Nick Oldham - Critical Threat

Donaldson said, ‘Roger.’ They all removed their fingers. He looked at Henry. ‘The Secretary of State is due to leave Merseyside, nothing of interest to report. Estimated she’ll be crossing into Lancashire in twenty minutes. They hand over to your escort at Switch Island and then she’ll be brought into Lancashire.’

Henry knew that Switch Island was the complex roundabout to the north of Liverpool at junction 7 of the M57 where it joined the A59 and where the M58 started.

‘Which way will she come up into Lancs?’

‘M58, M6, M65 then off at junction 4,’ Donaldson reeled off from memory.

Working that out, Henry guessed that it would be less than an hour before Rice actually set foot on Lancashire soil once she actually got on the road. Security escorts stop for neither man nor beast.

‘What’s her itinerary?’ Henry asked. He’d seen it, but couldn’t recall it.

‘First stop is a school in Pleckgate, then she’s due to visit Ewood Park after that, home of that soccer team, Blackburn Rovers, which doesn’t give us much time.’

‘To do what, exactly?’

‘Find out exactly how Akbar intends to kill her, otherwise it’ll just be pot luck — and I don’t like pot luck.’

‘So what’s your plan?’

Donaldson ignored the question and turned to the mystery man and Dr Chambers. ‘How is he?’

‘Alive and likely to remain so, but doped up with a few choice drugs,’ she said.

‘Has he said anything?’

‘Said I should fuck off back to Satan.’

‘Nice,’ said Donaldson. To Henry, he said, ‘Shall we?’

Feeling — knowing — he was being dragged into something better avoided, Henry followed Donaldson from the observation room into the interrogation room. The words of his dear old mum rang clear in his ears, often shouted at him when he was a youngster in trouble: ‘You’re easily led, you!’ and he knew she was right.

The two men walked across the vinyl-covered floor and stood in front of Ali, whose black-ringed eyes watched with a simmering hatred. He might have been shot, might have been drugged up, but Henry could tell he knew exactly what was going on.

‘How are you, Fazul Ali?’

‘I need to go to hospital,’ his reply came, the words slightly slurred through cracked, dry lips.

‘All in good time.’

Ali’s eyes settled on Henry. A reluctant grin came to his lips. ‘You fought well.’

Henry chose not to respond. Inside he was being torn apart, drawn into a situation completely alien to him. A wounded prisoner, shackled and naked in an interrogation room. Interrogation wasn’t a word ever used in police circles. It represented everything bad about how the police used to obtain confessions in the very bad old days. Now they ‘interviewed’, sought the truth using approved methods. Interrogation was totally negative and had links with corrupt and murderous regimes. And torture.

Not that Henry would ever class himself as a saint and maybe he was being two-faced about this. He had hit prisoners before, he’d bent the rules, but he’d always known the boundaries and deep down had always felt uncomfortable when he did such things … but those methods had never approached anything as brutal and lawless as this.

There would be outrage if it was discovered that such things were taking place on British soil.

‘I’ll come straight to the point, my friend,’ Donaldson said to the prisoner. ‘Mohammed Ibrahim Akbar.’ There was not even a flicker from Ali’s sullen eyes. ‘How does he plan to murder the Condoleezza Rice? It’s a simple question, the answer to which will see you receiving the best medical treatment money can buy.’

Ali stared at the floor. ‘So I have to bargain for my basic human rights?’ He cackled.

Henry looked at him, his hairy body, genitals hanging loosely, thick-muscled legs, trying to convince himself that, even though nothing had yet happened to him and this man was probably responsible for butchering two of his colleagues, this was completely wrong and went a hundred per cent against his beliefs. And yet, did he deserve to be treated this way?

‘You have no human rights, Ali. Just like those two innocent people you murdered today. What happened to their rights?’

A sneer morphed on to his lips. ‘I demand to be taken to hospital.’ He glowered defiantly at Donaldson. ‘I demand the rights of any prisoner held in Britain.’

Donaldson gave a short laugh. ‘Bad news, old buddy … because you ain’t in Britain anymore … right here, right now, just think of this place as a little piece of America — like Guantanamo Bay — and those rights you’re bleating about just don’t exist.’

For the first time, Henry saw a glint of doubt and fear in Ali’s eyes.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, that as if by magic carpet, you’ve been transported to hell and yes, you’re looking right into Satan’s eyes.’ Donaldson pointed the first two fingers of his right hand towards his own eyes, then pointed the same two at Ali. The words in themselves were comical but the way and the context in which they were said were terrifying, even to Henry who was now seeing a dark side of Donaldson that, yes, he’d suspected existed, but deep down in his soul he’d wished didn’t.

Ali squirmed uncomfortably against his shackles, then farted and excreted a vile, almost green-coloured shit, the stench of which immediately filled the room. Then he urinated a stream of thick yellow piss in an arc into this awful mess underneath him.

‘That’s the drugs and fear combined,’ Donaldson said brutally. ‘And we haven’t even started yet.’

Henry shot a worried glance at the two-way mirror, but all he saw was a reflection of himself, beaten and bruised.

‘Like I said, simple question,’ Donaldson continued. The pool of shit and urine had collected underneath Ali’s chair and his bare feet slithered in it. ‘What are Akbar’s plans for today and also, how is Mansur Rashid involved?’

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

‘You are Akbar’s right-hand man.’

‘I don’t know him. Never heard of him.’

Donaldson smiled. ‘OK, Fazul, those were the denials. Those were the formalities. We ask, you deny … you now have no need to keep this up … we’ll let it be known that you did your best before crumbling … your bravery will filter through the grapevine — and unless you do wish to suffer further, please tell me what I want to know … next step, electrodes to testicles.’

Ali winced as a surge of terrible pain arced through his shattered shoulder.

‘Karl, that’s enough,’ Henry whispered behind Donaldson, who did not even acknowledge him as he eased on a pair of latex gloves from out of his pocket and made a show of pulling them on to his hands with a snap.

‘I have no time for subtlety, Fazul,’ the American said. He walked behind the prisoner, ensuring he did not step in the mess. ‘That takes far too long.’ He came up behind Ali and peeled off the blood soaked bandage that had been applied to his shoulder, tossing it on to the floor where it landed with a wet slap.

As Henry suspected, the wound was awful. The bullet had entered the shoulder blade, then deflected upwards into the shoulder joint, destroying it before exiting and making a huge, shredded hole, in which Henry could see splintered bone and gristle, blood oozing.

Donaldson squeezed Ali’s shoulder between his fingers and thumb.

Ali screamed.

Henry cowered back.

Donaldson leaned in close to Ali’s right ear. ‘Tell me. Stop this pain.’

‘Fuck you,’ he uttered with a gasp, spittle flecking out of his lips. A torrent of sweat poured from his hairline. His eyelids fluttered and his head rolled as he slid towards a merciful unconsciousness in default to the pain.