The Walking Dead

'I'm asking this because I think the jury will expect to hear your answer to the allegations made by the police, in evidence, that you — associate with criminals, are in fact at the heart of a web of thieving and violence.'

'Maybe I meet criminals, but not intentionally. In business, buying and selling, I meet many people. Honestly and truthfully, though, I don't go round asking guys whether they've done bird. They sell to me and I sell to them. That's about it.'

'Now — and this is most important, Mr Curtis — a Crown witness has said, again on oath, that she can positively identify you as being in the allotment nurseries, and behind a lock-up shed, as you changed from a boiler-suit into more normal clothing, then dumped the boiler-suit, rubber gloves and a face mask in a brazier that was already lit. Was that witness correct in her identification or mistaken?'

'Absolutely mistaken. She got it wrong. I wasn't anywhere there — and it's lies if people say I was.'

'Possibly a lie, Mr Curtis, but more probably a genuine mistake.'

'Whichever, I wasn't there.'

Jools could remember that witness better than, any of the Crime Squad detectives who had given evidence and better than any of the forensics experts and the one who had said the men in boiler-suits and masks caught by CCTV inside the shop had identical physiques to the accused brothers. The witness had been small in build, plain-faced and with an ugly cold sore at her mouth, not more than twenty-two years old, probably younger — and she had been so certain. Jools had believed her. He would have staked his life on her.

The defence barrister was a tall, bowed man, with a hawk nose and a casual stance — his weight was taken by the lectern on which his notes were laid out — and he was dressed in crumpled striped trousers and waistcoat, and a tatty old robe that might have been slept in. Not for a night but a month. Jools thought that the studied indifference was part of the barrister's well-practised art. Confronted by the eye-witness, he had started out with bogus sincerity in challenging her, but received no satisfaction. He'd gone through the quiet, sneering phase and still failed to shake her. Then he'd barked. Eyeball contact and courtesy slipped away, and flat statements demanding that she contradict what she had already stated. He'd not broken her. She was as strong after four hours of ruthless cross-examination as she had been when she'd started in the box. Jools had thought her so gutsy. Himself, he couldn't have turned in such a performance, and he'd gone home that evening, after she'd finished, and told Babs about the girl's courage in the face of her ordeal. All of them in the jury room had believed her.

'And where were you, Mr Curtis, at the time the jewellery shop was robbed by armed men who threatened the lives of the staff and who wore boiler-suits, rubber gloves and face masks? Could you tell the jury where you were?'

'Down at my mum's, sir. She's not well.'

'She has, I believe, a medical history of diabetes mellitus, Mr Curtis.'

'That's what they call it. I look after her, and Ollie does. I was with my mum and so was he.'

He heard a little snigger from Corenza. Ettie murmured to Baz that Curtis must have been watching too many police soaps on TV Peter grunted scornfully. Yes, it was a pretty old one — sick mum, loving and dutiful sons playing carers.

'So, we can be very clear on this. At the time that this criminal enterprise was under way, you were more than twenty miles away with your mother…and a witness who says otherwise is mistaken?'

'Right. Yes.'

The judge intoned, 'I think this a good moment to adjourn.'

After he was gone, and the Curtis brothers with their minders, Jools and the rest were led out by their bailiff. He wondered, going to the door sandwiched between Fanny and Dwayne, whether the accused men realized they were scuppered, knew they were on a conveyor-belt to a guilty verdict.

* * *

'What do you reckon?'

'You want it straight up, Ozzie?'

'Straight up? Course I bloody do.'

'Then I have to say that you're shafted — and I can see no different outcome for Ollie. Both of you, well and truly shafted.'

As a hard-working solicitor who represented a superior strata of the criminal classes — if they had the resources to pay for his services, and pay substantial sums — Nathaniel Wilson had a potent reputation. A serious facet of it, alongside his willingness to beaver away all the hours of the day and week on behalf of his clients, was frankness.

'You can't see any way out?' A cloud had settled over the elder Curtis brother's face. They were dinosaurs, from a world long extinct. Armed robbery, waving handguns in the faces of the staff at a jeweller's — it was the stuff of fossils.

The solicitor shrugged. 'We'll try, your brief and I. If there was going to be a happy ending I'd be the first to tell you…and I'll be the first to tell you when you're going down.'

Ozzie Curtis turned to his younger brother. 'Be a good lad, do us a Dolly.'