‘They dumped Rita back on the street, bleeding internally, with cigarette burns that turned to weeping sores. Novak lost it completely. The only constant in the shit-storm he called a life had been his little sister and he had made a promise to himself that he’d protect her.
‘So while Rita was still in hospital, being looked after by social workers, Novak bought himself a .25 calibre automatic handgun for eighty quid from an IRA gunrunner called Jimmy Ferris. The Ferret.
‘I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking a kid like Novak, with his history of violence and his hair-trigger temper, would go all Dirty Harry and shoot a place up, but it didn’t go down like that. Novak didn’t walk into that clubhouse guns blazing. He watched and he waited. He followed the bikers, making a note of their faces, their routines, where they lived . . .
‘The first mark made it easy. He left a bar in Short Strand with a young girl in tow. The pair walked into a dimly lit parking garage. By the time Novak turned the corner, the biker had the girl on her knees.
‘It was a familiar scene. Novak tapped her on the shoulder and she pulled back in fright. The biker opened his eyes and the pistol slipped between his lips.
‘Novak told the girl to get lost. He waited until she disappeared before he looked back at the biker whose shrinking wet penis was still hanging outside his pants.
‘The girl heard him begging for his life. Apologising. Novak counted down from three and pulled the trigger. Because it was a low-calibre weapon the bullet didn’t make a clean entry and exit. Instead it ricocheted around the inside of his skull, turning his brain to pulp.
‘Novak used the guy’s shirt to wipe the saliva and blood from the barrel of the gun. Two hours later, he killed a second biker. This time the guy ran into a school and hid in a toilet block. Novak found him in one of the stalls and shot him four times, but only after he’d kicked him unconscious. Novak slipped on the muck and left a neat handprint on the floor. That’s how the police eventually caught him, but not before he’d killed eight more times.
‘One by one he tracked down the men who’d raped Rita. Nigel Geddes was the last. By then Geddes knew he was being hunted so he fled to Liverpool and changed his name, but Novak caught the ferry to Holyhead and slept rough in the streets of Anfield for two months until he found his man. Geddes was shooting up in a squat in Everton and Novak helped him find a vein and then an artery. Bled him dry.
‘The police caught up with Novak when he stepped off the ferry in Belfast. He didn’t say a word during the interviews. He wouldn’t speak to the social workers or child psychologists. The bloody handprint saw him charged with one of the murders, but investigators didn’t have enough evidence to pin the others on him.
‘When Novak’s barrister stood up at the bar table, he told the jury that Novak had been sexually assaulted by the biker, who mistook him for a rent boy. The jury believed the story and the prosecution accepted a manslaughter plea. Novak was still a minor so he was sent to a youth prison and served barely four years.’
Ruiz doesn’t look at me for a reaction. Nor does he editorialise with his own body language. This is history now. Indisputable.
The clang of metal on metal makes him turn. Across the road an overloaded skip sits beneath a forest of scaffolding pipes. Workmen are dismantling the framework around the Guildhall. Another pipe drops from a height, bouncing on to the cobblestones.
‘How do you know this stuff?’ I ask.
‘Nigel Geddes was part of the IRA cell that set off the Harrods bomb. He’d been under surveillance for nearly two years.’
‘But if you’re right - if Novak Brennan was convicted of manslaughter - why hasn’t it come out?’
‘He was still a juvenile. He can’t be named. Juvenile records are sealed. Anyone tries to publish a detail like that and they risk going to prison.’
Ruiz doesn’t sound too bothered by the fact. If anything, I sense a grudging admiration for Novak.
‘So what’s your take on this?’ I ask.
‘The guy loved his sister.’
‘Meaning?’
‘It means Novak Brennan has the capacity to care about people, just like the rest of us.’
‘So what happened to him afterwards?’
Ruiz shrugs. ‘He changed and he didn’t change. He studied for his A-levels in prison and moved to England when he got released. I think he went to university in the Midlands. Then he set about making his fortune, using the same basic technique that he and Rita had employed, only on a much bigger scale.’
‘He blackmailed people.’
‘He took advantage of their weaknesses.’
‘So when did Novak Brennan become a pin-up boy for the neo-Nazis? ’
Ruiz shakes his head. ‘No idea.’
‘You think he’s genuine?’
‘All politicians have an agenda.’
‘And Rita?’
‘She’s still around. Never married. Dotes on him.’
Julianne mentioned that Novak had a sister.
We push through a revolving door into the foyer of the Crown Court where security guards are x-raying bags and searching visitors with a body scanner. Ruiz has to unload his pockets as we pass through.
The marbled foyer is dotted with barristers and clerks. A spiral staircase rises to the upper floors. The daily court listings are pinned on a noticeboard behind glass. Novak Brennan is on trial in Court One. It’s the same courtroom and the same judge that heard my bail application.
Seats in the downstairs public gallery are being kept clear. We’re directed upstairs to a balcony area, overlooking proceedings. Ruiz slips in behind me, easing the door closed with a trailing hand.
Below us in the courtroom, the jury is seated along one wall closest to the witness box. On the opposite side of the room, Novak Brennan, Tony Scott and Gary Dobson are side by side in the dock, behind a glass screen. There are more lawyers now. Each defendant has one.
Julianne is sitting on a chair between the witness box and the jury, looking calm and businesslike, yet I can tell she’s nervous because she’s playing with the charms on her bracelet. Usually, when I picture her, she is the same young woman I met in 1983 after an anti-apartheid rally in Trafalgar Square. She is still beautiful - with a voice that can make an offer of coffee seem like an invitation to sex - but she has changed in the past two years. She’s grown weary. Perhaps I’m to blame for that too.
A new witness has been summoned: Marco Kostin. There is a murmur in the courtroom, a frisson of anticipation that runs like an unseen current from the press benches to the jury box. Every trial has a main act - the moment when it can swing one way or the other. It could be a witness, a piece of evidence, a brilliant closing argument or an excoriating cross-examination. This is the main act. Marco Kostin. The survivor.
After a few moments he appears, walking with a slight pigeon-toed gait, following the court clerk to the witness box. Tall and gangly, he seems younger than eighteen, with large eyes and long lashes that would look almost feminine except for his thick adult eyebrows. Putting his left hand on the Bible, he raises his right hand and promises to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but . . .
Julianne translates the oath and nods to Judge Spencer, who addresses the jury.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, I apologise for the delay this morning but there were other cases for mention and certain points of law that had to be addressed. This witness requires a translator because his English is limited. I know this makes it more difficult and time-consuming, but both Miss Scriber and Mr Hurst have agreed to keep their questions short and to give the witness extra time to answer.’
Miss Scriber QC is a pinch-faced woman with pencil-thin eyebrows and a body rendered featureless by her black robes. She asks Marco for his full name and age and then asks where he was born. Occasionally Marco answers without the need of Julianne, but mostly he waits for her to translate each question.
Over the next twenty minutes he reveals how his father, Vasily Kosti
n, had been a Soviet ‘Liquidator’ sent to clean up the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant after the disaster in 1986. He drove a bus and helped evacuate people from the town of Pripyet. On one of these journeys he met Olga and they married two years later. Their first child Oles was born without a brain and lived for only a few hours. Then came Marco and his sisters, Vira, eleven, Aneta, six and Danya, four.
The family arrived in the UK fourteen months ago and spent two months in an immigration detention centre before being released into the community. The local authority provided them with housing and vouchers for food and clothing. Marco enrolled at a language school and the family prayed at a local church.
‘Why did you come to the UK?’ asks Miss Scriber.
‘We wanted to start a new life.’
‘What were you told?’
‘They said we couldn’t stay, but we were lodging an appeal.’
Miss Scriber brings Marco to the week of the fire.
‘How well do you know Stacey Dobson?’
‘She is a friend.’
‘Is she your girlfriend?’
Marco dips his eyebrows. ‘I see her sometimes at the bus stop. We catch the same bus. She jokes about my English.’
‘Did she flirt with you?’
Marco looks at Julianne for a translation of ‘flirt’.
‘She is a nice girl. Friendly. I have not met many English girls.’
Marco reveals how they spent a Saturday afternoon together. They went to the movies and then to an amusement arcade. Later he walked her home.
‘Did you kiss her?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you have sex with her?’
Marco lowers his gaze and murmurs something. Embarrassed.
Miss Scriber asks the question again.
‘Yes.’
‘Did you abduct Stacey Dobson?’
‘No.’
‘Did you sexually assault her?’
‘No.’
Miss Scriber glances at her notes. ‘Have you ever met Gary Dobson?’
‘Yes.’
‘When did you meet him?’
‘He was at the police station when I was taken there. He shouted at me.’
‘What did he shout?’
‘Bad words.’
‘Do you remember those words?’
‘He said: “You’re dead! You’re fucking dead!”’
‘Is the man who uttered those words in the court today?’
Slowly Marco raises his right arm and points towards Gary Dobson, who sits a little straighter in the dock with a crazy beaming smile on his face. There are cheers from the gallery. Judge Spencer calls for silence. For a moment the jury seems more interested in what’s going on above them, but the first question about the fire focuses their attention again.
Marco describes having dinner with his family. His mother had made his favourite meal and they said a prayer because Marco was home after spending the night in a police cell. After dinner Marco read a bedtime story to his two youngest sisters and turned off the light in the girls’ bedroom.
He slept at the top of the house in a small loft room accessed by a narrow set of stairs. Photographs of the house and a floor plan are projected on to a white screen. Marco points out each of the bedrooms. His sisters slept on the first floor at the rear of the house. His parents were in the main bedroom overlooking the street.
He was woken just after midnight by the sound of breaking glass. At first he thought someone had shattered a bottle on the footpath outside. He looked out the window and saw a white Ford van in the street. Two men were running. The door opened. The interior light showed a third man behind the wheel.
‘Did you recognise this man?’
‘Yes. I had seen his photograph in the newspapers.’
‘Do you know this man’s name?’
‘Novak Brennan.’
‘Is he in the court?’
Again Marco points to the dock. Novak Brennan looks completely relaxed, with one leg propped on the other at right angles, revealing a pale shin beneath his trouser cuff.
‘What did you see next?’
‘The van drove away.’
‘And then?’
Marco reaches for a glass of water, spilling a few drops. He mops up the spill with his sleeve, concerned that he’ll get into trouble. The judge tells him not to worry.
Miss Scriber repeats her question. ‘What did you do after you saw the van drive away?’
‘I went back to my bed and closed my eyes, but I smelled smoke. I got out of bed and opened my door, but there was smoke everywhere. I had to crawl on the floor . . . feel my way down the stairs. I saw flames in the hallway near the door. We could not get out this way.’
‘Where were your sisters?’
‘I heard them coughing. They were in a bedroom next to Mama and Papa. I could hear windows breaking . . . my mother screaming.’
‘What did you do next?’
‘I crawled to my sisters’ room. I couldn’t find them. I kept calling and feeling for them. Aneta was under the bed. Danya beneath the window. I carried them. I told them not to breathe.’
‘What about Vira?’
‘She was in the hallway. I don’t know how she got out. She was calling for Mama and Papa but I could not hear them any more.’
Marco raises his eyes. The courtroom is so quiet I can hear the tremor in Julianne’s voice as she translates. Marco recounts how he climbed back to the loft bedroom carrying his youngest sisters. He tried the window, but it could only be wound open six inches. Marco held up his sisters so they could breathe. They took turns but it wasn’t enough. Vira panicked and tried to run downstairs.
‘I heard her fall,’ Marco says, the words catching wetly in his throat. ‘She did not answer me when I called to her. I hope she died with no pain . . .’
A juror sobs. There’s nowhere to hide from the raw, numbing emotion in Marco’s voice. He describes how he used a suitcase to bash at the window, swinging it upwards into the reinforced glass until the hinges broke and he kicked it clear. He wanted to lift Danya out on to the roof, but the pitch was too steep.
Instead he pulled the bed beneath the window and climbed out. Leaning back through the hole, he told Danya to lift Aneta, the four-year-old, so he could pull her up . . . but she wasn’t strong enough.
‘She tried, but she couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t see . . . I couldn’t pull them out. I couldn’t go back . . . Aneta called to me. Danya was on her knees. They couldn’t breathe.’
Marco gulps a breath as if trying to help them still. Judge Spencer asks him if he’d like a break.
Glancing along the row of seats in the gallery, I notice a woman sitting alone, head bowed, holding something in her lap. She’s dressed in layers of mismatched clothes with clumpy shoes and woollen tights. As she rocks gently back in her seat, I see that she’s clutching a battered teddy bear with a ribbon around its neck. A mascot.
Someone’s mother, I think, perhaps one of the defendants’. Brennan’s mother died of a drug overdose, according to Ruiz, yet I can see a fleeting resemblance in the shape of her face and her narrow lips.
The truth drops into the stillness. This must be Rita, Novak’s sister.
Strands of hair fall across her face and I find myself trying to find her eyes in the shadows, wondering how much she remembers from the streets of Belfast at the age of twelve. Her face has a haunted look that I’ve seen before in children’s homes and consulting rooms. Beaten. Broken. Cautious. Young rape victims don’t wear the soft, gentle, confident expressions that say, ‘Isn’t it great to be me’. Instead they are eternally vigilant, but not even that can save them from hurt. It’s in their faces.
Judge Spencer has ordered a recess. He stands and the courtroom follows. Novak Brennan turns from the dock and makes eye contact with Rita. Something passes between them, less of a smile than an understanding. It’s as though Novak has touched her in some way, squeezing her shoulder or patting her hand. Her face flushes with affection. Novak
is led away.
At the same moment a door opens in the public gallery. A man appears, waiting for Rita. Tall with slick black hair that gleams under the overhead lights, he’s dressed in a leather jacket and jeans, but it’s not his clothes that make him stand out. The bones of his face are like metal scaffolding beneath his skin and inky tears drip from his eyes and down his cheeks,
This is the man Stan Keating described. The man I saw at the minicab office and outside the restaurant. Ruiz has seen him too. Although he doesn’t physically react, I can almost sense him mentally stepping back and shrinking slightly.
The door closes. They’ve gone.
Ruiz hasn’t moved.
‘You going to follow him?’ I ask.
He shakes his head. ‘I’ll find out who he is.’
‘And then what?’
‘I’ll try to leave him alone.’
33
I once had a patient, an actor, who invited all his family and friends for a drink on his eighty-second birthday at a pub near Vauxhall Bridge in London. ‘The drinks are on me,’ he said, putting money on the bar, along with a letter addressed to the gathering.
At some point during the evening, he slipped away and a fisherman found his body next morning floating in the Thames.
He’d written:I didn’t like the thought of spending my last years lying in bed, surrounded by my children and grandchildren feeling they must sit by my old wrecked body until my last gasp.So I hope you will understand and raise a glass and give me a cheer for catching the tide tonight.
There’s something noble about an exit like that, but I doubt if I’d have the courage or the conviction. Somebody still had to find his body and retrieve it - strangers who didn’t deserve a shitty day.
I used to think I wouldn’t care about losing control of my body, as long as my mind remained strong. A psychologist losing his mind is like a painter losing his sight or a composer his hearing. You could call it a tragic irony, but only if you believe in fate or that God has a sick sense of humour.
Bleed For Me (joseph o'loughlin) Page 25