Blackout

by Dawson, Mark

  Many of the other inmates had closed in now, forming a tight semicircle that pinned Milton and the two men between them and the wall. Milton glanced at the faces of the orange-shirted inmates all around him: their eyes bulged and their mouths hung open as they screamed their encouragement.

  There was a tray on the table. Milton grabbed it and backhanded the man with the broken nose in the face. He went down for a second time.

  Milton took a step away, looking for the fourth man, but, before he could retreat—if that was even possible—he felt a sudden blow to the side of his head. Pain flashed out and he felt blood in his eye.

  He danced back. The man was at his side, opening and closing his fist.

  Milton put his fingers to his brow and, when he looked down at them, he saw that they were daubed with his blood.

  He felt the usual surge of adrenaline and rode it.

  Perhaps the inmate noticed the steel in Milton’s eyes. He took a step back, away from him, but the wall of orange-shirted men watching the display did not part, and the man was shoved hard in the back. He stumbled forward, right at Milton, and Milton put him down with an elbow to the side of his head.

  That was the four of them.

  Milton looked left and right, staring into the avid faces of the spectators, daring any of them to step up.

  None of them did.

  Milton sat down, waiting for the guards to tell him and the others what to do. He felt the throb of the blow he had taken to the side of his head, but he didn’t acknowledge it. He knew that the others were watching him, and he was not about to undermine the display he had just given them by showing any signs of weakness.

  26

  IT WAS six in the morning when Josie awoke and checked her watch. She had been back in time to put Angelo to bed, but she wouldn’t see him this morning. She showered and dressed, pulling on the uniform that her mother had ironed for her. She collected her gun belt, strapped it around her waist, and left the room. She stopped in Angelo’s bedroom on the way out of the house. He was asleep, clutching his teddy, with his bare arms and legs sticking out of the light blanket that she had covered him with last night.

  She took a slug of orange juice from a carton in the refrigerator and went outside. It was already warm; the forecast on her phone suggested that it was going to be another burning hot day.

  She got into her car and set off. It was thirty kilometres from Alabang to Manila, a trip that would normally have taken her an hour. But it was Independence Day, and the traffic on the Metro Manila Skyway was already dense. She was stuck in a slow-moving snarl of vehicles five kilometres from the city as the sun rose over the grasping fingers of the downtown buildings. The temperature inside the cabin almost immediately started to increase and, as she cranked the dial of the aircon to try to compensate, she found that it was barely working at all. She slammed her fist against the console and was rewarded with a pitiful puff of air and then nothing.

  She groaned and wound down the windows, prepared to breathe in the smog in exchange for a little air to circulate.

  * * *

  MENDOZA WAS in his office.

  “Morning, sir.”

  He looked up and smiled at her. “Good morning, Josie. How’s Angelo?”

  “He’s fine,” she said.

  “And ready for today? Did you think about what I said? I’d love to take you both to the fireworks.”

  “He’s too young,” she said. “Thank you for the offer, though.”

  “Another time, perhaps?”

  “That would be nice,” she said. She found his small talk excruciating and moved the conversation along. “Did you get it?”

  “Did I get what?”

  “The video. From the bar.”

  She saw a flash of irritation before he shook his head. “Wasn’t working,” he said. “The owner said it hasn’t worked for weeks. There’s nothing there.”

  “He didn’t say that to me,” she said. “He said—”

  “I went and looked myself,” Mendoza interrupted her. “He showed me the unit in the back. It’s just there for show. But it doesn’t matter, does it? What would it have shown us? Smith said he met the girl there and we know what happened next. I don’t know why you’re so interested in it. The case is closed, Josie. It’s finished. Why are you pressing?”

  “Because I don’t think it’s as straightforward as it looks.”

  “I disagree.”

  “Bruno—”

  “No. Drop it. I don’t want to hear anything else about it. File the evidence for his trial and move on. You’re too busy to waste time on cases you’ve already solved.”

  She stood in the doorway, her cheeks burning and her fists clenched, but she managed to stop herself from retorting. “Yes, sir,” she said. “I’m sorry. You’re right.”

  She excused herself, pulling the door closed behind her. She clenched and unclenched her fists. Mendoza was wrong. It wasn’t as simple as he thought it was. She looked right, down the corridor to her desk, but decided against it.

  She turned left and started toward the way out.

  She wanted to see for herself.

  27

  SHE GOT back in the car, pulled out and headed through Ortigas toward Poblacion. She passed the jail in Quezon, so full to overflowing that it was becoming a national embarrassment. It was where Smith would be spending his time until he was tried. She navigated the traffic, plotting a series of shortcuts until she arrived outside the Lazy Lizard. The doors were closed and, as Josie drew closer, she saw that they had been fastened with a heavy chain.

  She got out of her car and approached. It was obvious that something was wrong. She put her face to the window and looked inside. The room was dark, just partially lit by the glow from the neon sign for Czech beer that was fixed to the wall above the bar. The chairs had been stacked upside down on the tables. There was no sign of anyone inside.

  “Not opening today.”

  Josie turned. The vendor who owned the banana-que stall in the street next to the bar was looking at her.

  “What happened?”

  “The owner.”

  “What about him?”

  “Dead. They said he was selling drugs. Shot him as he came out last night and left him in the street right where you’re standing.”

  Josie felt sick. “Did you see it?”

  “It was a man. Shot him after he locked up and then shot him when he was on the ground. Three or four shots. Then he left. No one tried to stop him.”

  “Did you see his face?”

  “He had pale skin. Not from around here, I think.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “You want to thank me, why not buy one of my bananas?”

  “No,” she said. “I’m not hungry.”

  * * *

  THE TRAFFIC was dreadful, and it took two hours to cross the city to the Makabat Guesthouse. Josie parked in the lot, facing the room where the body had been found, stepped out and crossed to the office.

  The door was ajar; she pushed it open and went inside. The manager, Santos, was standing in the middle of the room, his back facing her.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  Santos turned at the sound of her voice. “Oh,” he said. “I was about to call you again.”

  She frowned. “I’m sorry? Call me again?”

  “I left you a message last night.”

  “I haven’t had a chance to check my messages. What is it?”

  “We were burgled.” He stood and pointed to an open cabinet. There was a shelf with loose cables trailing down from it. “They took the hard drive for the cameras.”

  Josie went over to the cabinet and looked down at the empty space where the drive had been. “It was in here?”

  “Yes,” he said. “It was a cheap one. All the cables from the cameras fed into it.”

  Josie turned. “The door looks okay, though. Not forced.”

  “It was open,” the man said shamefully. “With everything that was goi
ng on, I forgot to lock it.”

  “They take anything else?”

  “We had some money to pay the staff,” he said. “That’s gone. And maybe some documents. I can’t be sure. I haven’t had a chance to check everything yet.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “I only noticed when I sat down to go through the video for you. Could have been yesterday or last night.”

  Josie stood back. There wasn’t much that she could say. There was no obvious reason for the man to lie to her.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  He swept an arm around him to indicate the office. “What about this? What do I do? I need to tell the insurance company something.”

  “Call the station again and ask for someone to come over,” she said.

  “But you’re here,” he said.

  “They’ll look after it for you.”

  “Can’t you—”

  “Call the station, sir. Goodbye.”

  She opened the door and stepped out into the sticky heat. Traffic rushed over the flyover, a constant hum that lodged in her brain. She heard the sound of horns as angry drivers confronted one another and then, almost as pervasive, the up and down yowling of a siren.

  Josie slid back into the car, flinching from where the cooked leather touched her skin. She laid her hands on the wheel and tried to think. Something was wrong. Very, very wrong. She had long since learned to trust her instincts, that it was always worth digging a little deeper when the equations didn’t add up. And this investigation, while it had been so obvious yesterday, was now starting to peel and fray at the edges. It might very well have been a coincidence that the owner of the bar had been killed just a few hours after she had visited him. It was possible that he was involved in drugs—many people were—and, heaven knew that was a dangerous occupation to be involved in these days. Mendoza had told her that there had been another killing outside the bar the same day. So, yes, it could be one of those things.

  But what if it wasn’t?

  So much about what she had discovered was peculiar.

  The way Smith had behaved during the interrogation.

  The murder of the owner of the bar.

  And now the missing hard drive.

  Josie swung the wheel and saw Santos watching her from the doorway of the office.

  She wasn’t ready to go to the station yet. She merged onto Visayas Avenue and retraced her path, heading back to Quezon City.

  The prison was there.

  Smith was there.

  She wanted to speak to him.

  28

  JOSIE KNEW that there would be nowhere to park on the street near the jail, so she drove around the block and parked in the lot of Police Station 10. She walked across Bernardo Park, made her way to the entrance of the facility and went inside. The reception area was overcrowded as relatives of the men held inside the jail waited in line for opening hours to begin. Josie went to the front of the line, showed her badge, and thanked the attendant who opened the door to let her go inside.

  She went to the office and waited in line to speak to the harassed clerk, who was trying to juggle telephone enquiries with the questions of the people waiting before her desk.

  Josie waited for her to put the phone down.

  “Yes?” the woman said, shooting her a withering look.

  “You’ve got a prisoner I need to speak to. John Smith. He’s English.”

  The woman turned to her monitor and tapped out Smith’s name on her keyboard.

  “He’s not here anymore.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “He’s been transferred.”

  “When?”

  “Yesterday afternoon.”

  “He’d only just got here!”

  “I’m just telling you what happened.”

  “Where to?”

  “New Bilibid.”

  Josie shook her head. “But he hasn’t been convicted.”

  The woman shrugged. “I know.”

  “But that’s not how it works, is it?”

  “No, Officer, it’s not. I did the transfer. I thought it was strange, but everything else was in order. It’s not my place to argue.”

  “Can I see the papers?”

  The clerk shrugged with a mixture of irritation and disinterest. “Hold on.”

  The clerk tapped another key and a printer whirred to life beneath the desk.

  Josie was confused. Suspected men were always kept in Quezon City until their trial. Smith hadn’t been tried. He hadn’t even been charged. New Bilibid was the facility where men were sent to serve their sentences. Josie had never heard of another instance where a man had been sent there at this stage.

  The woman reached down, collected the printout, and handed it to Josie.

  “There. Anything else?”

  “Thank you.”

  There was an empty chair at the other end of the room. Josie sat down and scanned through the transfer papers. She recognised the handwriting and knew who had filled it out before she reached the familiar signature at the bottom.

  Bruno Mendoza.

  She stared at his signature. Why would he arrange for Smith to be transferred? There was no reason for it.

  Josie looked at her watch. It was half past twelve.

  Smith might have been moved, but she still needed to speak to him.

  29

  IT WAS a two-hour drive to get to New Bilibid. Traffic was fair, although the long queues as drivers tried to get into the city for the Independence Day celebrations did not augur well for her return trip. She reached down to the radio and turned the dial until she found Jam 88.3, a station that played the alternative and indie music that she liked. Green Day was playing, and she distracted herself with it as she left the city limits and settled down for the trip.

  The song ended and, as ‘High and Low’ by Empire of the Sun started in its place, Josie’s phone buzzed. She had dropped it into the cup holder and, as she reached down for it and held it up to see who was calling, she recognised Mendoza’s number. She held the phone for a moment, her finger hovering over the button to accept the call.

  She decided against it. She put it into her pocket and left it until it rang out.

  Josie didn’t want to speak to Mendoza right now.

  He could wait until after she had spoken to Smith.

  * * *

  JOSIE HAD never been to New Bilibid. There was no reason why she would need to come. Her work was in assembling the evidence so that crimes were solved, the by-product of which was the fact that men she helped convict were brought out of the capital and transferred to this facility.

  She pulled into the parking lot, switched off the engine and waited in the car for a moment. She knew that she was taking a chance by coming. Smith’s unorthodox and unexplained transfer, and the role that Mendoza had played in that, made her more certain than ever that something was wrong.

  But she was here now.

  No going back. She needed to know what she was involved in.

  She was opening the door when her phone rang again. She didn’t even bother to take it out of her pocket. It would be Mendoza calling again, frustrated, no doubt, that he had been unable to get through to her. She let it ring out and then, thirty seconds later, felt the buzz against her hip that signified that a message had been left. She would deal with it later.

  She got out of the car and set off toward the entrance to the facility.

  * * *

  JOSIE SAT down on the hard wooden chair. She rested her hands on the table, but couldn’t stop her fingers from fidgeting. She must have looked nervous. Surely it was obvious to anyone who looked at her. She laced her fingers together so that she couldn’t fret with them.

  The visiting room was plain and sparse. She had hoped that she would be given a room with a little privacy, but that had been wishful thinking. Instead, the guard had led her through the complex to the communal meeting room, where those prisoners fortunate enough to be able to entertain visitors
were allowed to meet them.

  The room was busy. Josie was grateful for that. She had used her police credentials to gain entry to the compound and then to request the meeting with Smith. There was nothing unusual in that save that Smith shouldn’t have been in this facility and that she had travelled from the capital to visit him. At least their meeting would be hidden among the others that were taking place that morning.

  That assumed, of course, that Smith would see her.

  There were two ways into the room. One—guarded by two armed men—offered visitors a way in and out of the room. The other was a pair of double doors that led into a holding area, where inmates were searched before and after their meetings.

  She was wondering whether Smith would turn her down when she heard the squeak of the double doors as they caught against the vinyl floor.

  A man was standing in the doorway with a guard next to him. The side of his face was blackened with an ugly bruise and it took Josie a moment before she recognised him. It was Smith. The guard pointed across the room to her table and he started toward her with an awkward gait that suggested that it was a painful effort to walk.

  “Mr. Smith,” she said.

  “Hello, Officer.”

  “What happened to your face?”

  “I met some of the other inmates.”

  “Have you—” She was going to ask whether he had reported it to the guards, but stopped herself when she realised that wouldn’t have got him very far.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I can look after myself.” He rearranged himself on the seat, the effort triggering a wince of pain. “Why are you here, Officer? I thought you said the case was closed.”

  “It is.”

  “And you’re still here.”

  “There are some things I’m not happy with. I’d like to talk to you about them.”

  He grimaced; it took her a moment to realise that he was smiling. “I’m not going anywhere. You can talk about whatever you want.”