Guardian

by Dan Gleed

  Apprehensive, Roz looked in and, with a sudden horror, saw a gush of sticky black liquid spreading rapidly under his body, liquid that could only be blood. Momentarily she froze again, but a hard knock against her back from a clearly agitated Jomo brought her back to reality and the precariousness of their situation. Glancing upwards, she caught sight of a head appearing against the skyline followed immediately by several others, one at least of which was aiming a rifle directly at her. Simultaneously, a stab of flame sparkled at her, but the man had been in too much of a hurry and the clang of a bullet glancing off the Jeep right alongside served only to galvanise her into even faster action.

  Arriving in the driving seat like a rat on hashish and praying she wouldn’t be hit, Roz began to drive as though her life depended on it, which it probably did. She heard at least one other bullet chew into the back of the Jeep before she reached the first bend, taking it so fast she slid broadside into the close-pressed wall, only to bounce off onto the opposite side of the street, before managing to straighten up and build on what was left of her speed. Then, with the engine howling, she attacked the narrow, claustrophobic streets as though all the hounds of Hell were on her tail, oblivious to anyone or anything that might have had the misfortune to get in her way. It was pure luck that after four or five minutes of this she emerged onto a street she recognised, because it was this recognition alone that brought sanity. Her foot eased away from its flat prone position on the accelerator and, with a conscious effort, she sat back in the driving seat and flexed her shoulders from their hunched concentration. Her hands were another matter and it took a moment or two to straighten her fingers and break their almost manic grip on the steering wheel. Only then was she able to turn and look at Jomo, whose face clearly showed he was less than impressed with the whole experience. If he’d ever seen a circus ‘wall of death’ in action, he would now know exactly how the participants felt, but Roz had no time for that. Right now she had a badly wounded man on her hands and nowhere to go. She glanced over her shoulder into the back of the Jeep, not sure whether to take Malcolm to hospital where the authorities would undoubtedly interrogate him once they discovered the bullet wound, or whether to risk the drive out to Jill, in the hope she knew a friendly doctor. However, one searching look was enough to determine Malcolm needed professional help and needed it right now, or he would be beyond anything the world had to offer anyway. In some despair, she faced forward. “Jomo, show me the quickest way to the hospital.”

  Chapter 27

  Deep in the bowels of the cellar, its labyrinthine chambers excavated by slave labour some hundreds of years earlier, I was still locked in solitary confinement, sprawled in the space tunnelled out from the living rock below the high white walls. Faintly, however, my ears registered the distant sounds of rifle fire and shouting, all diffused into a soft silkiness by the solid rock and, I must admit, they barely disturbed my reverie. In any case, even if I had been able to determine what was going on, the knowledge probably wouldn’t have pierced the stupefying haze that now clouded my mind, probably wouldn’t even have sparked the beginnings of interest. Isolation and total blackness had long since sapped any latent effort towards attentiveness – attention to life, even. The considerations of these two treacherous companions, each one feeding off the other, had all but completed their task. By now it needed far more than distant sounds to bring me back to reality. I remember I simply kept my eyes closed. Why open them? I was in a world of my own and I doubt my eyelids even flickered. Certainly, my slow, shallow breathing was the only thing of which I was aware, as its hypnotic rhythm provided the only other sound in my universe. Days were dawning, as they must, and nights were falling, but none of this registered on my mind.

  ***

  With cruel delight, Ahmed ordered the sarong stripped from the girl who stood in front of him. Her baby had already been forcibly removed and she stood with her face half turned away in shame as her nakedness was revealed. She was tall and almost too thin to be beautiful, but the high-boned cheeks and narrow nostrils marked her out as a half-breed. As Ahmed stared at her, his lust, never far from the surface, began to throb and satisfaction flooded him as he contemplated the deal he had struck. For a moment he even considered an expansive gesture of thanks to Abdel-Aziz. But not yet. Let Abdel await that moment. He, Ahmed, was in no hurry. Not with such a fine slave standing naked before him and not while he could indulge the luxury of deciding how he would first make use of her body. He let his eyes wander over her, taking in the slender limbs and milk-swollen breasts, their dark nipples enlarged from recent feeding. Like many of her kind the tight, dark pubic curls that should have been guarding her prominent mound were completely shaved away and the secret parts of her sex, meant for her husband alone, were now openly on display to the two men. Returning his eyes to her face, Ahmed thrust a callous hand deep between her thighs and grasped the labia hard, watching with amusement as she gasped and stumbled back in startled dismay. Tonight he would treat himself to something exceptional. Abruptly, he let her go and turned back to face the ever inscrutable Abdel-Aziz.

  “Very well, you shall have your white boy. Barzac will bring him to the courtyard.” Ahmed had no idea how this particular prisoner had fared, but then he had little interest in the finer details. It was enough that Barzac had not seen fit to report anything untoward. As far as he was concerned, delivery alive to Abdel-Aziz was all that was required. Why waste money on pampering a prisoner you would never see again? Moreover, apart from using him as a convenient source of profit, he had little regard for Abdel-Aziz and was beginning to feel that the time was fast approaching when it would be prudent to cut this particular link and seek other outlets more amenable to his little foibles. Abdel’s only real asset was he usually made sufficient profit to not only reimburse the subsidy for each voyage, but enable Ahmed to fund further rounds without having to beg from the family. However, Abdel was not only beginning to demand far too much, he was getting a little careless in the way he came and went and there was no point in attracting unnecessary attention. So it might serve everyone well if he were to disappear. Permanently.

  Chapter 28

  Having been up all night, Roz was tired and, as she had long since discovered, when fatigue struck, dejection was quick to raise its ugly head. In particular, she was anxiously aware that Jill could appear at any moment. Malcolm had been alive when she delivered him to the hospital, if only just, but he had yet to regain consciousness and no one would commit themselves to a prognosis on his chances of survival. The bullet had missed vital organs, but one lung had collapsed through the shock of its passage and he had lost a considerable amount of blood. Not only that, but he had severe rope burns to his leg and had taken a brutal blow to the top of his head. There was no doubt that if his leg had not caught in the rope he would now be lying in the mortuary and Roz still didn’t know what she was going to say to Jill. Moreover, she was painfully aware that Malcolm had deliberately omitted to tell Jill exactly what he was planning to do. Like many large men he had a healthy respect, bordering on awe, for his small but feisty wife. But now, with Malcolm unable to defend himself, Roz was left to placate Jill in the certain knowledge that if she hadn’t made what now looked like highly unreasonable demands, Malcolm would not be facing the future as a possible invalid – assuming he made it at all. She knew Malcolm was Jill’s whole world and for perhaps the thousandth time, Roz glanced despairingly through the glass at the nurses surrounding the intensive care bed where, oblivious to her misery, they continued to bustle around the bed like bees round a honey pot.

  “Roz!” The sound of Jill’s voice caught her unawares and she cringed. “How is he?” Not waiting for an answer, Jill swept on into the intensive care ward and marched straight up to her husband’s bed. There she stood for several minutes, her animated back leaving no doubt she was questioning the nurses closely, though her eyes never left the still form of her husband. Eventually and apparently satisfied for the moment, she turned back to wh
ere Roz now hovered uncertainly in the doorway and laid a firm but gentle hand on her arm. “Come on, Roz, you and I are going to find a cup of coffee and you’re going to tell me exactly what’s been going on. All of it.” There was a crackle of steel in her manner, but her innate kindness was mixed with the very real grief playing out in her eyes as she gazed at her young charge.

  “So in the end Malcolm decided there was only one thing he could do. He had to get in somehow, or we’d never be sure and it was the only lead we had. The first I realised there was real trouble was when I heard two shots. I drove round the corner and Malcolm just seemed to fall down the rope he had been using to climb the wall. When I got to him he wasn’t moving, but somehow Jomo and I managed to lift him into the back of the Jeep – it’s all a bit of a blur – and then Jomo showed me how to get here. The rest you know.”

  Roz petered out into anxious silence, waiting for Jill to react, to shout at her, cry, do anything. But Jill just sat quietly, eyes half hooded, sifting through the events of the last twenty-four hours, mind and heart at odds while she searched for a way through the dilemma posed by her beloved husband’s dreadful injuries. She knew she had to be strong for him, had to take his place somehow as she confronted the world, yet still comfort Roz. But what to do, how to respond? Should she call a halt to the search, tell Roz the two of them had done their best, but now it was time to give up on Paul? Should she rant and rave about the stupidity of their escapades – something she supposed any normal wife would do? Or should she try to take over where Malcolm had left off? Not once did she consider playing the distressed wife. For a moment she toyed with the idea of asking the medical staff to keep things quiet, but in her heart of hearts she knew that was a non-starter. Bullet wounds to white people were too difficult to explain and with the hospital involved, she couldn’t hope to keep a lid on the night’s exploits. Once Malcolm regained consciousness, she guessed it wouldn’t be long before the police started asking him questions. And when that happened and an official enquiry got under-way, she very much doubted if it would help their efforts to find Paul. She was all too well aware they already had a good deal of explaining to do and could hardly imagine what the authorities would say when they realised who Roz was trying to find and, by implication, warn. Inevitably, the police were going to be far from pleased when they discovered the Paul in question was wanted up country for questioning about a double murder. Annoyed that she was still thinking defensively about a young man she hadn’t even met, while her husband lay unconscious on his account, Jill tried to put the Moncton boy forcibly aside and concentrate on what was best for Malcolm. The trouble was she knew what would happen, if and when he began to recover. Although out of the picture for now, he would still demand to know what was being done to find Paul. Having got the bit between his teeth, he would never give up and, knowing what he was like, there was no doubt in her mind that being attacked would only stiffen his resolve.

  Jill sighed and, as she did so, heard a commotion further down the corridor. Irritated, she spun round in time to see Matron firmly diverting the local Chief Inspector of Police away from the ward and into her office. The die was cast. She knew immediately that she couldn’t let Malcolm down, or Roz for that matter, and would have to find a way round the dilemma posed by the officer’s presence.

  Whipping round she hissed “Roz, the police are here. Go now, quickly, before they see you. It’s better they don’t know you’re here, for now at least and I need time to think. Keep the Jeep and get on home. I’ll call you when I can, but stay out of sight until we’ve had time to discuss where we go from here. Quick now, while that man is still in Matron’s office. Use the stairs over there. Find a way out.”

  Chapter 29

  Rough hands grabbed me under the armpits and dragged me upright. I suppose it’s inevitable that such people never major on consideration. At any rate, I remember groaning as the blood flowed reluctantly back into my cramped limbs, forced as they were to respond to unexpected movement. Swiftly and with a total lack of ceremony, they dragged me out into the passageway and propped me against yet another wall. Then in broken English, a guttural voice ordered me to stand upright and move my legs, but like it or not, self-help was out of the question. I could summon neither compliance nor rebellion.

  Slowly, involuntarily, I simply slid down the wall, unable and unwilling to command my legs or, for that matter, any other limb. Even when they began to slap me around, I was unable to react. For some reason far beyond the abilities of my addled mind to determine, I could sense the faintest stirrings of concern in their attitude towards me, but in my dream-like state any explanation merely stood tantalisingly out of reach. With no desire to influence matters, there seemed little point in staying awake and I duly let myself slide back into oblivion. Later, I have no idea how much later, the first weak warnings of distant pain reached out to me, thin tendrils of discomfort edging their way under the layers of indifference that isolated me from reality. At the same time, even my ears switched back on and although initially I remained totally indifferent, I did eventually become aware of individual sounds. In particular, that of distant slapping and pummelling, which ultimately turned into an explicit awareness that the unwanted intrusion was growing ever closer.

  Then the pain hit me. It gathered in my feet first, before setting out swiftly, all too swiftly, to traverse the length of my legs, running this way and that, ferreting around in obscure parts of my torso, malevolent in its intensity, recruiting my arms in passing, intensifying yet again as it narrowed to drive up through my neck and spill into my face, before exploding at the centre of my brain, the seat of all pain supervision. There it delivered its message in one long, loud and uncompromising scream. And I know I accompanied it, because I could hear the rich tenor that my voice had but recently attained, as it rose in counterpoint to the full orchestra playing along my nerves. Which meant it wasn’t long before someone forced a gag into my mouth and, despite my weakness, my whole body tuned itself to producing a physical answer to the mauling, leaving me to bite down helplessly in a supreme effort to contain the waves of nausea and pain thrusting barbed and lacerating hands into every part of my body.

  Believe me, returning circulation can vault its way through every last capillary when you’ve been abused as I had. And yet the very pain that threatened to drown me was probably my salvation, because it galvanised me as nothing else could. In short order, the layers of indifference that had cocooned and shrouded my wavering mind were stripped away, dissolved as though they had never been. And in an experience that you might liken to birth, I shot back into reality, kicking and choking somewhat more lustily than had probably been the case on that first journey into the world. All of which left me trembling with exhaustion and the guards visibly relieved. Oddly, they relaxed perceptibly from that moment and, under the glow of a single overhead bulb dangling loosely by its cloth-covered wires, they proceeded to strip my fouled clothing in favour of a kikoi, which they wound loosely round my waist. Their ministrations didn’t take long and, with my hands once more tightly bound at my back (for the life of me, I couldn’t see why), I was half carried, half propelled up the steps and into the night-darkened courtyard for the first breath of fresh air in a very long time.

  It was the all-pervading, never-to-be-mistaken smell of drying fish that gave me the real clue. Only minutes before, I had been shoved roughly into the cramped boot of a long-nosed Daimler waiting in the courtyard that had presented me with my last external view. I remember the car was waiting with its engine ticking over. Even I managed to work out that I was the anticipated cargo. And from the moment we turned out through the high metal gates, I tried desperately to work out where we were headed. To my intense surprise, the journey was over almost before it had begun and I felt the car respond to the brakes and roll to a stop on what sounded like rough gravel. Earlier, staggering up from my cell, there had been no hint of what to expect, but on emerging from the corridor and being pulled roughly towards the c
ar, I had become deeply aware of a hostile scrutiny from a small knot of men watching progress from a dimly lit upstairs window. Still unable to understand the import of events, but elated by my release from the suffocating confines of the boot, I now found my thoughts turning ever more to concern over my likely destination.

  Clearly, I was at the old harbour; but why? I couldn’t fathom it out. Just a few steps down from where I stood, a single jetty pointed its snub nose into the rapidly shelving water. Above me, the darkened Customs shed filled the horizon, its dilapidated old gates barring entry to the inner sanctum of power like a gap-toothed old crone. Around me, the night air stirred and blew fitfully across the water from the darkened dhows riding at anchor, a stone’s throw from the land. The air was warm and filled with the mingled perfume of dried fish and ambergris, whilst in the velvet blackness the sea stirred quietly against the end of the worn old stone. For a few seconds I almost forgot my predicament, momentarily entranced and at the same time stimulated by the sights and sounds all around me. Which, if you knew the old harbour, would only go to show how out of it I really was, despite the reprieve from that foul cell. Phosphorescence flickered and flared intensely white in the backwash from the jetty and, watching the ebb and flow, I had a sudden longing to throw myself in and let the layers of filth wash off my emaciated body. But scarcely had the thought formed, when a shallow outrigger canoe emerged from the blackness and brought my preoccupation to an abrupt end. The craft was no more than a roughly hollowed-out tree trunk with a single outrigger, powered by a barely discernible young man sitting in the stern. Nevertheless, its arrival galvanised my guards and a hand in my back propelled me down to the end of the jetty as the canoe swept broadside to the landing stage, to bob gently, held by a thin but muscular arm reaching up to grasp a protruding piece of wood doing time as a makeshift mooring.