Kicking Off

by Jan Needle

  The colonel glanced at his ADC.

  ‘Rum fish,’ he said. ‘Covering his back, I guess. Bloody glad to see him go, though. More tact than most of his ilk. Are we set?’

  ‘We are, sir. Two minutes to the off. And fifty seconds.’

  ‘Streets?’

  ‘No change. Practically empty. It’ll be another hour before there’s any movement there. We’re watching.’

  ‘Major Edwards?’

  ‘In position underneath the roof. No problems.’

  ‘Good. And the back-up?’

  ‘Medicos standing by, prison officers deployed at every stairwell. Dining hall ready to receive and contain the prisoners. Oh, and Maxwell just checked in. All lights are a hundred per cent again. They can blind them or black them out on signal.’

  The colonel nodded.

  ‘Good,’ he repeated. ‘Very good.’

  At the appointed moment, the contingent of twenty stormed the roof of Buckie Jail to confront the sixty seven prisoners. They had moved into their positions like wraiths, and the flinging up of grappling hooks and lightweight-ladders came as a total shock to the frozen, huddled men, many of whom had been asleep. By the time only four or five soldiers had clambered through the broken roof, however, the prisoners were ready. Their hands were full of jagged slates, their eyes were full of hate. There was going to be a bloodbath.

  Jimmy McGregor’s heart was pumping as his cohorts waited for an order. Would the soldiers charge? Would they gun them down like dogs? A short, powerful man was facing him, his eyes bright through his black face-paint. Should McGregor jump on him?

  The man shouted. It was an English voice, full and cultured. It was an officer.

  ‘Stand!’ he said. ‘All of you! You must all surrender!’ No one was expected to obey. Major Edwards lifted his hand towards McGregor, revealing what looked like a small tape recorder or a hand-lamp. Edwards hesitated. The prisoners were expected to attack. It was their part of the scenario. They must attack!

  But the men on the rooftop were finished. They had had enough. This was the SAS, they thought, this was the killing squad.

  There was no noise, no movement forward. Even when three more soldiers slipped out onto the roof they did not retaliate. Major Edwards was wrong-footed. His orders were to immobilise three of them in quick succession, then more if necessary. The psychiatrists had been adamant.

  Morale would hit rock bottom, they had said. When the first men were hit, the others would be horrified. And immobile. No argument.

  But the prisoners seemed horrified already; they were motionless. For several seconds he stared at James McGregor, for several seconds there was utter silence. And then McGregor jumped. But not at Major Edwards, as predicted. With a strangled roar he sprinted to the parapet, tearing at the makeshift balaclava covering his mouth.

  He screamed, a violent, tearing bellow, first at the other prisoners, then, leaping onto the low surrounding wall, into the blinding lights below, to the hoped-for TV cameras hidden in the glare, to the outside world.

  ‘Look out down there! Attack! Attack!’ he screamed. ‘It’s the SAS! They’ve—’

  But suddenly he crumpled. His knees sagged, and he staggered, one hand reaching for a chimney for support. The jumble of noises on the roof, the beginning of a hubbub from the other prisoners, stopped. A sob of wind buffeted them. McGregor swayed, and almost fell.

  ‘Lights!’ hissed Major Edwards, to the operator beside him. ‘For God’s sake kill the lights!’

  As the operator snapped the instruction into his handheld set, McGregor did fall. He twisted back around to face the roof again, he opened his mouth and slurred the one word, ‘Bastards.’

  Then he pitched backwards off the parapet without another sound. The silent men heard his body hit the ground, quite clearly. The world’s press did not see it. The TV men and women were all in bed, or bars, in various hotels. Except Rosanna Nixon, who was standing at her window in her dressing gown, and she could not believe her eyes. She watched the man jump high onto the parapet, and wave his arms, and stagger. She saw him reach out sideways, then turn his back to her in silhouette, and topple backwards, not at all dramatically.

  Before it truly registered, before she could make sense of it, the scene went black. After the stark white of the electric arcs, the dark was total. But the image of the falling man seemed to pulsate, flashing black and white on her retina. Rosanna blinked, and shook her head, and stared. Then she ran for her shoes and coat.

  By the time she reached the cordons the protest was over, although she could not know that. The prisoners, bemused and silent, had shuffled down below to the cheery prison officers, their long wait done at last. The lights, strangely, had been switched back on, but from where Rosanna stood there was no one visible on the roof, they had made sure of that. Only the banners remained, a garish white in the reflected candlepower.

  INQUIRY NOW blared one of them. WE DEMAND.

  THREE

  Kitting room. Buckie Jail.

  It was stuffy in the room, and the five officers got into the protective clothing as quickly as they could. There was little talk, because it was not yet dawn. Two of the men had been asleep when the order had come, and the others had been sitting in the rest room, comatose. For them, it had been a quiet night. Until they’d told him Jimmy McGregor was dead, it had been a quiet night for Donald Sinclair, too. He had heard it in a call from Christian Fortyne, the civil servant who had been his right hand man in Scotland. Not from the colonel in the operations room, nor any of his bagmen. Fortyne had had no doubt – they had not had the guts.

  ‘They’re claiming suicide,’ he’d said. Even on the telephone, his voice had dripped contempt. ‘You’d just know it, wouldn’t you? They fucked it up, sir. This was not your plan.’

  Despite his instant rage, Sinclair had found that almost funny. Fortyne was a man with iron grip, and his choice of words was deliberate. Stay cool, they said. There are other men to blame, more heads to roll. Stay cool.

  ‘What I think,’ he went on, ‘is—’

  ‘What I think,’ Sinclair interrupted, ‘is get the brother out. McGregor’s brother Angus. I want him out, Fortyne. I want him on his way to England. And if the news gets out, I’ll have your fucking guts for garters. Nothing personal, naturally.’

  Fortyne’s next words elated him. Here was a man he could work with. Here was a man to draw into a team.

  ‘It’s all in hand,’ the civil servant said. ‘I’ve spoken to the governor in anticipation. I’ll be at your door in two minutes, we’re meeting him in ten. I thought we’d better act immediately. You don’t mind, sir?’

  Sinclair did not. Between them, they might even save the day…

  It took the squad inside the kitting room full fifteen minutes to prepare. As they put on layer after layer, they grew from normal bulky men to something different, something alien. Last of all they fitted helmets, adjusting the straps carefully so that they could not slip even under the extremest pressure. Already they were sweating.

  Gordon Snell, the officer in charge, checked their equipment. Then he indicated the stacks of short, transparent shields and weighted sticks.

  ‘Gloves first,’ he said. ‘The bastard Angus bites, remember.’

  As they walked along the quiet corridors, the men could feel their tired grumpiness begin to lift. In a couple of minutes there would be a real hullabaloo, a row enough to wake the dead. All five officers had dry mouths and sweating palms. By breakfast time the place would be the centre of an electric storm.

  The cell they wanted was at the end of a wide, garishly floodlit corridor, through three sets of steel, multi-locked doors. Outside it, they smiled nervously at each other, and fixed their visors down. Gordon Snell checked the other four in turn, for exposed flesh or loose straps. When his gear had also been checked, he prepared the keys. When ready, he opened the spyhole in the door, almost stealthily.

  Because Angus John McGregor was such a violent man, the authorities
deemed it necessary to keep a light burning in his cell for twenty-four hours every day.

  Because Angus John McGregor objected to this treatment, he had taken to living naked in the cell. Because he was insane – the prison officers thought – he also refused to use a bucket or a lavatory, but smeared his faeces on his body, with the residue on walls and ceiling or the smashproof glass that hid the light.

  His rationale was this: if he was covered in shit, and if he bit and spat and scratched at anyone who might come near him, he would not be beaten quite so much. He might, indeed, with luck have Aids or hepatitis to pass on.

  Today, as usual, he was wrong. Finding him asleep, Snell unlocked the door with practised speed, and stepped sideways as the aliens swept in. McGregor was halfway to his feet when the first night-stick struck, and before he could recover he was knocked into the corner of the tiny room under a battery of blows and kicks. Officer Saxty, who had slipped in a pool of liquid filth and messed his glove completely, rammed it in a rage into the bleeding mouth.

  It was over very quickly, and with remarkably little noise. Five minutes later McGregor, only barely conscious, was bundled into the back of an armoured van with a pile of blankets and a soft plastic bottle of water, to begin his journey south. To England.

  He was very aptly named, the officers in the kitting room agreed as they removed their gear. The Animal. There never was a truer fucking word.

  *

  The Buckie Fox. Sinclair.

  At 8.15 that morning, Donald Sinclair paused for breakfast. As he drank black coffee and chewed some toast, his eyes ranged yet again over the print-out of Angus John McGregor’s life. He was thirty-four years old, ex-gangland hitman, the murderer of four in coldest blood. Since the age of seventeen had spent eleven years in prison, and was now serving a minimum of thirty-five. His record of violence inside jail had been appalling. Sixteen officers attacked, one almost blinded, one part-castrated. Three had been invalided from the service, and it was a standing order that he was never to be approached in units numbering less than three.

  He had a relative, but apparently only one. James Malcolm McGregor, twenty-three, the only human being the older brother had ever shown an interest in at all. There was, indeed, according to the briefing paper, a close bond between them. And this was the man, thought Sinclair bitterly, that the morons had managed to kill. When the Animal found out, God in heaven alone knew what would happen.

  Sinclair looked at his watch, and briefly thought of Carole Turner. When he had heard the news of Jimmy’s death, he had been tempted to ring her father, who was Home Secretary, to ask his advice and thereby implicate him in the full disaster. But there was a better way. He would get himself clear of the doodah off his own bat first, then share the glory with Sir Gerald; not the blame. Kudos all round.

  Throughout the rest of the morning hours he had worked with Christian Fortyne, until their plan was foolproof.

  ‘So the operation on the ground,’ said Sinclair, ‘was under the control of a Major Edwards. Agreed?’

  ‘On the ground,’ responded Fortyne. ‘That wonderful expression. In fact his colonel was in charge, but colonels have protection. The major is our man.’

  ‘Good,’ said Sinclair. ‘So put simply, I want his head. No. I want his bollocks. On a plate.’

  There was a slight pause, which Sinclair imagined for a moment might indicate well-bred distaste. Then Fortyne said, ‘Fried or boiled?’ and Sinclair laughed.

  ‘Any way you choose,’ he said. ‘But I mean it. I want him broken. And this McGregor, the older one. Now we’ve shipped him out of Scotland, I want him kept in solitary, night and day. Is that possible?’

  A longer pause.

  ‘The Scottish Parliament,’ said Fortyne. ‘The boys at Holyrood. Well, theoretically—’ He broke off, smiling.

  ‘I’ve got a number, obviously. We’ll be treading on more corns politically, but... Look, leave it with me. There’s at least one favour I can call… Yeah, that will be all right.’

  ‘Good man,’ said Donald Sinclair. ‘And then – the other thing.’

  Fortyne’s chuckle was dry.

  ‘Major Edwards’ bollocks, on a plate,’ he said.

  ‘Devilled.’

  When he had finished his breakfast, Donald Sinclair ran himself a deep bath and climbed wearily into it. He lay for some minutes on his back, his head tilted at an angle so that his scalp was immersed and only his eyes, nose and mouth were clear. He tried to still his brain, to slow it down at least, so that it would be ready for one last burst of sustained thought before he caught his plane to London in a couple of hours. Slowly, the tension drained away.

  By the time he had dried himself and dressed, he was confident he had the answers. He called Fortyne to his room, then ordered himself a car to take him to the airport, as ‘Philip Swift’ once more. He instructed the tall, watchful civil servant to announce a press conference for ten-fifteen, and told him how he expected it to go. Fortyne listened, nodding.

  ‘But you’ll be back in England,’ he said. ‘It seems a pity, in one way, that you can’t put in an appearance. The mastermind behind the Buckie triumph.’

  Sinclair examined the closed, clever face for any hint of irony, but found none. He smiled.

  ‘What triumph? The ending of a siege without the US Cavalry? If McGregor’s death gets out my role might not seem so brilliant, might it?’

  Fortyne’s look was quizzical.

  ‘How will it get out?’ he said. ‘Who’s going to tell? The Press were all unconscious, and we swept the sky for drones. I’ve had another thought on Major Edwards, too. He can keep his bollocks for the moment, because I’ve had a word with him. If it does get out, it’s down to him and him alone, he understands that perfectly. We will announce McGregor’s death of course, we’re not savages, are we? But we’ll announce it later – as a tragic accident. By then who’s going to notice, who’s going to give a damn? You know journalists. You were in the business, weren’t you?’

  Sinclair, who had served his time in newspapers and TV, acknowledged with a nod. The ploy was excellent.

  ‘I’ll leave it up to you then,’ he said. ‘I’m trusting you on this, Fortyne. But the bottom line is – no Army, no death and no me. Who organised it all remains a mystery, and I’m at most a shadow in the background at best no twat at all. I’m sorry to pile this on you, but I honestly believe that if the facts emerge immediately the results could be disastrous. I can’t imagine what might happen. Frightening.’

  Fortyne pushed his spectacles up the bridge of his nose with a tiny smile. Again there was no trace of irony.

  ‘Fatal,’ he said, drily. ‘It will be a pleasure to ensure that nothing untoward should happen. You shouldn’t imagine that I want to stay up here in Siberia a moment longer than I have to, by the way. I hope to follow you to London very shortly. Perhaps if you ring me when you get back to your office? I could bring you up to speed.’

  In the plane from Aberdeen, Sinclair thought of Fortyne for some little time before he drifted into sleep. He might be a damn good man to have as his right hand, he thought. A damn good man indeed.

  *

  London. Andrew Forbes and Alice.

  Inside the scruffy basement kitchen, the elegant black woman that Paddy Collins and the fat man had observed with lust looked completely out of place. Her handmade grey kid boots alone were worth more than all the furniture, and the bright colours of her skirt were startling against the backdrop of brown linoleum and sagging yellow paper on the walls. Opposite her, across a table festooned with dirty crockery and a coffee-stained Observer three weeks out of date, Andrew Forbes was more at home. He wore an off-white shirt over crumpled trousers and he had not shaved. He also had a hangover.

  ‘So that’s it, then?’ he said. ‘You’re going. And I still don’t have the foggiest why you came.’

  Alice Grogan gazed levelly for a few moments before replying. She was very beautiful, with high cheekbones and a haughty, contemptu
ous mouth. She did not smile.

  ‘Don’t play stupid, Andrew, it doesn’t suit you, I told you most of it last night. I came because you’re straight. You’re clean. I came back because nobody followed me when I came here last time. There aren’t many places left like that.’

  Forbes laughed. His pale and battered face became alive, attractive. He was amused.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘It’s only because no one wants to keep an eye on me. I’m only a dirt-digger, for Christ’s sake. Not even the scumbags of the Met bother spying on this place any more. But why me in the first place? Who gave you my name?’

  She twitched her lip. Some day I’ll make her smile, thought Andrew. I’d like that.

  ‘Why do men always assume women need telling things? I’ve been in London two months. I’ve read the papers, seen your pieces. I figured you’d have the contacts still. You could pass things on.’

  Forbes nodded. It sounded pretty roundabout, but she might be on the level. She’d told him yesterday she couldn’t approach the police directly because she didn’t trust them. He smiled to himself. Some cynical lady!

  ‘I’m flattered, Alice, but I’m very disappointed, naturally. I thought maybe you’d come back because you couldn’t stay away. You wanted my body. You wanted to share my miserable and lonely life.’

  Alice almost smiled. Her eyes took in the dank basement, the cluttered surfaces, the dirty cooker. Maleness, lone and rank.

  ‘Andrew,’ she said, ‘are you crazy? Yesterday I gave you times and places. I came back with the name. That’s important. You better pass it on.’

  He sensed she was becoming nervous. He’d noticed it earlier, when she’d first brought up the name. She’d seemed to find it hard to say it, as though it frightened her. Alice reached across the table and fiddled a cigarette from a pack. She lit it and inhaled. As she leaned back the green-painted kitchen chair creaked. She jumped. She was strung up like a wire.

  ‘Charles Lister,’ said Forbes, deliberately. ‘You must hate him, Alice. I wonder what he did to you.’