Osama

ELEVEN

During the night the agony of Caitlin’s death kept coming to Joe in vividly accurate flashbacks. Fear too. It was a dark shadow on the edge of his mind. He was trapped. Set up. And if anyone wanted to have another go at him, it would be easy.

As it grew light, he realized he would soon have to go back to the dining hall. When the door was unlocked at seven-thirty, he decided to head straight there without saying a word to Hunter. But his path was blocked. Sowden, the screw who had received him when he first arrived, was standing in the doorway. ‘All right, Mansfield,’ he said. ‘Hands flat against the wall. You too, Hunter.’

It was a brisk but thorough search. Sowden patted down his arms, his legs, his torso, back and crotch. ‘Go,’ he said shortly when he was satisfied Joe was clean. ‘Your turn, Hunter.’

Joe left them to it and made his way to breakfast.

His senses were heightened, tuned in to any possible sign of danger, like he was in the field. Maybe the eyes that he felt burning into him weren’t really following his progress towards the serving area. Maybe Finch, still surrounded by his crew at a table halfway along on the left-hand side, wasn’t staring at him as he passed.

Or maybe they all were.

Joe ate everything he was given, shovelling Alpen and rubbery eggs down his throat like he was filling a magazine with rounds, and gulping down a cup of hot, sweet tea. All around him he heard cons complaining about the food. Try a cold MRE after three days in the snow, he thought to himself. It took him no more than three minutes to get his breakfast down him, after which he headed straight back to his cell, intending to stay there till the next mealtime.

No such luck.

It was 10 a.m. when he heard the sound of truncheons banging against the doors of the corridor. ‘Exercise,’ Hunter said from the top bunk.

‘Fuck that,’ Joe replied.

‘Won’t let you, fella. Everyone’s got to go outside. Half an hour. It’s the rules.’

Hunter was right. When Joe refused to leave his cell, three screws arrived to persuade him otherwise. He quickly decided it wasn’t a battle worth fighting. A minute later he was outside in the yard.

It was a warm spring day. A third of the yard was in shadow as the sun had not fully risen over the prison buildings. Joe scanned the inmates. There were two men walking on their own. They looked anxiously at the other cliques and groups who had congregated in different areas. Were they nervous that they might be targets? If so, they were doing the wrong thing keeping close to the walls. If anyone decided to close in on them, they’d have nowhere to run.

Finch and his crew – Joe counted seven of them now – were standing ten metres away. In the opposite corner four Middle Eastern-looking guys were talking, and there were several groups of black prisoners. And as always, the screws – five of them this time – patrolling the yard, but keeping their distance from any of the prisoners.

Joe started walking, bisecting the yard, which meant passing within three metres of Finch. The crew from Northern Ireland fell silent as he approached. He had cleared them by two metres when he sensed them closing in to follow him. He was practically in the centre of the yard now. Twenty-five metres to the nearest walls, fifteen to the nearest screw, who had obviously seen what was happening but was keeping his distance.

Joe stopped and turned. Finch was standing two metres away, at the head of his crew, who were holding back slightly, looking menacing but in a disorganized, ragtag formation.

‘Enjoying the sunshine?’ Finch gave him a crooked smile.

‘If you’ve got something to say, Finch, say it. Otherwise take your goons and fuck off.’

Finch raised a sarcastic eyebrow as he looked round at his mates. ‘You hear that, lads? Goons, you are.’ The goons didn’t look very amused. ‘You thought about what I said?’

‘Not really.’

Finch’s face remained expressionless. ‘Here’s the deal. You do something for me, I do something for you: protection. It’s worth more than money in this place, but you’ve got to earn it.’

From the corner of his eyes, Joe could see Hunter. He had circled round the perimeter of the yard and was now at Joe’s two o’clock, staring at them.

‘You want to do Hunter, you do him yourself,’ Joe replied. ‘I don’t provide muscle for the nutting squads.’

A look of suspicion crossed Finch’s face. ‘And where did you learn so much about nutting squads, army boy?’ He shrugged. ‘No, you can be sure one of us will look after the paedo. I’ll take a knife to him myself if I can. I got someone else in mind.’ Finch looked to his right. ‘See the Pakis?’

Joe followed Finch’s gaze. The four Middle Eastern-looking guys he had already noticed were now sitting cross-legged on the ground. They were deep in conversation, seemingly oblivious to anybody else around them. To Joe’s eye, they didn’t look Pakistani. Lebanese, maybe, or Syrian.

‘Got a thing about the Pakis. I don’t think too much of the niggers, neither, but they’re busy enough doing our work for us and fucking each other up. Now the Pakis – ?they need proper cutting up, maybe more. Reckon you’re the man for the job. It’s what you army boys like to do, isn’t it? Fuck with the towelheads…’

Fuck with the towelheads.

He was back in Abbottabad, firing rounds into Romeo and Juliet…

Snap out of it, he told himself. Fucking snap out of it…

‘Do your own dirty work,’ he said. ‘And you can shove your protection up your fat Irish arse.’

There was a silence. Joe was aware of a pigeon flapping down and settling on the ground three metres to his right.

‘Bad call,’ Finch whispered. ‘Bad call.’ He turned round to his cronies. ‘Looks like Rambo here’s going the way of the nonces,’ he announced.

Finch backed away, and was immediately surrounded by his lads. The movement caused the pigeon to flap noisily up into the air and settle again between the bars of a second-floor cell window.

‘Be seeing you, army boy,’ Finch said, then turned and walked off. His crew joined him one by one, leaving Joe standing alone in the middle of the yard.

Joe stepped away. His hatred of the PIRA was deeply ingrained. He turned his attention instead to his surroundings. It was second nature to him to look for an exit strategy, but nothing presented itself here. The walls were nearly ten metres high and topped with barbed wire, every window was barred, every door bolted. There was a reason why prison escapes were so rare: they were almost impossible. He paced the exercise yard. He circled it twice. Then he saw, fifteen metres ahead, a man blocking his way.

He wasn’t tall – perhaps five-eight – but he was stocky with slicked-back grey hair and a neatly trimmed beard. He had a lit cigarette in his right hand, and an old-fashioned wooden crutch under his left.

Joe stuck out his chin. The two of them shared an unfriendly look for a full ten seconds before he sidestepped the lame man and prepared to continue his circuit of the exercise yard.

But there was another obstacle awaiting him.

He could see in an instant what was happening. On the far side of the yard, five metres from the door through which the inmates had entered it, Finch was talking to two of the screws. At Joe’s nine o’clock, two of his crew had started arguing, one pushing the other in the chest and attracting the attention of the remaining three screws. It was a clumsy diversion, but it was working: two more of the guys from Northern Ireland were striding in the direction of the lame man, violence in their eyes.

They were three metres from the inmate… Joe could see something shining in one of their fists. He acted almost without thinking. With a couple of strides he was between the lame man and the newcomer. The two from Northern Ireland continued to bear down on him, but they soon regretted it: Joe grabbed the fist with the weapon in it and, with a single move, twisted it as he brought his knee up into the pit of the man’s stomach. He went down.

Joe turned his attention to the second guy. There was no need. The man with the crutch was not so lame as he appeared. He had lifted it into the air and swiped it solidly round the second assailant’s head. The lad fell to the ground. So did the lame man, but not by accident. He knelt down and stabbed his lit cigarette into his attacker’s left eye. The lad screamed. Suddenly, screws were all around. It was the lame guy they surrounded, confiscating his crutch, grabbing him under his arm. ‘All right, Hennessey,’ one of them shouted. ‘Back to the fucking Seg Wing…’

‘We didn’t bother to change the sheets, hope you don’t mind…’ said a second screw.

Before Joe knew what was going on, Hennessey was being marched across the courtyard. It didn’t seem to bother the guy. He had a fiery glint in his eyes, and it was directed at Joe. He gave a nod of acknowledgement before he disappeared. Joe stepped away from the trouble as a medic rushed in. The whole exercise yard was suddenly awash with conversation as the other inmates started discussing loudly what had happened. All of them except Finch, who stood by the door with his back against the wall, looking at Joe with poisonous hatred.

Eva was used to prisons. She was used to the smell of them, and the noise. She was used to the way the inmates stared at her as she passed.

In Holloway and other women-only clinks, the women would stare at her without even trying to hide their contempt. They could spot a pig a mile off. In male prisons it was different. In these places she was a woman before she was a cop, and the inmates leered at her, checking her up and down, their eyes lingering on her tits and arse without any attempt to hide what they were doing. Her first ever trip into a prison had been behind the thick, ancient walls of Maidstone to interview a convicted rapist in the hope that he might be able to give her a lead on a sex crime she was investigating. They’d been talking for five minutes before she realized he was jerking off under the table.

But she’d never been as a visitor before, and there was something about the visitors’ centre at Barfield that put her on edge. Maybe it was just this depressing waiting room, where the plastic chairs were lined around the edge and the walls were covered in posters advertising counselling for families with a parent behind bars, or benefits for mums left on their own. Maybe it was the aggression steaming from the wives and girlfriends waiting to be admitted along with her. Eva counted sixteen of them, all done up to the nines with Wonderbras and lip gloss like they were heading up West, but with eyes that flashed like flick knives any time they caught her looking at them. About half of these women had kids in tow. They were quiet, mostly. Eva wondered whether they were scared of their mums, scared of the prison, or scared of the dads they were here to visit.

Or maybe her nerves stemmed from the prospect of seeing Joe again. In a place like this. At a time like this. When he wasn’t even expecting her. She realized she was grinding her teeth and made an effort to stop.

There were also three men waiting to visit. One of them was an elderly black man – the father of an inmate, Eva assumed. The second was a lad of about seventeen wearing the standard uniform of a London rude boy – hooded top, baggy jeans, trainers, bling, cigarette behind his ear. He was chewing gum and pretending he was the only person in the room. Eva would have put money on there being a few lumps of hash wrapped in clingfilm in the bag at his feet. The third man seemed a little out of place somehow. He had dark skin – Asian maybe, or Middle Eastern – and wore a smart suit that looked elegant on his slim frame. He had a large, hooked nose, slightly stooped shoulders and looked quite serene as he waited for the screws – two male, one female – to call them forward.

It was 2 p.m. exactly when they called the visitors to the reception desk at one end of the room, next to which there was a magnetic security arch leading further into the prison. There was a bit of jostling as the wives and girlfriends competed to be first in the queue. Eva found herself one place behind the Asian man but in front of the two others. The queue moved very slowly. The female screw patted each woman down and asked them to empty their pockets while the male officers stashed any bags or possessions into lockers behind the counter. More than once Eva heard the woman explaining the regulations in bored tones to visitors. ‘You can take a maximum of five pounds in change past security. Anything else you leave here. Come on, you know the drill…’

It took twenty minutes for the other women to disappear through the security arch and for the Asian man in front of Eva to reach the counter. She’d already removed her bracelet and earrings and put them in her handbag, and counted out five pounds exactly to take through with her. Now, though, she was thinking of just walking out. She should have written to him instead. Asked if she could come and see him. Not just turned up.

‘What’s this?’

One of the male screws had been patting the Asian man down and was removing something from the pocket of his suit.

‘It is a book,’ said the man politely, as if he were not answering a stupid question.

‘You can take a maximum of f—’ The screw started to repeat the mantra.

‘It’s only a book,’ the man protested mildly. ‘I am accustomed to carrying it with me at all times.’

But the screw wasn’t having it. He flung the book onto the counter. Eva saw the words ‘Holy Koran’ in gold letters on the leather cover.

‘Hand!’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I need to scan your hand. All male visitors.’ As he spoke, the screw held up a webcam and took a picture of the Asian man, before indicating the scanner on the counter. The Asian man looked uncomfortable, as though he was about to protest further. But then he thought better of it, gave the screw a nod of thanks and disappeared through the security arch, by which time the female screw was patting Eva down and finding nothing but the five pound coins in her back pocket.

Beyond the security arch she found the other visitors waiting in a small holding room, a third the size of the one they’d just left. It stank like the perfume hall in Debenhams. Eva stood slightly apart from the others, next to the Asian man who was blinking calmly into space. The remaining two visitors and the three screws arrived a couple of minutes later. The female screw locked the door behind them before opening one on the opposite side of the room. The visitors were led across a deserted exercise yard and into a brown-brick building on the other side.

The visiting hall looked more like a day-care centre than a prison. It was large – probably thirty metres long by twenty wide – with strip lights hanging from the ceiling. Every couple of metres there were sets of four chairs, all fixed to the carpet-tiled floor; three of each set were yellow and one red. In the middle of one long wall was a serving hatch – as Eva entered the hall the metal grate was being raised to reveal a couple of dinner-lady types in plastic hairnets, two stainless-steel tea urns and, behind them, boxes of Kit-Kats, Mars Bars and crisps. There were another four screws in here, already patrolling the room. The door at the far end, which was clearly where the inmates would enter from, was locked.

‘All right, everyone,’ barked one of the screws. ‘Find yourselves a seat – prisoners on the red, visitors on the yellow.’ The wives and girlfriends hustled forward. Clearly the seats nearest the serving hatch were the most sought after and were filled in seconds. Eva took the one nearest the entrance, naively thinking that she could make a sharp exit if she wanted to – until she saw the female screw locking the door behind her. Then the woman nodded at one of her colleagues who had approached the entrance at the other end.

The door opened. Men entered.

Eva realized her palms were sweating as she watched them come in. These lags’ faces looked eager. Some of them were even smiling as they hurried into the room. She looked at them all in turn, as they peeled off from the other prisoners and headed to hug their women or their kids. At another time and place the sight of these incarcerated men softening at the sight of their children might have caught Eva’s heart. Not today. Today she hunted for the features she knew so well.

And she couldn’t see them.

All the inmates had entered. Joe wasn’t among them.

Maybe she’d missed him. She stood up from her yellow chair and scanned the room again. There was the old black man, sitting and talking quietly with a guy in his thirties who shared his features. Next to him, the Asian man was talking with two others who wore plain prison clothes but had their heads covered according to the rules of their religion. She was so distracted that she didn’t see a final figure appear in the doorway. When she did notice him, she had the feeling he’d been staring at her for several seconds.

Her eyes widened. She swallowed hard. He looked terrible.

His face was covered in scabs, as though he’d been in some kind of accident, and he had a couple of days’ dark stubble. He was leaner about the face than Eva remembered, but it was his eyes that shocked her the most. They were haunted. Unfriendly. Mistrustful. He didn’t smile as he looked at her. In fact, his face barely registered any expression. And he didn’t move.

Eva felt Joe might have just stood staring at her for the duration of the visit, but the screw instructed him to walk into the room.

He walked slowly, his face still set. A kid ran in front of him but he barely seemed to notice. When he reached the little group of four chairs at which Eva was standing, he stopped. Still he didn’t talk.

‘Inmates on the red!’ shouted a screw from across the room. Joe sat down. Eva sat opposite him.

‘Hi,’ she said. Her voice cracked, so she swallowed, smiled and tried again. ‘Hi.’

No reply.

‘It’s Eva,’ she said.

Joe looked around and beckoned to the female screw who was patrolling about five metres away. ‘I want to go back to my cell,’ he said.

‘Visiting time one hour. You go back then. No exceptions.’

The room was a hum of quiet conversation. About ten people were queuing up at the hatch.

‘I could get you a coffee,’ Eva suggested, ‘or some chocolate…’

‘Why are you here?’

Eva blinked in surprise. ‘Joe…’ she whispered.

‘Who sent you?’

‘Nobody sent me. Joe, it’s me…’

She saw his eyes narrow as he looked briefly around the room.

‘I saw…’ Her voice cracked again. ‘I saw it in the paper…’

‘I didn’t kill her.’ He said it quietly. Not much more than a whisper. For an instant his gruff, unfriendly voice sounded just like the kid she’d grown up with.

‘I know you didn’t. I just thought… I could help?’

Silence.

‘You want some ch—?’

‘No.’

A screw walked past. They sat in silence until he was out of earshot.

‘What happened?’ Eva said. ‘Who did this?’

He leaned forward. Eva did the same. For a moment she was back in Lady Margaret Road with him.

‘You expect me to believe that you just happened to get a sudden itch to see me after ten years? You think my brains have dribbled out my fucking ears?’

‘Joe…’

‘I don’t know who’s got to you, Eva. The Firm? Someone else? But whoever sent you, you can tell them this from me. I don’t care what happened in the compound. But I do care what happened to Ricky and Caitlin. You tell them that. You tell them, if they think they can set me up for this, they got another think coming. And when I’m out, I’m going to track them down and do something that is worth sending me down for…’

‘Joe, I don’t know what you’re talking about. What compound? You’re not making sense.’ She looked around the room. ‘Are they… taking care of you here? You know you’re only on remand? They shouldn’t be treating you like you’re convicted.’ She paused, while Joe made a hissing sound from behind his teeth. ‘Have you seen a lawyer?’ And then, more quietly: ‘A doctor?’

Joe stood up. Immediately two screws bore down on him. ‘Red chair,’ one of them called across from ten metres away, and everyone in the room turned to look at him. With a dark expression on his face, Joe sat down again. He didn’t look at Eva, but stared into the middle distance.

They sat like that, in silence, for five minutes. Eva found that she was holding back tears.

‘You’re different,’ she said finally.

No reply.

‘Do you remember the last time we met at the bandstand?’ she whispered.

It had been a cloudy Saturday afternoon, two days before what Joe had called ‘selection week’, whatever that was. Joe had told her that he was applying to join a different regiment. A ‘special’ regiment, he had said. Eva hadn’t known what he was talking about, though she had a good idea now. It would mean a lot of travel. Staying away for months at a time, or leaving the UK at short notice. She’d made him promise to keep in touch, but he hadn’t. Not really. Their paths had diverged. An uncomfortable thought crossed Eva’s mind. Maybe she didn’t know Joe as well as she thought. Maybe the things he’d seen, the things he’d done, had changed him.

She wondered how many people he had killed in the line of duty. And she wondered if once you’d killed one person, it was easier to kill the rest.

‘I’ll get us some coffee,’ she said weakly, and she stood up immediately because she knew Joe wouldn’t give her any response.

The queue was still long, which was a relief. It gave her time out. When she returned to the seating area ten minutes later, Joe hadn’t moved. He was staring into space. He didn’t take the coffee, nor did he speak as Eva drank hers.

‘I shouldn’t have come,’ she said when she had drained the dregs from her plastic cup. ‘I’m sorr—’

‘You ever been in the jungle, Eva?’ He still didn’t look at her, but he seemed to know that she had shaken her head. ‘Last time I was there, I spent five days lying on the jungle floor. Hard rations. Mosquitoes, snakes, fuck knows what else. Had to piss and shit where I was. Didn’t move more than half a metre in any direction.’

He turned to look at her, his eyes flat.

‘You tell them that.’

‘Tell who?’

‘You tell them I can do my time better than any man alive. And when I’m done, when I’m out of here, I’m going to find out who they are and—’

‘Joe…’ Eva knew that the tears were flooding her eyes now. He sounded paranoid. And what was it she’d read in the newspaper? About soldiers coming back with their heads messed up. Maybe he really had lost it.

Maybe he really had killed her.

‘Joe,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Really I don’t.’

But the conversation was over. Eva was left counting down the minutes until visiting was over. She made an awkward goodbye: ‘I still live in the same place… Dawson Street… if you need anything.’ Joe didn’t respond. The inmates and visitors divided into two groups. One standing by the door that led further into the bowels of the prison, the other by the exit that would take them back to the freedom of the outside world. And as the lags waved at their kids and wives and girlfriends across the open room, Joe stood by the door with his back to them.

Ten minutes later Eva was walking away from Barfield. The world was misty with tears. As she waited at a zebra crossing, she became aware of a man standing next to her. She recognized his suit, his stooped shoulders and his hooked nose, and she sensed that he was looking at her with interest. But Eva just kept her head down and crossed the road as soon as the little green man told her she could. It had been a traumatic afternoon, and she really wasn’t in the mood for talking with strangers.

‘Who’s your girlfriend, army boy?’

Finch was two steps behind Joe and talking in a quiet, taunting voice. ‘Wouldn’t mind getting her sweet lips round my chubby.’

Before Joe knew it, he had grabbed Finch by the neck and forced him up against the corridor wall. Instantly they were surrounded by a semicircle of inmates.

‘Go on then, army boy,’ he rasped. ‘Take your best shot, why don’t you? Might be your last chance.’

Joe squeezed his fist. He could feel Finch’s stubble against the palm of his hand, and the pulse of his jugular. There was a thickening of the neck as the blood constricted. Finch tried to kick him in the shins, but Joe barely felt it. He threw the bastard down. ‘I wouldn’t waste it on a piece of shit like you, Finch.’

Finch just grinned at him.

‘Be seeing you, army boy,’ he said. ‘Sooner than you’d think, eh?’

He dusted himself down and pushed through the semicircle of onlookers, who dissolved among the other inmates walking the corridor.