Chris Ryan - Osama

‘I didn’t kill her,’ Joe muttered, his voice hoarse.

‘Save it for the beak, pal. Now take the rest of your fucking clothes off before we give Albert something to ignore.’

Joe blinked stupidly up at him. ‘What the fuck?’

‘Clothes!’ barked the screw. ‘Off?! And don’t look at me like that. There’s plenty of faggots on the block, but we’ve all got WAGs to suck us off at home. Your arsehole’s safe on this side of the door…’

Joe stood up slowly. Without taking his gaze from the screw, and aware that everyone in the crowded room – the two guards, the thin screw, the four armed police by the door – were watching him, he stripped, then stood up straight.

‘All right, He-Man, turn round.’

Joe turned.

‘Squat.’

Joe didn’t move.

‘ Squat! ’

Joe squatted.

‘Cough.’

He did as he was told.

‘All right, you’re clean. Put your fucking trousers back on. Just so’s you know, we’ve got a nasty habit of asking you to do that whenever we feel like it. Remember that if you get tempted to keister anything…’

Joe pulled his jeans back on, then felt himself being yanked towards the counter. The guy with the bloody nose was still missing. Another screw, bald and thickset, had emerged from the room behind the counter. ‘Hand,’ he said, and pointed to the scanner. Joe stretched out his bloodstained hand. The guy grabbed him by the wrist and looked at his palm. He didn’t seem at all bothered by the gore, other than to say: ‘Too much blood. Won’t work. Give me the other one.’

The next thing Joe knew, his clean hand was palm downwards on the scanner bed, and a fluorescent white strip was moving from top to bottom under the glass. ‘What is it?’ he demanded.

‘Biometric ID,’ the screw said proudly as he held up the webcam, looked at the screen and pressed the button. ‘Matches your palm print to your face. Course, clever bloke like you won’t be thinking of no funny business.’ He seemed to find this amusing, and grinned at the others.

The thin screw started talking. ‘My name’s Sowden,’ he said. ‘You call me guv and you do what I tell you. Trust me, sunshine, we’ve heard it all and seen it all. You want a quiet life, put your head down and do as you’re told.’

Joe had zoned out. Sowden continued talking – a list of rules and regulations, something about a lawyer and remand custody. His words barely registered.

The bald man handed Joe a bundle of beige clothes, then took a set of keys, walked round to the other side of the counter and opened up the heavy metal door. It was a good eight inches thick with two sets of internal locking bolts each at least three inches in diameter. Joe felt himself being nudged through the door.

He found himself in what felt like a cell – three metres by three, with an identical metal door on the opposite wall. The two prison guards and Sowden joined him, leaving the ARU in the reception area. The door clanged shut behind them. Joe heard the bolts closing. Thirty seconds passed before the second door opened. Another screw was there, his keys attached to his belt by a length of cord. Joe’s guards pushed him out into the corridor beyond, and the door was locked behind him.

This corridor had yellow-painted concrete walls and bright strip lighting. After fifteen metres it led to a second set of double security doors, then to another courtyard, half the size of a football pitch and surrounded by imposing brick buildings four storeys high. Even though it was still night, the sky was bathed in light – Joe had the sense that the whole exterior was lit by floodlights. Every window he could see had bars over it. He counted four prison guards circling the courtyard, each with a German shepherd on a lead. One of the dogs looked in his direction, its ears flattened. Its handler yanked its lead sharply and continued to circle the courtyard.

The building to which the guards led Joe was on the opposite side of the courtyard at his ten o’clock. This time they passed through a single security door, which Sowden carefully locked behind them. They were in a small annexe with a sign on the opposite wall: ‘Category A’.

‘You said remand,’ Joe muttered.

‘We’ve been advised you’re a flight risk. You’re under observation. Do yourself a favour and keep your head down.’ Joe opened his mouth to argue. He didn’t get the chance. ‘Give me any more trouble, fella, I’ll stick you with the fucking Irish. I reckon they’d make short work of a nice army lad like you. Trust me, mate, you’re better off with Hunter.’

Joe didn’t ask who Hunter was. He figured he’d find out soon enough.

The block Sowden and the two guards led him to consisted of three landings, each with a set of security bars at intervals of fifteen metres and lined with solid metal doors with shuttered peepholes every seven or eight metres on either side. Joe’s guards led him to the third door on the right of the ground-floor landing. One of them rapped on the door – three heavy thumps – then unlocked it.

‘In,’ said Sowden.

Joe entered: he had no other option. The cell door clanged shut behind him. He found himself in almost total darkness.

Silence.

In the corridor outside he heard the rattling of a set of security bars dissolve into nothing.

Silence again.

Joe realized his muscles were tense. He didn’t know who this guy Hunter was, or why he was here. But he did know that he couldn’t afford to display a moment of weakness in front of whatever fucking maniac he was banged up with. He expected Hunter to be in the bottom bunk – that, he knew, was where the dominant cellmate traditionally installed himself. Joe considered pulling him out and forcing him to the top – to show he didn’t intend to take any shit – but before he could do anything, there was a voice.

‘Ain’t someone been a bad boy?’ A nauseating sound, somewhere between a giggle and a snort.

Joe peered through the darkness, trying at once to see his cellmate and work out what his voice said about him. Hunter sounded older than Joe, probably in his fifties. London accent – east, not south. Probably white. He didn’t sound very hard. Quite the opposite. Almost effeminate, and it was clear he was already occupying the top bunk…

‘ Very bad boy, to end up with old Hunter.’

Joe managed to pick out some dark shapes in the room. A table along the right-hand wall with a small TV on top. A set of bunk beds along the left. The outline of a window at the far end, about a metre square and with the shadows of six metal bars just visible. A toilet at the near end, with a tiny sink next to it; a wardrobe to his right. The cell smelled of bleach. Joe installed himself on the bottom bunk.

‘A bad, bad boy, to end up in here with me,’ the voice persisted. It had a sing-song lilt to it, the voice of a man doing what he could to sound like a child. Joe had a flashback of another voice, so far away but with the same rhythmic sing-song: Amer-ee-can motherfucker. Amer-ee-can motherfucker…

‘You speak again,’ Joe said, his voice level, ‘I’ll break every bone in your fucking body.’

His cellmate sniggered, then fell silent. Five minutes later Joe heard the deep breathing of sleep.

As for Joe, it still didn’t matter if he kept his eyes open or closed. Either way, he relived the night’s events, over and over, like a film loop in his head. Like a knife being stabbed into his own guts, withdrawn and then thrust in again.

Just as he had done to Caitlin.

He could hardly bear to think of it, and yet he couldn’t think of anything else.

And, in another corner of his brain, questions. The sortie through the minefield that had killed Ricky: was that just an accident, or had they been manoeuvred into position? But manoeuvred by who? The Americans? Was the car that had tried to run him over anything to do with it? The driver hadn’t looked American. Middle Eastern, if anything. And the intruders in the SOCO suits, who’d tried to make it look as if he’d killed Caitlin before committing suicide. Who were they? How had they tracked him down? No one knew he was there.