Osama

by Chris Ryan

  The pebble made a flat thud as it hit the taped window. There was a slight indentation at the point of impact but the glass itself remained fixed. He struck another three times while there was still enough noise from the aircraft to mask the sound. As it faded away, he stopped and waited another three minutes for a second plane to pass.

  It took two more strikes with the pebble for the glass to slip from its frame, but it remained in one unshattered piece on account of the tape. Joe cautiously removed the glass, before crawling through the opening and gently laying it on the carpet inside. He listened hard for any sound of movement in the house. Nothing.

  He needed to make sure this was the right place, so he stepped towards the mantelpiece where he could see the silhouettes of three framed pictures. At random, he selected the middle one. It was too dark to make out the details, so he stepped back to the French windows to take advantage of the moon. Now that he could see the photograph properly he inhaled sharply.

  It was of him.

  He looked so much younger. No frown lines on his forehead, no scars on his face. His skin looked less leathery, his frame less bulky. In his eyes there shone a quiet enthusiasm that he had not felt for years.

  Joe was not alone in this picture. She was standing next to him, looking like she always had done in his mind. The girl next door. His best friend for so many years. Only he could see now what he’d never seen then. The way she had brushed up against him, the way she had leaned her head on his shoulder the way friends seldom did. Joe felt a pang of something like guilt, and the sickening image of Caitlin, bleeding and begging and dying, flashed across his eyes. He returned the picture to its place before creeping towards the door of the sitting room, then along the hallway and up the stairs.

  He found her sleeping in a bedroom where the curtains were open a few inches. She stirred the moment he opened the door, rolling in her bed and muttering something under her breath. He recognized the voice. It was definitely her. Definitely Eva. Joe stood in the doorway, waiting for her to settle, but she didn’t. He could hear her teeth grinding, and remembered the way she used to do that whenever she was on edge. Whatever dream was troubling her continued to do so. It gave Joe no pleasure to realize that he now had to drag her into a waking nightmare. He clutched his scalpel once more and walked the few paces from the door to the bedhead.

  His eyes were used to the darkness now, and in any case there was a thin shard of moonlight. He could make out the hair streaked sweatily across her face, and could see her lips moving silently.

  And he saw her eyes suddenly open wide to stare up at him.

  Her mouth opened to scream.

  Joe moved like lightning. He slapped his left hand over her open mouth just in time to turn her scream into a mumble. He held the scalpel three inches from her eyes.

  ‘You see this?’ he whispered.

  She nodded frantically, her eyes huge with terror.

  ‘It’s sharp enough to slit your throat with one cut. And that’s what’s going to happen if you make a sound, and unless you tell me who sent you to visit me in prison. Understood?’

  Eva nodded again.

  Slowly Joe loosened the grip on her mouth, but he kept his hand two inches above it and the scalpel just where it was. ‘Talk,’ he said.

  ‘How did you . . . ’

  ‘Who sent you?’

  Her eyes were brimming with tears. That told Joe nothing. People cry when they’re falsely accused, but they also cry when they’re scared.

  ‘Nobody sent me. I told you. Joe . . . how did you get out?’

  ‘I’m asking the questions, Eva.’

  ‘I know you’re not going to hurt me, Joe.’ She was whispering. ‘And I know you didn’t hurt Caitlin. Let me sit up. Let me talk to you.’

  Joe didn’t move. There was ten seconds of silence. And then: ‘I swear to God, Eva. You make a fucking sound, you’ll regret it.’

  She swallowed hard, but nodded. Joe moved his hands back and she shuffled up to a sitting position.

  ‘Can we turn the light on?’

  ‘Absolutely not.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I don’t know who’s watching.’

  ‘How did you get out?’ Eva pressed. ‘Did they give you bail?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘But you’re all wet . . . you smell like . . . Joe, I’m scared. What’s going on?’

  She was scared. He could tell. But was she scared of him, or scared of someone else? And Joe had interrogated enough people to realize that if they didn’t want to tell you the truth, there was only one way to make them. Eva might not be lying to him. But equally, she might.

  Moving fast, he put the scalpel on her beside table, grabbed her body and spun her round onto her front. He pressed her, face down, into the pillow and yanked her right arm up behind her back until he could feel the tendons reach straining point. He kept her in that position for a full ten seconds before speaking.

  ‘Who sent you? You’ve got five seconds to tell me before I break your arm.’

  He yanked her head up by her hair and she gasped.

  ‘One,’ said Joe.

  She inhaled again: half breath, half sob.

  ‘Two.’

  ‘Oh, God, please . . .’

  ‘Three.’

  ‘Nobody sent me . . .’

  ‘Four.’

  ‘What’s happened to you, Joe?’ Her voice was weak. Almost inaudible. ‘It’s me. It’s me!’

  He didn’t reach five. Suddenly he saw himself, as though from outside his own body, torturing his oldest friend. Was this really him?

  ‘Joe . . . please . . .’

  Slowly he released the pressure on her arm. She scrambled away from him to the other side of the bed. And the way she looked at him was like a knife twisting inside him. He felt himself screwing up his face as the agony in his mind became acute. Looking away, he caught sight of himself in a full-length mirror on a wardrobe beside the bed. The knife twisted further. He looked fucking demented. No wonder Eva was terrified.

  Her breath was coming in short, shaky gasps, like a child unable to stop sobbing.

  ‘How . . . how did you get into my house?’

  ‘We can’t stay here,’ Joe interrupted. ‘They’ll know you visited me. It won’t take them long to come knocking.’

  ‘Who? Who’s “they”?’

  It was a good question. Joe couldn’t answer it.

  ‘Joe, if you’re in trouble, maybe I can help?’ Her voice was very small.

  ‘Maybe.’ He stood up and walked to the other side of the room, where he peered out into the back garden between the gap in the curtains. A cat was drinking at the edge of the water feature. Other than that, nothing. He turned to look back at her. A thought had crystallized in his mind. What mattered now wasn’t whether he trusted Eva. It was whether she trusted him.

  ‘Get dressed,’ he said. ‘Quickly. Is there any money in the house?’

  ‘Next door . . . in the cash box on the table . . . It’s open . . .’

  ‘Do you have a weapon?’

  She blinked in the darkness. ‘Of course not.’

  Joe nodded and quickly left her to get dressed. He found the money – four £50 notes. Next to the box was a copy of The Times; it was the same one the lawyer had showed him in prison, open at the article about him.

  Something else caught his attention. Through the thin curtains he could see the headlights of a vehicle parked outside. He pulled the curtains a centimetre apart, just enough to scope it out.

  A black van. Registration: KT04 CDE.

  “They” were here . . .

  He sprinted back to Eva’s room. ‘We’ve got company,’ he said.

  ‘Who?’ She was dressed – jeans, jumper – and had just pulled on her trainers. She picked up a small bag from the table beside the bed.

  ‘Just move!’ Joe hissed.

  He grabbed her arm and pulled her down the stairs. No time for stealth – their footsteps seemed to shake t
he whole house. The van’s lights were illuminating the frosted glass in the front door, and he could see silhouettes approaching. ‘Who is it?’ Eva shrieked.

  ‘This time of night, it’s not the fucking milkman. Get out the back!’

  Eva groaned as she saw the glass missing from her French windows, but she clambered through the hole with Joe following close behind. He helped her over the low fence into the neighbours’ property. They sprinted across the half-dozen gardens, giving no thought to secrecy or silence. Joe saw the upstairs lights come on in two of the houses. Clearly they were disturbing people with their noise.

  They reached the end of the terrace in a little under a minute. From the last garden they could open the gate over which Joe had had to scramble. The moment they were on the street he grabbed Eva’s hand and pulled her in the opposite direction to her own house. He looked over his shoulder. Two figures were running towards them, unrecognizable in the pale yellow lamplight, but Joe instantly spotted the handguns they were clutching. The two men were thirty metres away and closing.

  ‘Run!’ Joe hissed.

  They turned out of Dawson Street and into Halfway Parade. On the other side of the street, the Hand and Flower, where Joe and Eva used to drink when they were teenagers, was turfing out its customers. The road was busy – buses, minicabs, even a couple of cyclists with flashing head-torches and hi-vis jackets. Twenty metres ahead, two passengers were stepping into a bus. Still clutching Eva’s hand, Joe ran towards it, just managing to jump on board before the doors hissed shut. It pulled away almost immediately as Eva, breathless, waved her police ID at the driver.

  Joe’s attention was elsewhere. He was staring through the window at the two figures that had just arrived alongside the moving bus. They both wore jeans, trainers and hoodies. The face of one of them was obscured, but Joe just caught a glimpse of the other. Dark skin. Yellow teeth. The same kid who had been loitering outside his house in what seemed like another lifetime.

  Weapon or no weapon, he wanted to burst out and get his hands on the fucker. Eva would be safe on the bus. Now it was accelerating, and the kid had disappeared. All twenty or so other passengers were staring at the two of them with suspicion.

  Joe turned to Eva. ‘We can’t stay on here,’ he breathed. ‘Too many people. Where can we talk?’

  Her face was deathly white. She looked almost too petrified to respond. ‘Next stop,’ she whispered.

  A minute later they stepped off the bus. Eva walked briskly, with Joe following. She turned left, off the high street and into a long residential road that Joe remembered from his youth. It extended half a mile, becoming gradually more shabby the further they walked. It started to rain again. In the distance Joe saw the twinkling lights of three tower blocks, and it was only then that he realized where Eva was taking him.

  The bandstand – that crumbling old relic by the swings and slides in the recreation area, a stone’s throw from Lady Margaret Road – was their place. It had always been deserted in bad weather, and it was deserted tonight. Joe only gave up his heavy overcoat, putting it around Eva’s shoulders, when they reached the recreation area and he had established that nobody would see his prison uniform. Eva gave him a grateful look, but then he noticed her eyes lingering on the blood on his hand and the uniform. She wasn’t at ease, and Joe didn’t blame her.

  Stepping onto that empty bandstand was like stepping back in time. The white paint on the wrought-iron railings was still peeling. There was the familiar smell of rotten wood from the damp decking. The park around them was bleak and neglected, with high-rises twinkling all around. An old tramp was sleeping on a bench by the adjacent playground, using his coat as a tarp against the downpour, but apart from him, there were only Joe and Eva in the vicinity. They sat down side by side with their backs against the railings, looking towards the middle of the bandstand.

  They remained silent for a full minute, listening only to each other’s exhausted, shaking breath and the patter of rain on the roof of the bandstand. When Joe finally spoke, his voice sounded monotone.

  ‘I was in Pakistan when they went in for Osama bin Laden.’

  He could sense Eva holding her breath.

  ‘I saw something I shouldn’t have seen. My mate who was with me died the next day. I got sent home and someone tried to do me in a hit and run. I took . . .’ He felt a shadow cross his mind. ‘I took Caitlin and Conor away, somewhere I thought was safe. They found us, I don’t know how. They killed Caitlin and tried to make it look as if I’d committed suicide. But then they were disturbed . . .’ He heard his voice waver. ‘. . . Conor saw his mum’s body. He saw the knife in my hands.’

  Eva put her hand on his knee.

  ‘What did you see?’ she whispered. ‘In Pakistan, I mean.’

  Joe shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Only that they removed two bodies from bin Laden’s compound.’

  ‘Two? But . . . I saw it on the news. They all said—’

  ‘I know what they said.’ He sensed Eva tensing up at his aggressive tone, and immediately regretted it. He took a deep breath and continued. ‘In Barfield four Arab guys tried to kill me.’

  Another silence.

  ‘Joe,’ Eva said timidly. ‘Are you sure about all this? It sounds like . . .’

  Joe snorted. ‘Like I’m cracking up? That’s what they all think. My OC. Even Caitlin thought I was imagining things.’ He turned towards Eva. ‘And they’re right.’ It was the first time he had admitted it, even to himself. Somehow it made him feel lighter. ‘I have flashbacks. Blackouts. But they did kill Caitlin, Eva. They did try to cut me up in Barfield. Someone’s turning your house upside down right now, and I’m not making that up either . . .’

  ‘Wait,’ Eva breathed.

  On a reflex, Joe looked over his shoulder to check nobody was approaching. But the rain was falling heavily again. Apart from the sleeping tramp, they were alone.

  ‘The men who attacked you in prison. They were Middle Eastern?’

  Joe nodded.

  ‘Were they in the visiting room the day I came?’

  Joe thought back. He could see two of them in his mind, sitting ten metres to his left. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘There was a man,’ said Eva. ‘He looked, I don’t know, Arab or Asian. I know that doesn’t mean anything, but he was in the visiting room with us.’

  Joe tried to sharpen his memory. There must have been a third man sitting there – the inmates wouldn’t have been in the visiting room without a visitor – and the more he concentrated, the more a blurry face came into his mind. If Joe saw him again, perhaps he’d be able to make a positive ID. But without something to jog his memory . . .

  ‘Would you recognize him?’ he asked Eva.

  She nodded. ‘I think so . . .’

  They fell silent again, then Joe said quietly: ‘You don’t have to help me. If anyone suspects you know where I am, they’ll—’

  ‘—break into my house at night? I think it’s safe to say somebody already suspects.’

  Joe nodded. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Eva stood up, walked to the other side of the bandstand and stared out into the rain. ‘Remember last time we were here?’ she asked. Joe nodded. He also remembered the photograph he’d found in her sitting room.

  ‘Every male visitor to Barfield has their photograph taken and biometric information recorded,’ Eva continued, suddenly brisk.

  ‘Barfield will be crawling with—’

  ‘I don’t need to go to Barfield. It’ll be on the system, somewhere. I’ll just have to locate it.’ She looked out at the rain again. ‘I could go to the office first thing.’

  ‘I don’t like it,’ Joe said.

  ‘Better than sitting and shivering in the bandstand. I’ll drop into my place first, see what state it’s in, get a few things—’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ Joe cut in. ‘They’ll have eyes out for you.’ He still didn’t know who ‘they’ were.

  ‘I can look after myself, Joe.’

  ‘You
can’t go home.’

  There was an edgy silence. ‘Fine,’ Eva said. She looked at her watch. ‘It’s just gone midnight. I’ll wait till six before I go to the office – any earlier and it’ll look suspicious.’

  Joe closed his eyes. People close to him were suffering. Dying. He didn’t want Eva to be next in line. But he didn’t have any better ideas.

  It was almost as if she knew what he was thinking. ‘I’ll be careful,’ she said. ‘How will I contact you?’

  Eva gave him some paper and a ballpoint pen from her bag, and he wrote down two random strings of eight letters, numbers and symbols, following them both with the suffix ‘@hotmail.com’, and by each one he wrote an equally unguessable password. Then he copied them exactly onto a second piece of paper, and handed it to Eva. ‘I’ll create these accounts,’ he said. ‘The first one’s yours, the second’s mine. Check it regularly, every hour if you can, but not from your phone and never from the same location. If you don’t hear from me, meet back here at 1800 hours.’

  Eva neatly folded the piece of paper and placed it in her bag.

  A sudden wave of exhaustion crashed over Joe. He sat down again, his head against the edge of the bandstand. ‘I need to sleep,’ he murmured. He’d had no shuteye since his first night in prison – forty-eight hours ago – and even that had been more a trance than a sleep. He looked down at his prison clothes. ‘And I need to clean up, find something else to wear before it gets light. And then . . .’

  He paused.

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘They told me Conor was staying with Caitlin’s dad in Epsom,’ he said quietly. ‘I need to know he’s safe.’

  Eva nodded. It looked like she understood.

  Silence. Joe tried to fight his drowsiness.

  ‘These attacks . . . are they . . . revenge?’ Eva asked quietly. ‘For bin Laden, I mean?’

  Sheikh al-Mujahid? He’s not dead . . .

  ‘Don’t know,’ Joe replied. He was slurring from exhaustion. ‘I just don’t know . . . Doesn’t make sense.’

  Maybe something showed in his face, because Eva suddenly crouched down beside him. She put her arms round his shoulders and rested her head against his chest, much like she had been doing in the picture he’d seen in her house. ‘I’m sorry about your friend. And I’m so, so sorry about Caitlin.’