Ozzie Curtis turned to his younger brother. 'Be a good lad, do us a Dolly.'
Singing, good cadences, burst from Ollie's mouth. Nat Wilson thought the younger brother, must be the hero of every pub karaoke night he patronized. Dolly Parton bounced off the cell walls. 'I Will Always Love You' filled the space from the mesh-covered ceiling light to the scarred floor tiles on to which they flicked cigarette ash. No way that any detective from the Robbery Squad would deliberately bug the confidentiality of a meeting between a legal representative and his clients, but there might just happen to be an old wire going to a device fitted into the cell bars, or the light casing, or the panic button. And that old wire might just lead to a tape-recorder that happened to be loaded. So Ollie Curtis sang 'I Will Always Love You' and placed his back so that it covered the cell door's spy-hole, and Ozzie Curtis leaned close from the mattress bed on which he sat to Nat on the hard chair. 'It's as bad as that? We're shafted?'
'Not looking very clever–not just my opinion but the brief's as well. Goes right back to that star, the little bitch, because we didn't shift her, and you could see the jury believed her. They lapped her up. I watched them again this afternoon. I have to tell you, Ozzie, we didn't score any points with them. They're getting bored, want it over, want to get their lives back, and when they're bored they're not open to argument…Sorry, you're going down.'
Every client of Nathaniel Wilson knew of his loyalty to them. They paid well for his commitment to causes beyond the hopeless, and because he never gave them the crap they might want to hear. He worked from behind a battered door in east London's Hackney, and lived with his wife in the flat above. Nathaniel and Diane, who did the books, the paperwork and the filing, grossed in excess of a quarter of a million a year. They were hugely wealthy but had no extravagant tastes; they took an annual fortnight's holiday on the Isle of Wight in a guesthouse, and in their wills everything they owned was destined for the People's Dispensary for Sick Animals.
'That stuff about Mum…'
'Didn't cut any ice. I watched their faces. A complete contrary reaction, like it was so obvious, so manufactured. One even laughed to herself. We're not getting to them.'
He heard Ollie starting again, back on the first verse of 'I Will Always Love You', and perhaps his voice or his enthusiasm was failing because Ozzie had swung towards him and lifted his arms, gestured that more was wanted and louder.
Ozzie Curtis's mouth was less than an inch from Nathaniel Wilson's right ear. 'If you're right, and I'm not saying you're wrong, we need Benny in on the act.'
Nathaniel Wilson's breath hissed as he sucked it in between narrowed lips. 'That's fighting talk, Ozzie.'
'For fuck's sake, if I'm going away for an eighteen or a twenty–I'm bloody going to go down fighting.'
'And not long to set it up.'
'You said three weeks for this to run.'
'I said, Ozzie, the trial will be complete within three more weeks, not a day more and likely less.'
'So we need Benny, need him on the move now.'
Seldom a demonstrative man, Nathaniel Wilson raised his eyebrows and let a frown furrow his forehead. For a moment he seemed to lose the odour of the cell, and the smell of Ozzie Curtis's body lotion. 'Not with the time that's available–and he'd have to drop everything else. It won't come cheap.'
Ozzie's chin jutted in defiance. 'Nothing about me is cheap–too fucking right it isn't.'
'You'd be looking at a hundred for an acquittal, and seventy-five for a retrial.'
'Not a problem. Get Benny. You do that, Mr Wilson.'
'If that's what you want.'
'Can't see another option–I want it. Hey, Ollie, shut that fucking row.'
The singing died. Nathaniel Wilson stood, lifted his briefcase and rang the bell beside the door. He smiled at the guard who unlocked it, then said that his legal consultation was complete. As he stepped out into the corridor he saw two detectives lounging at the far end, the bastards, and he was happy that Ollie Curtis was an uncrowned karaoke champion.
He went out of the court building, into the growing dusk. In half an hour, inside a security ring of guns, the brothers would be leaving for HMP Belmarsh and another night on remand. In an hour he would be making a first contact with Benny Edwards, with the promise of big bucks to attract the man's interest–and his own fee would be ratcheting up. He faced spending his old age in a cell alongside the brothers, and being struck off all Law Society lists, if it became public knowledge in the Robbery Squad that Nathaniel Wilson was, on behalf of clients, in touch with the man better known as the Nobbler.
29 October 1936
We are still at Albacete. I have written little of the first days here because we are worked hard and with all that is fitted into each day there seems little time to put down on paper my thoughts and experiences, but the commandant is away this afternoon and we have been allowed time off.
At Albacete, a good-sized town inland from the coast and Valencia, we are housed in the old barracks of the Civil Guards. I do not see any point in writing a diary dictated by self-censorship. When we arrived here the building was in a quite disgusting state–not just filth but worse. Government forces took the barracks from the Civil Guards, but they did not just put the defeated men into a prison cage: they killed them. The Civil Guards who surrendered were then massacred. My German comrade who was on the train with me, Karl, told me that the first of the International Brigade volunteers to arrive here after the slaughter were his fellow countrymen. These Germans were so horrified with what they found that they cleaned the barracks. They scrubbed its walls and floors to cleanse it of blood, bones and flesh. They even found dried-out brain matter from the Civil Guards who had been bludgeoned. Then they painted over the worst of the stains with whitewash.
The same slogan is now written on those walls. Where I sleep there is 'Proletarios de todos Paises! Unios!' (Spanish); 'Proletarier Lander, vereinigt euch!' (German); 'Proletari di tutti i Paesi, Unitevi!' (Italian); and 'Workers of the World, Unite!' So, from the walls around me, I am already something of a linguist! I am also shown the truly international quality of the struggle to turn back the tide of Fascism.
The commandant at Albacete is André Marty. He is Spanish or French, I don't know which, and comes from the Pyrenees. He has a white moustache, is short but with a big stomach. I have never spoken to him. He is not a man you approach. He has a bad reputation. Discipline here is enforced with what I suppose would be called 'an iron fist'. Discipline is everything and is enforced with brutal beatings–some volunteers have died from their injuries. I have never before seen beatings of such ferocity, and they are done by men we call the 'commissars': they wear a uniform of black leather jackets and blue berets and have heavy pistols hanging from their polished leather belts. We avoid them.
I had thought I would be trained in the arts of modern warfare at Albacete. It is not so. Most of the time we drill in the square, and are shouted at by the commissars if we are not in step, or punched or kicked. In the day we drill for hours. In the evenings we go to political lectures, which are compulsory. If a volunteer is late for a lecture, or goes to sleep, he is taken outside and beaten. We are learning about Communism and the sacrifices that the Soviet state has made in support of the working-class people of Spain. I want to know what some of the older men call 'fieldcraft' and the tactics of fighting, and how to use a rifle, but there are no rifles here and what I am being taught is the politics of the struggle.
We live on a diet of beans cooked in vegetable oil. We do not see meat or fresh vegetables. Some volunteers have collapsed on parade because they have dysentery and are weak.
But I must not be negative. (I think if it were known what I have written this evening my negativity would earn me a beating from the commissars!) I came here of my own free will. I could still be at my desk with my ledger in front of me, Mr Rammage at my shoulder. I could be at the kitchen table with Mum dishing up from the stove. I am here, and it was my decision to travel to this war. And, whate
ver the conditions in the barracks at Albacete, I am determined to play my part as a foreign soldier in a foreign land, and stand in defence of a cause I believe in.
The best news of the last week is that I have found two new friends. Daniel is from Manchester and is three years older than me; he was a road-building labourer when he could find work. Ralph is a year younger, and should have been starting his first term at the University of Cambridge to study history, but he came here instead. On the parade-ground we march together, in the lectures we sit together, and their palliasses are on either side of mine. We watch out for each other and share everything. I have never been to Manchester or Cambridge, and they know nothing of a room full of clerks' desks in a bank. With them at my side I know–yes, know–that I will be able to fight with courage.
We have not been told when we will go to the front and stand against the Army of Africa–they are Riffian tribesmen and the battlecry when they advance is 'Viva la Muerte', which means 'Long Live Death'–but the rumour is that they are advancing towards Madrid and that they do not take prisoners.
With friends beside me, when the time comes, I shall not be afraid.
'Stand by, Delta Group. Principal on the way'
Banks jerked upright in the passenger seat of the car. First reaction, to slide a hand inside his suit jacket, down to his belt and the pancake holster, feel the cold, hard shape of the Glock. Second, to drop the weathered leather-covered notebook into the jacket pocket where it would lie on the folded black tie he had discarded after leaving the funeral. Third, to reach for the door handle and prise it back.
'Delta Group. Principal with you in a half-minute.'
Their car was parked over double-yellow lines. For the protection officers of the Delta Group traffic restrictions were of no importance; neither did it matter that the nearside wheels were on the pavement. In front of them stood the black limousine, weighed down with armour plating, in which the Principal would be taken away, and forward was the car that would be driven ahead of the limousine. Already the motorcycles were easing past them to take up the position where they could clear traffic hold-ups from the passage of the convoy.
There was a pecking order of importance in the Delta Group. Foremost on the pyramid's pinnacle were the officers of the Royal and Diplomatic Protection team–Delta 1 and Delta 2–who would have had a table inside the hotel's restaurant, but not eaten with the Principal's own people. Half-way up the pyramid were the men–Delta 3, Delta 4, Delta 5 and Delta 6–who had loitered outside the restaurant door in the foyer and in the kitchens. At the bottom were the drivers, and the guys who sat in the front passenger seats: David Banks was Delta 12. He stood on the pavement, his back to the hotel's revolving doors, and made his body into a barrier to prevent late-night pedestrians, perhaps spilled out from a theatre, a film or a meal, obstructing the passage of the Principal.
'Delta Group. All clear?'
'To Delta One. Bring him through.'
He heard the bleak, controlled voices in his ear. He opened his arms, held them wide apart and blocked the pavement. A tourist in a Burberry raised a camera, but Banks shook his head and the lens was lowered. It was the power he had. Power came from proximity to a rated Principal. He twisted his head, at speed, and saw the Minister, the man they protected, scurry across the pavement and disappear into the limousine. Banks walked backwards briskly, and when he was level with the car's door, he ducked down and inside, and they were gone into the late-evening traffic.
Banks almost resented the interruption of the Principal's departure from the hotel. He'd been using a small torch to decipher the faded pencil writing in the notebook. He had read of the journey across France and into Spain and, within a few minutes, had been captivated by the story written seven decades earlier by a relative he had not heard of before. When the Principal had been hustled from dinner to the car, he had known a moment of irritation at being snatched away from the drill yard, the straw-filled bedding and the brain-spattered walls–but, more important, he had begun to feel, just, that he walked in Spain's sunshine with the humility and bravery of Cecil Darke.
The motorcycles cleared a way for them. He could see the top of the Principal's close-cut grey hair through the limousine's back window. The Principal was the Minister for Reconstruction in Baghdad and the carpet had been rolled out for him in London, where he had come to beg and borrow resources. The word was that he would go home with little more than a few asinine meetings under his belt and a few decent meals in his stomach. The Principal was a prime target in Baghdad; there, he would have been at risk every time he stuck his toe outside his front door, but how was he a target here? Only a target if the information was trumpeted to Al Qaeda's office in Iraq that the Minister, for Reconstruction was arriving at 8.35 p.m. at a particular hotel restaurant in a particular street (see attached map), would be entertained by an undersecretary at Overseas Development, then head off again at 10.47 p.m. Al Qaeda, Baghdad, did not have an army of floaters drifting round the West End with primed bombs, loaded handguns and, maybe, an armed rocket-propelled grenade-launcher, all on the lookout for the faint chance of being in the right place at the right time.
No, it was not about the threat.
Yes, it was all about the show.
As David Banks saw it, the size of the escort of Protection Officers was an indication to the Principal of the respect in which his hosts held him. Little on offer in resources and funding, but the compliment of two cars riding front and back of the limousine and a small army of well-dressed men to open and close doors. It was flattering, and it bred self-esteem, and Banks knew that the dread of every home-brewed politician who had held a sensitive office of state was to get the heave from Downing Street or the electorate and have protection removed overnight.
Along with the flattery of the Principal went similar doses of feel-good for the Protection Officers. They were an elite. They rubbed shoulders with the movers and shakers of government, and the biggest and best that came in from overseas. They had the privileged access that dictated they were party to little mutters of gossip and the tantrums of the great and mighty…But David Banks was different, which was why he was an outsider and anchored at the bottom level of the pyramid.
'Hey, Banksy.' It was Delta 6, the sergeant, leaning forward from the back.
'Yes.' He didn't turn, kept his eyes on the pavements they sped past: might be an outsider but didn't think his commitment to his work could be faulted.
'Just a little problem. We like to look the part in this team. It's your shoes, they've got mud on them. That's not good, Banksy–don't let it happen again.'
He could have said he'd been to a family funeral, and that the mud had come from a crematorium garden where he and his mother had laid flowers, but he held his peace.
Chapter3
Tuesday, Day 6
'They are not before the court, Mr Curtis, but the case for the prosecution is that you were aided in this robbery by friends.'
'I don't have those sort of friends, sir.'
Maybe it was because the air-circulation plant was on the blink or switched off, but warmth seemed to have invaded court eighteen. Jools Wright had noticed that a bead of sweat had formed on the defence barrister's forehead. He'd followed it, watched the tiny rivulet it made from the forehead down between the shaggy eyebrows, then its passage under the bridge of the spectacles and along the nose. By the nostrils a drip had formed, had gathered in size and weight, and fallen–wow!–right on to the barrister's papers. Jools lifted his gaze back to the man's forehead and waited for the next rivulet to flow.
'Do you deny that among your friends, Mr Curtis, there is what we would call an "armourer"?'
'Never heard of anyone called that.'
The word he would have used to his students to describe the atmosphere in court was soporific: dictionary definition, 'inducing sleep'. He'd lost track of the growing size of the latest drip accumulating on the barrister's nose because his eyes had closed. Jools felt his head droop. H
is chin banged against his chest, then rested on his open-necked purple shirt. So hard to stay awake…and why should he bother? The damn man in the box was lying through his teeth.
'The weapons carried, allegedly, by you and your brother when–as the prosecution says–you were involved in this violent theft, were identified from witness reports as a military Browning 9mm automatic pistol and a Smith & Wesson revolver, a Magnum…Do you have, Mr Curtis, among your friends, an armourer, someone who could have supplied such fiendish weapons?'
'No, sir.'
'Have you ever touched, handled, aimed, threatened with a Browning 9mm pistol or a Smith & Wesson revolver?'
'Absolutely not, sir. God's truth, I have not.'
Head down again, not bothering to lift it. They'd been shown, four weeks before–it might have been five–photographs of the pistol and the revolver; a detective, with a litany of firearms experience behind him, had described the killing power of such weapons.
Not going to think about the weapons because that area of the case, in Jools's mind, was closed. He was going to think about Hannah.
'And you can state categorically that you have no friends who hire out such weapons, Mr Curtis?'
'I've a lot of friends…People seem to adopt me, like I'm an uncle to them–but I don't know nobody who supplies shooters. Personally, sir, I wouldn't touch nothing like that.'
'And, Mr Curtis, at the time of the robbery–as we established last week in your evidence under oath–you were with your mother who has a serious diabetic condition.'
Lovely Hannah. Sweet, delicious, sweaty Hannah. Brilliant, gorgeous Hannah–
There was a sharp, grating cough beside him. Jools's head jerked up. He blinked. Corenza coughed again, and gave him a savage glance. Should he concentrate? To shake off the desire to sleep, he locked his fingers together and cracked the joints, then wriggled his toes, looked down and saw the movement in his striped socks below the straps of his sandals. For the trial's first week he'd worn a suit and black shoes, for the second week he'd dressed in an open shirt, sports jacket and brogues. Now, as if to stamp his individuality, he'd reverted to work gear, and that, at the comprehensive, was jeans and sandals. He rather relished the individuality…No, nothing to be gained from earnest concentration Hannah was what he coveted.
The Walking Dead Page 5
