The Mother. Jaime Raven

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       4

      Adam

      The man in the dock at the Old Bailey looked as though he hadn’t got a care in the world. Even when the judge instructed him to stand up and turn to the jury he didn’t appear to be in the least bit anxious. He was facing the prospect of a long stretch behind bars, but from his expression you would never have guessed it.

      ‘The bastard is cocksure that he’s about to be acquitted,’ Detective Inspector Adam Boyd whispered to his colleague who was sitting beside him in the courtroom. ‘And I have a horrible feeling he could be right.’

      The case against Victor Rosetti – a Romanian national – had been undermined during the past couple of days. One of the prosecution witnesses had disappeared before taking the stand, and the defence had managed to refute some of the forensic evidence, claiming it had been contaminated.

      For the National Crime Agency, which was set up to fight organised crime in the UK, it would be a bitter blow if Rosetti did walk. As one of London’s nastiest villains and drugs traffickers, the man deserved to be locked behind bars. But securing a conviction was always going to be a challenge for Adam and his team.

      Rosetti had an army of foot soldiers working for him, along with some powerful contacts. Several senior police officers were also believed to be on his payroll.

      Adam had managed to build a strong case against him before bringing a charge that related to the importation and distribution of cocaine. But Rosetti’s defence had dismissed much of the evidence as circumstantial and had accused the police of ‘fitting up’ their client.

      Things had gone from bad to worse two days ago when the prosecution’s key witness – one of Rosetti’s own drug couriers – slipped out of the safe house he was staying in. All attempts to trace him had failed, and Adam thought it likely that Rosetti’s people had ‘encouraged’ him to vanish by threatening his family.

      The jury foreman was now being asked if a verdict had been reached. The foreman said it had and passed a slip of paper to the clerk.

      Adam stared with ill-disguised contempt at the man who was known as ‘Rosetti the Cutter’ because of his fondness for slicing up his enemies with a knife.

      He was a short, heavyset man with a round face and shaved head. He’d been on the NCA’s radar for a couple of years, but this was the closest they’d come to bringing him down and Adam wasn’t sure they would get an opportunity like this again.

      As the judge prepared to ask the jury foreman to announce the verdict, Adam felt his mobile phone vibrate with an incoming message. He ignored it, deciding that whatever it was it could wait. Right at this moment the only thing that mattered was seeing if this Romanian scumbag got what he deserved.

      Adam felt his insides contract as he switched his gaze from Rosetti to the jury foreman, a thin-faced man with a scruffy beard.

      ‘So do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty?’ the judge asked him.

      Adam bit his bottom lip and held his breath. The courtroom fell silent. The jury foreman spoke without hesitation.

      ‘Not guilty, your honour,’ he said.

      Rosetti’s reaction to the verdict was to grin broadly and punch the air with his fist.

      It made Adam want to throw up. Although he’d seen this coming it was still a sickening blow.

      He had to resist the urge to leap to his feet and berate the jury for being so stupid and to ask who among them had been nobbled. Instead he just sat there, gritting his teeth so hard his jaw ached.

      Shouts of support came from the public gallery as Rosetti was led out of the dock.

      ‘What a bloody disaster,’ Adam said to himself, loud enough for those around him to hear.

      He didn’t move for several minutes, waiting for the courtroom to empty. He felt wrung out, the emotions thick in his throat.

      At length, he threw out a long sigh and got to his feet. He needed some fresh air and a cigarette. And after that a stiff drink, or two, at the nearest boozer.

      Outside, a few newspaper reporters and a TV camera crew had gathered on the street. But it could hardly have been described as a media frenzy. The case hadn’t been as high-profile as some of the others that had been taking place at the same time. Victor Rosetti wasn’t exactly a household name, and drugs trials had become so commonplace that they failed to attract much attention these days.

      The Romanian stood on the pavement, flanked by two burly minders, as he answered the reporters’ questions.

      Adam’s boss, DCI Mike Dunlop, stood to one side preparing to make a statement on behalf of the NCA, in which he would no doubt express profound disappointment.

      Adam slipped away from Dunlop and the rest of the police team and crossed the road where he sparked up a fag and tried to suppress the rage that was bubbling up inside him.

      He regarded what had just happened as a travesty of justice, and it was going to take him a while to get over it. The thought that Rosetti would now go away and continue to ply his illicit trade made his blood boil.

      He watched as the bastard finished answering questions. Then a black Mercedes pulled up to the kerb and he climbed in with his minders. The reporters immediately turned their attention to Dunlop. The Mercedes then pulled away, but instead of driving straight off, it shot across the road СКАЧАТЬ