Free Blue Is the Night by Eoin McNamee Page A

we’ll keep an eye on Mr Taylor for I believe a spot in this yard will be pegged out for him.’
    ‘Those poor men,’ Patricia said, ‘not even a flower laid for them.’
    ‘Murderers, the whole lot of them,’ McConkey said. ‘They got their just deserts and good riddance.’
    Patricia stared at the graves. It was the picture that would come into McConkey’s mind when he heard about her murder. The girl with the downturned mouth standing alone in that unhallowed place.
       
    McConkey showed her into a seat beside Harry Ferguson. The foreman of the jury kept looking towards Ferguson. Patricia remembered the feel of his overcoat against her cheek. The way he smelt of cologne and cigarette smoke. She noticed the way people nodded at him. Court clerks, policemen. The way they leaned over and whispered to him, bringing him stories, scandal, the information flow of the city, its spoken bounty.
    More papers were brought to the judge by the clerk. Then the judge spoke to her father.
    The courtroom was not as Patricia had imagined it might be. She had expected dread, a monstrous tribunal. Men gesturing and eloquent. But this room was quiet. One of the jury members looked as if he was asleep. Documents were being passed up to the judge. Her father sat at a wooden table, his head bent over an affidavit. There were dust motes in the air. It reminded her of schooldays, a classroom at Methody, late afternoon, a teacher’s voice droning on.
    As the day went on she started to see it differently. There were other things going on here, low-key and elaborate. The fabric of the courtroom gathered meaning to itself, the chipped benches and scuffed planks. Law reports stacked on the desk in front of the court clerk, books of lore and covenant. She saw George Hanna, the defence counsel. He was a sleek, plausible-looking man. Hanna paused behind her father and spoke but Lance did not look up from the brief on the table in front of him.
    Patricia thought that Taylor did not look old enough to die by hanging. She told Hilary that his attention wasn’t on proceedings most of the time. He smiled at the public gallery or waved. And sometimes he would find something, a loose thread or a button on his jacket, and would examine it for hours, turning it this way and that as though he would learn the properties of it.
    ‘Does he look wicked and depraved,’ Hilary said, ‘an evil monster?’
    ‘He looks like somebody’s little brother,’ Patricia said.
    ‘A babyface killer,’ Hilary said. ‘No one suspects him.’
    ‘You could see him delivering things. Newspapers,’ Patricia said.
    ‘He finds his way into his victims’ confidence. Before they know it they are ensnared in his web of intrigue. They plead for mercy but though his eyes are smiling his heart is made of stone.’
    ‘He’s a fidget. Jumps about the place.’
    ‘Probably the remorse. Gnawing at him. What’s the gen on the courtroom? I’d say you could cut the tension with a knife. A man on trial for his very life. What was your father like?’ Hilary said. ‘Was he heroic? Standing up for truth? Stern but just?’
    Lance seemed to be addressing himself to an office superior to others in the court. They left space around his desk. Solicitors entered it respectfully with documents, withdrew without speaking. A higher purpose was being explored. Patricia kept her head down so that he would not see her, but Lance did not look at the public gallery.
    Every few minutes it seemed that Taylor remembered where he was and he would look around. His eyes kept going to the second row of the gallery. His father and mother sat there. His father looked like a shipyard worker. He was wearing a serge suit and he held a cloth cap between his hands. His eyes travelled over the members of the jury, looking each of them up and down, returning always to the foreman. A girl sat beside Taylor’s father. She was wearing a black dress and veil as though she was in mourning. She moved