The Walking Dead

'See that as beneath them. I think it's the adrenaline rush…No, don't ask me. They make a healthy living from whatever they do, pleasantly healthy. I'm not authorized to bargain, but I'm permitted to offer — take it or leave it — the sum of fifty K win or lose on a retrial and paid up front, a further twenty-five K paid in the event one juror becomes the Great Persuader and it's an acquittal. Then there would be, also up front, twenty-five K as an inducement should it be a carrot rather than a stick. How does that sound?'

'That's all cash?'

'Cash and handed over on trust.'

'Handed over when?'

'Tomorrow — it's in place.'

'When I'm satisfied I don't argue.'

A hand snaked across the table, took the solicitor's, shook it gently, and the reverberation of the deal's conclusion slid through Nathaniel Wilson, as the implications invaded his whole body. Why? Why get involved? Something about perceived slights from established lawyers in the distant past, something about sneered and curled lips when he was young, had had suit trousers with a shiny seat, and had put together a basic law degree at night classes and from correspondence courses. Truth to tell, he had some admiration for the criminal classes, their esprit, their limited code of honour, even their bloody-minded — arrogant and obstinate — determination to breach the system: it was not something he often thought of. He leaned closer across the empty coffee cups. 'I've done some notes on the jury. There's five males and five women — does the sex matter?'

He made a show of ignorance that was not justified. Nathaniel Wilson had not used Benny Edwards as a Nobbler before but he'd been on defence teams who had, and he could recognize that they now moved on to high-risk territory. Yes, he knew very well what the answer would be to his question.

'Carrot and stick, right? I don't like using women. Dangle the carrot; but women aren't that interested in cash — they don't worry about the mortgage arrears, and don't give a stuff if the credit card's stacked with debt. Wave the stick and women are likely to throw the big wobble, tears and screaming, shrieking and howling, and then it's all gone out of control. No, men are the better bet…Five, you say?'

That morning, in court, before he slid off his seat, Nathaniel Wilson's note-taking had not involved the evidence given by Ozzie Curtis. Instead he had jotted down a description of each juror and their clothing. He pushed the single sheet of paper across the table. The Nobbler scanned it. His finger rested on the new foreman for a moment, then eased on down the sparse pen-portrait of the Afro-Caribbean, the young, keen one, the moaner who looked to have a permanent ache in his ear or his tooth, then to the one who could barely stay awake and wore a purple shirt with bloody sandals. When he'd read it, absorbed it, the Nobbler took a cigarette-lighter from his pocket and burned the paper, leaving the flakes to fall into the table's ashtray. Then he gave a first name and an address to which, the next day, a suitcase of banknotes should be delivered.

Nathaniel Wilson hurried back to court eighteen.

* * *

Eight more full working days to go.

Sitting in his small, closed-in territory as though he were a subsistence farmer with minimal ground, Naylor's mind scraped over the wretched, irritating little spat before he had left home that morning. The sniped exchange with Anne weighed on him.

'Dickie, you're just a sore-headed bear and making a fuss about the inevitable. For Heaven's sake, everyone has to retire and pack it in. Daddy accepted it — and started a new life — and so can you,' she'd said, exasperated.

Her father's new life, and he'd responded churlishly with it, had been three mornings a week on a south-coast links course and membership of the golf club's catering committee. It had gone downhill from there. Unwisely, he'd commented that he wanted more from the future than worrying about the price of breaded cod fillets served up in a golf club bar and whether tartare sauce should be served in a bowl or from sealed sachets. She'd retaliated that her father had carried a burden of greater responsibility when he'd finished than Dickie had ever been given, and he'd flounced away to the cupboard under the stairs for his raincoat and umbrella. He'd been bending to pick up his briefcase from its place under the hall table when she'd punched him, verbally, in the flab of his stomach.

'Oh, I forgot — Mary in your office rang yesterday, quite slipped my memory'

'I was sitting a dozen feet from her all day. What did she want that she couldn't have said to me?'