The Walking Dead

  'Just the desk man. I'll be half an hour, Joe, perhaps a bit more.'

  The bus slowed, then stopped. By craning his neck, looking over the heads in front of him and past the screen behind the driver, Jools could make out wire fences, a lowered barricade, arc-lights, a guardhouse and sentries. The soldiers were in battle dress and had rifles against their chests. Jools grinned to himself. He understood why they had not been told where they were headed, or what was their destination: it was a bloody army camp.

  The detective, a morose blighter and without conversation through their hour's journey, had gone up front, had spoken through the open door to a sergeant, then turned to them. 'Thank you indeed, ladies and gentlemen, for your patience. You will be shown to your sleeping quarters, then given a meal. You are all, I guarantee it, quite safe here, and–'

  'It's not my safety I'm concerned with, it's my cat's,' Fanny piped. '- every effort will be made to ensure your comfort.'

  Safer than a vault of the Bank of bloody England, Jools reflected. But for how long? The little toad man had told him: There would be nowhere to hide. My friends have long arms and longer memories. He felt the cold through the open door of the coach, and shivered.

  *

  'I don't want to say this but, Dickie, you don't seem so well.'

  'Just tired. .. I suppose I ought to invite you for a bite to eat.'

  'Wouldn't hear of it. What you need is bed, and maybe a Jack Daniel's for company. Don't have a conscience about playing host to me. I have a date, and I'm told it will be Italian so I'm going to go out there and make a fool of myself with a spaghetti bowl. I'll be dropped back at my hotel.'

  'See you in the morning, Joe. Hope you don't feel your day's been wasted.'

  'Been a good day, Dickie. We're only short of one thing. Luck.'

  The cottage slept, but in one room the curtains flapped and an open window whined on its hinges.

  Chapter11

  Wednesday, Day 14

  Fine rain fell on Ramzi. He was sitting on a bench. Before him, while he buried his head in his hands, was the city that was his home, laid out below him, the lights of its streets blazing through the mist. Far to the east, above the lights and beyond them, was the first smear of a softer grey. Soon the day would come.

  When the others had slept, he had made his preparations for flight. He had disguised his bed. He had opened the window with great care because the hinges creaked from the rust on them. He had dressed and pulled on his trainers. After each movement he had paused to allow the quiet of the night to settle around him again. Once, Syed had called out, but had not woken. He had stood on the bed and lifted his left leg out through the window. He had been astride the sill, half in, half out, his knee dose to a little china bowl that was a decoration there, when Jamal's cough had exploded, but none of the sleepers had been roused. He had worked his right leg through the gap, settled for a moment on the outer sill, then lowered himself into the flower-bed below and had felt the earth clog on his trainers. He had tried to close the window, fasten it, but that had not been possible so he had abandoned it. Ramzi had run and heard the flap of the curtains behind him, the swing of the window.

  The strengthening wind had been on his face. He had run as if his life had depended on it, had charged across the lawn, because he had believed himself to be condemned.

  He had gone through the hedge, missing the gap where the thorn was sparsest and the wire was down to knee height. He had struggled to free himself from the wire's barbs, the thorns, tearing his trousers and lacerating his hands. When he had slipped in the field, mud had smeared his face, hands and clothing. He had blundered to an open gate and there had gasped for breath, looked back and seen the dark outline of the building–but no lights were snapping on and no shouts carried on the wind, only the rain. He had skirted the far side of the wood that was near to the track leading to the building. The muscles he had built in the gym, with rings of weights, were in his shoulders and in his arms–they could be seen and gave him the stature he craved–not in his stomach and thighs. At a shambling trot, he had staggered towards the village.

  He had come into it past the closed and blacked-out pub, past the shop, which had only a dim security light, and had crossed the street. For Ramzi, the countryside, its quiet and isolation, was an alien, unfamiliar place: he was used to concrete, paving, noise and the dense terraces of closely packed homes. He no longer had the will to run but he stumbled forward, going north, along the pavement. When he came under a high light, he had seen the mud from the ploughed field on his top and trousers round the tears. When he had cleared the village, gone past the last set-back houses, a car had swept past and he had waved–too late–at the driver. When the village was far behind him, and there was no pavement, and he meandered in exhaustion on the road, there was the scream of a horn as a van swerved by. His waved arms–frantic–were ignored. An hour later, when Ramzi could run no more, barely trot, only walk–and he was two or three miles from the village–he had heard the grinding approach of a heavy lorry. He had turned and stood with his arms spread, at the side of the road, and had heard the brakes wail. It had come to a stop fifty yards ahead. He had summoned his strength and run to the high cab door that had been opened.

  He would have called the lorry driver a Crusader. He would have thought of him as an enemy. He had planned to kill, and the Crusader, the enemy–or his family–might have been close to the explosion, near enough not to have been able to duck away from the flying shrapnel of ball-bearings, nails and screws: it was what he had hoped to achieve. An arm had reached down, caught his fist and heaved him up into the warmth of the cab, where music played. 'Christ, you look a proper mess. What you done? Not my business, eh? Well, I like a bit of company–where you trying to get to?' He had named the city that was his home. 'Can't do that. Tamworth's the best I can manage, but you'll get a train out of Tamworth for Derby–yeah, I like a bit of company on a night run.' He had seen the driver when the cab light was on: he wore a sleeveless shirt and his arm was tattooed with a picture of a naked girl.

  They had driven at speed through the night along deserted roads. 'Just so as we understand each other, if you're in trouble with the law–trouble with anything–I don't want to know. It's just good to have someone up here. Pity you're not a pretty bird…'

  Ramzi had never before been so close, shoulder to shoulder, with a Crusader, an enemy. The family had no friends outside their own community. At his schools, the kids had all been Muslim and dominated by lessons on the Faith. At college, before he had dropped out of the computer-studies course–eight months into a two-year curriculum–the other students' families had originated from Pakistan and Bangladesh. The benefit office he used was staffed from the ghetto. The shops he, his mother and his sisters went to were inside the ghetto. Where he worshipped, where he had been recruited, the evils of the morally corrupt society of the Crusaders had been drilled into his mind. The television he watched came on the satellite, and the websites he visited trumpeted the successes of martyrs in the fight against the enemy.

  It was a soft voice, a Birmingham accent. 'You want a sandwich? Sorry, sorry…I'm a daft bugger, they're ham. But there's rock cakes my missus made, and the flask's coffee.' He had wolfed three cakes, and drunk from the mug on top of the Thermos, and he had learned of the life of the driver, and his family's life, and their home in the Smethwick suburb of Birmingham, and the holiday he was looking forward to–'Can't come bloody fast enough, know what I mean?'–in a caravan park on the Yorkshire coast, and the job he did delivering shelf supplies to supermarkets. He had been driven into Tamworth, and a sign for the rail station had been pointed out.

  'You'll be all right now, but better when you've had a wash and brush-up. Been good knowing you.'

  He had stepped down from the cab. He had seen the smile above him, and the little wave. Should he have said it? Should he have told the kind Crusader, the generous enemy, not to go with his family next Saturday morning into the centre of Birmingham
? It had been in his mind, deep in his throat…But the lorry had pulled away, and the warning was left unspoken.

  The first train of the morning service out of Tamworth had brought Ramzi home. He had fled because he was condemned. Not in words…Where I fight, a cell must be secure or it will fail, and failure comes when respect inside the cell is lost. Trust was placed in you. Should I doubt that trust? The hand had been gentle on his shoulder, and a smile had been at the mouth. The words had been honeyed, not the eyes. The eyes had told him he was condemned–perhaps not that day, perhaps the day after, because Ramzi had lost respect, and trust in him was doubted, and the eyes had pierced him and had spelt out their contempt. He was dead if he stayed so he had run. If he walked slowly, he would reach his home within fifteen minutes, and he would hit the door with his fist and a sister or his mother would unlock it, and the story of his failure would be prised from him. They would learn of his disgrace, his shame, his humiliation. His old boasts replaced by a stuttered confession. Their old pride in him gone.

  He sat on the bench and the cold sank into his body.

  The handler was always the first in his home to rise, shower, shave and dress. A biscuit for the grand old lady, retired, in her basket. Then the kettle on, a pot of tea made, a mug taken, up to his wife, a bang on the doors of his kids' rooms and protest groans as a reward. It was still dark. He heard the six o'clock news on the radio every morning unless he was on early turn and already at work. He ate toast and listened to the news, then climbed into his waterproofs. On his pager, he read a bald text of an increased security alert down south in the capital, but the spin-off was that he was tasked to show the flag and let his spaniel sniff round the city's railway station and the bus terminus. It had been a regular routine since Seven-Seven, since the bombers had taken an early train into the heart of London with explosives in rucksacks on their backs. The radio told him that the Dow was down overnight, that big redundancies were forecast in the north-west, there had been a homophobic attack in the south-west, a junior minister was entangled in scandal, two suicide bombs in Iraq…The handler barely took in the litany of gloom. He savoured the tea, the toast and the quiet. By being dressed in time for the six o'clock news he was able to enjoy the peace of the house, and he would have said, if asked, that it was the time of day he enjoyed most, particularly in autumn, winter and spring when it was still dark outside, and he could think and reflect.

  What he thought of most often, reflected on most frequently, was that he fitted no stereotype as a police officer in the city of Derby. Wouldn't have been in the force if he hadn't been a dog-handler. He had few ambitions and had never shown an interest in sitting the sergeants' examination; there were plenty who did and were fast-tracked towards it. In fact, nothing that was memorable or worth a commendation had ever intruded on his career. Most certainly, if he had not been a dog-handler, he would have resigned rather than face the bloody binge-drunk rioters in the city centre every weekend but he had been spared that since he had taken on Smack and now Midge. Wasn't in a hurry that morning, and after the news and the weather forecast, bloody awful, he caught up with last night's Evening Telegraph and the Ram's predicted line-up for the coming Saturday's match. Then he poured some more well-stewed tea.

  Few slept well in the cells at HMP Belmarsh. Most woke early, at the clangs of unlocking doors, the rattle of chains and the stamp of boots. Some did not sleep at all and gazed at the ceiling bulb behind its cover or the glow through the barred window of the perimeter walls' arc-lights.

  Ozzie Curtis had not slept.

  He burned, and hatred was a fire in him.

  Didn't reckon that Ollie had missed out on sleep. The dozy bastard relied on him, leaned on him and left the worrying–and hatred–to his elder brother.

  He checked his watch, did so every five minutes, and thought it was about the time it would happen.

  If it wasn't for the work and the planning–the hating and burning–that Ozzie put in, Ollie would have been running a stall most likely on the Columbia Road flower market; Ozzie had always split down the middle line, fifty-fifty, but had done the worrying. To show for Ozzie's worry, Ollie had a pad in Kent of the same value as his own, the same bloody investment income and the adjacent Spanish villa.

  They were going down, both of them; with the jury in protection and the judge bloody poisoned against them, they were looking at long bird. They would be bloody old and bloody decrepit when–if–they emerged from a prison's gates, and they would be without authority.

  The fire burned in him because the man with a beard, and his feet in bloody sandals, had taken their money, then grassed them up.

  In his mind, flames burned.

  Bright flames flickered, flared, then spread.

  He looked again at his watch.

  At that hour, in a distant suburb of east London, most households slept. Only a minimal few had been roused by alarm clocks and the automatic switching on of radios.

  The few were those who had furthest to travel, those on the earliest shifts, those who were key-holders and had to open up factories, businesses and offices…and among the few who were about their trade before dawn were the three men in an old saloon car, with substituted number-plates, who had cursed at the stench of petrol and had not dared to light the chain of cigarettes on which they would normally have survived.

  The car was parked beyond the end of the road, and the driver was left with it. He did not have to be told that he should keep the engine running. First out was the Nobbler, and in a gloved fist he carried a plastic supermarket bag tightly wrapped round a half-brick; The second man held the, source of the petrol stench: a fuel-filled milk bottle with a wad of old shirt rammed into its neck. He had in his pocket a snap-open Zippo lighter.

  In the world of Benny Edwards, two options of persuasion existed. They were the choice of the carrot or the less welcome alternative of the stick. The choice was gone, and with it had disappeared his client's cash and a segment of his own reputation' of success: the alternative of the stick, however, remained. It was now of great importance to him–his hard-won reputation relied on his ability to deliver hung juries or acquittals. For the stick, given the chance, he would have gone along the route of a child's face slashed and disfigured with a razor-sharp blade, or a woman's legs hit by a car's bumper as she walked along a pavement. But Wright's daughter was not there, nor his wife, and the opportunity to send a message from either of them while they lingered in Accident and Emergency was not available. Early the previous afternoon the driver of the car, ducked down in his seat had watched as the child and the woman were hustled with their bags through the front door and the gate by uniformed and plain-clothes filth, and dumped without ceremony in the back of a police wagon. When they had sped out into the traffic stream their road had been blocked by a car with a blue lamp flashing on the roof and the chance of pursuit had not been there. But a message needed sending and could still be sent. A, message was the least of Ozzie Curtis's demands on Benny Edwards. He who pays the piper calls the tune: that was obvious to the Nobbler. A message would reach the bastard Wright, and he had been told of long arms and longer memories. There was a good chance that the stick, on fire, would dictate the bastard's decision in the jury room.

  It was raining. The pavement shimmered under the street-lights. The two men, walking briskly, carrying the half-brick and the milk bottle, had hoods over their heads and scarves on the lower half of their faces. The Nobbler presumed that a junior filth would have been left inside the house–there was an unmarked car by the front gate, empty–and that a camera lens would have been mounted above the front door. Better to presume everything . . They went past a closed van, with the logo of a window-cleaner on its side and ladders on the roof, and the house, the target, was now less than fifty paces ahead. The Nobbler quickened his stride, and the man behind him.

  Benny Edwards was familiar with success. He would not have admitted to complacency, but success–and the enhancement of his reputation–came ofte
n enough. He backed his nous, his instinct, and it had been wrong, which had confused him. The money had been taken; the deal had been done; end of bloody story. What had gone wrong? When news had reached him–second-hand, via that callow shit-face of a solicitor–of the new security ring thrown round the jurors, he had gulped in astonishment, but his own people had seen the coach pull away from Snaresbrook and the windows had been covered with newspaper. Four days earlier, at home in his corner jacuzzi, soaking and relaxed, he would never have thought–not for a bloody moment–that Julian Wright, the bastard, would be the one to play the goddamn hero, take the money and piss all over a deal. The thought of it was beyond his comprehension. He had seen nothing in the man, or in the bloody demands, bank statements and credit-card sheets, that had rung warning bells. The bastard had been as pliable as a bloody wet turd. More important, he had left the Nobbler looking like an idiot and an incompetent, and that hurt.

  'You ready for it?' Benny Edwards spoke from the side of his mouth.

  He heard a grunt of acknowledgement behind.

  He stopped. First, his eyes flitted over the darkened road. He saw nothing that aroused his suspicion. Then he twisted his head, raised the scarf -higher on his face and looked at the terraced house. His glance went over the gate that hung from one hinge, across the little flower-bed to the door where the paint had peeled. There was no glimmer of light from behind the glass pane at the top, but he fancied–was not sure–that he had identified a lens from a pinhead camera, but he was. prepared for that and his face was well covered. He checked the bay window beside the door: curtains drawn. He sucked in breath, held it in his lungs and listened…He heard nothing.