Time to Die

by Alex Howard

  He drank the lemon-flavoured water that had come with his meal and gave himself an insulin injection based on the carb count on the tuna salad packaging. Shortly after he’d eaten, he started yawning deeply. He was feeling very tired all of a sudden. It crossed his mind that he might have been drugged but he was too sleepy to care, and before he did actually fall asleep, he thought, I don’t mind anyway, perhaps when I wake up it’ll be in my own bed, perhaps I’m going home.

  And forty miles away in London at the City Airport, Lord Justice Reece walked down the metal staircase from the plane, down to the black tarmac. There was a smile of happy anticipation on his lips. Tonight’s the night, he thought, tonight’s the night.

  33

  Julie Demirel had known Enver more or less as long as she’d known his cousin Hassan, now her husband. Julie was an attractive blonde in her early thirties, her good looks, in her opinion, let down by her legs. I’ve got fat thighs, she would think to herself gloomily. Thunder thighs. Hassan didn’t seem to mind. It was all right for him, she thought, he had lovely legs. Now she was the mother of two small children, aged four and six, and she was too preoccupied with them and her job to worry about the lower half of her body. She was pleased to be seeing Enver, she liked him a lot.

  Most people found it strange that she worked in a male prison but Julie didn’t mind it. It was unsurprising, people’s surprise. Prison is a place universally dreaded. In her experience, people assumed you were locked in a life-or-death struggle with insanely violent depraved criminals. Well, in twelve years as a prison officer there had undoubtedly been moments, but what her friends failed to realize was that you had to be firm, not brutal, and most of the inmates were reassuringly normal. Anyway, prison for Julie had run in the family. It was normal for her. Her dad had been a prison officer, most of his mates had been in the service, one of her brothers was in the probation service and she’d grown up with it. Now, many of her friends struggling financially or with job insecurity were looking at her job in the prison service with a certain amount of envy, although in Julie’s opinion few of them would last five minutes. You had to be tough to survive in there and most civilians, she felt, with a certain amount of good-natured contempt, simply couldn’t hack it.

  The attack on Bingham had undeniably hit the prison hard. Every officer fears a riot and a good deal of prison rules are there to create an atmosphere of normality, of acceptance, so that everyone could get along with as little friction as possible. She guessed it was like being stuck on a submarine. There had to be a certain amount of consensus, give and take on both sides. No matter what happened, you couldn’t just storm out or slip away. You were trapped in it. The Bingham episode was similar to throwing a large piece of concrete into a small pond. It had landed with one hell of a crash. It had created a very ugly atmosphere.

  Like everyone in the prison, from governor to cleaner, from the lowest- to the highest-profile prisoner, she had speculated on who, why and how it had happened. More or less everybody suspected Anderson. Why he had done it was a question more for the guards than the prisoners. Why not, the prisoners would have answered. Who cares? Shit happens. Some of the murderers had committed their crimes in an alcoholic- or drug-induced blackout and couldn’t remember why they’d killed, indeed sometimes who they’d killed. One or two of them had very tenuous grounds for murder. ‘He looked at me in a funny way’ was one reason frequently given. The last question, how it had happened, was particularly pertinent for the authorities.

  In Julie’s opinion, at least three staff would have to be involved. She could think of half a dozen likely candidates. It would be such an easy thing to rationalize. Bingham was a child sex offender, no one really cared what happened to him, no tears would be shed. It would be hard to find the culprits. They would all, herself included, close ranks. The prison officers had a siege mentality stronger than the prisoners. More or less everyone who was not a prison officer was an enemy. Anyway, those responsible would say, if ever they were found, well, no one escaped. No one innocent had been hurt. So what. Easy for others to talk, they didn’t have to live on a prison officer’s salary.

  The main issue raised was, of course, one of corruption. A great deal of money must have changed hands. And now Enver, who she liked a lot, was explaining that a police officer had sanctioned the assault. Well, thanks a bunch, DI Hanlon, for shitting on our living-room carpet. You don’t have to deal with an enraged prison governor, three hundred plus over-excited prisoners, an enquiry, and an internal affairs audit of your finances and spending to check you haven’t suddenly become unaccountably rich.

  Well, she thought, that answers the why to a certain extent. Because of the bloody Metropolitan Police. Hassan, her husband, didn’t seem to understand. So what? A prisoner assaults a prisoner. Who cares? Julie knew there was little point explaining to him there had to be rules of justice. She found the whole thing scandalous above and beyond the temporary annoyances. She was a deeply moral person. How would the Metropolitan Police like it if the Prison Service started meddling in their work? Outrage was tempered, though, by the victim’s status. She would cheerfully kill anyone who harmed Aydin and Rifat, her boys, something Enver was exploiting none too subtly.

  ‘There is a missing boy, a twelve-year-old, and if we don’t find him soon he’ll die,’ said Enver. He’d used this argument several times already.

  ‘That’s not the point,’ replied Julie.

  Enver shook his head. He looked at Julie, who he could see was getting angry. Her cheeks were dangerously red. ‘It’s exactly the point, Julie. We’ – by ‘we’ he means ‘me’, thought Julie – ‘we have the choice. We can either save him or we can choose to do nothing. And then he’ll die horribly after being sexually assaulted. Repeatedly sexually assaulted. I was there when a toddler, a baby almost, was pulled from a canal after being raped at least a dozen times. We’re not talking about abstract justice. That could be your child, Julie.’

  ‘That’s enough, Enver,’ said Hassan. He was getting cross himself now. He repeated himself in Turkish. ‘Yeter, Enver.’

  And in one sense it was enough. Julie agreed to do what he was asking. It was enough to make Julie agree to speak to Anderson the following day. Enver felt no sense of triumph or victory. He felt ashamed of himself for the moral blackmail. ‘We just need to know where,’ said Enver urgently. ‘Just an address.’

  ‘Just an address,’ said Julie, ‘and no one will ever know where it came from? I won’t be implicated? Fordham won’t find out? He’d go spare.’

  ‘No,’ replied Enver. ‘This is all very much unofficial. That much is certain.’

  On Strood Island, Conquest, Clarissa and Robbo, who was the permanent caretaker there, looked at the TV monitor that showed Peter’s cell. The cell had been a former wine store in the cellar underneath the house and modified for its current purpose a couple of years ago. The boy was now sound asleep from the Rohypnol that had been added to his juice. The judge, in his rather detailed instructions, had wanted the boy unconscious when he arrived. He wanted about five hours, while he explored his unresisting body, before he woke the sleeping beauty up. Robbo was an expert at drugging victims. He’d had quite a bit of experience now, working for Conquest.

  ‘Shall I take him upstairs now?’ asked Robbo with a grin.

  When Conquest had first met him, back in the eighties, a fellow Hell’s Angel, Robbo had quite long hair. Now he was a neo-Nazi skinhead, a devotee of tattoos, or body art as he preferred to call it. Most of Robbo’s tattoos had a similar theme: eagles, iron crosses, provocative slogans. ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ – ‘Work makes you free’ – the words above the gates at Auschwitz, were tattooed across his shoulders. He was a dedicated bodybuilder and the steroids that he took to enhance his muscle mass had left him with a perpetual acne-covered back and an eternally angry mood.

  The ‘upstairs’ to which he was referring was a large double bedroom, fitted with a bank of cameras that were motion sensitive and would record the a
ction automatically so the judge would have a permanent record of his activities for future, pleasurable viewing. Robbo would edit them to form a coherent, sexually exciting, whole. The judge liked to dress up. Robbo, like some repellent butler, had already laid out upstairs the costume the judge liked to dress up in. He would be wearing a black, latex mask whose eyeholes were covered in a fine silver mesh, preventing any form of recognition. There was a wide selection of sex toys in the room, mainly relating to pain: whips, handcuffs, nipple clamps, tongue screws, the full range of S&M panoply. Conquest liked to call the room the Bridal Suite. It seemed appropriate.

  Conquest hoped the judge wouldn’t be too enthusiastic, wouldn’t get too carried away. He didn’t want the boy dead too soon from internal or external injuries. He needed to film him with Robbo and Glasgow Brian for Internet distribution after the judge had finished and before disposing of him. Peter would fetch a very high price. Conquest always needed funds. There was a potentially very large market for what would be Peter’s one and only sex film.

  Outside the house, in the field, the pigs had been put on strict rations. Conquest wanted them starving by the time everyone in the house had finished with the boy. Pigs can be very aggressive. He was toying with the idea of putting Peter in with them while still alive and seeing what would happen, how long they would take to finish him off. The pigs had been brought up to eat dead and occasionally dying animals. It would be interesting to see what they would make of the boy. He would get Robbo to film it anyway. He was sure there would be a specialist market out there for that kind of thing. Bingham would know. He missed Bingham and his technical expertise as well as his infallible commercial sense.

  Conquest looked at the boy, still wearing his school trousers and shirt. His arm was curled round the dog. He smiled, pleased with his foresight. He had put the dog in with the boy and given him the books because he hadn’t wanted the child to go to pieces. He wanted Peter to look his best for the judge and not be some gaunt, sobbing, hysterical mess. He’d learnt from experience. A previous guest in the cell had committed suicide in a state of despair. It was rare for children to do this – unlike adults they could have no conception of the horrors that awaited them and they were valuable commodities, things in which he’d invested a great deal of time and effort. It paid to look after them. He’d keep the dog once Peter was gone. Conquest quite liked dogs. He looked at his watch; the judge would be here in an hour or so. Then his fun could begin.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Leave him here for now. We’ll move him when Reece arrives.’

  Lord Justice Reece relaxed back into the luxuriously soft, leather upholstery of Conquest’s Mercedes as he was driven through the outskirts of East London towards the highway that led to Essex and the island. He was humming an old pop song to himself, he couldn’t remember the name of the artist – ‘Tonight, I celebrate my love, for you’ – when his phone went. He pulled on his reading glasses in irritation and looked at the small screen. It was his office, his secretary.

  ‘Yes?’ he said angrily. He had left strict instructions not to be disturbed, unless it was absolutely necessary. His secretary was a highly competent woman called Caroline who had been with him for over thirty years now. Reece prized loyalty. Caroline would have crawled across broken glass for the judge if she’d had to, she thought he was wonderful. She said briskly, ‘I know you left orders not to be disturbed, my lord, but the Cabinet Office want to see you tomorrow morning. I told them you were officially on holiday, but they insisted.’ She lowered her voice confidentially. ‘It could be the one. The big one,’ she said. She was far more excited than he was; she felt his talents had been criminally overlooked.

  Reece smiled appreciatively. As a Lord Justice he was automatically a KBE, a knight, and could call himself Sir Crispin Reece, but he was not a full lord, entitled to a seat in the Upper House, and he wanted that honour. He had plenty of money now. More money was always nice, but it had ceased to delight him. Power, though, and titles, well, that was beyond mere money. He had campaigned assiduously for elevation to the peerage, flattering the egos of politicians he despised, sitting on committees he had no interest in, so his name would be more noticeable. Lord Reece of…? Well, that was a question to ponder. A very nice question to ponder. A shame his old sadist of a house master wasn’t around to see it; he’d always predicted abject failure for Reece, a view shared by his parents who had taken any side but his. He hummed the first bars of ‘Come Unto Me’, the old school song.

  ‘What time?’ he said.

  ‘The Permanent Secretary wants you at 2 p.m.’ she replied.

  ‘Get back to him. I’ll be there,’ he said curtly and pressed the button to end the call. The present government was sucking up to him now he looked like getting the top job in Brussels. He stretched luxuriously in the back seat of the car. Life could hardly get better.

  The boy would have to wait until Thursday night. He couldn’t give the child the time that he felt he deserved. He wasn’t going to be rushed. He could spend the night on Strood Island, travel back up to town in the morning and then back again in the evening, but this, he felt was out of the question. He wanted to give his full and undivided attention to what was going to be the sexual highlight of his life. He ordered the driver to turn round and take him home to Mayfair. He texted Conquest the change of plan.

  A pleasure deferred. It was one of the signs of a higher being.

  34

  Julie stood outside Anderson’s cell. It was Thursday afternoon; she was working the two until ten shift. She had often been responsible for the solitary punishment cells in the past – it was felt that a woman might have a calming effect on the more disturbed inmates – and getting to Anderson was simple. It had been a while since the cells had been used. Solitary confinement was out of fashion at the moment, but not illegal. It was regarded as counterproductive and of questionable human rights ethics, but Fordham’s towering rage had put one of them back into use for Anderson’s benefit.

  She had been forced to wait until four o’clock, when she’d visited the guard on duty, started a conversation – not hard, she knew he found her attractive – and volunteered to check on Anderson. He smiled as he gave her permission. Quite a few staff had been along to have a closer look at their new celebrity prisoner. As she turned her back on him she could feel his gaze lingering longingly on her backside.

  The walk to the cells was short; the other cells were untenanted. She opened the flap below the eye-level viewing window to speak to Anderson. He was standing up, his back turned to her.

  ‘What do you want?’ he asked, his voice flat and uninflected. The accent was unassertive London.

  ‘Hanlon sent me,’ she said. ‘I need an address.’

  Now he did turn round. It was the first time she had ever seen him in the flesh. He had shoulder-length rat-tailed hair, a thin, almost malnourished face and very deep-set, intelligent, dark eyes. His shoulders were narrow and his hands, which hung by his side, seemed disproportionately large. Julie felt the presence of an overwhelming malevolence coming from Anderson and a feeling of great strength. The hands, with their bitten-down fingernails and long, strong fingers, looked very powerful. They belonged on an animal; they were the kind of hands capable of tearing someone to shreds.

  It wasn’t just his reputation that made him so menacing. She had long lost count of the number of convicted killers she had met, there were plenty in the prison itself right now, but none had come close to Anderson when it came to intimidating power. Julie didn’t scare easily, she couldn’t do the job if that were the case, but he scared her more than any prisoner she had ever met.

  Anderson walked up to the door and looked at her through the small, open flap. She was very grateful to have the heavy steel door between them.

  ‘Tell her, Strood Island, near Walton-on-Naze, Essex. Repeat that.’ He spoke softly. He didn’t need to raise his voice. People paid close attention to what he said. His face was framed in the metal hatch like a compell
ing portrait of evil. She could sense the power emanating, radiating, from him. His gaze was hypnotic, compelling. Julie felt a sensation akin to vertigo, that overwhelming desire to jump, except in this case it was the need almost to beg him not to hurt her. Like a bird hypnotized by a cat, she thought. She repeated the words he’d spoken.

  Anderson nodded satisfied, then he said, almost as an afterthought, ‘Tell Hanlon, Conquest is a supplier, not a user.’ Then he turned away from her. His back was a sign the conversation was over.

  Julie closed the flap and walked away. As she did so, she felt Bingham had probably got off relatively lightly. That man was capable of far worse.

  At half four, the first opportunity she got, she texted Enver with the information.

  An hour later, he and Hanlon drove out of London, east, heading for the Essex coast. Hanlon had used that hour for some frantic, last-minute research. She had an excellent series of contacts in Essex and, because it was her, they dropped whatever they were doing to help. Shortly after they left, so did the judge, at the wheel of his own Porsche. His meeting, too, had gone well. His suspicion had been more than confirmed that the Home Office, knowing of the Brussels appointment, wanted to get into the judge’s good favour by the offer of a peerage. The stronger the ties that bound him to the UK government, the more chance of his reaching judgments favourable to his country of birth, that was their hope. The civil servants he had just met, always deferential, were now treating him like uncrowned royalty.