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Cape Town’. Both were manifestly false and it was testimony to the policeman’s appalling education that he had not immediately recognised the deceit. The barely legible statement suggested that the witness had seen the accident involving the distinctive Coupe and could identify the driver. Although lacking in detail, the description of the driver sounded chillingly like Svritsky. The State clearly expected that, once found, their witness would be able to distinguish Svritsky in a line-up. Richard anticipated that the man would be extremely hard to unearth and, if found, reluctant to testify.
    Armed with this information, he approached his client with a forced smile. ‘Stefan, good news. They don’t have the witness. She still wants to proceed, but they don’t have him. And without him, they’ve got nothing. Anyway, she’s bluffing, I reckon. She’ll throw a plea bargain our way and when we tell her to get stuffed she’ll withdraw.’ Richard’s speech strayed towards slang when he was around the Russian, and he disliked it. ‘She has to withdraw; she’s got no case and she’s got no choice.’
    Svritsky smoothed some imaginary hair on his head with his burly hand. ‘In the meantime, I still have to pay you, yes?’ he scowled, handing over an envelope of cash to make his point. ‘Fuck, it costs me money every day, this rubbish. I should just fix her. Then I can get on with my life without all this crap, you know? All the time, this crap. Why always this crap that you cannot fix? Huh?’
    Richard had long since learnt not to respond to the barked questions, asked with a lifted chin and smouldering eyes.
    ‘And that little boy … he fuck up my car, hey,’ the Russian continued, warming to his indignation. ‘I liked that car. It is old but that V8 motor was good. It purred … it was a good ride. I liked that ride. Then he fucking walk into the way. From nowhere he comes, into my beautiful car … Bang! ’ Svritsky slammed his two palms together. ‘Then I have to throw it away. Like it is a piece of rubbish. More crap. Now they want to say it’s my fault!’ He shook his head and threw his cigarette into the gutter, still burning.
    Richard held up his hands in an effort to calm down his client, but Svritsky was starting to boil. ‘A few drinks I have at the club. Just driving back, minding no one’s business, yes? On my own. Then this boy jumps out into my way. Like he wants me to hit him. It is just crap. You should have seen the bonnet. I’d just paid money to polish it. Cost me fortune. Then it is all cracked, and the windscreen is in pieces and the roof all dirty with his brains and shit. Maybe we could have put it back in shape, but then I realise that the licence plate is gone. So we must dump the whole car. It burns me up. The whole car. For some idiot who can’t watch where he goes. Burns me up. All this shit. All the time. Huh?’
    Richard assented with a mumble, already wrestling with the approach he would adopt to comply with his professional ethics. Knowing that his client had indeed been driving the car, had also probably been drunk when the accident happened and had certainly laid a false complaint of vehicle theft – these were not insurmountable problems, provided that he did not mislead the court during the trial. He would have to challenge each witness on the content of their evidence without putting a version to any of them, breaking the trial up into small, isolated parcels of fact, each disjointed from the next, so that when the prosecution put them together, a fractured and incoherent narrative played out. He would have to win his case through pedantic challenges to the state witnesses, ensuring that he tugged at the smallest of inconsistencies until the fabric of the whole case unravelled. It would be laborious and would incur the irritation of the bench. It was not an approach that he relished and it felt far removed from the practice of law. He sighed resignedly as he pocketed