The Walking Dead

  'I suppose it's the little woman,' the armourer said, confidential; dropping his voice. 'Three years, isn't it? The world moves on and you have to forget her. Have I told you that FBI recruiting story about women?'

  He could have said that the friction inside Delta had nothing to do with any of the scratchiness in his relationship with the others, the old tensions his divorce had created. Mandy did not figure, but if he had disabused Daff he wouldn't hear the story: the armourer's reputation for stories was gold-medal standard.

  'You haven't,' Banks said drily, 'but I expect you will.'

  The lilted tale began. 'It's like this…The FBI had an opening for an assassin, a dedicated killer. After all the security checks and interviews they were down to a short-list of three: two men and a woman. For the final test, the FBI's Human Resources took the first man to a big metal door and handed him a Smith & Wesson, and said, "We must know that you will obey orders to the letter, no matter what. Inside the room your wife is sitting in a chair. Kill her." The first man said he could never shoot his wife, and he was told, "You're not the right man for us. Take her and go home." The second man was given the same order and he took the pistol and went into the room. There were five minutes of quiet. Then he came out with tears on his face and said he had tried but finally realized he could not kill his wife. He was told, "You don't have what it takes, go on home with her." It was the woman's turn. Her husband was in the room, sitting in the chair, and she was to shoot him. She took the gun and went inside. Shots were heard, one after another, the whole magazine. Outside, they heard screams, crashes and bangs, then everything went quiet. Would have been at least three minutes more, then the door opened slowly and the woman stood there. She wiped sweat off her forehead and said, "This gun was loaded with blanks. I had to use the chair to kill him." Women for you, Banksy.'

  He laughed. He laughed till it hurt. He realized it was the first time he had laughed, from deep in his belly, in the eleven days since the funeral–since he had been handed the diary kept by Cecil Darke. 'I like it.'

  'Is it women? You got women aching in your gut?'

  'No…Daff, it's a bit worse than women.'

  The armourer's face contorted in mock horror. 'God, that bad? Then you have my sympathy, Banksy. Well, go on, chuck it up.'

  He had come to the basement, to his friend–perhaps the only one he had–to get himself up against a shoulder that would take the burden of his problem. He spoke, haltingly at first, of words written seventy years before 'in a foreign land' and he quoted the verse of Psalm 137, and Daff knew it from chapel in childhood, and he said what had happened in the canteen, kids' play ending in spilt blood, and that he was damned if he would apologize when he had no guilt.

  Blinking, Banks said, 'What it's come down to is that there is now a doubt as to my dedication to the job. Would I, because of what I said of my great-uncle, have the ruthlessness to shoot a suicide-bomber who might just be a "brave and principled" young man? Would I hesitate at that moment, going into double tap, and not think of him as a scumbag, a rabid animal, who should be killed–like it was in the Underground train? In their minds, the doubt exists.'

  'No one knows, Banksy, how they'd be.'

  'There's enough who talk up the macho stuff.' Banks's bitterness flowed. 'Plenty who say they're sure. I'm no longer trusted.'

  The face across the counter brightened. 'Did you read that one about the suicide-bomber in Baghdad the other day? You didn't? It's real, it happened, went like this. A suicide-bomber drives his bomb-primed car right under an American M1A1 main battle tank and lodges beneath it and between the tracks and it weighs more than sixty tons. The crew hop out, think it's a road traffic accident and find this guy pinned in his crushed car. He tells them he's a martyr but the way the car's squashed he can't reach the switch to detonate himself. But he still dies, because they do a controlled explosion that kills him, but the tank isn't damaged. What do you think God told him when he got there? "Dear me, you look miserable, have a bad day at work?" You're not laughing now, Banksy.'

  'No, I'm not. It's a new war and a new enemy, and maybe they are brave and principled. I don't have the answers–others do, but not me. Daff, I feel like I'm flawed.'

  'What do you want me to say?'

  'Don't know.'

  'Well, I'll offer this. If you're in shit, get clear of it. If you're in a quagmire, crawl out of it. Hack on in there, Banksy, don't let the bastards destroy you. Always believe it, something'll turn up.'

  'If only it were that easy. I'll see you, Daff.'

  At the top of the stairs to the basement he met the crowd of Delta, Golf and Kilo guys and was ignored. Without him, with their briefing finished, they went to draw their weapons.

  She sat on the bed and her silent sobbing shook her. From the next room, she could hear the beat of Kathy's music. Beside her, on the duvet, was the brown-paper package with one end torn open and the banknotes exposed.

  She had found it an hour earlier when she had brought the ironing upstairs and two pairs of his socks had fallen as she had stacked his clothes on the wardrobe's shelves. The socks had dropped among the shoes at the bottom. It was so obviously hidden and not intended that she should discover it. She had, and she had ripped back the paper. It was more money than she had ever seen. She knew of no reason, other than a criminal one, for so many banknotes to be in her house.

  The door clicked downstairs. His voice called, 'Hi, love, you up there? Everything fine? Mum and Dad send their love.'

  She heard his footsteps on the stairs and pushed the package further away from her, so that he would see it better when he came into the room.

  She wiped her eyes and twisted to face him, contempt coursing through her. She saw his face go ashen.

  Chapter9

  Monday, Day 12

  He handed the envelope to the jury bailiff. The man studied it, a frown knitting his forehead. He seemed to hold it with suspicion, but he read what was written: By Hand -for the personal attention of Mr Justice Herbert, Court 18. There was hesitation. 'Is this something I can deal with?'

  Jools said tartly, 'No. If it were I would not have addressed it to Mr Justice Herbert.'

  'Actually, in the hour before his court sits, he's rather busy.'

  'I'd like it delivered to him now.'

  'And when he's busy he has a short temper. Are you telling me this is urgent?'

  Jools looked sharply around and behind him, but the remainder of the jury seemed not to have noticed his conversation with the bailiff. 'Look, it's not some bloody complaint about the food or the chairs we sit on. It's urgent and should get on to his desk soonest–like now.'

  'Right, then. Be it on your head.'

  All the way to the door, the bailiff examined the envelope as if still doubtful of its importance, then was gone. Could not be called back. Jools thought he had cast the die. He was sure that nothing in his life would be the same again.

  He felt sick. Vomit had risen from his stomach and was lodged in his throat. He swayed. His eyes, bleary and bloodshot, ached…as well they might. He had been up half the night as Babs had scalpelled the truth from him; In the bedroom, her voice stiletto sharp and quiet, his murmuring early evasions and late honesties, she had cut the story out of him. When she had finished, he had been tossed aside. He had spent what was left of the night on the living-room settee, and when he was about to leave she had hurled the package, now retaped, into his midriff. He had clutched it against his chest, under his anorak, all the way to Snaresbrook Crown Court. It was now in his locker, hidden under his coat.

  He swayed and felt weakness in his knees. Through the night, as truths were dragged out of him, she had belted him: 'You disgust me, you make me cringe with shame…Don't give me the craven excuse that there was a threat to Kathy, me, you. Policemen exist to protect us from such threats…It's not too late. You took the money and now you will hand it in to the court's authorities and come clean…If you have not done that by the time you come home this evening I w
ill be straight down to the nearest police station and you will be looking at a charge, from your vantage-point in the cells, of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, or whatever they call it…Why didn't you just throw it back in that awful little man's face? Isn't there an iota of decency, pride, self-esteem, in you?…And you're a person responsible for overseeing the way children are brought up, your own and at school–God, what a damn Pharisee you've turned out to be, and unfit to have children in your care…There is, if you didn't know it, a clear division between what is right and what is wrong, but since you don't seem to understand that, it falls to me to kick you down the right road…Do you think I could ever look myself in the face, stand in front of a mirror, if I knew that our debts were paid off with that money? Do you? Well, think again. I'd prefer to starve in the street, destitute, and Kathy with me, than spend a penny of it…Get out of my sight because I don't want you in my room and most certainly not in my bed…So, there will be consequences–well, the police will look after us, and my trust lies in them, not in the word of criminals…' Always had had a way with words, his Babs.

  'Hey, Jools, you been on the juice last night?' Baz had sidled close to him, and grinned.

  'More like a right junket.' Fanny giggled. 'What did you have? A gallon or two?'

  He reeled away from them and slumped on to a chair.

  Fanny came to him and crouched beside him. She said softly, 'Don't mind them, Jools, they're just silly and spiteful. Is it that you're ill or is it Angst in the mind? You can tell me–I only share secrets with my cat.'

  He thought her a dear and chaotic woman, with rather an admirable chest that was a usual attention point for him in post-lunch court sessions, but was damned if he would confide. 'There was no alcohol involved. I merely happen to have slept poorly,' he said sharply.

  The hands of the clock on the wall advanced. The time came and went when the bailiff would normally have urged those who needed it to make a last visit to the toilets. The others had now retreated to the hard chairs round the walls and were buried in newspaper word teasers and crossword puzzles, except Fanny, who knitted from a pattern. Their bailiff had come back into the room, had hovered with an expression of crisis on his face, then had been called out, had returned again, then gone once more. By now they should have been gathering up their notepads and filing into court. Jools felt the earlier tiredness and sickness ebb out of him, replaced with a sensation near to exhilaration. None of them except him knew the cause of the delay. It was as if, and none of them had seen him do it, he had pulled the pin from a pineapple-shaped grenade, rolled it studiously across the floor, and it had wobbled to a stop in the centre of the room. The bailiff was back with them and coughed heavily, not to clear his throat but to attract attention–Jools was counting down the seconds till the explosion.

  'I regret, ladies and gentlemen, that we have a delay this morning and I cannot say for how long it will be. Our judge asks for your patience. A matter has come to his notice that he has to deal with. As soon as he has an answer to a difficulty that has arisen, he will call you in. I am afraid I am not at liberty to discuss the matter, the difficulty, with you.'

  Jools motioned to the bailiff to come to him, then reached into his trouser pocket for his locker key. 'In my locker there's a package that'll be corroboration for what's in the letter I wrote to old Herbert,'

  he whispered. 'Please retrieve it, without a song and dance, and get it to him.'

  He saw it done with discretion. He threw his sandalled feet forward, leaned back, yawned, and yawned again. They'd think of him as a bloody hero, wouldn't they? They would never know he was merely the spineless bloody coward who had crumpled under the weight of his wife's morality.

  'You'll put it in place, Chief Inspector. I will rely on you to do that.'

  'The cost, sir, of such a procedure is prohibitive.'

  'I am not in an area of discussion and argument. It will happen. I will not countenance the losing of the case at such a late stage. I would estimate that the Crown has already invested more than two million pounds in this prosecution and if we go for a mistrial–and a subsequent rehearing–we will be looking for another million, at least, in expenditure. There is the further consideration, and it is a weighty one, that the abandonment of the trial in its last hours would be a victory for the forces of corruption. No, if the jury needs protection, I am charging you with providing it.'

  If Mr Justice Wilbur Herbert was flustered by what he had learned that morning, he gave no indication of it. He anticipated that preliminary estimates of cost and expenditure were now scrambling at speed in the chief inspector's mind. But justice was his, concern, not the spilling of further sums from the public purse. He had played the card of the expense of a retrial, and had loftily dismissed the prospect of such an action, yet he was economic with his motivation. Regina v. Curtis and Curtis was a high-profile matter, one that would attract the attention of the Lord Chancellor: a successful conclusion would enhance his prospects of a legal peerage and, ultimately, a seat on the benches of the Court of Appeal. He had no doubt that his diminished jury would bring in 'guilty' verdicts on all counts, and had already framed a wording of the statement he would make to the accused when he sent them away to serve most, if not all, of the remainder of their lives as Category A prisoners. Well hidden under a veneer of polite calm he felt a fierce desire to purge, whenever it was within his power, the culture of organized and serious criminality. If he had lived half a century before, Mr Justice Herbert would have had a clerk slip a freshly ironed and uncreased square of black cloth carefully on to his wig, then pronounced the death sentence on murderers. Not appropriate here, but breaking stones in a quarry would have been–in his opinion–proper retribution by society on such men as Ozzie and Ollie Curtis. Preferably granite.

  The thief inspector, the senior investigating officer on the case, seemed to squirm. 'The cost, sir, is but one side of the problem.'

  'I'm not in the mood for having problems deflect us.'

  'The reverse face is manpower, sir.'

  'I doubt that is insoluble. An officer of your experience and ability can and will, I'm sure, find a route round such difficulties.'

  The objections were shoved aside with the ruthlessness 'that was the hallmark of Mr Justice Herbert's successful climb on his career ladder. But when he spoke it was with his old-world courtesy, with which all who appeared in his courts were familiar. There was a thoroughness about him that scuppered the mention of appeals being won on the basis of his guidance to juries and his dealings with defence lawyers. His exterior was one of moderation and patience. His listed hobbies of reading Victorian melodrama, poetry, and sailing an eighteen-foot yacht off a mooring at Southwold, along with his regular Sunday attendance at morning worship in the cathedral of his home city, St Albans, all proffered an image of caring reasonableness, and truth was disguised. He believed that the chief inspector would soon weaken, but he tolerated a trifle of the man's obstinacy and allowed him his moment.

  'The cost, sir, of protection is awesome. We have a jury of ten persons and although we have had one jury member come clean about an offer–'

  'And not only "come clean", but also hand over a most considerable sum of money, thereby giving two significant markers of honesty and courage.'

  'Of course, sir…but I cannot assume that this one individual is the only one who has been approached. You are asking me–'

  'I am instructing you, Chief Inspector.'

  'Yes, sir. Your instruction means that I have to rustle up the manpower to protect the jury members, ten of them, and look after their families. I would have to move the jury for the rest of the trial into secure accommodation, while at the same time ensuring that their families are guarded in their homes. We are talking about upwards of a hundred officers, and the requirement that a percentage of them would be armed. That's a big call, sir.'

  'Then your job is to make the call.'

  'Over and above that, we would have to acknowledge Duty
of Care for the future, both to the jurors and their families. It won't all grind to a halt, sir, when the case concludes, could go on for months. Frankly, I hear a cash register going out of control here, and we could be looking at relocation.'

  'The price of justice, Chief Inspector, is not cheap. What'll you do? Put the jurors into a hotel for the duration?'

  'I don't think so. Hotels are about as insecure as things get–people wandering in and out, unvetted staff, back-of-the-building fire escapes and trade entrances…I'll look elsewhere. Then there's the business of keeping the jurors calm: "Who's going to be looking after my wife, my mother, all the rest?" They could panic and want out.'

  'That is my responsibility and I will field it. I'm very grateful for your positive response, Chief Inspector, and I guarantee that your cooperation will be reflected in the personal letter I will write to your commissioner. Confidently, I leave these matters in your capable hands…and let us not forget the public-spirited action of this most courageous man, Julian Wright. Thank you.'

  Signifying the termination of the meeting, Mr Justice Herbert returned to the hillocks of paper notes on his desk, but he saw from his eye's corner that the chief inspector had slipped on plastic gloves before he picked up the package that was ripped open at one end to show the wads of banknotes. He was alone in his room. Did he care about the costs? He did not. Did he care about the disruption of the jurors' domestic lives? He did not. Did he care about a mistrial and the prospect, then, of losing the opportunity to make a crafted speech on the threat of organized crime to society at large? Most certainly. Modern intruder alarms were wired throughout his home: he himself lived under a permanent threat of attack from the associates of those he had sent down for long terms of imprisonment. Because of the obligations of justice, he wore a hair-shirt, as had the ascetics and penitents of history, and others could ape him.

  He buzzed his clerk. He told her that he needed the presence in his room of the QCs heading the prosecution and defence. He saw them, heard their comments. When they had finished, he thanked them effusively and announced that he would resume in ten minutes.