The Verdict (45 page)

Regina v Vernon James
 

Case No.
T20119709
 

Court 1, Central Criminal Court
 

(Old Bailey)
 

We met in Christine’s chambers at 7 a.m. sharp.

One glimpse of her and I feared the worst. She looked about as ill as I’d ever seen anyone look: haggard, skin close to translucent, make-up clinging to it like overnight frost on a windscreen. I was positive she was going to tell us she was stepping down and handing over to Redpath…

But no. The first words out of her mouth were orders:

‘We’re to meet up here every day at the same time. We’ll review the day’s order of business, and then get a cab to court. It’s imperative we’re seen arriving and leaving together – as one, a team, a united front. OK?’

We nodded. I felt like saluting.

‘Terry, do you know how to do the court walk?’

‘No.’

‘The media will be out in force today. TV in particular. They always film the lead barristers going in on the first day. They repeat the same clip on every news item about the trial until it’s over. Your entrance must be just right.

‘So: walk at a medium pace. Head up, back straight. Do not look at the cameras, and do
not
smile. That’s
very
important. We’re arguing over a person’s future, sometimes the rest of their lives. Wear a serious expression, but not a stern one. Be human, but not humane.

‘Normally I walk on the outside for the cameras, but I don’t look my best today so I want you to take my place. I’ll be next to you. I’ll be moving a little slower than usual, playing up my frailty. I’ll be holding on to your arm for support. We’ll pretend we’re deep in discussion. I talk, you listen and nod along. All right?’

‘OK,’ I said.

Redpath cleared his throat.

‘What about me?’ he asked.

‘You’re on trolley duty,’ she said. ‘Stay three or four steps behind.’

The taxi dropped us off at the corner of Newgate Street. I helped Christine out and we set off down the road, arm in arm to the Old Bailey.

The press were camped on the pavement opposite the South Block entrance, a dense grey clump of photographers and camera crews already training their lenses our way.

It was warm but overcast, the sky a solid grubby white matt rolled over the city, blocking out every hint of blue and the sun beyond it. The faint breeze smelled of brewing rain.

Christine walked ultra-slow but talked non-stop. She explained how she’d written two very different opening statements, dry and dramatic. She’d know which one to use once Carnavale kicked things off. She’d worked out her strategy, she said.
We were going to win
.

Then she was telling me about opening-day nerves, how she still got them after all these years and well over a hundred trials. Good barristers had to be like boxers; scared going in – scared of failure, scared of ridicule, but most of all scared they’d let their client down. If they didn’t have that fear, they no longer cared and had no business being here.

Was that really the case? I asked her. Oh yes, she said. All the best silks are nervous wrecks the night before a trial; zombies (insomniacs) or chuckers (pukers). Take Carnavale, for example. The Walking Dead.

I didn’t tell her I was nervous too, probably as much as her – if not more.

I kept my head averted as we walked past the press pack. Yesterday, I’d made the front page of every newspaper, fleeing a gunman.

We waited in the Great Hall for the courtroom doors to open.

Carnavale stood across from us with his junior barrister and clerk, the three of them inadvertently lined up in descending height-order, the tops of their heads forming a step arrangement. They were juggling individual phone conversations and going over a document that was passing back and forth between them. The clerk handed to the junior who read and scribbled as she babbled into the phone in her other hand. Then Carnavale got the document, looked it over and made an annotation of his own before passing the paper back to the clerk via the junior. The clerk then read the document down the phone.

There were about a dozen accredited journalists hanging around with their hands in their pockets or thumbing through notebooks. A few came over and said hello to Christine. None of them asked about the trial or VJ, just after her. I sensed the length and depth of the relationships. Christine must have used them as much as they’d used her.

I played tourist and took in my surroundings.

The Great Hall lived up to its name. We were in the very heart of the Old Bailey, under the dome and thus directly below the golden statue of Justice. Every inch was decorated or dramatically illuminated with yellow lighting or opened up into vaulted skylights. The floor and walls were black-and-white marble, the ceiling strung with arches that had friezes on every abutment and moulded stucco squares on their undersides. Half-moon frescos fanned out above the entrances to the courts, depicting the building’s four mainstays – God, the Law, the Establishment and London. Court 1’s painting showed Justice on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral, with Alfred the Great – the lawmaker king – to her left, and on her right, Moses receiving the Ten Commandments. The subtext was clear: if we don’t get you, God will.

‘Here he comes,’ Christine whispered to me.

Carnavale was heading our way, heels snipping at the floor.

‘How are you?’ he said to Christine, grinning.

‘Well. You?’

‘You know…’ he said with a shrug. ‘Are we going to be straight out of the gate?’

‘I don’t see why not.’

‘You’re not going to contest anything?’

She shook her head. This was the way things were often done, Christine had explained to me. Deals were struck between defence and prosecution – a kind of bartering where both sides agreed to drop repetitive evidence and inessential witnesses to speed things up. They all had other trials to go on to, other cases to work on. Unlike America, there was also an unspoken agreement not to submit new evidence in the middle of proceedings. It wasn’t unusual for opposing barristers to be good friends, so they tended not to burn each other either. And, even if they weren’t friends, the law was a small world where favours were accumulated along with grudges. But as this was Christine’s last trial, she had no intention of observing niceties.

Carnavale changed the subject. He asked about her family. And then they were off, chatting about kids, grandkids, houses…

I tuned out.

We’d come here from the cells downstairs. We’d seen VJ. He was calm, all smiles and quiet confidence, as if he thought this the beginning of the end of his ordeal, that it would be over soon; just one mountainous hurdle to get over and he was home free.

Christine had talked him through what would happen today. Jury selection and opening statements. Setting up the pieces on the board. The fun, she said, would start tomorrow.

Carnavale said his goodbyes to Christine, a quick hello to Redpath and went back to his team.

‘That’s a worried man,’ she said.

‘Seems confident enough to me,’ I said.

‘Barristers are the best fakers. Ergo good actors. Franco’s Oscar material.’

‘All rise.’

Judge Blumenfeld came in with a swish of his robes and a bounce to his wig.

We sat down after he’d taken his place at the podium. The clerk was the same woman with the same outdated curly-perm.

‘Anything before we start?’ the judge asked, looking at Carnavale, then Christine.

Both barristers shook their heads.

‘Bring in the defendant, please,’ he said to his clerk, who picked up a phone and spoke inaudibly for a few seconds.

Our seating arrangements were slightly different from the PCMH. Prosecution and defence barristers habitually sat in the first two rows, with their clerks behind them, but Christine had brought me on to her row and sat me next to her. More pieces being arranged on the chessboard.

A security guard led VJ to the dock. A chorus of murmurs and whispers rose up from the packed public gallery. Christine glanced at him as he reached the bulletproofed dock. We all exchanged nods. He was expressionless.

‘Let’s proceed with jury selection,’ the judge said to the clerk. Another silent phone call.

A few minutes later twenty people entered the courtroom. Mostly mid-twenties to mid-fifties men and women, all carrying a single sheet of paper.

The clerk addressed them.

‘The court requires twelve of you to sit as jurors. I will call out the number you’ve been given. If your number is called please come forward and let me know if you are available for this trial. If you are not available, you will be asked to explain your reasons to the judge, and to provide relevant evidence on your behalf. Do you all understand?’

She scanned their faces.

‘I will now call the first number,’ she said, running a finger down the list she was holding. ‘Fifteen.’

A young Asian woman with shoulder-length hair came forward. The court clerk spoke to her. Then she motioned her to take a seat on the jury bench facing us.

‘This is where you start earning your keep,’ Christine whispered to me. ‘I want you to read the jury.

‘First thing to remember is that these people don’t want to be here. They’ve been ordered to do this. Most will stay resentful for the duration, wishing the whole thing be over. They’re the best and worst kind of juror. They barely listen. So when it comes to making a decision they’ll side with the majority just to get out of here as fast as possible.’

The clerk read out the next number.

‘Seven.’

A squat man in a blue blazer and silver-rimmed specs approached her with the waddling stomp of the seriously overweight. A few murmurs and head bobs later and he’d joined the Asian woman on the bench. He smiled as he sat down. And then he looked up at VJ, looked at him a little too intently for my liking. He didn’t like what he saw. If this had been America, Christine could have cross-examined him to root out bias or pre-judgement. Unfortunately in Britain we don’t have the luxury of not liking someone’s face. Jury selection was random. We were stuck with who we got.

‘Juries are dictatorships,’ Christine continued. ‘The verdict will be decided by three or four people at the most. Those are the ones who’ll follow the trial carefully, who’ll determine how the other eight vote. You’re to be my eyes on this. I want you to identify the main players and observe their reactions. I need to sway at least two.’

‘What should I look out for?’

‘Note takers, obviously. They’re the keenest. Also watch for how they react to me and Franco. If they smile when I speak and scowl when he does, that kind of thing.

‘The most important juror of all is the foreman. The other eleven choose him or her as soon as they’re sworn in. It’s almost invariably a default decision. The person who volunteers for the role gets it. The foreman is the authority figure, the organiser. The weaker jurors always think as the foreman does. So he’s worth a couple of extra votes.

‘Last thing. Don’t let them catch you looking at them – especially when you’re helping me up or down. They’ll know it’s an act then and we’ll lose their trust.’

‘Did you teach your esteemed pupil this?’ I asked.

‘Of course,’ she smiled. ‘What do you think his clerk’s doing right now?’

I resisted the temptation to turn round.

The proceedings took all morning. Several of those selected wanted to be excused and had to go before Blumenfeld to plead their cases. The judge made it hard on them from the off, glowering intimidatingly as they stood looking up at him on his podium, and asking them to speak up so the whole court could hear them. I knew what he was doing – making any potential shirkers think twice about trying to wriggle out.

The first person – a redheaded woman in a pinstripe skirt – had a valid excuse. She was getting married next week and everything had already been booked before she got the jury summons. She stammered as she spoke and trembled as she produced the paperwork, which the judge scrutinised like it was incriminating evidence, his expression thunderous. Then, with a smile and in a purring tone, he told her that was fine and she was excused. He wished her well in her marriage.

He wasn’t so accommodating to those who followed. There was a writer on a tight deadline. Blumenfeld asked him what he wrote. ‘Crime fiction.’ The judge’s lip curled ultra-sardonically and there was laughter from both press and public. ‘Then you should regard this an ideal research opportunity,’ he said and sent him to the bench. The writer was furious. We had our first potential problem juror.

By 12.30 p.m. the jury had been sworn in. Ten men, two women. They chose as their foreman the fat man in the blazer. The worst choice.

‘We’ll break for lunch now,’ the judge said. ‘Let’s reconvene at two for opening statements.’

Janet joined us in the canteen, motorbike helmet in hand, file under her arm.

She didn’t so much as glance at me, never mind say hello. She went and sat several tables behind me, where Christine joined her. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I knew what they were talking about.

Janet and I had talked till sunrise, mostly on her patio, because she’d chain-smoked her way through a whole pack of Silk Cut.

It hadn’t started well. My fault. I hadn’t prepared, hadn’t planned what I was going to say. I spouted my theory about Kopf. She greeted it with predictable disbelief and outrage, but also fury. She shouted, slammed her hand on the kitchen counter, called me everything from stupid to nuts – all in pure, unadulterated Cockney. In-between she spat out chunks of Kopf’s career history, to underline his lifelong honesty and integrity. She dismissed everything I said as baseless paranoid delusion without a shred of evidence to back it up. Then she told me to get out – out of her house and out of the firm.

I made it to the door when her husband intervened. The commotion and cigarette smoke had woken him up. He’d come down to see what was going on.