Osama (36 page)

‘Joe . . .’

‘That’s where he is,’ he murmured.

Eva tugged on his sleeve. ‘Joe . . .
look!
’

He dragged his attention from the laptop. Eva was pointing at the TVs along the back wall. There were about twenty of them, of different sizes and quality, but they all showed the same image.

Him.

Joe’s eyes flickered towards the three assistants. They had convened around the till again, and did not appear to have noticed what was on television. The image changed, to be replaced by a female news reporter standing outside the front gates of Barfield.

Calmly but quickly, Joe examined the map in front of him, scanning the surrounding area: the beach, a cliff behind, a single road leading there and a solitary house about a klick inland. His eyes narrowed as he examined that house.

‘Joe . . .’ Eva sounded desperate.

The nearest village: Thornbridge.

‘
Joe!
’

He logged out of his account, then ushered her quickly out of the shop before any of the assistants tried to accost them. ‘West Wales,’ he said.

‘But—’

‘We
need
to get there.’

Eva stopped walking, and as Joe turned to look at her, she grabbed his hands and held them tightly. Fiercely. Joe glanced at her watch. Midday. He had eighteen hours. ‘Listen to me, Joe,’ she said. ‘We
can’t
do this alone. We’ve got to tell someone what’s happening. We
need
to get help. I know people. I can speak to them . . .’

An old lady trundled along the pavement in an electric mobility vehicle. Her head turned as she passed. Had she recognized him? Or was it just that they were arguing?

‘No,’ he hissed.

‘We
have
to.’

‘Eva, even
you’re
not sure this isn’t in my head. Even
you’re
wondering if I made it all up. Hey, I could have done. Abbottabad. Caitlin. The whole fucking thing. What if I really am out of my mind? What if I really am a psycho?’

Eva frowned and shook her head.

‘You
know
me,’ Joe insisted. ‘But who the hell else could I go to that won’t just shove me back in a cell and throw away the key?’

Eva had no answer. She just bit her bottom lip. ‘What if it’s a trap?’

‘He killed my wife. He took my son,’ Joe replied. Pulling himself away from her grasp, he continued walking along the pavement. He could feel her tearful eyes burning into his back. And he’d only gone ten metres when he heard her footsteps running along behind him, and felt her tugging at his sleeve once more.

‘
But what if it’s a trap?
’ she repeated.

Joe gave her a hard stare. ‘Of
course
it’s a fucking trap,’ he said. ‘Come on, we’ve got a lot to do.’

Seventeen

1300 hours.

There were easier ways than this to get your hands on a weapon, Joe thought to himself. There were contacts he could call. Favours he could pull in. But they involved showing his face. This, he decided, was the better option.

The tower block was the same grey colour as the sky. It was fifteen storeys high, and the side facing him had apartments two abreast, each with a balcony whose front was a dirty orange colour. A covered lobby jutted about five metres out from the block, and inside a bleak, dark, concrete-clad area led to stairs on the left and right.

Joe stood twenty metres from the entrance, on the edge of a small playground where three children clambered over a pyramid-shaped frame, while their mums sat on an adjacent bench, smoking, chatting and ignoring their kids. He was leaning against a lamppost beneath a sign indicating that this was an Alcohol Restricted Area. There was a car park between him and the entrance, about half full of clapped-out old vehicles, three of which had broken windows. A red mail van was just driving away. Joe had watched the postman hurry back to it having made his delivery, evidently keen to be somewhere else.

This was one of the high-rises that had been visible the previous night from their vantage point on the bandstand. He’d been born and brought up in this area. Lady Margaret Road was just a ten-minute walk in an easterly direction, and he had a suspicion that his mother, if she was still alive, lived in one of these blocks. But he wasn’t here to visit family, and he hadn’t chosen this particular block at random. He’d chosen it because it was, as it always had been, the shittiest, most run-down, godforsaken spot in the whole of west London. If you weren’t a waster or a junkie or a dealer when you first moved here, you would be pretty soon. No other type of person lived here. And even if he hadn’t known the reputation of this block that the locals referred to as ‘Heroin Heights’, he’d have recognized the signs anyway: half the curtains drawn even though it was the middle of the day, several broken windows and all but three of the balconies stuffed full of debris – old mattresses, white goods, you name it. It was a real shithole, largely untouched by the police because they’d given up and it kept all the dregs in one place.

He had spotted the two kids immediately, and recognized them for what they were. One was black, one mixed race. Both were blinged up and wearing reversed baseball caps. They were standing on the north-eastern corner of the block, about ten metres from the entrance. Parked in front of them, two wheels on the pavement, was a black Range Rover with all the trimmings: tinted glass, alloys, the works. The driver’s door, which was on the pavement side, was open and it was thumping out heavy gangster rap. There had to be sixty grand’s worth of car there. Joe didn’t get the impression these boys had saved up their paper-round money to buy it.

He continued to watch them from a distance. There was something about spending time in a war zone that made cunts like this all the more repellent. Ship them from Heroin Heights to the poppy fields of Helmand and they’d lose their attitude shortly before they lost their lives.

Five minutes passed. A thin woman with acne and piercings on her nose sidled up to them and handed the mixed-race kid what Joe assumed was a banknote. The dealer then turned his back on the woman, who shuffled off round the corner and out of sight. No doubt she’d be taking delivery of her purchase elsewhere.

Joe walked across the car park in the direction of the two dealers. They stared coolly at him as he approached. When he reached the Range Rover and slammed the door so the volume of the music faded by half, they stepped up, their faces instantly more aggressive. They were obviously used to people treating them with respect. Joe leaned nonchalantly against the car – it was vibrating with the music – and took in all the information he needed in a single glance. Apart from the colour of their skin, these two were identikit: baggy jeans revealing their boxer shorts, Puffa jackets, white trainers, chunky gold bracelets, maybe seventeen years of age. They stuck out their chins, but he saw the way their eyes flashed sideways at each other. They weren’t quite as confident as they liked to make out. The mixed-race kid casually moved his right hand to his back pocket. Joe figured he had a knife. The black boy was digging his nails into his palm.

‘Business good, lads?’ Joe asked.

Neither of them answered. The mixed-race kid made a hawking sound in the back of his throat, then spat a mouthful of green phlegm in Joe’s direction. It spattered against his trousers. Joe looked down at it. Then he looked at the kid.

‘Fancy coming a bit closer to do that?’ he said.

The kid snorted dismissively, his right hand still in his back pocket, but moving upwards slightly. His eyes darted towards his companion again.

He took two steps forward.

Then Joe made his move.

He was fully expecting the boy to pull the blade – a three-inch flick, small but no doubt sharp – so he was ready for it. As he stepped in the kid’s direction, he grabbed the wrist of his raised knife arm. With a brutal yank, he twisted the kid’s arm behind his back and forced it upwards until he heard bone splinter. The knife fell to the floor as the kid let out an agonizing scream and his friend scrambled towards the Range Rover. Joe blocked his way, shook his head and watched with satisfaction as both dealers – the injured boy clutching his arm behind his back, howling with pain and cursing – disappeared around the other side of the block in the same direction the junkie had headed. Spinning round, he opened the door of the car and removed the keys from the ignition. The ear-splitting music suddenly cut out. Joe slammed the door and clicked a button on the fob to lock the vehicle, before retrieving the knife from the ground and running over to the entrance of the block.

The lobby, which stank of piss and was littered with cigarette butts and beer cans, was deserted. The walls were plastered with graffiti, and on the left-hand side there was a broken lift, whose door kept trying to click closed, but to no avail. Joe positioned himself at the corner of the entrance. From here he could see the Range Rover twenty metres away, and he also had a clear view left and right of the road in front of the block.

Five minutes, he told himself. It wouldn’t take a second longer.

The kids on the corner had been just that. Kids. They were neither old enough nor, underneath the bluster, streetwise enough to be in charge of their little operation. Joe knew how it worked. Stick the foot soldiers on the corners and let them do the dirty work. If the police came calling, they would have the incriminating merchandise or the money. But these enterprises had a hierarchy. Joe would have bet almost anything that the corner boys’ boss man would already be on his way to defend his patch. And he wouldn’t be doing that with a three-inch flick knife. He’d be altogether better prepared.

The lift clicked. Music from the flats above drifted down. Joe waited.

Three minutes passed. He heard it before he saw it: a screeching of car wheels and the roar of an engine. The vehicle that pulled up in front of the Range Rover was a BMW X5, also black, windows also tinted. And the man who emerged seconds later had murder in his eyes.

Sallow-faced and thin, he had short, bleached-blond hair and wide cheekbones. There was something Eastern European about his features. He had none of the hip-hop bling that the kids wore – just a slightly oversized tracksuit that had the effect of emphasizing his skinny frame. Joe noticed at once, however, that his right hand was tucked inside the zip of his tracksuit top. He might be skinny, but then he didn’t have to rely on his strength to get what he wanted.

The man looked round, his eyes wary, clearly looking for whoever had dared to muscle in on his patch. Joe emerged from the shadows of the entrance and, the moment the newcomer observed him, made a clicking sound from the side of his mouth and winked. Then he stepped back into the shadows, his ambush prepared.

He could hear the man’s footsteps approaching. They were swift and confident, the footsteps of somebody moving without fear. And Joe knew he was moving without fear because of whatever he had tucked inside his tracksuit. He held the flick knife lightly in his right hand, ready to attack the second he saw him enter the bleak lobby.

No words were spoken. There was nothing to be gained from delaying. The man was carrying a small handgun lazily by his side. Whether he meant to fire it or threaten with it didn’t matter. He was armed, which meant he had to be put down. The instant Joe saw him come round the corner he attacked, swiping the knife across the width of his face. Joe felt the blade slice into the flesh at either corner of the man’s mouth, and as he whipped it sideways there was a slight, spongy resistance as it cut into his tongue. The explosion of blood was sudden and shocking. It was accompanied by the clattering sound of the weapon falling to the concrete floor. The man threw his hands up to his face, but not before he had screamed loudly, a single word in a language Joe didn’t recognize. That was the worst thing he could have done. As he opened his mouth, the cuts on each corner ripped open like a seam splitting up the side of his face. The flow of blood doubled, and his hands were not nearly equal to the task of staunching it. He staggered back, his face a scarlet mess of horror.

Joe bent down to pick up his gun. It was a Smith & Wesson .38 snubnose – nothing to write home about but serviceable enough. It would fire a round, and that was the important thing. He opened the cylinder release to check it was loaded, then tucked the weapon into the front of his jeans and made sure it was hidden under his lumberjack shirt. Then, leaving his victim, who had sunk to his knees and had at least realized that keeping his mouth shut was a good idea, he walked back out into the open air. Nobody would be shedding a tear that a piece of shit like that had been cut up, and although Joe had hardly taken him on out of good citizenship, he couldn’t help feeling grimly satisfied with what he’d just done. No doubt some other twat would grab this corner in the blink of an eye once word got out about what had happened, but that wasn’t a reason not to sort the cunts out. You had to keep cutting the heads off the hydra even when they kept on growing back, otherwise the Regiment would have given up on the Taliban months ago.

The Regiment. He’d hardly thought about them since he’d been back in the UK. Had they heard what had happened? Was it being discussed in the squadron hangars of Hereford or ops centres of Bagram, Bastion and Kandahar? Were his mates ready to believe the worst of him? It wouldn’t be the first time one of their number had gone bad.