The Verdict Read online

  The room erupted in applause and cheers. The lights went up. The room rose to its feet in ovation. He saw a few tears being wiped off cheeks.

  He stepped back from the microphone and savoured the applause, nodding to the crowd, left, centre and right. The Blonde was on her feet too, clapping, beaming, her breasts bouncing under her dress. Their eyes met again.

  ‘I love you,’ she mouthed.

  People came towards the stage, hands extended. He shook them all, soaking up their compliments, thanking them with humble bows and scrapes.

  Yet as the applause rang in his ears, he remembered how things had really been when he was growing up. He wasn’t sure if his father turned into a monster after he came to England, or if he had always been that way. It didn’t matter now. Rodney James had served his purpose. The story Vernon had just told was a big lie strained from the smallest truth, but it was a hell of a tale and that was all that mattered.

  He waved to his cheering audience, picked up his award and started leaving the stage. He was happy and his heart was pumping. A celebration was in order.

  And he desperately wanted to fuck The Blonde.

  But when he turned to look for her, she was gone. The chair she’d sat in empty.

  Afterwards everyone went to the hotel nightclub. A DJ with red, white and blue dreadlocks played an array of roots reggae, 1970s funk and rap from an amped-up laptop.

  The club was called the Casbah. It had a sunken dancefloor, which glowed overlapping shades of turquoise and gold, and a two-tiered seating area, with tables on one level and booths on the next.

  A cheer went up when Vernon walked in. People clustered around him like village idiots to a maypole. They complimented him on his speech. They gushed about how wonderful!! he was and how wonderful!! the work he was doing was, and they insisted they’d always liked and admired him. The backstabbers turned backslappers. He stayed in character, from the false modesty to the faked accent; slicker than grease on ice. He thanked them with his best sincere smile and firmest handshake.

  He worked the room. He mingled. He smalltalked. He chatted. He laughed at bad jokes. Strangers offered to buy him drinks, even though they were all free. People wanted to snap photos with him on their mobiles. He complied. Women swooned. Two lost the power of speech. One kissed him on the cheek. He signed a napkin and a couple of menus. An Asian man wanted to know his secret. ‘Hard work and aspirin,’ he answered and moved on. A pissed sixtysomething northerner asked him if he was a ‘tin bath kid’. Earnest types wanted to know his opinions on global warming, the Middle East, the British government, the decline of American power, and whether Ireland and Iceland were safe to invest in again. He gave left-leaning answers to everything. They nodded in agreement like beatified bobblehead dolls.

  He didn’t mind any of it, the flesh-pressing, the smarming, the insincerity. It was all post-purchase aftercare to him; the promised phone call at the end of a one night stand. This bunch of sorry do-gooders had made him very happy for reasons they’d never know.

  Now…

  Where was The Blonde?

  He walked the length and breadth of the club, but he didn’t see her.

  The guests got drunk enough to take to the dancefloor, as reggae gave way to disco. People danced, some effortlessly, others like they were standing in drying cement.

  Vernon retraced his steps, encountering more handshakes and platitudes and flattery. Fistbumps, handpumps, three high-fives and a load of thumb-ups.

  No sign of her.

  The DJ played The Clash, The Jam, The Specials, The Housemartins. The women fled to the edges of the floor and watched middle-aged men pogo wildly for a few seconds, reliving their youth, only to stop, panting and sweating, and looking all embarrassed as time caught up with them and abruptly yanked their chains.

  Vernon slipped outside and looked up and down the corridor. Smooth grey carpet and portholes for windows; central London at night, like being in the middle of a gigantic box of jewels.

  He took the lift down to the lobby. She was well and truly gone. What a shame, he thought. But he didn’t dwell on the disappointment. God had invented escort services for moments like these.

  He went back to the party. He decided to give it another hour, then split and order himself up a Nordic cheerleader type. He’d ask her to come in a tight green dress.

  Waiters and waitresses were roaming the tiers, taking drinks orders. Vernon ordered a double vodka and went up to one of the booths where some of the judges and Trust board members were sitting. More compliments, more handshakes. A couple of the judges who’d voted against him apologised for misjudging him. He accepted and said he regretted all the controversy. Someone said it had been great publicity and winked.

  His drink came. He sipped it and scanned the floor, one more time, just in case.

  The music got louder. Tunes everyone knew. A group of men and women had linked arms and were dancing in a circle, singing aloud, high-kicking, butting other revellers out of the way.

  No one could hear anyone talk.

  Vernon had an ideal opportunity to slip away.

  And that was when he saw her again.

  A flash of blonde on green.

  She was standing all the way across the club, near the exit, her back to him.

  Vernon excused himself. No one heard him.

  He edged around the floor, which was overflowing with people. A woman was being helped over to the booths, hopping, her foot bleeding. Someone called out his name and he turned and smiled and waved without seeing them. He crunched over broken glass or ice cubes and squished olives and lemon slices.

  The Blonde was talking on a mobile.

  Vernon reached her and stood behind her for a second, waiting for the right moment. He was drunker than he realised. Vodka was the only alcohol he ever touched, because he knew how to pace it and control its effects. He’d had eight – or was it nine? – drinks over a four-hour period and plenty of water in-between. The most he would have usually felt was tipsy. Now his balance was off, his mouth dry and his head caught in a slow clockwise spin.

  He tapped her on the shoulder.

  She turned around, her phone still to her ear.

  ‘Oh…’ was all Vernon could say when he saw her face.

  The dress was… kind of the same colour, but… her hair and… her height and her shape should have given it away.

  It wasn’t The Blonde. Just a blonde – a foot shorter, dumpier and only a long-term boyfriend or devoted husband’s idea of beautiful.

  How the hell could he have made such a huge mistake?

  ‘Yeah…?’ She looked at him quizzically.

  ‘I’m sorry. I thought you were someone else,’ he said.

  ‘Well I’m not, am I?’ she snapped and turned around and resumed her conversation.

  Just then a conga line of men burst into the club, singing ‘Agadoo’. They crashed into the woman as they hurtled towards the dancefloor. She lost her balance and fell headfirst into Vernon, smacking him hard in the chest. He rocked back on his heels and grasped out for support. His fingers caught her hair and he pulled her down, yelping, on top of him.

  They landed on the floor as one, Vernon taking the brunt of the fall and their combined weight on his upper back and shoulderblades. He cried out as pain shot up his neck. They both tried to get up at the same time. In their confusion and momentary panic they struggled against each other, the woman poking his eye, sticking another finger up his nostril and then scratching her nails down his cheek as she attempted to get upright. She’d just about made it, but she couldn’t raise her head all the way up because some of her hair was snagged up around one of Vernon’s cufflinks. He tried to disentangle her, but she lost all patience and yanked her head away with another yelp.

  Vernon was all apologies and concern, even though his shoulders were killing him and the pain had now spread to his jaw.

  ‘Where’s my phone?’ she yelled at him.

  Vernon shrugged and then winced as the
bruised muscles flared up.

  Then he saw that a strap of the woman’s dress had busted and her left breast was slowly spilling out as the fabric fell away.

  At first she didn’t notice what had happened. She was shouting at him about her phone over the music. But he’d lost all audio. He was looking down at that voluminous left breast of hers.

  She followed his stare.

  Her mouth formed a perfect capital ‘O’.

  Then it collapsed into an angry rictus.

  ‘You big twat!’ she screamed and scampered out of the club in a hunchbacked half-crouch, clutching the front of her dress and trying to contain her modesty.

  Vernon looked around to see who was watching. Just about everyone. Most were laughing at him or with him or both.

  He switched back to crowd-pleaser mode. He smiled, laughed along, shook his head and held his hands up. It was a perfect moment to leave. He turned, and, as he did, he trod on something.

  It was a mobile phone. He guessed it was the woman’s.

  The front was completely smashed.

  He picked it up and slipped it in his pocket. He’d hand it in to reception tomorrow.

  He left the club and headed down the corridor, grateful to be getting away from there.

  He wouldn’t need the escort service after all, just bed. He’d been so preoccupied with his speech, he hadn’t even had time to look at the suite’s bedroom. That was something to look forward to. He was exhausted. The state he was in was more down to the day he’d had than the vodka; it was the tiredness after the adrenalin, the comedown after the triumph, his real self taking over from the forged one.

  He headed for the lift.

  A group of people came gambolling towards him, drunk, bouncing off the walls, laughing. They stopped him to ask for directions to the club. As he was pointing to it, out of the corner of his eye, Vernon saw a flash of green on blonde go past them, heading away, in the opposite direction.

  He remembered the phone in his pocket. He left the group and hurried after her.

  ‘Excuse me?’ he called out.

  The woman stopped and turned.

  And he stopped too.

  No…

  No.

  Surely not.

  It couldn’t be…

  But it was

  Her.

  The Blonde.

  ‘Oh hello,’ she said, looking him up and down. ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘The party’s getting a bit wild,’ he said.

  ‘And you’re leaving?’ she laughed.

  ‘There’s wild I like, and wild I don’t,’ he said. ‘How come you weren’t there?’

  ‘I was just going,’ she said. She had a French accent – noticeable, but not overpowering.

  ‘You’re heading the wrong way,’ he said, hiking his thumb over his shoulder.

  ‘Am I?’ she smiled.

  The bar on the eleventh floor was as good as deserted, with only the bartender wiping down the counter.

  She took a seat at a corner table by a window, while Vernon got the drinks – a white wine for her and a glass of water for him. He asked the barman to ‘make it look like vodka’.

  Vernon let The Blonde take the lead with the talking. She’d already introduced herself as Fabia and said she worked in PR. Now she told him she was originally from Switzerland. She’d been living in England for the last five years. She’d married a Kiwi but they’d split up a year ago. She flashed the wedding ring she’d moved to her right hand.

  She’d as good as told him she was available.

  His move.

  Vernon’s marriage was essentially solid. Although he and his wife spent a lot of time apart, when they were together they got on fine and the sex was good.

  But there wasn’t enough of it for him. Nor was it the kind he’d come to like more and more these days. The special kind. For that he went elsewhere.

  He rarely picked women up, unless they were a sure thing. He wasn’t interested in the chase – too much time and effort to spend on an indeterminate outcome. And he wasn’t looking for a mistress or a bit on the side.

  So he mostly used prostitutes. High-class ones – expensive, discreet and always blonde. It was a simple arrangement: he got what he wanted, paid for it and went home.

  Fabia was very different from the kind of women he usually encountered socially. Sure they flirted with him, but never overtly. There was always a buffer, a deniability. Fabia didn’t have that. She was direct to the point of bluntness. She wanted the same thing he did. It was there in her eyes when he’d first spotted her, and it was there in the way she was looking at him now.

  Vernon told Fabia he and his wife had an open marriage.

  ‘Why wasn’t she here tonight?’

  ‘She’s in America,’ he said.

  ‘What about your entourage?’ she asked. ‘Bodyguards, assistants?’

  ‘I came alone.’

  ‘That’s brave.’

  ‘It’s called vodka.’

  She laughed. They both sipped their drinks and then gazed out of the window. It was the same view Vernon had from his suite, only slightly lower: the South Bank between the Millennium and Waterloo Bridges, the vista lit up like a giant pinball machine with the cover torn off. Everything washed and burnished and blessed in bluey neon.

  ‘Nice watch…’ she said, nodding to his wrist.

  ‘It was my dad’s,’ he said.

  His father’s Datejust Rolex, the only valuable he’d brought over from Trinidad. It had originally been given to his grandfather when he’d retired as manager of the London Bank in 1952. He’d passed it on to Rodney. Rodney used to wear it once a year, on his birthday. They’d found it after he died, in a shoebox at the back of the closet when they were clearing out his clothes. Vernon had suggested selling it, but his mother refused, saying she wanted him to have it, so he could pass it on to his son one day. ‘What if I have girls?’ he’d asked. And he had. Three of them.

  He’d worn the watch for the first time ever tonight to remind himself to stay on message, to think warmly of the man he’d hated. It was a good prompt. Heavy, like a shackle, the metal cold on his wrist.

  ‘May I?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Vernon slipped it off and handed it to her. The watch didn’t look flash, the way modern Rolexes did. The lustre had long gone out of the yellow and silver jubilee bracelet, and the glass was scratched.

  She took it and felt its heft in her palm. Then she inspected it carefully and he could tell she knew what she was doing.

  ‘This is an antique?’ she said.

  ‘Yes. Do you know about watches?’

  ‘My father’s a watchsmith,’ she said, as she put the Rolex on her wrist and admired it. The strap was too big and the watch slid halfway down her forearm.

  ‘You look like a rapper,’ he laughed.

  ‘Birthday or Christmas?’

  The tips of their fingers bumped across the table. She took his hand and looked at him. The hold became a light grip as she leaned her face towards his. He felt her warm breath on his chin. She leaned forward a little more, her lips slightly parted, her eyes half-closed.

  Vernon pulled back and broke away, looking around quickly to see if anyone else was there. But they were still alone, apart from the barman, who was turned away from them, stacking glasses on a shelf.

  ‘I thought you had an open marriage,’ she said.

  ‘The door’s always on the latch.’

  ‘Are you staying here? In the hotel?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I guess this is the moment you invite me up to your room to see the view.’

  When the lift doors opened, Vernon did the gentlemanly thing and stepped aside to let her pass. He would have done it anyway, because he knew his good manners and how they spoke volumes to the aware, but he also used the opportunity to check her out again and take her in.

  Her dress exposed much of her back, all the way down to the absolute lowest limit of her spine, sto
pping tantalisingly close to the bold convex swell of her buttocks. He let his eyes slide down the groove of her vertebral column and linger on the fine pale down matting her tawny skin. She was perfect.

  In the suite, they stood by the floor-to-ceiling window, taking in the view.

  ‘Is this how you see the world?’ she asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘From up on high, like a god? Everyone small and insignificant and crushable?’

  ‘Just tonight,’ he said. It was raining outside, and the glass was speckled and running.

  He took her hand gently and turned her towards him. Then he pulled her a little closer. He started kissing her. There was an initial resistance on her part. Her mouth was set and unyielding, her arms down by her sides. He stopped and asked if she was OK.

  Instead of answering, she grabbed his head and brought her mouth to his. They tongue-torqued. She nibbled his bottom lip.

  Then she bit it.

  He stepped back with a gasp and touched his mouth for blood. She apologised with a giggle, said it was over-enthusiasm. And maybe the wine too. He said OK and excused himself.

  He went into the hallway bathroom. She’d drawn blood from his lip, but it didn’t make much difference to his overall appearance because he looked a mess. He was dishevelled, his face was scratched, his shirt pocket was torn and hanging loose, and the left sleeve of his jacket was wet and filthy with booze and dancefloor dirt.

  He splashed cold water on his face, which chased some of the mist out of his head.

  When he came out he found her standing by the couch and coffee table in the middle of the room, adjusting her dress about her hips.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘Make it up to me,’ he said.

  He took her face in his hands and kissed her. Again he met hard, closed lips. What was the matter with her? This was starting to irritate him. If she was teasing him, he was way too tired and booze-jaded. If she was trying to provoke him, it was working.

  He started to say something when Fabia came at him again. She nibbled at his neck and put her tongue in his ear. Then she pushed his jacket off and undid his belt, then his trousers. She licked her fingers and slipped them through the fly of his boxers and freed his hardening prick. He groaned, loving how she was taking the initiative, her aggression.