Chris Ryan - Osama

‘Let’s go,’ he breathed.

He took Eva by the hand. If anyone was looking for him personally, he would be more unobtrusive as one half of a couple. As they walked north up Dagenham Heathway he thought he sensed Eva squeezing his hand ever so slightly. He didn’t return the gesture. He didn’t want her to get the wrong idea.

The busker’s voice faded away, to be replaced by the sound of a drunk couple arguing. The male, mid-twenties, pockmarked, ruddy face, the female hollow-cheeked and with a shaved head. Noted.

Fifty metres from the B&B, they passed a Currys. The shop was devoid of customers and three assistants were hanging around the till. Along the far wall was a bank of televisions, and the three aisles between that back wall and the entrance were filled with laptops and other electronics.

‘In here,’ Joe said. He let go of Eva’s hand and headed for the laptop closest to the entrance.

It didn’t take more than about ten seconds for one of the assistants to swoop – a young man with wispy facial hair that needed its first shave. ‘You OK, boss?’

Joe jabbed a finger at the laptop. ‘Listen, mate, do you mind if I have a quick go on this? I’m thinking of getting one.’

‘Good deal on that one, boss. Ends today…’

‘Is it online?’

‘Course it is, boss.’ He lingered.

‘I’ll give you a shout if I need anything, mate.’

The assistant took a couple of steps backwards. ‘Course, boss. You just do… you know… whatever…’

But Joe was already navigating towards his Hotmail page. He logged on. He felt his heart stop. A new email was waiting for him. The world around him dissolved into a fog.

He clicked it open.

There was no link this time. No movie to watch, no images to horrify him. Just three sequences of numbers:

110511

0600

51.848612, -5.1223103

He stared at it, vaguely aware that Eva had joined him at the screen.

‘What is it?’ she whispered.

He didn’t immediately answer.

‘Joe, what is it?’

‘Instructions,’ he said quietly.

‘I don’t understand.’

He pointed at the first sequence. ‘Tomorrow’s date,’ he said. ‘May 11. Time, 0600 hours.’

‘But what about the last numbers?’

‘Coordinates,’ he said. ‘Latitude and longitude.’

‘But… where?’

Joe navigated to Google Maps, but even as he did so, he was thinking out loud, remembering the details of the YouTube video that was no more. The sea, and the darkness of the sky despite the fact that it had been taken after sunrise. ‘The west coast,’ he said. ‘Somewhere remote.’ As he spoke, he tapped in the grid reference. Five seconds later he had zoomed in to a beach on the Pembrokeshire coast. The satellite image was indistinct.

‘Joe…’

‘That’s where he is,’ he murmured.

Eva tugged on his sleeve. ‘Joe… look! ’

He dragged his attention from the laptop. Eva was pointing at the TVs along the back wall. There were about twenty of them, of different sizes and quality, but they all showed the same image.

Him.

Joe’s eyes flickered towards the three assistants. They had convened around the till again, and did not appear to have noticed what was on television. The image changed, to be replaced by a female news reporter standing outside the front gates of Barfield.

Calmly but quickly, Joe examined the map in front of him, scanning the surrounding area: the beach, a cliff behind, a single road leading there and a solitary house about a klick inland. His eyes narrowed as he examined that house.

‘Joe…’ Eva sounded desperate.

The nearest village: Thornbridge.

‘ Joe! ’

He logged out of his account, then ushered her quickly out of the shop before any of the assistants tried to accost them. ‘West Wales,’ he said.

‘But—’

‘We need to get there.’

Eva stopped walking, and as Joe turned to look at her, she grabbed his hands and held them tightly. Fiercely. Joe glanced at her watch. Midday. He had eighteen hours. ‘Listen to me, Joe,’ she said. ‘We can’t do this alone. We’ve got to tell someone what’s happening. We need to get help. I know people. I can speak to them…’

An old lady trundled along the pavement in an electric mobility vehicle. Her head turned as she passed. Had she recognized him? Or was it just that they were arguing?

‘No,’ he hissed.

‘We have to.’

‘Eva, even you’re not sure this isn’t in my head. Even you’re wondering if I made it all up. Hey, I could have done. Abbottabad. Caitlin. The whole fucking thing. What if I really am out of my mind? What if I really am a psycho?’

Eva frowned and shook her head.

‘You know me,’ Joe insisted. ‘But who the hell else could I go to that won’t just shove me back in a cell and throw away the key?’

Eva had no answer. She just bit her bottom lip. ‘What if it’s a trap?’

‘He killed my wife. He took my son,’ Joe replied. Pulling himself away from her grasp, he continued walking along the pavement. He could feel her tearful eyes burning into his back. And he’d only gone ten metres when he heard her footsteps running along behind him, and felt her tugging at his sleeve once more.

‘ But what if it’s a trap? ’ she repeated.

Joe gave her a hard stare. ‘Of course it’s a fucking trap,’ he said. ‘Come on, we’ve got a lot to do.’

1300 hours.

There were easier ways than this to get your hands on a weapon, Joe thought to himself. There were contacts he could call. Favours he could pull in. But they involved showing his face. This, he decided, was the better option.

The tower block was the same grey colour as the sky. It was fifteen storeys high, and the side facing him had apartments two abreast, each with a balcony whose front was a dirty orange colour. A covered lobby jutted about five metres out from the block, and inside a bleak, dark, concrete-clad area led to stairs on the left and right.

Joe stood twenty metres from the entrance, on the edge of a small playground where three children clambered over a pyramid-shaped frame, while their mums sat on an adjacent bench, smoking, chatting and ignoring their kids. He was leaning against a lamppost beneath a sign indicating that this was an Alcohol Restricted Area. There was a car park between him and the entrance, about half full of clapped-out old vehicles, three of which had broken windows. A red mail van was just driving away. Joe had watched the postman hurry back to it having made his delivery, evidently keen to be somewhere else.

This was one of the high-rises that had been visible the previous night from their vantage point on the bandstand. He’d been born and brought up in this area. Lady Margaret Road was just a ten-minute walk in an easterly direction, and he had a suspicion that his mother, if she was still alive, lived in one of these blocks. But he wasn’t here to visit family, and he hadn’t chosen this particular block at random. He’d chosen it because it was, as it always had been, the shittiest, most run-down, godforsaken spot in the whole of west London. If you weren’t a waster or a junkie or a dealer when you first moved here, you would be pretty soon. No other type of person lived here. And even if he hadn’t known the reputation of this block that the locals referred to as ‘Heroin Heights’, he’d have recognized the signs anyway: half the curtains drawn even though it was the middle of the day, several broken windows and all but three of the balconies stuffed full of debris – old mattresses, white goods, you name it. It was a real shithole, largely untouched by the police because they’d given up and it kept all the dregs in one place.