Nothing Sacred (17 page)

THAT OUR SOCIETY
no longer executes its citizens for misdemeanours is something that I believe is to our collective credit; as a lawyer I do not accept that justice is served at the end of a rope. But as I sit in the waiting area of Galley Wood high security prison, the idea of incarceration does not seem much more humane.

Galley Wood was constructed in the late nineteenth century when criminology was in its infancy and earnest reformers were looking for alternatives to execution, finding rational solutions for monstrous acts. It is a Victorian building that has been added to and added to but which retains its solid and baleful façade. Back then, prison was intended to be as abhorrent as possible, a deterrent every bit as effective as hanging – a hell on earth. I wonder how much more tolerable it is today.

I entered through a visitors' entrance, rather than the main white metal gates that prisoners pass through on their way to years of captivity. I had my photograph and fingerprints taken, was patted down, my briefcase opened and examined, and a spaniel dog was brought over to check that my shoes contained no drugs or other contraband. The other visitors had been through this procedure before, probably on many occasions, and submitted to it in sullen silence; just one more petty humiliation in their joyless lives.

Now I am sitting on a hard green plastic chair that is fixed to the wall of the waiting area, watching a woman in a tracksuit tell a child to shut the fuck up, this is the last time. It was the last time the time before, and the time before that. She has four children with her, their ages ranging from about three to fifteen, and she has a stunned expression on her face as if her present situation has occurred overnight, rather than being the gradual accumulation of hundreds of poor decisions. There are old and young people waiting to visit prisoners, men, women and children, their skin yellow and sickly under the tube lighting. But they all share a quiet anger – at the prisoners they are about to visit, at themselves, at the world in general. A prison is a terrible, dehumanising place, for prisoner, visitor and guard alike.

It is three days since Gabe and I were forced off the road and had guns placed against our heads. It has taken this long to arrange a visit to see Connor Blake, to get the paperwork organised. He is on remand, which made things easier. Had he been serving a custodial sentence, getting access to him would have been near impossible. Now I am waiting to see him. I have no idea what to expect.

As I wait I think back to that night with Gabe, the memory compromised by the amount of Scotch we had drunk and, I now suspect, the shock I was suffering at what had happened to us. Still, I remember enough to know that Gabe is in trouble every bit as deep as mine.

Gabe might have recovered from the wounds he suffered out in Afghanistan, but the guilt at what had happened to Lance Corporal Creek still troubled him months after his release from Selly Oak hospital. He had made phone calls, contacted members of his old platoon and any soldiers he could find connected with the Rifles; he had lobbied superior officers to reopen Creek's inquest, cajoled, finessed, threatened.

‘Course,' Gabe had said, ‘nobody wanted to know. Why would they? I had no proof, no grounds at all to get it reopened. They just thought I'd lost it, another PTSD loony.'

It turned out that nearly all of the soldiers of the Rifles platoon had left the service. They had followed the path of many ex-soldiers in search of the adrenalin rush the army could provide, coupled with the kind of salary it could not, and gone freelance for private security companies.

‘Mercenaries,' I said.

‘It's where the money is nowadays,' said Gabe. ‘Britain, the US, they go into countries to liberate them, then lose the stomach for the fight. All the western companies committed to infrastructure work, building motorways, oil exploration, suddenly they need protection from the pissed-off locals. You know how much an ex-sergeant can get a day out in Iraq?'

‘Don't they need, I don't know, some kind of licence?'

Gabe laughed. ‘Giving them away like pizza menus. Another thing ex-soldiers like. Fuck-all oversight. They can run around shooting whoever they want, nobody says a word.'

I imagined the veterans of the Rifles, unleashing their brand of savagery across the world with nobody to apply the brakes.

‘Turns out this wasn't enough for them,' said Gabe. ‘Bunch of them got together to create a company – Global Armour. Already won some lucrative contracts. Been out in South Sudan for six months.'

‘Doing what?'

Gabe shrugged. ‘Christ knows. Whatever they want, I expect. Anyway, doesn't matter. They're back now.'

‘The guy at the tennis court?'

Gabe nodded. ‘He's one of them. Horrible shit called Banyan. Proper little killer.'

‘And the other night? The shooting?'

Gabe smiled, swirled his Scotch as he thought back to their misjudged attempt at intimidation. ‘Yeah, that was them. Thought they could scare off a cripple. Should have seen their faces when I went after them.' He laughed at the memory.

It was now full dark and the events of that afternoon seemed something that had happened in the distant past, separated from the here and now by drink and exhaustion. I frowned, my mind working slowly through the fog of alcohol as I tried to piece it all together, cause and effect. ‘It's not a bit… drastic? What they're doing?'

Gabe shrugged. ‘Private security companies run on reputations. All they've got to trade on. If you've got a reputation for shooting your own kind, you're dead in the water.'

‘So you really think that was them?' I said. ‘Earlier?'

Gabe nodded slowly. ‘The way they got us out of the car – fast, aggressive – it was good work.'

‘Could be,' I said. ‘Still think it was Blake.'

‘One way to find out,' he said.

‘Yeah.' Go and see him. Not something I wanted to do. ‘So, what's next?' I said to Gabe.

‘That guy you met the other day. Shaved head. Major Strauss. He was my superior officer and he's on the case. We're going to nail them. It's going to happen.' He drank the remains of his glass, pushed it away from him. ‘It's going to happen.'

The room where I am waiting for Blake has walls of drably painted brick. There is a window high up and I am sitting at a table, an empty chair on the other side. The rules have been explained to me and my almost empty briefcase examined again; I know that I must not give anything to the prisoner or offer to bring anything in for the prisoner or pass on messages from proscribed persons to the prisoner or knowingly provide information to the prisoner that could result in harm to any other prisoner.

The room has two doors on opposite walls and there is a rattle in the lock of the door facing me, the door I did not come in through. The door opens and a man is walked in, a guard holding him by the arm, high up under his armpit.

‘Connor Blake,' says the guard, and he says it with a curl of disgust as if the name has tasted bad inside his mouth. He lets go of Blake and looks at the hand he was holding him by and I half expect him to wipe it on his shirt.

‘We'll be outside. If you need us. Hammer on the door.' The guard gives Blake the stare as if to warn him to be on his best behaviour but Blake does not respond, does not meet his eye. He appears to be in his own world, unaware. The guard turns and walks to the door, pauses in the doorway, takes a last look at Blake and then shakes his head and closes the door behind him. Now it is only me and Blake, him standing and me sitting, and for a moment there is silence as I look at the man who I believe has been at the root of the recent evil I have experienced.

Connor Blake is so good-looking that I do not recall ever encountering anybody who comes close. He has black hair in gentle waves and the bluest eyes I have ever seen, bluer even than his father's, and his features are so regular, his nose so straight and jaw so strong, that he would not look out of place in a Hollywood movie or on the cover of
Vanity
Fair
. He is wearing prison denims yet on him they look almost stylish, as if this season's fashion is jailhouse chic. He has his sleeves rolled up and he is wearing handcuffs, his hands in front of him. He is standing casually, relaxed, as if wearing handcuffs is nothing, as if it is something he has chosen to do.

He pulls out the chair across the table from me and sits down, leans back and makes himself comfortable, as relaxed as if he is in his own home. He clasps his hands and puts them on the table in front of him, the handcuffs making a metallic sound on the table's surface. I watch him, wait for him to speak.

‘Never hang up on me again,' he says.

‘What makes you think you can give me orders?'

Blake ignores me. He carries the contemptuous air of a man who acknowledges only that which he considers worthy. When I worked in the City, one of my clients had been the son of a sheikh connected to the House of Saud, a young construction billionaire who drove a Lamborghini and was surrounded at all times by a retinue of deferential advisors he treated worse than unwanted pets. For some reason, Blake makes me think of him.

‘The people in here,' he says. He shakes his head. ‘Wouldn't believe it. Dogs. Animals. The stink of them.' He makes his eyes go big in mock panic. ‘Man, you've got to get me out of here.'

‘How will I do that?' I say.

‘Course,' he says, and I wonder whether he hears anything I say, ‘they don't touch me. They know who I am. But still. You know what I think the problem is?'

‘What's that?'

He leans forward, whispers conspiratorially. ‘Place is full of criminals.' He leans back again, smiles, delighted at his joke. I watch him without expression.

‘Come on, man. Lighten up.'

‘Don't think so.'

‘We're going to be working together. Give me a smile.'

‘Not going to happen.'

Blake closes his eyes, puts the cuffed heels of his hands up to them, sighs in frustration. ‘Okay. Okay, Daniel. Let's have it. What's the fucking problem?'

He takes his hands away, frowning, and his bemusement seems genuine. I wonder whether he even understands that intimidation and blackmail are hostile acts, that they cause resentment in those it is visited upon.

‘You threatened me. My girlfriend.'

‘Maria? Nothing'll happen to her. Not unless I say.'

I can feel my pulse hurrying, heat rising from my chest. ‘Mention her again and I'll break your jaw.'

‘Probably could too. You're a big, ugly bastard, anybody ever tell you that?' He smiles, presumably to rob his words of any offence. ‘Listen, you're on the team now. Nothing to worry about.'

‘I wasn't worried.'

Blake gazes at me for some seconds, watches me as a bird of prey would tall grass, looking for movement. There is something hypnotic about his stare, an assuredness that seems unassailable.

‘You fucking well want to have been.'

His words are delivered with such measured threat and contain such a promise of malice that for a moment I am unbalanced; they are so at odds with his affability of moments ago that I do not know how to respond. By the time I am ready for a comeback the moment has gone and he is smiling again.

‘Daniel, hey. Start again, okay? Okay?'

‘Running me off the road,' I say. ‘Holding a gun to my head. No. No, it's not okay.'

Blake frowns, looks behind him as if asking his counsel for advice. He looks back at me, confusion in his eyes, his composure threatened for the first time.

‘What?' he says.

‘Please,' I say.

‘No,' says Blake. ‘What the fuck are you talking about?'

I look at him and he is looking at me in incomprehension and I realise that he has no idea what I am referring to. He had nothing to do with it. What happened on that road, the guns to our heads, the warning – it was all about Gabe. A military manoeuvre, that's what Gabe had said. They'd been after him, not me.

Too late I realise that Blake has done nothing except make some empty threats and rattle my cage. All I want to do now is get away from his odious presence. But I need some answers; I owe Vick that much.

‘Tell me,' I say. ‘Ryan Lowrie. What did you want from him?'

Blake looks surprised. ‘Want? Wanted him to get me out of here.'

‘How was he supposed to do that?'

Still that look of surprise, as if I am asking questions that he cannot be expected to answer. ‘Fuck would I know? He's the screw, not me. Was,' he corrects himself, smirking. ‘I told him to find a way. Get me transferred, give me a day release, whatever. His problem, not mine.'

‘But…' I say, and for a moment I cannot think of the words for this man. ‘Did you really think he could do that?'

‘I'll be honest,' he says. ‘Towards the end, I think he was stalling. Bullshitting me, saying he could do this, do that.'

I thought of Ryan, of him hearing of furniture moving, of Vick waking outside; being shown shots of his children tied up, unconscious. Of the relentless pressure put on him and his desperate response; empty promises, assurances that he would find a way to get Blake out, if he'd just give him time. Saying anything to keep Blake and his men at bay, away from his family.

‘What did you expect?' I say. ‘You were blackmailing him, harming his kids.'

Blake shrugs, looks bored. ‘Anyway, gave him a week. Told him he didn't get me out, we'd kill his wife. Ex-wife. Do it properly this time.'

‘So he took his own life.'

‘Yeah.' Contempt in Blake's voice. Contempt like I had shown Ryan, to my shame. ‘Little prick.'

This is enough for me. ‘We're done,' I say, pushing my chair back.

‘Sit down,' says Blake, amused.

‘I have nothing more to say to you,' I say, standing up. ‘I've seen all I need.'

‘You're going nowhere. You need to get me out of here.'