LOST SOULS. Neil White

       Chapter Eight

      I made it to the morning briefing on the abductions, held early to give the evening editions and lunchtime television a chance to get their reports ready. There was nothing much that was new so I headed to the Magistrates’ Court, next to the police station.

      Going to court had been my fall-back in London. If in doubt, go to court, because there was always something to write about. My career had started by writing court reports, when I had worked on one of the local papers based in Turners Fold. All the crime from Turners Fold ended up in the Blackley court—it was the biggest local town—so I knew my way around the courthouse, an old Victorian building, with pillars by the doors and high ceilings that wrecked the acoustics. The magistrates sat high and lofty, looked down on the lawyers perched on old wooden pews, and at the defendants perched high in the dock.

      The regular court reporter, Andy Bell, a haggard old smoker with long, grey hair and patched-up trousers, had been hostile at first. He had put the years in, on Fleet Street in his younger days, and, like me, he had returned to his northern roots. But he had mellowed over the last few days. He remembered me from before I moved to London, and he soon realised that we wanted different things. I wanted the angles on Blackley life, the background stories. He just wanted the day-to-day knocks.

      It was the internet thieves Andy hated, the ones who scoured the web for his stories when cases first hit the courtroom and then just arrived for the sentence hearings. I didn’t do that. He had earned the right to those stories. And anyway, he knew the tricks. If he had a story that he knew would interest the nationals, he would get the local paper to hold it back from the website until after the London deadlines. By then his story would be in London and in print before the internet hyenas knew anything about it.

      It was one of those stop-start days, the cells quiet, and I was filling in the gaps by drinking coffee with Sam Nixon, one of the defence lawyers.

      Nixon was one of the main players in the courtroom. Tall and dapper, he looked every inch the lawyer. Single-breasted Aquascutum suit, neat and sharp, and Thomas Pink shirt, he shone success when surrounded by failure. The courthouse attracted showmen, those who strutted and boasted, promising clients acquittals they couldn’t deliver, but Sam was different. His accent didn’t have the polish of his looks, he spoke direct and bluntly and the magistrates liked him for it. If Sam Nixon said it had happened, then it had. The earth is flat? According to Mr Nixon it is, and that’s enough.

      I was talking football with Nixon and watching the movement from the court corridor, the town’s drama. Young men in tracksuits slouched on hard plastic seats, there to see friends, to socialise, part of their scene. Bad skin. Bad teeth. Bad lives. The older ones sat back and looked bored. The first-timers wore suits and stared at the floor, picking at their nails.

      A prosecutor loitered nearby, but he wasn’t saying much, more interested in Sam’s football tales than his caseload. He was a good lawyer—I had been around enough prosecutors to know that most of them are—but the machinery of the civil service knocked the fight out of them, so that being able to forget about work became the best part of the job.

      I turned around at the sound of laughter from a corridor that ran from one of the back courts. A man bounced into the foyer, his arms swinging defiantly, his grin showing off brown teeth and a complexion that looked like he had hovered over too many joints, his skin tarred and lined. He turned in a circle, his chest out, his arms in a come-on pose, and said to Sam, ‘She’s a fucking star, that one,’ before strutting past the glass ushers’ kiosk and out of the main door.

      The ‘fucking star’ emerged from the same corridor, a tired look in her eyes. I had met her before but I couldn’t remember her name. She was one of Sam’s assistants, pretty and blonde and tall, with her hair tied back into a ponytail that swished against the black suit cut tight to her body, her skirt just above her knees. She had the figure to carry it, and I sensed the mob of track-suits a few yards away turn to gape.

      Sam Nixon nodded towards her. ‘Have you met Alison Hill, one of the lawyers at Parsons?’

      I smiled and held out my hand. ‘I’ve seen you around.’ When Alison shook, she smiled back at me, her eyes warm.

      ‘Nice to meet you,’ she said. I sensed the confidence that comes from good education and good looks.

      I nodded towards the exit doors. ‘Looks like someone was happy.’

      Alison looked that way briefly, and then she said, ‘I lost.’

      I thought back to the client as he’d bounced through the court foyer. He looked like he had spent his life being beaten by the system, every loss carved into the anger lines around his eyes. He had lost again but at least he had stood up to it.

      ‘I’m not so sure about that,’ I said. When she didn’t respond, I asked her, ‘Was justice done?’

      ‘Not yet,’ interrupted Sam, and he looked solemn.

      Alison looked puzzled.

      ‘The bill,’ said Sam, and then he began to grin. ‘The job’s not done until we get paid. Then there’s justice.’

      As Alison rolled her eyes, my eyes caught someone looking at Sam.

      He was in the middle of a pack of drinkers. They all looked haggard and tired, their faces much older than their years, red and puffy, their eyes unfocused. Their clothes hung loose and stained, their movements were slow and deliberate.

      I guessed that whoever it was, he wasn’t pleased with Sam’s last effort for him. His eyes were red like all the rest, drunk even that early in the morning, but the focus was sharp and clear. Despite the drink, his stare was hard and direct.

      I looked at Sam, who acted like he hadn’t noticed him. He was talking to Alison.

      I was about to say something when Sam reached down for his phone. When he looked at his screen, he seemed concerned for a moment and then held it up. ‘I’ve got a message to go and see Harry.’

      Alison winced. ‘So I can have your office after all.’

      Sam laughed, but I could tell from the look in his eye that there was some truth in that. I knew of Harry Parsons’ reputation, the curse of the local police, and I had heard that he was as ruthless with his staff.

      As Sam left, I watched the drunk follow him with his eyes, the glare ever-present.

      I turned to the prosecutor, a tall man in a shiny suit, with flashes of grey at his temples, badger-style, and frayed tips on his shirt collars. I didn’t know if he earned less or just cared less, but he seemed a fashion rail away from Sam Nixon. ‘Who’s that?’ I asked, as I nodded towards the man in the corridor.

      The prosecutor looked for a moment, chewed his lip as he thought of a name, and then said, ‘Terry McKay. He’s here most weeks. Drunk, usually.’ He checked his watch. ‘They’ll have to call his case soon. If it gets adjourned over lunch, we won’t see him again.’

      I smiled. Terry McKay. I made a note of the name and went back into court.

      Laura sensed Pete’s anger as they arrived back at the station. He was gunning for Eric Randle now. She wasn’t sure that they had got it wrong, but it had turned Pete silent and brooding. The echoes of their footsteps were the only sounds as they walked along an old tiled corridor heading to the Incident Room. As they got there, Pete spoke in a whisper, an angry hiss. ‘Egan will love this,’ he said.

      There were a few officers in the Incident Room, sifting through information brought in by those cops knocking