Michael Robotham - Bleed For Me

The older man is walking towards us.

‘Wait! I want to see who this is.’

Reaching below the dash, Ruiz pops the bonnet. Climbing out, he unhooks the latch and the bonnet hinges open. The man has almost reached us. The streetlight reflects from his bald patch and his umbrella clicks on the pavement with each second step.

‘Hey, guv, you wouldn’t happen to have any jumper leads?’ asks Ruiz. ‘I can’t get a spark out of this thing.’

The man barely pauses. Looking flustered and feverish, he mumbles a reply and keeps walking. He’s in his fifties with a solitary band of greying hair that warms the top of his ears. I know him from somewhere.

‘Is there a garage nearby?’ asks Ruiz.

The man stops and turns. ‘Perhaps you should call the AA.’ His accent is public school. Genteel. Erudite.

‘Not a member,’ says Ruiz. ‘Always thought it was a waste of money. Isn’t that the way?’

‘Quite,’ says the man, turning again. His eyes meet mine. I see no hint of recognition.

‘Well, you have a nice evening,’ says Ruiz.

His umbrella swings and clicks as he walks away.

Ruiz shuts the bonnet and slides back behind the wheel.

‘Now there’s a turn-up.’ He glances in the rear-view mirror.

‘You recognised him.’

‘Didn’t you?’

That’s the thing about Ruiz: he doesn’t forget. He has a memory for names, dates, places and faces - for the victims and perpetrators - going back ten, twenty, thirty years.

‘I know I’ve seen him somewhere,’ I say.

‘You saw him on Thursday.’

And then I remember . . . Bristol Crown Court . . . he was sitting in the front row of the jury box. The foreman.

Ruiz has found my father’s birthday present - the bottle of Scotch I forgot to wrap or to send. He cracks the lid and pours a generous amount over ice before settling the bottle on a table in the lounge where it can keep him company.

We sit opposite each other, listening to the ice melting. Ruiz once told me that he didn’t talk politics any more, or read newspapers, or watch the News at Ten . One of his ex-wives had accused him of opting out of public debate. Ruiz told her that he’d served his tour of duty. He’d manned the barricades against outraged pacifists, anti-globalisation protesters, poll-tax rioters and hunt saboteurs. He had fought the good fight against the violent, corrupt, treacherous, hypocritical, cowardly, deviant and insane. Now it was time for others to take up the battle because he had given up trying to save or change the world. He simply wanted to survive it.

‘What did we just see?’ I ask.

‘We saw evidence of jury tampering.’

‘Maybe it was a chance meeting?’

‘It’s against the law to approach a member of a jury.’

‘He’s one of twelve.’

‘He’s the foreman !’

‘Yeah, but he’s not Henry Fonda and this isn’t Twelve Angry Men . You need ten jurors for a majority verdict.’

‘What about a hung jury? You need three.’

‘Maybe they have three.’

‘So there’s a retrial and they do it all again with a different jury. That doesn’t help Novak.’

‘So what do you suggest?’ I say.

‘We have to tell someone.’

‘The judge?’

Ruiz almost chokes. ‘You’re joking. He’ll abort the trial. That poor kid giving evidence will have to go through it all again.’

‘Maybe he’ll just dismiss the foreman. The jury can still deliberate. Eleven is enough.’

Ruiz stares at the fireplace. ‘Maybe we should talk to a lawyer.’

He gives Eddie Barrett a call. Puts him on speakerphone. It’s a bank holiday Monday and somebody is going to pay for Eddie’s fifteen minutes - probably me. His voice comes through like a foghorn.

‘You two bumboys are getting a reputation. You’re like Elton and David without the wedding. I thought you’d retired, Ruiz.’

‘On holidays.’

‘Try Benidorm next time, or Jamaica. Get yourself some black bootie. What do you want?’

‘I got a hypothetical,’ says Ruiz.

‘I hate fucking hypotheticals. Don’t you fairies ever deal with real situations?’

‘We weren’t boy scouts like you, Eddie.’

‘Dib fucking dob. What’s your hypothetical?’

Ruiz pitches the question: ‘You’re at trial. You discover the foreman of the jury meeting up with an acquaintance of the defendant. This particular acquaintance has a history of violence. And this particular defendant has a history of getting away with murder. What do you do?’

‘Am I the defence or the prosecution?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Sure it fucking matters.’

‘You’re neutral.’

‘Could it be an accidental meeting?’

‘Doubtful.’

Eddie sucks air through his teeth. ‘The trial is probably fucked but the judge might just cut the foreman loose. Warn the jury. Keep going.’

‘So you’d tell the judge?’

‘Nah, I’d tell the police.’

‘Will you help us?’ I ask.

Eddie laughs. ‘Now there’s a fucking hypothetical!’

Tuesday morning, sunny and warm - the forecast said rain. The roads are quiet on the drive to Bristol. Ruiz has one hand on the wheel and an elbow propped on the window.

His contact in the Met got back to him overnight. The name Mark Conlon threw up one match - a bank manager from Pontypool who lost his licence four years ago for drink-driving. Five ten. Brown hair. No tattoos. He’s not the Crying Man. The plates on the Audi were either stolen or copied. We’re back to square one. Maybe Ronnie Cray will have more luck.

We decide to breakfast near Queen’s Square in a modern place full of chrome furniture and hissing steam. The waitresses are Romanian girls in short black skirts, who slip outside for cigarettes while it’s quiet. Ruiz orders a fried egg and bacon sandwich (‘On proper bread not that sourdough shit’). He flicks through the paper. The Novak Brennan trial is still page one.

Marco Kostin will resume giving evidence today. I can picture him in the witness box with hyper-real clarity, every tremor and blink and turn of his head. The cross-examination is still to come and three barristers will be queuing up to pick holes in his story.

The door opens. A tangle-footed teenager comes in wearing cycling gear. Multicoloured. A courier. He talks to a Romanian waitress. Kisses her lips. Young love.

‘I got a strange feeling about yesterday,’ says Ruiz.

‘Which bit of yesterday are we talking about?’

‘When I was following the freak with the tattoos, I stayed well behind him. I wanted to make sure he didn’t know he was being tailed. When he dropped off the pavement princess. When he picked her up. When he went to the shithole hotel. I stayed out of sight.’

‘What’s so strange about that?’

‘It’s probably nothing.’ Ruiz shrugs. ‘I just got an impression that maybe he knew I was there. Once or twice he seemed to slow down, like he didn’t want the lights to change and for me to miss them.’

‘He knew he was being followed?’

‘That’s what it seemed like.’ Ruiz pushes his plate away. ‘Maybe we should check out his gaff before we talk to Cray. We could take a run over to the hotel; have ourselves a sticky.’

‘What about the trial?’

‘It’s not going to end today.’

On the street outside, Ruiz drops a coin into a busker’s hat and keeps walking, crossing the pedestrian precinct. We pull out of the underground car park, passing over the floating harbour to Temple Circus where we turn north along Temple Way. Taking the exit at Old Market Street, we pass close by Trinity Road Police Station on our way to Easton.