Hard Return

by Rosie Claverton

  What would happen about the roof? Would a repair team come in while they were all sleeping? Was it only the front door that locked, or did individual rooms in the compound do that too? How would they do it without their little roof mission becoming part of the Governor’s escape plan? Unless this was the escape plan. Maybe someone had stuck the roof on purpose just to let them all run out into this cold and wet night.

  Or maybe not. After all, Jason wasn’t the brains of this outfit for a reason. He might have an active imagination, but his problem was always in the execution.

  Lewis returned a minute later with Stoker, ladder, and bucket. Jason chucked the bucket under the biggest leak and then looked at the ladder.

  ‘I don’t think this will work from the inside.’

  ‘Outside then,’ Stoker said. ‘I’ll round up some help.’

  Despite the freezing, sheeting rain and the vodka, Stoker rounded up Bo, Dreadlock, Nikolai, and Gareth to help them out. They chucked on fleeces and jumpers before their coats, none of which had hoods due to bloody prison regulations. Jason was planning on a hot shower after this. Well, a lukewarm shower that was barely a trickle over his head, but a man could dream.

  ‘Your first elite job, Jay Bird,’ Nikolai said, with a shit-eating grin. ‘Up you go.’

  Nikolai and Dreadlock held the ladder and Gareth held open the door, in case they took too long and the curfew lock kicked in. Stoker and Lewis went to the junk pile round the back to look for anything to secure over the hole. Not wanting to spend any longer outside than he had to, Jason tucked a torch into his waistband and climbed up the ladder, bracing himself against the force of the wind. He paused every few steps to hold himself steady against the gusts, feeling the ladder sway and hearing the two drunken men below wrestling with it.

  On the roof, he pulled out the torch and, crawling across the wet surface, he located the hole above the kitchen – and the large tree branch that had done for it. Avoiding the edges of the break, Jason saw that the damage spread much further than he'd expected. Peering down, he could see the bucket he had placed in the centre of the kitchen, but the tear in the roof extended right to the edge of the building. Except, weirdly, the kitchen did not.

  There was an extra metre or so to the building that wasn’t accounted for by the kitchen. The cupboards were flush against the wall and there was no sign of a false door or anything that could conceal a heating system, or some other inner working of the building. Was it part of the surveillance? Jason recalled Amy’s server room from their old house, but even he knew you couldn’t just lock a piece of equipment like that behind a wall. He tried to look down into it, but he saw nothing but black. Darkness above, darkness below.

  Shifting the branch out of the way, he tried to get a closer look – and someone pushed him towards the hole.

  Jason yelled and grabbed for the branch as he overbalanced, jarring his old arm injury and sending a wave of pain through his upper body. He landed heavily on his back, the roof cracking ominously beneath him. He was mostly away from the hole but with one foot dangling precariously into the broken mess. He tried to kick himself back and away, but he only shifted a couple of inches.

  A sharp blow to his cheek snapped his head back, and he lost his grip on the torch. He saw its light roll away across the roof and over the edge, leaving them both in complete darkness. The full weight of his assailant came down on him – and the roof cracked again. The branch was digging into his back, grounding him, reminding him that this was real and he wasn’t floating in outer space.

  One last shove, and the branch fell away. For a moment, he was suspended in mid-air – before crashing through the fragile roof and down into the kitchen below.

  Chapter 30: Red Alert

  As soon as she heard the alarm ringing through the compound, Amy knew Jason would be at the heart of it.

  It was near the beginning of the night shift, most of the day shift finishing dinner or grabbing a shower before bed, and Amy emerged from her cupboard to find the corridor unusually full of people.

  ‘Is he conscious and has he broken anything?’ Owain barked.

  Amy elbowed her way through the crowd, her heart clawing at her throat, threatening to choke her. She made her way to Owain’s side, a single video feed occupying the whole screen. It took a moment for her to orientate herself – she was looking at the mess hall of the compound, where two tables had been shoved together and a man laid on top of them.

  Jason.

  ‘He’s talking,’ she said, without her brain really connecting to her mouth. ‘That’s Le – That’s P7 who’s got his hand.’

  ‘Can confirm.’ IN4 piped up from her station. ‘Positive ID on P8 as the injured party, with P7 keeping him conscious.’

  ‘Who has medical training?’

  There was a slight pause, before IN3 answered him.

  ‘P6 is the most qualified. P5 has basic training.’

  ‘P3 also has basic training,’ said IN2.

  ‘Can we get sound?’ Owain asked.

  ‘No sound in the canteen. The microphones were damaged about six months ago, and we’ve been unable to access for repair.’

  ‘Sloppy,’ Owain muttered, earning him sour looks from those gathered.

  ‘What happened?’ Amy asked him, still breathless.

  ‘We think he fell through the roof.’

  She didn’t even want to know how he'd got up there. However, she would be accessing whatever footage was available to find out. Though, as most of the corridor cameras and the outside cameras were busted, she would have pretty much zilch. In many ways, it was now easier to list the areas they did have covered rather than the ones that were missing.

  She found her calm in her to-do list, taking each breath as it came, slowing down her heart rate as she took on more oxygen. Keeping breathing for Jason, who had just fallen through the ceiling, because he was colossal fuckwit.

  ‘Let me the fuck through!’ bellowed a voice from the door.

  The day shift agents parted to admit an irritated-looking guard. Amy recognised him as Number One, in charge on the night shift.

  ‘I have Control. Do we need an airlift?’

  ‘Status of your prisoner, IN4?’

  ‘P6 has completed his survey,’ she reported. ‘No treatment measures currently in place.’

  At that moment, Lewis helped Jason to sit up and swing his legs over the side of the table. Amy felt the wave of relief ripple through the room, and there was a smattering of applause.

  ‘Let Control know we have the situation under control, SN1.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Stand down Emergency Protocol 1. Day shift, get some rest. INs, as you were.’

  The crowd at the door filtered away, leaving the surveillance room empty of everyone except the night Eyes, Owain, and Amy. She stayed to watch a little longer, taking in the way Jason favoured his right arm – the old injury where Stuart Williams had taken a pipe to it – and how he was struggling to weight bear on his left leg.

  ‘Send crutches in the next requisition,’ Owain said.

  ‘We have a pair on site, sir,’ IN2 told him.

  ‘IN1, I need a report ASAP.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Why was Owain asking IN1 for the report? Was it about the missing record for P1? She was now convinced that G was the man with the absent record. Did he have a mechanism for reporting in? Also, SN1 had ‘Control’ in direct contact – how were they able to send communications outside the bunker, when they thought the mobile jammer was still functional? Was there a landline lurking around here somewhere?

  Amy thought of her own line of communication and wanted access to it right now. Jason needed her, and she was stuck in this stupid place with no windows and no way out, and he was hurting when she wasn’t there. She hated watching him get hurt, at a distance, and not being able to do anythi
ng. She'd thought those days were behind them, but it seemed she had more sleepless nights to come.

  On the feed, the crowd of men around Jason parted and a figure entered in a uniform she hadn’t seen before. Was this G? He talked to Jason for a couple of minutes, before saying something to the tall man with dreadlocks standing next to him. Then, he turned to leave.

  The Cardiff Ripper stared out of the screen at her.

  She was back there, in her flat, struggling to breathe as she kicked out, tried to run, tried to escape him. She couldn’t escape him.

  She was there on the balcony, one toe in the outside world, and the gun was in her hand. But it was Jason bleeding, because she had fucked up.

  ‘Agent Lane, I need you to walk with me.’

  With a hand on her back, Owain escorted her from the room. She had sparkles across her vision and it was growing black around the edges. She wasn’t breathing. Why wasn’t she breathing?

  She heard the beeping of a keypad and then Owain’s office door was open, and he was trying to sit her in a chair, but her legs had given way and she was on the floor. Leaning against his desk and dying.

  ‘The Cardiff Ripper is there.’

  ‘Yes, he is.’

  She wheezed out a laugh, near-hysterical, and sucked in a breath to stave off the blackness.

  ‘You knew – and you didn’t tell me.’

  ‘Only when I got here. I’m not happy about it either.’

  ‘He’s going to walk, isn’t he? That’s how it works. They play the game and then they walk.’

  Owain hesitated, then nodded.

  She laughed again, the hysteria bubbling out of her mouth. It was hilarious, it was tragic, it was the worst day of her life.

  ‘He killed all those women. He tried to kill me, and Carla. It doesn’t mean anything to her, does it? She just wants to play games.’

  They didn’t have to name her to feel her spectre in the room with them, as they had often enough in Amy’s flat, in the car on their way to Bristol.

  Amy tried to breathe, but the laughter wouldn’t stop.

  ‘What was the point in it all?’ she wheezed. ‘He’s just going to kill again. Maybe he already has. Nobody here cares.’

  ‘I care,’ Owain said, fiercely, the strongest sign of emotion she'd seen from him since he first defected to the NCA. ‘I fucking care, Amy. We put him away forever, and now it’s going to be undone, all of it. But that’s not our job right now. Our job is to keep everyone else in there safe.’

  ‘No one is safe in there. They’re locked in with a serial killer! Jason is in there!’

  ‘Jason can handle himself.’

  ‘Someone just pushed him through a hole in the roof. That is not handling himself.’

  Owain suddenly stopped and frowned. ‘How do you know he was pushed?’

  ‘It’s not a coincidence, is it? Mole dies, Jason falls – it’s all connected.’

  Owain was looking at her with pity. She had seen that look on her sister’s face, or her mother’s. She hated it.

  ‘You need to get some rest.’

  ‘You need to listen to me. We all need to get out of here, sooner rather than later. There is a killer in that compound – and we already know his name.’

  Owain offered her a hand up. She considered refusing, but she didn’t trust her legs to support her without his assistance.

  ‘It’s been a long day—’

  ‘One day, you will fucking listen,’ she said, and walked out with the remaining shreds of her pride.

  Chapter 31: Bed Rest

  ‘I’m all right,’ Jason said for the hundredth time, but no one was listening.

  ‘Sure you are,’ Lewis said, again, and helped him into the bed that had belonged to Anchor.

  Above him, Joe was motionless inside his sleeping bag, giving a bad impression of sleep, but Jason didn’t give a shit. Anchor had dug out some strong painkillers from a first aid kit and iced his ankle until it came out all pink and purple bruises. He was relieved of all his duties, because an elite who couldn’t walk was useless and the kitchen was still underwater.

  As Lewis was zipping up his sleeping bag, Jason caught sight of his friend’s face.

  ‘What the fuck happened to you?’

  He leaned forward to reach for Lewis’ split lip, but he jerked his head back.

  ‘Fucking Nikolai,’ he said under his breath. ‘Leave it.’

  ‘I will not—’

  ‘Stoker has it in hand.’

  Jason hadn’t heard any disturbance at the bottom of the ladder, but that at least accounted for Lewis and Nikolai, maybe Stoker too. That left Dreadlock, Bo, and Gareth able to climb the ladder and punch him, assuming that someone else hadn’t snuck out of the building to do it. Manning the ladder and the door wouldn’t have been a high priority for them if there was a fight breaking out. Perhaps Nikolai had caused the disturbance on purpose, as a distraction.

  ‘Get some rest.’

  Lewis left him alone before his mouth could catch up with what was happening. His body was humming with adrenaline and really good painkillers, but he was struggling to think it through. Someone had tried to kill him, or at least injure him seriously enough that he would be removed from this place. The attacker hadn’t counted on him grasping for a ceiling tile to break his fall, only landing awkwardly on his ankle and sparing the rest of him more than scrapes and bruises.

  It had to be linked to Mole’s murder. Had he been asking too many questions? The only person he'd really spoken to was Gareth, though he supposed anyone could’ve overheard him talking to Lewis in the kitchen. Or did someone think he was out of place, out of sync with the brainwashed culture, and think he was a copper or a plant? All were possibilities, but his head was spinning too fast to consider any of them.

  Jason was jolted from his thoughts by what sounded like crying. Or, rather, someone trying to pretend they weren’t crying because they didn’t want anyone to know. He had heard its like in prison and had tried his hardest to forget the pitiful sound.

  ‘You’re all right,’ he said, the words almost automatic from his times consoling Amy.

  The sound died away.

  ‘No,’ a voice said, surprisingly strong. ‘I’m not.’

  It seemed to be coming from the bunk above and, as the rest of the room looked empty, Jason assumed it was Joe speaking to him – the man who thought he'd been poisoned.

  ‘Is it the poison?’ he asked.

  ‘You must think I’m a wanker,’ Joe said. ‘Faking poison or whatever. I thought I was going to die. Still do, really. Any day now.’

  ‘If you tell me who’s after you—’

  ‘He’ll make sure I’m dead. I’ll keep my secrets, thanks.’

  Either Joe was experiencing a break from reality, or he knew who had killed Mole. Jason cursed himself for not being Bryn or even Owain, for having the right words to provoke a confession. He had no idea how to extract information except with his fists or a flirtation, and neither was going to work here.

  ‘Is there anything I can do?’ Jason asked.

  ‘He’s painted a target on your back now. You'd better watch yourself – and get out. When the vote comes around, tell them you want out. It’s too late for me, but you’ve still got a chance.’

  ‘It’s not too late. You could leave here too.’

  ‘He won’t let me go. He doesn’t know that I don’t fucking know anything! I don’t have the proof! Fucking Alby and his fucking light fingers. I could murder him. I really fucking could.’

  The tears had started up again. Jason thought it was a terrible shame that any man was driven to tears by Alby Collins.

  ‘What did he steal? Did he steal your evidence?’

  ‘I can’t—’

  ‘It must still be here. He can’t have left with it, can he?’

&nb
sp; The crying abruptly stopped.

  ‘What? Why not?’

  ‘Because…’ Jason paused, considering how to put this without giving himself away. ‘Because he was a thief, wasn’t he? They wouldn’t have let him leave without searching him.’

  ‘Shit. You’re right.’ Jason heard the bed creak as Joe sat up. ‘What the fuck am I doing? I have to find it. I have to get it back.’

  ‘What did he steal?’ Jason repeated.

  Joe was coming down the ladder on wobbly legs, bringing a smell of stale BO with him.

  ‘My watch,’ he said, giving Jason a slightly desperate smile. ‘Only my watch.’

  Chapter 32: Down the Rabbithole

  Cerys woke up on a strange sofa in a strange room. What the hell had she done last night?

  Downstairs, she could hear a man’s voice singing in Welsh, a deep resounding tenor that made her hair stand on end. She glanced across at the nearby coffee table and saw a couple of empty cans of energy drinks and two tiny espresso cups.

  She abruptly recognised the caffeine crash headache from an all-nighter after a night shift, her sheep in the pattern royally fucked. She ran her fingers over the crocheted blanket, picking out the grubby unwashed sheep, not able to remember how it had got there. Had Catriona made this? She was a deeply weird woman with hidden depths of weird.

  Checking her surprisingly plugged-in, fully-charged phone, Cerys saw she had one new text message. When was the last time anyone had sent her a text instead of a snap or WhatsApp? The message was from an unknown number, and it said:

  Find alby and ask about phone.

  It took her a minute to realise what – or, rather, who – ‘alby’ was. Alby Collins had been a rat-faced dickhead who had worshipped her brother and tried to perv on her in the shower. He was also the reason Jason was currently locked up in the middle of a wood with his other so-called mate Lewis Jones.

  Which meant that this message had to be from either Jason or Amy. The signal jammer was down, and they could communicate with them. Catriona would be able to get a precise location on them and they could confirm all their findings!