‘What about me, though?’ she asked.
I thought about that one for a moment. ‘Do you want to come with me? We’ll both have cash, and there’s nothing keeping you here any more.’ I might have only known Elaine for a few days but sometimes you can just tell when they’re right for you. My mum and dad had got engaged after only two weeks, so whirl-wind romances obviously ran in the family. They’d lasted close to five years, too. Not that I fancied getting hitched just yet.
‘Do you want me to?’ she asked, her expression serious. I knew then that she felt the same way. Sometimes, with her, it had been difficult to tell. She could be a bit distant on occasion, to be honest with you, and it had made me wonder more than once whether I was maybe outstaying my welcome.
I nodded. ‘Yeah. I do.’
‘Have you got anywhere in mind?’
‘As long as it’s not Sierra Leone, I don’t much care.’
She smiled. ‘How about Bermuda? I’ve always fancied going there.’
I shrugged, thinking that whoever said money didn’t buy happiness was badly fucking mistaken. ‘Sure, Bermuda it is.’
‘Let’s have a little celebration, then. Fancy a beer?’
Life doesn’t get much better than that, does it? A beautiful naked woman with a devil tattooed on her shapely rear offering to go and get you a nice, cool lager while you lounge idly on her bed.
‘Yeah, I’d love one,’ I said, getting myself comfortable and lighting a cigarette of my own.
I watched as she breezed out of the bedroom, thinking that this time in a week I’d either be the happiest man on earth, or dead. And if I was dead, none of it was going to matter anyway. High stakes, yes, but then that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? That’s what made it all the more exciting. I remembered a phrase someone had quoted to me when I was out in Africa. It was something a French general had said to his men back in the nineteenth century when they were defending a town from the British. ‘The enemy have vastly superior numbers. They are coming at us from three sides. Soon their encirclement will be complete. Our right flank is collapsing, casualties are high, our forces are in retreat. Situation perfect. Attack.’ And that’s the thing. Half the joy is facing superior odds and winning. I might have thought I wanted the quiet life, but in the end, like all true soldiers, I longed for that old call to arms. Even better when there was a pot of gold at the end of it that would set me up for ever.
When Elaine returned with the beers, I had a grin on my face the size of China.
Friday, nine days ago
Gallan
I was in court all Friday afternoon giving evidence in the case of a child molester. He’d been accused of abusing young boys at the swimming club he helped run for inner-city kids with limited access to leisure facilities. It was something I’d worked on months before but, as everyone knows, the wheels of justice turn incredibly slowly. The defence barrister gave me as hard a time as possible in the stand, taking full advantage of the fact that forensic evidence was limited and that most of the case against his client rested solely on the words of children, several with learning difficulties, who could easily be lying. But I’m no pushover and I held my ground firmly and with barely concealed contempt for the man in front of me. The defendant already had three previous convictions for exactly this type of offence – not that the jury were aware of that – so, as far as I could see, the defence barrister had to be pretty damned sure the man he was defending was guilty. In which case, he was helping to put a dangerous man back on the street so that he could continue to prey on the kind of people least able to stop him. You can couch it how you want it, spout all this bullshit about everyone being entitled to a proper defence, but it was still wrong. As far as I was concerned, to put the rights of someone who abused children for his own enjoyment above those of the same children to live their lives free from these kinds of assaults was probably the single most perverted aspect of the British justice system, and one of the few things that made me doubt my own role in upholding the law. That well-educated, supposedly respectable men and women were paid sums of money vastly out of proportion to their talent to help keep this situation going, and from the public purse as well, only served to spawn that doubt.
The best way to combat this, however, is to beat them at their own game, and in that particular battle I knew I’d done just that, constantly staring my enemy down and using just the right levels of sarcasm in my answers to make him look foolish in front of the jury. It was a small victory – after all, the lawyer still went home with a nice fat sum of money for his efforts, if you can call them that – but it was a victory nonetheless, and I felt confident that a conviction was on the cards which, ultimately, was the most important thing.
So I was in good cheer when I escaped at just after five (the wheels of justice are not only incredibly slow but also work, with rare exceptions, to office hours) and took the DLR south of the river to pick up my daughter for the weekend. I hadn’t seen her in close to a month, so I was looking forward to it, and so it seemed was she, still being of the age where she can appreciate her dad’s company. We travelled back by Tube and I took her to the
