by Nick Oldham
‘Mansur Rashid? I wonder what we’ve got on him … Name doesn’t ring any bells,’ Donaldson said as Henry finished.
‘I haven’t had the chance to do any digging yet, either.’
Donaldson stood up and switched on the lights. ‘Next door,’ he said. ‘Think you can stand up?’
The pain relief administered by Dr Chambers had actually kicked in, numbing down Henry’s injuries. ‘I might need a Zimmer frame,’ he joked.
Donaldson took him next door. Four people sat at computers, tapping busily away. No one looked round. Donaldson approached the nearest operator and laid his hands on the guy’s shoulders, making him jerk out of his concentration on the screen.
‘Mansur Rashid,’ he said simply. With a nod, the man began to interrogate his PC. ‘Access to thousands of databases,’ Donaldson said to Henry, ‘including every single thing Lancashire Constabulary has on computer record – and every other force in the country.’ He wasn’t bragging, just being matter-of-fact. Henry didn’t even raise an eyebrow. Nothing surprised him anymore.
Ten seconds later, the man said, ‘Mansur Rashid.’ He leaned back to allow Donaldson and Henry to look at the screen. ‘This is from Special Branch files in Lancashire.’
The two officers looked at the computer.
Donaldson read out, ‘Mansur Rashid, date of birth 22/10/64 in Pakistan … address on Balaclava Street, Blackburn … attends a local mosque … and that’s about it, a one-line entry … very thorough, you lot,’ he said critically, then more magnanimously, ‘Though to be fair, there’s a hundred thousand entries like this the world over, one-liners about people who might be of interest.’
The computer guy scrolled down the screen and said, ‘This file has been looked at twice today, by the way.’
Angela Cranlow and Graeme Walling, Henry guessed. That’s how they discovered his address. And Jenny Fisher accessing it for the same reason following Henry’s instructions: to find Rashid’s address.
‘No trace on any other database,’ the guy said.
‘Anyway, Karl,’ Henry said, ‘you haven’t told me how you magically appeared on Balaclava Street and saved my life.’
‘Eavesdropping,’ he admitted. ‘Our surveillance team lost Fazul Ali, then not long after I hear the chatter on the local radio channel that we are monitoring. I recognized your voice and picked up that a couple of your officers have gone missing in the same vicinity as Ali was mislaid, and you were investigating. I just decided to take a look … and in case you haven’t worked it out, pal, this is the second time that you’ve missed Akbar because I’m pretty sure that he was in the house when your people knocked … and how do I know that? The dead cops, for one thing, and for another, the guy who wanted to slice you up.’
‘Is Fazul Ali?’ said Henry, deadpan, suddenly realizing he’d been in hand-to-hand combat with one of the world’s most dangerous men.
‘Fazul Ali,’ Donaldson confirmed.
‘And you shot him.’
‘Winged him, actually,’ Donaldson said with a grin. ‘Now let’s go and torture him.’
Sixteen
Henry’s disbelief diminished as Karl Donaldson took him along the ground-floor corridor, up the set of wooden steps and on to the first-floor corridor, which virtually replicated the one below. ‘The far offices have been turned into sleeping quarters,’ Donaldson said with an airy wave of the hand, ‘and this is the interrogation suite.’ He opened the door of the first office and stepped through, Henry behind him like an obedient puppy.
They entered a dimly lit room. It took a moment for Henry’s eyes to make the adjustment and to his amazement he saw that there was a large two-way mirror in one wall, on the other side of which there was a very bare looking room. In the centre of that room was a chair and, tied to it and slumped forward, was the naked form of Fazul Ali, his head lolling drunkenly to one side, eyes glaring sullenly towards what must have been a very large mirror to him. He must have realized what it was and that he was being observed from the other side of it. The chair was screwed to the floor and Ali’s feet were shackled by thin chains to bolts fixed in the floor, his wrists cuffed to the back legs of the chair.
His right shoulder was bandaged, blood flowering slowly through the gauze from the gunshot wound underneath. Henry had a flashback of Ali being shot by Donaldson, recalling how the shoulder had seemed to explode. It was a bad wound, one which required hospital treatment.
There were two people in the observation room – Dr Chambers and a man in his late thirties who wasn’t even introduced to Henry. They were sitting on chairs, looking through the mirror at Ali. A door adjacent gave access to the interrogation room beyond. The two looked up at Henry and Donaldson as they came into the room, nodding, then, as if on cue, all three Americans put their right forefingers into their ears and their brows furrowed. Henry realized they were all listening to tiny earpieces.
Donaldson said, ‘Roger.’ They all removed their fingers. He looked at Henry. ‘The Secretary of State is due to leave Merseyside, nothing of interest to report. Estimated she’ll be crossing into Lancashire in twenty minutes. They hand over to your escort at Switch Island and then she’ll be brought into Lancashire.’
Henry knew that Switch Island was the complex roundabout to the north of Liverpool at junction 7 of the M57 where it joined the A59 and where the M58 started.
‘Which way will she come up into Lancs?’
‘M58, M6, M65 then off at junction 4,’ Donaldson reeled off from memory.
Working that out, Henry guessed that it would be less than an hour before Rice actually set foot on Lancashire soil once she actually got on the road. Security escorts stop for neither man nor beast.
‘What’s her itinerary?’ Henry asked. He’d seen it, but couldn’t recall it.
‘First stop is a school in Pleckgate, then she’s due to visit Ewood Park after that, home of that soccer team, Blackburn Rovers, which doesn’t give us much time.’
‘To do what, exactly?’
‘Find out exactly how Akbar intends to kill her, otherwise it’ll just be pot luck – and I don’t like pot luck.’
‘So what’s your plan?’
Donaldson ignored the question and turned to the mystery man and Dr Chambers. ‘How is he?’
‘Alive and likely to remain so, but doped up with a few choice drugs,’ she said.
‘Has he said anything?’
‘Said I should fuck off back to Satan.’
‘Nice,’ said Donaldson. To Henry, he said, ‘Shall we?’
Feeling – knowing – he was being dragged into something better avoided, Henry followed Donaldson from the observation room into the interrogation room. The words of his dear old mum rang clear in his ears, often shouted at him when he was a youngster in trouble: ‘You’re easily led, you!’ and he knew she was right.
The two men walked across the vinyl-covered floor and stood in front of Ali, whose black-ringed eyes watched with a simmering hatred. He might have been shot, might have been drugged up, but Henry could tell he knew exactly what was going on.
‘How are you, Fazul Ali?’
‘I need to go to hospital,’ his reply came, the words slightly slurred through cracked, dry lips.
‘All in good time.’
Ali’s eyes settled on Henry. A reluctant grin came to his lips. ‘You fought well.’
Henry chose not to respond. Inside he was being torn apart, drawn into a situation completely alien to him. A wounded prisoner, shackled and naked in an interrogation room. Interrogation wasn’t a word ever used in police circles. It represented everything bad about how the police used to obtain confessions in the very bad old days. Now they ‘interviewed’, sought the truth using approved methods. Interrogation was totally negative and had links with corrupt and murderous regimes. And torture.
Not that Henry would ever class himself as a saint and maybe he was being two-faced about this. He had hit prisoners before, he’d bent the rules, but he’d always known the bounda
ries and deep down had always felt uncomfortable when he did such things … but those methods had never approached anything as brutal and lawless as this.
There would be outrage if it was discovered that such things were taking place on British soil.
‘I’ll come straight to the point, my friend,’ Donaldson said to the prisoner. ‘Mohammed Ibrahim Akbar.’ There was not even a flicker from Ali’s sullen eyes. ‘How does he plan to murder the Condoleezza Rice? It’s a simple question, the answer to which will see you receiving the best medical treatment money can buy.’
Ali stared at the floor. ‘So I have to bargain for my basic human rights?’ He cackled.
Henry looked at him, his hairy body, genitals hanging loosely, thick-muscled legs, trying to convince himself that, even though nothing had yet happened to him and this man was probably responsible for butchering two of his colleagues, this was completely wrong and went a hundred per cent against his beliefs. And yet, did he deserve to be treated this way?
‘You have no human rights, Ali. Just like those two innocent people you murdered today. What happened to their rights?’
A sneer morphed on to his lips. ‘I demand to be taken to hospital.’ He glowered defiantly at Donaldson. ‘I demand the rights of any prisoner held in Britain.’
Donaldson gave a short laugh. ‘Bad news, old buddy … because you ain’t in Britain anymore … right here, right now, just think of this place as a little piece of America – like Guantanamo Bay – and those rights you’re bleating about just don’t exist.’
For the first time, Henry saw a glint of doubt and fear in Ali’s eyes.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, that as if by magic carpet, you’ve been transported to hell and yes, you’re looking right into Satan’s eyes.’ Donaldson pointed the first two fingers of his right hand towards his own eyes, then pointed the same two at Ali. The words in themselves were comical but the way and the context in which they were said were terrifying, even to Henry who was now seeing a dark side of Donaldson that, yes, he’d suspected existed, but deep down in his soul he’d wished didn’t.
Ali squirmed uncomfortably against his shackles, then farted and excreted a vile, almost green-coloured shit, the stench of which immediately filled the room. Then he urinated a stream of thick yellow piss in an arc into this awful mess underneath him.
‘That’s the drugs and fear combined,’ Donaldson said brutally. ‘And we haven’t even started yet.’
Henry shot a worried glance at the two-way mirror, but all he saw was a reflection of himself, beaten and bruised.
‘Like I said, simple question,’ Donaldson continued. The pool of shit and urine had collected underneath Ali’s chair and his bare feet slithered in it. ‘What are Akbar’s plans for today and also, how is Mansur Rashid involved?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘You are Akbar’s right-hand man.’
‘I don’t know him. Never heard of him.’
Donaldson smiled. ‘OK, Fazul, those were the denials. Those were the formalities. We ask, you deny … you now have no need to keep this up … we’ll let it be known that you did your best before crumbling … your bravery will filter through the grapevine – and unless you do wish to suffer further, please tell me what I want to know … next step, electrodes to testicles.’
Ali winced as a surge of terrible pain arced through his shattered shoulder.
‘Karl, that’s enough,’ Henry whispered behind Donaldson, who did not even acknowledge him as he eased on a pair of latex gloves from out of his pocket and made a show of pulling them on to his hands with a snap.
‘I have no time for subtlety, Fazul,’ the American said. He walked behind the prisoner, ensuring he did not step in the mess. ‘That takes far too long.’ He came up behind Ali and peeled off the blood soaked bandage that had been applied to his shoulder, tossing it on to the floor where it landed with a wet slap.
As Henry suspected, the wound was awful. The bullet had entered the shoulder blade, then deflected upwards into the shoulder joint, destroying it before exiting and making a huge, shredded hole, in which Henry could see splintered bone and gristle, blood oozing.
Donaldson squeezed Ali’s shoulder between his fingers and thumb.
Ali screamed.
Henry cowered back.
Donaldson leaned in close to Ali’s right ear. ‘Tell me. Stop this pain.’
‘Fuck you,’ he uttered with a gasp, spittle flecking out of his lips. A torrent of sweat poured from his hairline. His eyelids fluttered and his head rolled as he slid towards a merciful unconsciousness in default to the pain.
Henry now saw his friend clearly. Donaldson’s face was showing no emotion as though he was totally untroubled by what he was doing. He wasn’t even breathing heavily. If Henry had to make a guess, he’d say that Donaldson was actually enjoying himself in some perverted way.
Then, Henry noticed something in Donaldson’s right hand and wasn’t sure where it had come from.
‘Oh no you don’t,’ Donaldson said to Ali, tapping him on the cheek, bringing him back from the edge of oblivion. Ali looked desperately up at him, then at Henry with eyes that pleaded for help.
‘Karl,’ Henry said warningly.
Donaldson sniggered. To Ali he said, pointing at himself, ‘Bad cop’ – then, indicating Henry – ‘good cop. A winning combination.’
‘Karl, this has to stop,’ Henry said.
But the big American did not seem to hear Henry, as once again, he walked behind Ali and raised his right hand, gripping the instrument Henry had noticed him holding: an expanding baton, which he wrist-flicked to shoot it out to its full length, then smashed it down on to Ali’s shoulder.
It was like hitting a tomato. Blood flicked everywhere.
And Ali’s scream of agony rent through the fetid air.
‘There’s no one to hear you,’ Donaldson said when the sound had died down and Ali sat there sobbing and moaning, rolling his head and eyes, his face contorted with sheer agony. ‘So tell me – now!’ It was the first time Donaldson had raised his voice.
He laid the baton gently across the wound so that Ali could see it from the corner of his eye.
Then he raised his hand once more – at which point Henry could not stand it any more. Ashamed he had let it go so far, he moved and took hold of Donaldson’s forearm.
‘No,’ he said through a short breath. His head shook as he stared into Donaldson’s blazing eyes. ‘No,’ he said again.
‘Good cop, eh?’ Donaldson sneered.
Clearly the American was on another level of consciousness. The red mist had truly descended to cloud whatever judgement he had. Henry had experienced something like this on many occasions when he wanted that result, or was under real pressure, but never to this intensity.
‘Time for you to speak to him,’ Donaldson said.
‘What?’ Henry said, realizing that Donaldson believed Henry was about to play his part in this scenario. ‘No – I mean it, Karl. This whole thing has to stop. Can’t you see how wrong it is?’
Donaldson shook himself free from Henry’s grip and raised the baton.
Henry pushed him away and stepped between him and the prisoner. The two men stood like statues for several beats until Donaldson growled, ‘You’d better get out of here, Henry.’
Henry regarded him for another brief moment of contempt, then strutted out of the interrogation room.
He needed air, to escape the reek of the room. He clattered down the wooden steps to the ground-floor corridor and stumbled to a fire exit, ignoring the fact that a notice on it declared ‘This door is alarmed’.
Not as much as me, Henry thought as he crashed through it and found himself in a high-fenced courtyard somewhere down the side of the industrial unit. He fell against the fence and listened to the high-pitched alarm he’d just activated.
No doubt a soldier would come out and shoot him now. It would be a blessed relief, he thought.
>
The air tasted sweet. Beyond the tightly meshed fence was an expanse of wild moorland which Henry could smell.
He took in deep breaths, trying to slow his body down. His head ticked nervously and his heart pounded.
A man with a gun drawn did appear at the door. One of the ‘Bobs’: the soldiers-cum-pseudo-paramedics.
Henry raised his hands defensively. ‘It’s OK – I needed air, fast.’
‘OK, pal.’ The soldier muttered something into a discreet radio mike secreted somewhere on him and the alarm came to a sudden halt, its echo lingering. He looked curiously at Henry, then withdrew, leaving him alone.
Henry turned to face the fence, hardly able to see anything through the tight steel mesh, and laid his forehead on the criss-cross strands, standing there until he became aware of a presence behind him. Without looking, he knew it would be Donaldson.
‘I thought you’d be up for this, Henry,’ Donaldson said. ‘That’s why I brought you here and trusted you,’ he said accusingly, hurt.
Henry could not bring himself to turn because he knew that something very fundamental had changed in the relationship between him and the Yank. There was now no more burying his head in the sand. He had seen up close and personal just what sort of a man Donaldson was, or had become. Now there was no going back. He either had to accept it, or not. Henry was lost for words as he choked something back in his throat.
‘That guy and his pals are out to kill the Secretary of State today, and I will do anything within my power to prevent that happening. This is a war, Henry. You know that.’
Henry’s nostrils flared as rage boiled inside him.
Donaldson went on. ‘We are dealing with mass murderers, people who want not only to destroy our way of life, but us too,’ he said reasonably. ‘He would have killed you today. He’s already had a hand in murdering two of your colleagues. I saved your life today.’
‘And for that I’m eternally grateful,’ Henry said truthfully. He now turned to look upon his friend, tears beginning to well.