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victims, including her father. But there was no hint of recognition on their faces, no sign that they knew who she was. Neither would Justine have cared. She was too busy savouring the freedom of being out of doors.
    *      *
    No Freedom for Richard Parker though as he sat at his untidy desk. A busy man ’ s desk, he liked to call it. The shades were up, but the light of dawn that fell on his desk was too weak to read by. A desk lamp, shaded by smoked glass to the tone of the mid-day sky, threw a pool of light over his notes and the large volume of case -law that lay open before him.
    The hours of immobility had taken their toll on Parker and he felt the soreness of bone and cramp of muscle that were the doubtful reward for his Herculean endeavours. At the back of his mind was a vague recollection of having started last night with the city lights as his backdrop and the headlights of cars drifting by in a display of kinetic tapestry.
    Sleep had descended upon him some time after midnight, but he couldn ’ t remember when he had emerged from it. He had simply resumed working as soon as he the willpower had seized him. It was a familiar pattern: first he found a ruling that appeared to offer promise, then he saw a cross-reference to another extract containing further information and his hand reached up to another shelf, to pull down another for further scrutiny. With his other hand, he frantically scribbled down his notes.
    Suddenly he put his pen down and stretched his legs under the desk. He wished he didn ’ t have to be there. He longed to sleep. But more than that, he longed to go out into the open, to inhale the fresh air. He would have turned green with envy if he had known that Justine was jogging in the dawn light of Central Park .
    *      *
    Sean Murphy slammed the telephone receiver down angrily. The telephone was out of order and now he ’ d have to find another to deliver the warning. It was Birmingham all over again. They ’ d checked both phones only the day before. But the telephones had been vandalized since then by the kind of scum who damage other people ’ s property for pleasure. In Derry and the Falls Road area of Belfast , the IRA disciplinary squads would catch the vandals, or other members of their families, and smash boards with spikes into their kneecaps. But thinking about that didn ’ t help. He had to find another pay phone, and quickly. The bombs were meant to kill, but part of their strategy was to give the impression that while they sometimes attacked civilian property , they tried to spare civilian life and limb. So he raced from the street, trying to get to another phone on time.
    *     *
    Justine was beginning to work up a slight sweat, but still running with ease. To look at her now, Parker would have been surprised to notice how harmless she seemed. Gone was the fiery tigress who had refused his help and stepped boldly alone into the arena to face an experienced prosecutor. Gone was the rock of granite who had confronted him with a surface of cold indifference when he tried to reach out to with friendship. Now she was alone, with no enemies in sight and no mental armour to shield her from the cut and thrust of the enemy, or from the burden of a needy friend.
    But it was hard to define what was left.
    As the ground rolled by beneath her feet, the eyes of men settled upon her. They licked their lips at the sight of her long legs and the curve of her tight round buttocks as she drifted past them. But they knew that it was just a daydream. Even stripped of the cold anger that shielded her in the courtroom Justine was too distant from the ordinary mortal to be available to them. As she sped on relentlessly, she became even more distant leaving her admirers trailing behind her. But her face was no longer forbidding. Now and again she even flashed a benevolent smile at some random stranger. Her whole manner seemed say: “I ’ m happy to be alive.”
    *     *
    Not so happy