Read The Righteous Men (2006) for Free Online Page A

concert.’
    ‘Yes, of course. I loved it,’ Will said, running his fingers through
his hair and facing the floor. How could he have been so stupid? ‘I
should have called. Amazing choir.’
    ‘You sound subdued.’
    ‘No, just tired. It’s been a long day. Remember that thing I was
called out on after the concert, that killing? I had this idea to take what
everyone thinks is a bog-standard murder and see what really happened. “Portrait
of a crime statistic”, the life behind the death, that kind of thing.’
    Beth’s presence behind the slammed door of their bedroom was burning
up the apartment. Surely he should be going over there, talking through the
door, coaxing her back out.
    Or at least coaxing his way in.
    ‘That’s good thinking. What did you find out?’
    ‘That he was a low-life pimp sleazeball.’
    ‘Well, I guess that’s no great surprise. Not in that place.
    Still, I can’t wait to read your IMF piece: much more you, I suspect.
Listen, Will, Linda’s gesturing. It’s a dinner for Habitat — “you
know who” is here — and we’re expected to mingle.
    Speak soon/ Even on his nights off, thought Will, his father and his ‘partner’
— a word Will could not bring himself to utter except in quotation marks
— were doing something morally worthwhile.
    Habitat for Humanity was one of his father’s favourite charities. ‘I
like the idea of a cause that asks you to give your time and your labour, not
just your money,’ Monroe Sr had said, more than once. ‘They ask you
to open your heart, not just your pocketbook.’ Hanging in the judge’s
chambers was a photograph of himself and the former president — ‘you
know who’ — each midway up a ladder, both clad in lumberjack shirts,
the ex-president holding a hammer. They were taking part in one of Habitat’s
trademark events: building a house for the homeless in a single day. In Alabama
or somewhere.
    He wondered about all this great do-gooding fervour of his father’s.
In fact, he was suspicious of it. The most cynical reading was that it was
merely a career move, designed to burnish William Monroe Sr’s image as a
man of fine character, eminently suited to a place on America’s highest
bench.
    More specifically, Will wondered if his father was trying to improve his
chances with the evangelical Christian constituency that were such key players
in the nomination of judges to the Supreme Court. Some of his father’s
rivals were committed, vocal Christians. A secular liberal like William Monroe
Sr could not match that, but if he could smooth out some of his hard, godless
edges, it could only help. That, at least, was his son’s guess.
    Will tiptoed over to the bedroom, creaking the door open just a crack. Beth was
fast asleep. He closed the door; recovered what was left of the pasta and ate
it from the saucepan.
    He felt as if a high wall had just appeared in their apartment — and
he and his wife were on opposite sides of it.
    He reached for the remote and jabbed on his default channel: CNN.
    ‘International news now, and more trouble in London for Britain’s
finance minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gavin Curtis, today under fire
from the Church. The Bishop of Birmingham took to Britain’s House of
Lords to step up the pressure.’
    Will sat up to take a close look. Curtis looked harried and much older than
Will had remembered him. He had come to Oxford when Will was a student. Curtis
was then in opposition, shadowing the environment department. He had come up to
act as lead speaker in an Oxford Union debate: ‘This House believes the
end of the world is nigh.’ Will was then the news editor on Cherwell — and he had given himself the plum assignment of interviewing the
visiting politician.
    He had not thought about it in years, but at the time Curtis had left quite
a mark. He had taken Will seriously, treating him as a real journalist when
Will could not have been much more than nineteen. The funny thing was Curtis
had