Julia gave a start and knocked over her wine, her third glass of the evening and thankfully almost empty. After she rescued the drink, the face had gone. She parted the curtains and stared out into the garden. Had anyone been there at all? The light was off now, the darkness unremitting. She dithered about whether to call the police but decided against. A visit tonight from an officer was most unlikely, especially as she couldn’t be absolutely sure what the shadow was. With her caseload, she certainly didn’t have the time to endure a telephone lecture about better locks and security lights, which was almost certainly all that would happen. Besides, if her stolen keys had already found their way down here from Nottingham, a burglar was much more likely to choose a time when nobody was in. She turned on the exterior lights and stood at the French windows but could see no one. She did not have the courage to pick up her torch and step out into the garden in the darkness.
After another hour, she went to bed, but took ages to fall asleep. The night passed uneventfully, and as soon as her alarm sounded and before it was properly light, Julia went out into the garden with a torch to quickly check for signs of intruders. She saw a crisp packet and a drink can, half concealed in a mulch of sycamore leaves down by the compost bin. At first she thought the litter had been chucked over the wall from the street, but then she saw a footprint. Some kind of training shoe, smallish size. There was mud on top of the wall too, which would indicate someone clambering over. It wasn’t too difficult if you were nimble and didn’t mind squeezing through the gaps in the hawthorn hedge on the other side. Confirmation of last night’s fears made her nervous. What could she do if they returned? Having a leasehold on the garden flat gave her exclusive rights to the garden, which made up for the semi-basement outlook at the front. Briony Winters’ flat upstairs was more spacious and secure. Briony seemed to be spending more and more time at her boyfriend’s place, which had kept down the incessant clacking of high heels from above but now meant there was only elderly Mrs Drake on the top floor to go to in an emergency.
Julia headed off to Chelmsford feeling nauseous with anxiety. She had left two lights on and the radio on low, with the forlorn hope that it would make the place seem occupied. She left a telephone message for Briony, asking her to keep an eye out on her return. The case turned out to be straightforward, was over in forty minutes with a guilty plea and Julia was soon back on the train. When she got home that evening, she checked in the garden again.
She found two cider cans and some cigarette ends that had not been there that morning.
Someone had definitely been there. Again.
For several weeks nothing happened. There was no fresh litter in the garden, and Julia began to forget about the nocturnal visitations. Besides, she had plenty to keep her busy in the day. Nottingham Crown Court had by the end of October finally published a schedule for the trial of Callum Sinnott, Terrence Bonner and other members of his gang. First was the pre-trial preparation hearing at Crown Court in November, with the trial itself provisionally set for late January 2020 and expected to last for six weeks, under the well-known hardliner Mr Justice Oakeshott. Julia needed to visit her client and prepare his case, assuming he intended to deny all charges. She and the solicitor, Emily Harper, travelled up together to Strangeways, as HMP Manchester was still universally known. Bonner was being held there on remand in a high security unit.
Julia was pleased to see that Emily had taken her advice. She had on a herringbone jacket with dark trousers and a pale blue blouse. Her earrings were pearl studs rather than the dangly ones she had won previously. She had perhaps gone a bit too heavy on the eye make-up, but that together with a darker lipstick instead of the tangerine shade she had used before added half a dozen years to her and just the beginnings of gravitas. Having secured table seats in first class they spread out their papers, discussing the case using the code letter K in place of their client’s name. It was a sensible precaution. Cases had in the past been compromised when the other side had overheard strategic planning on the train.
The main worry as Julia saw it wasn’t the prosecution case against the sixteen defendants, which was quite overwhelming when it came to conspiracy, it was that other defendants could justifiably blame Bonner alone for the many violent acts. The enforcer’s track record made him an easy target. That would mean the various defence barristers squabbling amongst themselves, rather than opposing the Crown. It was a prosecutor’s dream.
The first glimpse of the prison showed a new and modern extension built on to the original hub-and-spoke Victorian lockup. Strangeways, one of the few prisons to have its own gallows, had been a place of execution and horror well into the twentieth century. A riot and rooftop protest there in 1990 led to reforms, but Julia could see it still hadn’t quite lost its forbidding atmosphere. The security check was far more intrusive and thorough than anything that she had experienced at even the Old Bailey, and required the two women to leave their mobile phones and even ballpoints behind. The metal detecting wand wielded by a female security guard traversed slowly and closely over them. It was set off by the zip on Emily’s trousers and Julia’s underwired bra as well as somehow detecting a spare plastic button in a side pocket of her jacket. Emily, who had seemed quite confident on the train, looked younger and more lost with every security door and corridor they passed through. There was a rising jeer of prisoners in the distance, sensing somehow the approach of women, and a smell like men’s changing rooms. After a labyrinthine journey with a large and friendly male custody officer, in which they were largely spared the sight of felons, they were finally brought to a modern bright interview room in what was clearly a new extension of the jail.
Bonner was already there, sitting athwart a fixed metal chair at a fixed plastic table, his head so closely shaved it looked almost oily. His expressionless countenance did not alter on their arrival.
‘This looks a bit better than I expected,’ Julia said cheerfully as the door was locked behind them. She glanced up at the skylight through which sunshine poured.
‘Yeah, but it’s the people that make it really special,’ Bonner replied with half a smile.
‘How have you been treated?’ Julia said, sitting down, opening her briefcase and bringing out a sheaf of court documents.
‘I’ve been banged up twenty-three hours a day in isolation. The food is shit, the screws are sadists, and the cells are freezing cold. So yeah, it’s good.’
Julia looked up. ‘Terrence, have you had any chance to consider how you will plead?’
‘Not guilty, all charges.’ He folded his arms and tightened them across his chest, a full stop to every assertion.
‘That is your right. As I mentioned, I would have preferred to take a more nuanced approach—’
‘I’m not here to make your job any easier.’ Bonner stared at Julia, then let his eyes wander slowly up and down Emily’s body. The young solicitor folded her own arms across her breasts and stared back at him. Good. She’s challenging him.
‘You should be. When my job gets easier, your chance of liberty improves.’ They locked eyes. Julia passed across a printout of a thread of texts between Bonner’s phone and two of the other defendants. It was an extensive discussion of the supply of something to a known mid-level dealer called Dev Linton. Julia pointed to a particularly incriminating message from Bonner. ‘Hold the gear until you get payment.’
‘This, Terrence, is going to be very hard for you to deny,’ Julia said.
‘It was a mixing desk I was selling him.’ Bonner stuck his chin out belligerently, daring them to contradict him.
‘For £40,000?’ Emily said. ‘That seems quite a lot.’
‘It was good gear, top of the range stuff. He had a mate who was a DJ.’
‘And according to this thread it was wrapped in bin bags,’ Julia said.
‘Yeah, and?’
‘I’m sorry, that’s not going to convince anyone. If sound equipment is that expensive, it’s hardly going to be lugged about from one vehicle to another in bin bags, is it? The prosecution will take you to pieces.’ Julia stared at him. ‘It may be my job to believe you, but twelve jurors will have their own opinion. I suggest, Mr Bonner, that you think again.’
While Bonner’s face tightened in contemplation, Julia glanced at the wall, where a fresh coat of paint covered some extensive graffiti. Level with the edge of the table was one long and neat sentence. In this light it was still legible, the correct grammar and use of adjectives even more chilling than its pornographic lucidity. It was exactly what Emily said Bonner had threatened to do to her. The image was now in Julia’s head, irrevocably, the writer’s gift. As Julia turned back to her client, his slight smile and inflected brow told her he knew she had read it. An almost imperceptible nod, and his eyes slid sideways to Emily.
The meaning was clear. When I get the chance, I’ll do that to her. Julia didn’t doubt he was serious.