Chris Ryan - Osama

A minute later they stepped off the bus. Eva walked briskly, with Joe following. She turned left, off the high street and into a long residential road that Joe remembered from his youth. It extended half a mile, becoming gradually more shabby the further they walked. It started to rain again. In the distance Joe saw the twinkling lights of three tower blocks, and it was only then that he realized where Eva was taking him.

The bandstand – that crumbling old relic by the swings and slides in the recreation area, a stone’s throw from Lady Margaret Road – was their place. It had always been deserted in bad weather, and it was deserted tonight. Joe only gave up his heavy overcoat, putting it around Eva’s shoulders, when they reached the recreation area and he had established that nobody would see his prison uniform. Eva gave him a grateful look, but then he noticed her eyes lingering on the blood on his hand and the uniform. She wasn’t at ease, and Joe didn’t blame her.

Stepping onto that empty bandstand was like stepping back in time. The white paint on the wrought-iron railings was still peeling. There was the familiar smell of rotten wood from the damp decking. The park around them was bleak and neglected, with high-rises twinkling all around. An old tramp was sleeping on a bench by the adjacent playground, using his coat as a tarp against the downpour, but apart from him, there were only Joe and Eva in the vicinity. They sat down side by side with their backs against the railings, looking towards the middle of the bandstand.

They remained silent for a full minute, listening only to each other’s exhausted, shaking breath and the patter of rain on the roof of the bandstand. When Joe finally spoke, his voice sounded monotone.

‘I was in Pakistan when they went in for Osama bin Laden.’

He could sense Eva holding her breath.

‘I saw something I shouldn’t have seen. My mate who was with me died the next day. I got sent home and someone tried to do me in a hit and run. I took…’ He felt a shadow cross his mind. ‘I took Caitlin and Conor away, somewhere I thought was safe. They found us, I don’t know how. They killed Caitlin and tried to make it look as if I’d committed suicide. But then they were disturbed…’ He heard his voice waver. ‘… Conor saw his mum’s body. He saw the knife in my hands.’

Eva put her hand on his knee.

‘What did you see?’ she whispered. ‘In Pakistan, I mean.’

Joe shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Only that they removed two bodies from bin Laden’s compound.’

‘Two? But… I saw it on the news. They all said—’

‘I know what they said .’ He sensed Eva tensing up at his aggressive tone, and immediately regretted it. He took a deep breath and continued. ‘In Barfield four Arab guys tried to kill me.’

Another silence.

‘Joe,’ Eva said timidly. ‘Are you sure about all this? It sounds like…’

Joe snorted. ‘Like I’m cracking up? That’s what they all think. My OC. Even Caitlin thought I was imagining things.’ He turned towards Eva. ‘And they’re right.’ It was the first time he had admitted it, even to himself. Somehow it made him feel lighter. ‘I have flashbacks. Blackouts. But they did kill Caitlin, Eva. They did try to cut me up in Barfield. Someone’s turning your house upside down right now, and I’m not making that up either…’

‘Wait,’ Eva breathed.

On a reflex, Joe looked over his shoulder to check nobody was approaching. But the rain was falling heavily again. Apart from the sleeping tramp, they were alone.

‘The men who attacked you in prison. They were Middle Eastern?’

Joe nodded.

‘Were they in the visiting room the day I came?’

Joe thought back. He could see two of them in his mind, sitting ten metres to his left. ‘Yeah.’

‘There was a man,’ said Eva. ‘He looked, I don’t know, Arab or Asian. I know that doesn’t mean anything, but he was in the visiting room with us.’

Joe tried to sharpen his memory. There must have been a third man sitting there – the inmates wouldn’t have been in the visiting room without a visitor – and the more he concentrated, the more a blurry face came into his mind. If Joe saw him again, perhaps he’d be able to make a positive ID. But without something to jog his memory…

‘Would you recognize him?’ he asked Eva.

She nodded. ‘I think so…’

They fell silent again, then Joe said quietly: ‘You don’t have to help me. If anyone suspects you know where I am, they’ll—’

‘—break into my house at night? I think it’s safe to say somebody already suspects.’

Joe nodded. ‘I’m sorry.’

Eva stood up, walked to the other side of the bandstand and stared out into the rain. ‘Remember last time we were here?’ she asked. Joe nodded. He also remembered the photograph he’d found in her sitting room.

‘Every male visitor to Barfield has their photograph taken and biometric information recorded,’ Eva continued, suddenly brisk.

‘Barfield will be crawling with—’

‘I don’t need to go to Barfield. It’ll be on the system, somewhere. I’ll just have to locate it.’ She looked out at the rain again. ‘I could go to the office first thing.’

‘I don’t like it,’ Joe said.

‘Better than sitting and shivering in the bandstand. I’ll drop into my place first, see what state it’s in, get a few things—’

‘Absolutely not,’ Joe cut in. ‘They’ll have eyes out for you.’ He still didn’t know who ‘they’ were.

‘I can look after myself, Joe.’

‘You can’t go home.’

There was an edgy silence. ‘Fine,’ Eva said. She looked at her watch. ‘It’s just gone midnight. I’ll wait till six before I go to the office – any earlier and it’ll look suspicious.’

Joe closed his eyes. People close to him were suffering. Dying. He didn’t want Eva to be next in line. But he didn’t have any better ideas.

It was almost as if she knew what he was thinking. ‘I’ll be careful,’ she said. ‘How will I contact you?’

Eva gave him some paper and a ballpoint pen from her bag, and he wrote down two random strings of eight letters, numbers and symbols, following them both with the suffix ‘@hotmail.com’, and by each one he wrote an equally unguessable password. Then he copied them exactly onto a second piece of paper, and handed it to Eva. ‘I’ll create these accounts,’ he said. ‘The first one’s yours, the second’s mine. Check it regularly, every hour if you can, but not from your phone and never from the same location. If you don’t hear from me, meet back here at 1800 hours.’

Eva neatly folded the piece of paper and placed it in her bag.

A sudden wave of exhaustion crashed over Joe. He sat down again, his head against the edge of the bandstand. ‘I need to sleep,’ he murmured. He’d had no shuteye since his first night in prison – forty-eight hours ago – and even that had been more a trance than a sleep. He looked down at his prison clothes. ‘And I need to clean up, find something else to wear before it gets light. And then…’

He paused.

‘Then what?’

‘They told me Conor was staying with Caitlin’s dad in Epsom,’ he said quietly. ‘I need to know he’s safe.’

Eva nodded. It looked like she understood.

Silence. Joe tried to fight his drowsiness.

‘These attacks… are they… revenge?’ Eva asked quietly. ‘For bin Laden, I mean?’

Sheikh al-Mujahid? He’s not dead…

‘Don’t know,’ Joe replied. He was slurring from exhaustion. ‘I just don’t know… Doesn’t make sense.’

Maybe something showed in his face, because Eva suddenly crouched down beside him. She put her arms round his shoulders and rested her head against his chest, much like she had been doing in the picture he’d seen in her house. ‘I’m sorry about your friend. And I’m so, so sorry about Caitlin.’