by Daniel Cole
“Killing me?” Baxter helped him. “Yeah, I remember. It’s nothing to do with Masse. I’m just hoping Governor Davies isn’t still working here. He doesn’t like me much.”
“You?” asked Rouche, in what he hoped had (but had not) come across as dismayed aghast.
“Yeah, me,” said Baxter, a little offended.
It was a lie, of course. Baxter’s trepidation was indeed rooted in coming face-to-face with Masse again, not because of what he was but because of what he might know and what he might tell.
Only four people knew the truth concerning what had occurred inside that Old Bailey courtroom. She had expected Masse to contradict her hastily formulated version of events; however, no opposition was ever made to her statement. And as time wore on, she began to let herself hope that he had lost consciousness, too injured during his altercation with Wolf to be aware of her shameful secret. Every day she had wondered whether the past would catch up with her, and now she felt as though she was flaunting her good fortune by sitting down with the one person who could ruin her in an instant.
At that moment Governor Davies came around the corner. His face dropped when he recognized Baxter.
“I’ll get Curtis,” she whispered to Rouche.
She paused at the door to the toilets on hearing Curtis’s voice coming from inside. This struck Baxter as bizarre, as they had given up their mobile phones back at security. She gently leaned against the heavy door until she could make out the young American agent talking to herself in the mirror:
“. . . No more stupid comments. Think before you speak. You can’t make a mistake like that in front of Masse. ‘Confidence in oneself demands confidence from others.’”
Baxter knocked loudly and swung the door open, making Curtis jump.
“Governor’s ready for us,” she announced.
“I’ll just be a moment.”
Baxter nodded and went to rejoin Rouche.
The governor escorted the group in the direction of the high-security unit.
“As I’m sure you’re well aware, Lethaniel Masse sustained some lasting injuries prior to his apprehension by Detective Baxter here,” he said, making an effort to be pleasant.
“Detective chief inspector now,” she corrected him, ruining it.
“He has undergone numerous reconstructive surgeries on his jaw but will never have full use of it again.”
“Will he be able to answer our questions?” Curtis asked.
“Not coherently, no. Which is why I’ve arranged for an interpreter to sit in on your interview.”
“Who specializes in . . . mumbling?” asked Baxter, unable to help herself.
“Sign language,” said the governor. “Masse learned it within weeks of arriving here.”
The group was led outside through another security door, where the recreation areas stood eerily empty as a coded message was announced over the Tannoy system.
“How is Masse as a detainee?” asked Curtis, the interest evident in her voice.
“Exemplary,” answered the governor. “If only they were all so well behaved. Rosenthal!” he called to a young man at the far end of the five-a-side football pitch, who almost slipped on the ice as he jogged over to them. “What’s going on?”
“Another fight in House Block 3, sir,” panted the young man. One of his shoelaces was undone and trailed along the floor behind him.
The governor sighed. “I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me,” he said to the group. “We had an influx of new inmates this week and there are always teething problems while they size each other up and adjust the pecking order. Rosenthal here will take you to see Masse.”
“Masse, sir?” The young man looked less than enthused by the order. “Of course.”
The governor hurried away as Rosenthal led them toward the prison within a prison, surrounded by its own walls and fences. When they reached the first security gate, he patted his pockets frantically and started retracing his steps.
Rouche tapped him on the shoulder and handed him an ID card.
“You dropped this back there,” he said kindly.
“Thank you. The boss would literally kill me if I lost that . . . again.”
“Not if one of the escaped mass murderers you’re in charge of got to you first,” Baxter pointed out, making the young man go bright red with embarrassment.
“Sorry,” he said, before buzzing them through, only to confront them with another series of security checks and searches.
He explained how the high-security unit was divided into “spurs” of twelve individual cells and how warders were allowed to work only a three-year stretch before being transferred back into the main prison.
Inside, beige walls and doors surrounded the terra-cotta-colored floors and the framework of rust-red railings, gates, and staircases. Above their heads, large nets stretched between the walkways, sagging in the center where rubbish and other, more aerodynamic objects had accumulated.
The building was surprisingly quiet, as the prisoners were still confined to their cells. Another guard showed them to a room on the ground floor, where a dowdy, middle-aged woman was waiting for them. She was introduced as their sign-language expert, and then the guard took them through the painfully obvious rules before finally unlocking the door.
“Remember, if you need anything, I’ll be right outside,” he emphasized twice, then pushed open the door to reveal the imposing figure sat with his back to them.
Baxter could sense the guards’ uneasiness around their most notorious inmate. A long chain linked Masse’s handcuffs to the top of the metal table, running down the length of his dark blue boiler suit to attach the shackles that bound his feet to the concrete floor.
Although he did not look around, keeping the deep scars that were cut into his scalp facing them as they filtered into the room, he tilted his head back and sniffed the air inquiringly, breathing them in.
The two women looked at one another, instantly unnerved, while Rouche sat down, selflessly choosing the seat nearest to their suspect.
Despite the chains binding him to the room he could not leave, it was Baxter who felt trapped as the heavy door closed behind them and she slowly took her seat opposite the man who, despite his incarceration, still posed such a threat to her.
As Masse watched her glancing around the room, looking anywhere to avoid meeting his eye, a lopsided grin formed on his ruined face.
Chapter 5
Wednesday, 9 December 2015
11:22 A.M.
“Well, that was a complete waste of time,” sighed Baxter as they stepped back out into the spur’s main atrium.
Masse had not even attempted to answer a single question during Curtis’s half-hour monologue. It had been like visiting a caged animal at the zoo, Masse present in name only—a subdued and defeated shadow of the sadistic monster that still kept her up at night, feeding off the fumes of a reputation that he could no longer live up to.
Wolf had utterly broken him, body and soul.
She could not know for certain whether his attention had kept returning to her because he knew what she had done or simply because she had been the one famously credited with his arrest. Either way, she was glad that it was over.
Rosenthal had been waiting for them in “the Bubble,” the secure staff area at the far end of the spur, and was already making his way over.
“We’ll need to conduct a thorough search of Masse’s cell,” Curtis advised him.
The inexperienced guard looked uncertain.
“I . . . er . . . Does the governor know?”
“You’re not serious?” Baxter asked Curtis in exasperation.
“I’ve got to agree with Baxter,” said Rouche, “but in a politer way, of course. Masse isn’t involved. This isn’t the best use of our resources.”
“On what we’ve seen so far, I’m inclined to agree,” started Curtis diplomatically, “but we have a strict protocol to follow, and I cannot leave the premises until such time as we rule out, wi
thout a shadow of a doubt, any possibility of Masse’s involvement.”
She turned back to Rosenthal:
“Masse’s cell . . . please.”
Dominic Burrell, or “the Bouncer,” as he was better known to inmates and staff alike, had been imprisoned for beating a complete stranger to death simply because the man had made the mistake of looking at him “funny.” He had spent the majority of his incarceration in House Block 1 but had recently been transferred to the high-security unit following two similarly unprovoked attacks on warders. He was generally avoided where possible, given his reputation and obsession with bodybuilding, despite his unimpressive stature of five feet six inches.
He watched from his cell as the group on the ground floor were escorted up to Masse’s empty room, which stood directly opposite his own. As they began their cramped search of the six-by-ten-foot room, he lost interest and continued tearing the fabric of his mattress into long strips, assisted by the razor-sharp wedge of plastic fashioned out of melted food packaging.
When he heard the guards unlocking the first cell door in order to line the inmates up for lunch, he flipped the mattress back over and wrapped the long piece of material around his waist to conceal it beneath his clothing. He was ushered out onto the walkway and noted that Masse was only two people ahead of him in the queue. Once the prison guard had moved on, he shoved past the man between them, who was evidently aware of his reputation and backed away without argument.
Standing on his tiptoes, he whispered into Masse’s ear: “Lethaniel Masse?”
Masse nodded, disguising their conversation by keeping his eyes forward.
“I’m here to deliver a message.”
“Wha’ mes-sage?” Masse slurred painfully.
Leaning around to check on the warder’s location, he placed a firm hand on Masse’s shoulder and gently pulled him closer until his lips were grazing the fine hairs of his ear:
“You . . .”
As Masse turned his head, the Bouncer locked his enormous arm around his throat and dragged him backward into the empty cell beside them. As per prison rules, the men in front and behind reassumed their places in line, neither interfering nor alerting the guards to the fight.
Through the open door, Masse made eye contact with one of the men in line, who just stood there watching him suffocate impassively. He tried to call out, but the few incoherent mumbles that he managed through his mangled jaw failed to attract the attention of anybody who could help him.
Masse wondered for a moment whether the burly man intended to rape him when he ripped his top open, but then he felt the sting of the blade tearing into his chest and realized that he was going to die.
He had felt it only once before—the unfamiliar sensation of fear, tainted with a twisted fascination as he finally appreciated what each of his countless victims had experienced in their final moments, the helplessness they had felt at his hands.
Curtis, Baxter, and Rouche had been advised to finish up their fruitless search of Masse’s cell and leave before the lunchtime prisoner movements. While the doors on the first floor were opened up, Rosenthal had escorted them down to ground level and across the atrium. They had almost reached the red iron gate when the first whistle blows pierced the calm above them.
It was difficult to make out what was happening as three warders struggled to reach whatever the jeering prisoners were blocking. More whistles joined the panicked calls for assistance as the shouts grew more excitable, echoing deafeningly around the empty metal building as the prisoners occupying the cells on the ground floor joined the cacophony.
“Let’s get you out of here,” said Rosenthal as bravely as he could muster. He spun back around and inserted his ID card into the reader on the wall; a red light blinked in response. He tried again. “Shit!”
“Problem?” asked Baxter, keeping one eye on the events developing above.
“We’re in lockdown,” he explained. He was clearly beginning to panic.
“All right. So what do we have to do in a lockdown situation?” Rouche asked the young man calmly.
“I-I don’t . . .” he stuttered.
The whistle calls above were growing more desperate, while the shouting somehow grew even louder.
“The Bubble, perhaps?” Baxter suggested.
Rosenthal looked at her wide-eyed and nodded.
The noise above rose to a crescendo as someone was lifted over the walkway railings and dropped into the empty void at the core of the atrium. The half-naked body ripped the netting from the wall on one side and landed facedown just a few meters away from the group.
Curtis screamed, attracting the attention of the men above.
“We need to go. Right now!” said Baxter, but she froze when the dead body made a sudden and unnatural movement toward them.
It took her a moment to realize that the length of knotted material trailing down the destroyed netting had been wrapped around the bloody victim’s neck. Just then the makeshift rope pulled taut, dragging the corpse up into the air as a second, more muscular body, dropped alongside it.
“He’s still alive!” gasped Rosenthal in horror as the counterweight thrashed about desperately while the frayed noose took its time to choke him.
“Go! Go! Go!” ordered Baxter, shoving Curtis and Rosenthal after Rouche, who had almost reached the door to the Bubble.
“Open the door!” he yelled.
The whistles went silent one by one as the riot escalated. There was a chilling cry from somewhere above and then a burning mattress dropped into the middle of the atrium, the chaos fueling the inmates’ excitement like fresh blood to shark-infested waters.
The first of the prisoners had clambered down the broken netting as the group reached Rouche at the Bubble’s secure door.
“Open up!” shouted Rouche, hammering frantically on the metal.
“Where’s your card?” Baxter asked Rosenthal.
“It won’t work. They need to open it from inside,” he panted.
More inmates had made the perilous descent onto their level, while the first man benevolently unlocked cells at random with a blood-smeared security pass.
Rouche rushed around to the front, where he could see a warder inside through the protective glass.
“We’re police officers!” he yelled through the impenetrable window. “Open the door!”
The terrified man shook his head and mouthed the words “I can’t. I’m so sorry,” gesturing to the approaching ensemble of the country’s most dangerous men.
“Open the door!” shouted Rouche.
Baxter joined him at the window.
“What now?” she asked as calmly as she could.
There was nowhere for them to go.
An enormous inmate climbed down from above. He was wearing a prison officer’s uniform that looked absurdly small for him. The trousers were cropped halfway up his shin, and his stomach was on show beneath the hem of the shirt. The ensemble would have looked almost comical had it not been for the fresh scratch marks torn across his face.
Curtis was pounding on the door, pleading desperately.
“He isn’t going to open it,” said Rosenthal, slumping down onto the floor. “He can’t risk them getting through.”
The rioters were rushing toward them, eyeing Rouche and Rosenthal with burning hatred and the women with hunger. Rouche grabbed Baxter by the arm and shoved her into the corner behind him.
“Hey!” she shouted, trying to fight him off.
“Stay behind us!” he shouted to the women.
Rosenthal seemed confused by the word “us” until Rouche dragged him back up onto his feet.
“Go for their eyes,” Rouche shouted to the petrified young man seconds before the pack engulfed them.
Baxter kicked out wildly. There were hands and sneering faces everywhere. A strong fist grabbed a clump of her hair and dragged her a couple of feet, but she was released when a fight broke out between two of her attackers.
She scrambled ba
ck against the wall, looking for Curtis, but the powerful arm returned for her. From nowhere Rosenthal appeared, leaping onto the man’s back, sinking his fingers deep into one of the tattooed inmate’s eyes.
Suddenly, the lights went out.
Only the eerie illumination of the crackling fire in the center of the atrium remained, two silhouettes hanging above the dying flames like the aftermath of a witch hunt.
There was a loud bang. The space filled with smoke. Then another.
Men in full riot gear and protective masks entered through the iron gate on the far side of the hall as the inmates covered their faces and ran for cover, dispersing in all directions like hyenas chased off a kill.
Baxter spotted Curtis lying unconscious a few meters away and crawled over to her.
She wrapped the FBI agent’s ripped shirt back around her. A large bump protruded from her head, but she appeared otherwise unharmed.
Baxter felt her nose and mouth burning and could taste the CS gas as it diffused into her section of the room. Through her failing vision, she watched the spectral shapes fan out into the haze surrounding the fire, welcoming the searing pain in her airways because it meant that she was still alive.
After forty minutes of eyebaths in the medical center, Baxter was finally permitted to join Rouche and Governor Davies. Having recovered more quickly than the other two, Rouche had kept her updated with the latest news while she ungraciously received her treatment.
They had learned that one of the dead prisoners had been a man named Dominic Burrell. More troublingly, however, the other had been Masse. From the CCTV footage, they had confirmed that it was Burrell who had murdered Masse prior to taking his own life.
Curtis was awake but still shaken by the ordeal, and Rosenthal had a broken collarbone but was in high spirits.
Now that Baxter could see, she suspected that Rouche was more injured than he was letting on. He was limping and appeared to be taking intentionally shallow breaths. She noticed him holding his chest painfully when he thought nobody was watching.
The governor had ensured that once all the inmates were returned to their cells, the scene had been left untouched. He then explained, as politely as possible, that there was nowhere else for the prisoners to go and, as such, the high-security unit was operating as usual, only with two dead bodies hanging from the rafters. So the sooner they did whatever they needed to do, the better.