Chris Ryan - Osama

There were also three men waiting to visit. One of them was an elderly black man – the father of an inmate, Eva assumed. The second was a lad of about seventeen wearing the standard uniform of a London rude boy – hooded top, baggy jeans, trainers, bling, cigarette behind his ear. He was chewing gum and pretending he was the only person in the room. Eva would have put money on there being a few lumps of hash wrapped in clingfilm in the bag at his feet. The third man seemed a little out of place somehow. He had dark skin – Asian maybe, or Middle Eastern – and wore a smart suit that looked elegant on his slim frame. He had a large, hooked nose, slightly stooped shoulders and looked quite serene as he waited for the screws – two male, one female – to call them forward.

It was 2 p.m. exactly when they called the visitors to the reception desk at one end of the room, next to which there was a magnetic security arch leading further into the prison. There was a bit of jostling as the wives and girlfriends competed to be first in the queue. Eva found herself one place behind the Asian man but in front of the two others. The queue moved very slowly. The female screw patted each woman down and asked them to empty their pockets while the male officers stashed any bags or possessions into lockers behind the counter. More than once Eva heard the woman explaining the regulations in bored tones to visitors. ‘You can take a maximum of five pounds in change past security. Anything else you leave here. Come on, you know the drill…’

It took twenty minutes for the other women to disappear through the security arch and for the Asian man in front of Eva to reach the counter. She’d already removed her bracelet and earrings and put them in her handbag, and counted out five pounds exactly to take through with her. Now, though, she was thinking of just walking out. She should have written to him instead. Asked if she could come and see him. Not just turned up.

‘What’s this?’

One of the male screws had been patting the Asian man down and was removing something from the pocket of his suit.

‘It is a book,’ said the man politely, as if he were not answering a stupid question.

‘You can take a maximum of f—’ The screw started to repeat the mantra.

‘It’s only a book,’ the man protested mildly. ‘I am accustomed to carrying it with me at all times.’

But the screw wasn’t having it. He flung the book onto the counter. Eva saw the words ‘Holy Koran’ in gold letters on the leather cover.

‘Hand!’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I need to scan your hand. All male visitors.’ As he spoke, the screw held up a webcam and took a picture of the Asian man, before indicating the scanner on the counter. The Asian man looked uncomfortable, as though he was about to protest further. But then he thought better of it, gave the screw a nod of thanks and disappeared through the security arch, by which time the female screw was patting Eva down and finding nothing but the five pound coins in her back pocket.

Beyond the security arch she found the other visitors waiting in a small holding room, a third the size of the one they’d just left. It stank like the perfume hall in Debenhams. Eva stood slightly apart from the others, next to the Asian man who was blinking calmly into space. The remaining two visitors and the three screws arrived a couple of minutes later. The female screw locked the door behind them before opening one on the opposite side of the room. The visitors were led across a deserted exercise yard and into a brown-brick building on the other side.

The visiting hall looked more like a day-care centre than a prison. It was large – probably thirty metres long by twenty wide – with strip lights hanging from the ceiling. Every couple of metres there were sets of four chairs, all fixed to the carpet-tiled floor; three of each set were yellow and one red. In the middle of one long wall was a serving hatch – as Eva entered the hall the metal grate was being raised to reveal a couple of dinner-lady types in plastic hairnets, two stainless-steel tea urns and, behind them, boxes of Kit-Kats, Mars Bars and crisps. There were another four screws in here, already patrolling the room. The door at the far end, which was clearly where the inmates would enter from, was locked.

‘All right, everyone,’ barked one of the screws. ‘Find yourselves a seat – prisoners on the red, visitors on the yellow.’ The wives and girlfriends hustled forward. Clearly the seats nearest the serving hatch were the most sought after and were filled in seconds. Eva took the one nearest the entrance, naively thinking that she could make a sharp exit if she wanted to – until she saw the female screw locking the door behind her. Then the woman nodded at one of her colleagues who had approached the entrance at the other end.

The door opened. Men entered.

Eva realized her palms were sweating as she watched them come in. These lags’ faces looked eager. Some of them were even smiling as they hurried into the room. She looked at them all in turn, as they peeled off from the other prisoners and headed to hug their women or their kids. At another time and place the sight of these incarcerated men softening at the sight of their children might have caught Eva’s heart. Not today. Today she hunted for the features she knew so well.

And she couldn’t see them.

All the inmates had entered. Joe wasn’t among them.

Maybe she’d missed him. She stood up from her yellow chair and scanned the room again. There was the old black man, sitting and talking quietly with a guy in his thirties who shared his features. Next to him, the Asian man was talking with two others who wore plain prison clothes but had their heads covered according to the rules of their religion. She was so distracted that she didn’t see a final figure appear in the doorway. When she did notice him, she had the feeling he’d been staring at her for several seconds.

Her eyes widened. She swallowed hard. He looked terrible.

His face was covered in scabs, as though he’d been in some kind of accident, and he had a couple of days’ dark stubble. He was leaner about the face than Eva remembered, but it was his eyes that shocked her the most. They were haunted. Unfriendly. Mistrustful. He didn’t smile as he looked at her. In fact, his face barely registered any expression. And he didn’t move.

Eva felt Joe might have just stood staring at her for the duration of the visit, but the screw instructed him to walk into the room.

He walked slowly, his face still set. A kid ran in front of him but he barely seemed to notice. When he reached the little group of four chairs at which Eva was standing, he stopped. Still he didn’t talk.

‘Inmates on the red!’ shouted a screw from across the room. Joe sat down. Eva sat opposite him.

‘Hi,’ she said. Her voice cracked, so she swallowed, smiled and tried again. ‘Hi.’

No reply.

‘It’s Eva,’ she said.

Joe looked around and beckoned to the female screw who was patrolling about five metres away. ‘I want to go back to my cell,’ he said.

‘Visiting time one hour. You go back then. No exceptions.’

The room was a hum of quiet conversation. About ten people were queuing up at the hatch.

‘I could get you a coffee,’ Eva suggested, ‘or some chocolate…’

‘Why are you here?’

Eva blinked in surprise. ‘Joe…’ she whispered.

‘Who sent you?’

‘Nobody sent me. Joe, it’s me… ’

She saw his eyes narrow as he looked briefly around the room.

‘I saw…’ Her voice cracked again. ‘I saw it in the paper…’

‘I didn’t kill her.’ He said it quietly. Not much more than a whisper. For an instant his gruff, unfriendly voice sounded just like the kid she’d grown up with.