Danny should have been a girl. That’s what Jessica said until he was six when suddenly he became her favourite because he was a boy and he could never outshine her. Maisie and Christy were becoming far too pretty far too soon. When Danny was small Jessica would not accept his maleness. She sidestepped his gun toting, dogged in her belief that she could change him by spreading before him a future strewn with flower presses and magic sets. But he turned sticks into guns and cardboard boxes into tanks, he took avid pleasure in squatting by flattened frogs and hedgehogs on the road. He put them in his flower press.
Jessica had no brothers nor indeed sisters herself and had fallen in love with Frank because he was gentle, and not like the barking red-faced youths her parents had encouraged her to meet at shooting parties and on skiing trips. Her life now was as neat and feminine as the floral wallpaper she had hung in her living room, except for the presence of Danny. By the time he was six she knew she could not steer him, and instead she changed her own course. She was fascinated by the man she could see Danny would become. His maleness ceased to be a threat and became an obsession.
She had schooled Frank and bent him to her will, their lives ran as she wished them to and he complied. Danny was different. He played with her. He flirted with her. When he wanted her to let him go to a football match with Frank he didn’t argue his point. He just looked at her. She could not resist him. She always gave in with Danny. She admired him for opposing her and for his pleasure in getting away with it.
Frank remonstrated.
‘You can’t have one rule for the girls and another for Danny; it isn’t fair on any of them.’
Jessica tossed her head.
‘I don’t. Anyway, the girls are older, they should know better by now.’
And despite her inconsistencies, Jessica’s children loved her, she was sure. Jessica was thirty-five when she looked in the mirror one morning and knew she wanted more.
Mick wandered along a shingle path and stopped, facing away from Christy. He never came too close when they visited Jessica’s grave, and he didn’t speak until they were back in the car again driving out past terraced houses and the liquorice lines of the railway track. It was the new car. Christy couldn’t see how it was different from the old car, but Danny and Mick had both told her it was perfect. The best car around for now.
‘I’m going away tomorrow for a few days, and I asked Danny if he’d be wanting to go with me.’ He stopped at traffic lights and rested his hand on Christy’s knee.
She looked away, excluded, repulsed by his bitten fingernails.
‘You never take me,’ she said.
‘It’s not your sort of thing, Christy, and anyway, you’re working. He’s going to help me do some research. We’re going to Reading. I’ve got some people to see there.’
She wanted to know who he was seeing, why he needed a new car, why he never took her with him, but she didn’t ask. It was better to glide on the surface, darting between these half-submerged questions without touching them. The leaping joy of being with him, of having a boyfriend, had steadied. There were parts of him she didn’t know, places where she couldn’t reach him. He was attentive and thoughtful, he gave her presents and bought her dinner whenever they went out. He wanted her with him in his house and he was dependable. But Christy wanted more. She became captious and determined to see into his soul. But by now she knew if she asked too many questions he would close himself off for days, leaving her scrambling in confusion. He loved her, he hadn’t said so but he would soon, and this fuelled her crusade. In time he would be open, quite open. As she was with him.
They took Hotspur to the sea and walked along the ragged shore beneath the stony bulge of the sea defences. Above them cliffs crumbled soft sugar brown and Hotspur dashed up, pausing then hurling himself back down to the sea. Pebbles round and tight like roe shored up in hills and valleys along the wide beach and in the distance their smoky purple met the sea beneath a ribbon of foam. September sun crept in and out of fleeting cloud casting bruises on to the sea. Mick flicked stones into the water sending Hotspur into a spin of hysterical pleasure. His face was sleek and wet like an otter and he panted at Mick’s side, barking and leaping to and fro but determined not to set foot in the sea. Christy sat behind them on banked stones, her arms clasped around her knees and her face turned up to the sun.
Mick threw a last flint for the dog and knelt down beside her.
‘A seashore for your thoughts,’ he said smiling, balancing two round pebbles on her knees.
‘I was thinking about you, wondering about your family.’ If she didn’t ask a direct question she might catch him out.
Mick lay flat beside her and closed his eyes, his scar a fine colourless ridge like a hook caught beneath his skin.
‘We never had anything like you’ve got, Christy. My dad worked in a brewery and Ma was a nurse in an old people’s home. They’ve retired now, and there’s no money. They were never there when we came back from school, and it didn’t take us long to realise that they would never know if we didn’t go to school at all. None of my mates went anyway. There wasn’t much to do during the day there, so we used to nick cars and bikes, anything to get you out of that place, even for half an hour.’
They lay side by side, feet towards the sea, listening to waves crashing on stones. Christy shaded her eyes and looked up at no-colour sky. Autumn sharpened the air and stretched shadows down over the sea scent of salt and wet sand. Danny was going back to college next week. Maisie was already in the latest look for the new season, her tan scrubbed off, her hair pinned high and tight like a Victorian governess. Christy twisted to look at Mick. He had placed two pebbles in the sockets of his eyes and straightened himself as if he had been marked and discarded by the sea.
‘Don’t. You look dead, Mick.’
She took the stones off his face and pulled him up. She couldn’t bear to think of him filling his childhood with petty crimes and danger; she wanted to make it all right, she wanted it not to have happened like that.
‘Is your sister still living there?’
‘Yeah, she works in a day-care centre, and at night she goes home to Ma and Da and cooks for them. She’s older than me, five years older. I don’t think she’ll get out now.’
Hotspur bounced towards them from the sea, his mouth full, the hairs on his chin dripping in a goatee beard. He came closer and Christy saw that the beard had claws, wildly twitching then falling still for a moment.
‘He’s got a crab. God, he’s disgusting.’ She got up and called the dog.
He came to her, eyes bright with pride, tail spinning. The crab waved at her, Hotspur dropped it and barked a challenge, stretching down on his front legs, enjoying the game. On the ground the crab pulled itself together like a puppet ready for action. Christy suddenly couldn’t pick it up. The grey-blue shell gleamed and the claws snapped. She pushed it with her toe and the sea caught it, whirling it to and fro until it vanished beneath a slapping wave.
She turned back to Mick. He was sitting up, his arms loose and long at his side. He grabbed her hand and pulled her down next to him.
‘Christy the emancipator. You’re too kind-hearted, sweetheart, you’ll never get through unless you toughen up, now, will you?’
She giggled and lay back against his shoulder.
‘I’m not. I just don’t like seeing a disadvantaged crab. If you were caught in someone’s mouth I’d get you out as well.’
He rolled over on top of her, pinning her flat on the cobbled surface, holding her tighter, tighter.
He’d said it now.
This time when Mick was away, Christy wanted to go out. Bolstered by mutually declared love she shed her skin of transparent shyness and swam out supple and strong, gleaming beauty and confidence in every gesture. At the trout farm the fishing was slowing down now the days were not so warm, but there were still restaurant orders to fill, and the smoke house was sulking. Everything came out scorched. Christy’s clothes were pungent with the salt-dry smell of over-smoked fish, her hair frizzed from too much time spent leaning into the oven, and she was convinced that her face was beginning to take on the leathered sheen of dried fish skin.
Frank gave her the weekend off and she caught the little train into Lynton. The two short carriages filled up as the train paused at village stations and clusters of women in tight shoes crowded on, their wrists creased around the handles of too many deflated shopping bags. Fields marooning church towers gave way to car-parks and net-curtained windows as the train drifted into Lynton. Leaning too far out of the window, Christy watched the spaghetti chaos of rail tracks unravel until three strands remained and she was too close to see them run up to the platforms and stop.
Maisie’s hairdressing salon was in the centre of town, near the fountain where she and Christy had spent aimless hours as teenagers, swapping insults with boys they half knew as a prelude to being snogged by them in the station waiting room. As Christy walked by she noticed a row of girls giggling, sitting on the wall around the fountain, their feet obscured by piles of plastic bags full of cheap dresses bought this morning at Dorothy Perkins for the party tonight. Relentless, unchanging Saturday behaviour: Christy was depressed by the sameness of it. Two youths, crew-cut and dressed in shapeless dirty jackets and trainers, sat down near the girls, lit cigarettes and began to swap loud remarks about the slappers they had been with last night. She turned away, not wanting to see the girls toss their hair and beckon with shining eyes and gestures until the youths sidled close to them and the insults began. She suddenly wished Frank had taken her further away when Jessica died, to a new town where experience could start again. But then she would never have met Mick. Mick could take her away. They could live in London maybe, or in a little cottage with gingham curtains. He could do that kind of thing, he was free. He could give her his life to share. There was nothing to tie him to anyone but her.
Wrapped in fantasy, Christy entered Maisie’s salon. Music pumped over the whir of hairdriers. Maisie winked at her but went on parting and combing wet white hair on the head of a friend of Jessica’s. All Jessica’s friends came to the salon where Maisie worked, and they all requested Maisie. With them came a trail of quiet tweed and pleats, button-down shirts and shiny handbags to match the shoes. Jessica had never looked like them, never been one of them, but they were fond of her and determined to help still, three years on. They weren’t comfortable in this setting of chrome, bright lights and big music. They had to submit to having their hair washed in sinks shaped like dog bowls and the mirrors had atrophied snakes and spears twisted in the frames, but they came for Jessica’s sake. They must support her daughter, it was all that could be done.
Maisie was furious.
‘God, I’ve got bloody Marjory Perkins and then Elizabeth Moore today,’ she whispered to Christy when the white-haired chairwoman of the WI had gone, leaving a small tip and a faint aroma of talcum-powdered goodness behind her. Maisie washed brushes vigorously and carried on. ‘They all ask for me and I spend my whole time doing sets and rinses. I can’t stand it, I never have time to do anyone young, and those old bags just go on and on about poor dear Jessica and poor dear Frank, was it wise for him to start that trout farm, until I want to chop their stupid tongues off, or at least give them peroxide instead of brunette rinse.’
‘Well, you can do me if you like,’ Christy offered, ‘but don’t cut too much off. I don’t want it to look any shorter, or any different.’
Maisie threw her scissors and combs into a tall jar of blue liquid and wiped her hands on her skirt.
‘No bloody thanks, but I’ll meet you for a drink after work. Why are you here anyway?’
Typical Maisie, thought Christy. I don’t know why I go on trying to please her.
‘I’m coming to stay with you tonight. I thought we could go out and have fun. We haven’t been on our own for ages.’
Maisie was delighted.
‘Is Mick away? Oh good. We can go to a party or something and get really dolled up. It’s Anna’s hen night; she won’t mind if you come. I’m sick of bloody boyfriends after Ben being back here for all that time. You should see the state of the flat. He’s bought another motor bike, or some bits of one anyway. He’s a right pain and he wouldn’t take me to London when I asked him to.’
A discreet cough interrupted her and the broad figure of Marjory Perkins loomed in the mirror, or as much of her as would fit. The sensible shoes and broad calves were cut off by the table, and the beige mackintosh sleeves, one dangling a handbag, the other caught tight by the hook of her umbrella, were set too far apart on either side of her solid frame to be seen in the mirror.
‘Hello, my dear, I’m so glad you had an appointment for me. Alan has a directors’ dinner this evening, and I haven’t had a moment to see poor Frank since I don’t know when . . .’
Maisie pushed her down into the chair and engulfed the kindly tinkle of her conversation in a white towel.
‘God save me,’ she whispered, rolling her eyes.
Christy laughed and left the salon. She wanted to buy a present for Mick. It was his birthday on Hallowe’en; six weeks away but she was determined to have everything organised well in advance. She thought she might give him a surprise party at the cottage, his present would be bestowed beforehand in the morning, if only she could find the right thing.
The new shopping mall with its piped music and warm air was a good place to start. Christy joined the trail of slow-moving shoppers at the entrance and with them began to wander through the arcades. It was like being under water; all sound was softened and dulled and the faces turned towards shop windows were expressionless and pale green, reflecting the glass roof and the mossy carpeting. She realised she had been standing in front of a men’s clothes shop for five minutes without taking anything in. The clump of shoppers she had come in with had moved on through the hall. She could see the red anoraks of one couple bobbing back and forth in a shoe shop. She watched the two bending and rising then stopping as they tied laces and looked at one another’s feet, incongruous in pristine shoes beneath old jeans. In a minute they would sail out again and on, extra plastic bags banging against their calves.
Christy suddenly didn’t want to buy Mick something big. It had to be small, not heavy but visibly expensive, something she could slip into her pocket, or into his when she gave it to him at breakfast on his birthday. She wandered into an electrical shop, past a bank of televisions like windows in a tower block, busy and unheeding of their neighbours but displaying uniform scenes in lurid colours. Green turf on a smaller television at the side attracted her and she watched a race start, the horses breaking in kaleidoscope pattern as the flag went up, then reforming in a long tight chain as they found their positions as near to the front and as close to the railings as they could manage. The jockeys perched above their backs like harlequins in a parade, still and faceless as the horses hurtled towards the final straight. The front runner was drawing ahead now, its body lengthening, the muscles standing out on its quarters so it seemed to be pulling the others behind it on an invisible string. A few people then a mass came into view at the railings and the horse slowed as it passed the post. Christy wasn’t watching the race though; she crouched by the screen, willing the camera to move back from the winner whose jockey was punching the air in victory. She had seen Mick. It must have been him, tall and dark with his long black coat on, standing beside the finish. Her heart bumped in her chest as though she had caught him in bed with someone. Maybe it wasn’t him. It couldn’t be. The camera was slow, so slow to move back to the course. There was no sound, she didn’t know where the race was, she didn’t know if they would show it again.
The picture changed; it was the track and the horses again. Second and third place were decided by a photo finish. The finishing post jerked into view, the mass of green and brown and blue jackets behind the white railings appeared as they had before. She knelt in front of the television trying not to blink, searching the shunting picture for Mick, but the black coat wasn’t there. She thought she saw it moving back in the crowd, but her eyes were hot with staring and she wasn’t sure. The picture changed again, a different race in progress, a different track. She could tell because the railings were curved at the top. Pink and stiff with embarrassment and fury, she stood up and walked out of the shop without looking at the staff, afraid that they were watching her and knew she had seen her boyfriend where he hadn’t said he would be.
Christy only told Maisie because she knew Maisie would dismiss it. They were getting ready to go out, clothes washed up around the bed where Maisie lay painting her fingernails.
‘What a bastard,’ said Maisie. ‘He’s probably got another girlfriend and a few children you don’t know about. You shouldn’t let him get away with it, Chris.’
Cold like a river streamed through Christy. ‘You mean you think I did see him? You don’t think it was a mistake? Maybe it was someone else who looks like him. It’s not likely to be him, is it?’
If she hadn’t told Maisie she could have forgotten it, pretended she’d imagined it. She would never have mentioned it to Mick because he would think she was so crazy about him she’d started seeing things. Maisie was meant to back her up and say she was daft. But Maisie knew it was Mick. She hadn’t even questioned it. She accepted it and moved on to her toenails.
It must have been him. She must ask him. She would die if she didn’t ask him now, this minute.
Maisie stood up, splaying her toes, and waddled across to Christy.
‘You can’t have him taking you for a ride like this. You’ve got to talk to him, get some explanations. Treat him mean, Christy, or you’ll be trampled.’ She patted Christy’s back and kissed the top of her head.
Christy pressed her palms against her eyes, heaving breaths, not crying, please God, not crying.
The party was upstairs in a pub. Anna was an old friend of Maisie’s from school; Christy had met her often before and liked her. Her round face was framed by candyfloss hair and her voice fluted like a child’s. Christy thought it was a shame she was getting married, it would encourage Maisie. Christy had never been to a hen night before. She didn’t know anyone who was married, apart from proper adults. Maisie was engaged, of course, but that was different. Christy didn’t believe that Maisie and Ben would ever get married. Maisie liked being engaged for the same reasons that she liked the motor bike in her flat: it gave her a reputation, it made her different.
Anna, though, was serious about her forthcoming nuptials, and kissing Maisie when she arrived, announced that she was determined to enjoy the hen night to the death. Not a detail had been forgotten. The girls giggled and squealed with faked pleasure when the phallic-shaped menus were brought. The green drinks they sipped were called Screaming Orgasms, and the food was served by three muscle-bound boys wearing shorts and vests. Christy’s nerves jangled. She could not look at the other girls; she was trapped in her own thoughts, scrabbling round and round after Mick. She resented their noise, their laughter, their intrusions on her separateness. The longer she sat there, the more separate she became. She felt an icy disgust when Maisie, drunk, started stroking the waiters’ arms when they leant over to serve her. The girl next to Christy was small and dark. She didn’t drink and she pushed her food around her plate, eating only the salad when it arrived limp and wan after its voyage from the kitchens.
Christy caught her eye and smiled; the girl stared back at her.
‘How do you know Anna?’ Time would pass more quickly if she talked.
‘I massage her, I’m learning aromatherapy. You’re Mick Fleet’s girlfriend, aren’t you? I’ve done him as well.’
Christy looked at the girl’s hands. They were small; long nails yellow and repulsive flicked crumbs across the tablecloth. Christy shivered imagining those hands on Mick’s back. She pretended she knew.
‘Oh yes, I remember Mick saying he liked aromatherapy, I’ve never had it . . .’ Her voice trailed off, she was stuck, she couldn’t think of anything else to say. She wished she had never started talking to this girl. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Linda. You’re Christy, aren’t you? Mick talks about you sometimes.’
Talks not talked. Christy lit a cigarette, letting her hair fall over her face to give herself time. Another waiter came in and whispered to Anna at the top of the table; she nodded and music poured into the room. Everyone looked up, their mouths open. Anna giggled, straightening in her seat and pushing her hair back. The waiter began swaying and as he swayed he fumbled with the buttons of his shirt. His face was in shadow, a tear of sweat wobbled on his cheek. He brushed it off, keeping his eyes on Anna as he dragged off his shirt. A stripper. Christy felt sorry for him. She wondered if he was drunk, or if he did this night after night for hot-skinned half-cut girls, protected from them by his own glass bowl of stony sobriety. He wasn’t even good-looking. His clothes drooped and fell to the floor; he couldn’t muster the panache to fling them across the room in the traditional manner. Inch by inch his body emerged, stodgy and much too hairy. Linda suddenly pushed her plate into the centre of the table, knocking her glass over and Christy’s next to it. Red wine swelled then sank into the pink cloth. Christy thought about mopping it up but couldn’t be bothered.
Linda was leaning forwards across the table towards Anna, her hands spreading in the spongy cloth, yellow nails flexing.
‘How could you do this, Anna? It’s grotesque. Who’s enjoying it? Anyone?’ She looked round at the over-made-up girls, each one looked away, not wanting to meet her eyes.
Maisie rose and glared down at Linda. The stripper carried on undressing, slowly, halfheartedly. Maisie drank her wine before she spoke, a good gesture as it gave everyone time to focus on her.
‘I think you should go, Linda. You’re upsetting Anna.’
Christy had been tensed for Maisie to shout and rant, to start tearing her own clothes off to prove her point. But she was quiet and in control; Linda seemed the fool, not the stripper, not even the gawping girls. Not Maisie. Christy relaxed and inhaled pride at her sister diffusing awkwardness instead of intensifying it. Linda picked up her bag and rushed out of the room, her long scarf trailing with pathetic flamboyance behind her. Christy hoped she was crying. Her drunkenness vanished, Maisie knelt next to Anna, making her laugh, and the girls next to her, until the whole table had unfrozen again.
Walking home to the flat with Maisie, Christy’s step was jaunty with admiration for her sister and satisfaction at the downfall of Linda.
‘You were brilliant, Maisie, you saved Anna from a miserable night. I don’t know what made Linda do that. She wasn’t even drinking.’ They were passing Maisie’s salon now. Christy looked in and stopped dead. A huge photograph filled the window. ‘My God, Maisie. Look at this.’ Maisie laughing looked out at Maisie laughing looking in and Christy next to her, dwarfed by her giant black-and-white sister.
‘They put it up this afternoon; it only arrived from the enlargement place yesterday. What do you think?’
Christy didn’t know what she thought. It was the picture Mick had taken the first time he met Maisie and Danny. The handle bars of the motor bike curved gleaming chrome; Christy remembered Maisie leaning forwards between them led on by Mick’s flow of sweet talk. She turned away, cold suddenly; Maisie had moved on.
‘I didn’t know you were using that picture for the shop.’ She hurried after Maisie along the street. ‘I didn’t know you even had that picture.’
‘Mick sent it the other day and they needed something big so they enlarged it.’ Maisie was unconcerned, feeling in her bag for keys as they turned down towards her building. ‘It’s good, isn’t it?’
Christy nodded.
‘It’s very good. I wish you’d told me.’
Maisie sighed.
‘It’s no big deal, Chris. You should stop getting so wound up about things.’
In the flat Maisie went into the bathroom to brush her teeth. Christy leaned in the doorway of the sitting room. Orange light flooded in from the street and danced on the motor bike, sending warped shadows across the floorboards. The air was warm and smelt of stale scent; Christy’s face sagged with exhaustion. There were questions knocking somewhere in her mind but sleep shrouded them and she couldn’t think. Something wrong was happening and her body could not face it. She got into Maisie’s scrambled bed and shut her eyes. Maisie came through moments later: Christy was already asleep, fully dressed with her heels prodding the blankets. She looked like a small child in dressing-up clothes. Maisie took the shoes off and got in beside her. She wished Jessica could tell her how to help Christy.
Maisie was late. I heard her rattle in through the main doors of the court house even though I was halfway up the second flight of stairs. Her bracelets clanked as she heaped them on the table beside the metal detector and her voice carried up through the hall. ‘Do you have to empty my bag? Those are nail scissors. Are they really offensive? Oh, I see, you think I might stab someone with them. Well, I’ll collect them from you later, shall I?’ Then her heels sharp across the floor and there she was in a cloud of scent and clean hair, wearing her pink fake-fur coat and hardly any skirt. ‘Sorry I’m late. Have we missed it?’ She followed me through to the next checkpoint, giggling. ‘It’s just like the Great Escape, isn’t it?’
We entered the courtroom. Tobin was standing, one elbow on his little folding table, the other draped in his black gown. He lost where he was in one of those endless sentences as his eyes bulged over Maisie, forcing silence into the room while we shuffled along to a pair of free seats in the public gallery. Mick hardly looked up, but the black-haired boy in the jury pushed his fingers through his hair and straightened his shoulders; next to him Lemon Face pursed her lips. Even the Judge gazed at Maisie, his eyebrows peaking to graze his wig.
Tobin took off his spectacles and wiped them on an ostentatious handkerchief. He shook it out and starched folds made a pattern of criss-cross shadow on white linen. He really strung this sort of thing out. To him the courtroom was a stadium. I’d seen him during lunch breaks talking to Mick’s barrister, sucking on a cigar at the pub they all went to, and there he merged into his chair and his surroundings, a pompous figure always, but not posturing the way he did in court. He knew the value of body language as well as a rock star. He put his spectacles back on and began to rev his speech up again. He had a policeman in the witness box and he was on his way to a major revelation. I could tell now when Tobin felt on top of things. He stood tall, swaying back and forth in the tiny space he filled between his desk and the one behind; if he’d been at home he would be pacing around his drawing room swilling brandy in a big glass.
‘Exhibit 85, please.’ He looked over his spectacles at the clerk who shuffled out, allowing Tobin several seconds to gaze at Maisie. His side-kick nudged him and he leant down to receive instructions, his eyes never leaving Maisie’s face.
The clerk reappeared in front of two policemen. They were carrying a bulky polythene parcel sealed with yellow tape.
‘What’s that?’ Maisie whispered, but I shook my head.
‘Don’t know. It looks like a set of drainrods to me.’
Tobin’s voice was plum deep in pleasure.
‘Constable Rayne, do you recognise this exhibit?’ The clerk was unwrapping the parcel on the table beneath the Judge’s platform; the Judge slid forward on his throne to see. ‘Your Honour, members of the jury, this exhibit was found in the grounds of Mr Fleet’s house. Buried there, as Constable Rayne will tell us.’
Then he was off on those interminable questions, sifting every grain of nuance out of the policeman’s responses until a dust of possibility lay over even the most insignificant yes or no.
‘Would you tell the jury how you came to find the exhibit?’
‘Can you show us on the plan of the property, which the jury will find on page seventeen of the third bundle, where precisely the exhibit was located?’
‘Were you alone when you unearthed the exhibit?’
All the time he was asking, the policeman and the rest of us in the courtroom had our eyes fixed on the exhibit as the clerk unwrapped whatever it was. It was like pass the parcel. A question, another layer, an answer, another layer. Even the Crown Jewels couldn’t need that much padding. Tobin knew it would take ages. That was why he had asked if the policeman recognised it without waiting for an answer and before it was opened. He wanted everyone to be on tenterhooks.
Maisie was like a spaniel on a scent at my side; she didn’t move, but her hair shivered down her cheek. The final yellow tape crunched through the silent room and there they were. Three guns. One sleek and black, slender as the drainrod I wished it had been, the other two maimed, cut short where the barrels were meant to be. I bit my tongue to stop my teeth shaking. Dad had a shotgun for rabbits and the occasional duck, but it was small, cartoon-like in its simplicity. These guns had big straps and sights and a menace which exploded in the courtroom like a shot.
This was one of Tobin’s finest moments. No one moved but the air became stultifying, as if everyone had inhaled all the oxygen at once.
‘Did these guns bear fingerprints, Constable Rayne?’
‘Yes, sir, they did, sir.’
‘And did these fingerprints tally with those given by the defendant to the police at the time of his arrest?’
I could only see the policeman’s square back, flesh in a roll above his collar and then his hair.
‘Yes, sir, they did.’
Triumph sleeked around Tobin like ermine.
‘I have no further questions for this witness, Your Honour.’
I couldn’t look at Mick. I didn’t want to see his expression; whatever it was it would be the wrong one for being accused of hiding guns.
Maisie squeezed my arm.
‘Are you OK, Chris?’ she whispered.
I nodded.
‘Yes, I wish we could go out, though, but it would look bad, we’ll have to hang on until the lunch break.’
Having peaked, Tobin threw himself into his chair and crossed his legs, ready to enjoy the defence cross examination. The headlines in the local paper the next day were robbed of absolute sensation by the fact that the Judge had ordered that Mick should not be named.