Dead if You Don’t

10

Saturday 12 August

15.00–16.00

The first fans had already begun arriving at the Amex Stadium an hour ago, some making their way to the private boxes and hospitality suites, most heading to the catering stalls or bars for their pies and pints. All were surprised by a much larger police presence than they could remember. But of course, now they were Premier League, it was bound to be different. Few grumbled, and the security guards carrying out the searches were mostly good-natured.

Ylli Prek, mingling with the crowd, made his way towards the long queue ahead of him at the turnstiles, and saw the security searches in operation. Suddenly the spring in his step was gone and he felt nervous. Nervous of failure. Of what would happen to him if he did fail. What if they checked inside the camera? He’d seen the video, heard the splashing sound. All of them who worked for Mr Dervishi had seen that video and heard that splashing. He didn’t know if it was true about the reptile, but he had seen for himself the horrific things Mr Dervishi ordered done to people who failed him.

He’d seen, on another video, Mr Dervishi command his surgeon to slash a man’s eyeball open with a razor. He’d watched a man strapped to a table being skinned alive by the surgeon on Mr Dervishi’s command. He could easily believe it was indeed true that his boss kept a sixteen-foot-long man-eating Nile crocodile in the basement of his mansion. And regularly fed it bits of people who disappointed him.

But no one asked him to open the camera. One big, tall guy patted him down thoroughly, checked his pockets and made him open his coat.

Then he was through.

Holding his ticket in his hand.

And his instructions in his mind.

Ylli Prek made his way into the South Stand. He found his seat, number 311S, and perched on it, waiting patiently — if anxiously — over the next ninety minutes as the stands filled.

Two small boys sat on their own nearby, both wearing Seagulls baseball caps and the blue-and-white club scarves. He held his camera, with its lens that he could not see through, on his knees. It was safe, he had been assured. It could not detonate accidentally, he could even drop it and nothing would happen, not until he primed it. He glanced a few times at these two boys, feeling a bit bad about them. They’d be blown to pieces, for certain.

But better that than him meeting the crocodile.

Hey-ho.

Boom, boom! I’m the secret bomber! I have no fear!

He might have been just a little less confident had he known that two rows behind him, in the rapidly filling stand, sat Sussex’s senior homicide officer, Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, with his ten-year-old son, Bruno.