Stephen Booth - Already Dead

Sheena Sullivan twisted her hands anxiously on the bed. Watching her, Fry guessed she was probably longing for a cigarette, if only to give herself something to do with her fingers. But there was no smoking in a hospital ward. This was one place the law couldn’t be overlooked.

Sheena had one leg in plaster as a result of a compound fracture, and a few broken ribs. She’d been under observation for a possible concussion, but now the bandages had been removed and a series of stitches were visible running through her hair where her scalp had been lacerated by broken glass. Her eyes were blackened, but Fry could see that the bilirubin was already starting to turn the bruises yellow. Mrs Sullivan had been very lucky that her face was otherwise untouched.

‘Charlie Dean had a good scam going,’ said Fry. ‘And Williamson Hart seem to have known about that. They were about to sack him.’

‘Were they?’

‘What they didn’t know is that he was being blackmailed. His activities came to the attention of Ralph Edge at Prospectus Assurance. That would all have come apart when he lost his job, wouldn’t it?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘It’s so difficult to avoid getting drawn further and further in when someone is able to put pressure on you like that. Before you know it, you’re in too deep, and it’s too late for you. Charlie was given a role in what happened to Glen Turner, wasn’t he?’

Sheena stared at the wall. She was pale, but Fry couldn’t be sure whether that was from the pain of her injuries, or the shock. It didn’t matter. She was happy to carry on talking for a while, sorting out the facts in her own mind.

‘I bet Charlie thought they were just trying to get information,’ she said. ‘But maybe the Gibsons always intended to kill Turner, or didn’t care. How was Charlie involved exactly, Sheena? What was he supposed to do? Whatever it was, the man in the red rain jacket turned up and scared him so much that he cleared off and didn’t go back. He was terrified that there was a witness who’d be able to identify him. So he just drove away and prayed.’

Sheena blinked a little. Fry thought she might be getting close to the truth.

‘So — Charlie. He sounds like a man who was able to compartmentalise his life pretty well. He had everything separated out, didn’t he? His job, his wife, his mistress, his criminal activities. He must have worked out a set of roles for himself, changing into a different Charlie Dean according to the circumstances. Who said men can’t multitask, eh?’

Sheena even smiled a little at that.

‘The only wonder is that he managed to juggle all those balls for so long,’ said Fry. ‘His wife was getting nearer and nearer to the point where she would have divorced him, I think. That would have been a shock for Mr Dean. I bet he thought he was the only one who could do that, and his marriage would last for as long as he decided it would. And there were his employers at Williamson Hart. Ursula Hart told me they were planning to sack him. That would have brought the whole pack of cards tumbling down too. But your husband Jay got to him first.’

Sheena had listened long enough. Finally, she decided to talk. Perhaps Fry had just driven her to it.

‘There were these two men that Charlie met,’ said Sheena.

‘Yes, the Gibson brothers.’

‘That’s them. Ryan Gibson was on a driving course that we both did in Chesterfield. I didn’t like him at all. And his brother was even worse. I can’t remember his name, but he was horrible.’

‘The brother is called Sean,’ said Fry.

‘Well, they were doing the job on this Glen Turner character. Charlie and me, we were supposed to go back and get him after a while. We were only going to scare him, you see. Charlie said what they were doing was only like waterboarding. No worse than that.’

‘Waterboarding?’

‘The CIA do it with al-Qaeda suspects. Turner would never have gone to the police and reported us. He would have had to explain why it happened. Charlie had all that figured out. He’s a clever bloke, Charlie. I mean, he was.’

Fry stared at her. Yes, waterboarding was clever, but simple. Among torture methods, it had a history as old as civilisation itself. She had no idea who invented it, but she knew it had been popular across the world, from the Spanish Inquisition to the Khmer Rouge. The Americans had executed Japanese soldiers on war crimes charges for using it during the Second World War, then decades later had used it themselves. It needed so little equipment. Just a cloth and a bucket of water — and someone to hold your victim down.

Layers of cloth were placed over the face, the head tilted back and downwards, and a slow cascade of water was poured over the cloth. You would hold your breath for a while, and then you’d have to exhale. The next inhalation brought the damp cloth tight against the nostrils. She imagined it would feel something like a huge, wet paw suddenly clamped over her face. They said you were unable to tell at that point whether you were breathing in or out. You were flooded more by sheer panic than by water. No one lasted long, they said. You would pray for the relief of being hauled upright and having the stifling layers pulled off.

As the prisoner gagged and choked on the water, they said, the terror of imminent death was overwhelming, with all the physical and psychological reactions. An intense stress response, a rapid heartbeat, the gasping for breath. There was supposed to be a real risk of death from actually drowning, or from a heart attack, or from damage to the lungs by the inhalation of water. As a result of physical fatigue or psychological resignation, the victim might simply give up, losing consciousness as water was allowed to fill the airways. Waterboarding could cause the sort of ‘severe pain’ prohibited by the United Nations Convention against Torture. Long-term effects for survivors included panic attacks, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. People would panic and gasp for breath whenever it rained, even years afterwards.

There were instructions for waterboarding on the internet now. You could even watch a video of the journalist Christopher Hitchens going through it himself and managing to last only sixteen seconds before he capitulated — but at least he’d volunteered for the experience. Once you made information like that generally available, people were bound to use it. Not long ago, in another part of the country, burglars had broken into an expensive house and waterboarded an elderly woman to get the combination of her safe.

Like them, Charlie Dean and his associates hadn’t felt bound by the United Nations Convention. Who did, these days?

Fry thought about the position of the body, the doubt over whether Glen Turner might have died from drowning. There had been a two-litre Coke bottle, perfect for pouring a controlled flow of water. And the towels. Oh, God the towels. They would have been put over Turner’s face and soaked with water. When he was finally forced to breathe in, his body would tell him he was drowning, whether he was or not.

‘ Like waterboarding?’ she said. ‘It undoubtedly was waterboarding.’

‘You know what it is?’

‘Yes, I know what waterboarding is. But…?’

‘What?’

‘Glen Turner. He was hardly a terrorist. Did he really deserve what you did to him?’

She turned her face away and stared at the wall. ‘We thought so at the time. I suppose things look different when you think about them afterwards.’

‘You said you were supposed to go back after a while to rescue him. But you didn’t go back, did you?’

‘Not then. Not straight away. It was the man in the red rain jacket-’