No mention of the separation.
‘This is a case of a home invasion. The defendant found an intruder hiding in his house. It was dark. He was frightened. He acted to protect himself and his property.’
Eddie pulls out a handkerchief and waves it like a white flag. It’s a nice touch.
‘This is an outrage. A travesty. To incarcerate a man whose privacy has been violated. A man who has selflessly served the community . . .’
Judge Spencer raises his hand. ‘All right, Mr Barrett, you’ve made your point. Save the speeches for the trial.’
At that moment I sense I’m being watched and glance over my shoulder. The public gallery is deserted but there is a blind spot to the right of the main doors, an area of shadow big enough to hide a person.
Someone pushes through the door, throwing light into the dark corner. Julianne is watching me. Her hair is brushed back from her face, the fringe falling diagonally across her forehead. She’s wearing a dark trouser suit she bought when she worked in London.
I raise my hand, but she turns away and pulls open the door.
Judge Spencer has finished. Eddie Barrett signals me to the edge of the dock.
‘Can you raise twenty thousand?’
‘That’s a lot.’
‘It could have been worse.’
‘Call Ruiz. He’ll know what to do.’
This time I’m placed in a different holding cell. Three men sit on separate wooden benches against the walls. All of them are wearing suits, but only one of them leans forward to stop the jacket from creasing.
I recognise them from photographs. The nearest is Gary Dobson. Next to him is Tony Scott and sitting slightly apart from them is Novak Brennan. I know what I’ve read about them. Scott is six foot tall, shaven headed, a veteran football hooligan who has served time for assault and robbery. Dobson is shorter, stockier and ten years younger with convictions for car theft, drug possession and assaulting a police officer. Both men drank at the same pub and were activists for the BNP.
Brennan was a party candidate at the recent council elections. He narrowly missed winning a seat on Bristol City Council because the Labour Party withdrew its candidate and urged its supporters to vote for the Liberal Democrat, ensuring the BNP couldn’t win the contest.
Brennan looks younger in the flesh, with barely a line on his face. His trademark thick dark hair is brushed back from his forehead and he has laughter lines around his eyes. Unlike his fellow accused, his suit doesn’t look like a straitjacket.
Scott and Dobson acknowledge my arrival by making eye contact. Brennan is picking at his manicured nails, elbows on his knees. I take the bench opposite. The walls have been recently painted. Without the graffiti I have less to read and more time to think.
I find myself staring at Brennan. His eyes lift and meet mine, locking on to a place inside my head. I glance away, staring at the floor.
I’m holding my breath. When I realise, I exhale too quickly.
‘How’s the trial going?’ I ask.
The three of them are staring at me now.
‘I just got bail,’ I explain. ‘I’m waiting for someone to post it.’
‘Big fucking deal,’ says Scott, shaking his head.
Brennan continues to stare at me as if he’s trying to examine my conscience.
‘Congratulations,’ says Dobson, who seems happier to talk to someone. ‘What didn’t you do?’
He laughs.
Brennan takes a moist paper cloth from a small travel pack in his pocket and begins carefully wiping his fingers one by one, almost polishing his fingernails.
‘You must be getting sick of being in that courtroom,’ I say.
He raises a forefinger, signalling me to stop. ‘Do you know the first lesson you learn in a place like this?’ he asks.
‘No.’
‘You learn to keep your mouth shut just in case the person they put in the cell with you is a snitch who’s going to claim later that he heard you say something you didn’t say.’
His accent is slightly Irish. The North. Belfast maybe.
‘I’m not a snitch.’
‘Oh, so you brought references did you?’
‘No, I mean . . .’
‘Best you not say anything.’
I nod and he goes back to cleaning his hands.
Julianne told me that he didn’t look like a monster. I wanted to tell her that they rarely ever do, bad people. They don’t have a rogue gene or a tattoo on their foreheads and, despite what people seem to think, you can’t ‘see it in their eyes’.
A few minutes later Brennan, Scott and Dobson are led upstairs and their trial resumes. Julianne will be there. Her witness gives evidence today. The survivor.
32
Two hours later I step outside the crown court registry office alongside Ruiz, who posted my bail.
‘Where did you get twenty grand?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘You put up your house.’
‘More fool them - it’s falling down.’
‘I don’t know how to thank you.’
‘Just make sure you turn up for the hearing or I’ll track you down myself and kill you.’
We’ve spent the last hour waiting for the paperwork to be approved while I recounted what happened yesterday - first with Sienna, and then Gordon Ellis. As I told him the story, I could see every turn in the road, every dip and curve, every fuck-up. When I reached the point where Ellis claimed to have slept with Charlie, I could feel the temperature rise in Ruiz.
‘It’s not true,’ he told me. ‘Charlie’s too bright for that.’
‘I know. I wish I could have been thinking more clearly at the time. Instead I wanted to kill him.’
‘Yeah, well, don’t go publicising the fact.’
We’re standing on the steps. The street outside is empty except for police and a handful of protesters who have stayed behind. Ruiz unscrews the lid from his sweet tin and pops a boiled lolly on his tongue.
‘You medicated?’
‘I’m all right.’
‘You should get some sleep.’
‘I have to talk to Julianne. She’s working today. Translating.’
I glance towards the courthouse and try to push away the memory of her watching me standing in the dock. The look she gave me. Blank. Empty.
‘Which court is she in?’
‘The Novak Brennan trial.’
Ruiz seems to taste something in his mouth that turns sour and unpleasant. He spits the sweet into the gutter where it shatters against the concrete.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You know Brennan?’
‘Yeah, I know him. We go way back.’
‘I just spent an hour in a holding cell with him.’
‘Then you might want to shower.’
Planting his hands in his coat pockets, Ruiz stares indolently into the pearl-grey sky, but his gaze has turned inward, replaying past events in his head. Clearing his throat, he begins talking about his years in Northern Ireland when he was seconded to work with the Royal Ulster Constabulary, monitoring intelligence on IRA terror cells operating on the British mainland but controlled from Belfast.
‘A prostitute called Mae Grace Brennan died of a drug overdose in a bedsit on the Antrim Road in 1972. It was just after Bloody Friday. She was dead two days before the neighbours broke into her flat. They found Novak and his sister living in filth. Novak was three, Rita only nine months. The baby was so undernourished she had bleeding sores on her buttocks and back. Novak could barely walk.