Chris Ryan - Osama

He stepped out of the train at Epsom just as the Tannoy announced the arrival of the 08.32 to Waterloo. The platform was busy, but Joe’s can of lager did the trick as the harried commuters walking in the opposite direction separated to let him pass. Minutes later he was walking south through the residential area of Epsom. He knew his route. He had walked it often enough with Caitlin and Conor. His father-in-law, or whatever you wanted to call him, lived alone in a quiet road ten minutes’ walk from the station. But he knew something was wrong before he’d even walked for half that time.

These streets were always lined with parked cars, but they were seldom busy. This morning they were gridlocked. Drivers were performing tight three-point turns to get out of the solid, unmoving traffic, which only made matters worse. Several had got out of their cars and were looking ahead, trying to see the cause of the blockage.

Joe, though, realized what it was the moment he turned left into Mr O’Donnell’s street.

There were no sirens, just the ominous blue and white flashing of four emergency vehicles – one ambulance, three police – stationed in the middle of the road. They were thirty metres from Joe’s position. Midway between them and him was a police cordon, delineated by a strip of fluorescent tape and with three uniformed officers on duty. Ten metres from the cordon a four-man TV crew had set up a camera in the road and were standing beside it: two smoking, two drinking coffee, looking bored and clearly waiting for something newsworthy to happen.

The cordon, the camera crew, the blocked-off street: these were the cause of the traffic jam. They were also the cause of Joe’s sudden nausea. He didn’t even need to check that the emergency vehicles were positioned outside Caitlin’s father’s house.

It was all he could do to resist the urge simply to barge through the cordon. What the fuck had happened? Conor? Was he…

Suddenly his pulse was racing, his breath short. If he’d lost Conor, he’d lost everything. He ran towards the camera crew. Before he knew what had happened, the camera itself was lying smashed on the ground and he had grabbed one of the team by the front of his coat and was bellowing: ‘ What’s happening here? What the fuck’s going on? ’

He felt arms behind him – the rest of the crew were pulling him away. He made short work of them, jabbing one in the chest with the heel of his right hand, swiping another away with his arm like he was barely there. It didn’t matter that they’d done nothing. Rage was burning inside him like he’d never known it.

From the edge of his vision, he was aware of two police officers – one male, one female – sprinting towards him from the cordon. The male officer was shouting something – in his confused state, he couldn’t tell what – and the woman was talking into the radio attached to her uniform.

He stared at them for a second, breathless, teeth clenched.

And then he ran.

There was more shouting behind him. Someone was making chase. Joe hurtled round the corner of the street, running blindly but with all the speed he could muster. Sweat poured from him. His muscles burned. He didn’t know where he was heading. He just had to get away, out of sight. He had no thought for himself, but only for Conor. He had to know what had happened. He had to speak to Eva. She would be able to find out…

He was in an alleyway behind a terrace of Victorian houses. He didn’t know how he’d got there. It was quiet. A bold urban fox stared at him from ten metres away, but apart from that he was alone, standing by three green wheelie bins overflowing with stinking rubbish bags. He crouched down between two of them, making sure he was fully out of sight in case anyone should appear at either end of the alley. With trembling, fumbling hands he removed the stolen phone from his lumberjack shirt, replaced the battery and switched it on.

Ten seconds passed. The screen lit up with an animated Nokia logo. The service bars were half full, the data coverage good. He quickly opened the browser and directed it to the Hotmail homepage. After pulling out the scrap of paper with the email addresses he’d created, his calloused fingers tapped in the details on the touchscreen. In an instant he was staring at two emails in his inbox: one welcoming him to Hotmail, the other from the second address he had created. From Eva.

He tapped it and read the message that appeared: ‘The visitor’s name is Hussein Al-Samara. Address: Flat B, 23 Wimborne Road, Dagenham. There’s a cafe directly opposite. I’m there now. E’.

Joe could feel the return of the anger that had just made him lose control. He didn’t know who this Hussein Al-Samara was, but he knew he wanted to fuck the guy up. And if he knew anything – anything – ? about Conor…

Joe acted with sudden clarity. He had stolen this phone for a reason. If someone was searching for him – someone with resources – there was a chance they were monitoring access to his regular email account. If he accessed it from this phone, they could start tracing it. But it would be a moment’s work to leave the handset under the seat of a bus and set his pursuers on a wild goose chase…

He didn’t hesitate. Logging out of his new account, he typed in the username and password of his old one. Ten seconds passed while the connection was made. His inbox appeared.

There was a long list of unread emails. The usual shit: loan offers, porn sites and Viagra. Joe paid no attention to any of them. At the top of the list was an email from an address he did not recognize, but with a subject heading that he certainly did: ‘Conor’.

He felt, as he lightly tapped the screen, that the world had slowed down. It seemed to take an age for the email to display. When it did, and he tapped on the link that formed its only contents, the delay was excruciating.

Ten seconds passed. Twenty. A YouTube video appeared on the phone’s screen. No title. Number of views: 0.

Joe tapped the screen to play it. He saw dark, juddery camerawork. A time code read ‘06:03’. There were clunking noises, and then perhaps, very faintly, a whimpering sound.

A child’s voice. Full of fear.

The camera swung round. There was a window. Beyond it, he thought he could make out the sea. The sky was growing light, but there was no sign of the rising sun. It continued to move. He saw a bed. On the wall behind it there was a picture of a sailing ship in stormy seas.

And, sitting on the bed, was his son.

Conor’s face was beaten and bruised. There was a cut on his lower lip, and a daub of blood just below it. His eyes were raw and swollen. His hands were tied behind his back.

He tried to speak, but couldn’t. All that came from his mouth was a weak, shuddering sound. But then he looked up, clearly paying attention to whoever was holding the video camera. Whatever sign that person made, it seemed to fill Conor with more horror.

Finally he spoke. Each word was an effort. He stuttered and stumbled, and it sounded more like weeping than speaking. The message, though, was sufficiently clear.

‘Daddy… I don’t know where I am… Mr… Mr Ashe… He killed granddad… He says he’s going to kill me…’

The very second he had forced these feeble words from his terrified throat, the screen went black. The video was over.

With dread creeping through every cell of his body, Joe stared at the empty screen. And when he tried to replay the scene, he was unable. Instead of his beaten, terrorized son, he saw a brief message: a message that chilled him almost as much as what he had just seen.

‘Video unavailable,’ it said. ‘The owner has removed this content.’

The full cup of coffee on the table in front of Eva was cold, the toast uneaten, the Daily Mirror unread. She had no stomach for either food or news.