The Walking Dead

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.

Chapter 3

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. His 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.

'That's right.'

'I think we've nailed that little point down. You know of no individual who is paid to hire out deadly weapons, nor have you ever handled such weapons, in particular a Browning automatic pistol or a Smith & Wesson revolver. You confirm that?'

'Never, sir, that's correct.'