The Distance: A Thriller

by Helen Giltrow

  Focus.

  “Time for some proper introductions,” Brice says. “Mr. Ryan Jackson, meet Jimmy. Jimmy’s offered us his assistance. That’s right, isn’t it, Jimmy?”

  Jimmy nods—there’s something pathetic about his enthusiasm—and reaches into his jacket. He pulls out a handful of photos, family snaps. “Photos,” he says.

  Brice says to the little man, “Not the photos, Jimmy, not this time,” then confidingly, to Johanssen, “Not all there, is Jimmy.” Louder, he adds, “Jimmy’s first task is to help us with a little demonstration.”

  Jimmy’s still smiling. He doesn’t see it coming, but Johanssen does.

  Brice steps forward, jabs Jimmy hard in the guts, and as he doubles, grabs his arm, twisting it savagely, wrenching it against the socket. The photos scatter. Jimmy yelps and goes down, face in the dirt. His legs are working, trying to pivot him away from the pain, but Brice’s knee has settled between his shoulder blades, pinning him down. His snapshots have fanned out around him: a man and a woman in party hats raising glasses to the camera, a kid chasing a dog across a lawn.

  “You see, Mr. Jackson,” Brice continues conversationally, “we need to know how committed you are …”

  The words run through Johanssen’s head like water. Sweat’s trickling cold down his back. All the colors merge. Focus focus focus.

  “You did say you’d do anything, didn’t you?” Brice glances over at Johanssen, and his face creases with concern. “You don’t look very well. Ryan—I can call you Ryan, can’t I? I hope this isn’t making you uncomfortable.”

  Johanssen’s stomach squeezes in on itself.

  In the dirt Jimmy whimpers. Brice gazes down at him. He’s still got the little man’s arm wrenched behind his back. He murmurs, “Or maybe you don’t realize how serious we are. Maybe we have to demonstrate our seriousness to you.”

  Wrench and twist. The angle’s impossible. Something snaps, and Jimmy screams like an animal.

  Brice glances up at Johanssen. “Would you say we’re serious?”

  Johanssen’s stomach twists, his eyes sting. He opens his mouth, closes it again.

  “Sorry, didn’t catch that,” Brice says.

  “Yes,” Johanssen says. The word cracks.

  “Good,” says Brice. He releases Jimmy’s arm and rises, dusting his hands. “Your turn. Mr. Quillan wants to see how serious you are.”

  The words have to fight their way through the mess in his head. Brice wants him to—

  “Well?” Brice asks. His eyes are very bright, and blue. He’s still smiling.

  Three meters away Quillan leans forward in his seat, his gaze darting between their faces.

  “I hope you’re not wasting our time,” Brice says pleasantly. Then, when Johanssen still doesn’t move: “Sorry, don’t you get it? Need another clue?”

  “No—” Johanssen says, but Brice is already moving. Jimmy tries to lever himself away from the other man, dragging his useless arm, but Brice grabs him by the shoulder, slamming him down, and he screams again, and then he gives a little strangled sob.

  Brice glances questioningly at Johanssen.

  “All right,” Johanssen says.

  “Sorry?”

  “I’ll do it.”

  “Sure?”

  Johanssen gulps down bile, nods. He can’t speak.

  “That’s good,” Brice says. “Good.” He steps back. His hands sign an open invitation: Be my guest. “Over to you then. Impress Mr. Quillan.” Then: “Oh—it doesn’t matter how much noise he makes. No one will come.”

  Johanssen looks at Quillan. The bright red scarf’s bleeding its color across the air between them. Jesus Christ focus. For a second their eyes meet. Quillan’s face gives nothing away.

  Down on the ground Jimmy starts to cry, incoherent pleading bubbling out in a mess of snot and saliva. Johanssen blocks it out.

  He takes a step toward the little man. Everything hurts. His back, his throat, his guts, shoulders, limbs. The light surges and fades. He sways on his feet. Behind him someone sniggers.

  Do it. Just do it.

  Can he make it quick, clean? Does he have anything left for this?

  Pull it all together. You know how it goes.

  He maps them. The little man sniveling in the dirt. Brice off to one side, his breathing shallow, his lips drawn back in anticipation, keen for the fun to start. Quillan sitting forward in his chair, eyes hawkish, watchful: waiting to be impressed. Johanssen himself at the center of the freak show, vomit down his shirt, swaying on his feet—

  Three deep breaths. Go on the third.

  —raising one knee, lifting his left foot and letting it rest lightly on Jimmy’s buckled shoulder (no weight, no pressure, but Jimmy still screams), ready to stamp down and twist until he feels the bones grinding through the sole of his boot—

  —and Brice leaning forward, all his concentration focused on that one point of impact.

  Go.

  Two moves in the same instant. Sidestep and jab. His hands connect: fingers into Brice’s eyes, fist into his throat. Pivot. The boot into the kidneys. Brice doubles against the nearest wall. Johanssen follows through, grabs his head, smashes it back against the blockwork. Snatches up the baseball bat left-handed and spins away from the wall—

  He is surrounded. Five of them: two blocking the path to Quillan, the other three moving in on him. Quillan has one hand raised. The gesture telegraphs, Wait, wait … Johanssen tries to read his face. Impossible.

  He has nothing left now. He’s spent. The shakes hit him, and this time he can’t stop them.

  Quillan nods at Johanssen’s left hand. “Drop that.”

  The baseball bat slides easily from his fingers and clatters to the ground.

  “You interest me, Mr. Jackson,” Quillan says. His eyes are small and cold and hard, like marbles, like glass. “One blow from that could shatter a man’s skull like eggshell … Tell me, would you have used it on me?”

  Up against the wall Brice’s head sways. There’s blood on his face. His eyes flicker open, and he coughs, shifts, tries to get up.

  “Why did you do that, Mr. Jackson?” Quillan asks.

  He should have an answer. What is it?

  Brice makes it to his knees. His head comes up, and his stare locks on to Johanssen. The rage coming off him is pure and hot.

  “Be honest with me, Mr. Jackson,” Quillan says quickly, “while you can still talk.”

  Brice is on his feet now, balling his fists, sucking in air.

  Johanssen says, “He told me to impress you.”

  “Ah,” Quillan says. “Well, if it’s any consolation”—he smiles, sadly—“I was impressed.”

  One blow and Johanssen’s down. A boot into his stomach, and he gags, but there’s nothing left to bring up. Another blow, and all the injuries of the last twenty-four hours connect, a hot grid of pain.

  Brice grabs him by the hair, presses his face into the dirt. The man’s breath is on his cheek.

  “We start with your fingers,” he says and then, to someone else: “Bolt cutters.”

  Oh Jesus.

  He’s facedown. They wrench his arms out on either side, kneel on his elbows to keep him spread-eagled. He clenches his fists, but they’re so much stronger: they force his hands open and splay the fingers.

  There’s going to be pain, a lot of pain. He needs to take himself out of this, but he can’t, there’s nowhere in his head he can go.

  Brice crouches down beside him again, selects a finger, pries it straight. Right hand: trigger finger. The metal of the bolt cutters is cold against his skin.

  Across the dirt—beyond the scatter of photos, weddings and barbecues and party hats and the smiling face of a man who could almost be Charlie Ross—Jimmy’s eyes are open. His stare meets Johanssen’s, but nothing passes between them, no understanding, nothing.

  “The first one goes like this,” Brice says.

  A movement, fast—a flash, bright and hard, on the edge of his vision.

&n
bsp; And a woman’s voice, very close. “Do not fucking make me, Brice, because I will.”

  Everything stops.

  All he can see is the photos, and Jimmy. All he can feel is the metal against his finger, hard and cold, and squeezing, squeezing.

  “Quillan?” The woman again, as if it’s a threat.

  Above Johanssen, Brice shifts his weight. Seconds pass. The pressure on his finger eases. He breathes, once.

  The pain swamps him.

  After that, nothing.

  His fingers. They are going to cut off his fingers.

  He balls his fists, turns them in toward his chest, but they’re prying his hands open, and there’s the cold touch of metal—

  Jesus oh Jesus oh Jesus

  He opens his eyes. The light blinds him. He squirms away from it as if he’s been burned. Flails, thrashes, but they pin him down. Someone’s shouting, he can’t make out the words.

  Fight it fight it fight it—

  A male voice: “… the fuck’s that sedative?”

  Above him a blank-eyed boy readies a needle.

  Minutes later, or hours. He has no idea. He cannot feel his own body.

  Voices float past him. A man and a woman.

  The man: “… Outside.”

  And the woman: “So?”

  “He says you’ve got to hand over—”

  “I know.”

  How long has he been staring at the wall, and what do the scratches mean? Are they keeping score?

  The light changes. He drifts.

  He wakes on the edge of pain.

  He’s down on the floor, on a mattress. On the far side of the room, in a nest of bedding by the door, a woman sits. Her face is gaunt, and there are dark shadows under her eyes, like bruises. Her exposed wrist is brittle, skeletal. In her hand there’s a blade.

  Somehow he must get it off her, but he cannot move.

  He sleeps.

  Behind a door in a farmhouse, a man is screaming.

  DAY 8: WEDNESDAY

  KARLA

  I sweat my way through Wednesday.

  The gates open again at 8:00 a.m., but I’m at my desk long before that. More than twenty-two hours since Johanssen entered the Program, fourteen since the gates closed for the night; I’ve had maybe three hours of broken sleep, and I’m nauseous with tiredness.

  But any moment this could be over. Any moment, and he could be out.

  Whitman’s already in Program Administration, talking to the staff, impressing on them the urgency of finding Ryan Jackson. I wait as the digital clock on the computer clicks around to 8:00, then 9:00, then 10:00—wait by my phone for the call that says he’s out, he’s safe. It doesn’t come.

  Craigie wants me out and safe, too: out of here and untraceable. I’ve refused. To bait a trap they would have used a real prisoner. Craigie doesn’t believe it. Even over the phone he twitches with stress. He’s gone hunting for Johanssen in the darker corners of the security services’ domain, the interrogation rooms and high-security suites. But he won’t find him there; he won’t. Johanssen’s in the Program still. I’d swear it.

  I send to Finn:

  Although the Program is a privately run enterprise, various interested government parties require access to surveillance footage. The Prison Service and the Ministry of Justice have round-the-clock feeds; the Met and the security services also have on-demand access, as do a select few high rankers in other areas of public policy. Each point of access may have a security loophole; Finn must find one.

  Finn doesn’t respond. Doesn’t answer chases either. But then, at 4:00 p.m., as the light’s fading, I receive a link, with the comment

  Finn has got me access to the Program’s surveillance feeds.

  I’m passive: I can only watch what they watch. The cameras pan across, zoom in and out, at someone else’s whim. An empty interior that might be a classroom, a convoy trundling down a darkening street, a man loitering in the doorway of a small shop.

  I search all the faces. I don’t see Johanssen.

  Should I take it further? Attempt to eavesdrop on comms traffic in the Program? Check for news of a corpse, white, male, six foot, blue eyes? Check for body parts coming out with the refuse collections? I won’t be squeamish. These things have to be faced. I know what happened to Charlie Ross. They couldn’t even return complete remains to his widow, had to identify by DNA. He’d been dismembered.

  At 5:00 p.m., Whitman rings.

  “They got a sighting,” he says. “In the canteen: Jackson seen talking to some guy, but he left alone—”

  I snatch at that. “Today?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “And the guy?”

  Already my hand’s on the mouse, reaching to click into the inmate records, but Whitman says, “They wouldn’t give a name.”

  “Persuade them.”

  “I can’t just—”

  “Find a way.” Snapped back at him, too hard, but there’s still an hour to go before the gates close again and the place locks down for the night. Still time.

  Whitman’s silent. At last he says, “I don’t like this, Laura. You want it both ways. We’re keeping it unofficial, you said, we’re just borrowing this guy’s ID, Washington doesn’t need to know. Fine: then we keep it low key. I act concerned, but I don’t go in there telling these guys how to do their job. I tell them they’re doing great. Or I go in there and I kick these guys around, but in that case, you’d better find someone in Washington who’ll back you because you’re going to need it. I can’t make a big noise and keep your guy off the radar. Every time I open my mouth, his profile goes up a notch.” There’s another little silence; a weary shrug on the other end of the line. “You choose, Laura.”

  He leaves just enough space to be sure I’m not going to reply, then he says, “I’ll try again tomorrow,” and he hangs up.

  On the screen in front of me the Program goes about its business. The light diminishes, the patrols pull back, the gates close.

  It is now more than thirty-two hours since Johanssen entered the Program.

  At 7:00 p.m. Craigie calls on me again. He sits with his tea cooling on the table beside him, his narrow face pinched with anxiety. But he’s found nothing to suggest that Simon Johanssen is in the hands of the authorities.

  “He’s still in there,” I say, and this time he doesn’t argue.

  “Could someone have ID’d him?” he asks.

  “Ross is dead.”

  “Someone he served with in the army, then?”

  But I’ve been through inmate records for any ex-squaddie who could identify him as Simon Johanssen. There’s no one. No one who’s likely to have known the real Ryan Jackson either. Everything’s a blank.

  When Craigie’s gone I eat in my office, watching the surveillance feeds. The official patrols have stopped circulating now, but others have taken their place: men on foot, in twos and threes, moving with quiet purpose. Quillan’s men.

  So far there have been no reports of a wounded civilian. No reports of a corpse. I try to cling to that.

  But you know what Johanssen is. And you thought he’d retire to some beach in Thailand? Wear cutoffs, grow a beard, smoke pot, take up fishing? Grow old?

  No.

  They all go, sooner or later. All of them.

  There is a pattern to these things: a phone call first, a tip-off, and then, a few hours later, a news bulletin, police tape across an alleyway, the TV camera zooming in on the remaining traces of blood. That’s what happens to people like him.

  Only this time maybe there’s no contact calling in. Certainly no TV coverage. Maybe he’s just gone.

  That night Charlotte Alton goes down with the flu and phones her friends, rearranging her diary; and I stay at my desk.

  I’ve returned to the woman in the photo. I’ve stopped thinking of her as an inmate—in my mind the newspaper front page, the screaming headline, has vaporized. But her guar
ded smile remains, and so does the conviction that I’ve seen her before.

  Johanssen said that who she was didn’t matter. He was wrong.

  So I sit up late into the night, searching the databases for the woman in that photo. And I keep chasing the memory of her face, but always it drifts ahead of me, just beyond my reach.

  DAY 9: THURSDAY–DAY 10: FRIDAY

  JOHANSSEN

  Another voice, in another life.

  “Ryan Jackson.”

  Pain tells him he’s alive: his head pounds, and his guts ache as if someone has taken them out and stamped on them.

  “Ryan Jackson,” the voice says again.

  The name is familiar.

  He opens his eyes. A sharp-featured man with a receding hairline is gazing down at him. “So,” he says, “you still know your own name.”

  Johanssen blinks at him, bewildered.

  “One lucky bastard, aren’t you?” the man says, sarcastically.

  The man helps him sit up. The pain in his head doubles, roaring, and when he breathes too deeply something sharp lances into his ribs.

  “Here.” The man holds a beaker to his lips. He swallows, and pain rips into his throat, and everything rushes back: the bucket and the funnel and the tube, the narrow yard, the old man Quillan in his picnic chair, Jimmy on the ground screaming, the bolt cutters—

  His fingers. He stares at them. A red ring circles the index finger of his right hand. A cannula’s pinned into the back of his left: an IV line runs to a drip stand next to the mattress.

  “Brice—” he says.

  “Fuck Brice,” the man says. “Drink.” He pushes the beaker against Johanssen’s mouth, tips it. He’s in his midforties, hard-bitten, wiry. There’s strength in his hands, and his forearms are lean and knotted, the veins standing out over muscle, tattoos for MUM and BAGHDAD.

  Five gulps and Johanssen pushes the beaker away, gasping. “Jimmy?” he asks.

  The sharp-featured man grunts. “Medevaced.” He pushes the beaker into Johanssen’s hands—“Take it, you’re not a fucking kid”—then he gets up and goes out, shutting the door. His footsteps clump down a flight of stairs.