Denial (Sam Keddie Thriller Book 2)

by Paddy Magrane

  The air began to fill with a sharp smell, as if the two liquids had combined to become something more deadly. At first, it irritated Zahra’s eyes, but then she could feel it burning. She had to get out of the room.

  She looked behind. As the women helping the Pakistani girl were now discovering as they wrenched at the door handle, they had locked themselves in.

  Zahra glanced to her right. Above a bank of dryers there were windows. Without hesitation, she ran to the nearest dryer, climbed on top and turned the handle. It opened, blasting her face with icy air. The window frame was rectangular, wider than the average person. Below, about six feet, was a bed of shrubs. Beyond was a car park and, in the distance, a break in the wire fence that surrounded Creech Hill, where there was a security office and a barrier that was now lifting to allow a car in. She looked down the room where the two guards had been. They were gone. But their door now stood ajar. Just to her left, the women hiding behind the laundry cart were coughing. If escaping the gas was the only priority, they could all have simply moved through the open door. But Zahra knew she was no longer safe inside Creech Hill.

  ‘If you want to leave this place, now’s your chance!’ she shouted at the hacking women. Some were too weak to stand, but five moved towards her.

  As Zahra helped the women clamber through the window, there was a shout from the opposite end of the room. She shot a look in that direction. Guards were spilling through the doorway. By the laundry cart, the remaining women were wheezing, gasping for air. At the other door, the Pakistani girl collapsed to the ground. The two women helping her were crying out. Zahra wanted desperately to help but knew it was a matter of seconds before the guards reached the dryer and grabbed at her legs.

  The woman in front of her eased through the window. A guard was running towards the dryer, arms outstretched. Zahra placed both hands on the window frame, pulled her body up, then leaned out of the opening until momentum tipped her forward, and she dropped.

  She landed on her belly, the shrub’s small, sharp branches tearing at her t-shirt, cutting her stomach. She cried out but was soon being pulled to her feet by two women. They ran as a group into the car park, weaving between stationary vehicles. Overhead lights cast an orange glow over the space, the tarmac sparkled with frost. One woman slipped, but was soon dragged to her feet.

  Ahead, the security office had been alerted. The man who emerged was in his sixties, overweight. He raised a hand helplessly at the women but they simply sped past him, ducking under the barrier and running out of the open gate.

  Chapter 8

  Stoke Newington, London – 8am

  Sam flicked the kettle on to make coffee. Eleanor was already gone. She had a meeting in Birmingham that morning and had left just after 6am.

  The radio was on and the news was being read. The kettle came to a boil. Sam spooned granules into the mug, added milk, then poured water in.

  ‘Reports are coming in of a riot at Creech Hill Immigration Detention Centre in Essex,’ intoned the newsreader.

  Sam froze.

  ‘There are suggestions that two detainees have died during the incident, which took place early this morning. It’s believed that several inmates have escaped. Creech Hill is one of three immigration detention centres run by Tapper Security in the UK. More details on this story as soon as they become available.’

  The item was over, the newsreader now talking about a speech by Prime Minister Gillian Mayer about a more joined-up approach to tackling what she described as ‘the morally repugnant issue of human trafficking’.

  Sam began feverishly processing the implications of what he’d just heard. Was the riot anything to do with Zahra’s fearful statement yesterday? Was she safe?

  He went upstairs and grabbed his jacket, which was lying over a chair in the bedroom. He rummaged through the pockets until he found his mobile. He phoned Linda. It went straight to voicemail, so Sam called the charity’s office at Creech Hill, but that was engaged. Still gripping his mobile, he went back downstairs to the sitting room, hoping the television would offer more details.

  The item on Creech Hill that he eventually found showed a reporter outside the centre’s gates. The woman was wearing a thick coat and scarf, her breath turning to vapour.

  ‘According to a source inside the centre,’ she said, ‘the riot broke out at around 6am shortly after a woman in her 30s displaying violent behaviour was restrained by guards. The guards were set upon by other detainees and forced into a laundry area, where they became trapped. Cleaning fluids were used as missiles and it’s believed that spillages of ammonia and bleach combined to form the potentially hazardous gas, chloramine. It’s now confirmed that one detainee has died from inhalation of the gas, another has suffered severe facial burns and a guard is being treated for injuries. Six detainees have escaped.’

  Sam drew slim comfort from the fact that there’d been only one death, not two as originally suggested. But mention of a woman in her 30s made his stomach pool with anxiety. Was it Zahra? And if so, had she been injured? Christ, what if she was the fatality mentioned?

  Sam tried the office number again. This time, to his huge relief, it rang. A woman’s voice, harried, answered with the charity’s name.

  Sam explained who he was and asked to speak to Linda.

  ‘I’m afraid she’s tied up, as you can imagine.’

  ‘Can you just confirm whether a client of mine is safe? An Eritrean woman. Zahra Idris.’

  There was a pause at the other end. ‘We’re still struggling to piece things together.’

  ‘Of course,’ Sam said. He felt chastened. They had better things to do.

  ‘Hold the line a moment. I’ll see what I can find out.’

  Sam’s ear filled with a slow-paced and crackling piece of muzak. Then, a minute or so later, it abruptly ended and the woman’s voice came on again.

  ‘You asked about Zahra Idris.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She’s escaped.’

  ‘Shit,’ he said. ‘And was she the woman being restrained?’

  The woman paused. ‘I’m not able to talk about that,’ she said, with evident discomfort. ‘There’s going to be an investigation.’

  ‘Can you ask Linda to call me back?’

  ‘I’ll ask, but I can’t guarantee it’ll be today. It’s mayhem here.’

  The phone call over, Sam realised that he had less than fifteen minutes before his first client showed. His head was spinning with the morning’s news. It was too late to cancel but he had to call his other clients. There was no way he’d be able to sit calmly through the rest of the day.

  The woman had neither denied nor confirmed that Zahra was the one who’d been restrained, but her voice said it all.

  Had Zahra spun out, become violent, as the news item suggested? Or was something more sinister occurring?

  One thing was certain. Whatever happened had convinced Zahra that she wasn’t safe inside Creech Hill, and escaping was the only option.

  From what Sam had gathered, Zahra’s case for asylum was compelling. What had begun as a fast-track detention leading inexorably towards deportation had changed course when scars – the signs of repeated beatings – were found on her back by Creech Hill medical staff. She refused to talk about them, but did speak about her incarceration in Eritrea’s most notorious prison. Her identity, as the daughter of a prominent critic of the regime – a former senior army officer – was confirmed. Her lawyer began arguing that sending her home would without doubt put her in grave danger. Despite Home Office grumbles about what was referred to as Zahra’s ‘selective memory’, the omens began to look positive. Zahra dared to hope. To dream that asylum would be granted, that she’d start a new life in the UK, that her son would be able to join her from Eritrea.

  If Sam knew Zahra at all, then she would only have thrown that away if she was bloody terrified.

  He had to find out about the man in the suit. It started with him. Of that, Sam was convinced.

  C
hapter 9

  Basildon, Essex

  ‘What happened this morning?’

  It was midday. Tapper stared out of the front window of his Range Rover on to a field still covered with the morning’s frost, the ploughed earth rigid in the cold.

  The warm air in the car began to fill with his old cellmate’s smell, as Wallace’s version of the story slowly unravelled.

  By the time Wallace got to the part about flying missiles and his escape back into the men’s wing, Tapper felt his bowels loosening.

  He now had two crises on his hands. A very public fall-out from the riot at Creech Hill. And, more importantly, Zahra Idris. She had not responded as expected to a threat from the intimidating bulk of Pat Wallace. Quite the opposite, by the sounds of it. The woman was, by all accounts, feisty, head-strong, angry. And now on the loose.

  ‘So,’ said Tapper, his mouth dry, ‘plenty of witnesses to your presence in the women’s wing.’

  ‘There’s going to be an investigation, isn’t there? And I’ll get called in. You don’t exactly get promoted after something like this.’

  Tapper continued staring at the field. He could feel a headache developing above his eyes. With a thumb and forefinger, he massaged around the bridge of his nose. What the fuck had he been thinking, sending Wallace – with his predilection for violence – into the women’s wing?

  A press conference at Tapper Security’s HQ in Southampton Row was scheduled for the afternoon, by which time a soothing message about the Creech Hill incident was needed. He’d heard that the PM was fuming.

  ‘You’re right,’ Tapper said, thinking out loud, ‘there will be an investigation. But I can delay that. In the meantime, perhaps you need to have a bit of sick leave. Call it stress. I’m sure we can spin this. Say you were called in to help with the restraint of a violent woman. Blame the riot on a bunch of crazies who were already baying for blood. But I think it’s probably best you don’t return.’

  Wallace’s eyes were fixed on an indeterminate point in the bleak field ahead. Tapper could see he was wounded. The man had just lost his job – his one-and-only hope of employment after prison. They went back a long way, but would bitterness get the better of him? Would Wallace start mouthing off?

  And what did he do about Idris? The woman was dangerous. With the right allies – a solicitor being one – she might just start a fire. They’d been careful, destroyed the evidence. But all it took was a strand of fucking hair.

  Tapper felt a rising panic at the thought of what this demanded, the steps that were now required, the line that would need to be crossed. But desperate times called for desperate measures.

  He glanced at his old cellmate. Tapper knew that, if he was going to pursue this matter to a satisfactory conclusion, he needed assistance. Things hadn’t gone well at Creech Hill, but Wallace could not be wholly blamed for how it had turned out. Now very much available, he was the obvious candidate. And there was another advantage to keeping him on board. Paying Wallace would take the sting out of his sudden redundancy – placating him, lessening the chances of him blabbing out of anger.

  ‘How about you work for me now?’ said Tapper, a new course of action taking shape in his head.

  ‘I’d appreciate it, Harry.’

  ‘But on an informal, cash-in-hand basis. This Idris business needs tidying up.’

  Wallace turned in Tapper’s direction, a question forming on his face. There was a cut and a bruise on his left temple from where he’d been struck by the lamp.

  ‘You gave me a chance when no one else would, Harry, and I really appreciate that. And last time we met I didn’t ask too many questions ’cos I could see you wanted to keep everything under the radar. But, given how things have changed, I think I’m entitled to know what I’m involved in.’

  Tapper understood. Wallace had lost his job and the mention of cash suggested more dodgy activity. But there was no way he was incriminating himself by telling the full story.

  He felt the bile rise in his stomach at the thought of revealing even a snapshot of what had happened.

  ‘I was involved with something last summer. Something that went horribly wrong.’ A shiver of disgust ran through him. ‘Idris witnessed it all.’

  Tapper hoped it was enough to satisfy Wallace.

  There was silence. Then: ‘We all make mistakes, Harry. Christ, I’m no angel.’

  ‘I will tell you the rest, Pat. But it’s a long story, and now’s not the moment.’

  ‘In your own time, Harry.’ A smile spread across Wallace’s face. ‘The pay at Creech Hill was shit anyway.’

  Tapper felt his eyes well, not just with gratitude, but at Wallace’s lack of judgement. The man knew him when he was nothing, a terrified young convict. He had always accepted him. How could he have doubted him?

  They locked eyes for a moment – an unspoken message passing between them – before Tapper broke away, the intensity of the moment deeply unsettling.

  He thought of his next request, and now anxiety began spreading queasily in his gut. He breathed in, steadying himself. His hands were sweating as he pulled a leather Smythson notebook from his pocket, opening it to scribble down a couple of names. He peeled the sheet from the pad and handed it to Wallace.

  ‘I need you to search their places,’ Tapper said. ‘Both their homes and offices. Find anything that links me and Zahra Idris. Keddie’s a shrink and Fitzgerald’s a solicitor. You OK to find the addresses?’

  Tapper could see that whatever Wallace had been expecting, it wasn’t this. Just yesterday he’d been in legal employment. Now that was over and he was being asked to break into people’s property.

  ‘Shall we say a grand per address?’

  Seconds passed, then the doubt dissipated. ‘Appreciate it, Harry.’

  ‘Can you get going as soon as possible? Time is not on our side.’

  ‘I’m right on it.’

  ‘Sort this out and I’ll find you something more –’

  ‘Legal?’

  The two former cellmates from Ipswich exchanged a smile. ‘Quite,’ said Tapper.

  *

  They drove back to Basildon in silence. Tapper dropped Wallace off on a street corner, then took the A127 back to London. It meant a journey through his old turf in Romford.

  The traffic was painfully slow as he circled the roundabout in front of the town hall, the market place to his left, where his dad had sold fruit and veg. He watched a stall holder dancing on his feet to keep warm, the punters thin on the ground. How much would he earn today in such pitifully cold weather?

  Strange how our destinies pan out, thought Tapper, in the warm interior of his Range Rover. From the son of a feckless market trader to a multi-millionaire CEO.

  Tapper had started out providing humble security systems like CCTV, fire detection and intruder alarms for high street shops. The firm’s clients now included huge multinationals across the globe. For them, security also meant monitoring and response units, and mini armies to provide dense layers of protection, both static and mobile.

  Other Tapper offerings included highly-skilled operatives for close protection of celebs, exiled despots and paranoid oligarchs. And of course they ran secure facilities, such as Creech Hill and a handful of young and adult offender institutions, including some in Eastern Europe, India and Israel.

  There was a new area too, one which he was certain would, eventually, transform Tapper Security from a firm with a profit of around £240 million last year (not bad when some of his rivals couldn’t give shareholders a bean by way of a dividend) to the stratosphere.

  He remembered the firm’s first prison contract and how the media had been all over him, dragging up the crime that had landed him in Ipswich.

  Thanks to his formidable PR machine, the story that stuck was of a loving teenage lad who’d been defending his mother against the blows of a violent, alcoholic dad when he’d pushed him hard against a wall. Not that it wasn’t true, of course. But Tapper knew that, in the wrong hands,
the story could easily have been one of a young, feral killer.

  Tapper drove on, putting distance between him and the town centre. It had always been about controlling the narrative, shaping the story. And that was exactly what they were doing now. Ensuring one particular strand never saw the light of day.

  Chapter 10

  Stoke Newington, London

  Sam spent the day glued to the news, learning nothing. Late in the afternoon, Linda finally called back.

  ‘Sam,’ she said, her voice strained. ‘I got both your messages about Zahra Idris. Though I suspect your concerns are rather academic now that’s she escaped.’

  Linda was clearly exhausted, the day’s events evidently overshadowing everything. But Sam wasn’t letting this one go just yet. ‘I mentioned Zahra’s description of the man.’

  ‘Most days, this place is crawling with white men wearing suits. They’re called lawyers.’ The words dripped with sarcasm. ‘Besides, there was a tour of Creech Hill that morning. A bus-load of suits – journalists and local councillors mostly. It could have been any one of them. If indeed it was any of them.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I can’t comment on her mental health – she’s your client, not mine – but what she said to you doesn’t bode well.’

  Something flared in Sam. ‘And that’s your line, then?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘That she was losing it. And therefore needed restraining.’

  ‘As you’ve already been told,’ said Linda, her voice prickly, ‘there’s to be an investigation. I can’t discuss the day’s events. But I think you may be over-stepping your responsibilities as her therapist. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve had a bloody awful day and I need a bath and a glass of wine.’