Free The Verdict by Nick Stone Page A

vanity.
    I’d come with a pen and pad, more as props to steady my hands than in expectation that this meeting was anything but a dismissal. I wondered if I’d get any severance. I hoped so. I was a week away from getting paid for the month.
    Kopf picked up a document from his desk and flicked through it. Three pages, stapled. My CV.
    ‘How long have you been with us?’ he asked.
    This already sounded bad.
    ‘Going on four months,’ I said. My mouth was dry and my palms damp. I’d gone from mid-level panic to high alert in the space of a minute. Just get it over and done with, I thought. I was already envisaging going to temping agencies this afternoon.
    ‘Hasn’t even finished his probation,’ he said to Janet.
    I’d have to be working here another two months before the firm decided whether they wanted to keep me on or not.
    He tossed my CV back on his desk with a scowl.
    ‘Do you come from money?’ he asked me.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Are your parents rich?’
    I was confused. What did my parents have to do with this?
    ‘No. Why?’
    ‘What do they do?’ he asked.
    ‘Sorry?’
    ‘What do your parents do for a living?’
    ‘They’re retired,’ I said.
    He looked at me like I was stupid.
    ‘What
did
they do?’
    I didn’t like this. I didn’t like his questions. I didn’t like his sneering tone. And I really didn’t like him.
    ‘You’re not allowed to ask me that,’ I said, straightening up in the chair.
    That gave him pause for a millisecond.
    ‘I just did,’ he said.
    ‘I’m not obliged to answer,’ I retorted.
    ‘Only in an interview situation. Which this isn’t. If it were you’d have lost me at “Hello”.’
    So, I was definitely getting fired. OK, fuck him, I thought. Go down swinging.
    ‘What’s the point to your question?’
    A hint of a smile flashed across his face.
    ‘Your CV belongs to someone else. Some brat with wealthy parents. A pampered slummer who doesn’t understand the concept of working for a living. But who it
doesn’t
belong to is you,’ he said.
    So they’d found out about Cambridge. I braced myself for the chop.
    ‘You’re a comprehensive kid. You overachieved at school. Straights As in everything. Then, instead of going to university, which would have been the natural thing to do – and the right one – you went to work. And you’ve been polishing the bottom rung of the career ladder ever since. Now you’re here. That’s worrying.’
    Kopf had one of those polite accents redolent of money and good breeding, of country retreats and Mediterranean villas.
    ‘Why?’ I asked.
    ‘We don’t carry people here.’
    ‘I don’t think I’m being carried,’ I said. ‘I made the wrong decision when I was young, that’s all. I couldn’t see the point of more studying. I wanted to work. What did I know?’
    He stared at me without blinking. He had small blue eyes, framed by white lashes, which made his stare even colder. I held his gaze.
    ‘My dad was a welder,’ he said, breaking the glaredown. ‘I used to pick metal splinters out of his palms every evening when he got home. I had to use a hot needle to get under his skin. He was a good man, but I looked at him and his sore bleeding hands and decided I wasn’t going to be him. That’s what being born poor’s about. Not becoming your parents. How old are you?’
    What was he playing at? A little humiliation before he kicked me out? Why not just get straight to it? What did he have to prove?
    ‘It’s in my CV,’ I said.
    He glanced at Janet. Something passed between them. He nodded slightly to her. Had she told him to wrap this up now?
    ‘Thirty-eight,’ he said. ‘Same age as our newest client, Vernon James.’
    ‘Give or take a few months,’ I said. I could hear my heart pounding away.
    ‘And look where he is today?’ Kopf went on. ‘Millionaire, top of his tree, a few spare homes —’
    ‘And presently in police custody on suspicion of murder,’ I interrupted. ‘I’d say he’d happily