The Walking Dead

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.