‘No, I mean . . .’
‘Best you not say anything.’
I nod and he goes back to cleaning his hands.
Julianne told me that he didn’t look like a monster. I wanted to tell her that they rarely ever do, bad people. They don’t have a rogue gene or a tattoo on their foreheads and, despite what people seem to think, you can’t ‘see it in their eyes’.
A few minutes later Brennan, Scott and Dobson are led upstairs and their trial resumes. Julianne will be there. Her witness gives evidence today. The survivor.
32
Two hours later I step outside the crown court registry office alongside Ruiz, who posted my bail.
‘Where did you get twenty grand?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘You put up your house.’
‘More fool them - it’s falling down.’
‘I don’t know how to thank you.’
‘Just make sure you turn up for the hearing or I’ll track you down myself and kill you.’
We’ve spent the last hour waiting for the paperwork to be approved while I recounted what happened yesterday - first with Sienna, and then Gordon Ellis. As I told him the story, I could see every turn in the road, every dip and curve, every fuck-up. When I reached the point where Ellis claimed to have slept with Charlie, I could feel the temperature rise in Ruiz.
‘It’s not true,’ he told me. ‘Charlie’s too bright for that.’
‘I know. I wish I could have been thinking more clearly at the time. Instead I wanted to kill him.’
‘Yeah, well, don’t go publicising the fact.’
We’re standing on the steps. The street outside is empty except for police and a handful of protesters who have stayed behind. Ruiz unscrews the lid from his sweet tin and pops a boiled lolly on his tongue.
‘You medicated?’
‘I’m all right.’
‘You should get some sleep.’
‘I have to talk to Julianne. She’s working today. Translating.’
I glance towards the courthouse and try to push away the memory of her watching me standing in the dock. The look she gave me. Blank. Empty.
‘Which court is she in?’
‘The Novak Brennan trial.’
Ruiz seems to taste something in his mouth that turns sour and unpleasant. He spits the sweet into the gutter where it shatters against the concrete.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You know Brennan?’
‘Yeah, I know him. We go way back.’
‘I just spent an hour in a holding cell with him.’
‘Then you might want to shower.’
Planting his hands in his coat pockets, Ruiz stares indolently into the pearl-grey sky, but his gaze has turned inward, replaying past events in his head. Clearing his throat, he begins talking about his years in Northern Ireland when he was seconded to work with the Royal Ulster Constabulary, monitoring intelligence on IRA terror cells operating on the British mainland but controlled from Belfast.
‘A prostitute called Mae Grace Brennan died of a drug overdose in a bedsit on the Antrim Road in 1972. It was just after Bloody Friday. She was dead two days before the neighbours broke into her flat. They found Novak and his sister living in filth. Novak was three, Rita only nine months. The baby was so undernourished she had bleeding sores on her buttocks and back. Novak could barely walk.
‘Brother and sister were made wards of the court and fostered. A Methodist minister and his wife adopted them, but the die was cast early when it came to Novak. He had behavioural problems which saw him expelled from school and given counselling from the age of seven. When he was ten he killed the family cat by throwing it against a wall after it scratched him. Four years later, he beat up the minister’s wife so badly that she had to be hospitalised.
‘The family gave up and Novak and Rita were taken back into care. Four months later they ran away and finished up on the streets of Belfast. It was 1983, just before I started my secondment.
‘That December the IRA set off a car bomb outside Harrods and killed six people - three of them coppers. I knew one of them. Inspector Stephen Dodd. He died on Christmas Eve. We were trying to trace the men responsible and the trail led to Belfast.’
Ruiz registers the passing of a police car. The windscreen catches the light like a camera flash and two men in uniform watch us as though we’re middle-aged suicide bombers.
‘What happened to Novak and Rita?’ I ask.
‘They lived on the streets, in squats, deserted factories and freight cars. Then Novak came up with a honey- trap scam. Rita used to dress up in a short leather skirt and boob tube, wandering up Adelaide Street, drawing attention from the johns. She lured them into a dark alley, unzipped them and got on her knees. That’s when Novak crept forward and tapped Rita on the shoulder, aiming a knife at their soft bits and demanding money.
‘He stole wallets, credit cards, sometimes clothes. Later he graduated to blackmail by taking Polaroids and threatening to post them home if the john didn’t stump up more cash. Nothing shakes money from a tree like a photograph of an underage girl giving a married man a blowjob.
‘Soon they had plenty of cash and rented a place. Set up house. Stayed clear of the social. It seemed like a perfect set-up.’
‘What happened?’
‘Rita attracted the wrong customer one night. A biker by the name of Nigel Geddes plucked her off the street before Novak could intervene. Geddes took Rita to a gang party where she was raped every which way by at least a dozen bikers. When they discovered she was a virgin they laughed. What were the chances, eh?
‘They dumped Rita back on the street, bleeding internally, with cigarette burns that turned to weeping sores. Novak lost it completely. The only constant in the shit-storm he called a life had been his little sister and he had made a promise to himself that he’d protect her.
‘So while Rita was still in hospital, being looked after by social workers, Novak bought himself a .25 calibre automatic handgun for eighty quid from an IRA gunrunner called Jimmy Ferris. The Ferret.
‘I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking a kid like Novak, with his history of violence and his hair-trigger temper, would go all Dirty Harry and shoot a place up, but it didn’t go down like that. Novak didn’t walk into that clubhouse guns blazing. He watched and he waited. He followed the bikers, making a note of their faces, their routines, where they lived . . .
‘The first mark made it easy. He left a bar in Short Strand with a young girl in tow. The pair walked into a dimly lit parking garage. By the time Novak turned the corner, the biker had the girl on her knees.
‘It was a familiar scene. Novak tapped her on the shoulder and she pulled back in fright. The biker opened his eyes and the pistol slipped between his lips.
‘Novak told the girl to get lost. He waited until she disappeared before he looked back at the biker whose shrinking wet penis was still hanging outside his pants.
‘The girl heard him begging for his life. Apologising. Novak counted down from three and pulled the trigger. Because it was a low-calibre weapon the bullet didn’t make a clean entry and exit. Instead it ricocheted around the inside of his skull, turning his brain to pulp.
‘Novak used the guy’s shirt to wipe the saliva and blood from the barrel of the gun. Two hours later, he killed a second biker. This time the guy ran into a school and hid in a toilet block. Novak found him in one of the stalls and
