel their hands on me; a hard snatch of the chains. They are so strong that I am practically lifted off my feet, waiting to be thrown. I gasp in the mist.
‘I’ll do it!’
The hands yank me back, and my legs give. I slam down onto the planks. My head knocks against the wood without my hands to break my fall.
The Messenger reaches down and snatches the chains at my back, lifting me up so my ear meets his lips.
‘Next time,’ he whispers. ‘It will be your sweet little Hannah.’
He drops me again with a thud, my brain rattling in my skull. As the men begin unfastening the chains from the blocks, I look down through the cracks in the planks at the chopping water below, imagining Hannah staring up at me. Thrashing silently until the life leaves her eyes.
