Road.
‘I can’t believe he really did it,’ says Julianne. ‘And I let Charlie babysit for him.’
‘You weren’t to know.’
She shivers slightly and her shoulder brushes mine.
‘Can I ask you something?’ I ask.
‘What’s that?’
‘Judge Spencer - what’s he been like?’
She looks at me oddly. ‘Where did that come from?’
‘Do you think he’s favouring one side or the other?’
‘Why?’
‘It’s just a question.’
She studies me momentarily, knowing that I’m holding something back.
‘He’s a grumpy old sod, but he seems pretty fair. He’s very nice to the jury. I think he feels sorry for them. It’s a pretty horrible case . . . seeing those photographs of burnt bodies.’
‘Has he disallowed any evidence?’
‘I don’t get to hear the legal arguments.’
‘What happens now?’
‘The prosecution has finished. The defence begins calling witnesses tomorrow.’ Julianne turns down the volume. ‘I just hope they get found guilty and Marco can get on with the rest of his life.’
‘What is he going to do?’
‘He wants to go to London. Friends have offered to put him up and help find him a job. He’s applied for university but that’s not until the autumn.’
For a few moments we sit in silence. Julianne picks at lint from the sleeve of her sweater.
‘Would you like to have dinner with us?’ she asks. ‘Or maybe you’d prefer to go home and sleep?’
‘No.’
She stands and pirouettes away from me before I try to read anything into the invitation. Summoning the girls, she serves dinner and we sit together at the table like a proper family, or like proper families in TV commercials for Bisto and frozen vegetables. It feels familiar. The familiar is what I crave.
It cannot last, of course. Charlie has homework. Emma has bedtime. Julianne says I can read Emma a story but I fall asleep halfway through it. An hour later, Julianne shakes me awake, holding her finger to my lips.
The dishwasher is humming as I come downstairs. The TV turned down low.
‘I’ve been thinking about what you said about the divorce,’ I say.
Julianne closes her eyes and opens them again, looking in an entirely different direction. She elevates her face. ‘And?’
‘I think
‘You might be right.’ She doesn’t want an argument.
‘Do you want to remarry?’
‘No.’
‘So why?’
‘I don’t feel married any more.’
‘I do.’
Julianne pushes bracelets up her forearm. ‘Do you know your problem, Joe?’
I know she’s going to tell me.
‘You want everything to
Her admonishment is intimate and so laced with melancholy it leaves me nothing to say.
‘You don’t have to go home,’ she says. ‘You can sleep on the sofa.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you’re exhausted and some nights I get a little scared on my own.’
‘Scared?’
She slips her hand down my forearm and hooks her fingers under my palm. ‘I can have bad dreams too.’
My head is vibrating. The sensation comes and goes every few seconds. Opening my eyes, it takes me a moment to recognise my surroundings. I am on the sofa in the cottage.
I remember Julianne giving me a pillow and blankets, watching the news and feeling a sense of helplessness. Problems in Gaza, global warming, the credit crisis, ozone holes, soaring unemployment, casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan . . .
I don’t remember turning off the TV or the hallway light. Julianne must have decided not to wake me. I
The vibrations begin again. My mobile phone is wedged between my head and the armrest of the sofa.
I press green. It’s Ronnie Cray.
‘Where are you?’
‘What is it?’
‘Ellis is on the move.’
My mind is issuing orders. My feet take a little longer to obey. Navigating through the darkened house, splashing water on my face, lacing my shoes. Suddenly, all thumbs, I can’t make the loops and knot the laces.
Julianne appears at the top of the stairs in a thin cotton night-dress. The light behind her paints her body in a silhouette that would make a bishop break his vows.
‘What is it?’ she asks.
‘Go back to bed. I have to go.’
‘This is what I don’t like, Joe.’
‘I know.’
Two unmarked police cars are waiting outside. Monk holds open a rear door. Ronnie Cray is inside, talking on her mobile. She hasn’t been to sleep since yesterday.
We travel in silence along Wellow Road towards Radstock and then take a series of B-roads heading west. Kieran the tech is sitting in the front passenger seat, fiddling with an earpiece and tapping on a keyboard. The surveillance vehicles are colour-coded dots on a satellite map displayed on a laptop screen.
Safari Roy over the two-way: ‘Mobile One: We’re two back, keeping visual. He’s indicating right . . . turning on to the B3135.’
‘Copy that.’
Another voice: ‘Mobile Three: I’m two miles ahead on the A39. I can take over at Green Ore.’
Sunrise is an hour away. Cray looks at her watch. ‘How soon can we get a chopper in the air?’
‘Forty minutes,’ says Kieran.
We push on through the ink-dark night, listening to the radio chatter and watching the grid lights of larger towns that dot the landscape. Still heading roughly west, we pass through Cheddar and Axbridge and dozens of small villages that appear and disappear, each looking the same.
Gordon Ellis is heading for the North Somerset coast. Every so often he pulls over and waits or doubles back for several miles before turning and resuming his journey. He’s making sure that he’s not being followed, perhaps checking number plates. Safari Roy gets worried and drops back further. A tracking device on the Ford Focus will keep us in touch as long as Ellis stays with the vehicle.
The eastern horizon is now a yellow slash and the treetops on the high ground are changing colour. The helicopter is in the air but still half an hour away. It’s another call-sign in the chorus of chatter and static on the radio.
Ellis seems to be slowing down, still turning at every roundabout and doubling back. He’s on the A38, passing under the M5. At the next roundabout he takes the second exit on to Bridgewater Road and after half a mile turns left towards Berrow and the coast. The landscape is flat and windswept, broken only by occasional villages and the Mendip Hills in the south.
Kieran points to a satellite image that shows clusters of white boxes along a six-mile beach stretching from Burnham-on-Sea to Brean Down. Caravan sites, chalet parks and holiday cabins are like miniature communities set
