The Walking Dead

'You have a moment, Banksy? In my office? Please.'

Banks turned, gazed at the inspector's smiling face. 'Of course. Be right up.'

He waited for the footsteps' retreat, then rolled his eyes and asked the armourer, 'What's he doing still here?'

'Been on the prowl, finding something to do. Look, he even did the ammunition dockets, checked them through. Must be a mid-life crisis…OK, sign here.'

He did, and heaved his bulletproof vest, his ballistics blanket, magazines and the Glock on to the counter. The armourer checked them and lifted them on to the racks behind. A line of men from Delta's team was behind him, but he might as well not have been there. If he had looked for signals in their faces as to why an inspector had hung around late into the evening, then asked for him, he would have failed to find them. It had been another session in the close art of ostracism, as if he was no longer a part of them. He'd done his job, made damn certain there could be no criticism of his work, but he had not been spoken to. He had sat in the back of the second escort vehicle and had read the diary while their Principal and his wife had had their Covent Garden evening. He'd thought it the most miserable bloody Christmas he'd ever heard of, and worse than anything Dickens had described. His own Christmases, since Mandy had gone, had been back at home with his mother and he'd never told her that he was at the top of the volunteers' list for working Christmas Eve and Boxing Day; but he had driven down to his mother for lunch and left when it was barely decent, enjoyed the empty roads, and had a packet of new handkerchiefs and a new shirt to show for it. He saw that the isolation clinging to him had been noted by his friend, the armourer, and there was anxiety, but no one could help him and, right now, after what had been said, he wanted no help. He would fight his own bloody wars.

He eased past the line of Delta men and no eye met his.

Banks went in search of the inspector in his office. Why — in US Marine Corps Vietnam-speak — would a Rear Echelon Mother Fucker have stayed late, then called him in? What did the REMF want of him? He knocked lightly.

'Ah, Banksy, good of you. Bit difficult this.'

'How can I help?'

'Is everything all right? I mean, I've eyes in my head. Are there, problems in Delta?'

'Not that I know of.'

'Are you sure, Banksy, nothing you want to tell me of?'

'Can't think of anything.'

'What about the atmosphere in Delta, you and colleagues?'

'It's fine…If you don't believe me, ask around and see what answers you get. Will that be all?'

'I will. Don't want any niggles in a good team. Thanks, Banksy, and safe home.'

He went out into the night. He was an intelligent man but too racked with exhaustion to recognize that deflecting the enquiries of the REMF, his inspector, was not clever. He walked briskly towards the station and the late train home to his bedsit where all the company he would have would be in the lined pages of a notebook, scrawled with pencil writing, each entry harder to read than the last. It was not clever because he had put himself on to a track and did not know where it would take him.

Chapter 6

Friday, Day 9

He thought the judge was watching him. He was tense. Sweat ran down the back of his neck. Jools Wright gnawed at the problem engulfing him.

The judge seemed to break away from his laborious writing down of key points of evidence and glance up. His eyes roved across the well of court eighteen, his concentration fractured and his frown spreading, then came to rest on Jools — not on Corenza, Deirdre or Baz.

The evidence droned on: Ollie Curtis's turn in the witness box where he had been all day, lying, twisting and evading. But Jools had heard little of the wriggling denials. His problem was larger, causing him to squirm in the plastic chair. Once, Peter had turned in his seat and said soundlessly — but lip-readable: 'Can't you sit still for five minutes?' He could not, and the problem loomed bigger…Late-night shopping. He always went with Babs, after school finished on a Friday, to do the late-night shopping.

He tried to smile at Mr Justice Herbert, as If that would free him from the beady surveillance.