Death By Dangerous (17 page)

Hussain was tight as a drum. He showed them into the kitchen where Safa was hiding her face at the sink, wiping the tears from her puffed-up eyes. She managed only a muttered welcome to the visitors. Hussain invited them to join him at the table. After a few seconds of intently clasping and unclasping his hands, he spoke.

‘The police recovered a debtors list in Waqar Ahmed's things. My name was on it.'

They digested the information.

‘But you represented him on legal aid,' said Anderson, jumping to a conclusion. ‘So you were taking cash on top?'

‘No,' replied Hussain, irritated by the assumption. ‘I owed
him
money.'

‘What? You owed money to your own client?' Anderson couldn't decide which scenario was worse.

‘How much?' asked Adey, without making any judgement.

‘Twenty grand.'

‘Twenty grand! What for?'

Hussain stared down at his hands. ‘Shahid.'

‘Shahid?' repeated Adey in surprise.

‘Who is Shahid?' asked Anderson.

A tear ran down Hussain's cheek. ‘My son. My beautiful, beautiful son.' He was lost in thought. Then: ‘He died of leukaemia, last May. The twelfth.'

‘Just before the Banji case?' Anderson asked.

Hussain nodded.

Anderson remembered a difficult drugs case in which he had bullied and insulted Hussain throughout to hustle his way to a conviction. He shuddered at the realisation his opponent had been mourning the recent death of his child. ‘I'm so sorry.'

‘There was a new treatment in America. Our only hope. We had to try everything.'

On seeing Hussain overcome with emotion, Safa sat down and continued the story. ‘We had no money. The house was mortgaged, everything we had went on keeping the firm afloat, and with all these legal aid cuts…'

Anderson asked, ‘So you borrowed it from Ahmed?'

Hussain hung his head in shame. ‘Yes.'

‘I bet Ahmed jumped at the chance to have a hold over you.'

‘Did you tell the police?' asked Adey.

‘No. I went no comment. If I'd told them I defended a gangster whilst in his debt, I'd be struck off. It's a blatant breach of the code.'

‘Taz!' exclaimed Adey. ‘Better that than a life sentence for murder.'

‘No, you were right,' said Anderson, surprising himself at how pragmatic he had become lately where the law was concerned. ‘Say nothing. If that's all they've got, you're free and clear.' ‘It is,' replied Hussain.

‘I'm so sorry about your son. Both of you, I had no idea.'

‘But Safa,' asked Adey, ‘why do you blame Anderson?'

Anderson thought he'd already worked it out: ‘Because Ahmed called in the debt – for defending the man that prosecuted him?' Anderson paused while he thought it through. ‘And so he'd been putting pressure on you to withdraw?'

‘Yes,' lied Hussain. Never had he felt so ashamed.

Adey took Safa's hand. ‘And poor Safa couldn't understand why Tahir wouldn't dump the Anderson case?'

‘Yes,' she said defiantly. ‘I'm sorry, but Taz should put his family first.'

‘Well, it doesn't matter now – he's dead,' said Hussain with some relish.

Reflecting further, Anderson wasn't so sure. ‘That debt meant he owned you, Tahir. If we've worked that out so will the police. It's not just the debt; they can attribute motive to you. Motive to kill.'

Anderson made the morning train journey to Bradford alone. Adey had explained at breakfast that she had some enquiries to make, and Hussain was going by car. Anderson didn't want to put him off his game by getting a lift and asking a million questions about the case. He knew from experience, Hussain needed a clear head.

Bradford Interchange. Anderson followed the hoards off the train to make the short walk past the Victoria Hotel to the court. His phone bleeped – a text. He fished it out of his coat pocket. His fingers struggled to find the keys in the cold Yorkshire air. It read:
YOU ARE GOING TO DIE
.

Anderson gulped. With everything else he'd put the last call to the back of his mind. Instinctively, he looked around him at the crowds, the faces. Were they commuters or was one of them out to get him? He pulled the collar of his coat up around his neck and quickened his step.

The court building was a welcome sight, despite Anderson's dread of what might unfold there. Once he was beyond the metal detector he read the text again. There was a mobile number from which it was sent. He forwarded the text and the number to Adey. He could feel someone watching him. Paranoia? No. Standing by the lifts – Sam Connor. Waiting to be spotted, he gave Anderson a nod of acknowledgement. What was he doing here? Had he just sent the text? As some kind of sick joke? No, of course not, he reasoned, pulling himself together. His old colleague had come to give evidence for the prosecution.

Anderson took the stairs to avoid him.

Hussain was pacing up and down outside the courtroom. On seeing his client he hurried over, full of ideas about the day's cross-examinations. ‘You know today is all about Stapleton getting witnesses to say how tired you were on the day of the crash, because of working on the Ahmed case?'

‘I know,' Anderson sighed.

‘I've got to go in hard. Put it to them they are lying out of jealousy, ambition, rivalry.'

Anderson agreed. ‘But be careful not to lose the jury. Nothing gratuitous.' Anderson was finding it hard to stay positive. ‘I don't think we are ever going to know the truth of what happened. Maybe Waqar Ahmed took that with him to the grave.'

‘Come on, my friend. You mustn't think like that. And remember, the burden is on the prosecution to make the jury sure of guilt. We don't have to prove your innocence.'

They heard the tannoy: ‘All parties in Anderson to Court One immediately.'

The courtroom was packed. Journalists filled the press box – a chambers colleague giving evidence for the prosecution would add human interest for the readers.

Anderson scanned the public gallery for a friendly face. Only strangers. Had one of them sent him the text, he wondered?

‘Your Honour, members of the jury,' announced Hannah Stapleton, ‘I call Matilda Henley-Smith.'

The usher led Tilly into court. Less wet behind the ears than Anderson remembered, but still very attractive − the jury would like her. She confidently repeated the oath whilst scanning the courtroom so as to know her audience. Brief eye contact with Anderson, but no acknowledgement.

Stapleton moved quickly through the preliminaries to the day of the crash. ‘So you were with him pretty much all day?'

‘Yes.'

‘And how did he seem?'

‘Tired,' came the reply, without the slightest prick of conscience.

‘Just a moment,' said the judge. ‘I'm making a note.' He wasn't going to let the jury forget that one.

‘Miss Henley-Smith,' Stapleton continued. ‘Why did you come to that conclusion?'

‘He just seemed very run down. Exhausted. We went for a coffee after court, to recharge his batteries.'

Anderson listened open-mouthed as this demure young girl sought to destroy him, seemingly without a second thought.

‘The case had really taken it out of him. It was very demanding. And I think he had some personal problems at home.'

Hussain turned around to see Anderson shrug. How could Tilly have known about his home life? She was deliberately poisoning the jury against him.

Stapleton continued: ‘You were in fact one of the last people to see him before the crash. How did he seem when he left Starbucks?'

‘Still tired, and distracted by something,' she offered, feigning regret at having to give such a damning answer.

‘But he did drink a coffee, didn't he?'

‘I'm not sure that he did. I remember him getting up to leave and knocking the cup all over the floor.'

‘Oh, I see.' Stapleton glanced off to the jury. ‘Thank you, Miss Henley-Smith. Please wait there.'

Hussain got to his feet. Feeling the pressure: ‘Difficult trials were nothing new to John Anderson, were they?'

A hesitation, then: ‘No.'

‘He grew up with this pressure and did these trials week in, week out, didn't he?'

‘I don't know.'

‘But of course, you didn't see him do any other trials, did you?'

‘No, I don't think so.'

‘No?' emphasised Hussain. ‘Because you were a pupil. You'd hardly seen anything of the courtroom, had you?'

‘Well, I—'

Hussain followed up with: ‘As you'd never seen Mr Anderson at work before, you have no idea how he comes across during a case. It might be that he would always seem tired to you?'

‘I suppose so. He might yawn after court in every case he does.'

The jurors laughed.

Tilly Henley-Smith had raised the stakes; Hussain had no choice but to go for the jugular. ‘Why did you go for that coffee?'

‘He asked me. You don't say no to a senior member of chambers.'

‘Weren't you worried?'

‘Worried?'

‘That Sam Connor, your pupil-master, would be jealous?'

Buying time to think, she repeated: ‘Jealous?'

‘Yes.' Hussain shot the witness a mischievous smile.

She didn't answer.

‘If we were to see your emails, would they reveal that you were in a relationship with Mr Connor?'

Tilly's face lost its rosy pallor. Was Hussain bluffing? Had he read them? He couldn't use them if he'd hacked in, but to deny the affair would be perjury.

Judge Cranston rescued her: ‘Mr Hussain, what possible relevance could this witness's personal relationships have to whether your client fell asleep whilst driving or was in some other way distracted?'

‘It is our case that the witness is not being entirely truthful about the defendant's tiredness − or lack of it – she has animus towards him which I must explore further.'

‘Very well,' replied the judge, convinced Hussain was making a big mistake pursuing this line with the young witness.

‘Were you in a relationship with Sam Connor, Miss Henley-Smith?'

She waited for the judge to rescue her again.

This time he didn't.

‘That's not why I'm here,' she said, trying to stop herself moving around in the box. A dead giveaway. ‘I'm not answering that.'

‘I'm afraid you have to, Miss Henley-Smith,' said His Honour. ‘I will stop Mr Hussain if he oversteps the mark.'

‘So, I will ask you again,' said Hussain. ‘Were you in a relationship with Sam Connor?'

Reluctantly, she replied: ‘Yes.'

‘Now let's go back to my question that started all this off: weren't you worried that Connor would be jealous if you went off for coffee with his leader?'

Unsure of how to answer: ‘No.'

‘Thank you. Now, you are a barrister, aren't you? An officer of the Court, are you not?'

‘I am.'

‘You are under oath, Miss Henley-Smith. Think long and hard before answering my next question. Is the reason you weren't worried because Connor knew you were having a coffee with Anderson?'

There was no escape. With an air of defiance: ‘Yes.'

‘Was there some agreement with Mr Connor that you would take Mr Anderson for a coffee?'

‘Anderson suggested it.'

‘But that was just good fortune. You had agreed with Connor to keep him busy anyway, hadn't you?'

Eventually, with a nervous glance across at the prosecutor: ‘Yes.'

Hussain had guessed right. ‘Why, Miss Henley-Smith?'

The sanctimonious young barrister had disappeared to be replaced by an embarrassed little girl. ‘Connor didn't want Anderson going back to chambers.'

‘Why not?'

‘It was all to do with a junior brief on a murder. Orlando West, our Head of Chambers, had promised it to Anderson. They were supposed to have a meeting about it after court. Connor thought West would switch the brief to him if Anderson didn't show.'

The jurors' shock at her duplicity smashed around the courtroom. Their fickle loyalties were shifting.

Hussain took advantage: ‘So you and your lover were trying to damage your leader's career whilst he was in the middle of prosecuting a difficult trial?'

‘It was just chambers politics. Happens all the time.'

‘Really? Did your pupil-master, Sam Connor, tell you that?'

‘No,' she replied.

‘So who else in your chambers stabs people in the back?'

‘No one.'

She was beaten.

‘Did you or Connor do anything else that day to ruin John Anderson?'

‘No!'

‘Did you have anything to do with that crash?'

‘Mr Hussain!' exclaimed the judge. ‘That's a step too far.'

‘It's all right,' said Tilly. ‘I don't mind answering. I had nothing to do with it and I don't know anything about it, other than what I read in the newspapers.'

‘No further questions.' Hussain's disgust was evident for all to see.

A shamefaced Tilly slunk out of court.

Anderson was buoyed by Hussain's hatchet job, but would the jury just see it as a sideshow? At least Hussain had muddied the waters.

‘Perhaps that's a convenient moment for a break, Your Honour?' suggested Stapleton in the hope it would allow time for Connor to be tipped off before he walked into the same trap.

‘I think we'll have one more witness before the jury stretch their legs,' replied the judge.

Hoping now to play down Connor's evidence, Stapleton rushed him through in chief, moving swiftly on as every laboured assertion about Anderson's tiredness grated on everyone in the courtroom.

Hussain couldn't wait for his turn. When it came, he wasted no time: ‘He wasn't tired at all, was he?'

‘I've already answered that,' Connor replied.

‘You did very well out of Anderson's downfall, didn't you?'

‘I don't know what you mean.'

‘Let me spell it out for you. You took over the Ahmed case as leader, didn't you?'

‘Yes, but it wasn't a responsibility I wanted thrust on me like that.'

‘And that big murder brief? What was it called?'

‘I don't know. Which brief do you mean?'

‘You know, the one Anderson was going to do, but got switched after the crash?'

As if it had only just occurred to him: ‘Harrison?'

‘That's the one,' said Hussain. ‘Harrison.'

‘It was just Anderson's bad luck. I had nothing to do with the decision.'

‘You said in your witness statement that you saw Anderson in Starbucks with Tilly as you walked past.'

‘Yes, that's right.'

‘Where were you going?'

‘What?'

‘Where were you going?'

‘Home, I suppose?'

‘But why go that way? You rent a parking space behind chambers, don't you?'

‘Er, yes. I can't remember where I was going, it was weeks ago.'

‘Were you even there? Did you just want the police to think he was having an affair – sling a bit of mud in Anderson's direction? '

‘No! Of course I was there. How else would I know they were in Starbucks?'

‘Maybe Tilly told you? You had a plan, didn't you?'

‘What plan?'

‘To stop Anderson from going to chambers so you could get the Harrison case?'

‘That's ridiculous!'

‘You were in a relationship with Tilly Henley-Smith, weren't you?'

Connor opened his mouth to deny it but before he could get his words out a voice shouted, ‘Enough!'

Everyone looked to see Anderson on his feet. Hussain had never had a cross-examination interrupted by his own client before.

‘No more questions,' Anderson said quietly.

Reluctantly, Hussain nodded. He understood. Connor was a chambers colleague when all was said and done. Anderson couldn't allow the destruction of a career over a secret affair and personal ambition. Hussain sat down. Anderson never ceased to surprise him.

A confused and flustered Connor stared over at Anderson, then at a tearful Tilly as she came into court and sat in the gallery. It clicked. Anderson had just saved him from a charge of perjury. And his career.