The Walking Dead

'You might think it's possible to sit on a fence and play in both sides of the field — that is, to take advantage of the offer and go to the police. Don't consider it. We know where you live, we know where your daughter goes to school. There's an old saying about running but not being able to hide, and I think it comes from American boxing. There would be nowhere to hide. My friends have long arms and longer memories…Now, so that we understand each other, you have two choices, Mr Wright. You can straighten out your finances and pay off your debts and forget about it, or you can spend every minute of your day looking over your shoulder, wondering whether there's a petrol bomb coming through the front window, concerned if your daughter's face is going to stay unmarked, whether what's done to your legs will let you walk again…But I don't think you're an uncooperative man. I reckon you'd realize when generosity was shown you.'

Could he have stood up to them? He couldn't even meet the gaze, from the dock or the witness box, of Ozzie Curtis. Just looking at the man, with half an army of security and court staff for protection, terrified the wits out of him. And Jools thought of the new credit-card statements and the bank's overdraft letters and the builder's invoice that would be landing on the mat behind his front door. The voice dripped on, and he thought himself shafted. Why not bloody moaning Peter, or that toff Corenza? But it wasn't them who was trapped in the car: it was 'Jools bloody Wright. The blood' surged to his face…Yes, damn right, they'd chosen well.

'It's half down now, and the other twelve and a half thousand will be in your bin the night the verdict's given, you've voted against conviction and the jury's hung…I almost forgot. If you turn out to be the Great Persuader and talk the others round to an acquittal, it's another twenty-five. Nice money, if you can get it…and, Mr Wright, you can. So, what's it to be?'

He hesitated. 'How do I know that…?'

'That the secret stays…? Of course it does. My friends have made an art form of discretion. You'll never hear from us again, believe it.'

'I do have some financial worries.' Jools grimaced.

'All in the past, Mr Wright. My advice, use the money in small amounts, nothing big and nothing flash. Pay off the debts in hundreds, not thousands. Don't draw attention to yourself.'

'I don't know your name.'

There was a sweet smile. The man drew surgical gloves from his pocket, put them on, reached behind him and took a package from his canvas bag. It was wrapped in brown paper, sealed with tape, and it was dropped on to Jools's lap.

The car brought him back to the end of his road, and the package was lodged inside his windcheater. He had already thought where to hide it, and he hadn't reached the half-fallen gate to his handkerchief front garden before the car had accelerated away and was round the corner…He didn't have a name and didn't have the car's number.

Then the shock took him. His hands trembled and his legs shook.

Chapter 8

Sunday, Day 11

Through the window, Ibrahim saw her in the garden. She hung washing on the line. He was not yet dressed and he kept himself half hidden behind the curtains but there was a sufficient gap between them for him to watch her. He ignored the voices and the sounds of the day starting and watched her, waiting for the repetition of her movements. She was bent over the basket and the jeans were tight against her buttocks and hips. She lifted out a shirt, a pair of underpants, or something flimsy that was her own, then stretched up to reach the plastic line that was suspended between two trees. When she reached up her T-shirt rode higher, leaving him a clear view of the skin at the small of her back, and sometimes the flatness of her stomach, the little indentation of her navel. At the moment that she fastened whichever garment it was to the line with pegs, she would arch her back, when the swell of her breasts was most pronounced, and then she would start again.

He felt breathless. He could not comprehend that she was one of his own Faith. She contradicted everything he had been brought up to value in a woman, above all modesty. It was when she turned and lifted the basket, had her back to the line of clothing that swayed in the wind and the sun caught the intricacies of the items that were hers, that she looked — and he thought there was almost sadness on her face — at the windows, but she would not have seen him because he had ducked away. Those who had been his friends in Jizan would have sniggered at the long scar on her face, as if it made her worthless, but Ibrahim did not think it a blemish on her prettiness. When he was back, his nose and mouth close to the glass, she was gone, but he lingered to see the movement on the line of what was hers, what was worn under the jeans and beneath the T-shirt, and there was a tremor in his breathing, and…more movement, on the far edge of the grass behind the cottage.