Chris Ryan - Osama

He was in a high street standing outside a McDonald’s. Boots on one side, Coffee Republic on the other. A road sign thirty metres to his right indicated that he was a mile from both Brixton and Wandsworth, and two from Clapham. He turned on his mental GPS and continued to look around. The weather had forced most people off the streets – a blessing, given Joe’s appearance – but one woman passed, huddled under an umbrella, dragging an unimpressed cocker spaniel on a lead. She gave him a look of distaste and hurried on. Joe half considered entering the McDonald’s and cleaning himself up in the bathroom, but he quickly dropped that idea. There were about twenty people in the restaurant and he couldn’t risk one of them recognizing his face from the papers. Instead, he pulled up the collar of his overcoat, lowered his head and started to walk.

He had only two things in mind. First, he needed to get as far off the Transit’s route as possible. It wouldn’t be long before his disappearance from the prison was noticed, and it wouldn’t take a genius to work out how he’d done it – at which point every police officer in the capital would be looking for him.

And second? The world thought he was a murderer. The people he loved were dead, or in danger. And someone was hell-bent on killing him. He needed money, shelter, help. He needed someone he could trust.

The rain fell harder, soaking through his coat and running into his eyes. But his mind’s eye, for the first time in days, was clear. It focused on the pale, frightened face of a woman who, once upon a time, he had trusted without question.

The trouble was, in a world turned upside down, how did he know he could trust her now?

‘I still live in the same place… Dawson Street… if you need anything.’ When he had heard these words in prison, Joe hadn’t expected to act on them. He’d been wrong.

Number 132 Dawson Street, Hounslow, was a small terraced house: two up, two down. The curtains were shut both downstairs and upstairs, and he could see no chinks of light. He lingered outside for a few minutes. He felt like he had a fucking spotlight following him, like everybody he’d passed on his way here had stared at him, recognized him. Like they could see through his overcoat to the beige prison uniform underneath. And with dried blood on his fingers, he kept his right hand hidden inside the sleeve.

He noted that he was under a Heathrow flight path. Aircraft flew overhead at a rate of one every three or four minutes. He could use that. A black van drove down the street, registration KT04 CDE. If he saw it a second time, he knew he’d have to disappear. If any of the occasional passers-by paid him too much attention, same deal. And his senses were alert for any other sign that this place was being watched. That was the trouble with surveillance: you often didn’t know what you were looking for until you saw it.

The rain had stopped, but his clothes were still uncomfortably wet and he had to suppress the occasional shiver as walked fifty metres along Dawson Street before coming to the end of the terrace. The final house had a two-metre-high wooden gate to its side, clearly giving access to the back garden. Joe checked once more that he wasn’t being watched. The gate was bolted so he climbed over it and squeezed past two wheelie bins to the back of the house. It was a postage stamp of a garden, mostly taken up with a kid’s trampoline. The shared fence was only a metre high. He clambered over it, then crossed the intervening gardens with little difficulty, until, counting carefully, he reached number 132.

A tiny water feature tinkled gently in one corner of the garden. The rest of the space was paved and covered with twenty or thirty plants in pots. He examined the rear of the house. On the left was a door – no catflap, two mortise locks, and a bolt at top and bottom. Impenetrable without proper equipment. He could see through the window next to the door into a small kitchen. To the right were French windows, each with two panels. It was a moonlit night but he couldn’t make out much inside, except that it was a sitting room. His eyes scanned the darkness for the glow or blink of a burglar alarm’s sensor. There was nothing.

From the pocket of the overcoat he removed the scalpel and the surgical tape. As long as he was silent, he could use these to gain entry.

The glass of the French windows was wet. Joe removed his overcoat and used the sleeve of his prison jacket to dry the lower right-hand pane. Taking the scalpel, he slowly, precisely, scored around the edge of the glass, loosening the putty that held it to the frame and easing it out. It was slow work – it took about ten minutes – and he had to be quiet. If the neighbours heard a constant scratching sound, they’d be out to investigate.

Once he’d removed as much putty as he could, he unrolled the tape and stuck strips across the pane until it was entirely covered. These two jobs done, he returned to the water feature and selected a smooth, grey pebble no bigger than an orange and carried it back to the French windows. He stood very still, brandishing the pebble, waiting for another plane to pass overhead. And when the air was filled with the thunder of jet engines again, he struck.

The pebble made a flat thud as it hit the taped window. There was a slight indentation at the point of impact but the glass itself remained fixed. He struck another three times while there was still enough noise from the aircraft to mask the sound. As it faded away, he stopped and waited another three minutes for a second plane to pass.

It took two more strikes with the pebble for the glass to slip from its frame, but it remained in one unshattered piece on account of the tape. Joe cautiously removed the glass, before crawling through the opening and gently laying it on the carpet inside. He listened hard for any sound of movement in the house. Nothing.

He needed to make sure this was the right place, so he stepped towards the mantelpiece where he could see the silhouettes of three framed pictures. At random, he selected the middle one. It was too dark to make out the details, so he stepped back to the French windows to take advantage of the moon. Now that he could see the photograph properly he inhaled sharply.

It was of him.

He looked so much younger. No frown lines on his forehead, no scars on his face. His skin looked less leathery, his frame less bulky. In his eyes there shone a quiet enthusiasm that he had not felt for years.

Joe was not alone in this picture. She was standing next to him, looking like she always had done in his mind. The girl next door. His best friend for so many years. Only he could see now what he’d never seen then. The way she had brushed up against him, the way she had leaned her head on his shoulder the way friends seldom did. Joe felt a pang of something like guilt, and the sickening image of Caitlin, bleeding and begging and dying, flashed across his eyes. He returned the picture to its place before creeping towards the door of the sitting room, then along the hallway and up the stairs.

He found her sleeping in a bedroom where the curtains were open a few inches. She stirred the moment he opened the door, rolling in her bed and muttering something under her breath. He recognized the voice. It was definitely her. Definitely Eva. Joe stood in the doorway, waiting for her to settle, but she didn’t. He could hear her teeth grinding, and remembered the way she used to do that whenever she was on edge. Whatever dream was troubling her continued to do so. It gave Joe no pleasure to realize that he now had to drag her into a waking nightmare. He clutched his scalpel once more and walked the few paces from the door to the bedhead.

His eyes were used to the darkness now, and in any case there was a thin shard of moonlight. He could make out the hair streaked sweatily across her face, and could see her lips moving silently.