The Reckoning by Jane Casey Read Free Book Online

you’re on the side of the defendant.’ I’d met more unicorns than coppers who had tears to shed for the man or woman in the dock.
    Derwent laughed. ‘I wouldn’t go that far. But I hate those cases where you’ve got a witness who’s obviously spinning a tale and no one challenges them on it. I’d rather not take a shit case to court, even if I was pretty sure of a win. I’ve seen barristers lose cases they should have won because the jury ignored the evidence, and I’ve seen them win when they shouldn’t have, and I don’t like either one, to be honest with you. I like to play fair.’
    I filed it away as an interesting insight into Derwent’s character. I’d have said he was the type to want to win at all costs. It was going to be important to get the measure of him, if we were going to have to work long hours together. I needed to be careful not to make assumptions about him just because he was an awkward sod. Godley had brought him on to the team for a reason. I just needed to work out what that reason was, because it would make my working life a lot easier.
    ‘Well, innocent or guilty, going to prison was probably the best thing for Palmer. At least he was protected there. He seemed to have survived prison intact only to get targeted on the outside.’ Child abusers were the least popular members of the prison population but were generally kept away from other prisoners. It was when he had come out and attempted to start his life again that things had spiralled all the way through bullying and intimidation to murder. ‘It sounds as if he was a victim of other people’s prejudices long before he was murdered, so yeah, I do feel sorry for him. And anyway, regardless of what he had or hadn’t done, no one deserves to die that way.’
    We were stopped at a junction, waiting to turn right, so Derwent was able to indulge himself in a slow handclap. ‘Well said. If policing doesn’t work out for you, maybe you could consider a career in the law. That sort of thing would have a judge sobbing into his wig.’
    ‘You sound like my mother. She always wanted me to become a lawyer.’
    ‘Not happy that her darling girl became a policewoman?’
    I shook my head. ‘She’d have liked to be able to boast about me if I was a solicitor or a barrister. But she’d have been just as happy if I’d become a doctor or a vet.’
    ‘Is she Irish?’
    ‘Yes. Dad too. But I was born in London.’
    ‘I noticed the accent. Or lack of one. Not that you could pretend to be anything other than Irish with a name like that.’ Another glance across the car. ‘Besides, you look Irish. A fine Irish colleen.’
    If there was one thing I hated, it was being called a colleen. There was a world of difference between it and the phrase that had sounded like music through my childhood, cailín alainn , used by both of my parents as a term of endearment, my lovely girl . In their mouths it was loving – in Derwent’s, pure condescension. Eight hundred years of unwanted attention echoed through those two syllables.
    More than anything, I regretted the fact that I didn’t speak Irish myself. I knew a few phrases but I didn’t have that understanding that came from thinking in a language, knowing a culture from the inside out. And it didn’t help that my cousins in Ireland whined about having to learn the language in school, hated every second they were made to speak it, and devoted as much energy to forgetting it as they ever had to committing it to memory in the first place. They still had it, and I didn’t. The fact was, I was Irish to English people and English to Irish people and I never truly felt I belonged in either society, but that wouldn’t stop someone like Derwent categorising me based on his own preconceptions. And he was absolutely the sort to find Irish jokes funny. He might not have made any yet, but I was steeling myself for them; he’d make them, in time.
    I settled for responding with, ‘I’m not exactly the