The Verdict by Nick Stone Read Free Book Online

the Dark Ages?’ she asked.
    ‘Just about everything.’
    Karen pondered in silence.
    The Serbian couple downstairs were rowing. Or at least they might have been. It was hard to tell. When they’d first moved in a year ago, all they seemed to do was argue, shouting at the top of their voices, sounding hysterical. We’d gone down to complain – and to make sure the woman wasn’t getting battered. Turned out they weren’t arguing at all. They were on the phone to their respective families back home. The lines were so bad they had to shout.
    Karen clicked into gear.
    ‘Let’s isolate the problem, shall we?’
    ‘There’s more than just the one problem,’ I said, taking a sip of coffee. ‘As you know, I’ve lied on my CV. That’s a sackable offence anywhere, but in a legal firm it’s castratable. It’s all right to represent liars and lie on their behalf, but you can’t be one yourself. You’ve got to draw the line somewhere. As far as KRP are concerned I left school after my A levels. I haven’t mentioned my year at Cambridge, the law degree I never finished. I was at Cambridge with Vernon. All he has to do is tell Janet and that’s me out on my ear.’
    ‘Why don’t you say you can’t take the case for personal reasons?’ Karen said.
    ‘I could do that. But then I’ll have to explain why. And Cambridge’ll come up one way or another, whether I tell Janet or he does. And if she hears it from him it’ll be even worse: “Yeah, I knew Terry Flynt. He got kicked out of Cambridge for theft.”’
    ‘
Theft?
’ Karen started and almost stood up.
    I hadn’t meant to say it the way I did, abruptly like that. I’d intended to build up to it slowly. But it came out anyway.
    Karen looked at me like I’d turned into a complete stranger.
    ‘I thought you told me you got kicked out of Cambridge for failing your exams.’
    ‘
And
that,’ I said.
    She sat back and glared at me. Her eyes had lost their clarity, gone a milky turquoise. If this was a police interrogation, I’d be screwed about now, caught out contradicting my statement; fair copped, guv.
    I couldn’t hold her stare, so I looked away at the digital photo frame on the mantelpiece. There were pictures of the four of us over the years, going back to when we’d first met, our wedding, me in my clown suit on Ray’s third birthday, Ray holding baby Amy, the four of us at Ray’s prize-giving. It felt like I was watching the best part of my life flashing by.
    ‘Why don’t you start again, from the
very
beginning?’ Karen said.

5
    ‘I called him VJ. We were at the same school. He was the only black kid in class.
    ‘We didn’t become friends immediately. Though we lived on the same road, the only time I saw him outside school was every other Saturday morning. Him and his sister Gwen would help their mum do the shopping. They didn’t have a trolley, so they used this rusted old pram that didn’t have a canopy. It was a strange sight, them pushing that thing down the road. The wheels squeaked something terrible. You’d hear them coming a mile off.’
    I smiled at the memory.
    ‘The other thing I remember about VJ was that on Mondays he always reeked of bleach. He only had two white shirts for school. His mum’d boil them on the weekends.
    ‘I remember the exact day we became friends. It was in March 1980. It was right after The Jam had gone straight to number one with “Going Underground”. This was a big deal in my household. My brothers were massive fans. Paul Weller was their icon, their working-class hero. They cheered when they heard. It was like
they’d
gone to number one.
    ‘Anyway I was on my way home when I saw this group of older kids surrounding him. They were pushing him, hitting him. They’d dumped his books on the floor, ripped pages out.
    ‘I told them to stop. They didn’t. There was this skip nearby. It was full of old bricks. So I grabbed one and threw it at the tallest kid. Caught him right on the temple. Then I