Dead at First Sight

86 Thursday 11 October

Kofi Okonjo liked to work out. He let his lunch digest, then took his turn in the exercise yard, with its tall fence topped with two rolls of razor wire, and began running circuits in the pelting rain. No one else was out here and that was good.

As he ran he thought of his life back in Reutlingen. His cars. Julia. They’d had a similar background. She’d told him all about her father, an angry farmer, angry all the time at the EU subsidies, angry when she tried to read books to educate herself, angry at her mother. And who’d abused her throughout her childhood.

Kofi told her about his background, about stuff he’d done as a boy soldier, and it shocked and excited her. She understood. They were two of a kind. He dreamed of her now, her pale white skin. Her sexy mouth. Her bright-red nipples and her small but firm round breasts. The ring in her navel. The other ring, down below, that drove her crazy when he flipped it around with his tongue.

He felt himself growing stiff inside his loose grey tracksuit as he ran. When he finished his circuits he’d whack off in the shower, perhaps, thinking of her. Imagining her voice. Talking him through it. Imagining her hand on him. Slow, slow, gently, then firmer. Harder. Faster.

An hour later, sodden with rain, he re-entered the First Night Centre, and the sour reek of disinfectant. He walked past the cells and went into his. His mean-looking cellmate wasn’t there. No big loss. He stripped off his clothes, picked up his meagre towel, wrapped it round his midriff and headed off to the showers.

Entering, he slung his towel on one of a row of hooks and turned the tap, standing well back to check the temperature. Then stepped forward, immersing himself, feeling the jet of hot water, gratefully, on his face, body and hair. He washed his body and his hair thoroughly, rinsed off and stepped back, his eyes stinging from soap residue.

As he did so, a voice behind him startled him. ‘Nice fresh towel, Dunstan?’

Who knew him by that name in here?

He spun round. To see a man with a towel over his head and face. Holding what looked like a home-made knife.

‘Mr Barrey told me to take care of you.’

Before he could move, the man rammed the blade into his stomach. Okonjo felt for a second he had been punched by a fist. An instant later his stomach erupted with burning, searing pain. The towel fell away from his assailant’s face. It was the silent Eastern European man who had been in the prison van with him from the magistrates’ court.

‘I’m told you like blades, don’t you, Dunstan? Or should I call you Kofi?’

He moaned in agony.

The man held him against the wall with the hilt pressed against his stomach.

He was dimly aware that his bowels were evacuating. The man was eyeballing him.

‘I’ve a message from Mr Barrey. He told me to take care of you in prison. Do you know anything of history? Those old medieval knights, in wars, had a code of honour. They would ask the knight who’d pierced them with a sword not to twist — it gave them a better chance of survival, because if they twisted the blade, it would tear their guts, ripping open their bowels, all that muck getting into the bloodstream. Sepsis would follow. Too far gone for doctors. A slow, agonizing death. Eh?’

Okonjo stared at him, shaking in agony and terror. ‘No, please,’ he mouthed, but the sound came out strange, distorted, lost inside another moan of agony.

‘Plenty of time to think about your life, yes? All your loved ones. Got a girl you’re sweet on waiting for you back home, have you? Julia, that her name?’

His assailant shot a quick, wary glance behind him. ‘I could just twist the blade and then you’ll have a few hours before you die. A few hours to think about Julia, yes? Or you would if I left you like this, but I can’t take that chance. Sorry.’ He withdrew the shank, Okonjo gasping as he did, blood and something darker and vile-smelling running from the wound. Okonjo jammed his hands over it, panting in pain. An instant later the man plunged the blade through Okonjo’s chest. Pushing it in hard, right up to the makeshift hilt again. Then gave it a sharp twist.

The African jerked, once. A gurgling sound came from his throat, then he collapsed into the shower tray.

His assailant removed the shank. He rinsed it under the running water for some while, wiped it carefully with a towel and slipped away, taking the towel with him.