The Verdict by Nick Stone Page A

narrow, all bone and vein, with thin, tentacular fingers. Everyone had always commented on them, how his hands didn’t correspond to his body.
    And there was another thing too:
    I’d never known him to be violent or even aggressive towards women – not at school, not at university. He’d been close to Gwen and his mother. What the hell had gone wrong with him?
    Kopf returned fifteen minutes later, his face like thunder.
    ‘Right then, where were we?’
    ‘Trial mode,’ Janet said.
    ‘We really want to avoid a trial, if possible. The CPS will want to avoid one too.’
    He caught the baffled look on my face.
    ‘Trials cost the state money, Terry. So the state does its best to avoid them where possible. If Vernon James couldn’t afford us and had himself a taxpayer defence lawyer, that lawyer would be doing his utmost to get him to plead guilty. Not for his client’s sake, but his own. The state likes a lawyer who keeps costs down. You’ll find that they’re the ones who tend to get the most work.’
    Now I was shocked.
    ‘Welcome to the legal system.’ He winked and smiled.
    ‘How do I sell it to him?’ Janet asked.
    ‘How old are his kids?’
    Seven, five and three, I thought. Family planning at its finest. Equal gaps between each daughter.
    ‘Preschool and primary school age,’ Janet said.
    ‘Did the victim have any other injuries – cuts, bruises, broken bones?’
    ‘We haven’t had the coroner’s report yet, but the preliminary reports didn’t mention anything.’
    ‘Assuming that remains the same, we could feasibly go for an involuntary manslaughter plea. Say it was a sex game gone tragically wrong. Happens all the time. People get carried away. The client could even have blacked out. If we’re lucky there’ll be drink and maybe drugs in his system too.
    ‘So that’s a ten-year sentence – maximum. A plea – now – would reduce that to eight, maybe seven. He’ll do half that, most of it in a low-security prison. Out in three years. His kids will still be young enough to forget later, he’ll have his money minus our fee, and maybe his business too.’
    What about his marriage? I thought. Would he still have that?
    ‘He’s adamant he’s innocent, Sid.’
    ‘It’s early days,’ Kopf said. ‘And we haven’t had all the evidence yet.’
    ‘I still think we should be in trial mode,’ Janet said.
    ‘Who’s the prosecutor on this?’
    ‘Franco Carnavale.’
    ‘Figures,’ Kopf muttered. ‘High-profile case.
Ergo
cameras. Do you know what Franco’s first ex-wife told me? In the five years they were married, he spent at least one of them in the bathroom. Apparently that’s why they broke up.’
    Janet cleared her throat impatiently.
    ‘Barristers? Are we staying in-house?’ she asked.
    ‘With Franco on board, this is going to be a street fight. Our people aren’t built for that,’ Kopf said.
    ‘So who do we get?’
    ‘Styles make fights. We need his opposite.’
    They brainstormed. Names got batted around. All male.
    The more they talked and the more people they rejected, I found myself thinking like the jury. What would I be seeing? Two blokes in wigs and gowns getting into a pissing contest. So I spoke up.
    ‘I think the lead barrister should be a woman.’
    Janet and Kopf both looked at me like they’d forgotten I was in the room.
    ‘Why?’ Kopf asked.
    ‘A woman defending a man accused of killing another woman will make the jury think twice about his guilt,’ I said. ‘I also think our barrister should be older than our client – and definitely older than the victim. Maybe old enough to have a daughter the victim’s age. That’ll cloud the jury’s mind even more.’
    ‘Good thinking, Terry,’ Kopf smiled. ‘Who’s out there?’
    ‘There’s Nadine Radford,’ Janet said.
    ‘Oustanding, but currently tied up on two trials, with a third starting before Christmas,’ Kopf said.
    ‘Sonia Lawrence?’
    ‘Very good, but a full calendar this