A Fool for a Client (5 page)

Justine adop
t
ed a different approach.
She kept a metal paper cutter with a retractable blade up her sleeve and had loosened the elastic stitching there to let it slide out easily when she needed it.
To keep the sleeve shut she simply held it with her fingers as she ran, taking advantage of the f
act that it was a long sleeve.

On the one occasion when she had needed it, she had handed over a wad of dollars
before
letting the knife slip into her hand and using it.
Her passive handing over of the money had lulled the mugger into a false sense of security and the gun was no longer aimed at her when she slid the blade into its extended position and lunged at one of the eyes that only a second earlier had lit up at the sight of the money.
He had fallen to the ground bleeding and writhing in agony, but still holding the gun.
But his grip on the weapon loosened as he the pain continued, and Justine had calmly walked around him, taken
the money back and jogged on.

With her mother ill at the time, the last thing she needed was to be the subject of a
cause celebre
, even though she was confident that she could win it.
Now she had no such qualms and nothing too lose.

She wondered what story the mugger told the hospital, or the police.
Probably, she suspected, that
he
had been mugged.
But then again he still had the gun to explain.
A smile came to her lips.
It was one of those unfinished episodes in her life that hadn
’
t troubled her at the time, but aroused her curiosity now.

The asphalt swept by at a pace made relentless by the swiftness of Justine
’
s feet.
It wasn
’
t just the calories that she was burning up; it was the frustration.
Being out of jail gave her a modicum of freedom, but she couldn
’
t escape the sense of confinement wrought by those long hours.
This at last was the breath of freedom that she craved.

She was dressed in the colour of the sea.
Her track-suit and running shoes were dark blue as she jogged energetically past the older and less tenacious health freaks who were trying to recapture their youth.
She both admired and pitied them.
At least they were doing something and not just sitting down passively waiting for whatever meagre share of good fortune life was ready to hand them.
But for all that they were just following a fad, copying a trend instead of trying to set one.
Jogging was the “in” thing and
Central Park
was the “in” place.

She sometimes used to flee to
Central Park
, deserting her mother when her father
’
s erratic temper got too much for her to bear.

But it wasn
’
t always possible to flee.
Suddenly it all flooded back to her, like a wave sweeping over a lonely swimmer, pulling her under and threatening to drown her in painful memories.

The violent rage in her father
’
s voice bellowing at her mother in another room as Justine lay in bed waiting with desperate longing for sleep to engulf her.

The cringing helplessness of her mother, not yet the rock of refuge that she was to become.

The sound of vicious slapping as the hands of a shell-shocked victim of some one else
’
s cause lashed out at the woman he loved, beyond his own control as well as hers.

The advancing thud of bare feet along the uncarpeted passageway as the cries of anger and fear drew nearer.

The hurried opening of the door to admit a frightened woman in a torn nightdress whose tears mingled with the blood that oozed from the sides of her lips.

The rapid slamming and locking of the door before the battle-crazed stranger could enter.

The hammering of an iron fist against a solid oak door, an accompaniment of human thunder to the silent prayer that went up from inside the room.

The soft bodies of mother and daughter pressed against each other in silent fear and patient hope, helplessly clinging together as they waited for the paroxysm of rage to pass and the bitter sobbing to begin.

Justine spat on the ground and raced on, stretching the pace as if to leave the past behind her.
There was a fresh, natural look about her firm, body and smooth complexion.
In a word, she looked healthy.
Only a single line of bitterness crept into her smile and gave away the fact that she couldn
’
t capture the inner tranquillity that she had known as a child before her father
’
s return from the jungles of
South East Asia
.

Somewhere along her route, she passed a discarded copy of a two-day old newspaper.
“Pretty Poison to go to trial” read the headline, borrowing a reference to a movie from before her time.

Trial by the press was part of the price one had to pay for having a free press.
It would have been tempting to dismiss it as too high a price.
But not for Justine.
She never saw events out of context.
Nevertheless the headline worried Justine, not because it boded ill for her trial, but because it reflected a lop-sided view of justice on the part of the public
.
They knew about Sean Murphy and what he had done.
They knew that he had blood on his hands.
Yet there had been no public outcry for his extradition.
Some Irish Americans had even tried to portray him as a soldier for a righteous cause.

She passed another old newspaper.
But this one she didn
’
t even bother to look at.
She seldom noticed things or people when she jogged.
To the runners whom she overtook, it almost looked as if her face held a Thousand Yard Stare, the look that haunted the faces of so many shell shock victims, including her father.
But there was no hint of recognition on their faces, no sign that they knew who she was.
Neither would Justine have cared.
She was too busy savouring the freedom of being out of doors.

*
    
*

No Freedom for Richard Parker though as he sat at his untidy desk.
A busy man
’
s desk, he liked to call it.
The shades were up, but the light of dawn that fell on his desk was too weak to read by.
A desk lamp, shaded by smoked glass to the tone of the mid-day sky, threw a pool of light over his notes and the large volume of case
-law that lay open before him.

The hours of immobility had taken their toll on Parker and he felt the soreness of bone and cramp of muscle that were the doubtful reward for his Herculean endeavours.
At the back of his mind was a vague recollection of having started last night with the city lights as his backdrop and the headlights of cars drifting by in
a display of kinetic tapestry.

Sleep had descended upon him some time after midnight, but he couldn
’
t remember when he had emerged from it.
He had simply resumed working as soon as he the willpower had seized him.
It was a familiar pattern: first he found a ruling that appeared to offer promise, then he saw a cross-reference to another extract containing further information and his hand reached up to another shelf, to pull down another for further scrutiny. With his other hand, he frantically scribbled down his notes.

Suddenly he put his pen down and stretched his legs under the desk.
He wished he didn
’
t have to be there.
He longed to sleep.
But more than that, he longed to go out into the open, to inhale the fresh air.
He would have turned green with envy if he had known that Justine was jogging in the dawn light of
Central Park
.

*
    
*

Sean Murphy slammed the telephone receiver down angrily.
The telephone was out of order and now he
’
d have to find another to deliver the warning.
It was
Birmingham
all over again.
They
’
d checked both phones only the day before.
But the telephones had been vandalized since then by the kind of scum who damage other people
’
s property for pleasure.
In Derry and the Falls Road area of
Belfast
, the IRA disciplinary squads would catch the vandals, or other members of their families, and smash boards with spikes into their kneecaps.
But thinking about that didn
’
t help.
He had to find another pay phone, and quickly.
The bombs were meant to kill, but part of their strategy
was to give the impression that while they sometimes attacked civilian
property
, they tried to spare civilian life and limb. So he raced from the street, trying to get to another phone on time.

*     *

Justine was beginning to work up a slight sweat, but still running with ease.
To look at her now, Parker would have been surprised to notice how harmless she seemed.
Gone was the fiery tigress who had refused his help and stepped boldly alone into the arena to face an experienced prosecutor. Gone was the rock of granite who had confronted him with a surface of cold indifference when he tried to reach out to with friendship.
Now she was alone, with no enemies in sight and no mental armour to shield her from the cut and thrust of the enemy,
or from the burden of a needy friend.

But it was hard to define what was left.

As the ground rolled by beneath her feet, the eyes of men settled upon her.
They licked their lips at the sight of her long legs and the curve of her tight round buttocks as she drifted past them.
But they knew that it was just a daydream.
Even stripped of the cold anger that shielded her in the courtroom Justine was too distant from the ordinary mortal to be available to them.
As she sped on relentlessly, she became even more distant leaving her admirers trailing behind her.
But her face was no longer forbidding.
Now and again she even flashed a benevolent smile at some random stranger.
Her whole manner seemed say: “I
’
m happy to be alive.”

*     *

Not so happy was the man who was watching her through the telescopic sight of an M-16 automatic rifle.

He had a rough and rugged look about him, and although only in his late thirties, he looked old.
His face was ravaged by hatred, the
suppressed
hatred that he felt not only towards Justine but also towards humanity in general.
As far as he was concerned, the trial was just a middle-class formality.

He pressed the butt of the rifle into his shoulder and leaned into it, his left knee bent with the foot forward, the trailing leg straight with the foot pointing outward.
The index finger of his right hand moved toward the trigger.
In his mind he could already see the pretty young head exploding, the juices spilling out from the brain.
For a few seconds he held Justine
’
s head in the cross-hairs of the telescopic sight, relishing the feeling of power and the knowledge that he was striking a blow for the cause.

She would die now.

His finger moved and a single shot rang out.

*     *

"OK Tommy, you
’
ve had your turn on the horse.
Now let the other children play."

"Again," said Tommy in that sweet little voice of his, giving his mother a flash of that angelic smile.

"All right, one more time."

But it was not to be.
For suddenly a voice boomed out of the public address system.

"Owing to a security alert, customers are requested to leave the shopping centre immediately."

A murmur of panic moved through the crowd and in seconds people were walking, or in some cases running, to the exits.
Pauline Robson scooped Tommy off the horse and strode quickly towards the nearest exit, converging on it in time with countless others.

But inside the shops, the announcement went largely unheard and many people stayed where they were, blissfully unaware of the danger that faced them.
Less than ten seconds later, the bomb in the bookshop exploded, blowing a hole in the right side of Srini Shankar
’
s torso.

At the sound of the first blast, the restrained panic in the shopping centre erupted into full blown hysteria.
People began stampeding towards the exits, pushing others to the ground and trampling all over them to get out.