Little Criminals by Gene Kerrigan Page B

they quickly made up their minds, a jury usually liked to take at least a couple of hours, so no one would think they weren’t taking their duties seriously. Waiting for a jury that might come back five minutes from now or five hours was a recipe for heartburn, unless you found a way to blank it all out.
    ‘Out of gas.’
    ‘Sorry?’ said Nicky Bonner.
    ‘The tank is empty in America,’ said John Grace. ‘Three, two, three. Out of gas.’ He inked in the crossword.
    The court clerk appeared at the door of the courtroom and gave a thumbs up.
    Grace and Bonner stood, Dolores put her tit back in her blouse, her boyfriend rubbed his palms together, and they all started moving towards the courtroom.
    Grace watched Mr Big Shot shuffle towards his fate. A bulky little man with a pout. Since the pub fight, the poor clown had come close to a nervous breakdown, and doubts had been raised about whether he was fit to stand trial. Grace felt sorry for the stupid fucker. Putting him in jail wouldn’t do anybody any good. Sure, he was a danger to society. So are most people who get tanked up, and you can’t lock them all up. But that’s the job. If someone gets thumped and they die, the law ordains that you arrest the thumper and bring him before His Lordship. The charge should be stupidity and bad luck, but they don’t have laws against things like that, so the nearest that fits is manslaughter.
    ‘He’s not looking such a smart-ass now, is he?’ said Nicky Bonner.
    John Grace grunted.
    On a bench at the end of the corridor, a thin woman sat with an elderly couple. The victim’s wife and her parents. No one else from his family had attended the trial. They rose slowly, as though dreading entering the courtroom, their faces as strained as the defendant’s.
    Angela Kennedy glanced at the small TV at the end of the kitchen counter. The nine o’clock news was on, something about a government minister denying something categorically. Angela was racking plates in the dishwasher. Out in the dining room, Justin and the kids were on their second portions of birthday cake. Angela had decided to skip it. She had cooked Justin’s favourite meal, a lasagne, and had herself eaten only a small portion, filling out her plate with salad.
    It was the first evening in weeks that all four of them had sat down together for dinner, and it took Justin’s birthday to accomplish that.
    Without the kids, Justin would insist on ignoring his birthdays, seeing them as unwelcome reminders of a finite and dwindling supply of time. For Luke and Saskia, aged eight and nine, any anniversary was a cue for a fuss, and they treasured being allowed to stay up a little later than usual. The kids were still slightly bemused at the dullness of adult birthday parties. No decorations worth speaking of, no games, just a token cake and hardly any goodies.
    ‘Adults can have anything they want,’ Saskia said. ‘Daddy could have a party in a disco, or on a yacht, adults can do anything they like. But their birthday parties are always so boring !’
    As Angela left the kitchen, carrying two cups of coffee, there was something on the TV about a verdict in a manslaughter trial. The kitchen door swung closed behind her as the screen showed a fat little man with a sweaty face being led out in handcuffs, climbing cautiously into a van.
    An hour later, the kids were in bed – it was a Wednesday, a school night, they’d been up later than usual, and there were no stories, no reading, they were both ready to drop. In the living room, there were candles alight on the mantelpiece, Angela was pouring the last of the wine, and Justin was wearing Luke’s present – a Dublin GAA football team shirt – and sliding Saskia’s present into the CD player. As the first track of the Elvis Presley greatest-hits album swaggered out of the Bose speakers, Justin sprawled on the sofa and looked up at Angela. He admired the burgundy dress, the colour and the flattering cut, what it did