He saw the misery in the face of the young man, saw him blink away tears. He went to him. He squatted beside him. 'What is your name?'
A choked response: 'Ibrahim, Ibrahim Hussein.'
'Where are you from?'
'From Asir Province, the town of Jizan.'
'Do you have work in Jizan?'
'At Jeddah, in the university, I am a student of medicine.'
The sun had started to slip from its zenith. Soon, perhaps, small rats or rabbits would emerge to scurry on the sand having scented the crumbs of the bread they had eaten. Later, maybe, as the greyness of dusk approached, foxes would track them.
'We do not move before darkness. There is danger here, but greater danger if we travel in the light…Are you strong?'
'I hope to be. Please, am I rejected?'
'Not rejected, but chosen.'
He saw again the fullness of the smile, and relief broke on the young man's face.
He went to his own vehicle, and lay down full length in the sand, his head against the forward off-side lyre. Beneath the balaclava he closed his eyes and slept in the knowledge that the cool of dusk would wake him. More than the present, the images of the future sidled into his mind, and the part in it that a young man would play because he walked well.
'The laws of justice permit a jury to be reduced from twelve persons to ten. With ten of you the trial may still proceed. Regretfully, we have lost two–first, through tragic bereavement, and second, by this sad accident today in which your foreperson has fallen on the way into the building and has, I am informed, suffered a fractured bone in her leg…I am sure you will all join me in expressing our sincerest sympathy to your colleague. But now we must move on.'
When he had been told in his chambers of the wretched woman's tumble, Mr Justice Herbert had cursed softly, but to himself, not in the view or hearing of the bailiff.
'We have now been together for a day less than nine weeks and I anticipate that three more weeks, at a maximum, will enable us to reach a conclusion and you to find the defendants guilty or not guilty of the offences with which they are charged.'
He was a careful man. Sitting as judge in court eighteen at Snaresbrook on the eastern extremity of metropolitan London, Wilbur Herbert was renowned for his weighted words…He had no intention of letting the trial, Regina v. Oswald (Ozzie) Curtis and Oliver (Ollie) Curtis, slip from his grip, and no intention that his words now could justify any subsequent appeal by defence counsel for the overturning of a guilty verdict.
'We will adjourn, I hope briefly, so that you may go back to your room and choose a new foreperson. Then we will resume.'
He spoke softly. It was his belief that a lowered voice caused jury members to lean forward the better to hear him and held their attention. They were a run-of-the-mill crowd, neither remarkable nor unremarkable but typical, and he thought the case against the Curtis brothers was unlikely to tax them with complications. Should he tell them to be certain to have a bottle of aspirin conveniently adjacent should any relative show signs of sickness? No, indeed not. A momentary titter from a relaxed jury valuable as it was, denigrated the majesty of the Bench. He believed that majesty important to the process of justice.
'A few minutes only, I hope, for your choice of a new foreperson, and then we will continue…The matter of flowers is in hand.'
He gathered his robes closely against his stomach, rose and left the court. He was damned if this case would slide from under him–and slide it would if court eighteen lost just one more of those jurors.
A bitter little argument had divided the room. Trouble was that both Corenza and Rob had wanted the job, and both had trumpeted their claim. Important, was it, to be foreman, forewoman or foreperson of a jury? Both had obviously thought so. What they had in common–Corenza, the toff, and Rob, the pompous idiot–was the dislike they generated among the remaining eight jurors. Deirdre, Fanny and Ettie had gone with Corenza, as Glenys's successor, while Dwayne, Baz, Peter and Vicky had supported Rob. Himself? Well, he didn't give a damn, and he'd used his casting vote to give Rob, an officious, pedantic prat, the job that the imbecile seemed to yearn for.
They were back in court now, and the whole morning had been given up to the dispute; the judge had looked to be biting his lip to control his irritation at time lost. Jools hadn't given a toss, and had enjoyed another cup of coffee from the machine in their room.
He was 'Jools' to his colleagues of nine weeks. Actually, everyone who knew him well–and the few who loved him, some who despised him, and the many who were casual in his life–called him Jools. Formally, he was Julian Wright: husband of Barbara, father of Kathy. He was Julian to his parents, and Mr Wright, occasionally, to his pupils. He enjoyed the nickname, Jools, and believed it gave him a certain welcome raffishness. Now, because they had all had to move chairs, he sat between Ettie and Vicky; the rearrangement of their places was because Rob had eased into Glenys's seat, extreme left of the lower tier, nearest the judge…Ettie had a powerful scent on her, dabbed on her wrists and neck, but the whiff of Vicky's perspiration was richly attractive.
Of course they were guilty.
It was the first time that Jools had sat on a jury. Not bad to have reached the age of thirty-seven and never before received the brown envelope with the demand that he present himself to Snaresbrook Crown Court for duty as a juror on a Monday morning in February. His initial reaction had been, as he realized now, typical. He hadn't time for it, he was in work, he had responsibilities. He'd telephoned the given number and explained, rather forcibly, that he was deputy head of the geography department at a comprehensive, and had a classroom schedule stretching through the coming term into the summer–but the woman at the far end of the line hadn't taken a blink of interest. She had said that, unless there were more pressing demands on his time, he should pay more attention to his civic responsibilities and be at Snaresbrook on the appointed day.
Jools had gone to his head teacher, believing that there he would find support, that a letter would be written on the school's headed paper stating that he could not be spared from his curriculum obligations. He had been brushed away with a cryptic 'We'll just have to get a temporary replacement in. Personally, I'd give my right ball to be out of this place for a month or two. Consider yourself fortunate, Jools. The education authority will pay your salary, you won't be out of pocket. You'll be envied by each one of us–an escape tunnel from this stalag is how I'd regard it. Relax and enjoy the ride. But, please, try not to get one of those long ones.' His retaliation had been, when a milling mass of prospective jurors was gathered in a cold, airless waiting room, to volunteer for any case, regardless of how much time it would take up, and he had said to the bailiff, with an earnest lilt in his voice, that he regarded his obligations to society as of paramount importance. His reward was to be free of a classroom of juvenile yobbery where geography counted only as a route map to the nearest fast-food outlet, or the way to the park where blow-jobs were on offer for peanuts, or the road to…On his last Friday afternoon, he'd turned in the doorway of the staff common room and announced that it might be some time before he met up with them all again. The remark had been greeted with indifference, as if nobody cared whether he was there or not.
Not only was it the first time he had sat on a jury, it was also Jools's induction to the daily working life of a Crown Court. The legal profession hardly stretched themselves–God, they didn't. The hours weren't fierce. With pomp and circumstance the judge entered court eighteen at ten thirty in the morning, broke for lunch at a quarter to one, resumed at two fifteen, and called a halt usually at a quarter past four and certainly not later than half past. At the drop of a wig, the barristers were on their feet and seeking to make legal arguments that necessitated the jury evacuating to their room, sometimes for hours. When the court was in session, with full steam up, the barristers' questioning of witnesses was as slow as paint drying.
If the padding had been cut away, the business of the court could have been com
pleted in a week or less. Herbert, up there in the clouds with angels for company, seemed to have little interest in prodding witnesses and lawyers from a jog to a run. Jools had had much time to ponder on the courtroom pace, nine weeks of it.
Most of the others took full notes, as Mr Justice Herbert did, in longhand on the lined pages of A4 refill pads. Corenza was on her second, Rob was on his third, and Fanny wrote in short headline bursts on scraps of paper. Jools did not do notes. He could see no reason to.
They were guilty.
He rarely looked at them. The brothers sat away to his right shoulder. They faced the judge, were behind their legal team and the prosecution's, and were flanked by prison guards. They were in their mid-forties, with wide chests pushing against their suit buttons and muscling bulged in the sleeves. They had clean shirts for each day of the hearing, and the type of quiet tie that a senior civil servant–or a top administrator in the education authority–would have chosen; he assumed that the ties had been nominated, along with the executive suits and daily changed shirts, by their defence people to make a 'good impression' on the jury. There was no way that a suit costing what Jools took home in a month would fool him. On their wrists were heavy gold chains, and he thought that under the laundered shirts and the fall of their ties there would be heavier gold necklaces. When he did look at them, sharp side-of-eye glances, he could see their intimidating bulk, and the cold arrogance of power in their faces. All right, all right, he would admit it–to himself: they frightened him. There were fathers who came to the school to complain when their child was suspended or sent home, fathers who clenched their fists and spat anger. Fathers frightened him, but not as much as the brothers did. The trouble was that each time he stole a look at them–having been drawn to do so, moth to a flame, compulsion–they seemed to sense it: their heads would twist and their eyes would fasten on to him, leech secure. He would turn away fast and look at his hands or shoelaces, the judge or the court reporter. But always, when he looked right, there was the moment when they trapped him and he felt the fear. He knew what they'd done, had heard in crawling detail of their entry into the jewellery shop, had listened to the stumbling recall of witnesses terrorized by the guns and the certainty of violence if they'd resisted. The fear made him shiver.
He cursed silently. Now he must find a new eyeline, somewhere else in court eighteen, to focus on. The elder brother, with a springy step, was being escorted by twin minders from the dock to the witness box, and from there would face the jury. Jools gazed at Mr Justice Herbert's nose, and the mole on its left side; he did not know where else it was safe to look.
He had never told his wife that eye-contact with the brothers frightened him. He was no hero, and Babs would have told him so. He had never before tasted the sourness of danger, and when this trial was complete he doubted he ever would again.
There were no snow-capped mountain peaks here, no caves above the iceline where hunted men hid. There were no tracks on which sure-footed couriers brought reports for evaluation and took away messages laced with hate that demanded execution. There were no cliffs against which old men would stand, leaning on sticks for support and holding rifles to guarantee their power, to denounce a sprawling society they loathed.
There were no deep-rutted roads along which armoured vehicles edged, and helmeted men, sweating in bulletproof vests, peered over the sights of machine-guns for an unseen enemy.
Nothing of this town showed the possibility that it might become a front-line outpost in the new war. Normality ruled in Luton That afternoon, the Bedfordshire town, thirty miles due north of central London, had a population of a few hundred short of 170,000 inhabitants. It boasted a major automobile factory and an airport patronized by tourists flying out on cheap charter flights. The town had been named–and had angrily rejected the title–'Britain's crappiest', with the 'worst architecture in the country' and 'wrist-slittingly moribund nightclubs'. But front line Luton was not.
In St George's Square, sandwiched between the town hail and the shopping centre, drunks and hooded kids had taken occupancy of the benches and were sprawled over them. They, and the shoppers, who skirted them warily, the office workers who came out to smoke in spite of the rain, the council's cleaners emptying overfilled rubbish bins, and the youngsters trooping into the public library off the square to use the computers, did not concern themselves with the war. Why should they? For what reason might they consider themselves threatened and labelled as legitimate targets? All thought themselves safe from terror. Months before, detectives had broken down doors and taken away handcuffed men. A year and a half before a vehicle had been left at the railway-station car park by four men who had taken a train to London to kill themselves and fifty others…Too long ago, best forgotten.
To the men and women of the town, the war was confined to television screens, distant beyond comprehension. But confined inside the boundaries of the town resentment simmered in ghettos of Asian immigrants–where a few Muslim radicals awaited the call to jihad.
The town that sprawled on either side of the river Lea did not, could not, know it.
When the girl had first arrived, punctual to the minute, the farmer's wife had thought her pretty. When she had come closer, the woman saw the livid scar on the girl's forehead, running laterally, and the second shorter one, vertical on her left cheek.
The farmer's wife tried not to stare. She thought the scars were from a car accident, a head striking a windscreen.
'I hope I am not late. Have not kept you?' the girl asked. 'Not at all, no. You're on the dot.'
The girl was probably in her early twenties; the woman glimpsed her hands and saw no wedding ring. Sad for her: with such disfiguring wounds, the girl would have difficulty in finding a husband with whom to raise a family…She was Asian, but her accent was local. The farmer's wife hesitated as to whether Oakdene Cottage should be let to an ethnic-minority group, then killed the thought. She would let the cottage to the girl for a month, payment in advance, not to champion racial tolerance but because–the books of Oakdene Farm showed it–she and Bill needed the cash.
'Come on in, my dear, and look round.'
'Thank you, but I am sure it will be very satisfactory'
'And how many will you be?'
'Eight in all. It is for our family. Some are coming from abroad.'
'Well, it'll be a bit of a squash. Only four bedrooms–did I say that?'
'It is not a problem. I think it will be excellent.'
The farmer's wife said quickly, 'And that will be, for a month, eleven hundred pounds, paid in advance.'
A young man was left sitting in the car that had brought the girl. She would have been pretty, with a good figure under her jeans and light windcheater and striking dark hair to her shoulders, but for those hideous injuries. They went inside, and the farmer's wife fussed through the details of the kitchen and its appliances, the room hot water, the bedrooms and their linen, the dining room, crockery and cutlery stores, but she thought the girl only vaguely interested, which surprised her.
'It's ideal,' the girl said. She was at the doorway, gazing out over the fields and the emptiness of the Bedfordshire farmland. She would have heard rooks calling and the engine of Bill's distant tractor. 'So quiet, perfect for my family.'
'And if you don't want quiet, Luton's only five miles…Either my husband or I will pop down and do the grass, see that you're settled.'
'No need. We'll do it. You can forget we're here. We will enjoy looking after your lovely cottage. We'll see you when we leave.'
'You're sure?' She had enough to be getting on with at the farmhouse, and Bill did on the land, not to come down the quarter of a mile on the side track to cut the grass.
'Absolutely sure, thank you.'
The deal was done. The girl was driven away up the long, bumpy track to the main road.
Only when she had gone, and the farmer's wife had gunned her Land Rover, did she realize that she was ignorant of the girl's name and had no address fo
r her. But she did have a letting for a month when there were no other takers for Oakdene Cottage, and eleven hundred pounds in fifty-pound notes rammed into her trouser hip pocket. She wondered why an Asian family should wish to stage a reunion in such a remote corner of the county, but only for a moment. Then she was considering how to prioritize eleven hundred pounds in cash, none of it for declaring.
He looked up from his screen. Its content rarely held him after his lunch break. After his two sandwiches and an apple, taken in a plastic box to the park at the back of the building, he was usually enveloped in tiredness. Now he was wondering–as his mind wandered–whether he could slip down to what he called 'the heads', lower himself on to the lavatory seat and get in a ten-minute doze that would help him through the remainder of his working day.
Dickie Naylor scowled.
The bloody woman was eyeing his territory already. Through the open door of his cubicle, he saw that Mary Reakes was gazing into his space, and he fancied he recognized covetousness in that look. Not that his cubicle had much to offer: a desk with a screen on it, a fishing-line tangle of cables beneath, his upright swivel chair, a lower upholstered seat for a visitor, a floor safe alongside two filing cabinets that each had a padlocked bar running vertically over the drawers, a side-table with a coffee machine and a couple of plastic water bottles. There was precious little else, except wall charts of holidays to be taken by the few staff who answered to him, and the roster for their night-duty obligations, a photograph of a cricket team proudly holding up a pathetically small silver cup and one of his wife in the garden, pictures of sour-faced bearded men were pinned to a board.
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