Michael Robotham - Bleed For Me

‘He stole wallets, credit cards, sometimes clothes. Later he graduated to blackmail by taking Polaroids and threatening to post them home if the john didn’t stump up more cash. Nothing shakes money from a tree like a photograph of an underage girl giving a married man a blowjob.

‘Soon they had plenty of cash and rented a place. Set up house. Stayed clear of the social. It seemed like a perfect set-up.’

‘What happened?’

‘Rita attracted the wrong customer one night. A biker by the name of Nigel Geddes plucked her off the street before Novak could intervene. Geddes took Rita to a gang party where she was raped every which way by at least a dozen bikers. When they discovered she was a virgin they laughed. What were the chances, eh?

‘They dumped Rita back on the street, bleeding internally, with cigarette burns that turned to weeping sores. Novak lost it completely. The only constant in the shit-storm he called a life had been his little sister and he had made a promise to himself that he’d protect her.

‘So while Rita was still in hospital, being looked after by social workers, Novak bought himself a .25 calibre automatic handgun for eighty quid from an IRA gunrunner called Jimmy Ferris. The Ferret.

‘I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking a kid like Novak, with his history of violence and his hair-trigger temper, would go all Dirty Harry and shoot a place up, but it didn’t go down like that. Novak didn’t walk into that clubhouse guns blazing. He watched and he waited. He followed the bikers, making a note of their faces, their routines, where they lived . . .

‘The first mark made it easy. He left a bar in Short Strand with a young girl in tow. The pair walked into a dimly lit parking garage. By the time Novak turned the corner, the biker had the girl on her knees.

‘It was a familiar scene. Novak tapped her on the shoulder and she pulled back in fright. The biker opened his eyes and the pistol slipped between his lips.

‘Novak told the girl to get lost. He waited until she disappeared before he looked back at the biker whose shrinking wet penis was still hanging outside his pants.

‘The girl heard him begging for his life. Apologising. Novak counted down from three and pulled the trigger. Because it was a low-calibre weapon the bullet didn’t make a clean entry and exit. Instead it ricocheted around the inside of his skull, turning his brain to pulp.

‘Novak used the guy’s shirt to wipe the saliva and blood from the barrel of the gun. Two hours later, he killed a second biker. This time the guy ran into a school and hid in a toilet block. Novak found him in one of the stalls and shot him four times, but only after he’d kicked him unconscious. Novak slipped on the muck and left a neat handprint on the floor. That’s how the police eventually caught him, but not before he’d killed eight more times.

‘One by one he tracked down the men who’d raped Rita. Nigel Geddes was the last. By then Geddes knew he was being hunted so he fled to Liverpool and changed his name, but Novak caught the ferry to Holyhead and slept rough in the streets of Anfield for two months until he found his man. Geddes was shooting up in a squat in Everton and Novak helped him find a vein and then an artery. Bled him dry.

‘The police caught up with Novak when he stepped off the ferry in Belfast. He didn’t say a word during the interviews. He wouldn’t speak to the social workers or child psychologists. The bloody handprint saw him charged with one of the murders, but investigators didn’t have enough evidence to pin the others on him.

‘When Novak’s barrister stood up at the bar table, he told the jury that Novak had been sexually assaulted by the biker, who mistook him for a rent boy. The jury believed the story and the prosecution accepted a manslaughter plea. Novak was still a minor so he was sent to a youth prison and served barely four years.’

Ruiz doesn’t look at me for a reaction. Nor does he editorialise with his own body language. This is history now. Indisputable.

The clang of metal on metal makes him turn. Across the road an overloaded skip sits beneath a forest of scaffolding pipes. Workmen are dismantling the framework around the Guildhall. Another pipe drops from a height, bouncing on to the cobblestones.

‘How do you know this stuff?’ I ask.

‘Nigel Geddes was part of the IRA cell that set off the Harrods bomb. He’d been under surveillance for nearly two years.’

‘But if you’re right - if Novak Brennan was convicted of manslaughter - why hasn’t it come out?’

‘He was still a juvenile. He can’t be named. Juvenile records are sealed. Anyone tries to publish a detail like that and they risk going to prison.’

Ruiz doesn’t sound too bothered by the fact. If anything, I sense a grudging admiration for Novak.

‘So what’s your take on this?’ I ask.

‘The guy loved his sister.’

‘Meaning?’

‘It means Novak Brennan has the capacity to care about people, just like the rest of us.’

‘So what happened to him afterwards?’

Ruiz shrugs. ‘He changed and he didn’t change. He studied for his A-levels in prison and moved to England when he got released. I think he went to university in the Midlands. Then he set about making his fortune, using the same basic technique that he and Rita had employed, only on a much bigger scale.’

‘He blackmailed people.’

‘He took advantage of their weaknesses.’

‘So when did Novak Brennan become a pin-up boy for the neo-Nazis? ’

Ruiz shakes his head. ‘No idea.’

‘You think he’s genuine?’

‘All politicians have an agenda.’

‘And Rita?’

‘She’s still around. Never married. Dotes on him.’

Julianne mentioned that Novak had a sister.

We push through a revolving door into the foyer of the Crown Court where security guards are x-raying bags and searching visitors with a body scanner. Ruiz has to unload his pockets as we pass through.

The marbled foyer is dotted with barristers and clerks. A spiral staircase rises to the upper floors. The daily court listings are pinned on a noticeboard behind glass. Novak Brennan is on trial in Court One. It’s the same courtroom and the same judge that heard my bail application.

Seats in the downstairs public gallery are being kept clear. We’re directed upstairs to a balcony area, overlooking proceedings. Ruiz slips in behind me, easing the door closed with a trailing hand.

Below us in the courtroom, the jury is seated along one wall closest to the witness box. On the opposite side of the room, Novak Brennan, Tony Scott and Gary Dobson are side by side in the dock, behind a glass screen. There are more lawyers now. Each defendant has one.

Julianne is sitting on a chair between the witness box and the jury, looking calm and businesslike, yet I can tell she’s nervous because she’s playing with the charms on her bracelet. Usually, when I picture her, she is the same young woman I met in 1983 after an anti-apartheid rally in Trafalgar Square. She is still beautiful - with a voice that can make an offer of coffee seem like an invitation to sex - but she has changed in the past two years. She’s grown weary. Perhaps I’m to blame for that too.

A new witness has been summoned: Marco Kostin. There is a murmur in the courtroom, a frisson of anticipation that runs like an unseen current from the press benches to the jury box. Every trial has a main act - the moment when it can swing one way or the other. It could be a witness, a piece of evidence, a brilliant closing argument or an excoriating cross-examination. This is the main act. Marco Kostin. The survivor.

After a few moments he appears, walking with a slight pigeon-toed gait, following the court clerk to the witness box. Tall and gangly, he seems younger than eighteen, with large eyes and long lashes that would look almost feminine except for his thick adult eyebrows. Putting his left hand on the Bible, he raises his right hand and promises to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but . . .