by Jan Needle
‘What shall we do?’ said Hughes. ‘We’d better call the law.’
‘We could make love,’ said Carole Rochester. ‘Angus wouldn’t mind. We don’t have to use the bed, do we? The floor’s all right.’
There was no reason to ask if she was joking. She wasn’t. But Alan Hughes did not know what to do.
‘I don’t know if I can,’ he said. ‘It’s been so many years. I wasn’t really very good at it, I don’t think. I’d got out of the habit long before they locked me up.’
‘This is very sudden, Alan. I apologise. I just wanted to, that’s all.’
‘It’s a normal reaction as I understand it. It’s called the Stockholm Syndrome. Captors and captives get confused. Dependent. They sometimes fall in love. I’d like to try. If you can stand a failure?’
They took each other’s clothes off and, oblivious to McGregor’s sightless stare, they did quite well, they thought. They laughed a lot, at least, and they stroked each other. Then, lying on her back, Carole asked Hughes: ‘Did you really kill your wife? Your wives?’
‘In my heart of hearts,’ said Hughes, ‘I like to think I didn’t. But I did kill one of them. The other one just disappeared. The one I killed fell down the stairs. I didn’t push her, but I didn’t try to save her. I’m lying. She was pushed. I pushed her.’
‘I’d have liked to have pushed my husband down the stairs. And my father. And Donald Sinclair.’
‘No stairs in here,’ said Alan Hughes. ‘We’re safe.’
She turned to him, and put her head on his chest.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I feel that. Tonight – let’s put old Angus on the floor, shall we? He wouldn’t mind.’
*
Queen Anne’s Gate. Sinclair
It was one of Sinclair’s former journalistic colleagues who alerted him to the YouTube viral hit, and Sinclair moved like greased lightning to suppress it, to get it dropped. He telephoned the Ministry technicians and threatened them with the direst of consequences for failure, then interrupted an official Prime Ministerial reception with the most urgent codeword possible. He spoke to MI5 at Thames House, he summoned the head of Special Branch, he alerted the Ministry of Defence.
The tape was dynamite. Death on YouTube, and distinctly bloody, pure cinema. Short men with faces covered, close up on big-barrelled handgun, extended with a solid silencer. Mike Masters on his knees, pale faced and pleading, with an empty body bag laid out behind him, two more behind that, not empty in any way at all.
And then a shot, a peculiar, muffled squirting noise, and a close up of the smoking silencer. Laughter, from three throats. A corpse stretched out on the cellar floor, a slightly twitching one, and then Masters was still. The waiting body bag. A high-tech, expensive lathe, state of the art. A young man laughing. Blood.
And then cut off. No sound, abrupt. To blackness. Within twenty minutes news-rooms staff across the media were locked in scenes that could have been from Hollywood. Jostled by heavy men with humourless faces, they were moved from their computer terminals and made to line the walls. Telephones were left unanswered, while duty producers and editors were conducted to their offices and told to speak to nobody until the most senior staff had been found and briefed. Home Office legal eagles went frantic. Within minutes moves were being made. Injunctions, by phone, by wire, through the internet, burst forth to kill thoughts of reproducing the clip, in any medium, or as stills. Donald, served by Judith Parker, drank ice-cold Becks and sweated blood.
Before any of the undercover squads went in, he had insisted to the people in control that they should ‘remember Zircon’. Any repetitions of blanket trawls by hammer-wielding teams of KGB-type heavies, as had happened many years before at the BBC in Glasgow and never been forgotten in the trade, would be met with the direst consequences.
‘We’re not a police state,’ he said, ‘and we can’t afford to be seen as one. We’re merely trying to protect the people from a heinous, disgusting stunt. Under no circumstances must news channels be disrupted.’
In the event, try as Whitehall might, they were no match for the social media, which truth to tell few of them even understood. Although the TV news output was filleted, the virus spread across the net, way beyond control. Despite all the pleas for restraint, hackers and photographers were severely roughed up by police in Southampton, Manchester, Coventry. Worst of all, an over-enthusiastic deputy at the Ministry of Defence scrambled special units in several parts of the country, and at least one transmitter mast acquired a ‘perimeter of bayonets’, as a reporter put it. The freedom of the press, it seemed, was looking like a joke.
At 10.46 that night, Sinclair took a call on the hot-phone from Velma Goodman, the PM’s rottweiler. The Boss, she said, was incandescent, what was he going to do about it? Sinclair cited Sir Gerald Turner as the man in charge, and Velma Goodman almost spat. Turner had fucked up, she said, Turner was fucking toast. Who had named Michael Masters, who had said the Government would not pay, who had set the net on fire, who had hung them out to dry? Who would save them? Who?
At 10.53, leaving a trusted deputy to watch the hot-phone, Sinclair, Fortyne and Judith went into an empty office for a conference. Their strategy decided, at 11.12 Judith and Fortyne started ringing their main contacts, while Sinclair contacted the very top of State security. The subject was not the ‘alleged operations’ against the YouTube scandal, but Bowscar Prison.
Suddenly, it appeared, the situation had become critical. Suddenly, as promised, the media were being informed as a matter of need and urgency, as an aid to national security. For the latest intelligence was that random killing of hostages was taking place, and the Government had been forced to act. As every other avenue had been exhausted, a crack force of assault troops would be going in tonight. Repeat – tonight.
That news alone – official, from the highest sources – was enough to clear everything off the front pages. But Judith Parker promised updates throughout the action, and suggested special editions and print-runs would be needed into the early hours. The media loved it, they were galvanised, they lapped it up like cream. Michael Masters? Who was Michael Masters? He was forgotten, he was yesterday. Last year’s news…
‘We’re on the move,’ said Christian Fortyne, when Judith had made her last call. ‘Donald, that was a classic carve-up. Should we tell Sir Gerald, do you think!’
They all three laughed like drains, and Sinclair shouted,
‘Damn him. Like the PM says, he’s toast. That’ll learn him, won’t it? Calling me illiberal? The man’s completely mad!’
*
Bowscar. The attack.
The timing of the last assault was critical. All the intelligence the military had gathered over the course of the siege suggested that between 3 and 4 am would be best, as there was very little detectable activity in the jail at that time. It was also desirable from a reportage point of view. Although they didn’t yet suspect it, the press and TV representatives were going to be moved well out of camera shot – for ‘military reasons’ – just before the troops went in, but because of 24-hour rolling news these days, they’d have more than plenty to get their teeth into. By breakfast time there’d be top brass galore to fill the telly screens.
The main problem they faced remained the hostages. Because they’d been put in individual cells, and never herded round or guarded as a group, none of the listening or heat-seeking location devices had ever identified them except as part of the Bowscar total population. There was no way of knowing where or how they were being kept, or how close they were at any time to people who might kill them. The simple fact was that the troops would go in blind, which could provoke a massacre.
‘The pity of it is,’ said Judith Parker, ‘that if we had a few more days, they’d probably all come out anyway, of their own accord. Sod bloody Michael Masters.’
Judith’s point, according to the medical advisers, was an exact one. The strategy of leaving the Bowscar men completely isolated had worked brilliantly. Apart fr
om three hostage deaths and two suicides from the roof-top, there had been little upset. The next natural step was to switch off the electricity for a day or two and see what happened. They’d probably wander out.
‘Unlucky, yes,’ said Sinclair. ‘But there’s no alternative, is there? In any case, if some hostages do get hurt, it’ll hardly be our fault, will it?
‘It will be our fault if no prisoners get hurt,’ put in Fortyne, merrily, ‘What will the Mail say if the scum don’t get their just deserts? And our public. They’ve got their expectations, you know.’
Over the next few hours, the logistics kept them fully occupied, although most of it involved going over well-turned ground. The designated hospitals were alerted, the camps where the bulk of the prisoners would go were manned, and the governors who had high-security places waiting were told to expect ‘visitors’ in the tail-end of the night. Sinclair, in case of triumph, went up to Bowscar, but kept himself well-hidden until the press – protesting violently – had been moved back. He heard the signal given, and he watched the troops go in. He thought of Buckie, and he crossed his fingers.
It was a magnificent success. The first wave of soldiers, using ingress spots they had reconnoitred exhaustively, flooded the main areas of occupation and used disorientation techniques perfected over many years. With stun grenades, bright lights and noise they woke the sleeping prisoners, then terrified them with their camouflage paint and rifles. There were some pockets of resistance, and sporadic shooting was heard by those outside the jail, but only four people were badly hurt, and none of those were hostages.
Sinclair, on a whim that was a PR masterstroke, allowed the media in before most of the prisoners had been evacuated. He was far too busy being filmed and interviewed with the filthy, shuffling men as backdrop to remember, for a while, to go and offer comfort to the freed hostages. Long enough, in fact, for Fortyne to get Pendlebury, the ex-governor, into an ambulance and away. That man could be a positive embarrassment.
By the time Sir Gerald Turner reached his office in the morning, Donald Sinclair was the hero of the hour. There was no question, this time round, of him being in the shadows. His face was everywhere, and he had been interviewed on all the early TV shows and on Today. The PM, Turner learnt, was absolutely cock-a-hoop.
The Bowscar siege was over.
TWENTY FIVE
North Wales. Peter Jackson
Throughout the long drive from London to North Wales, Jackson had kicked himself quite frequently. It had been a simple buzz along the information network that had set him off, and he knew it might be nothing. But he was sure he could do no more for Forbes and Rosanna in London, and his warning to them about Carole Rochester had nagged away at him. The buzz had been about a static caravan in Wales, which Forbes had said was known to nobody. So Carole Rochester might be in danger. She might need saving.
When he reached Llanbedrog, Jackson traced the spot quite easily by asking at the chemist’s shop. A lone English-woman with a camper van who had a static in a clump of trees at the bottom of a hillside farm. Easy. Unless he was too late.
Fifteen minutes later, as he approached, he knew he was. There were two cars parked discreetly behind the camper van, and the curtains were drawn. As he approached the door, one was twitched aside and a face peered out. A police face.
‘Peter Jackson.’ He flashed ID, before anybody could ask him. ‘Customs and Excise. I was looking for a woman called Carole Rochester. Some money matters.’
The Special Branch man grunted, but stood aside.
‘Too late. Even you bastards can’t get blood out of a stone.’
Jackson stepped inside. There were three more men in the caravan. Their faces remained stony.
‘Shit,’ said Jackson. ‘What was it? Troilism? Lovers’ tiff?’
Carole’s body was in the corner. There was a bullet hole in her cheek, and blood on the wall beside her. A slightly built man he took to be Alan Hughes was lying on his back on the floor, looking as if the Special Branch men had been dragging him when Jackson had arrived. In an armchair, with a pistol in his hand, sat the smallest corpse. The Animal. There was a black gash and ripped flesh at his throat, as if he had shot himself at very close range – after he was dead. The smell of gunsmoke lingered in the air.
‘Something like that,’ the man said. ‘That’s Angus McGregor there, that little shite. As far as we can see he shot the other two, then himself. The woman’s been fucked. You know Angus McGregor? The Animal. Escaped from Bowscar.’
‘Christ. He got all this way. Poor bitch, I wonder how she copped for this lot?’
‘We’re just clearing up. Now, can we help you? Because we’re a wee bit busy here, as you can see.’
Jackson could see very well. He guessed that they had shot all three, and were setting up the scene now, for the photograph.
‘No,’ he said. ‘No interest to me now. Oh well. It was a lovely drive.’
‘There’s a good pub down the road,’ said one of the policemen, suddenly quite friendly. ‘The Ship. They all speak fucking Welsh there, but they seem quite human. If you were planning on staying local?’
‘No,’ said Jackson. ‘I’ll get back. Duty calls.’
‘Ah. But you haven’t seen us, have you? Know what I mean?’
‘Not a word. We’re only interested in the live ones in my line of trade. Dead men pay no VAT. See you.’
‘London, is it?’
‘That’s right. London.’
But he did not return to London. Instead, in Llanbedrog, he turned right on the road to Aberdaron, where he had stayed in a hotel as a kid. He’d have a night off, stay out of the pull of trouble, drink some beer. What more could he do?
*
Queen Anne’s Gate. Sinclair, Fortyne, Judith.
The news of Sir Gerald Turner’s resignation was announced officially by Velma Goodman. His letter, which she released, was terse and to the point. As the PM was aware, for some time now he had been undergoing treatment for a pulmonary condition, and his medical advisers had insisted that a period of total rest was essential. After his long service in the post it was a wrench, but he left confident that he had served his government and his country to the best of his abilities. He thanked both his Premier and all his colleagues for the help and support he had always received.
The text of the Prime Minister’s reply was even shorter. It expressed great shock and deep regret, coupled with a sense of loss after his years of sterling service. The last two sentences were the finest: ‘May I thank you in particular for your part in the brilliantly handled affair of Bowscar Prison. It will not be forgotten.’
Donald, a glass of ice-cold Beck’s in front of him, was still chuckling over the letters with Judith and Christian Fortyne when the phone rang. It was his wife. Her voice was colder than the beer.
‘I suppose you’re satisfied now, are you?’ she asked. ‘Donald, what exactly does this mean? And incidentally, are you intending ever to come home?’
Sinclair frowned, nodding to the other two to leave. That very morning, he had bitten on the bullet. He had told Judith that he must return to his Surrey home, probably that evening, and try to rescue something from the ashes. It was nothing to do with love, he said, nor even plain affection. At this delicate stage, he could not afford a marital scandal, could he? It might blight both their futures.
Judith agreed entirely. Sinclair was going to seek a parliamentary seat for her, he was going to pull some strings. They may never be free to marry, but that was not everything. They could rise up the parliamentary ladder together, and probably reach the top. That sounded wonderful to her.
‘Yes,’ said Sinclair, to his wife. ‘This evening, if I can get away. I’ve moved heaven and earth, but you must understand how rushed it’s been.’
‘Oh I do,’ said Mary, icily. ‘I’ve been talking to Elizabeth Turner. We’re expecting the announcement any moment.’
‘What announcement?’
‘Oh, pick any one from twent
y. Your appointment as Home Secretary in Gerald’s place. The return of capital punishment, the building of that American prison you were on about, goose-stepping in primary schools, transportation, arming the police. You name it.’
Judith was hovering in the doorway. Sinclair waved her out. He took a nervous sip of beer.
‘Mary, have you been drinking? Gerald resigned for health reasons. Listen to th—’
‘I’ve been talking to his wife, you fool! He was sacked. You’ve done very well, my dear, very well indeed. You’ve made Gerald look like a bumbling idiot over everything, you’ve made the Prime Minister look like a savage over Michael Masters, and you’ve turned out Mister Clean. I thought you were a liberal sort of person, Donald, a “pretty straight kinda guy”, to quote another of your ilk. What’s the next step – depose the Prime Minister? There’s a vacuum where your heart should be, are you aware of that? A total vacuum. You’re the Vicar of Bray, a hypocrite. You’re a moral fascist.’
‘Dear dear,’ said Donald. ‘Perhaps I’d better stay away tonight, then. I wouldn’t like my jackboots to make the bedclothes dirty, that would never do. I’ll be in touch tomorrow.’
He put the receiver down and drank some beer. He buzzed for Judith.
‘That was a reprieve. The mad lady I took to wife and bed. Tonight I’ll take you to bed again, and a bloody good thing too. Do you think I’m a savage?’
‘What, in bed? Try me!’
But Sinclair had become preoccupied.
‘Mm,’ he said. ‘Look, call Christian in again. Let’s sort this business out.’
In truth, there was very little left to sort. There were forty-seven people in hospital from Bowscar, and slightly under seven hundred prisoners had been dispersed. Ironically, about fifty of the most dangerous had had to go to other prisons, rather than the holding camps, with the real possibility that they would cause unrest. Secretly, huge extra contingents of prison officers had been drafted in, and more general recruitment was quietly taking place.