The Walking Dead

Chapter 7

The phone rang. Spread across the kitchen table, among the coffee mugs, toast crumbs and the plate on which he had been served scrambled egg and grilled tomatoes, were the brochures. With his breakfast, Anne had been feeding her husband on holidays and the choice was Dickie's. He could plump for an early-season Mediterranean cruise, last-minute booking and therefore at a cut-rate price, or a railway journey to the Swiss Alps, or a boat trip up the Rhône with excursions to vineyards. But the phone yelled to be answered and he saw irritation on his wife's forehead. Under duress, he was looking at the train trip to the mountains. She beat him to it and Naylor was only half out of his chair by the time she was at the door and heading for the hall table. She'd said that as soon as he had erected the flat-pack greenhouse, and put in the tomato plants — she had already arranged for Mrs Sandham next door to water them — they should be off to the Mediterranean, Switzerland or France.

The ringing had stopped.

Did he care which it was? Not a great deal. He wasn't good on holidays. Whether it was Bournemouth, Bruges or Bordeaux, he would do the tramping, the galleries and museums, then buy a newspaper and, back in the hotel room or cabin, he'd flick for the running news channel on the television, and the books he'd brought stayed unread. She told him each time they went that he only lightened up when they were travelling with home as the destination, and work the next Monday morning.

She was at the door. 'It's Penny, doing night duty. She wants to speak. I said she'd caught us just before we went out — she said she needs to talk to you.'

She stood aside, arms akimbo, hands on hips, her familiar gesture of annoyance.

He smiled as if helpless. 'On a Saturday morning — funny, that.'

Naylor went to the phone, paused and looked down at the receiver. It lay off the cradle and on the Yellow Pages. He hesitated, then lifted it. 'Dickie here — good morning, Penny'

From Riverside Villas, it was not a secure line to 47 Kennedy Avenue in Worcester Park. Guardedly, he was told of a signal that had come across the river from the 'Sister' crowd, and that it had created 'something of a flap'.

'Who's in?' he asked.

'All the minor bosses, and the major boss is on stand-by and might be in by mid-morning. From what I can see, Dickie, it's a big, big flap.'

'And is it ours?'

'Yes. It's what we do.'

'Is Mary in?'

'Been here an hour. She said it wasn't necessary to spoil your weekend, it being the last. Now she's in a meeting, and I thought it right to call you. I wouldn't have bothered you but nobody's walking, everybody's running.'

'I'll be straight there,' he said.

Back at the kitchen door he offered a curt apology to Anne. What was she supposed to do? Go to the travel agent on her own? She should. And book? Whichever option she preferred. He was on the stairs when he heard her angry hiss: 'Daddy never went in at weekends. What do they want you for when you're virtually out of the door? Daddy would have told them to go jump.' He thought, reaching the landing, that only if he were blessed would he never again hear of her father. In their bedroom, he dragged a suit out of the wardrobe, a work shirt and tie from a drawer. His black London shoes were under a chair. He stripped off his Saturday clothes and dressed again.

Back in the hail, unhooking his coat from the stand, he called, to the kitchen, 'I don't know when I'll be back.'

'How much do I spend?'

He grinned cheerfully, 'As much as you can lay your hands on. Splash out, why don't you?'

Naylor was gone. A brisk stride down Kennedy Avenue, as much of a shambling run along the main road's pavement as his sixty-five years permitted, then a scramble up the steps at the station.

On the train, he sat sandwiched in a football team of teenagers with their bags restricting his leg room. Of course he would never be free of her father. Naylor had been a junior inspector in the colonial police and serving in the Trucial States in the early 1960s, transferred to Aden when internal security had collapsed and been seconded to the RAF's police investigation branch. She had been a secretary at Government House. They'd met at a drinks party. Rather unpleasant, but he'd done the right thing — she'd told him, two and a half months after a late-night swim session on Gold Mohur beach, that she was pregnant, and they'd married in the main salon of the Residence. A month later she'd said that she'd got her dates wrong and that no sprog was on the way. No sprog had been on the way since.

Aden had ended and Government House had been abandoned to the apparatchiks of the National Liberation Front; the RAF and he had flown home. The dust had not gathered under his feet. Daddy, once of the Palestine Police, was now a senior M15 officer with an empire at Leconfield House and had slipped the word that his son-in-law was a.'good sort and reliable', which had been more than enough for his recruitment into the Security Service. He was not privy to whether he had been a disappointment to Daddy or not but the introduction had ensured his employment for thirty-nine years, and he was grudgingly grateful for it. It gave him, and had done since he joined, a thrill to work for an organization charged with the Defence of the Realm, to see the innocent and ignorant around him and know that he — anonymous and unnoticed — was charged with their safety. God, he would miss it.

It had taken Dickie Naylor an hour and three minutes to make the seamless transition from domesticity to his professional workplace.

If he had been under oath and cross-examined, he would have sworn that the face of Mary Reakes fell as he swept into the outer office — she would have known that treason was abroad, and he'd been telephoned. Penny, the guilty one, had her face close to her screen and seemed to hide behind it — she'd earned, at the very least, a box of chocolates. He would make his point and give not a damn if he verged on rudeness.

'So that everybody understands, from this coming Friday evening I will not be called in if the heavens open. Up to this coming Friday evening, while 1 am charged with the running of this section, I have responsibilities and will exercise them. So, please, Mary, would you bring me up to speed?'

It was done with reluctance, but he was handed the digest of the signal that had come across the Thames from the sisters at Vauxhall Bridge Cross. He read it. He thought that at last something meaningful was before his eyes. He read the name of Ibrahim Hussein, medical student and citizen of Saudi Arabia, then his movements. Suddenly the final days had purpose, and he was not ashamed of his excitement. As he held the signal his hands trembled. He studied the photograph of an open, pleasant face. Then a winnow of fear: would the matter run beyond the stretch of the coming week at the end of which his swipe card would be taken from him? There was a reference to the Twentyman, then the signal's two bottom lines: 'The information given is a hunch, no more than guesswork, but the source (Josiah Hegner, FBI agent/Riyadh) has unique and personal experience in his field.'

He said, 'Right, let's go to work.'

In his office he pushed the buttons and his screen lit; the box engine ground to life. He looked up. She was gazing into the cubicle, embedded in thought.

'What has carried you away, Mary, and where to?' he called to her.

The positioning of her new desk, the placing of the new filing safes, whether to go with magnolia, peach or ochre on the walls.

'Just, Dickie, that it's such a strange code name for an enemy, and I haven't an idea what it means — the one Hegner calls the Twentyman.'

He walked briskly. There was no rain and a pleasant, cool sunshine played on his face. It was because of a British boy from the city of Leicester, to the north, that Ajaq had gone early that morning to the coach station close to the Victoria terminus, had bought the ticket and boarded the bus to the town of Bedford. That boy had been with him for a night and a half-day, four weeks back, after being collected at the market point along the frontier with the Kingdom. A few hours earlier, the courier had come back from the mountains of the Tribal Areas and had delivered the detail of instructions as to how he should travel from Iraq to the place from which he should launch this attack of importance. He had stripped that boy's mind and memories of anything that might be of use, the siting of cameras and the levels of surveillance, and had decided then that the closest observation was on trains and on the capital's underground railway. Because of what he had learned from the boy he had used the bus network, first for a long-distance coach, then for the connection — painfully slow — to the village. After that night and half-day, when he had leached what he thought significant from the boy, Ajaq had sent him on his way, towards a Shi'a district of Baghdad, with four kilos of military explosive under his loose robe.

He had talked of the matter with his friend, and the Engineer had scowled drily at what was asked of him, and the device was remotely controlled. The boy might have frozen at the moment of detonating the device against his chest, or panicked at the sight of the security men round the recruits' queue outside the police station, might have remembered a girlfriend or a mother, might have sweated too much; it was not possible, after what he had asked the boy with his incessant questions, that a bomber should fail, be captured, then interrogated. The Engineer had killed him, from a vantage-point two hundred metres away, by sending a dialled electronic signal to the mobile phone encased in the bomb against the boy's chest. Twenty-two dead in the queue and, more importantly, the knowledge of travel inside the enemy's territory gained.

From the village bus shelter, with his bag hitched on his shoulder, he had followed directions and gone past shops and small businesses, a house used by a dentist, another by accountants, and fine homes. Then he had hit open road. A small pink-painted cottage, with rose briars clambering on the walls but not yet in flower, was the final building in the village, and a man shuffled on the grass on hospital sticks but did not see him. There were flat fields on his left and a hill with bare-branched trees to his right. Cars sped past and did not slow because he was unremarkable…as unremarkable when he walked away from the village as Muhammad Ajaq, the Scorpion, when he moved in the crowds of the Triangle's towns. How many times had he been through the roadblocks of the Americans, his face disguised and his papers doctored? So many times. Then his demeanour was humble and filled with respect for the soldiers.

He saw grazing cattle. He saw a tractor far away in a field and thought it planted seed or scattered fertilizer. He saw peace that was total and without danger. And in the middle of that peace he saw the small, low, white-painted building, and turned down the lane. There was a sign: Oakdene Cottage.

Mud was splashed on his trouser ankles and puddles soaked his shoes. He approached the cottage, then saw movement at a window. He came to a wooden gate, straightened his shoulders and lengthened his stride so that, from the beginning, he assumed an image of authority. Where he fought, Ajaq would have had a weapon. His authority, there, would have been backed by a loaded rifle or pistol, or by a knife sharpened on a stone, and by the reputation of his name — the Scorpion. Here, in a cottage in the English countryside, that authority would rest on his bearing and in his eyes, and from the respect his voice demanded.

The door opened in front of him. The Engineer greeted him.

They hugged as if it had been weeks, not hours, that they had been separated.

He was not led inside, where shadows hovered, but was walked into the garden, the Engineer's arm in his. They went to a corner where the hedge was high and they were hidden from the farmhouse across the fields.

His head flicked towards the window. He knew that, there, they would be watching. 'How do you rate them?'

'They are both shit and satisfactory.'

'How are they satisfactory?'

'What they were asked to provide was provided. I can build it and I have started on it.'

'How are they shit?'

'So soft, with no hardness, and they talk. All the time they talk…

I tell you, I trust none of them. The girl cooks well but she and all of them are inquisitive. They believe themselves to be important. You should whip them.'

'What else?'

'I feel this place is a trap. It is like, in my mind, a trap we would place on the banks of the Euphrates, if we had chickens or ducks, to take a fox. If we trap a fox, we bludgeon it. I am not comfortable here, or with them.'

'You prefer home where there are many traps.'

'I think only of home and — God willing — my return.'

He punched the bulk of the Engineer's arm. He went inside, stooped under low beams and checked the rooms — his, the Engineer's, the girl's, and the room that was still empty. He saw the air-beds spread across the floor of the largest bedroom. Then he called them together, using the staccato voice of command. One, who seemed the youngest, with great thick spectacles on his nose and a clear-skinned face, said that it was time for his second prayer of the day, and could they wait until he had knelt and faced the Holy City?

Ajaq said, 'The war does not wait, and I do not wait. You want the opportunity to pray, then fuck off away from here and go back to your mother. Suckle her milk and pray. You pray when I give you the opportunity. First, you must learn obedience. Nothing that I say to you is for debate. I am to be obeyed. Where I come from, if a man or a woman falls me I kill them. I may kill them with my hand and break their neck. I may kill them with a knife so that their blood runs in the sand. I may kill them with a shot that disintegrates their skull. For disobedience, for the ignoring of my instructions, I kill. You may believe yourselves to be of importance, to be persons of significance. Then you are wrong. You do not have the importance of a single bullet. The desert sand I scoop up with my hand and use to wipe my arse, each grain of it has more importance than any of you. If you show vanity, I will beat you, and if I beat you, you win live in pain for many days. Remember it, you obey me. Do you have questions?'

There were none. The silence clung round him in the room. He looked into each of their faces, but none dared meet his gaze. He thought that the girl in the T-shirt and jeans had a good body but the scar spoiled her.

He went to a comfortable chair, sat and rested, and he waited for the last of them to come the escort and the Threatened Swan. Muhammad Ajaq slept. He dreamed of blood and wire, the whine of a ricochet and the clatter of a machine-gun, the vivid pure light of the exploding belt and the charcoal grey cloud that followed it. He slept deeply.

It was beyond the limits of her experience and she did not know how to respond.

They had been in the kitchen and Faria was at the sink, washing plates and bowls, when the sound of the car came labouring towards the cottage. None of them — Khalid the driver, Syed the watcher or Jamal the recce man — had helped her, or offered to dry what she rinsed. The washing-machine had been churning with their clothes when the first murmur of the car had been heard. She had put her own underwear and tight T-shirts in with their jeans, socks, sweatshirts and boxers. Later she would carry the damp load into the garden and hang it out. The strength of the sun and the breeze would dry it, and she did not care whether the men were offended by the sight of her flimsy white garments against theirs.

He seemed so small and vulnerable.

They had been in the kitchen, the quiet settled on them, since the lashing they had been given in the living room — and through the shut door came the gentle snore of a man at peace. The man who had built the bomb was in his room and there had been the sound of the door locking from the inside. What had made the lashing more terrifying was that the voice had never been raised. The intimidation, threats, had been spoken calmly and each of them, while they were battered, had cringed forward to hear him better. Faria understood it: they were in his control, doll figures held in the rough palm of his hand, and all could be crushed if he closed his fist.

He seemed to look round him, and across their faces, to measure their mood, then gave a smile of deep, genuine warmth.

On hearing the car, they had spilled out of the kitchen. The noise from the opening and shutting of doors, the slamming of the car's, had woken the man in the chair and he had started up with violence in his movement. His hand had snatched at the air above his lap — as if a weapon should have been there while he slept. Faria had seen, then, a flicker of annoyance on the man's features — as if he had betrayed himself. It was gone and the calm of authority bathed him.

Ramzi, the thug, was behind the boy. All of them, from the kitchen, had formed a crescent in front of him, but the boy looked past them to the chair, and the face there had softened and was unrecognizable from that of the beast an hour before. The face lit and the smile spread.

She heard a key turn in a lock and a draught hit the back of her neck. She smelt the breath of the man and heard the wheeze in his throat, then the door was locked again, but she could remember what she had seen: wires, sticks and the slim little detonators; the batteries, the soldering iron she had bought in the late-night hardware shop, the needle and thread and the waistcoat…and all for this young man. He seemed so frail. She fidgeted, as did the others in the crescent. She was not alone. Khalid, Syed and Jamal all shifted their weight and did not know whether to go forward to welcome him or hang back. The smile spread brighter, wider. When he half turned and faced the chair, his coat was thrown open and she saw. clearly the motif of the bird on his chest and thought it tried to make a show of protecting itself — but she knew that if a wing was broken it was helpless and would die. In her mind, she seemed to see the images from the videos, from Chechnya; Afghanistan and Iraq, of explosions and mutilations. Faria shivered. He had no fear. She saw none. He went to the chair, bent, kissed the cheeks offered to him.

She heard, 'I rejoice, my leader, that I have found you.'

'I welcome you, Ibrahim. You have my respect and you are honoured.'

What was she? What were Khalid and Syed, Jamal and Ramzi? They, she, were of lesser importance than grains of sand used to wipe a bottom after defecation, but he — Ibrahim, so slight and so threatened, walking with death — was respected. Love, she thought, shone in him. He went from the chair, from the sheikh, to the end of the crescent's line. As if he performed a ritual, Ibrahim took the hand of Khalid, held it and kissed the driver's cheeks. Khalid was rooted and could not respond. Then Syed, whose eyes blinked with uncertainty. Then Jamal…

He was — condemned. He had come to them, and his love for them was blazoned, and he smiled into their eyes, and their work was to help him successfully to destroy his body. When he was a pace from her, she closed her eyes and vomit rose in her throat. He bobbed his head at her, and edged past. She sensed it. The hand was taken, the fingers linked. The hand, the fingers, had come from the table where the bomb had been constructed. They handled the sticks and the detonators, they might have had on them the stains of the soldered fluids, now dry, that fastened the wires to the terminals. She heard, too, the gentleness of the kiss on the face of the man whose eyes pored over the intricacies of the device. The vomit climbed from her throat to her mouth.

Faria ran.

She went down the corridor, flung open the bathroom door and knelt over the bowl. It came from her stomach and her body shook. Which of them, if asked, would have done it? Would Khalid or Syed, Ramzi or Jamal — would she — have worn the waistcoat that was being made, with its load, in the locked room behind her? She was in the bathroom until her gut had emptied.

She — and Faria swore it as she retched — would not return the love that was given. Not ever.

He was stood down as were the others, divided from him, of the Delta team.

Time to kill. David Banks was on the far side of the canteen from them. Weekends in the police station had the character and life of a morgue, an empty, soulless place and so quiet. The mass of civilian staff was absent and a wedge of polished, cleaned tables separated him from his team. All would have known that he had been offered a route back to acceptance — a fulsome apology — and that he had thrown it back in the inspector's face. He sat in a distant corner, beyond the fruit machines, the chocolate and soft-drink dispensers, and was in shadow.

He was on overtime rates, double time. They should have been doing the escort of a Principal — a former home secretary, responsible for contentious legislation in the earlier days of the War on Terror — but at the last minute the man had pleaded a bout of influenza and cancelled his speech. The team was booked for the day, the overtime sheets had been issued, and the monies would be paid whether they were inside a draughty hail in Bethnal Green or idling in the canteen. In the rest of the Delta team, they were as decent men as was Banks;

as tolerant as was Banks; as bloody-mindedly stubborn as was Banks. He did not move towards them, they did not move towards him. If the team had been on the road, or in the hail and listening to the Principal's speech, there would have been professional linkage between him and them; the job would have been done. But they were in the canteen and there the relationship had collapsed. Of course Banks had thought about it…Push his chair back, get to his feet, cross the chasm of the canteen and spout the necessary. A place at the table would have been found for him, a magazine would have been heaved at him and he would have been told, 'Good shout, Banksy. It never happened. What do you reckon on those long-johns? They say your bollocks'll never freeze in them, but they're forty-eight quid a pair and…' But he didn't, couldn't, was never even close to pushing back the chair and starting the walk. For Christ's sake, one of them could have done the trot over the canteen floor, and none had.

He had read late into the night after getting back to his bedsit, had had to read slowly because the handwriting was steady in its deterioration, and what was to come — he sensed it — would be agony.

If he had not been on double time, weekend duty, he would have been tramping the streets, not reading the diary of Cecil Darke but getting himself over to Wandsworth and a little cul-de-sac where a developer had squeezed in a block of modern terraces. He would have been heading for Mandy's home. Pathetic, but still she dominated him. The divorce had gone through years back, but Mandy obsessed him, her and the money. If he had reached there, had turned into the cul-de-sac, he might have stood on the corner and looked along the street to where she lived, or he might have hit the door with his fist and started the futile inquest again; the source of the acrimony was always the money — the worth of the wedding presents, his maintenance payments, the sale of the old house, his cut and hers. The escape from it was overtime and maybe, now, the leather-covered notebook in his jacket pocket.

The other guys, the rest of the Delta team, talked marriages, relationships and girlfriends, and would have included him if he'd wanted it. He had never talked of Mandy with them — it wasn't any of their damn business.

They'd ship him out. He'd heard there was a WDC on the Golf team who was off on maternity leave and had heard also that a DC on the Kilo lot was transferring to the Anti-Terrorist crowd. He would be parcelled off, and it would not be the end of his world, just a different set of magazines and different chat. On Golf or Kilo, life would go on — fresh start — and he would have the same status.

What he thought, sitting in the shadows of the canteen and as far from the big window as he could be, he had stayed true to Cecil Darke, his great-uncle. Precious little else in his life was as important as staying true to that man. He reached down.

There was no bloody purpose in his own life. None, and it hurt.

Too right, that man was a hero. He'd had principles, guts, but no bloody thermal socks and long-johns and no training days in the Alley to sharpen him. He hadn't had the best weapons all oiled and loved in the Armoury, but he'd had hope. Banks had not intended to produce the notebook, but he did. He lifted it from the pocket. He turned aged pages that told of the great journey. In the emptiness of his own life there was only, as a goal, a transfer to Golf or Kilo…and the cold, and the brotherhood of friends. He found the place where he would walk again with a hero.

He read.

They had gone. Probably, Banks thought, they were now in the stand-by room and had taken over the bar-billiards table. He had hardly noted their going and doubted that anyone had glanced at him. He put his marker in the notebook, an Underground train ticket, and dropped it back into his pocket. He was haunted by what he had read, and sapped…but would have felt shame if he had not stood shoulder to shoulder with Cecil Darke, and had not refused to make the negotiated apology that was asked of him.

He felt the wet in his eyes.

It was the Nobbler's moment. He had sat in the car for three hours and his eyeline had given him a decent enough view of the white-painted front door, and the wheelie-bin; the little wicket gate was askew on its hinges. The house reeked neglect, financial hardship and lack of pride, which was as Benny Edwards wanted. He had read a newspaper from cover to cover and eaten a sandwich; the last dregs in the coffee Thermos were cold. He shifted in his seat to look through the sunlight blazing on to the windscreen and knew that the wait was over.

The buzz ran in him — excitement, adrenaline, expectation. It was always the same when it was his moment. The day was long past when he had worked for money and what money bought him. Today or yesterday he could have gone to an agent — he could go tomorrow — and bought the airline tickets for Faro or Malaga, have done the electronic cash transfers and bugged out to the southern sunshine, could have found the place — with a wide patio, a pool and a view — where he would spend the rest of his days, but he would be without the buzz. He craved it, could not exist without it.

They came out of the door. The Tango first, then a girl who had a holdall in her hand. The wife followed her daughter to the step, kissed and hugged her, but had nothing for her husband. The Nobbler had allocated the whole of that day, and Sunday, to searching out the optimum moment for the approach. It was never an exact science, needed the flexible thinking on which he prided himself. The only place that an approach, first time up, never worked was at the home when the juror's partner was there, and the doorstep was the poorest option. He wanted the Tango alone and off his beaten track. In his car, on the back seat, a canvas satchel held the carrot, and in his pocket was the photograph that would be the stick. For some Tango subjects the carrot or the stick was quick, for others slow, but the Nobbler had the two days of the weekend to make his approach with carrot or stick.

They were off down the pavement. He couldn't know where the Tango would lead him.

He liked what he saw of the scrote, his Tango. The girl was ahead of her father, as if she couldn't wait to be shot of him. He had those daft sandals on and bright socks that the sunlight caught, old trousers and the windcheater from court. He read the shabbiness that was the same as the front door, and the gate on to the pavement that was half off its hinges. He did not believe that the Tango would need the stick on his back, just a bite at the carrot — but he'd show the stick. It was his way and well practised, and he rehearsed the opening words: told his own boy, who would take over the trade when he was past it — not bloody yet — that the first words of the approach either sold or sank a deal. He nudged his car after them.

They went out of the road on to the main drag and were on the far side of it from the Nobbler.

They went to the station, crossed the forecourt and stopped where there was a rank for buses to pull in. He understood. The dutiful dad was doing his family bit, escorting his girl, maybe aged fourteen, to the bus and was going to stay with her till it came. He would see her off and would say, doubtless, 'Have a good time at your friend's, don't drink tonight and don't get shagged.' The Nobbler parked on a double yellow, nowhere else, took the Disabled card from the glove box, displayed it and waited some more.

The bus came.

As if it was a chore, the girl pecked the Tango's cheek and was away up the step and inside.

The bus left. The Nobbler noted that the Tango watched it go across the forecourt, raised his arm and waved, and was still waving when it was round the corner and gone, as if he didn't want to let it go.

The car door closed quietly after the Nobbler. He straightened, his hands flicked over his clothes, smart casual with a decent jacket, as if to smooth creases from them. Important to look good — a grin swept his face — and respectable.

He came behind him.

He said pleasantly, 'Excuse me, isn't it Mr Julian Wright? It is, isn't it?'

He spun awkwardly. 'Yes, that's me. I'm Jools Wright.'

'I was hoping to meet up with you. Actually, I was trying to.'

He had been far away in a cloud of thoughts. His daughter and Hannah. Bad thoughts and good thoughts. The little cow, cheekier by the day, sided with her mother…Hannah, whom he'd be with that night. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, as if it would rid him of the cloud.

'Do I know you?'

J don't think so, but..

'Are you a parent of one of my students? I have to tell you — sorry and all that — I cannot discuss school affairs here.' A new cloud had formed: suspicion.

'Steady on, Mr Wright. Nothing about school.'

'About what, then?'

'About something that might be of advantage to you, Mr Wright.'

'I'm in rather a hurry I have to get home — I have to—'

'Considerable advantage, Mr Wright.'

'Well, some other time. If you'll, please, excuse me.'

He wanted to run but felt caged — as if he were fettered. A hand was on his arm. The grip tightened. He knew it then: he would have to fight to be free…but Jools had never fought in his life. Had never struggled, never kicked, never eye-gouged. He felt panic rising.

'Nothing for you to worry about, Mr Wright. What I said, something of considerable advantage, and that's going to be worth a few minutes of your valuable time — yes?'

'I don't know, I really don't.'

'Let's go and sit in my car for those few minutes. Where's the harm in that?'

His arm was held vice tight. Jools said limply, 'I can't be late home. I've got to go out again.'

'So I'll drop you. Now, let's go to my car. No problems, are there?'

He was walked to the car, his liberty gone. Only when a passenger door had been opened was the grip on his arm loosened. He sagged down into the seat, the door was closed on him and the man walked round the front, then sat behind the wheel. Jools realized that this was the first time he had registered the man's appearance: middle age, average height, average build, average hair, a jacket of a neutral grey, and a shirt with a light check in it, slacks that were a darker grey. But the eyes burned with authority and the grip had been fierce on his sleeve. Under that veneer of reasonableness, almost charm, there had been the implication of violence. Jools sat hunched and taut; his teeth bit into his lover lip. The radio was turned on and there was a low babble of voices from the speakers.

'Now then, Mr Wright, I hope you'll listen very carefully to me. You will?'

'Yes.'

'And you'll hear me right through till I've finished?'

'I'll hear what you have to say.'

The man leaned back and edged himself more comfortably into his seat.

'You, Mr Wright, are currently sitting as a juror in court eighteen at Snaresbrook, right?' His voice was quiet.

Oh, God…He understood. Jools sighed. What chance of getting clear of the car and running? None. His head dropped and he whispered his answer: 'Yes, I am.'

'I represent some friends of friends, Mr Wright. The friends of my friends are the Curtis brothers, and you are hearing their case. Now, my friends say that you look to be a reasonable, fair man, one with an open mind 'and not prejudiced. You see, Mr Wright, the Curtis boys have been stitched up by the Crime Directorate. They have been subject to lies and untruths. They are good family men and they are honest, straight businessmen, but you wouldn't know that from the perjured evidence of the police. They are also, Mr Wright, men of exceptional generosity, most of which is directed towards local charities — a child with leukaemia near where they live was sent to the States for treatment, a Boys' Club needed premises, which were funded — but a substantial example of their generosity would be directed towards anyone who stood up for them against all that untruthful police evidence. It's why I said, Mr Wright, that meeting me could be to your advantage. No, don't say anything, just listen, please. To be rewarded with that generosity, you would have to guarantee that your vote would go to a not-guilty verdict, and that you would give your best effort to persuading others on the jury to follow you. Your advantage, their generosity, adds up to twenty-five thousand pounds, Mr Wright, cash in hand. I think you'll agree it's an attractive offer…and I am aware that your financial circumstances are not healthy. It would be a new start, a fresh page. It's on the table.'

His breath came in little gasps. Under his windcheater, his shirt was soaked in sweat. The man's hand dropped into his jacket pocket.

A photograph was lifted out. Jools saw the face of his daughter Kathy, her grin and wink to a friend. It was held in front of him, his eyes lingered on it, and then it was back in the pocket.

'Very pretty girl, Mr Wright, and long may she stay that way. Good complexion, unblemished skin, not a mark on it…I wouldn't, and neither would my friends, want the generosity of the Curtis brothers abused. It would be very sad, with consequences, if a considerable trust were broken.'

Jools sat very still. Kathy wanted to train as a hairdresser, but no one would want to employ a salon girl whose face had been slashed.

'You might think it's possible to sit on a fence and play in both sides of the field — that is, to take advantage of the offer and go to the police. Don't consider it. We know where you live, we know where your daughter goes to school. There's an old saying about running but not being able to hide, and I think it comes from American boxing. There would be nowhere to hide. My friends have long arms and longer memories…Now, so that we understand each other, you have two choices, Mr Wright. You can straighten out your finances and pay off your debts and forget about it, or you can spend every minute of your day looking over your shoulder, wondering whether there's a petrol bomb coming through the front window, concerned if your daughter's face is going to stay unmarked, whether what's done to your legs will let you walk again…But I don't think you're an uncooperative man. I reckon you'd realize when generosity was shown you.'

Could he have stood up to them? He couldn't even meet the gaze, from the dock or the witness box, of Ozzie Curtis. Just looking at the man, with half an army of security and court staff for protection, terrified the wits out of him. And Jools thought of the new credit-card statements and the bank's overdraft letters and the builder's invoice that would be landing on the mat behind his front door. The voice dripped on, and he thought himself shafted. Why not bloody moaning Peter, or that toff Corenza? But it wasn't them who was trapped in the car: it was 'Jools bloody Wright. The blood' surged to his face…Yes, damn right, they'd chosen well.

'It's half down now, and the other twelve and a half thousand will be in your bin the night the verdict's given, you've voted against conviction and the jury's hung…I almost forgot. If you turn out to be the Great Persuader and talk the others round to an acquittal, it's another twenty-five. Nice money, if you can get it…and, Mr Wright, you can. So, what's it to be?'

He hesitated. 'How do I know that…?'

'That the secret stays…? Of course it does. My friends have made an art form of discretion. You'll never hear from us again, believe it.'

'I do have some financial worries.' Jools grimaced.

'All in the past, Mr Wright. My advice, use the money in small amounts, nothing big and nothing flash. Pay off the debts in hundreds, not thousands. Don't draw attention to yourself.'

'I don't know your name.'

There was a sweet smile. The man drew surgical gloves from his pocket, put them on, reached behind him and took a package from his canvas bag. It was wrapped in brown paper, sealed with tape, and it was dropped on to Jools's lap.

The car brought him back to the end of his road, and the package was lodged inside his windcheater. He had already thought where to hide it, and he hadn't reached the half-fallen gate to his handkerchief front garden before the car had accelerated away and was round the corner…He didn't have a name and didn't have the car's number.

Then the shock took him. His hands trembled and his legs shook.