Blackout

by Dawson, Mark

  “The same night I saw him.”

  “Maybe that’s why. Maybe he had the drugs. Maybe he was a loose end. Maybe you frightened him when you went to investigate. Or maybe your going to see him frightened someone else. It’s too much of a coincidence otherwise.”

  One of the guards cleared his throat. She looked over at him anxiously, but he was looking the other way.

  “There’s something else,” she said, leaning closer to him. “I only found out this morning. The owners of the hotel where you were staying were killed last night. I went to see them and the security footage was gone. Someone broke in and took the drive. And then I went back again and the place was on fire. They were inside. They’d been shot.”

  “Someone’s cleaning up behind themselves.”

  “Everything about this is wrong. The bar. The hotel. And you being moved here—that shouldn’t have happened.”

  “You said your boss did that.”

  “He did.”

  “Then he’s involved.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” she hissed. “I’ve been threatened, too. There was a car outside my mother’s apartment. They took a photo of my son coming out of school, put it in an envelope with a bullet and pushed it under the door.”

  “It was him?”

  “He told me I needed to be careful. He’s not subtle. I’m sure it’s him.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if de Lacey has him on his payroll. You need to be careful.”

  She let her head hang. “This is getting out of control.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “I could help.”

  “How are you going to do that, Milton?” she hissed. “You’re in fucking prison.”

  “Then get me out.”

  “Yeah, sure. I’ll just go and get the rope out of my car and throw it over the wall.” She clenched her fists and fought to control herself. “I don’t know. Maybe I can dig into it. Maybe… maybe I could give you something to go to the court with. You got a lawyer?”

  He shrugged. “A public defender.”

  “Who is it?”

  Milton frowned as he tried to remember the name he had been given. “García.”

  She groaned. “Great.”

  “Not good?”

  “Eddie García is a drunk,” she said, before remembering that Milton was an alcoholic. “Sorry, I—”

  “Forget it,” he said, waving her embarrassment away.

  “And he’s corrupt. That’s worse. I could give him evidence that says there’s no way you were responsible and it’d make no difference. If this is a conspiracy, he’d just bury it.”

  “So we have to think of another way.”

  “Got any great ideas?”

  He placed both hands on the table and looked straight at her. “There is something.”

  “What?”

  “If I can get out of here, I’ll be able to make progress that you can’t make.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The people we’re dealing with—they don’t play by the rules. That means we can’t play by the rules either.”

  “You say ‘we’—this isn’t a team, Milton.”

  “Dress it up however you like. But we share the same goal. I want to fix this. And when I do, I’ll fix it for you, too.”

  “It doesn’t matter what you say you can do. I can’t get you out of here.”

  “Not officially. But you can still help.” He looked around. “I told you before. I need to get a message to a friend. He’d be able to help, but they won’t give me a phone call. He doesn’t know that I’m here. No one does.”

  “You want me to contact him?”

  “If you want to help me, that’ll be the best way.”

  “And assuming I did… What could he do?”

  “Could you get him in here to see me?”

  “Maybe.” She shrugged. “Probably. But what difference would it make? You’d still be here.”

  “I was a soldier,” Milton said. “My friend was, too. We have the same history. The same skills.”

  “You’re going to try to break out?”

  “Unless you can do it another way?”

  “What’s the man’s name?”

  “Alex Hicks. Do you have a pen and paper?”

  “No,” she said. “But I have a good memory.”

  Milton recited a telephone number. “It’s an English number,” he said. “Call him. Tell him we’ve spoken. Tell him he needs to fly out here as soon as he can.”

  “And he’ll do that? Just like that?”

  “Hicks owes me. And he’s a good man. He’ll come.”

  “And then?”

  “Bring him in here to see me so we can talk.”

  The clock ticked over to the hour and a buzzer sounded. “Time up,” one of the guards shouted. “All guests out—now.”

  Josie tried to assert some order over the chaotic parade of thoughts that flashed through her mind. It was a mad flurry: the threats against her and Angelo; the murders at the hotel and the bar; Mendoza’s complicity; Milton’s untruths, and whether she could trust someone like him. She had always worked to lay down solid foundations upon which she could build for the future and now, for the first time since her husband had left her and Angelo, it felt as if those foundations were unstable. Her options seemed limited. Milton had lied to her, but, despite that, she couldn’t get away from the conclusion that he was as invested in solving this mess as she was.

  It wasn’t saying much, but he was the best that she had.

  “Josie?” Milton said.

  She stood. “I’ll do it.”

  47

  MILTON WAS taken back to the cell. He walked on, conscious of the guard behind him, and wondered whether Hernandez would follow through. He realised that he was relying on her. If she didn’t deliver the message, there would be very little that he would be able to do. He knew that he stood no chance of winning his freedom at trial; she had made it very clear that the deck was stacked against him. He couldn’t even say with certainty that he would make it as far as the trial. The beatings were taking it out of him. He was at Tiny’s mercy.

  He would have to try to fashion his own escape, but, despite subjecting the security arrangements to as detailed an assessment as his limited opportunities allowed, he had not discovered any serious weaknesses that he would be able to exploit on his own. He would have to ask Isko to tell him about the weakness that had been fortified, or push him to consider other weak spots that would be worthy of investigation. If worst came to worst, he would find a way to get over the wall, but, as Isko had made clear, even if he managed to get away, he would be an obvious target in an unfamiliar and hostile landscape.

  He would try, but the odds would be long.

  He needed help.

  First, though, he needed time.

  Isko was waiting for him. He was brushing his teeth with a toothbrush he kept in a cloth washbag with a cake of old soap.

  “She came?”

  “She did,” he said. “Thank you.”

  “They came for you again,” he said. “The four of them who work for de Lacey.”

  “I’m sure they’ll be back.”

  “You can’t carry on like this.”

  “No,” he said. He looked at the toothbrush and had an idea. “Could I borrow that?”

  Wordlessly, Isko handed it over.

  Milton took it and held it in his hand, the brush in his palm. It was just long enough.

  “Can I borrow your lighter, too?”

  Milton rolled over so that he was facing the wall and, with Isko keeping watch, he took the lighter and thumbed flame. He used the fire to soften the plastic, waiting until it was blackened and soft. Once he was happy with it, he started to rub the edges back and forward against the abrasive surface of the concrete wall. He worked at it for an hour, turning the brush halfway through so that he could concentrate on the opposite side. He scrubbed, peeling away the
plastic and then heating it again so that it stayed soft. By the time he was done, he had rubbed away enough of the plastic so that the shaft ended in a point. Milton touched the end. It was sharp. It was a poor substitute for a metal shank, but it was the best he could do on short notice. The plastic was easy to grip; he would have liked some duct tape to roll around it so that he had something more substantial to grip onto, but he doubted that would be possible.

  He would make do with what he had.

  48

  THE GUARDS unlocked the cell doors in the afternoon so that the inmates could have their exercise. Milton took the sharpened toothbrush and slid it inside his trousers, the point prodding his thigh as he followed Isko down the stairs and out into the yard.

  “Be careful,” the old man said as they started to stroll around the same circuit as before.

  “Stay away from me,” Milton warned. “You don’t want to get caught up in this.”

  “I know what you’re doing. It’s dangerous.”

  “I have to do something. You said so yourself.”

  “They might beat you in solitary, too.”

  “They might. But Tiny is definitely going to keep working me over if I stay where I am. It’s worth trying. What do I have to lose?”

  Milton tensed as he saw a group of four inmates walking out to intercept them. He reached down and plucked out the toothbrush, sliding it up his arm so that the handle was pressed against the inside of his wrist and the sharp point rested against his cupped fingers. The men wouldn’t be able to see it until he wanted them to and, by then, it would be too late for them.

  “Go on,” Milton said. “Keep walking.”

  “Good luck, Smith.”

  Isko continued on.

  Milton stopped. The men were closing in. He recognised them: two of them had been in the group that had attacked him the first day in the canteen, and the remaining pair had been part of the group who had beaten him in his cell before delivering him to de Lacey. Beyond them, Milton saw a pair of guards with shotguns waiting by the entrance to the exercise yard. There were another ten guards scattered around the periphery of the space, and two watchtowers loomed at either end.

  “You,” the nearest man said. “You come with us.”

  “Again?”

  “Come.”

  “Not today, lads. Tell Tiny I’ll see him tomorrow.”

  “We don’t ask,” the man said. He took a pace ahead, stepping in front of Milton, less than an arm’s length away. “We tell you. You come—”

  Milton dropped the shank into his hand and slashed out with it. He backhanded him with an upward diagonal, the point slicing through the man’s cheek and continuing up across his eye and up his forehead. He shrieked with pain, his hands automatically flying up to his face.

  He wasn’t a threat any longer; Milton ignored him and turned to the next man. Milton’s arm was still raised from the first swipe, and he brought it back down and across in a forehand hack that found the side of the man’s jaw and then tracked down across the soft flesh of his throat.

  It was a deep incision, and bright red arterial blood frothed out.

  The man fell to his knees as Milton pivoted. The third and fourth men were frozen to the spot, agog at the sudden detonation of brutal violence.

  Milton closed the distance to the nearest inmate with two quick steps and flashed the blade across his face. The man managed to raise his hands, and the point of the shank sliced across both outward-facing palms.

  The fourth man backed away.

  There came the unmistakable boom as a shotgun was discharged.

  He heard the sound of a raised voice. He couldn’t translate the Filipino, but the meaning was clear.

  He glanced to his right. One of the guards at the gate had fired into the air, and his partner was coming forward with his own shotgun aimed squarely at Milton.

  He dropped to his knees and raised his hands.

  “Lie down!” they bellowed.

  He did, covering his head with his arms.

  He heard the sound of the guards’ boots in the sand as they ran across to him. He tensed, anticipating that he was going to take another beating, and they didn’t disappoint him. They jammed the butts of their shotguns down onto his torso, working up his shoulders to his folded arms. He couldn’t protect all of his head, and they jabbed down with the shotguns and struck him with kicks and punches, so many of them that he dimly assumed that others had come over to join in.

  He felt consciousness retreating and, once more, the familiar curtain of blackness twitched at the edges of his vision. The blackness grew pregnant and swollen and rushed over him, sweeping him away again.

  49

  ALEX HICKS was having dinner with his family when his telephone rang.

  They were celebrating. The results of Rachel’s last PET scan had been delivered that morning and, after another round of chemotherapy, the cancer was officially in remission. They had gone out to the Pizza Hut in the centre of Cambridge, and Hicks had somehow been cajoled by his boys to eat the hottest pizza on the menu. They had conspired with the waiter to add extra chili to the topping and, loath as he was to admit it, he was struggling. He grimaced as he started on the penultimate slice, aware that a light sheen of sweat had formed on his forehead. His sons found his discomfort hilarious, and Rachel smiled to see them so happy. It made Hicks happy, too. It wasn’t so long ago that the diagnosis had seemed like a death sentence.

  His phone was in the pocket of his jeans and he felt it buzz for fifteen seconds before it stopped. There was a pause and then the phone buzzed again to indicate that a voicemail had been left. Not many people besides his family had his number, and it rarely rang. He finished the slice, exaggerating the heat of the chili for another cheap laugh, and then said he was going to the bathroom to run the cold tap directly into his mouth.

  He took an empty cubicle, shut the door, took out his phone and navigated to his missed calls. He didn’t recognise the number. It wasn’t that it was unfamiliar to him, although that was true; he didn’t even recognise the country code.

  He went to voicemail, set it to play the last message and put it to his ear.

  “Hello.” Hicks didn’t recognise the voice. It was a woman, with an accent that he couldn’t place. “This is a message for Mr. Hicks. Mr. Alex Hicks. My name is Josie Hernandez and I am calling from the Philippines on behalf of John Milton. He is in trouble and he asked me to contact you. It is urgent. Please call me back.”

  The woman’s English was halting, the accent heavy and difficult to decipher. She recited the same phone number that Hicks’s phone had recorded and then ended the call.

  He stared at the screen for a moment as he absently wondered what to do.

  It didn’t take long.

  He tapped the number and waited for the call to connect.

  “Hello?”

  “You left a message for me.”

  “Mr. Hicks?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you for returning my call.”

  “You know Milton?”

  “A little.”

  “You said he was in trouble?”

  “He has been arrested for murder. He is in prison, waiting for his trial.”

  “And what does that have to do with you?”

  “I am a police officer in Manila. I arrested him, but now I do not believe he did what it is said that he did.”

  Hicks lowered the lid of the toilet and sat down. It was only thanks to the money that Milton had provided that he and Rachel had been able to fly to America for the experimental treatment that had saved her life. He had helped him with a small matter since then, but it did not extinguish the debt that he owed. Milton would not have called if it wasn’t necessary. Hicks believed the woman: the fact that she had his number was evidence that Milton was involved and proof that he was in trouble.

  “I can’t talk now,” he said. “Can I call you in an hour?”

  “Yes. I will wait to speak to you. Please, do not
forget. It is urgent.”

  He ended the call and went back out to finish dinner. The kids had been waiting to see the new Avengers movie for a week, and he and Rachel had promised to take them. The boys were playing with their action figures in anticipation of the film.

  “Is everything all right?” Rachel asked him quietly.

  “I had a phone call,” he said.

  “Alex,” she said with a sigh, “not now. We’re having dinner.”

  “It was about Milton. I think he’s in trouble.”

  Rachel knew that Milton had provided the money that had funded the treatment. Her exasperation evaporated. “What kind of trouble?”

  The children were distracted, but Hicks kept his voice low. “He’s in the Philippines. He’s been arrested. For murder. The call was from a policewoman. She said that Milton needs my help.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. I said I’d call back this evening.”

  “The Philippines? Are you going to have to go there?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  Rachel was patient, and she knew that they owed Milton everything. “If you have to, you have to. Are you going to miss the film?”

  “I’ve got to call her back.”

  She nodded to their children. “They’ll be disappointed.”

  “I know. She said it was urgent.”

  “Don’t worry—I’ll take them. Just promise you’ll keep me in the loop.”

  “Of course,” he said.

  He kissed her on the cheek, told his boys that he would take them to see the film for a second time, and then went to find a taxi to take him home.

  50

  MILTON AWOKE. It felt as if he had been drugged. He could hear the sound of voices, but they were a distance away from him and he was too groggy to understand them. He waited until he came around a little more. The voices were speaking in Filipino. Raucous laughter punctuated the conversations. He couldn’t understand a word of what was being said.