Chris Ryan - Osama

Joe stopped and turned. Finch was standing two metres away, at the head of his crew, who were holding back slightly, looking menacing but in a disorganized, ragtag formation.

‘Enjoying the sunshine?’ Finch gave him a crooked smile.

‘If you’ve got something to say, Finch, say it. Otherwise take your goons and fuck off.’

Finch raised a sarcastic eyebrow as he looked round at his mates. ‘You hear that, lads? Goons, you are.’ The goons didn’t look very amused. ‘You thought about what I said?’

‘Not really.’

Finch’s face remained expressionless. ‘Here’s the deal. You do something for me, I do something for you: protection. It’s worth more than money in this place, but you’ve got to earn it.’

From the corner of his eyes, Joe could see Hunter. He had circled round the perimeter of the yard and was now at Joe’s two o’clock, staring at them.

‘You want to do Hunter, you do him yourself,’ Joe replied. ‘I don’t provide muscle for the nutting squads.’

A look of suspicion crossed Finch’s face. ‘And where did you learn so much about nutting squads, army boy?’ He shrugged. ‘No, you can be sure one of us will look after the paedo. I’ll take a knife to him myself if I can. I got someone else in mind.’ Finch looked to his right. ‘See the Pakis?’

Joe followed Finch’s gaze. The four Middle Eastern-looking guys he had already noticed were now sitting cross-legged on the ground. They were deep in conversation, seemingly oblivious to anybody else around them. To Joe’s eye, they didn’t look Pakistani. Lebanese, maybe, or Syrian.

‘Got a thing about the Pakis. I don’t think too much of the niggers, neither, but they’re busy enough doing our work for us and fucking each other up. Now the Pakis – ?they need proper cutting up, maybe more. Reckon you’re the man for the job. It’s what you army boys like to do, isn’t it? Fuck with the towelheads…’

Fuck with the towelheads.

He was back in Abbottabad, firing rounds into Romeo and Juliet…

Snap out of it , he told himself. Fucking snap out of it…

‘Do your own dirty work,’ he said. ‘And you can shove your protection up your fat Irish arse.’

There was a silence. Joe was aware of a pigeon flapping down and settling on the ground three metres to his right.

‘Bad call,’ Finch whispered. ‘ Bad call.’ He turned round to his cronies. ‘Looks like Rambo here’s going the way of the nonces,’ he announced.

Finch backed away, and was immediately surrounded by his lads. The movement caused the pigeon to flap noisily up into the air and settle again between the bars of a second-floor cell window.

‘Be seeing you, army boy,’ Finch said, then turned and walked off. His crew joined him one by one, leaving Joe standing alone in the middle of the yard.

Joe stepped away. His hatred of the PIRA was deeply ingrained. He turned his attention instead to his surroundings. It was second nature to him to look for an exit strategy, but nothing presented itself here. The walls were nearly ten metres high and topped with barbed wire, every window was barred, every door bolted. There was a reason why prison escapes were so rare: they were almost impossible. He paced the exercise yard. He circled it twice. Then he saw, fifteen metres ahead, a man blocking his way.

He wasn’t tall – perhaps five-eight – but he was stocky with slicked-back grey hair and a neatly trimmed beard. He had a lit cigarette in his right hand, and an old-fashioned wooden crutch under his left.

Joe stuck out his chin. The two of them shared an unfriendly look for a full ten seconds before he sidestepped the lame man and prepared to continue his circuit of the exercise yard.

But there was another obstacle awaiting him.

He could see in an instant what was happening. On the far side of the yard, five metres from the door through which the inmates had entered it, Finch was talking to two of the screws. At Joe’s nine o’clock, two of his crew had started arguing, one pushing the other in the chest and attracting the attention of the remaining three screws. It was a clumsy diversion, but it was working: two more of the guys from Northern Ireland were striding in the direction of the lame man, violence in their eyes.

They were three metres from the inmate… Joe could see something shining in one of their fists. He acted almost without thinking. With a couple of strides he was between the lame man and the newcomer. The two from Northern Ireland continued to bear down on him, but they soon regretted it: Joe grabbed the fist with the weapon in it and, with a single move, twisted it as he brought his knee up into the pit of the man’s stomach. He went down.

Joe turned his attention to the second guy. There was no need. The man with the crutch was not so lame as he appeared. He had lifted it into the air and swiped it solidly round the second assailant’s head. The lad fell to the ground. So did the lame man, but not by accident. He knelt down and stabbed his lit cigarette into his attacker’s left eye. The lad screamed. Suddenly, screws were all around. It was the lame guy they surrounded, confiscating his crutch, grabbing him under his arm. ‘All right, Hennessey,’ one of them shouted. ‘Back to the fucking Seg Wing…’

‘We didn’t bother to change the sheets, hope you don’t mind…’ said a second screw.

Before Joe knew what was going on, Hennessey was being marched across the courtyard. It didn’t seem to bother the guy. He had a fiery glint in his eyes, and it was directed at Joe. He gave a nod of acknowledgement before he disappeared. Joe stepped away from the trouble as a medic rushed in. The whole exercise yard was suddenly awash with conversation as the other inmates started discussing loudly what had happened. All of them except Finch, who stood by the door with his back against the wall, looking at Joe with poisonous hatred.

Eva was used to prisons. She was used to the smell of them, and the noise. She was used to the way the inmates stared at her as she passed.

In Holloway and other women-only clinks, the women would stare at her without even trying to hide their contempt. They could spot a pig a mile off. In male prisons it was different. In these places she was a woman before she was a cop, and the inmates leered at her, checking her up and down, their eyes lingering on her tits and arse without any attempt to hide what they were doing. Her first ever trip into a prison had been behind the thick, ancient walls of Maidstone to interview a convicted rapist in the hope that he might be able to give her a lead on a sex crime she was investigating. They’d been talking for five minutes before she realized he was jerking off under the table.

But she’d never been as a visitor before, and there was something about the visitors’ centre at Barfield that put her on edge. Maybe it was just this depressing waiting room, where the plastic chairs were lined around the edge and the walls were covered in posters advertising counselling for families with a parent behind bars, or benefits for mums left on their own. Maybe it was the aggression steaming from the wives and girlfriends waiting to be admitted along with her. Eva counted sixteen of them, all done up to the nines with Wonderbras and lip gloss like they were heading up West, but with eyes that flashed like flick knives any time they caught her looking at them. About half of these women had kids in tow. They were quiet, mostly. Eva wondered whether they were scared of their mums, scared of the prison, or scared of the dads they were here to visit.

Or maybe her nerves stemmed from the prospect of seeing Joe again. In a place like this. At a time like this. When he wasn’t even expecting her. She realized she was grinding her teeth and made an effort to stop.