‘There I go again,’ she said, dabbing the spill with the heel of her sock.
Daniel gave Blitz the last of his toast, then finished his milk as he listened to Minnie rant at the news. The Prime Minister, John Major, was talking about the potential for economic recovery.
‘Yer arse in parsley,’ Minnie railed at the screen. ‘They’ll not be satisfied ’till they have this country on its knees … God, I hated that woman, but he’s not much better.’
She wasn’t expecting an answer from Daniel and so he said nothing. He put a piece of coal on the fire.
‘How was your bath, love?’ she asked him, her cheeks wet as if with fresh tears. She leaned over the arm of her chair, a smile on her face and her eyes merry. ‘Did you get your work finished?’
‘Aye.’
‘That’s good.’
‘Are you all right?’ he asked her, seeing her wipe her face again.
‘I’m grand, love. I’m just incensed by the sight of that bloody man. Turn that news over. Turn it off. I can’t even stomach the sight of him.’
Daniel got up and changed the channel. It was sport and he glanced at her to see if she would allow it. Usually she would ask him to watch it on the black and white in the kitchen, or she would say yes but then lose patience. Tonight her eyes wavered before the screen, then closed for a long blink.
As Daniel sat down to watch the game, her eyes closed and her head twice bobbed down sharply, waking her. When her eyes began to close again, he got up and gently took the glass from her hand and carried it through to the kitchen. The dog wanted out and so he opened the back door. He washed up the dishes from dinner and wiped the portion of the kitchen table from which they had eaten.
When Blitz came back inside, Daniel locked up, closing the windows and bolting the back door. The dog settled into his basket, as the house warmed to Minnie’s snores.
In the living room her head was thrown back in the chair, the fingers of her right hand still reaching out to grasp the glass that Daniel had removed.
Daniel stood with his hands on his hips for a moment and sighed. He turned off the television and put the guard across the fire. He turned out the light beside her chair then took her hand and helped her forward until he could get an arm underneath her shoulder.
‘No, leave me, love, leave me,’ she protested.
But he lifted her up, put her arm over his shoulder and walked her, a hand by her waist, out of the living-room door and upstairs. Twice he had to stop and steady himself, one foot behind him on the lower step, when she leaned back into him, but he got her upstairs and then lowered her on to her bed, where she lay with her lips parted and her torso twisted so that her feet were on the floor.
Daniel knelt and unlaced her boots, slipped them off and then her big wool socks. He was always amazed by the smallness of her feet. He loosened her blouse and peeled the cardigan from her, then took the clasp from her hair, allowing her long grey curls to spill over the pillow.
He took her feet and slipped them under the covers, lifted her shoulders a little and centred her on the pillow, before pulling the quilt over her.
‘You’re a good lad,’ she whispered to him, when he was still leaning over her. Always she would do this: surprise him with her consciousness. ‘I love you, so I do.’
He tucked her in, and turned off the light.
‘G’night, Mam,’ he whispered, in the near dark.
25
It was the second week of Sebastian’s trial. Daniel was deliberately not reading the newspapers, but he was distracted by a story that he glimpsed over someone’s shoulder on the Tube. When he reached St Paul’s he ran into a newsagent’s where he picked up a copy of the Mail and flicked through it. On page six there was his photograph. He was frowning; it was a shot taken at the entrance to the Old Bailey. The headline read: THE MAN WHO WANTS TO FREE THE ANGEL KILLER. The report also mentioned Irene.
Daniel put the paper back on the rack. When he arrived at court, it was just before nine. The crowds outside the Old Bailey had not lessened since the trial began. A policeman shielded Daniel as he tried to enter the court, a cup of coffee in one hand and his briefcase in the other.
‘Mr Hunter, what’s the defence going to be?’ a journalist shouted, and Daniel turned in case he recognised the man, but it was not the journalist who had called at his flat. ‘Would you say the Crown’s winning?’
The crowd jostled around the reporter.
*
Inside the Old Bailey, Daniel straightened his shoulders and walked towards Court Thirteen, looking up at the ornate, painted walls of the court. He saw Irene minutes before the judge came in. She tapped his shoulder as she passed, and bent down to whisper, ‘Bastards,’ so close that her voice tickled his ear. He knew she had seen the article.
‘They don’t know how they pervert justice,’ she said. ‘How dare they be judge and jury?’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Daniel whispered back. ‘Good luck.’
‘The Crown calls John Cairns.’
John Cairns was a man uncomfortable in a suit. Daniel could see from the way the suit pulled at the shoulders that Cairns felt constricted. The man stepped into the witness box and took a sip of water before looking at the jury, at the judge and then at Gordon Jones with his sharp upturned jaw, who was addressing him.
‘Mr Cairns, you work at the Barnard Park Adventure Playground, is that correct?’
‘Yes.’
‘Please can you state your role, and how long you have been employed there?’
‘I am one of the play managers, and I’ve worked there for the last three years.’ His voice was thick, as if he were nervous or recovering from a cold.
The court was freshly convened and rapt.
‘Mr Cairns, can you tell us about the morning of Monday 9 August this year?’
Mr Cairns sniffed, and leaned on the witness box for support. ‘I was first in. I’m always first. I opened up as usual and then made a cup of coffee. I always check the yard on Monday, in case any of the ropes are loose or … usually I need to tidy up some litter, so I did that next. It was while I was doing that that I found … the child’s body.’
‘The body was later identified as that of the victim, Benjamin Stokes. Can you confirm for us the exact location of the body when you found it?’
‘It was partially hidden under the small wooden playhouse that we have in the playground, in the far corner near Barnsbury Road and Copenhagen Street.’
‘At this point I would direct you to page fifty-three in the jury bundle. You will see here a map of the playground with the areas identified by numbered and lettered squares. Please can you tell us the approximate location on this map?’
‘E3.’
‘Thank you. Was the body immediately obvious to you?’
‘No, not at all. I saw there was something there, but to be honest I just thought it was a plastic carrier bag or something, litter that had got caught by the trees near the fence …’
There was a gasp from the gallery. Daniel glanced up to see Mrs Stokes lean forward, a hand over her mouth. Her husband pulled her into him, but she was now inconsolable and had to be taken out. Sebastian sat up straight with his hands folded in his lap. He seemed interested in the evidence of the play manager and also strangely pleased by Mrs Stokes’s breakdown. Daniel put a hand on his back to ask him to turn round, when he turned to watch Mrs Stokes go.
Kenneth Croll was in court, and he leaned forward then, rising out of his seat to do so, and poked Sebastian in the back. The thick finger was enough to send Sebastian jolting forward in his seat. Daniel glanced at Croll out of the corner of his eye. Sebastian began scrunching up his eyes again, and rocking slightly, back and forth.