by Ed Grace
Lunchtime would arrive. He’d be starving, but the food only made his stomach worse. That wasn’t necessarily because of the nausea caused by lack of booze, but because he wasn’t used to such inedible sludge.
Then they would be allowed out of their cell. They were supposed to get an hour, but it would depend on the mood of whichever screw was on shift — screw being a term used by inmates when referring to a prison officer. He disliked using more words than he had to, so he welcomed the chance to just use a single syllable to describe these people.
While he was out of the cell, he would wander around, watching the inmates, subtly keeping his attention on Azeer and his comrades. After a short walk, he would sit on the same bench — a bench which soon became his bench. No one else would go near it, as if it was understood that it was his.
They’d have all seen the news. They’d know who he was, and what he had done. Only a fool would want to fuck with him.
Once the hour in the courtyard was up, he would return to his cell, where the rest of the afternoon and evening would be spent watching the news. He often thought about calling Kelly — not for a discussion about work, but for a chat. To see how she was doing. To see whether or not his being a prick had done its job of pushing her away.
But he couldn’t call her. If someone saw records of him phoning an MI5 agent it could rouse suspicion.
Eventually, the night would come. He would retrieve the Dictaphone from its hiding place and, despite the voices being so faint he could barely hear them, he would record.
Then he would sleep, get up, and the day would repeat.
But, on this particular day — the fourth day Sullivan had counted — he walked into the courtyard to find his normally empty bench occupied.
Azeer sat on it, with the rest of his group sat around him, puffing out their chests, strutting around, acting tough.
Sullivan knew why they were there.
It was his bench, and they knew it. They were hanging around it to ensure that the new inmate knew exactly where he stood. They needed to show Sullivan that, despite being a known murderer, he was not in charge.
At this point, Sullivan had a choice to make. Did he let them keep the bench? Or, did he refuse to allow them to have authority over him?
He knew he should just leave it. He knew he shouldn’t start anything. He knew that, should he get into a fight, he could be moved cells.
Yet, being the person he was, and feeling the anger he felt when looking at this piece of shit, his ego struggled to let it go.
Just go, just leave it, just—
Azeer caught his eye. Noticed Sullivan staring. Azeer glared back, and the rest of his crew turned too.
Rage rose through Sullivan. This was the man who planned to kill more people in a few seconds than Sullivan had in a lifetime.
And he’d killed Sajid.
One of his own.
A sweet kid.
Would he see Sajid as a necessary sacrifice? Or would he decide Sajid deserved it for not having the same extreme ideologies as him?
Or would he even give a fuck at all?
“You got a problem?” asked the man next to Azeer. Sullivan recognised the voice as Hasim’s, the man who shared a cell with Azeer.
Sullivan did not reply. He just continued his glare with Azeer.
Azeer grinned.
“He asked you a question,” he said.
Sullivan shook his head. “You guys are a joke.”
“What did you say?”
“I said you guys are a joke.”
Azeer stood, as did the rest of his group, squaring up to him, looking all tough and hard — to everyone else, that was, but Sullivan.
He could feel eyes turning. People aiming uncomfortable glances in their direction.
“You’re on my bench,” Sullivan said.
“This is your bench?” Azeer replied.
“Yes. Yours is over there.”
He pointed to the bench they normally sat on.
“Yeah, that’s not how I see it. I see this bench, that bench, that bench, that bench — and all of them belong to me, and I can sit on whichever one I like.”
“Is that so?” Sullivan said.
“Yes, it is. And what you got to say about it?”
Sullivan smiled back. He looked at Hasim, then scanned the eyes of the rest of Azeer’s group of sheep, before turning back to their leader.
He reminded himself to lay low. To avoid trouble. He did not want to get moved cells. Breaking Azeer’s skull would probably not be a good idea.
“Look at you,” said Azeer, moving to within inches of Sullivan’s face. “Big white boy trying to get us Muslims to move. Don’t like us Asians.”
“I couldn’t give a shit whether you’re brown, white, black or orange — I just want my bench.”
“Oh yeah? Then take it.”
Azeer waited for Sullivan to make a move.
Sullivan stared back at Azeer, paying particular attention to what Azeer was doing with his hands. Sullivan had no doubt that, should he swing his fist, Azeer would have something sharp ready to retaliate, probably made out of a toothbrush or a pair of scissors.
A whistle went, interrupting their exchange.
“Inside!” shouted a screw.
Azeer laughed in Sullivan’s face.
“Fucking gweilo,” he muttered, and pushed Sullivan out of the way.
Sullivan was forced to step aside, and it took every piece of self-control in his body not to grab the hand that pushed him and snap it off.
Azeer chuckled, Hasim chuckled, as did the rest as they barged into him and walked on.
Sullivan watched them go. He kept his eyes on them until they disappeared into their cells, and he disappeared into his.
Oh, how much he would love to show them who the bigger man was.
He reminded himself of the greater good. Of the lives they were trying to save.
Although, at that moment, he didn’t care — all that mattered was destroying this man, one way or another.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Kelly downloaded the files onto the computer, just as she did every day, and loaded them into her audio software.
Sometimes she wondered if there would be a message before the recordings began, or after they finished, where Sullivan would say that he was okay, or that he hoped she was okay, or that he missed her, or…
But of course there wasn’t.
He would never be that kind of boyfriend. As he kept on insisting, he wasn’t even her boyfriend. He was just a man she was fucking.
Maybe he was right.
Or maybe his past had really damaged him and he needed her support.
Or maybe he’d change his mind someday.
Or maybe…
I don’t know.
“Stop it,” she told herself, then huffed.
The same monotonous routine began. The recordings were quiet, so she had to alter it. She highlighted the audio tracks, selected noise reducer, then decreased the noise to its lowest decibel. She would select amplify and increase the volume to the maximum. Finally, she would export that into another file, re-import it, and use amplify to increase the volume again.
Then she would have what she was after — a perfectly audible file.
Well, not perfectly audible. She still had to strain a little.
She would play a sentence, write it down on her pad, then type up the translation. Play a sentence, write it down, type it up. Play, write, type; play, write, type — and so forth.
Every day she heard the same back and forth between Azeer Nadeem and Hasmin Nadal, and the same diatribe about how the British would pay for repressing the Islamic state — something Kelly thought was unlikely to actually be a priority on the government’s list of tasks.
Sometimes she thought about her next-door neighbours. They were Muslim. She often had them around for dinner. There was never any tension between them, and never even any mention of religion. She ensured what she cooked was halal, but t
hat was the only thought she ever gave to their beliefs.
It reassured her that Azeer Nadeem was the exception, not the rule.
She had considered inviting her neighbours around to meet Sullivan, in fact. But then she realised what a stupid idea that was. Meeting her friends for dinner was a ‘boyfriend’ thing — not something Sullivan would ever agree to.
Was she foolish to keep hoping he would change his mind? She considered herself to be a strong, independent woman, and felt pathetic for constantly hoping she could break down his barriers and convince him that they were in love.
Shut up, Kelly.
She needed to stop thinking about this. She needed to focus.
It was hard to do so, admittedly, as everything she listened to was repetitive and gave them nothing.
It was day after day of the same thing, never getting anywhere. This was a task she’d usually dictate to someone else but, being unable to trust their team, she had to do it. It was the same job she’d done when she’d left the marines and started out at MI5 as an Arabic to English translator. She’d come a long way since then, yet, sitting here doing it again, she felt like she hadn’t come a long way at all.
She made herself a coffee then continued, reminding herself that this was the only way. This task could provide the intelligence they needed to prevent more deaths.
But she found nothing, after nothing, after nothing — until the moment came when she finally found something.
Until she finally heard what she had been waiting to hear.
A location.
She opened a new notepad and wrote it down.
She kept listening. The time had to be next. It had to be.
Just more talk. More waffling. More discussions.
She sped up, then told herself to slow down.
She had to be astute. Careful. Had to listen to everything.
Then they said it. The day.
“Shit, we have it!”
She wrote it on the notepad, and leapt up.
She knew when and where the attack would be.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Kelly bounced around the room, almost unable to decide what to do first, leaping from one foot to the other
They could stop it. They could actually stop this attack. Unlike the fuck up of a week ago, they could prevent it from happening.
She picked up her phone. Called Jameson.
“Get in here right now,” she said.
“Do we know—”
“We know, just hurry.”
She hung up and stared at the pad. She felt proud. Eager. Keen.
Then she gave herself a reality check — she had only found the time and location. They hadn’t stopped it yet. There was still work to do.
Jameson entered minutes later, shutting the door behind him.
“I had to leave my meeting early for this, please tell me you’re not fucking with me.”
“I am not fucking with you.”
She turned the pad toward him, and he read aloud.
“Brighton Pier.”
“Yep.”
“The day of the night the clocks go forward. What does that mean?”
“The clocks go forward on Sunday at 1:00 a.m.”
“So it’s on Sunday.”
“Exactly.”
“Did they give any indication of a specific time?”
“No, just that it’s on that day. But it will be when it’s at its busiest, won’t it?”
“Of course.”
Jameson considered this.
“Right, so today’s Friday, giving us two days,” he said. “This is what we do — we go to Brighton and we—”
“I think I should go see Sullivan.”
“What? Why?”
“So he knows what we’ve found and can alert us of any erratic behaviour from Azeer.”
It was as good of an excuse as any.
“Fine. While you do that, I’ll get people to Brighton Pier.”
“Evacuate?”
“No. There’s going to be another attack, and if we evacuate now, they’ll just change it to a new location.” He put his hands in his pockets, looked out the window, and contemplated. “We need to station people at Brighton Pier — not our team, we can’t trust them; we’ll go, and we’ll handpick some police officers we’ve worked with before to be on standby, officers we trust. Someone is bound to check the location before they attack, aren’t they? So we watch. We spend today and Saturday on the Pier, a covert operation, looking for any known Alhami supporters, any deliberately inconspicuous behaviour, anyone looking out of place, anything — have firearms on standby. I’ll get in touch with agents already performing surveillance on Alhami members, especially those in Brighton. Whatever we do, we need to be discreet. We can’t let them know that we know.”
“And if we don’t catch them before Sunday?”
“Then we close the pier and arrest anyone we suspect.”
“Is it a good idea to just go around arresting anyone we suspect? It would look pretty awful to have a police van full of innocent Muslims.”
“Are you saying we should prioritise race relations over saving hundreds of lives?”
Kelly raised her eyebrows.
“All right, I get what you’re saying,” he said. “Look — you did well, Kelly. Really well. I’ll get a team and we’ll go through procedure. You go speak to Sullivan then we’ll reconvene in Brighton in four hours. I’ll let you know when we have a safe house.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
He rushed out of the room.
She finished translating the last few minutes of recording, then booked herself a taxi to HMP Brenthall, wondering whether Sullivan would even care if she showed up or not.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Sullivan emerged into the courtyard with the rest of E Wing. Azeer’s group sat on their bench, being rowdy like normal, but they didn’t interfere with Sullivan, nor did they look in his direction.
Sullivan wandered around the courtyard, killing time, stretching, walking the perimeter. There was little to do, but he needed the fresh air. Being in his cell for 23 hours a day was getting boring, so it was nice to be bored outside instead.
After half an hour or so of aimless walking, Azeer and his group caught Sullivan’s attention.
A man sat at a bench. Probably in his seventies, maybe his eighties. On his own. Sullivan was sure he’d heard a screw call him Al. He had a pack of cards in front of him, playing what looked like Solitaire.
Sullivan saw Azeer’s head turning toward this man before his group did. Azeer nodded in Al’s direction, and the rest of the group turned and laughed.
“Boy’s playing Solitaire,” he heard one of them say between sniggers.
Sullivan wondered what was so hilarious about a man occupying his time inside with a game or two of Solitaire. But, to Azeer’s group, this seemed like a perfect opportunity to show off to everyone just what a bunch of dicks they were.
They approached Al and said something to him. One of them brushed Al’s cards aside, knocking most of them to the floor.
Al didn’t say anything. He dropped his head, more in annoyance than fear, and avoided looking any of them in the eyes.
One of them grabbed the back of his hair, and shoved his head into his cards.
Sullivan sighed.
He should not get involved.
He should stay out of trouble.
Avoid drawing attention to himself.
Yet, even as he told himself this, he found his legs marching forward, and before he knew it, he was at Al’s side.
He did not speak to Azeer, nor did he even acknowledge the group’s presence. Instead, he crouched down and picked Al’s cards up for him.
“Look at him,” said one of them.
“He’s got brains, this one!” said another.
Once Sullivan had picked up every last card, he placed them back in front of Al.
Hasim went to swipe them away again, but Sullivan grabbed Hasim’s
wrist before he managed.
Now, now, he told himself. No drawing attention to yourself. No creating a scene.
He let the wrist go.
“I saw you on the news,” Hasim said. “You think you’re a big man, don’t you?”
Al looked up at Sullivan, as if to ask him what he thought he was doing.
Sullivan looked around for one of the screws. They didn’t even care. In fact, they were more preoccupied with checking the time and ensuring the prisoners didn’t stay outside for a minute more than they were allowed.
“You think you’re safe in here?” Azeer asked, his voice low and hushed. “You’re not safe anywhere from me.”
The whistle interrupted them, and they all began to return to their cells.
Al took his cards and shuffled past Sullivan without lifting his head.
Sullivan sighed, wondered why he did these things, and returned to his cell.
Just as he’d finished his piss, turned the news on, and settled on his bed, he heard some shuffling from outside his door.
It unlocked.
Then nothing.
He watched the door, waiting for one of the screws to come in, but they didn’t.
After a few minutes, however, the door did open. Only a prison officer did not stand there.
Azeer did. As did Hasim. As did the rest of them.
Sullivan sighed. He wondered how much they had paid the screw for this.
They entered his cell. Closed the door. Stood over him, saying nothing.
They must think they look really scary, Sullivan thought.
But they were nothing. He could have them all squealing on the floor, clutching their broken bones, begging for mercy, and he could do it in less than a minute.
He stood, ready to fight.
Then he remembered — no attracting unnecessary attention.
Imagine he beat the shit out of them — what then?
He didn’t have the screws in his pocket like they did. He didn’t have access to his money from inside even if he did want to bribe them. An altercation where he left in the better state would mean he’d be moved cells for sure.
What’s more, if they were all in hospital, there would be no way for him to record their conversations. Many, many people would die.
