The Jump by Martina Cole Read Free Book Online

about Georgio Brunos?’
    Jimmy, closed his eyes. ‘That’s not fair, Mr Laughton, because I don’t know anything, you know I don’t. There probably ain’t anything to know. That’s why you’re here.’
    Laughton lit another cigarette and grinned. ‘I just want a statement saying you refuse to give any evidence on Brunos, that’s all.’
    Jimmy shook his head sadly. ‘You’re an arsehole, Mr Laughton.’
    ‘So I’ve been told, Jimmy. Many times, and by better men than you. Now let’s get to the station, shall we?’

    28

Chapter Two
    Donna stared around her.
    The jury were filing back into the room. Eight men and four women. They looked serious, as they were supposed to. Donna was reminded of long-forgotten courtroom dramas from America, in which the suspect’s wife, knowing her husband is innocent, has to watch him being condemned. But now there was no amiable cop around to pip the jury to the post. She felt an insane urge to laugh, only knew it was not with humour but with hysteria. She fought the urge, and held her breath instead.
    As she watched a reporter at work sketching Georgio, she expelled the breath in a long silent sigh. Six weeks ago at the start of the trial, Georgio had been jaunty, confident. He had sat upright, offering his profile to the young girl so she could draw him at his best. Smiling that engaging smile of his. Today, he sat slumped in his chair. He looked beaten. Donna felt her heart going out to him, this man of hers, this husband whom she missed so much, especially in the night.
    ‘Jaysus, they’re taking their time. Would they just get it all over with?’
    Maeve Brunos’s voice was loud, her face, semi-obscured by a large hat, looked ferocious. Donna took her hand and squeezed it tightly. Pa Brunos was wiping his forehead with a large handkerchief. His enormous bulk was squeezed into a dark blue suit, and he looked out of place - a peasant once more in the company of his betters.
    Donna felt her heart constrict with love for these two kind people, both of whom were amazed and bewildered by the events of the last year. God-fearing, law-abiding citizens of their adopted country, they couldn’t comprehend what had transpired. Their eldest son, their pride and joy, had been accused of masterminding a bank robbery, a robbery that had been violent in the extreme. During the execution of it, a guard had died - a young man with a pretty plump wife and two innocent children. Another guard had been shot in the leg, wounded badly enough to be confined to a desk, his permanent limp a painful legacy of doing his job. He had lain beside his dead colleague while

    29

    them the masked raiders loaded up the money into a car, one that Georgio Brunos had reported stolen three months previously
    The evidence was all circumstantial. Georgio had been in the car lot the day of the robbery - three people had testified to that. Except that those three people were not reliable. One, a woman named Matilda Braithwaite, had been looking at cars; she had dropped in to inspect a small Mercedes Sports. A woman in the wrong place at the wrong time. -Under oath she had been reduced to a quivering wreck, finally unsure if it had been on that day or the one before that she had called in at the lot; admitting that she often traipsed around car dealerships looking at different models. It was a kind of hobby with her, rather like thole women who look at other people’s houses. The other two witnesses had been swiftly discredited because one was a convicted criminal, the other a well-known layabout already convicted of perjury.
    The prosecution had brought forward a battery of men who said they would not, under any circumstances, give evidence against Georgio. It had been a farce, but an elaborate farce. No one had been able to get a straight answer from any of them. Only that they refused to give evidence either way. One man, a Jimmy Something or other, had mumbled his lines as if rehearsed. Which Donna had a