The first of the rioters got to a guard and promptly started to hit him with his makeshift bat. Another of the guards broke the linked arms and tried to wrestle the inmate from his colleague. More of the rioters arrived and started to throw punches and weapons at their foes. In these situations, the prison officers are not at liberty to use force, even to defend themselves but that book of conduct was now out of the window. There was one thing on each of the guard’s minds: survival.
Governor Swinton took two steps back as she watched her recently-inherited staff members being dragged into the paths of these caged animals. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
What year is it, she thought.
‘Back,’ she shouted into the megaphone. ‘Get back, I tell you!’
But her voice could not be heard over the alarm that was still sounding and the shouts and grunts of the group.
‘Send them in,’ she shouted into her phone, which was connected to the small army of officers waiting at the main entrance to the block. They had been busy donning their protective riot gear: stab and bullet-proof Kevlar. In her twenty years of running prisons, Governor Swinton had never seen something so gruesome unfolding before her eyes. How had she lost control so badly?
She offered up a small prayer for the lives of the men who were now being beaten up beyond the bars and walked away. She didn’t even know what they were protesting against.
*
Green remained on the gangway outside of his cell watching in horror as the unconscious bodies of the dozen guards who had remained trapped inside the compound were tossed idly to one side. It was still too noisy to concentrate on anything else so those who had chosen not to get involved with the violence had gathered together to watch events unfold. It wouldn’t matter that they had chosen to be conscientious objectors, all the inmates would be tarred with the same brush and would find other rights removed. It was just the way the system worked.
He had taken the sensible decision to stuff some torn bits of toilet paper into his ears to protect them from the continuous alarm. Despite the scene of violence unfolding before his eyes, ironically this was the safest he had felt all day. With Garcia out of the way and Rosco happy to unleash his anger on someone that wasn’t his cell mate, he felt a wave of relief envelope him.
A nudge on the arm caught his attention. He turned and saw Peacock, the kitchen’s Head Chef, standing next to him. Green nodded at the man who returned the acknowledgement before lifting a small plastic bottle up.
‘Fancy some mead?’ Peacock attempted to shout into Green’s ear. ‘It’ll help the time pass.’
Mead was what the inmates called the illegal alcoholic beverage that they brewed from honey and potatoes. It tasted like shit but, at over thirty percent proof, it was a popular beverage to help one forget their troubles. Green had only tried it a dozen times since he had arrived, and only then on special occasions such as his birthday, but now seemed as good an occasion as any. Nodding, he led Peacock into the cell and partially closed the door.
‘Have you got anything we can mix this with?’ Peacock asked, lifting the straw-coloured liquid to show what he was referring to.
‘Sure,’ replied Green, opening a small cupboard where he kept his possessions and removing a litre bottle of Coke. ‘It might be a bit flat, but should disguise some of the flavour.’
Peacock accepted the bottle and poured some of the soft drink into a couple of plastic beakers on the side of a basin. He then added the mead and swilled the contents of the beaker. He offered one to Green and took a sip from the other.
‘Eurghh,’ grimaced the chef, ‘still tastes like shit.’
Green took a sip and felt his cheeks tighten as if he had just chewed on a sour lemon.
The alarm suddenly stopped, but he could still feel a ringing in his ears as he removed the pieces of tissue.
‘That’s better,’ he said, before apologising when he realised he was still shouting.
‘Do you think it’s over then?’
‘Who knows?’ he replied. ‘It’ll be over soon enough.’
Both men took another sip from their drink. He was starting to feel lightheaded already.
‘Is this your own batch?’ he asked.
Peacock nodded, knocking back the rest of his drink, a small smile breaking onto his face. Green copied the action and was forced to cough as the liquid burned at his oesophagus on the way down. He was starting to feel drowsy and his head began to roll around.
‘That’s shum pretty shtrong shtuff,’ he slurred, trying to point at the plastic bottle, but unable to focus. His vision was blurring and his tongue had gone numb.
‘Wha-’ he tried to say, but found he could not speak. His knees buckled and he fell to the floor as an all-encompassing paralysis gripped him. He tried to find Peacock to see if the chef was struggling to deal with the alcohol too, but all he could see was a pair of black shoes walking towards him.
Peacock bent over the fallen man and whispered into his ear, ‘It seems someone out there doesn’t like you, my friend. I want you to know that I’m sorry it had to end like this, but at least you can take some solace from the fact that it was a painless death. The poison you have swallowed will shut down your central nervous system so you will feel no pain as each of your main organs slowly fails. It is my own recipe, but of course, I didn’t put any in my cup. You’ll probably pass out before your heart stops beating so you won’t even realise you are dying. It will just feel like a dream.’
He could not process the confession as his eyelids began to grow heavy. He never saw it coming.
15
The
BBC ’s man-in-a-crisis, Marshall Lancaster, straightened his tie, using his reflection in the van’s windscreen. His naturally strawberry blonde hair was now greying and wilting and the bald patch on the crown of his head was growing by the day. He scrunched up his face and mentally counted the crow’s feet around his eyes. His wife had been trying to talk him into having some cosmetic enhancement to his face, but he had vehemently told her that he had to be taken seriously as a journalist and, for that reason, he could not go under the surgeon’s knife. Now just inside the entrance to H.M.P Isle of Wight, he was beginning to question this stance. After all, if he wanted to continue his career for a bit longer, the younger he appeared the better.
It was nearly ten p.m. and the crisis in the prison had been running since breakfast. When the call had reached the news desk that there was a riot in one of Britain’s oldest and once most-feared establishments, he had been quickly kitted up and sent out in one of the vans designated for outside broadcasts. His crew, a seventeen year-old pimply probationer responsible for holding the boom and a forty year-old camera technician with a sixty-a-day habit, were busy in the back of the van testing the feed. They were due to report live for the ten o’clock bulletin and Paul, the older of the two men, was on the phone to the broadcast’s director, back in London. The director was urging them to hurry up as the anchor was already seated and waiting to begin.
Lancaster skim read his notes a third time, committing as much detail to memory as possible. They had been reporting from the prison for the last six hours so most viewers would already be familiar with what was going on. That didn’t matter as he was still required to give a recap for those who had yet to catch up with the day’s events.
‘Marshall, you ready?’ said Paul, squeezing out of the van and instantly putting a cigarette to his lips.
Lancaster tried to hide his disdain and nodded. The probationer exited the van and held the boom aloft proudly.
‘You gonna’ smoke that now?’ Lancaster asked.
Paul pulled the cigarette from his lips and pushed behind his ear, muttering, ‘Force of habit,’ before hoisting the camera onto his shoulder and pointing it in Lancaster’s direction.
‘And we’re live in five, four, three,’ said Paul mouthing the numbers two and one.
Lancaster tried to ignore the big halogen lights hovering above Paul’s
head, and listened out for the anchor’s voice in his ear piece.
‘A little after ten o’clock this morning, the inmates of Wing-C in the building behind me, began a violent protest against the new prison governor, Natasha Swinton. Disgruntled by a rumour that traditional Christmas celebrations were to be cancelled this year, the prisoners gathered in the canteen area of the wing and took hostage a group of ten prison officers who had remained inside in an effort to restore peace. The hostages were badly beaten as the protest ensued and it was left to trained riot police, drafted across from the mainland, to finally take the wing back. That wasn’t until considerable damage had been done to the cells and communal facilities. Estimates for the cost of the damage will be tens of thousands of pounds of tax payers’ money.’
Marshall paused to allow the anchor to ask some scripted questions for clarification.
‘Well I managed to speak with Governor Swinton earlier this evening and she denied any knowledge of the decision to cancel Christmas celebrations. She stated that no such decision had been made and she put the rumour down to a prison guard with an overactive imagination. She wanted to stress that a full investigation would be carried out to understand who had started the rumour and that the guilty individual would be handed the strictest of punishments.’
Another pause for a question in his ear.
‘The police entered the premises just before lunch, with a view to securing the safety of the unconscious guards. The injured men were taken to a nearby hospital where their injuries are being treated. There are numerous broken bones but nothing more serious thankfully. The police returned to the canteen area and began to secure the inmates in their cells and, despite some initial resistance, once Governor Swinton had confirmed that traditional Christmas festivities would be observed, order was promptly restored.’
The anchor asked a question about prisoner injuries.
‘That’s right. The bodies of two inmates have been discovered. The first, whose identity has yet to be confirmed, was located in the wash block, brutally stabbed and with a cut throat. It is believed the crime was gang-related but at present there are no suspects in custody for the crime. The second body was located in one of the cells. There are no obvious causes of death at the moment and a post mortem is set to be carried out in the next day or so. This inmate’s identity has been confirmed as Nathan Green. He was convicted of three sexual assaults and murder more than twenty years ago. He was a relatively young man in good health so his sudden death is somewhat unexpected and foul play has yet to be ruled out.’
The anchor thanked him for the update and proceeded to tell the watching audience more on the history of the prison.
‘And we’re out,’ said Paul, lowering the camera from his shoulder and grabbing the cigarette from behind his ear in one motion. The pimply probationer raised his hand in an effort to instigate a high-five with Lancaster. The weary journalist ignored the gesture and walked over to the van and climbed in. They were due to give one final live broadcast for the BBC News 24 channel in ten minutes but it was too cold to stay outside waiting. They were booked into Newport’s Premier Inn and he desperately hoped the bar would still be open by the time they got there.
*
‘Did you see the news report?’ the deep voice asked.
‘Yup,’ she replied.
‘You wanted to know what your thirty thousand pounds would get you; now you know.’
She gulped, uncertain whether she was pleased with this outcome or not. What she had done…what she had paid to do…what she had ordered…was it worth it?
‘Are you still there?’ the male voice asked.
She confirmed she was.
‘Listen,’ said the man, ‘I know it’s not easy to deal with the guilt. You shouldn’t feel bad about it. You have helped rid the world of one sick son of a bitch.’
She found it mildly amusing that the man on the phone, who had helped engineer Nathan Green’s final moments, could be so judgemental of a fellow killer.
Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone, she thought, but then realised the hypocrisy of the thought.
‘Did he suffer?’ she asked, not sure why she cared.
‘Not especially so. His death would have been quite quick. The poison applied by the killer was subtle and would have closed down the major organs pretty quickly. He will have known he was dying but there would have been no pain.’
This brought the woman a moment of relief, but she was still struggling to come to terms with what she had done.
‘When do I transfer the rest of the money?’ she asked trying to focus on less emotional things.
‘My solicitor will be in touch in the next day or so. He will instruct you where to pay the remaining fifty percent.’
‘Will I ever hear from you again?’
‘No you will not,’ he replied, eager now for the call to end.
‘Okay, then I guess I’ll…’
The line was dead before she could finish the sentence. So that was it: Green was dead. Justice had been served.
Why does it not feel like it, though?
She had attended a number of rape crisis meetings since that night and one question they always asked new members was if you could have your revenge, would you? It was meant purely hypothetically to help the victim find closure. For her, it had triggered a thought that had led to where she was now. It had taken her twenty years of nightmares to pluck up the courage to carry out the act but now it was done: he would not rape again.
Cat Jurdentaag replaced the phone on the hub and walked to the kitchen. She knew it would take several more months, maybe years, until she achieved true closure. Opening the fridge, she removed the chilled bottle of vodka and poured herself a shot.
Good riddance, she thought, before knocking back the drink.
WEDNESDAY 27 NOVEMBER
16
Johnson Carmichael pointed the lens of his Canon camera out of the window of the Hyundai I-20. It was the car he always used for such exercises as it was indistinct, and so avoided attention. The couple he was watching had been at the small table outside of the café for twenty minutes already and were just starting to tuck into the sandwiches they had ordered. It was a surprisingly mild and dry day in Southampton, considering the time of year: it looked like it wouldn’t be a white Christmas yet again.
He pulled his tie down slightly and unfastened the top button of his shirt. He had spent many a long day sitting in a similar spot, just watching people. It was the dullest job he had ever done, but he liked the freedom he had to take on jobs when he wanted and not just when he was told. Surveillance operations like this one took time to set up, but even longer to carry out, if they were to be effective. It was why he made himself a flask of hot, black coffee every morning. The current day’s flask was already empty and he was feeling incredibly parched, but moving now would draw unwanted attention to himself, and it could lead to him missing out on the break he needed.
He had begun his career, as a fresh-faced college graduate, in the Metropolitan Police. He had walked the beat for the requisite two years but had always sensed that he was destined for greater things and passed his detective’s exam and interview board at the first attempt. Joining C.I.D. at Notting Hill Police Station was one of his proudest moments. The dim reality of surveillance operations, bureaucratic red tape and criminals evading capture soon set in and made him begin to question his career choice.
He had been an intelligent young man with a refreshingly naïve consideration of the British justice system, and it was this that had got him recognised as a strong candidate for development, despite his African heritage, in what was a pretty closed-minded institution. But it was a time of growing diversity and so the ambitious black detective was soon plucked from the obscurity of C.I.D. and fast-tracked into the first task force against organised crime under the new Police Commissioner. The team was made up of ten detectives of varying grades with the sole purpose of minimising the impact of inner city crime. I
t was a task he was born for, or so he thought.
The task force was a lot less-formal than what he had grown accustomed to: jeans and t-shirts were acceptable office uniform, when required.
The team’s first big case was against a known Russian family, the Stratovskys. The head of the family, Nikolai, was living in Russia at the time and so the day-to-day businesses were being run by Nikolai’s two nephews: Victor and Janus. The two brothers were very close and many regarded them as Russia’s answer to the Kray twins; they did everything together: if someone hadn’t paid their bill, Victor and Janus would torch the person’s premises. If another family wanted to meet to discuss a joint proposal, Victor and Janus attended the meetings together. Despite the likelihood of sibling rivalry, the two brothers remained loyal to one another, neither particularly keen on usurping the other for more power.
The D.C.I. running the operation, Martin Saunders, knew the end game was to collect enough evidence to see that Victor and Janus would end up behind bars; but that was the long-term goal. In the meantime, they needed to attack the smaller fish in the operation and see if they could convince any of them to testify against the heads of family. This was where Carmichael and the other Detective Constables came in. They were assigned duties of shaking down known offenders, eliciting details of upcoming operations and making sure that they knew what was going on in any given place on any given day. He took to the task like a duck to water. He soon built up a network of informants, who could be pressed into sharing their secrets with the right level of force. He was young, fit and strong: his right hook could leave a man with concussion for days.
Trespass (P.I. Johnson Carmichael Series - Book 2) Page 9