One Dead Witness

by Nick Oldham

  ‘What ... what’s going on?’ Charlie Gilbert blurted from the bed. He had been watching the events unfolding with incomprehension. He then vomited spectacularly down his chest, stomach and genitals, fell forwards on the bed with a groan, huge ass in the air, and started snoring.

  Kruger raised his eyebrows at Bussola. ‘Well?’

  Reluctantly he edged towards the wall. His eyes lasered into Kruger with a fierce anger. ‘You’ll regret this, Steve.’

  It was a statement of fact. It told Kruger nothing he didn’t already know.

  ‘In fact you’ll all regret this,’ Bussola declared blandly.

  ‘Get the girls out of here,’ Kruger said to Myrna and Kelly. The two women entered the room, careful not to step into the line of fire between Kruger, Jimmy and their two targets. Bussola watched them through veiled lids, lingering over Myrna. His face turned back to Kruger. ‘Why the hell are you here anyway, Steve?’ Bussola mused out loud. He licked his lips. The ex-cop felt himself begin to weaken underneath the tough exterior.

  Even naked and exposed, Bussola was every inch a gangster. He’d paid his dues on the mean streets of New York and Chicago, punking around with the gangs, terrifying neighbourhoods, but always thinking about expansion and the future. In his thirties, with a well-established criminal organisation in those cities, he decided to move the centre of his operations to Miami where it expanded to epic proportions. He orchestrated some bloody - and a few bloodless - coups and continued to grow, though he only ever made the number two spot. Number one was held by a mobster named Tony Corelli. Corelli’s unexpected demise at the hands of two armed women - a case still unsolved by the cops - opened the way for Bussola to claim top spot. Which he did, ruthlessly taking over Corelli’s flourishing empire.

  Bussola was widely believed to be a billionaire.

  He was also widely believed to have personally killed several people on the way to amassing his fortune. Legend had it that he once chain-sawed a rival to pieces. This was never proved, but Kruger believed it.

  And Kruger was frightened because he believed everything about Bussola, and frightened because he believed Bussola’s words.

  He was also totally disgusted at a man who had so much wealth at his disposal that he could have bought anything legal in terms of sexual pleasure, yet resorted to a sordid back-street room where he, together with another man, got his kicks by raping a girl who did not look twelve years old.

  Maybe that was part of the thrill. Doing something which, no matter what the circumstance, was unlawful - and getting away with it. The ultimate middle finger stuck up at a society he despised.

  Except this time he would not get away with it.

  Kruger found he could not prevent his mouth curling into a sneer of contempt as these thoughts went through his mind.

  ‘What choo lookin’ at?’ Bussola growled.

  ‘Scum.’

  Bussola nodded, then winked at Kruger. ‘I’m a very bad person to have as an enemy.’

  ‘So am I,’ Kruger responded. He could see Bussola was not convinced, whereas Kruger honestly believed the Italian would be a very bad adversary.

  Myrna and Kelly escorted the two girls out of the room, the younger one of them covered up by a large, soiled towel Kelly had found on the floor.

  This left Kruger and Jimmy facing Bussola, the bodyguard and the big fat guy spread-eagled on the bed in a sea of vomit.

  Their guns never wavered.

  ‘What now, Steve?’ Bussola raised his thick bushy eyebrows.

  ‘Cops.’

  ‘And what do you expect to happen?’

  ‘Arrest and conviction.’

  Bussola blinked as though he could not believe his ears. Then he roared with laughter, throwing his head right back. His penis, now limp, jiggled with merriment. Then the laughter stopped. He became serious. ‘I very much doubt it, Steve. Very much.’

  A cop siren wailed not too distantly. A flood of relief passed through Kruger. ‘We’ll see, Mario.’ Inside he already had his doubts.

  ‘How about letting us get dressed?’

  ‘No - stay as you are,’ Kruger said, not wanting to lose any forensics. ‘Just as we found you - naked as jailbirds.’

  Chapter Five

  Although British prisons have had a bad press over recent ears for their allegedly liberal regimes, it is true to say at even a prison run along the strictest of lines would not be able to control inmates 100 per cent of the time - unless they were banged up in their cells twenty-four hours a day.

  And however tightly policed the prison inside which Trent was incarcerated had been, there is a better than even chance he would still have been able to plan, prepare and execute the course of action he had decided to take.

  As it was, the fairly laid-back way in which the prison was run meant that with just a little care and common sense, there was no earthly chance of him being caught.

  Once again he was awake early.

  He watched the darkness of night become the brightness of morning, willing the time to pass, eager to get going.

  By the time his cell door opened he was shaved, dressed and ready for breakfast. He did not show any enthusiasm to the warder for the day ahead, however, but sloped dejectedly out of the cell and walked slowly along the landing. He stared blankly ahead of himself, dragging his feet, trying to give the impression of a dead man walking.

  He joined the queue to the breakfast servery. Coysh was one of the servers, Trent noticed, and the man slopped wet scrambled eggs and bacon swimming in grease onto people’s plastic plates.

  Coysh clocked Trent’s imminent approach and surreptitiously selected a few prime rashers for him.

  The two men exchanged a knowing glance. Trent said, ‘Everything okay?’

  Coysh nodded.

  ‘Keep me informed.’

  Coysh turned his attention to the next one in line.

  Trent moved on, smiling secretly, grabbed a mug of tea and sat down at a table. Alone.

  ‘I heard about what happened last night, Danny,’ Henry Christie said. The two of them were in Henry’s office, the door closed, his phone on divert.

  He saw she looked tired and worn-out. Not just because of the problems of the early morning, but for lessons far more fundamental. The white, narrow strip of plaster over the sutured cut on her face did not help matters.

  Danny, in turn, eyed Henry. She bit her bottom lip to stop it from quivering because she wanted to cry. But not here, Not in front of her future boss. The last thing she wanted was to be tagged as a pathetic, weeping woman.

  She drew in a deep, juddering breath and braced herself.

  ‘Think it was Jack Sands who smashed the window and damaged your car?’ Henry asked. He leaned his elbows on the desk.

  Danny shrugged noncommittally. In herself she knew damn well it was Sands. Evidentially, though, she could not prove a thing.

  ‘Want to discuss it?’ Henry offered.

  She closed her eyes, shook her head. She was perilously close to bubbling over. She had spent the last two hours since coming to work avoiding both Henry and Sands in an effort to steer away from the problem. She knew that if she encountered either one of them, the bubble would burst with a messy flood of emotion all over the carpet. With Sands it would have been anger. With Henry, tears.

  Henry had been the first one to collar her and beckon her into his office.

  ‘No, not really, Henry. I just want to get on with my work. I’ve got loads of things to get boxed off before I join you. I don’t want to talk about my private life, if you don’t mind ... with respect.’

  Even as she said the words, she knew they weren’t true. More than anything she wanted to share her predicament with someone. But not here, not now. She placed her hands on the chair-arm and started to stand up . . . about to run away.

  Henry stood up quickly and waved her to be seated. He came round from behind his desk and sat down on the chair next to Danny.

  He said, ‘I’ll bet you’re thinki
ng you’re making one hell of a bad impression with your new boss, aren’t you?’ She opened her mouth to say something; Henry held up a silencing finger. ‘I’ll tell you this, Danny. All I’m interested in - bottom line - is how you perform in the workplace. However, I know from my own experience that personal issues often cloud professional judgments. I know that for a fact, Danny. I’ve been that person in that situation more times than I care to remember. So what I’m trying to say, dead clumsily, is that I realise people are more than machines, more than what they are for eight hours a day at work, and I’m interested in my team as individuals who have thoughts, feelings, aspirations, problems ... whatever ... and these are the things I have to deal with to get the best out of my people.’ He blew out his cheeks and said, ‘Phew! That was a long one. So, if I can help you Danny, let me. Okay? Totally confidential.’

  She slumped back, regarding Henry’s face slowly. Letting her eyes take his features in. It was a kind, concerned face. She felt instinctively she could trust him.

  ‘And not only that,’ he reminded her. ‘As you said, I am involved already. I have some right to know about what happened in the garage last night ... at the very least.’

  ‘Yeah, you’re right Henry.’

  She looked away, gathered her thoughts and decided to tell him the lot. ‘Me and Jack have been having an affair for about six months. I fell in love with him, I guess. All that lonely female baloney. But it was going nowhere, except down the tubes. I’ve tried to end it a few times now, but he’s so overbearing and clinging and possessive - horrible, really, if I’m honest - and I just let it go on and on. Night before last I’d had enough and told him it was over, for good this time. But he won’t let it lie and I don’t want to hurt his wife. I’m sure she doesn’t know yet. I feel a complete bitch and I’m not happy at all with the situation. . . I’m so bloody depressed, actually. I’m dying to get out of that office onto CID.’ She stopped talking abruptly because she realised the babbling had started. She swallowed and wiped the beginning of a tear out of her eye. ‘Sorry, Henry.’

  ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘What did Jack say last night, after I’d gone?’

  ‘Nothing, other than to abuse me.’ Henry leaned forwards, elbows on knees. ‘What do you want to do, Danny? What’s the best thing that can happen now?’

  She considered the questions a moment. ‘For him to accept it’s over, leave me alone, and let us both get on with our lives.’

  At eleven-thirty that morning, Trent swigged down the last dregs of his morning brew. He was alone in his cell, sitting on the edge of his bunk, leafing idly through one of his teen-girl magazines. He closed it, slid it onto the pile underneath his bunk and got to his feet. He walked over to the steel toilet in the corner of the cell and urinated, his back to the door.

  As he finished he heard a movement behind. He zipped up and turned.

  Blake leaned nonchalantly against the door. In his grimy nicotine-stained fingers he held a self-rolled cigarette from which a single whisper of smoke rose.

  ‘Okay, nonce?’ he sneered. He slurped his tongue around the inside of his mouth, then spat on the cell floor.

  Cold icicles of fear spread rapidly through Trent’s veins. Literally, his blood ran cold.

  ‘What do you want?’

  There was a strange, deadly look in Blake’s eyes which Trent immediately interpreted. When the answer spilled out of the villain’s mouth, Trent was not surprised.

  ‘You. . . I want you - but you’ve always known that, haven’t you?’

  Trent nodded. He could scarcely breathe.

  Yes, he had known that one day Blake would want to have him too. But it would not be from a loving desire, it would be from hatred.

  ‘I want to give it to you, Trent,’ Blake said. ‘Everything I’ve got - and I want to make you suffer just as much as you made them little girls suffer. . . and after that I’m gonna make you suffer ten times more so they’ll never ever properly repair you.’

  ‘You’ve already done that.’ It was a hoarse, strained whisper that grated out from Trent’s dry throat.

  ‘I haven’t even started.’ Blake pushed himself upright and took a menacing stride into the cell. Trent almost screamed, though it was more of a whimper. He recoiled, stepped backwards, caught the back of his knee on the toilet, causing the joint to fold. He grabbed thin air in an attempt to prevent himself from falling backwards, failed, and next thing he knew he was sitting on the lavatory, looking meekly upwards at the towering menace of Blake.

  The big man burst into laughter.

  ‘You pathetic twat.’ He reached for Trent’s throat with his right hand. The fingers curled around his windpipe, digging in, hoisting him to his feet. Blake pivoted and slammed Trent against the cell wall. ‘You haven’t got an ounce of fight in you, have you? I’m going to really enjoy raping you, so you’d better prepare yourself, ‘cos I won’t be long. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow, you little piece of shite.’ His face was only inches away from Trent’s. He reeked of smoke and body odour. His breath made Trent gag. ‘Who knows?’ he snarled. ‘But it’ll be soon and you won’t know what’s hit you - because I intend inserting more than just myself up your backside. So let yer imagination run riot.’

  He opened his fingers, releasing Trent, who, choking, slithered down the wall, tears streaming out of his eyes. ‘See ya.’ Blake gave a friendly wave and spun out of the cell. Trent could hear him laughing all the way down the walkway.

  Trent quickly removed his trousers and underpants and dashed to the toilet, plonking himself down only just in time. The terrifying encounter had taken its toll on his bowels. They opened up immediately.

  With his head in his hands, he realised he would probably have to act sooner than later.

  Talking to Henry had proved to be a nice release for Danny. She left his office feeling better having dumped such a heavy burden from her shoulders. It helped her greatly with the mental side - a trouble shared, and all that - but the physical side was another matter altogether.

  Danny would be the first to admit she had allowed her fitness to deteriorate over the last ten years, but it had happened in such slow stages that she had been unaware of just how unfit she had become because it had been masked by her sedentary lifestyle.

  It had taken the exertions and batterings of the last forty-eight hours to demonstrate what a blob she had become.

  Firstly, chasing Claire Lilton and rescuing her; then being assaulted by Jack, coupled with the early-morning incidents at her house. Everything had accumulated in such a short space of time so that when she sat down at her desk she felt so creaky she should have had her pension book in her bag.

  Yet she knew that if she had been only slightly fitter, she would not have felt half as bad.

  She leaned back in her chair and took a quick evaluation of her body, from feet upwards.

  Actually her toes did not feel too bad.

  Everything else above and beyond was in pretty poor condition though.

  The ankle she’d twisted throbbed meanly away underneath the tubi-grip bandage and was swollen like a football. She rotated her foot carefully and winced.

  Her long legs were stiffening up. Running after Claire - all of what, 200 metres? - had made her use muscles which had lain dormant for ten years, despite the most robust lovemaking, and there had been plenty of that. They ached all the way up to the cheeks of her bum.

  During the buffeting on the sea-front, she only now discovered she must have taken a few knocks which went unheeded at the time, probably due to adrenaline. Her chest was painful around the ribs, and the outer point of her right elbow felt like it might have been, smashed against the ground.

  The base of her spine was still damned sore, making every other movement of her body a chore. The back of her head was agonisingly tender and her face smarted from the blow Jack had delivered to her. And, of course, there was the cut on her left cheek, stitched with such precision by the same drop-dead gorgeous doctor who’d tubi-gri
pped her.

  Sod Jack, the bastard, she thought bitterly. She wondered whether or not to make an official complaint of assault, as suggested by Henry, who had voiced the opinion that if Jack had the capacity to do that to someone he allegedly loved, he deserved to face the consequences. Danny shook her head. No.

  That was the last thing she wanted. Muck-raking, grievances, courts, ruining reputations, marriages, professional relationships. She simply wanted it all sorted out as amicably as possible.

  Danny’s fingertips touched her cheek, gently moving across the two stitches inserted at Casualty earlier that morning.

  Two stitches. A serious assault by any standards.

  And yet she did not want Jack to get away without facing any consequences - especially if he had smashed her window and damaged her car in a fit of pique. He should be forced to admit it, pay restitution - then get out of her life.

  She moved in the chair to ease the pain in her back.

  She knew she could at least make one decision about her life there and then. That would be to drag herself, unwillingly, to fitness classes a couple of times a week. Then, she reasoned, if she was feeling physically better it would make it easier to get to grips with other more nebulous aspects of her life.

  Such as cutting out smoking - although as she thought about that one, a deep longing for a cigarette pervaded her body like an insistent spirit. Maybe that would have to wait.

  The phone on her desk rang. It was the public enquiry assistant (PEA), down at the front desk.

  Claire Lilton wanted to see her. Could Danny come down, please?

  It is not necessarily the prison hard men who know everything there is to know about the institutions in which they are forced to lead their lives. In fact, more often than not, these are the people who know the least. They may control things like drugs, screws, booze, cigarettes and violence, but they were wrapped up in their own comfort zones, insulated and smug. They know what they feel they need to know and little else. Only when they want to escape, perhaps, or cause a riot, do they get to know it better.