McDade takes a few steps across the floor and stands roughly midway between the doors. His face contorts. He can taste the gas. He coughs.
‘Which door is which?’ he says hurriedly. ‘Okay, I’ll choose, but I’ve forgotten. Tell me, please, which door is which.’
I give him a while to stew, long enough for him to look up at the ceiling as though I’m floating, disembodied, above him, and scream: ‘WHICH DOOR IS WHICH? TELL ME!’
‘Bathroom for rehabilitation. Exit for hard time.’
He takes one last glance at the screen, then the man of sincerely held beliefs and enduring principles lunges for the bathroom.
That’s where the first video ends. The following interlude I also recorded for posterity, but for a number of reasons have opted not to share with the general public.
McDade emerges into not a bathroom but a narrow passageway, about ten yards long. He pulls the door closed behind him to cut off the gas, at which point a door at the far end swings open. He stops dead at the sight of this, bracing himself for what might emerge through the aperture. Nothing does. He takes a moment to clear his lungs of the gas and gulp down some uncontaminated air, then begins to walk tentatively forward. He can see that the door doesn’t lead to either of the narrow chambers he had been watching on TV, but to somewhere more expansive. He can see one wall, maybe twenty yards distant, but the light is low, the space beyond gloomy and windowless. He pauses at the door, angling his head to try to see what might be to his left or right, then steps forward with a hilariously ginger gait. Once he has cleared the doorway, I emerge from the shadows.
He flinches, throwing himself back against the wall to the left of the doorway, head down, barely daring to look directly at me.
‘Look, whoever you are, you’ve got to believe me, I’ve never been a police inform—’
‘I know,’ I tell him.
At this point he looks up enough to recognise that I am neither of the men he saw on screen.
‘I lied about what was waiting behind the doors. What you saw was just stock CCTV footage. I have no idea who those men were. And as you have discovered, both doors lead to the same place. But it’s a lie redeemed if it causes a greater truth to emerge, wouldn’t you agree? Rehabilitation or hard labour: it was a no-brainer really, wasn’t it, which one made for a safer route? That’s why I assigned to the bathroom the option I knew you’d choose: because you’re full of shit. I was telling the truth about the rest, however. To escape, you merely have to get past the man you found on the other side.’
‘Who are you?’ he asks.
I should add that I’m wearing a mask at this point. This is, among other reasons, so that he believes my wish to protect my identity implies that I ultimately intend to let him live.
‘There is another selection from your greatest hits on the floor just in front of you,’ I tell him. ‘Read it.’
He looks down, notices the sheet of paper lying on the concrete. He scuttles forward to pick it up, keeping his eye on me as he does so, as though afraid I’m going to rush him.
The paper bears a blow-up photocopy of one sentence:
The greatest tragedy about the death of Simon Darcourt is that none of us will ever get to spend ten minutes locked in a room with him, without his guns, his C4 and his henchmen.
He looks up, his jaw hanging, his breathing suspended.
‘Your ten minutes start now.’
Video Two starts by tracking out from McDade manacled to a chair, the chair itself bolted to the floor. He’s got a sack over his head and is wearing an orange jumpsuit. I take the bag off and step out of shot. His face is bloodied and bruised, though it hasn’t had time to really swell up yet. He looks ahead and immediately starts fighting against the restraints, throwing himself back in the chair, but it isn’t going to budge. Out of shot is a steel table, upon which he can see a car battery connected to two crocodile clips; a basin of water floating a large sponge; a rope; an oxyacetylene blowtorch beside a welder’s mask; an unfolded canvas wrap accommodating a selection of surgical instruments; a pair of bolt-cutters; and finally a large hypodermic needle attached to a drip-line next to two bags of saline solution.
He pisses himself. It’s ridiculous, but he’s not laughing.
‘Hope you like the togs,’ I tell him. ‘I’m sure you’re getting a bit fed up hearing your own words, but as you put it yourself, you don’t end up in one of those orange jumpsuits without a bloody good reason.
‘Now, listen carefully, because this is about securing your future. If I was to let you go, you would no longer be able to live safely in this country. I’m prepared to let you leave, but if you return, I will kill you. Do not even begin to kid yourself that the police will be able to protect you. I’ve abducted you once and I can do it again. If you remain in the UK, I promise I will kill you, but not before an ordeal beyond the worst horrors of your imagination. Do you understand?’
‘But... but... I’m just a journalist. Just a pundit, a talking head. I’ll change what I’m writing, just tell me what you want.’
‘I’ve told you: I want you to leave. I don’t want you in the country any more. And I’m not merely taking away your right to express your... well, in light of your earlier decision we can hardly call them beliefs any more, can we? Let me rephrase: I am not merely taking away your right to publish your moronic populist drivel, Mr McDade. I am taking away your right to live unpersecuted, to live unoppressed by constant fear. If you remain in this country, I will come for you once more. You’ll never know when, you’ll never know where. You’ll just know that if you stay, you will be apprehended in darkness, once again, taken to a place of confinement, and killed in the slowest and most painful manner I can dream up. Do you understand?’
He nods like a Parkinson’s sufferer.
‘I understand. I’ll leave, I promise. I’ll leave immediately.’
‘You’ll flee to another country?’
‘Yes, I swear.’
‘Seek asylum somewhere abroad?’
‘Yes.’
He states this effusively, still nodding, but you can see it in his eyes the moment he realises what he just said.
‘So, to recap, Mr McDade, you’re now an asylum seeker who believes in rehabilitation for convicted criminals.’
He raises his head, still quivering but perhaps daring to believe he’s heard the punchline and the joke is finally over. He’s almost right.
‘Sorry, I lied again, about letting you go. Another lie redeemed by the truth it revealed. I’m going to kill you now.’
‘Jesus, please,’ he blurts, imploding into whimpering sobs.
I take a walk towards the table, causing him to throw all his strength into rocking back and straining at his bonds.
‘Don’t panic,’ I reassure him. ‘I’m not going to torture you. That would be inappropriate. Instead you will be the author of your own death; or at least the author of the method. Your words once more: “String me up – it’s the only language I understand.”’
I lift the rope from the table and carefully begin tying it into a noose. The knot accomplished, I turn back to McDade.
‘I believe it’s traditional for the condemned man to be offered a last meal. Would you care for some muesli?’
Glitterball shards (i)
Zal’s hands are cuffed, tight about both wrists, the jangling links of solid steel looped behind his back around an upright column. He is on his knees, his bare feet similarly bound to the immovable pillar. The steel is warm from the hands that fastened it, moist now with two people’s sweat. His arms are stretched behind him, his back tight to the column, his posture cramped and contorted.
His captor has retreated from sight. Zal is now isolated, hidden from any observer, cut off from all intercession. The bounty hunter, though unseen, remains mere yards away, rapt in his vigil.
Zal allows himself a moment to contemplate precisely how his situation must look from that bastard’s point of view: one man relishing the other’s in
escapable captivity, blissfully unaware that he has the picture back to front.
Zal smiles and whispers to himself: ‘Alakazammy, stairheid rammy. Suffer, you prick.’
Cover story
‘Allah hu akhbar, Allah. Allah hu akhbar, Allah. Hay-ye alas-slat.’
He hears the muezzin’s voice, calling out like a siren from the minaret. There’s times of day when it’s swallowed by the traffic on Boulevard Aristide Bruant and you can only hear it if you’re already in the building; not the most effective call to prayer as you need to already be in the mosque to hear it. But this morning, this Sunday when the shops are closed and the Christians make their token, largely grudging weekly display of faith, it’s easy to imagine it sounding out across the rooftops, heard for miles around, echoing along empty streets, rapping against the closed shutters behind which most natives are practising their true faith, that of mattress-worship.
He’s sweating, though the air is cool. He looks again through the window down to the haram. That’s where the call to prayer is most audible even at the noisiest of times. There are dozens of people hastening through the courtyard, but instead of hurrying to prayer (hay-ye alas-slat), they are evacuating the mosque, scattering anxiously out towards the street.
‘Ash-hadu an la ilaha illal-lah.’
The muezzin still calls them to prayer, though this is neither a renewed appeal nor an act of faith that they will return: the voice is on an iPod plugged into a speaker system atop the minaret.
There are some screams from women, panicked cries from men. Voices sound out in both French and Arabic. They are urging each other to run. The word ‘police’ bounces about the courtyard like a teargas grenade.
Other people have noticed the commotion and begun streaming through from the madrassa, heading for the courtyard and out. He is suddenly swimming against the tide. People urge him to turn and leave, like he is a heedless child.
‘Gunfire!’
‘Police! They have guns!’
‘There is talk of a bomb!’
‘The cursed jihadis have brought this down upon us. They will not rest until they have made martyrs of us all.’
He lets them pass, buffeted slightly by the occasional outstretched appealing hand, standing his ground and waiting for the door to the madrassa to clear.
‘It is an outrage,’ he spits, to none of them in particular. ‘They would desecrate our place of prayer! An outrage. A rape.’
There is one person not hording through with the rest of the evacuees: a woman in a niqab, standing helplessly apart from the charge. Hands are offered to her too, but she shrinks back as though in panic, even turning her back to prevent further entreaties. She must have come from the kitchen, perhaps. Maybe she doesn’t understand what is being said: could be she speaks only Farsi, or Urdu, her husband preferring her not to learn French. And where is her husband? Perhaps that is why she is so helpless.
There is a louder swell of voices from just outside as the last of the evacuees depart the passageway. He sees men throw themselves back against the wall, a flash of black uniform, the glint of grey. Gun-metal grey.
Then one more body moves aside and his eyes meet those of the policeman.
Recognition is instant.
‘Akim Hasan. Arrête.’
The sub-machine gun is raised to shoulder-height. He freezes for quarter of a second, then another evacuee, a student, staggers inadvertently into the policeman’s view before ducking down with his arms covering his head.
It’s long enough. He launches himself to the left, out of the policeman’s line of sight. The door to the madrassa is clear now, but he won’t make it, not without putting himself directly into view. However, the woman in the niqab, in her erratic helplessness, has moved to within a few feet of him.
As the policeman steps through the archway and into the passage, he grabs the woman around the shoulders, putting her body in front of his, then from a pocket produces a handgun and places it against the black cloth at the side of her head. Others might call it cowardly; in his mind it is entirely justified. If she dies, she will go to paradise, but on this earth, anything is a valid weapon against the kuffar.
The policeman stands fifteen yards away in a trained stance: knees slightly bent, the machine gun held at shoulder-level, his eyes looking along the sight, which is now the second weapon to be pointed straight at the woman’s head. He is in full body armour and helmet, a thin boom microphone in front of his lips.
‘Drop the gun, Hasan,’ the policeman says, in French. His voice is hurried, anxious. ‘Let the woman go. We’ve got police everywhere.’
‘You drop your gun. Then I’ll let her go.’
Hasan. Akim Hasan. That’s his name.
It used to be Jean-Marc Danticathe. He’s been radicalised. It’s clear from his Arabic. It’s stilted, too formal, sticking out like a freshly erected wooden post in an old fence: unweathered, stiff, clean, missing the rough edges that characterise long-term use.
The policeman is looking at the woman, occasionally getting to glimpse one of Akim’s eyes as he peers past his human shield.
‘Put down your gun, please, officer,’ she appeals, also speaking in French. So she could understand what was said. Why didn’t she run? Scared? Lost? Hysterical? Doesn’t matter now: he’s just grateful that she didn’t. ‘Please, officer,’ she repeats. ‘As you said, there are other police here.’
The policeman retains his stance. His eyes narrow briefly: a message in his earpiece, perhaps. Then he swallows and says: ‘Okay. I’m putting my gun down. Don’t hurt the lady.’
‘You put it on the floor and then slide it towards me,’ Akim says. He takes a step back, pulling his hostage with him.
The policeman crouches to his knees, turning the gun to present it sideways all the way to the floor, his focus always remaining on what he can see of Akim and the two eyes that are the only part of the woman visible through the slit of her niqab.
He switches on the safety and gives the machine gun a stiff push across the flagstones. It comes to rest at the woman’s feet. She turns her head to look out of the window. Akim puts a leg around her and places a foot on the stock of the machine gun, intending to drag it behind him as he backs himself and his hostage closer to the far exit, towards the madrassa.
As he does so, the woman’s right hand suddenly grips his wrist while her leg shoots up beneath his outstretched thigh, a microsecond before she pivots on her standing leg and sends her left hand, fingers outstretched, into his throat. She then vanishes from under him, reappearing at his back, her grip on his wrist somehow retained throughout the manoeuvre in a way that has drastic ramifications for the connectivity of this particular upper limb.
His face hits the flags with a crack almost as loud as the one accompanying her breaking his arm. Then she is kneeling on his back, pointing his handgun into the base of his skull, while checking the window again.
He’s screaming, curses and hatred spewing out amid the cries of pain. The infidels are getting it pretty tight, and the Jews aren’t coming out of it too well either. She wonders if it would hurt more if he knew that the Krav Maga techniques she just used were devised by the Israeli security forces. He doesn’t realise it, but she just saved his life. Another foot backwards and one of their marksman would have had a clear shot.
They need him to talk, but that’s not the principal reason she wanted to make sure he was taken alive. Everybody deserves a chance to change, to repent and to make amends. Dead people could do none of the above. Hope had to prevail, no matter how unlikely. One day, some Islamist firebrand leader was going to have an epiphany and realise that a book largely concerning seventh-century tribal squabblings was a less-than-sturdy basis for advocating mass slaughter. One day. The planet had a few billion years left before the sun went supernova and consumed the solar system, so there was probably enough time, but it might be tight.
She stands away and lets the policeman recover his weapon. Dumarque, his name is.
&n
bsp; ‘You all right?’ he asks.
‘A little hot under the canopy here, but yes.’
Dumarque smiles.
* * *
Aye. There was, upon reflection, something to commend the much-maligned jilbab-and-niqab combo, to say nothing of the burqa.
Sure, it was harder to think of a more complete symbol of absolute female subjugation than forcing them to dress like a free-standing Victorian changing booth rather than the human being that might be found inside it. Sure, it showed disgust for the female body, an insulting mistrust of male self-control and a bridling hatred of human sexuality in general. Sure, it was only a kick in the arse off of locking your woman away in a black box like some possession that had no autonomous will of its own, there only to be used when required and then securely stored again. Sure, it denied the woman the right to any pride or pleasure in her form or appearance, the right to express any individuality and the ability to indicate anything through nonverbal means other than whatever she might be able to convey by making her eyes go skelly. Sure, the Islamic fundamentalist version of Big Brother would be a bastard to follow unless the women all wore really big name-tags. And sure, the only way a culture could have been more contemptuous in devising a garment so sadistically unsuited to its own prevailing climate would have been if eskimoes sent their women out in thong bikinis. But...
When it came to undercover surveillance of Islamist radicals, it was simply de rigueur, darling. It was like wearing the One Ring. For a start, nobody knew what you looked like underneath the tent. Nor could anyone guess what else might be concealed beneath its billowing folds. A wire? A pinhole bodycam? Hah! You could fit two boom microphones and a Dolby stereo pan inside and still have room for a high-def digital video camera up each sleeve. But its true Klingon cloaking-device efficacy lay in the fact that merely wearing it marked you as toeing the line, knowing your place and posing no threat. Invisibility rendered through irrelevance. You were, after all, a woman; and not just that, but a woman who was under control and who knew how to behave.
A Snowball in Hell Page 4