The John Milton Series Boxset 4

by Mark Dawson

  The nearest guard looked at him with unmasked contempt. “Take off clothes.”

  Milton knew that he had little choice other than to comply. He undid the buttons of his shirt and took it off. He took off his trousers and underwear and stood his ground as he was searched. The guard paused, noting the tattoos that covered Milton’s body and, perhaps, unnerved by his poise and lack of fear. He told Milton to spread his legs and then bend over and, moving with practised ease, satisfied himself that he was not transporting contraband.

  Milton had seen the dripping hose and knew what was coming next.

  The guard pointed. “Against wall.”

  Milton crossed the room. The floor was sodden and the paint had been scoured off the wall. The guard took the hose, aimed it squarely at him, and cranked the tap. A torrent of freezing cold water rushed out. It pummelled Milton in the chest, driving the air from his lungs and shocking him with the sudden drop in temperature. Milton clenched his jaw, unwilling to give the guards the pleasure of seeing his discomfort. They laughed anyway, the guard with the hose training it down at his genitals and then up to his face. Milton closed his eyes and turned away so that the jet thrashed against the side of his head.

  The tap was turned and the flow stopped. Milton stood where he was as the water sluiced off his body. His skin tingled.

  The guard assessed Milton’s size, selected a uniform from the pile, and tossed it down onto the floor in front of him.

  “Dress.”

  The uniform was orange. Milton tore the pack open and took out the two items inside: a pair of trousers and a short-sleeved shirt. They were made from rough denim and they scratched his damp skin as he put them on. The guard looked at Milton’s boots, shared a joke with his comrades, and put them to one side. Milton guessed that he wouldn’t see them again. The guard took a pair of sneakers from the pile and tossed them over. They were old, with a hole in the upper and cracks in the tread. Milton put them on. They were a little small, but not unbearably so; he decided that he would make do rather than invite them to give him a pair that was even more uncomfortable.

  There were other items on the table, and Milton was instructed to take one of each: he collected a cotton blanket, a threadbare sleeping mat of woven pandan, and a plate and mug made out of cheap, pliable tin.

  The guard grabbed him by the shoulder and shoved. “This way.”

  22

  THE GUARDS led Milton deeper into the prison.

  They passed through the outer door of the administration building and followed a dim corridor that cut directly down the centre of the building beyond. There were barred partitions at regular intervals; the guards were able to open these with the keys on their belts. Milton looked left and right; everything he saw reminded him that his liberty had been removed: the cage doors through which they progressed; the barred doors on either side, secured with thick sliding bolts; the guards in their khaki uniforms and caps, with holstered pistols and billy clubs that hung on fabric loops from their belts.

  They reached a third barrier and, rather than unlock it, this time the guards were required to speak into an intercom. Milton glanced up and saw a camera, its unblinking black eye staring down at him. There was a short conversation, unintelligible to him apart from the mention of the name ‘Smith,’ and then an electronic buzz as the gate was unlocked. The guard opened it, stepped to the side and indicated that Milton should make his way through.

  This new room looked to be the final one before the start of the main compound. A guard wearing the same uniform was positioned behind a lectern that bore a clipboard replete with papers. Milton was put in mind of a maître d’ standing station outside a restaurant, although the comparison was grotesque in the circumstances.

  The man collected the transfer papers from the guard and assumed custody of Milton. He looked at the papers and typed details into the computer terminal that was on a small desk next to the lectern. Once he was finished, he gestured that the guards should bring Milton around to him. He took Milton’s right hand, pressing his fingerprints against an ink pad, and then recorded the impressions on a slip of card that would accompany his details in a filing cabinet somewhere within the prison’s bureaucracy.

  He was moved to the wall and given a black strip of card that he held up to his chest. It bore a series of numbers and a letter: 13653-S.

  “That is your name. Not Smith. You are 13653. Understand?”

  “I understand,” he said.

  The guard nodded behind him to a small gate that had been opened from the inside.

  Milton went through.

  A GUARD was waiting for Milton on the other side of the gate. He was obese, his belly straining against the buttons of his khaki shirt. His skin was slick with sweat; there were damp crescents beneath his armpits, a sheen on his face, and droplets caught in the hairs of his moustache.

  “Welcome to New Bilibid, 13653.” The man laughed at that, as if he considered it to be a particularly choice joke. “Where are you from?”

  “London.”

  “And you are a murderer.”

  It wasn’t a question; it was a statement. Milton did not respond.

  “You murdered a woman. Better hope that stays secret.”

  The corridor was dark and it took Milton a moment for his eyes to adjust. There were other men here: a guard, his hand on the butt of his pistol, guided an orange-clad teenager into an adjoining room; another inmate pushed a trolley that carried a bucket and mop and other cleaning implements; another prisoner was on his knees, bent close to the floor so that he could scrub it with soapy water and a brush. The man—Milton saw that he was little more than a boy—sprang to his feet and stood ramrod straight as Milton and the guard approached.

  “You are used to nice things in London? Clean clothes? A comfortable bed? Good food and drink? Yes?”

  Milton kept walking.

  The man turned his head and spat at the wall. “You have nothing like that here. It is dirty, it smells, and the men you will be kept with will kill you if you let them.”

  They passed a group of four inmates soon after and, at a gesture from the guard, they dropped to their haunches and pressed themselves with their backs against the wall and their heads bent in a token of their servility.

  “You will have a trial soon. And then, when you have been convicted, you will be returned here for your sentence. If you are lucky, you will go to the room where we have the injections. You should pray for that sentence. Life here, if that is what you get, will be bad in comparison.”

  They reached the door at the end of the corridor. The guard rapped his knuckles against it and then stepped back as it was unlocked and opened. Milton blinked as he was assailed by bright light. He had expected that his cell would be in the main building, but it was not. Instead, the corridor opened onto a wide plaza with a network of wire mesh fencing that split it into separate sections. The ground underfoot was bare, the earth cooked in the sun until it was as hard as asphalt.

  The guard led Milton to a building marked with a notice as Building No. 1. It was a long building, several storeys tall and oblong in shape. The entrance was halfway down the long flank and, as they walked between two wire mesh fences to reach it, Milton counted twenty windows. Each was small and dingy, bars bisecting the dark apertures and a further screen of mesh increasing the security and, Milton guessed, reducing the light that was allowed to filter inside.

  He heard a loud metallic rattle and the noise of barked orders, and, as he turned back into the yard, he saw a group of fifty or sixty inmates being herded deeper into the compound. They were shackled together, each man fitted with leg irons and then chained to the men in front and behind. They wore faded orange shorts and were shirtless, their bodies exposed to the scouring sun. Their heads were shaved and their skin was slick with sweat. The formation was shepherded by a team of guards, their batons drawn so that they could be flicked out to encourage stragglers to greater effort and dissuade those who might consider the possibility
of dissent.

  “You see them?” the guard said. “They are castigados. They have broken prison rules. Perhaps they have smuggled contraband, or they have gambled, tried to escape, or committed sodomy. They are punished.”

  “What kind of punishment?”

  “Hard labour. They break rocks. They work in the sun until they collapse and then they are returned to isolation. They do it again until they agree that the rules must be obeyed. Understand?”

  “I do,” Milton said.

  The guards brought the phalanx to a halt and circulated among the men, inspecting them. One of the prisoners refused to respond to a comment from the guard standing before him. The guard pulled his baton from his belt and struck the man on the shins with a downward backhand slash. The prisoner looked up and spat at the guard’s feet. The guard called out, and two of his colleagues hurried to his side, their own clubs drawn. The three men struck the prisoner again and again, their blows landing on his legs and torso and against his shoulders and arms as he tried to protect his head. The man fell to his knees, but his weakness seemed only to provoke his attackers to greater effort, and they continued the beating until he was face down in the dust, blood running freely from a deep cut to his scalp.

  “Inside,” the guard said to Milton.

  The entrance to Building No. 1 was a broad opening in the wall. There were two doors, barriers that could be slid back on runners that were fitted into the concrete. The first door was made of two pieces of solid steel and the second comprised two rows of iron bars. They had both been pushed halfway open to allow access. There was a guard slumped in a plastic chair in front of the doors. He glared sullenly at Milton as he was pushed inside.

  The entrance led into a hexagonal space from which a number of corridors trailed away. There was a flight of stairs that led up to the first floor and, running directly to the left and right, was a corridor that Milton assumed must have been the main means of accessing the cells. It was blocked in both directions by iron doors that were secured with padlocks. There was a table just inside the gloom, at which sat two guards. They were engaged in a board game that Milton did not recognise, and neither paid him any heed as the guard nudged him toward the door on his right.

  It was unlocked and Milton was led inside.

  The corridor was constructed from bare concrete blocks. It opened out into a wide lobby that had been arranged around a flight of stairs. Milton looked up: the building was open, and the stairs ascended to the fourth floor high above. Each floor had a landing, and each landing offered access to cells. Milton looked at the cells on the ground floor: there were doors on either side of him, each made from solid metal bars that were also covered in wire mesh.

  There was an open antechamber, where another group of guards was waiting. There was a brief conversation and one of the men got up from his plastic picnic chair and took a large bunch of keys from a hook on the wall. He led the way to the stairs and then climbed them to the second floor. Milton was shoved along the landing until he reached a cell on the right-hand side. The guard unlocked the door and pulled it open.

  The man stepped aside. Milton didn’t resist. He felt a hard shove in his back and stumbled into the darkness beyond.

  23

  MILTON’S CELL was tiny.

  It was two metres deep and a metre and a half wide and was empty except for a toilet bowl that was fixed to the wall in the far right-hand corner, shielded from view by a waist-high wall made of cement blocks. Water was provided from a tap to the left of the toilet; it dripped, and a slimy puddle had formed beneath it. There was no furniture within the cell. There was just the cement floor, the cement ceiling, and the cement block walls.

  There was a single window. It was high in the wall, with a sill at shoulder height. Milton went over to it. It was bisected with a lattice of sturdy bars with the same mesh screwed down over it on the outside wall. Milton looked out through the mesh. He could see a row of whitewashed buildings, with guards gathering between them. The wall of the compound was visible beyond the buildings and, looming above everything, there was a guard tower with a searchlight and a machine gun pointing over the parapet. The sun was sinking and, as it moved by degrees to the west, the angle opened so that the brightness could seep inside.

  Milton realised that he was carrying his bed beneath his arm. He spread out the bedroll on the floor next to the wall. It was thin and stained, and, as he lowered himself down onto it, he knew that he was going to have a difficult time sleeping.

  The light was better now, and he could make out more detail. The walls had been whitewashed at some point in the distant past and, since then, they had grown dirty and smeared. Some of the stains were from bedbugs and cockroaches that had been crushed against the abrasive surface. There were inscriptions where names and messages had been scratched into the brick.

  Bayani.

  Rodel.

  Sayen.

  Milton couldn’t read the messages, but he could guess at the sentiment. There were downward scratches in groups of six, the seventh mark slashing diagonally across them to commemorate the passing of another week. Other marks were different. There were religious inscriptions. Someone had scratched an image of a woman. There was a patch of wall above Milton’s head where a reddish stain had been left. There was a rough circular patch and then four vertical stripes; Milton reached up his hand and laid it over the stain, realising as he did that it was a bloody palm print.

  Milton thought of the man he had seen outside and the beating that he had taken.

  He was uneasy. He was different from all the other prisoners that he had seen, and he knew that would mark him out for special attention from them and from the guards. And he was accused of murdering a woman. That, too, would play badly for him.

  Milton lay flat. His left shoulder was against the wall and he was able to reach out with his right hand and touch the opposite wall. It was a tiny room, but at least it was just him, at least for now. He closed his eyes and tried to remember back to his training in the Regiment. They had put him in smaller spaces than this, kept him there for hours as they tried to approximate what might happen if he was ever captured by the enemy. That had been unpleasant, but it was very different. He had known, even if he didn’t know how long it would take, that the door to his cell would eventually be opened and he would be allowed to leave. He would be able to get into his car and drive into Hereford and have a drink with the other men in the Regiment.

  This was different.

  He knew that he was going to have to keep a low profile if he wanted to stay alive.

  24

  JOSIE BUSIED herself with her usual duties for the rest of the day. She had a backlog of three murders that had been solved, but still needed to have the paperwork completed. She checked the evidence that had been prepared for a forthcoming trial—another murder—and called the pathology unit to check whether they were going to autopsy the woman from this morning. They said that it wasn’t planned. Josie thought about that and, on a whim, asked them to conduct one anyway. The clerk grumbled that they were busy but that it would be ready in the next couple of days. She told him she wanted it done faster than that, and then she rang off.

  The clock ticked around to six and she decided that she had had enough for the day. She was tired and she wanted to see Angelo before he went to bed.

  Her phone rang as she was getting ready to leave. She thought about answering it, but decided to let it go to voicemail. She closed down her computer, put the evidence for the trial in her bag, and, careful to avoid Mendoza, left the station. She went around to the back, slid into her car and cranked the air conditioning all the way to the maximum. She put the car into gear and set off.

  ON IMPULSE, she decided to make a quick stop on the way home. Instead of going south to Alabang, she turned to the east and drove to Poblacion. The Lizard Lounge was a nasty-looking dive fitted with a series of crude neon signs designed to lure tourists inside. Josie parked her car beneath a yellow pint pot with
BEER in electric blue and white froth that blinked on and off.

  She got out, passed through the doors and went inside. She went to the bar and attracted the attention of the barman.

  He came over to her. He was in his mid-thirties, with a head of long greasy hair and a sleeve of bad tattoos on his arm. “What do you want?”

  She laid her badge on the bar. “I’m Officer Hernandez.”

  The man shifted nervously. “What do you want?” he said again.

  “The owner.”

  “That’s me,” he said.

  She regarded him dubiously. “Really?”

  “This is my place,” he said again. “What do you want?”

  “Last night,” she said, “were you working?”

  “Yes. I work every night.”

  “There was an Englishman in here. Do you remember?”

  “Don’t know,” he said, with a shrug. “We had a few in last night. The holiday tomorrow—going to be busy all week.”

  Josie took out the mugshot of Smith that had been taken at the station. She laid it on the bar. “This is him. Have a look. He was here. Try to remember.”

  The man made the pretence of examining the mugshot. “I don’t know. Like I say, there were a lot of people here last night. I can’t remember everyone.”

  “He met a woman here. It would have been around eight. Have a look again, please, sir.”

  The man did as he was told, screwing up his face in an approximation of concentration. He shook his head and slid the photograph back over the bar. “No,” he said. “I don’t remember him.”

  Josie watched him. People reacted in different ways when they were spoken to by the police, and nervousness was not unusual. Working in a bar meant that he probably had secrets that he would much rather stayed secret; perhaps he had arrangements with local pimps, or he was paying protection money to underworld enforcers, or he knew that drug pushers operated from his premises and he worried that that might make him a target for the president’s crackdown. Whatever it was, he was anxious.