The Walking Dead

Chapter 9

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 will 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.

He wrote a note of what he would say, pondered on each sentence and checked a reference to a case a year before that had gone to appeal. He rewrote a line, then slipped into his robes. In front of the mirror he adjusted his wig and tightened his sash. He put the envelope and the letter into the floor safe, swung the combination dials, locked his room's door behind him, walked the corridor and heard the shout ahead of him: 'All rise.'

Mr Justice Herbert, with the full majesty of his office, swept into court eighteen, took his seat and read out what he had written.

Every eye was on him. Not a cough, a shuffle or fidget disturbed him.

He concluded:

'Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you have listened to me with due attention, but I will take the liberty of going again over the chief points I have made. These are matters of great importance and there should be no misunderstandings…It has been brought to my notice that a conspiracy exists to bribe one or some of you to bring in a verdict of not guilty for the accused, and that a reward of money has been offered. This is police intelligence. Because of that intelligence, it will be necessary for you to face restrictions on your movements and freedoms, which I greatly regret.

'We have been together a long time now and I urge you with due emphasis not to consider providing a spurious excuse and abandoning the trial in its final hours. You have shown such dedication that I am confident I can depend on you and, in anticipation of your cooperation, I am sincerely grateful to you all…

'Now, I am repeating myself because this is at the heart of the matter, you should draw no conclusions regarding this case from what I have just told you. There is no evidence that either Mr Oswald Curtis or Mr Oliver Curtis is in any way implicated in any plot to suborn you. As far as I am concerned; they are completely innocent of any such involvement. I cannot emphasize that more strongly. Ahead of us now are the closing speeches of the prosecution and the defence. Then I will offer you my guidance, and you will retire — either at the end of this week or the start of next — to deliberate on your verdict but you will not infer, from certain precautions put in place round you, that any of these allegations of bribery or intimidation reflect on the accused. They do not, and are not a part of this case, which you will decide only on the sworn evidence that has been put before you. You have to dismiss these allegations — which is all they are — from your minds. Right, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we will now adjourn but I have to ask you for your patience. Please, you will wait in the jury room until certain arrangements are in place, and we will resume our hearing in the morning — but do not forget what I have said. You will judge this case only on the testimony you have heard in the courtroom — nothing, absolutely nothing else…'

'The bastard, the fucking little bastard, I'll—'

'Please, Mr Curtis, refrain from that sort of language and from shouting.'

'He's took my money. I'll fucking have him.'

'You're in danger, Mr Curtis, of being heard throughout the entire building.'

'He's got my money, and the fucking Nobbler has! We're fucking screwed.'

The barrister, Ozzie Curtis's 'brief', took the force of it and Nathaniel Wilson was thankful for a minimal mercy. He stood with his back pressed to the cell door: As if he was in a trance of disbelief, Ollie Curtis sat on the bed's vinyl-coated mattress, stared up at the barred window and had nothing to contribute, unlike his elder brother. The rant had started at the moment that the barrister and Wilson had been admitted by a poker-faced prison guard. That bastard would have been pissing himself once the door was shut and the bolt pushed across. Wilson wondered if it was the wasted money that hurt his client most or the knowledge that the jury — if it held together and stayed firm — would now, inevitably, convict.

The barrister said wistfully, 'The problem is, Mr Curtis — and it's his skill — that our judge was at pains to exonerate you from any blame. He could not have said more. Of course, when I was in with him, I did all the stuff about a jury inevitably being prejudiced and went for a mistrial, but I was turned down and he's covered that ground. Areas of appeal, should this trial go against you, are considerably reduced…Our judge knows his stuff.'

'And it will fucking go against us.'

'I fear so, Mr Curtis.'

'And that bastard took our money. What you going to fucking do, Nat?'

'Well, what I'm not going to do, Ozzie, is rush upstairs, use my mobile and have that traced. It's a difficult situation, Ozzie, needs thinking about.'

'I want that fucking man having good fucking grief, and you're going to fix it.'

Nathaniel Wilson did not answer. The barrister rapped on the door for it to be opened. He was not involved. Wilson was in the quagmire up to his damn neck. He thought of the man who sat in the back row of the jury box, with the stubble on his face and the sandals on his feet, and wondered how he could have been so stupid as to cross his client, take Ozzie Curtis's money, then play-act at being a hero. And his mind turned, with rare longing, to a life outside the little flat that he shared with his wife over the office. Ozzie, thank the good Lord, had retreated and now leaned his forehead against a wall of the cell, spent. Later, when he had the security of fire breaks to mask his communications, he would contact Benny Edwards. He reckoned the man who had turned in the money to be as great an idiot as any he had known, with 'good fucking grief' ahead of him.

The bolt was drawn back. The same impassive officer let him and the barrister out.

The door had opened and there had been the pad of footsteps in the corridor. Now Ibrahim Hussein heard the toilet flush.

The sounds broke the quiet of the cottage. Hours earlier, he had seen his leader leave by car and head away slowly up the track. Khalid had driven and the girl had been with them and Jamal. Later, Syed had wandered off along the track and would now have settled himself in the clump of trees half-way up it from where he would have a view of the cottage, and its approach, and be able to see across the fields round it. The guard, Ramzi, was slumped in an easy chair, reading a magazine featuring colour photographs of body-builders with grotesque muscles. The clock in the hallway, by the front door, ticked noisily. Time passed in the life of Ibrahim Hussein, from the town of Jizan in Asir Province, and he did not know how much would pass before he walked. He reached out for his Book and thought his hours were best occupied in learning better the printed pages. His door opened and he started. The Book fell to the carpet.

'Please, would you come with me?' The heavy-built body of the man filled the doorway. 'Would you, please, bring that jacket — the leather one — with you?'

He lifted it from the back of the chair and followed. He was led into the room at the far end of the passageway and had to duck his head under a blackened beam. The table was in front of him.

On the newspaper that covered it was a waistcoat. Pouches had been sewn over its pockets, and the sticks lay in them. Flies swarmed incessantly over plastic bags tied to the pouches with fine string and their buzzing overwhelmed the clock's ticking. In the bags he could see, among filth, heaps of close-packed nails, screws and ball-bearings. Wires ran from the sticks to two batteries, and another wire came. from the batteries and was linked to a button switch. He gazed at the waistcoat, in awe of it.

He was told briskly: 'Please, I want your arms out.'

The waistcoat was carefully threaded over them. The weight settled on his shoulders, was a burden, and Ibrahim had to flex his upper-body muscles. Fingers were tugging at the material, straightening, raising, loosening it. He was in the tailor's shop on the Corniche; his father sat and watched with smiling pride because a sole surviving son had come of age; a tailor who was a distant cousin of his father fussed over the fall of a robe that was held together with pins and had yet to be finished to perfection, new clothing for the start of a student's first term at the medical school. Cased in plastic gloves, fingers probed and poked, then more tape was bound tight over the most protruding joins with the shiny silver detonators.

'Is it comfortable?' The question was asked with less respect than the tailor, the distant cousin of his father, would have given, but it was the same question. Then, in the flush of youth, the excitement of going away and beginning his studies, he had pirouetted and the robe had swung free at his hips and knees; his father had clapped. He did not know what he should answer, and the flies rose from the bags and flew into his eyes, nose and ears. He. was told, 'It has to be comfortable. If it is not comfortable, you will walk with discomfort and bad walking is recognized. A man who walks well is not noticed, but he must be comfortable — or he betrays himself.'

'I am comfortable,' Ibrahim said hoarsely. 'But the flies are…'

He was interrupted, as if his query was unimportant. 'No matter, there is a spray in the kitchen that will kill them. What concerns me — is it too tight, is it awkward? I can take out a vent at the back if you need it looser.'

'It is not awkward.'

The jacket was lifted off the hack of the chair and passed to him.

'You will wear this? It is a good length. It is heavy enough not to show a bulge on your chest. Try with the jacket, but gently because the connections are not yet finally fastened. Do it.'

He smelt the leather, felt its strength, put his arms into the sleeves and let it settle on him.

'Button it, but not roughly.'

He did as he was told. The fingers were back at his chest and pulled at the jacket's front. He saw a flitting, coarse smile of satisfaction.

'Much room, enough, not too tight…You can take them off, but carefully.'

He dropped the jacket on to the floor, then worked the waistcoat off his shoulders, and felt freedom when he had shed its weight. It was taken from him and laid again on the table, but the flies were still in his face.

'What do I do now?'

'If you have a complaint about the waistcoat, you tell me. If you have no complaint, you go back to your room. Do not misunderstand me, young man. I am not a coffee-house talker. I am not a recruiter who persuades young men to rush towards Heaven. Others talk and others persuade, but I am an expert in ordnance. I am a fighter and I use what weapons are available to me. It was your choice to volunteer and your motivation is not my concern. Do you have a complaint?'

'No.'

'Then go back to your room.'

Ibrahim turned, bent and picked up the jacket that was his prized possession. He told himself, harsh words in silence, that he was not afraid, that he did not need to be comforted. He let himself out of the room and did not look back at the table and the waistcoat.

'If it is a problem, drop your trousers and piss on it.'

Tariq, now the Engineer, had learned the value of the suicide attack, of martyrs to God, as a junior lieutenant aged eighteen, serving in the front line of the Fao peninsula.

The problem was the overheated barrel of a PKMB 7.62mm Russian-built light machine-gun.

What the platoon sergeant had told him, Tariq had done. He had exposed himself, his head and shoulders above the parapet of sandbags. He had crouched over the barrel, loosened his belt, lowered his trousers and urinated on the barrel; steam in a vapour cloud had hissed off the metal. Then he had loaded another belt of ammunition, fired again — and they had kept coming.

The machine-gun position nearest him, thirty paces to his right, was abandoned. In the one to his left, fifty paces from him, the gunner had collapsed over the stock of his weapon and the corporal shook with convulsive sobbing. It was hard to kill kids. One man had run from the children's advance and another had collapsed, but Tariq had continued to shoot with bursts of six to nine bullets each time his finger locked on the trigger.

He knew that their ayatollah had said: 'The more people die for our cause, the stronger we become.'

The assault across open ground, beyond the swamp reeds, towards the machine-gun nests was codenamed Karbala 3 by the enemy. As they ran, the kids shouted in shrill wailing cries, 'Ya Karballah, ya Hussein, ya Khomeini.' They came in dense swarms. Tariq knew, because the Ba'ath officials had dinned it into every soldier on the forward positions, that children were used in the van of an attack so that their drumming feet would detonate the anti-personnel mines laid in front of the wire that protected the sandbag nests. By using children, the regular troops of the enemy and the Revolutionary Guard would not have to advance through minefields. In the opening year of the war, his sergeant had told him that the enemy's commanders had tried to use donkeys to clear the mines but when one had lost its legs in an explosion the rest had proved too obstinate to go on, even when gunfire was put down behind them; and in Iran there were more children than donkeys. He could barely see over the wall of the children's bodies in front of the wire. He fired, changed the belt, fired again. The gunner to his right had fled because his replacement barrel was now worn smooth and useless, as was the first. The gunner to his right had collapsed, traumatized at the killing of so many children.

Above the wall of bodies he saw myriad little heads, on which were bright scarlet bandannas, and faces that were smooth and young but contorted with hatred. He swept his sights over them. At fifty paces' range, the PKMB machine-gun — in the hands of a good, calm gunner — was said in the manual to have a 97 per cent chance of hitting a man-sized target. Harder to achieve that strike rate now because they were so small, but they compensated by bunching into groups, like kids running in a school playground. Some were caught on the wire and blood drenched their T-shirts, on which was printed the message 'Imam Khomeini has given me Permission to enter Heaven'. They screamed then for their mothers, not for their ayatollah, and he could see, over the V sight and the needle sight, the little plastic trinkets hanging on string from their necks.

He knew what the lightweight trinkets were because the Ba'athist official had lectured them on the matter. The children wore plastic keys looped into the string. The keys would unlock the gates of Heaven for them. The official had told his unit that, earlier in the war and during the Karbala 1 campaign, they had been made of metal but there was a shortage of that now in Iran and plastic was more available and cheaper to manufacture.

That day Tariq, who was a teenage lieutenant, had fired in excess of 5,500 rounds of 7.62mm ball ammunition at children. When dusk had come, and the wire in front of him was unbroken, he had ceased firing and the screams had died. In the silence there was only the whimpering murmur of the wounded. He had learned the value of the willing martyr when he had had to piss on a machine-gun barrel, and had not forgotten it. For days afterwards, the crows came to feast and the stench grew. Then the armour had pushed forward, driving back the Iranian enemy, and bulldozers had been deployed to excavate pits and push the children's bodies into them.

A medal had been pinned on his chest by the President, and he had received a kiss on his cheeks, and the lesson of the martyr's awesome power had stayed with him.

Working at the stitching of the waistcoat, he could not recall how many martyrs he had helped on their journey to Paradise. Taping more securely the batteries' terminals to the wire, the Engineer knew with certainty that he created terror in the minds of his new enemy: the Americans and their allies.

The martyrs were merely weapons of war. They had no more significance to him than a shell, a bomb, a mortar round or a bullet. The martyrs performed the task he made for them and in return were given, perhaps, fifteen minutes of fame. Then the satellite television channel that had transmitted the video of them would move to another item.

It was irrelevant to' him whether he liked the boy or not. What mattered to the Engineer was that the boy walked without revealing himself, and that the leather jacket hid the bulges of the sticks of explosives, the bundles of contaminated nails, screws and ball-bearings.

He did not hurry. The gloves would have made his finger movements clumsy if he had rushed his work. His devices were manufactured to a foolproof standard…but he yearned to be away from this place. He hated it, feared it. He would be long gone before the boy walked with the waistcoat secreted under the leather jacket.

The farmer asked his wife, 'What do they do down there, all day every day?'

'Don't know and don't particularly care.' She was wrestling at the kitchen table with accounts.

He sipped his coffee. 'I'm not complaining. Their money was useful…It's just, well, what do they do?'

'Does it matter?'

'Don't suppose it does…The car went out this morning, I saw that. Half the bedroom curtains were still drawn, but there was washing on the line. A bit after that I was crossing the Home Field on the tractor and one of them was sat on his backside among the trees in the Old Copse, looking a right zombie, just staring at me. You reckon they're on drugs?'

'I doubt it. The girl didn't seem the type — if I know what the type is…That's it, celebrations are called for. Thanks to them, their contribution, we're all right for this month.' She bundled the paperwork together, buried it in a file, then dumped it in the table's drawer.

He chuckled. 'Could be magic mushrooms…What I'm thinking, maybe one of us…'

'You mean me?'

'…maybe you should pop down there, some time this week, just make sure they haven't…'

'Wrecked the place? You didn't meet her and I did. She's very pleasant…It's a family gathering — none of our business what they do all day…But I will. Not today, because I've got to do the ironing, and finish that embroidery if it's to be in time for the Show…but I will. Don't expect they'll bite me. I'll call in tomorrow or the day after. Satisfied?'

He grinned, stood, then bent and pecked her cheek. 'Just to be on the safe side, tomorrow or the day after.'

He went out, stepped into his wellingtons and walked, in his rolling gait, to his tractor. He would resume harrowing the Twenty-Five Acre field, which was beyond the Home Field. He wondered whether the zombie was still parked on his backside in the Old Copse, and couldn't imagine what an Asian family was doing at Oakdene Cottage and why, mid-morning, half the curtains were still drawn…but she'd find out. She had a nose as good as any vixen's for probing and prying.

It was about trust, and the Scorpion was short of it. He trailed the girl across the square, and at his shoulder was the youngest of them, Jamal. Her hips swung in front of him but he cut his glance from them and stared around him as he walked. His eyes raked over the signs for the sale that would start at nine in the morning on the next Saturday in the shopping centre. But he did not trust enough to show his interest. She walked to the steps and turned.

She said softly, 'On Saturday morning, before nine o'clock, there will be a queue here. There will be many people.'

At his grandfather's side he had learned not to trust the father who had abandoned his pregnant mother. Walking in orange groves with his grandmother he had learned not to trust the mother who had discarded him to find escape in death. Sitting in a classroom at school he had learned not to trust fellow students who sneered that he was a bastard and without parents. As a paratroop recruit he had learned not to trust the 'chutes' packers because a man in front of him had fallen to his death when the canopy hadn't opened. As a qualified paratrooper in the Jordanian army, trained in warfare against the Zionist enemy, he had learned not to trust when the frontier was opened to Jewish diplomats and a craven deal was done. After he had disappeared from the barracks in Amman and travelled to Baghdad to volunteer for the fledgling guerrilla militia, he had learned not to trust when, two months later, the Republican Guard units had disintegrated when attacked. In the ranks of the mujahidin, operating from the supposed safe haven of the Triangle, he had learned not to trust when captured colleagues informed.

He did not fully trust any of the cell that had been assembled for him. His trust for the girl who stood on the steps was at best incomplete, but he could live with that.

He spun on his heel and walked away through the square. He saw the confusion on the youth's face and heard the clatter, of the girl's shoes as she ran to catch him. He walked briskly to the car park.

At the car, she asked, blurted, 'Is the place not right?'

His survival was based on.a culture of mistrust.

He said to Khalid, in a firm voice, decisive, 'I want to go to the city of Birmingham. It is the second city, yes? This is a shit place, too' small and not worth his sacrifice. I am going to Birmingham to do a reconnaissance for a target of importance.'

The faces of the girl and the youth fell, as he had intended. He told them they should take a bus back to the village, that only he would go, with Khalid to drive, him. He thought the youth was near tears, and that the girl's mouth — below the scar — quivered in anger at the slight. He said he would be in Birmingham for the rest of that day, the night, and that he would return to the cottage on the following day.

Deceit, lies, evasions fashioned a protective web behind which the Scorpion, Muhammad Ajaq, existed.

Through the gates, past the dense rhododendrons, the grounds opened out, and beyond the flat grasslands — big enough for half a dozen soccer pitches — was the old edifice of the building. David Banks, detective constable, barely noticed the brick and stone façade, or the folly towers high over the main entrance. He hadn't seen the lake, the ducks and geese on the water. He was in no mood for sightseeing, no mood for a bloody tourist expedition to Snaresbrook Crown Court. He parked in a bay that was supposedly restricted to the disabled.

'Don't blame me, Banksy. You've made a rod for your own back…Yes, I did approach both Golf and Kilo, but a bad word is like a bad smell. It spreads, got me? Neither of them wanted you. I'm sorry, but I've done what I can for you. Maybe in the next few days you should reflect on where you've put yourself, then sort yourself out…In the situation we have in London right now, I don't have any more time to devote to your personal situation, Banksy. My final word on all this is that the guys you should be working with have lost confidence in you. As Protection Officers, at a time of maximum threat, they have the right to expect total loyalty from all members of their teams. Sadly, they've got it in their heads that if push comes to shove you'll blink and won't pull the trigger. Don't worry, you won't be sitting around twiddling your thumbs, your feet up, while the guys are doing their stuff. No, in answer to a request for manpower, you're going to leafy Snaresbrook to do valuable work in the field of jury protection. You made your own bed, Banksy, so go and lie on it.'

He'd left his inspector's door open behind him, had heard the REMF's shout for him to close it. Had ignored him and kept on walking.

Down in the basement armoury, he had drawn his Glock, ammunition, a ballistic blanket, a sack of gas canisters and stun grenades, and a first-aid box. For once, Daff had not helped. The armourer had told him cheerfully that every man and woman authorized to carry a firearm was out on the streets of London, that his shelves were stripped 'damn near bare'…but had added, with a widening grin, that 'Protecting a jury is pretty important work, don't you know?' He'd rammed the pistol into the belt holster, heaved the rest of the kit into his bag and the final rejoinder from Daff had been, 'And don't shoot the bloody judge, Banksy…' He'd gone to his car, slammed it into gear and driven east of the city where lock-down had settled.

He went into the building, used the main door at the side of the bloody useless and decrepit façade; showed his warrant card and asked for court eighteen. It was years since he had been in a Crown Court. One of the precious few advantages of being a Protection Officer and fawning over Principals was that the days of hanging around court corridors waiting to give evidence were finished. God, and it came back to him fast, the smell of those places. Banks saw the sign and stamped towards it.

Three uniformed men were by the double doors. He did not acknowledge them, strode past them and heaved on the doors' handles. They were locked and he couldn't shift them. He heard a titter — like it was good to see a pompous sod, without the time of day for colleagues, put down.

Banks barked first the statement, then his question. 'I'm with the protection outfit. Where are they?'

An usher was called. He was told he would be taken to the room where the rest of his people were gathered.

The usher, disabled and dragging his foot, led him, and chattered: 'Grand place, isn't it? I suppose it's your first time down here, you not knowing where to go…Biggest Crown Court in the country, does more than two thousand five hundred cases a year in twenty court rooms, a proper mass-production line. Wonderful building. Started off as an orphanage and was completed — money no object — in 1843. The main supply of stone was from Yorkshire, but the facings were from Bath and France. Fell into disrepair and was turned into a court in the middle 1970s, but they had a heck of a problem with the foundations and had to put three thousand tons of concrete under the main building so it didn't collapse. We see it all here…What's going on in court eighteen, anyway?'

'Haven't any idea,' Banks said. 'As you reckoned, it's my first time here.'

He hesitated at the door, listened for a moment to the rumble of voices inside. The rest of Delta, and the guys from Golf and Kilo, would be preening themselves as they made concentric circles of protection round the best and the brightest on the high ladders of achievement. Each last one would be imagining the plaudits — coming in wheelbarrow loads — if they managed a double tap on a suicide-bomber, a foreign suicide-bomber, a foreign fighter. His career was on the floor. Banks was assigned to a sodding jury out in the back end of nowhere. He opened the door and went inside. The talk stopped. Eyes were on him. He saw that a coffee mug, lifted towards a mouth, was held in mid-air. The hush closed on him.

Then, a voice boomed cheerily, 'Is that David Banks? Yes? Brilliant. You're the last bit of our jigsaw. You're very welcome.'

A hand was thrust towards his. He took it and his fingers were crushed with enthusiasm. 'Thank you,' he said limply.

'Hey, let's have a smile. I'm DO Brian Walton, Wally to you. The way I run a ship we don't stand on ceremony. I'm the case officer, but also the threat-assessment bloke. I tell you, we've all fallen on our feet. This is a real fridge-freezer job, and could get even better — could get to be a conservatory job, know what I mean?'

He did, and a smile slipped on to his face. It was an overtime payer: unsocial hours at time and a half, and extra days at double time. Big overtime paid for fridges, freezers and cookers in the kitchen, new carpets in the living room and hall, concert-standard sound on home-cinema systems — and the biggest overtime dollops could mean funding for a conservatory at the back of the house. He hadn't expected to be welcomed, greeted as a new friend.

Almost shyly, 'Good to meet you all. I'm Banksy.'

The voice progressed, boom to bellow: 'You treat this man with respect, hear me, guys? He's the proper thing, not one of you yokels rounded up in the backwoods of Thames Valley, Essex and Norfolk. He does the Prime Minister, royalty, all the toffs, but he's been given to us, and he'll show us how to do the job. When Banksy speaks, you lot listen — me too.'

Banks had to grin, then grimace, and probably he blushed, but he felt the warmth of those around him. Perhaps his jacket, weighted by the notebook, the pebbles and coins, had ridden back, but all eyes were now on his waist, his belt. He looked down and saw the smear of gun oil on his shirt, the edge of the dark leather holster. He understood. It was a team, perhaps twenty in all, put together in a spasm of panic. Not specialists, not high-flyers, but the men and women whose absence from their normal day-in and day-out duties would go unnoticed. They were what was available. He moved fast among them, took each hand and shook it, then cursed himself for not initially giving them what they offered him, warmth.

Wally clapped his hands. 'Right, your attention, please. This is my case and I'm not willingly going to lose it. I've bitched to the judge, Mr Justice Herbert, about the cost of it all and been given a flea in my ear, but at the end of the day I'm not arguing with him. To do this job properly would have taken three times as many of you as I've been given, but you're what I have and we'll cut our cloth accordingly. We're down to the essentials and we'll make it work. The case before our judge is the Queen versus Ozzie and Ollie Curtis and they are two old, unreconstructed blaggers. They do armed robbery successfully — that is, up to the time they knocked over a jewellery shop in the south-east. We found a witness, put her under the protection scheme, and she was a star in the firmament when she came to court. They're going down, the Curtis brothers are, and it's about as far down as fifteen years minimum. For them it's desperate, so they pushed for a nobble. A juror was approached and given big money. This jury, with another week or so to do, is reduced to ten, so if one more had pulled out or voted not guilty, then we have a mistrial. With a mistrial, we get another hearing in — if I'm lucky — a year's time, and I don't reckon I'll hold my witness for all those months. I need a guilty verdict next week…One juror had the guts to report the approach and the cash payment to the court. A very brave man, as courageous as it gets where the Curtis thugs are concerned. He deserves our protection and full support, and I aim to give them to him. Have other jurors been approached and caught in the web? I don't know. Are other jurors more vulnerable to corruption? Don't know. But I'm going to throw a net round them that puts them in a bubble: no mobiles, no contact with the outside. The court is adjourned for the day. You're going home with them. You'll watch them like bloody hawks. They'll each pack a bag and make what arrangements they have to, and you will escort them here in the morning. Tomorrow evening they'll be bussed to secure accommodation. That's where we are, and I'll take questions at the end. By the by, this is going to be a good little earner, and it won't end with the verdict. Health and Safety legislation requires duty of care, and that can run for a fair few weeks. Finally, I emphasize to you all, these jurors are not going to become your long-lost friends. You treat them with politeness and firmness. Their safety must be ensured, and the chance of a nobbler getting near them is removed, but my priority is the conviction of those low-life brothers. That's it.'

Barks thought he'd done well, couldn't fault it. Wally had a list, names and addresses, moved among them and allocated them.

Banks thought, passing, that he might have been blessed, that — at last — he was drummed into some police work that was valuable, worthwhile.

He went to pour himself a coffee from the dispenser, sipped it and watched the detective chief inspector meander across the room He realized that he had been kept for last.

He wondered, if time was available, where he would next find Cecil Darke, and what misery he would meet.

'You gone somewhere else, Banksy? I'm relying on you for the big one.'

'That's not a problem.'

'You're going to do the prime target — that OK? The juror who coughed up and did the decent, he's for you.'

'When we do threat assessment, we have a scale. E5 is the bottom level, and Al is at the top. Where on the scale are you putting him?'

'His name is Julian Wright. What I've seen of him, he's a dreamy blighter, beard and sandals, a teacher. Last nine weeks I've watched him in court, and I never rated him as being anything other than a guy who'll go with the flow. But I was wrong…Now he's shoved a stick into a wasps' nest and twisted it. It's the Curtis brothers' nest and they'll be powerfully angry. Not only has he taken their money but he's also grassed on them. Given the chance, they'll kill him and all those dear to him. It's why I'm grateful to have a man of your pedigree alongside him. On the threat-assessment scale, Julian Wright is at Al. Is that enough?'

Banks said simply, 'I'll do the best I can.'

Wally said he was going now to talk to the jurors, fill in their picture books, that he'd be back in a half-hour. Banks found a chair in a corner, and even in a crowded room he was alone with his notebook.

The call was answered. Dickie Naylor held the telephone close to his ear and mouth. Mary Reakes was at her desk in the outer office and he thought she strained to learn who he called, why, and with what message. He whispered, 'Is that Xavier Boniface or Donald Clydesdale? It's so long, I can't remember your voices — what, five years?…Ah, Xavier. It's Mr Naylor.…Yes, I'm well, I'm fine. Xavier, there might be work to be done, for both of you…Not certain, but if you were willing I'd like to put you both on stand-by. Can't say more, not on this phone…It'll be this week if it happens. So grateful. Regards to you both.'

The wail of seagulls was in his ear, the rumble of the sea and the wind's whine.

He returned the telephone to its cradle.

Probably in response to a message on her screen, Mary stood, then used her handbag mirror to check her hair or her lipstick, and was gone.

The photograph of the young man, the son of an electrical-goods salesman, stared smilingly back at him. He had fastened it, with Sellotape, to the glass panelling at the side of his office door. The smile seemed to mock him because it had the power to corrupt. He was a defender of the realm, and the proof of it was on the head of every sheet of notepaper he used, with its Latin words. As a defender he was able, if he twisted morality to a degree that Mary Reakes would not, to justify corruption. The Service, to an old-school warrior with a week's work ahead of him — then forgotten oblivion

was above morality and legal processes…and he had orders. It's a different war and we may have to dirty our hands. A man such as Dickie Naylor needed an order and required leadership, was always happy when given a little nudge forward. I'm sure you know what's necessary. He was a functionary. Men such as Naylor — in uniform and in civilian dress, in democracies and in dictatorships — had always sat behind desks and received orders, had believed that the threat to the state outweighed moral and legal niceties. He was not a Gestapo man, God, no. And not an NKVD official…He heard tapping. It had a regular rhythm and was far down the corridor and came closer…Perhaps he was a man who could justify to himself the bending of due processes.

He had not lost sleep over it in the Aden Protectorate, or in the holding cells of Castlereagh or the barracks at Portadown. Men screamed, blood dripped, bruises coloured — and the likes of Mary Reakes would have wet their knickers — but information had been gained. Information saved the lives of innocents. He did not need a tumbler of whisky or a pill to help him sleep. So he had telephoned a distant island and put two men from his past, proven as reliable, on stand-by to come south…The tapping intruded into his thoughts, was loud, the beat of a stick on the corridor's walls.

Mary Reakes came into the outer office.

A man used one hand to hold her arm, and in the other was a white-painted stick He used Mary and the stick as his guides, and swung the stick forcefully in front of his legs and hers. It rapped the door jambs, desk legs, the backs of chairs. The man was weathered from sunshine, stooped, and had thinning grey hair; he wore tinted glasses.

At Naylor's door, Mary said, 'I've brought up Mr Hegner. I told you he was coming. Mr Josiah Hegner of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, their Riyadh station.'

'I'm Joe,' the voice growled. 'How d'you do?'

Naylor was on his feet. He saw the creases in the clothes, and thought the agent must have come straight from the airport, not cared to take the time to change from what he'd slept in. He was starting forward to move a chair to a more accessible place, but backed off in the face of the swinging stick. A chair leg was whacked. The hand that had been on Mary's arm was loosed and found the chair's back, and the man dropped down into its seat. This was the expert, and he was blind.

'Thank you, Miss Reakes — that's kind of you.'

'Again, I'm going to apologize about the front entrance.'

'Water under the bridge, Miss Reakes, and no offence taken.'

'I was totally ashamed,' she babbled to Naylor. 'They wouldn't let Mr Hegner inside the security barrier until he'd gone through the metal-detector arch. Had his coins from his pocket, his glasses and his watch, his stick because it has a metal tip, and still wouldn't pass him through. It was a disgrace.'

Below the spectacles a grin of mischief formed. 'I still got an ounce, that's an estimate, of a bomber's shrapnel in me. So I said, "You want to see the scars?" He didn't answer so I dropped my pants and lifted my shirt. That seemed to satisfy him. I don't take it badly when a man's got to do his job, but I doubt I look like a goddamn wannabe Islamic martyr.'

'It was quite uncalled-for,' she said. 'I'll make some coffee, proper stuff.'

They were alone.

Naylor stumbled, 'I thought you'd have done the embassy and a hotel first, had a bit of sleep after a night flight.'

'Nice thought, but I reckon there ain't enough time for luxuries. Mr Naylor, you're in the eye of the storm.'

'I'm Dickie, please.'

'You're in the eye of the storm because I think you got the Twentyman here, and—'

'I don't understand — who or what is the Twentyman?'

'An Iraq-based insurgent commander. Uses suicide-bombers to effect. Has many names but that's mine for him. His attacks never fail to kill at least twenty, usually many more but that's a minimum. I'm here because I think the Twentyman is too and, if I'm right, that makes a real bad picture for you.'