Paternoster Read Free

crept from the courtroom, humiliated.
    Her heels clattered down the hallway and she shoved through a wooden door into the Ladies. Her face was ghostly in the purplish light: years before, the first time she’d attended court, she’d queried it and been informed that the light prevented drug takers from finding a vein. The cisterns were bolted shut, too. No hiding packages in there.
    Jackie jumped when the door banged behind her.
    ‘You OK?’ Her boss, Miranda Tyson, kicked open the door to each stall, checking for eavesdroppers. ‘You had a rough ride in there. Tosser.’
    ‘He’s doing his job,’ Jackie said, running a bowl of cold water and splashing her face. She dabbed it dry with a paper towel and said frankly, ‘I’m finished, aren’t I?’
    ‘No.’ Miranda hitched her bum against a basin. Her nails were painted navy and a huge tiger’s eye ring dominated her middle finger. ‘When do you want to come back to work?’
    ‘Undercover?’
    Miranda shook her head. ‘You’re outed, sweetie.’ As Jackie started to protest, she said, ‘It’s not the drugs. I understand all that. Been there myself.’
    ‘I never injected. Smoked, yes. I could control that.’
    ‘I know. But you’ve taken a pounding, and two years undercover is enough for now. Try something new. There’s plenty to get your teeth into.’ She leaned into Jackie and said in a tempting, sing-song voice, ‘Mobile phone cash transaction fraud.’
    Jackie wrinkled her nose.
    ‘Hey, don’t diss it. International transactions, links to terrorism. Could be a scoop.’
    Jackie tossed the paper towel into the bin.
    Miranda studied her. ‘I could arrange a secondment, if you like. Five expressed an interest.’
    ‘Five?’ MI5, the Security Service. ‘Agent running?’
    ‘No. But casework. You’d be good. They’ve asked for you to design some training for their rookies, too.’
    ‘What about Six?’
    ‘You don’t want to work for those wankers,’ Miranda said. ‘They all think they’re James Bond, comparing willies all day long.’ She paused. ‘You’d have a bigger willy than any of them. They wouldn’t like it.’
    ‘I’ll think about it.’
    ‘You coming back in? Watch the rest of the trial?’
    ‘Maybe.’
    ‘Shame you missed the first day,’ Miranda said. ‘James Little gave evidence while you were holed up in the witness room.’
    ‘Little Jimmy?’ Jackie cast her mind to the skinny Scot with his love of puzzle books. ‘I heard he pleaded guilty.’
    He’d already been sentenced; was already serving time in some Victorian monstrosity that retained its hanging shed.
    ‘He did. He also testified against the gang.’
    ‘Hell.’ Her guts crunched at the thought of how much courage that must’ve taken.
    ‘Spilled the beans about it all. What the gang was up to, where the guns were headed, the whole lot.’ Miranda scrutinised herself in the mirror and smoothed her fingertip along a wrinkle beside her eye. ‘And how he sneaked out of that warehouse and called the police. Told them what Hammond had planned for you. Even gave them the number plate. It’s down to him they found you so quickly.’
    ‘What?’ Jackie felt a stone in her stomach.
    Miranda turned to face her. ‘Little Jimmy saved your life.’

    Jackie couldn’t face the courtroom again that day. She wandered the London streets, dazed, barely aware of the hustle on the pavements and stink of hot bodies on the Tube. The Thames flowed by, brown and unperturbed, deprived of her corpse but sated with others. She turned her back on it and headed into the city, and lost herself in the litter and lights and crocodiles of European school kids sporting identical backpacks.
    She lurked at the back of the court to hear the summing up, and was there when the jury returned guilty verdicts against both defendants. Dave the Nutter was sentenced to twelve years. He jabbed his arms through the bars of the dock and swore at the judge, threatening to kill him. The judge