by Mark Dawson
Milton staggered, dazed. The man still had his hand around his fist and he yanked again, drawing Milton forward and then pounding him with a right-handed jab.
Milton saw stars and, the next thing he knew, he was flat on his back on the wet floor.
The light from the window was blocked out as the man lowered himself, his knees on either side of Milton’s body. Milton saw the first blow coming, managing to cover up as a meaty right hand crashed against his forearm, deflecting its momentum so that the man’s knuckles cut into the top of his scalp. The left fist followed, cracking into the side of Milton’s temple, and then, his defences scrambled, another right and then another left.
Each fresh blow detonated a starburst of pain, flashes of bright white light that cascaded behind Milton’s closed eyes. He tried to cover his face, but the man had taken a moment to pin Milton’s right arm beneath his knee, his bulk holding it in place. Another blow—Milton had lost count of the number now—and then he felt his left arm similarly restrained.
He was helpless.
His head pounded with so much pain that each fresh impact was just an echo of the last. His ears rang, but, as the darkness became blacker and more complete, even that started to fade. The strength drained from his body and he felt his neck go limp, just dimly aware that his head was swinging left and right with every new blow.
And then even that awareness drained away, too.
31
THE GUARDS picked Milton up and dragged him down the corridor. They took him beneath the shoulders and he allowed himself to hang limply as they left the main block and went outside. He blinked, but his vision was too fuzzy for him to make out anything beyond a blurred penumbra. He caught sight of flashes of blue as other guards went on with their business, none of them stopping to intervene.
The men took him across the main yard, through a gate in a mesh fence and into a quieter part of the compound. He raised his head a little, not enough for them to know that he was conscious but enough for him to be able to see where they were taking him. There were palm trees here and far fewer men than there were on the other side of the fence. Milton looked ahead and saw several wooden buildings. They looked like small houses: two storeys, shingled roofs, two windows on each floor and verandas with outdoor seating. If it wasn’t for the fences and the machine-gun nests in the watchtowers, they might have been able to pass for large holiday chalets.
The guards changed course and aimed for one of the buildings. Milton was dragged along the ground, his toes scoring gouges through the sand. His head hung limply between his shoulders and, as he gazed down, his vision swam in and out of focus. He felt the blood running from his nose and saw the spots that fell onto the muck. His torso and shoulders ached from where he had absorbed the punches and kicks, but he didn’t feel as if anything had been broken. He had been fortunate. He had been badly beaten, and there would have been nothing he could have done had the big man wanted to inflict more damage on him.
The guards climbed the two steps to the veranda and passed through the open door into a cool interior beyond. Milton heard the whir of a ceiling fan and felt the air on his skin. He heard the sound of classical music and, in another room, the sound of muffled conversation.
The guards dumped Milton on the floor. He lay still. The men exchanged words in Filipino and one of them walked away, his feet rattling against the wooden boards. A door was opened and the sound from the next room grew clearer: the music became brighter and, beneath it, he thought he could hear English being spoken. The door was closed and the sound was muffled once again.
Milton opened his eyes. He could see the feet and lower legs of the remaining guard. He wondered whether he might be able to overpower him, but quickly disabused himself of the notion. He would still be imprisoned. There would be no way for him to get out of the compound. Struggling now would more likely make things worse for him in the short term. Far better for him to lie in wait and work out what had happened to him.
And there was no point in pretending otherwise: he wanted to know who had arranged this welcome for him.
32
HE DIDN’T have long to wait.
The conversation in the other room stopped and the door opened. It was left open this time, and Milton was able to identify the music as Mozart. He heard the sound of several pairs of feet as they came through into the room.
He opened his eyes and looked. There were three men in the room with him now. The guard who had helped to drag him across the compound was nearest to him. At the edge of the room, next to the open door to the room in which the music was playing, was the big man who had beaten him.
The third man was walking toward him. Milton’s vision was blurred. He couldn’t focus.
“Jesus, Tiny,” the man said to the big man. “You didn’t pull your punches.”
“You told me to—”
“I know what I said,” the man said. “I said soften him up. I didn’t say half kill him.”
“I’m sorry, Mr.—”
“Never mind. Wake him up.”
The man spoke in an English accent.
Milton recognised his voice.
The big man strode across the room. Milton felt strong hands beneath his arms. He was hauled upright and dragged over to a sink. The tap squeaked as it was turned and Milton’s head was jammed down into the bowl. Water splashed onto his skin and across his scalp. It brought him around and, as he blinked his eyes, he saw that the water ran red with the blood from his wounds.
The man spoke again. “Sit him down.”
Milton was dragged back across the room to a wooden chair. He was dropped onto it; powerful hands locked onto his shoulders to stop him from sliding off it.
“You want a drink, John?”
Milton looked up.
His eyes wouldn’t focus beyond the cup that was held in front of his face. He smelled alcohol and instinctively turned his head away.
“It’s true, then? You don’t drink?”
The cup was taken away and Milton straightened his head again. His head throbbed with the start of what he knew would be a brutal migraine, but his vision cleared enough for him to look at the room more carefully. It was large. The walls were concrete, although an attempt had been made to soften them with framed pictures and drapes. The floor was composed of wooden boards. Comfortable furniture had been arranged around the space: a chaise longue, a large corner sofa, a coffee table with a bottle of vodka and two glasses, a bookcase filled with books and, on the wall, a large LCD screen. This was not a cell. It was more like a villa.
A second wooden chair was drawn up opposite his and the man who had been speaking lowered himself onto it.
“Come on, John. I was expecting a warmer welcome. I haven’t seen you for years.”
Milton glanced up. The man was sitting, but he could tell that he would have been taller than six feet when he stood. He had a leonine build that was showing the spread of a lazy middle age. He wasn’t wearing the prison uniform. Instead, he wore a pair of khaki shorts and a linen shirt. His clothes looked fresh, almost as if they had just been ironed. He might have been going on safari. His hair was neatly trimmed and he was tanned.
Milton knew him.
His name was Fitzroy de Lacey.
“Hello, Fitz,” he said.
“I’m glad you remember me.”
“Was all this necessary?” Milton managed to croak. “You could just have asked me to come and visit.”
The man allowed himself a chuckle. “You haven’t lost your sense of humour, John. That’s good to see. How are you?”
“I’ll be honest—I’ve been better.”
“I’m sorry about Tiny,” de Lacey said, indicating the big man behind him. “He’s heard a lot about you, and then you put on a little show in the canteen this morning. Your reputation goes before you—not that it’ll mean too much in here. You can fuck off now,” he said to the guard, waving him away with a flip of his hand. “Wait outside. You can take John back to his cell wh
en we’ve had our chat.”
The man bowed his head and backed out of the room.
“You did all this?”
“Did all what, John?”
“This. Setting me up.”
“That’s one way to describe it.”
“Why go to all this trouble? You found me… if you wanted to—”
“If I wanted to have you shot?” He laughed again. “God, no, John. That would be much too easy. It wouldn’t do, letting you off the hook as easily as that. No. That wouldn’t do at all.”
Milton reached up and pressed his fingers to his temple. He felt dizzy.
“Look around, John,” de Lacey said. “Look where you put me.”
“What do you mean? This looks comfortable. You should see my cell.”
“Yes, of course. I still have money and influence. You can buy comfort in a place like this if you have enough of either. Books, a television, better food, clean clothes—all of those things are commodities that can be purchased. Loyalty is the same. Men like Tiny. The guards. All the same. Of course, I can also buy the opposite for you. A cramped cell. Dreadful food. Men who will compete to make your life as unpleasant as possible and, when the time comes—and it won’t come for months yet, John, not for months—men who will clamber over each other to kill you in the most painfully creative way.”
“This is just to make me suffer?”
“Of course. I’ve been thinking about that ever since you put me in here. I want you to suffer and I want you to know why you are suffering. Killing you was never going to be enough. I want you to have the same experience that you gave to me.”
“Logan works for you?”
“That’s right,” de Lacey said. “I’ve never actually met him. He was recommended to me. Is he very good? Must be, to have fooled you like this.”
Milton ignored that. “And Jessica?”
“Surely that’s obvious now, John? I needed a reason for you to travel here and then a reason for your conviction.”
“I haven’t had my trial yet.”
“‘Innocent until proven guilty’? You’re not that naïve, John. You know that’s a foregone conclusion. Your sentence is the only thing left to be determined. That’s something else that I can purchase. I’m going to arrange for it to be life. Well,” he corrected with a chuckle, “life for as long as I deem it. You’ll die when I say so.”
De Lacey gestured and Milton was hoisted out of the chair.
“You’re going to get another beating tonight, John. It’ll be the same tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. Every day, John, over and over and over until you can’t tell where you end and the pain begins. I want you to think about me and what you did. Every time they leave you in a heap on the floor, I want you to see my face. Because I’m going to be outside, living my life. And you’re finished. The only way you’ll ever leave here is in a box.”
De Lacey nodded and Tiny held Milton upright. He had no strength in his legs, but the man was strong enough to suspend him.
De Lacey took a pair of knuckledusters from the table. He slid his fingers inside, closed his fist, and struck Milton in the side of the face. The metal cut into his cheek and clashed against the bone. His mouth filled with blood.
“You stole ten years from me, John,” de Lacey said. “You’ve got ten years of pain to catch up with.”
33
MILTON WAS taken out into a yard at the back of the villa and tossed to the ground. The big man, Tiny, took off his shirt and worked him over once more. Milton covered up, protecting himself as best he could. It was mercifully brief this time, although each blow heaped pain upon pain until his body felt like one single throbbing bruise.
He was picked up and hauled back through the prison to his cell. The door was opened and he was dumped inside.
“Are you okay?”
Milton groaned.
“Hey. Wake up.”
Milton put his palms flat on the floor and raised himself up. He tried to open his eyes and found that his right was already swollen shut. He opened his left eye. A man was kneeling down in front of him. He was thin, with spindly limbs and elbows and knees that jutted out from the sleeves of his orange prison-issue shirt and the legs of his shorts. His face was deeply tanned and lined with age.
Milton struggled to raise himself. The man reached down and helped him into a sitting position with his back against the wall of the cell.
He tried to speak, but his mouth felt as if it were clogged with dust.
“Here,” the man said, handing Milton a plastic bottle of water. He put it to his lips and poured the water in, swirling it around and then spitting it out onto the floor at his side.
“Drink,” the man urged.
Milton did, slugging the tepid water down until his thirst was slaked.
He gave the bottle back to the man. “Who are you?”
“My name is Francisco,” he said. “Everyone calls me Isko. You are John, yes?”
“How do you know that?”
“I have been in Bilibid for many years. Some of the guards are friendly to me. They talk. They tell me about you. You are John. You are English. They say you murdered a Filipino girl.”
The sky through the window was dark. The only illumination was from the bulb overhead.
Milton took the opportunity to look at the man more closely. He was more than just thin; he was emaciated to the point of malnutrition.
“I didn’t,” he muttered.
“They all say that, John.”
“How did you get in here?” Milton asked him.
“This is my cell, too. They moved me here this afternoon. We will share it.”
Isko gestured to the side and Milton saw a second bedroll that had been arranged on the floor. There was barely enough room for it next to his.
“You think this is cramped?”
“A little,” Milton admitted.
“We are lucky. There are sixteen thousand men in Bilibid. It was built for a quarter of that. Many cells like this have six or seven men inside.”
“I don’t think I’m the sort of person you’d want to be around.”
The old man waved that away. “You need a friend, I think. Someone to help you.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because you need it. I have done bad things in my life, John. I seek to make amends for them. I try to help when I can. And I think you need help. You have made a powerful enemy.”
Milton closed his eyes and saw de Lacey’s face again, the bloodlust in his eyes as he had watched Tiny laying into him.
“Tell me about him,” he said.
“Mr. Fitz is a very important person in Bilibid. He cannot leave, but he lives like a king.”
“I saw his place,” Milton said.
“His villa? Yes, I have seen it from the outside. There are several just like it where the men with money live. His neighbours are the drug lords. They say he has parties there. The guards bring women and alcohol and drugs. He has money and power. He does not mix with the rest of us. Why should he? He has his own cook, who prepares his meals for him. And he has men he pays to protect him and to make sure that others do as he wants.”
“I met one of them,” Milton said, wincing as he arranged himself into a slightly more comfortable position. “Big guy. Gold teeth.”
“Tiny,” Isko said with a nod. “He is a dangerous man. He has killed many other men for Mr. Fitz.”
Isko reached forward with the bottle and put it to Milton’s lips again. “Why did Fitz do this to you?”
Milton had no interest in revealing too much to a man he had only just met. “We have history. It goes back a long way.”
“Why are you in here?”
“I’m still trying to work that out.”
“But you didn’t kill the girl like they say you did?”
“No,” he said. “I think they drugged me. Fitz set me up.” Milton swallowed a mouthful of water, tasting his own blood as it went down.
“Y
ou must be careful here,” Isko said. “The other men notice you because you are English. Maybe they find out what they say you did. Men who kill women do not last long in a place like this. Or maybe they find out that Mr. Fitz is your enemy, and they want to make him their friend. You understand?”
“I don’t think I need to worry about that,” Milton said. “Fitz wants to keep me around for a while yet. I’m going to be punished before he gets rid of me.”
“I just say be careful. This is not a safe place, especially not for you.”
“You should be careful, too,” Milton said. “If he finds out you’re helping me, it might not go down well.”
Isko smiled, revealing a mouth full of snaggled and tar-blackened teeth. “I am an old man, John. I have been here most of my life. I will never leave. What are they going to do to me?”
Milton raised a hand to his face and prodded at it. Each press and poke was rewarded with a shot of pain. “How do I look?”
“Like you have been hit by a truck. Have you eaten?”
“No,” Milton said. “Not since breakfast.”
“Here.”
Isko handed Milton a package wrapped in paper. He opened it and looked down at a handful of dried sardines.
“It is dried in the sun and then dipped in vinegar.”
He took a mouthful. His jaw ached every time he tried to chew and the food was cold and unpleasant. But he was hungry, and he knew that he would need to maintain his strength if he was going to survive. He finished the fish, screwed up the paper and put it down on the floor.
“Thank you.”
Isko held up his hands. “You are welcome. Now, you should sleep. I show you around properly tomorrow.”
34
IT TOOK Josie two hours to finalise the paperwork that set out the case against John Smith. The procedure was straightforward enough: Smith would be brought to the courthouse and given the opportunity to plead guilty or not guilty to the murder charge that would be laid against him. In the event that he pleaded not guilty, he would have a minimum of fifteen days to prepare for trial and then the trial would begin thirty days after he received the pre-trial order. The president had made it a campaign pledge to improve the efficiencies of the legal process. One way was to reduce the number of suspects who ever made it as far as trial, the trail of bodies in the streets a testament to how diligently that course of action had been pursued. The other way was to ensure that the courts ran smoothly, dispensing verdicts and shuttling the guilty into custody without delay.
