NEARLY DEAD

by Conrad Jones

  The sausage dinner and ice cream that she had fed him earlier, threatened to come back up. His breathing was laboured and his knees were creaking beneath the substantial weight that they carried. He wanted to stop now before it was too late. The sound of a throaty cough floated to him on the icy breeze. He listened intently, frozen to the spot. Was it a cough that he had heard or was it an evil chuckle or was it neither, just a trick of the wind? He swallowed hard and caught his breath and scanned the horizon again, then he turned and walked into the biting cold. Rainwater ran down his nose and dripped from his chin. His exposed skin was cold and numb. The joints in his podgy fingers ached and his feet were sore. Every step was a chore. Only fear drove him on.

  A security light came on to his left, triggered by his movement. It made him jump but he was grateful for its luminance. The darkness was pushed back a few yards if only for a short while as he travelled through its field of operation. He could see a mechanic’s garage. Its signs advertised MOT’s and cheap tyres. The security light illuminated the forecourt where half a dozen vehicles were parked. On top of a pole, a CCTV camera overlooked the scene. He suddenly felt exposed and vulnerable in the circle of light. The feeling that he was being watched was overwhelming. Brian looked behind again nervously. He studied the shadows. Nothing. There was no sign of anyone there. He turned up his collar in a vain attempt to keep the rain out and jogged away from the light into the darkness once again. As the night enveloped him, he took small comfort that it offered him camouflage. He jogged awkwardly for a minute. The fat waddled from side to side. He struggled on until the sweat was running down his back. His nerves were jangling and he felt the muscles in his chest tightening as his lungs gasped for air. He promised himself that he would make a serious effort to lose weight but he knew that was a pipe dream. Being obese was something he had lived with all his life. He was the fat kid at school, college, and university. His fellow students had been cruel. The insults had cut him deep emotionally. It was something that he blocked out. He would go home from school crying most days. His mother would comfort him with sweets and chocolate and she would repeat the old saying.

  ‘Sticks and stones can break my bones but names will never hurt me’.

  What a load of bollocks that was. It had been made up by someone who wasn’t fat. They had never had to endure a barrage of abuse all their life. The name calling had hurt him. It still did but it wasn’t life threatening. He had reached his late twenties safely despite the bullying but his life was in danger now. Real danger. It swung in the balance and there was no way out. He steeled himself against the storm and cursed himself for getting into this situation in the first place.

  He wished that he had never agreed to it. Not that he had been given any choice. His life had been turned upside down since Charlie McGee had entered it. The man was deranged. In fact, deranged didn’t cover half of it. One minute he was everyone’s brother from another mother, the next he was a violent lunatic. He had no sympathy for those he hurt; in fact, the pain and the terror he inflicted on them amused him. Brian had seen it first-hand. He had encountered many bullies through his life but Charlie was on a different scale. He was a cocaine fuelled psychopath. Charlie McGee frightened the life out him. He frightened the life out of most people and that was why it was better to do what he was told to do, no matter what the consequences. If Charlie McGee said jump off a bridge, you asked him which one. Jumping would be easier than pissing him off. He wasn’t right in the head. He picked on Brian constantly, much to the amusement of his thugs. Charlie and his men bullied him relentlessly. Brian was used to being bullied but this was a different level of abuse. They kicked him, punched him, stabbed him with their steroid needles, and burnt him with cigarettes. He was constantly nursing one wound or another. They never hurt him enough to warrant going to a hospital but his mother was beginning to ask questions about the first aid supplies being depleted. If she had known, she would have made a fuss and called the police and that would have been even worse. He had never grassed on the kids at school and he wasn’t going to start now. Being the fat kid at school had made him accustomed to violence and abuse and things hadn’t changed when he became an adult. That had disappointed him. He had expected it to stop the moment that he walked out of the school gate for the last time but fatism was everywhere he turned. It always had been and always would be.

  Brian stopped in his tracks as a car appeared over the hill and he turned his face away so that the driver couldn’t see him. It went by without slowing. He watched the rear lights grow smaller and then disappear around a bend. The road was silent again. Behind him, the security light at the garage switched off, plunging the street into darkness once more. Brian kept jogging at an unsteady pace, trying to place his feet carefully. The last thing he needed now was to trip. His hands were in his pockets and if he lost his footing, he would fall on his face. Things were bad enough without any more facial injuries. The scar on his cheek was still red and angry. Fourteen stitches had held the flesh together until it knitted but the scar would be there to remind him what happened if you questioned Charlie McGee. Charlie had smiled as he sliced Brian’s face, slowly and calmly with a serrated steak knife. Brian had nightmares about the twinkle in Charlie’s eye as he cut through skin and muscle and scraped bone; the blade had nicked his cheekbone. The doctors weren’t sure if he would recover the use of the left side of his face beneath the scar. It had left him with a crooked smile. He hadn’t looked in the mirror for days. His reflection had always made him cry but now it was worse. He wished Charlie McGee would succumb to a long and painful disease and die screaming. Until then, he had to do what he asked.

  A hundred yards on, he saw the barrier that blocked vehicle access to a lane. It ran through a copse of trees towards the rear of Risley prison. He checked both ways before crossing the road. At the barrier, he paused and studied the pavements on both sides of the road. He looked left, right and behind him. There was no sign of life. He hoped that the mysterious footsteps that he had heard were a figment of his own tortured imagination. There were no monsters or demons stalking him; his tormentor was human. His waking nightmares revolved around one man. Charlie McGee. He was far more frightening than any imaginary being. Brian took one last look in each direction and then turned and waddled into the trees.

  The darkness took on another shade, darker and deeper than before. It seemed to shift, expanding and contracting around him. Dark shadows shifted position, drifting, floating, reaching for him. He slowed his pace and stuck to the middle of the lane. It was familiar to him. He had walked the route a dozen times before Charlie had made him fly a drone over the wall into the prison. Charlie didn’t know that Brian knew where he was to fly the drone. He thought that his security was tight but Brian had used his eyes and his ears to learn things that others missed. Picking bits and pieces from whispered conversations, Brian had worked out what Charlie wanted him to do and where. It was one of his few talents.

  It was all Brian’s idea from the start. He hadn’t thought for one minute that having an idea would take him to the edge of a precipice. He had simply been thinking aloud at the time. It was just an idea to begin with but when he had shared it with a work colleague called Luke, he hadn’t expected him to discuss the idea with his cousin, Charlie McGee. Charlie had listened to it, liked it and embraced it with fervour. He had waited outside Brian’s workplace the next day, approached him with a charming smile and a firm handshake, introducing himself as Luke’s cousin. Before Brian knew what was happening, he was persuaded to get into a Jaguar with three of Charlie’s henchmen. They took him to a very swanky gin bar, told him jokes and made him feel like one of them. Brian didn’t have many friends. He had always been shunned because of his weight. Charlie and his colleagues had made him feel like they were friends at first and he enjoyed himself for the first time in years. They were big men, heavily muscled and tattooed. Charlie was shaven headed and tall with a back like a grand piano. The sinews in his forearms looked like
they were made from wire. He wore an expensive grey suit with an open neck shirt and snorted coke from a silver business card holder every ten minutes or so. The rest of his friends wore jeans and designer polo shirts underneath dark leather jackets. The evening had gone by in a blur. As soon as their glasses were empty, another round appeared. Once Charlie was convinced that Brian was drunk and relaxed, the real reason that he wanted him there surfaced and the atmosphere changed very quickly. By that time, it was too late.

  ‘Tell me about your drones, Brian,’ Charlie had said, as he snorted a thick line of white powder. The question came out of the blue. His smile had vanished and his eyes seemed to look into Brian’s head, searching for lies. Brian was suddenly frightened by Charlie. It changed that quickly.

  ‘My drones?’ Brian was confused by the sudden change of subject. He looked around the faces at the table. ‘How do you know that I have drones?’

  ‘My cousin, Luke told me. You work with him.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ Brian said, shrugging. ‘What can I tell you about them that won’t bore you to death?’ Charlie had stared at him, no expression on his face. The silence was threatening. Nervously, Brian stumbled through a summary. ‘Erm, I am a bit of a drone geek, so I don’t want to drone on about it,’ he said, trying to make a joke but no one smiled. He could sense the menace coming from each of them. ‘Well, where do I begin? I have four drones, two small ones and two big ones. I mess about with them and put cameras on them and make videos of flyovers for my website.’

  ‘Videos of what?’ [EM5]Stu had asked. His voice was thick and gravely.

  ‘All kinds of things,’ Brian had explained. ‘I fly them over the city, the Liver buildings, the cathedrals, the river, the football stadiums. I’ve been all over the mountains in Snowdonia too. You know, that kind of thing?’

  ‘How many videos have you uploaded?’ Charlie asked, pretending to be interested in his hobby.

  ‘I’m not sure. Over a hundred.’

  ‘These drones can carry things?’

  ‘Yes,’ Brian said, nodding. His fat jowls wobbled. He felt like he had been tricked but he didn’t know why. ‘Obviously, the bigger the drone, the more weight it can carry.’

  ‘Obviously,’ Stu said sarcastically. The big men grinned at each other.

  ‘Tell me about your idea using a football to smuggle drugs into a prison,’ Charlie’s tone changed. All eyes seemed to bore into Brian. Two men on another table had overheard Charlie and turned around to look at them. ‘What the fuck are you pair of nosey cunts looking at?’ Charlie snarled at them. They stood up and put their coats on, leaving their drinks unfinished. He watched them leave and then turned back to Brian. ‘Tell me about the football idea.’

  ‘The football idea?’ Brian said, almost in a whisper. The colour had drained from his face. ‘I was just thinking aloud when I came up with that. How do you know about that?’

  ‘My cousin told me.’

  ‘Of course, he did,’ Brian muttered. His mind was spinning. What did this man want? ‘He told you what I said did he?’

  ‘Yes. Explain it to me properly.’

  ‘It was nothing really. We were just talking about an article online.’ Brian laughed dryly but no one else laughed with him. They stared, their faces deadpan. ‘It was an article about dealers flying drones into prison grounds delivering contraband.’

  ‘Tell me and the boys about the story,’ Charlie said, emptying his gin and tonic. He waved a tattooed hand at the barmaid and indicated that they wanted another round and then snorted another line. ‘From the beginning.’

  ‘Okay.’ Brian shrugged as if he couldn’t see the point. He had wanted to leave but knew that he couldn’t. Droplets of sweat formed on his top lip and it began to tremble just like it had at school when the bullies had surrounded him in the playground. The familiar desire to run crept into his mind. He had run once at secondary school but his tormentors caught him and beat him. Running wasn’t an option then and it wasn’t now. He had to tell Charlie what he wanted to know. ‘It was a story online about a dealer inside, who had someone fly a drone over the wall of the prison, using a camera to steer it once it was out of sight. The pilot flew it to a first storey window, packed with a drug called spice and a mobile phone,’ he explained. ‘It was a legal high before the government outlawed all of them.’

  ‘We know what spice is,’ Stu growled.

  ‘Of course, you do,’ Brian mumbled nervously. ‘Apparently, that stuff is like gold dust inside. Anyway, to cut a long story short, the drone he used was too small for the weight and the weather conditions and he couldn’t pilot it properly. The drone veered off track and went to the wrong window and the drugs fell into the wrong hands. According to the article, a fight broke out in the prison. Two men died, all because they used the wrong drone. It wasn’t big enough, a schoolboy error really. They overloaded it.’

  ‘Tell me about the football.’

  ‘It was just an idea,’ Brian said, blushing. ‘It was nothing.’

  ‘Don’t be shy. Tell the boys your idea.’

  ‘Well, prison officers are on the lookout for drones nowadays. My idea was to use a drone with a camera to see what kind of footballs they use during exercise time. You know, in the yards?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Stu asked, frowning. Deep wrinkles creased his protruding forehead. Brian thought he could model as a Neanderthal man.

  ‘My idea was to fly over and film the exercise yard. Then source the exact same type of ball, fill it with drugs or whatever you like and then fly it over the wall, drop the ball in the exercise yard and then fly the drone out. You could mark the ball so that the recipients inside can identify it without touching it. Once the coast is clear, they could empty the contraband out of the ball. If anything goes wrong and they are caught going near the ball, they can deny all knowledge of what is inside. They play with that very same type of ball every day, after all. The guards would have no way of pinning the drugs on anyone until they emptied the ball, obviously.’ Brian sat back and sipped his gin. He smiled, impressed with himself. His new friends looked equally impressed. That was his first mistake. They were not his friends. It had been a violent rollercoaster ride ever since.

  Brian felt the ground beneath his feet becoming muddy. The condition of the lane deteriorated the deeper into the trees he ventured. He heard shouting coming from beyond the walls. He couldn’t understand the words but he could tell that one of the inmates wasn’t very happy. A searchlight switched on to his right. The guard in the tower aimed it at something inside the walls. The powerful beam swept left to right and back again. Brian crouched and ran off the lane and into the trees. He ducked beneath the branches of an ancient oak and watched as more lights came on. More men began to shout and a siren started to wail. The volume went up as the lights crisscrossed the interior of the prison. It was obvious to Brian that something had kicked off inside. He checked his watch. It was nearly midnight. Brian reached into his pocket and took out his mobile phone. He ran back to the lane and headed deeper into the trees until he reached a rusty gate, where he recovered an entrenching tool that he had hidden in the long grass. Brian looked at his phone and scrolled through his contact list until he had the right number and then he hit dial. Beneath the ground, a Nokia 105 began to ring. He picked that mobile because its battery life was thirty-five days. The ringtone was muffled but he could hear it well enough. He followed the sound until he was directly above it and then he started digging. Within minutes, he had uncovered the rucksack that had the drone and the remote inside it. He had buried them the week before, after flying the drone into the prison before making his escape on foot. Burying them had seemed like the sensible thing to do but Charlie McGee didn’t think so. When Brian had told him that he had buried the drone near the prison, Charlie went ballistic. Apparently, leaving evidence behind was a big no-no, even if it was underground. He accused Brian of trying to get him nicked and gave him a good hiding for his troubles. The next morning, Charlie go
t the news that the drugs and mobile phones that were inside the football had been intercepted. Apparently, the guards were waiting to pounce. They had been tipped off that the drop was coming. Charlie had a sneak in his operation and he flipped, accusing every man and his dog of being the grass. His paranoia deepened. He questioned everyone. Brian’s interrogation involved the steak knife. Charlie’s men on the inside had been rounded up and transferred to different prisons the next day, where they were rearrested and charged with several offenses, all of which would add several years to their sentences. Charlie had been pulled in and questioned but following a ‘no comment’ interview, he was released quickly. He was rattled and he ordered Brian to recover the drone and dispose of it somewhere it could not be found and used as evidence. He had accused Brian of burying it so that he could use its location as a bargaining chip should he be arrested for his part in the operation. Brian didn’t think like a criminal but he could see Charlie’s point and he promised to recover the drone as soon as it was safe to do so. Charlie said that wasn’t good enough. Brian had to recover it that night or lose his fingers and toes. He had no option but to do as he was told.