'I can't stay there, shut in, not this weekend.'
Banks was formal, distant: 'The instructions of the judge were pretty clear. You stay under guard together.'
'I am afraid that's not possible.' Wright had his arms folded tight across his chest, like that was a defence posture. 'It's my problem.'
'I'm sorry, but there's nothing I can do about it.'
'You see, Mr Banks,' the voice wheedled, 'it's about my parents. They're old and they're not well, and I have a routine of visiting each weekend. It's something that's really important to them.'
'You go out on Monday, do your bit in the jury room. From what I've heard in court, it shouldn't take too long — not that I'm suggesting how your decision on the case will go — and then you can visit your parents.'
'You're not hearing me, Mr Banks. I go each weekend to see my parents because they're old and ill.'
He'd attended a course when he was in CID, before going over to firearms, that dealt with interview techniques. There had been a whole morning's lecture on the recognition of evasion, the telling of lies and half-truths. Because it had been interesting, the lecture's lessons had stayed with him. Looking up to the right, not the left, was an indication that a lie was told. More compelling than the eyes was the mouth; a tongue smearing the lips was a giveaway of an untruth. Having arms close on the body and folded was the sure sign of evasion…Little things, all part of the body language, trifling but telling Banks that his Principal was playing games with him. Then Wright twisted away and presented his shoulder to Banks, which was confirmation: the lecturer had called it a 'liar's posture'. It was eleven years since he had been on that course, and everything that had been told him then was crystal sharp.
'I sympathize with your situation, Mr Wright, but cannot do anything about it.' He thought he had closed the matter, leaned back and faced the window, the newspaper covering it.
'So the consequences will be on your head.'
'What consequences, Mr Wright?'
'Pretty simple — the collapse of the trial.'
'What — what are you saying?'
'Arithmetic, Mr Banks. We are ten. Ten jurors make the minimum quorum. Nine, and the trial collapses. That's the consequence.'
'The judge — if you didn't know it — has very comprehensive powers to level against anyone, forgive me, who flicks with his court.'
'Stomach-ache, try that. Migraine. Twisted back, can't sit. I can think up a few others, and it's millions down the drain. Do I get to visit my parents or do I not?'
Alarm bells clamoured. Consequences battered in Banks's mind. He could hear the inquest in court eighteen. Defence submissions that the case had failed…The prisoners' smirk…What did it bloody-matter to David Banks?
'Quite honestly,' Wright said, 'you'd have to lock me in a room and stand guard outside the door, because that's where I'm going. I'm going to see my parents, and if, Mr Banks, you prevent it, I will be handing in a sick note. What do you say?'
'Where are they, your parents?'
He was told. They lived in the Bedfordshire town of Luton.
Banks seemed then to shed the culture imposed by his warrant card. When his letter, two lines of it, was written and handed in, he would lose the card and his authorization to carry a firearm. It was ludicrous that, in the last hours of his service, he should play the pompous and dutiful servant of what he was about to reject. His career was gone; was in its last throes, and it concerned him not a damn that he had been lied to.
A final vestige of that culture remained. Banks said, matter-of-fact, 'Shouldn't be a difficulty, Mr Wright. Of course, I'll have to be with you. It'll be good to meet your parents. Don't mention it to the others.'
The juror sidled back up the aisle of the coach.
In the late afternoon, as dusk fell, Muhammad Ajaq crawled out through the gap in the back door, pulling his bag after him. For a moment he knelt on the wet concrete step, beside the base of the tilted rainwater butt, and looked back. She was there. He could see faintly that anxiety creased her forehead, and he reached through the hole, took her offered hand and squeezed it hard, then replaced the shifted plank. When he stood, he kicked it hard so that it was flush to the door. He left them, slipped away into the gloom and went out on to the road.
He had said to her, whispered in her ear so that the boy did not hear, 'Keep him strong. You alone can do that. He will weaken, will depend on you. You do what is necessary. They are all frightened at the last. You are with him tonight and he will lean on you, and you give him backbone. In the morning you will walk with him, and you will give him courage. The others were idiots, incapable, but you are the one who can help him. Walk with him as far as is sensible, until he has the smile on his face — we call it the bassamat al-Farah, which is the smile of joy — until he is within sight of the target area. When he smiles he is content that he is going to Paradise. Tell him, the last thing you say, that he does not look into the faces of those who are close to him, he must not. Must not gaze at the faces of the men, women and children who are around him because that is the source of failure. Then you are gone. You go home, return to your family. I think he will walk well. It is my judgement. Forget me, forget that we met, forget my face and my voice, forget everything of me, and sleep again.'
He went fast, with a good, confident stride.
He had the cap low on his bowed head and the scarf wrapped round his lower face. He did not look up — did not search for cameras high on lamp-posts. He went, in that early evening, where they would come in the morning.
The road was filled with streams of traffic, and he had to scythe through the pedestrians on the pavements. He passed the wide-fronted, brilliantly lit windows of the stores selling bright new consumer goods. He went by the wealth of his enemy, but emptiness gripped him. He felt the loneliness and it unnerved him. He was not looked at, not noticed, by the drivers of cars, lorries and vans, by the swarms of men, women and children who hurried towards him and passed him. It was as if he had no importance in their lives, and no fear of him. He swam among them. He heard laughter, raucous, and argument, and he was ignored as if he did not exist. He wanted to be dear, to be gone. Muhammad Ajaq, following the route she had given him, came down the long bill and into the town, into its soft belly.
He stopped, hesitated. He had reached the square. Around him, the day was ending, the shutters were coming down and office workers spilled out, jostling against him. He was anonymous. In front of him, dazzlingly lit, were the windows above the steps, and the signs for the sale starting the next morning. He stared at the target. A pushchair cannoned into his legs, and an Asian woman — in a jilbab robe did not apologize but wheeled her child past him. When he stepped to the side, he was bounced by the shoulder of an Asian man whose beard was stained with the red henna dye, and again there was no apology. He went across the square and saw the sign for the bus station. When he advanced on a target in occupied Iraq — a mosque or street market of the Shi'as whom he detested, a convoy of the Crusaders whom he despised — he was satiated with commitment, and when he saw the bomb's blast he was consumed with pride. Here, he felt nothing.
He left the bus-station sign, the square, the steps and the sale posters behind him. He had said it so many times: he should never have come. He had yearned for it so often: he craved to be back where he believed he belonged.
Muhammad Ajaq stood in the queue — where she had told him to — and made a picture in his mind of the old men, in caves or in the compound of a tribal leader, and thought they crowded close to a battery-powered radio, and waited. He believed his name was on their lips.