by Mark Dawson
The big man grinned at Milton’s bravado.
Milton closed in and led with a right jab. His fist found its mark, glancing off the corner of Tiny’s jaw, but it had a limited effect. Tiny tried to grapple him, but Milton was able to dance away to the right, ducking beneath the clumsy attempted bear hug and swinging a big left hook that terminated in the side of Tiny’s temple.
The punch hurt him. Tiny fell away to the side, his right hand reflexively going up to protect the point of impact and leaving his ribs exposed. Milton swung another left, putting all of his power into it, and his fist sank into the rolls of flab that protected the bigger man’s ribs.
Milton was caught up in the moment. He forgot that his future would not be best served by embarrassing Tiny, that he was guaranteeing a worse beating with every punch that he landed, and that they would take pleasure in ripping away every last shred of resistance. He surrendered to instinct and hammered a right-hander that detonated against the left side of Tiny’s head. The big man staggered back, turning away from the open doorway and retreating to the other side of the room. Milton followed him, closing in quickly and drilling him with a right-left-right combination to the head, ribs and head once again.
Tiny ran out of room. He backed against the wall, both hands raised to protect the sides of his head with a wide gap left open between his chubby forearms. Milton drew back his right fist until it was all the way back behind his head, felt the tension and power surge into his shoulder, and then released it, pummelling Tiny square in the face.
The big man slumped back against the wall, his hands covering his face.
Milton kicked him, left and right, the side of his foot landing against his ribs and shoulders. Tiny began to slide down the wall, and Milton’s kicks landed against his forearms. He heard an animal sound, an angry growling and panting, and realised that it was him.
Tiny was down on his haunches, low enough for Milton to step in closer so that he could start to use his knees and shins.
He cracked his right knee into the side of Tiny’s head, then stepped back to switch legs when—
—his vision went black and his head was filled by a single high-pitched tone.
He lost consciousness and, when he came around again, he found he was flat on his face on the floor. The concrete was cold and damp and it smelled foul. He caught a quick glimpse to his side and saw one of the guards, his billy club raised above his head, and realised that he had been cold-cocked. The guard slammed the baton down, the wooden end cracking against his crown. The other guards came into the room, their own clubs raised. They rained blows down onto Milton, the ends of their clubs finding their marks as the men fell upon him. Milton tried to cover up, but they just switched their targets, hammering his trunk and then, as he rolled up, his kidneys. Milton curled into a ball, bringing his knees up to his chin, painfully aware that his back and ribs were vulnerable. He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth as the blows rained down on him again and again and again.
42
MILTON BECAME aware of hands on either side of his body. He was being gripped beneath his shoulders. He opened his eyes and looked straight down at the floor. It was moving beneath him: he looked down at pebbles and rocks, patches of sand, and then an uninterrupted run of rough paving slabs. His head hung limply and his face felt like one huge, throbbing bruise. His mouth was open, and streamers of saliva stretched down. He dabbed at the inside of his mouth with his tongue and tasted blood. He felt for his teeth; he thought that they were still there. A small mercy.
He looked left and right and saw the legs of the men who were hauling him onwards. They were shod in shining leather boots. The guards. He allowed his head to dangle enough so that he could try to look behind him, but the effort made his head pound so that he felt like retching.
He closed his eyes again.
When he opened them again, he was back inside. He recognised the floor of the cell block, and his feet bounced off the stairs as he was carried upward. His cell door was open and he was thrown inside. He landed on the floor between the two bedrolls.
“Hello again, John.”
He looked up: Fitzroy de Lacey was standing before him.
Milton didn’t move. His body pulsed with pain.
“You still with us?”
“Hello, Fitz,” he mumbled.
De Lacey laughed. Milton concentrated on what he could feel without having to open his eyes. His arms were splayed out, and, as he moved his fingers, he felt the imperfections in the concrete floor. He concentrated his attention on the multitude of individual aches and throbs that he could feel. His face was the worst; he was lying against something sharp, and it provided a pinprick of intensity that was just perceptible as a peak amid the general swelling. He allowed his attention to travel down his body. His ribs throbbed, as did several distinct areas on his back and legs.
“How are you feeling?”
Milton could feel the blood on his head, the warmth of it ebbing away as it started to clot. “Not feeling so great,” he said. “Sorry if I don’t get up.”
“They told me you took the fight to Tiny this time. How’d that work out for you?”
“I think I broke his nose,” he said.
De Lacey chuckled again. “You should have just taken your medicine. He wants to kill you now. I told him no. Don’t want you checking out, old boy, not yet. He’s going to be in charge of your morning exercise. I managed to placate him with that. He’s looking forward to it.”
Milton tried to roll over, but the effort was too much. He lay still.
“I had a cell like this when they first put me in here,” de Lacey said. “Bloody awful. Can’t really say anything good about it, can you? You’ve got a window, I suppose, but that just makes it worse, doesn’t it? Seeing the sky. Knowing you’ll never see it as a free man.”
Milton heard de Lacey’s footsteps as he moved around the room, and then felt the toe of his boot against his tender ribs.
“You look pathetic, John. Pathetic. It’s not how I remember you. You were something when we met before. You had a confidence about you. A swagger. I’ve been thinking about that. I always thought I was a good judge of character, but you put one over on me. Made me doubt myself. I keep coming back to it, how you were so confident. Arrogant. You knew I was dangerous and you acted like it didn’t bother you. As if you belonged with us. I believed every word of it. I’ll be honest, old boy: it took me a while to get over how stupid you made me feel. But you don’t look so confident now, John. All that cockiness is gone. You look weak.”
Milton took a deep breath and felt a stabbing pain in his chest. He crawled ahead a few feet, pain flashing with the effort, and managed to fall onto his bedroll. He brought his knees up beneath his body and pressed up with his hands, raising himself enough so that he could turn and sit, his back up against the wall of the cell.
He opened his eyes and looked over to where de Lacey was standing. He was wearing a pair of expensive-looking jeans, a white poplin shirt and a pair of new desert boots.
“Going somewhere, Fitz?”
“Funny you should say that.” De Lacey undid his cuffs and rolled up his shirtsleeves. Milton saw a heavy and ostentatiously expensive watch on his wrist. “As a matter of fact, I am. Leaving tomorrow. They’ve changed how they see me in London. The new regime here has been fortunate for me, too. I’ve been negotiating with them for years, obviously. The previous lot let me move into the villa and they let me run Tactical, but they wouldn’t release me—they didn’t want to upset the Americans, apparently. But Duterte doesn’t care about that. Wants the world to see him as a strong man. Doesn’t want anyone to think the Americans can push him around. He’s been much more receptive to what we’ve offered. The rest of my sentence is being commuted.”
Milton closed his eyes. “What did you have to put up for that?”
“What do you think? Think of the favours I’ll be able to do once I’m in circulation again. You put me in here, John, but people hav
en’t forgotten about me. Far from it. My old clients are very excited about the business we’ll be able to do together. And I have new clients, too. It’s going to be a good year.” He paused, chiding himself with a theatrical tut. “I’m sorry, that was insensitive. It’s going to be a good year for me. Not such a good one for you.”
De Lacey took a step toward the open cell door.
“Fitz,” Milton managed.
De Lacey stopped. “Yes?”
“You said this would be the last time you saw me.”
“It will be.”
“No,” Milton said. “It won’t. I—”
De Lacey interrupted him with a chuckle. “Oh, come on, John,” he said. “Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?” He turned and took the step necessary to bring himself directly in front of Milton. He crouched down and put a hand on Milton’s shoulder. “Look at you. You’re done, old boy. You’re finished. Threats only work when they have substance. You can’t threaten me. You’re in here. I’ll be out there. But when I say that you’re going to be beaten every day, you should take that seriously. It’s not an empty threat. And when I say you’re going to die, you should believe that, too.”
Fitz stood and backed out of the cell.
Tiny stepped up and took his place.
The big man had a dressing across his nose. He laced his fingers and pushed, cracking his knuckles.
“More?” Milton said.
Fitz smiled through the bars. “Lots more. Have fun, John. Goodbye.”
43
“ARE YOU all right?”
Milton coughed. He felt bubbles of hot blood in his mouth. His nose was clogged up with plugs of solid blood. He had to breathe through his mouth, and, as he did, he felt stabs of pain from the back of his mouth. He probed with his tongue and felt the sharp sliver of enamel that had once been his back molar.
“John?”
He managed to groan. It was the best he could do.
He felt Isko’s hands as they slid beneath him, then heard him grunt as he tried to roll him onto the bedroll. Milton was in too much pain to help. His body throbbed, as if every last square inch had been pummelled repeatedly with a hammer. The pain swamped over him in waves.
The old man persevered and managed to push him into a half roll that ended on the mattress. Milton lay still, face up, his eyes closed. There was more blood in his mouth, and, lying like this, it started to trickle back into his throat. He managed to turn his head so that his mouth was pointing down and then tried to push the blood out with his tongue.
He felt a dampness on his skin and then the sensation of something moving up and down in a gentle pattern. He opened his eyes. Isko was crouched next to him. He had poured the water from his mug onto Milton’s forehead, and now he was very carefully brushing it across his face with the tips of his fingers. The water was tepid, but his skin was burning hot and it felt good. The old man washed it over the cuts and bruises, gently brushing away the dried blood.
“It was Mr. Fitz again?”
Milton managed a moan. “And the big guy.”
“You were unconscious when I got here. He beat you worse than last time.”
Milton wanted to tell Isko that he had embarrassed Tiny and that he didn’t think it had gone down very well, but the sentence was too long and he didn’t have the strength for it.
“We need to do something,” the old man said. “You can’t go through this every day.”
Milton tried to speak, but all he could manage was an uncontrollable cough.
“What?”
Milton waited until it subsided. “Got any ideas?”
“Not really.”
Milton managed to raise himself to a sitting position. “Fitz,” he said. “He said he was getting out.”
“You think that will make things better?”
Milton shook his head, but the movement was dizzying and it made him feel sick.
“No,” Isko said, finishing for him. “I don’t suppose it would.”
“Message,” he said.
“What?”
“Need to get message out.”
“To who?”
“Manila,” he said. “Can you help?”
“Perhaps. I might be able to find an inmate who has a visitor. I am friendly with some. Perhaps they could arrange it. Who do you need to speak to?”
“Police,” Milton said.
44
JOSIE’S MOTHER didn’t want her to go to work.
She had to reassure her that it was the right thing to do, but the effort meant that she was half an hour late getting out the door. She had never driven in from Taguig before, and the traffic was terrible. It meant that she was forty minutes late in getting to the station.
She tried to hurry along the corridor to the desk, but she hadn’t managed to get more than a handful of paces beyond Mendoza’s open door when he called out to her.
“Where have you been?” he asked her.
“Angelo is sick.”
He feigned concern. “What’s the matter?”
“A temperature.”
“I’m sorry. Poor boy. Are they at your mother’s place?”
He fixed her with an inquisitive look as he put the question, and Josie knew, for sure, that he knew very well that they had moved and that he was probing to see what she would say.
She was prepared to call his bluff. “They are,” she said.
Mendoza nodded solicitously. “I hope he feels better soon. If you need to leave early tonight, that’s fine.”
“Thank you,” she said.
She turned to go.
“Wait,” he said. “Shut the door.”
She found that her throat was dry. She did as he asked.
“You were at the hotel last night.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. “Yes,” she said carefully.
“You saw the fire.”
“Yes. How do you know that, sir?”
“The fire department report mentioned your name. What were you doing there?”
She remembered what he had told her about not pursuing the investigation. “I was driving home,” she said. “I saw the smoke.”
“Really? It was just a coincidence?”
“Yes, sir.”
“But that doesn’t make sense. It’s not on your way home. You go south on the Skyway. The guesthouse is north. So don’t lie to me—why were you there?”
She thought on her feet, finding the expression of concern that would be expected of someone who had just been accused of dishonesty by their boss. “I was seeing an informant,” she said.
“Really?”
“I met her in Intramuros.”
Mendoza let the answer hang in the air and then smiled, almost as if he hadn’t just accused her of dishonesty. “Just a coincidence, then?”
“Yes. I was passing.”
“That’s good. Because we talked about that case and how there was no point wasting time on it.”
“We did. And I understand.”
“Excellent. You’ve been working long hours, Josie. Don’t stay late tonight. Go home to your boy.”
The mention of Angelo made her flinch. “Thank you, sir. I will.”
“He needs his mother. You should spend more time with him. I appreciate your dedication, but you’re working too hard. And Manila is a dangerous place.”
She knew exactly what that was: a threat.
“Thank you.”
She was barely halfway out the door when Mendoza said, “One more thing. Your informant.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Who is it?”
She prayed that she could maintain her composure. “Her name is Fleur.”
“Get her details for me, please. Leave them on my desk before you go home.”
“What for?”
“I want to speak to her.”
“Yes, sir.”
She felt dizzy as she left the office. The bathroom was beyond her desk, and that was fortunate. She tried to look as nonchala
nt as she could as she headed to the door, but, as soon as she was inside and she was sure that she was alone, she locked herself in a cubicle, leaned over the toilet, and vomited.
45
JOSIE WASHED her face with cold water and then went back to her desk. She sat down and stared at her blank screen for five minutes. She needed to think, but it was as if her thoughts had been coated with Vaseline. She couldn’t focus on anything for more than a few seconds. She kept thinking about Angelo, the car outside the house and the bullet that had been slipped beneath the door.
She knew that she should ignore the murder of Jessica Sanchez. She had been warned, explicitly, what would happen to her and her family if she kept putting her nose back into it. She thought again of the bullet and the photograph of Angelo, and what Mendoza had said to her this morning. She thought of the owner of the bar and how his death was so obviously linked to whatever had happened to Smith.
She thought of the fire.
And, even though she knew it was folly and that she would be putting herself and her family in danger if her disobedience was found out, she couldn’t do as she was told.
She picked up her phone and called the forensics department. She asked whether the autopsy had taken place on the body of Jessica Sanchez. She was connected to the pathologist.
“I took a look at her last night,” he reported. “Cause of death was strangulation. Extensive bruising around the neck, as you would have seen. In addition to that, there was clear evidence of asphyxiation: pinpoint haemorrhages in the skin and the conjunctiva of the eyes.”
“What else?”
“There isn’t too much to report. It was very straightforward.”
“Toxicology?”
“Nothing. What were you expecting?”
Josie made a leap. “Had she been drinking?”
She heard the man tap on a keyboard. “Eight milligrams of alcohol per hundred millilitres of blood.”
“That’s hardly anything.”