He eased past the line of Delta men and no eye met his.
Banks went in search of the inspector in his office. Why — in US Marine Corps Vietnam-speak — would a Rear Echelon Mother Fucker have stayed late, then called him in? What did the REMF want of him? He knocked lightly.
'Ah, Banksy, good of you. Bit difficult this.'
'How can I help?'
'Is everything all right? I mean, I've eyes in my head. Are there, problems in Delta?'
'Not that I know of.'
'Are you sure, Banksy, nothing you want to tell me of?'
'Can't think of anything.'
'What about the atmosphere in Delta, you and colleagues?'
'It's fine…If you don't believe me, ask around and see what answers you get. Will that be all?'
'I will. Don't want any niggles in a good team. Thanks, Banksy, and safe home.'
He went out into the night. He was an intelligent man but too racked with exhaustion to recognize that deflecting the enquiries of the REMF, his inspector, was not clever. He walked briskly towards the station and the late train home to his bedsit where all the company he would have would be in the lined pages of a notebook, scrawled with pencil writing, each entry harder to read than the last. It was not clever because he had put himself on to a track and did not know where it would take him.
Chapter 6
He thought the judge was watching him. He was tense. Sweat ran down the back of his neck. Jools Wright gnawed at the problem engulfing him.
The judge seemed to break away from his laborious writing down of key points of evidence and glance up. His eyes roved across the well of court eighteen, his concentration fractured and his frown spreading, then came to rest on Jools — not on Corenza, Deirdre or Baz.
The evidence droned on: Ollie Curtis's turn in the witness box where he had been all day, lying, twisting and evading. But Jools had heard little of the wriggling denials. His problem was larger, causing him to squirm in the plastic chair. Once, Peter had turned in his seat and said soundlessly — but lip-readable: 'Can't you sit still for five minutes?' He could not, and the problem loomed bigger…Late-night shopping. He always went with Babs, after school finished on a Friday, to do the late-night shopping.
He tried to smile at Mr Justice Herbert, as If that would free him from the beady surveillance.
In the box, Ollie Curtis hadn't the stature of his brother, didn't create the same aura of intimidation but was still a formidable creature. It was a diabolical tissue of lies to suggest that two handguns had been brought by a woman, unidentified, to the shop's front door in a pram for him and his brother to retrieve from under a sleeping baby, then return to the same hiding-place when he and Ozzie had sprinted clear. He had been — injured innocence swam on his face — with his mother at the time of the robbery…Of course she could not come to court to testify: she was old, ill, and there was a doctor's certificate to prove it. Questions and answers wafted over Jools's head, because it was Friday, and Friday was late-night shopping, and there was the not-so-small problem of the increasingly imminent check-out.
'You state categorically, Mr Curtis, that you were not there?'
'Honest and truthful, I was not.'
Neither question nor answer was written down on Mr Justice Herbert's pad, but his eyeline was fixed on its target, and Jools's smile had failed to divert it.
The judge said, with studied resonance, 'I think we'll call it a day. Thank you, Mr Curtis. I have never believed that good justice is made when those before the courts are tired. You will be refreshed, Mr Curtis, by the weekend break before you resume your evidence on Monday morning…It has been a punishing week, not just for Mr Curtis but for all of us. There is something else I would like to say before we go our differing ways — in fact, to emphasize — and that is for the members of our jury…'
He paused. Jools stared back at him and the smile was frozen off his face. What's the old pedant up to? Recall of evidence was lost. The problem of late-night shopping was gone.
'We have been together a long time now and I am heartened by the commitment that you all, on our jury, have shown. It would be easy now for you, ladies and gentlemen, as we approach the final stages of the trial, to feel more relaxed about the strictures I have placed on you than you might have felt a month or two months ago. But, the guidance I gave you when we started these proceedings remains as important now as it was then. You might feel that a conversation with family or friends on the details of the case before you could not harm any of the participants. You would be wrong, members of the jury. I urge you most strongly. not — I repeat, not — to discuss any aspect of the trial with any person who is not a colleague on the jury, and then only in the assured privacy of your jury room. Is that, Mr Foreman, understood by you and all of those with you?'
Their foreman, Rob, looked down the row beside him, then twisted to see behind him. Heads nodded. Bizarre, and bloody unnecessary, but the judge had not addressed his remarks to Rob, Dwayne, Fanny or Fine, only to Jools. He jutted his chin, and could have shouted, 'Don't pick on me, friend. I know what's expected of me. I'm voting guilty as charged.' But didn't. Who was he going to talk to? Not much chance of him having a conversation with Babs while pushing the trolley at late-night shopping, getting closer to the checkout…no bloody chance. Hardly going to be spieling through the evidence with Hannah — in bed, Saturday night, thank God — was he? Rob, the officious prat, bobbed his head and bobbed it again: all understood. It was because the end was in sight that the judge had raised it. Not going to be easy, when it was over, to go back into the groove with the little thugs of year nine, and the statistics of the grain harvest in the Midwest and the consequences of the melting polar icecap.
'That's it, then. Have a good weekend — but remember not to discuss these matters with any third party, with nobody. My father was on the Atlantic convoys in the Second World War and he told me of the poster on the gates at Liverpool docks. 'Loose Lips Sink Ships.' Never forgotten it. So, no "loose lips" because these are matters only for you.'
Jools filed out of court. He wished his colleagues well, then ran for the station. He did not look beside or behind him.
Now Benny Edwards was hands on and had taken responsibility.
Two other rubbish bins had been checked out, and one of the males on the jury had been followed to his parents' home. Then the father had come back and been seen to wear that white shirt with the discreet straps on it that meant he was a uniformed policeman and off duty. Needn't have bothered, because they had the target, the best one — maybe the only one.
That morning, Benny had pulled on the latex gloves and sifted through a treasure trove of bills, demands and statements. A bonanza moment in his career of nobbling, he reckoned.
While he had been reading through the financial mess that was the life of Julian Wright, his photographer had been at work with a discreet little digital job — but that was for later.
He was up close to what he called the 'Tango'. He was always thorough and that was the basis of his reputation, which justified the charges he made on clients. The Tango and the wife had been through Fruit and Vegetables and were half-way down Cereals, and he was four trolley lengths behind them. There were others of his team in the coffee-shop beyond the checkouts, and another at the main doors, so a box had been formed round the Tango. It was all good, the way it should be done. Benny Edwards need not have been there, up close, but it was his tactic to observe before he moved on the approach run. This was confirmation, and he'd never reckoned that what another guy told him had half the value of being there, watching for himself and learning.