Hard Landing (14 page)

His car was on the second level below ground. There was a lift but it was claustrophobically small, hardly bigger than a coffin, so Nelson took the stairs.

There were spaces for two dozen cars on the second level, but only three vehicles. Nelson’s was at the far end, close to the emergency exit. His footsteps echoed off the bare walls as he walked across the concrete. Overhead there were bare pipes, stark fluorescent lights and the sprinkler system. Two CCTV cameras covered the area but he had never seen a security guard in the building. Nelson took his keys from his pocket. He looked up at the CCTV camera by the emergency exit, then frowned as he saw that the lens had been sprayed with black paint. He stopped walking and looked across at the second camera. That, too, had been spray-painted. It didn’t look like the work of vandals, he realised. It was a deliberate attempt to blind the cameras. So that no one would see what was going on. The hairs on the back of Nelson’s neck stood up and he shivered. He had a strong feeling that something bad was about to happen. ‘For God’s sake,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Get a grip.’

He started walking again, swinging his briefcase and humming. He kept looking round as he approached his car, unable to shake off the dread, but he was alone. He’d been watching too many horror movies. The world was a safe place, he told himself, and he was a thirty-five-year-old male in good physical condition, not the average mugging victim. Not any sort of victim.

Nelson jumped when he heard footsteps behind him. A man in a dark green anorak was running towards him, a black woollen hat pulled low over a pair of impenetrable sunglasses. The door to the emergency exit crashed open and Nelson whirled round. A second man stood there. Leather jacket. Blue balaclava. Sunglasses. Holding a Stanley knife.

Nelson took a step backwards, his heart pounding. He held up his briefcase in front of him, facing the man with the leather jacket. The man was grinning. Totally confident, totally in control. ‘I don’t want any trouble,’ said Nelson, and he could hear the fear in his voice. He took another step backwards.

Anorak was still running towards him. Nelson didn’t know what he could say to keep the two men at bay.

‘Please . . .’ he said. He felt his bowels go liquid and knew he was about to piss himself.

Leather Jacket swished the Stanley knife from side to side. Nelson stared at it in horror. Then Anorak hit him side on and Nelson crashed to the ground. His hand twisted under his chest and he felt his little finger snap. He tried to get to his feet but Anorak kicked him in the stomach and he curled up into a ball.

Anorak kicked him again, his boot catching him under the chin and snapping his head back. Nelson started to black out. Then he was aware that his face was being slapped. He opened his eyes. Leather Jacket had a knee in the middle of his chest. Nelson blinked away tears. He could see his face, his tear, reflected in the black lenses of Leather Jacket’s sunglasses.

Leather Jacket leered at him and held the Stanley knife to his throat. ‘If I cut you here, you’ll bleed to death in less than a minute,’ he hissed.

‘Please, don’t!’ Nelson gasped. ‘My wallet – my wallet’s in my jacket.’

‘We don’t want your money.’

‘My car,’ said Nelson. ‘Take it. The keys are—’

Leather Jacket pressed the knife to Nelson’s cheek and sliced the flesh. Nelson felt a burning sensation, then warm blood spuring down his cheek. ‘Shut up and listen,’ hissed the man, his mouth just inches from Nelson’s ear. ‘You know the Carpenter case?’

Nelson nodded. It was a Customs and Excise and Drugs Squad case, and he had been scheduled to give expert testimony in support of tapes recorded by two undercover officers. He had to show that the tapes hadn’t been tampered with, and that the voices on them belonged to Gerald Carpenter and the agents.

‘You tell them you can’t give evidence,’ said Leather Jacket. ‘Tell them you’re sick, tell them you’ve had amnesia, tell them what you want, but if you turn up in the witness box we’ll be back to finish the job. Understand?’

‘They’ll know I’ve been warned off—’ The man in the anorak kicked him hard in the ribs. Nelson felt a bone break and pain lanced through his side. He screamed, but the man with the knife clamped a hand across his mouth.

‘I’m a nasty piece of work, me, but I’ve got mates who are ten times worse,’ he murmured. ‘They’d love nothing more than to spend a few hours in the company of your wife. Pretty woman, Mrs Nelson. Lovely blonde hair. My mates were arguing about whether or not she was a natural blonde, and they’d love the chance to find out. How would you feel if your wife was raped? Take the gloss of your marriage, wouldn’t it?’

Nelson didn’t say anything. Tears welled in his eyes, not because of the pain but because he felt so helpless. The last time he’d been so powerless was when he was nine, and two teenage bullies at school had taken his dinner money off him every Monday. Nelson had been too scared to tell his parents, too scared of what the older boys would do to him if they found out, so he’d paid them every week. He’d started stealing loose change from the coats in the sixth-form cloakroom and had used it to pay for his lunches. He’d never told anyone. Not his parents. Not his teachers. Not his wife. It was a secret he’d kept buried for years, but lying on the cold concrete floor of the car park with the knife against his throat and blood trickling down his cheek, the shame and self-disgust came flooding back.

‘We know where you live, Gary. We know where your wife walks the dogs. Fuck with us and we’ll fuck with you.’

Leather Jacket took his hand off Nelson’s mouth. Nelson gasped. Every breath was agony – he could feel the fractured ends of his broken rib grating together – but he was grateful that he was still alive, that they weren’t going to kill him.

‘Just nod to let me know that you understand and agree,’ said the man, pushing the blade of the Stanley knife into Nelson’s neck.

Slowly, Nelson nodded.

Shepherd woke early. It was a nuisance not having his watch. The forensics investigator still had it, and he had no idea when, if ever, he’d get it back. Lee was snoring softly. Shepherd stared up at the barred window. All he could see was a patch of pale grey featureless sky. It was a strange feeling, knowing that central London was only a few miles away. Pubs, shops, football grounds, all the places he used to take for granted might as well not exist. His wife and son were less than thirty minutes away.

He wondered how it would feel to be a lifer, knowing you were going to be kept behind bars for ever. The confinement would drive him mad, he was sure of it. He’d go the same way as Justin Davenport and devote all his time and energy to breaking out. There was no way he could accept that for the rest of his life he would be told what to do at every minute of every day. Lloyd-Davies had probably been right when she said that a military background prepared a man for prison: the communal food, sleeping and washing arrangements, the requirement to follow orders, the rules and regulations that had to be obeyed, no matter how inappropriate, all brought back memories of Shepherd’s time in the army. But there was a big difference between the men with whom he had served and the prisoners in Shelton: choice. Shepherd had wanted to join the army ever since he’d gone into an army careers office with three school friends to shelter from the rain one lunchtime. They’d watched a promotional video, dripping wet and eating packets of Golden Wonder crisps. The others had jeered at the video, but Shepherd had been transfixed. His parents had been pushing him towards university: they wanted him to be a solicitor or a doctor, a professional, someone they could boast about to their neighbours, and they looked horrified when he’d turned up with a stack of army brochures. They managed to persuade him to go to university but he’d left before taking his finals and had signed up as a career soldier.

Once in the army he’d wanted to be the best of the best and had put himself through the SAS selection course twice before he was accepted. It had been harder and more uncomfortable than anything they could do to him in prison, but it had been his choice. Everything he’d done had been his choice, right or wrong, and there hadn’t been a day when he couldn’t have walked away if that was what he’d wanted. Eventually he had left, and that had been his choice, albeit because it was what his wife had wanted. But the men in Shelton had no choice, and that was what made prison such a terrible punishment. It wasn’t the food or the environment or even the people, it was the lack of choice. And when there were choices, they were choices laid down by others. Top bunk or bottom. Tea or coffee. Vegan meal or Ordinary. Choices that were no real choice at all. Even now, Shepherd was in prison by choice. He could have refused the job and woken up in a warm double bed with Sue, instead of alone in an uncomfortable bunk with a racist thug beneath him. But if that choice was ever taken away from him, Shepherd knew that the confinement would be more than even he could bear. He’d do whatever it took to get out.

He sat up, not liking where his train of thought was heading. Gerald Carpenter had a wife and family, and he was facing a long prison sentence. Shepherd had been inside only two days but already he had grasped how appalling the prospect of twenty or even ten years was. Carpenter had decided how badly he wanted his freedom, and the price he was prepared to pay to achieve it. He’d kill to get out. Shepherd rubbed the back of his neck where the tendons were as taut as steel cables. Would he be prepared to do the same? He had killed – five times – but in combat, in the heat of battle, the enemy in front of him. Combat wasn’t especially clean or honourable, but it was kill or be killed, soldier against soldier. Would he be prepared to kill another human being in cold blood if it meant the difference between life imprisonment and freedom?

Shepherd swung down off his bunk and started doing rapid press-ups. He concentrated on his rhythm and breathing and was soon bathed in sweat. He increased the pace and soon he could think of nothing except the exercise, the burning in his muscles, the pressure on his fingertips, the blood coursing through his veins. Twenty. Thirty. Forty. Fifty. He stopped at sixty, knowing he could do more, and switched to rapid sit-ups, working his left side, then the right, until he rolled over and did another fifty press-ups.

‘Bloody hell! Sooner they let you in the gym, the better,’ said Lee. He was watching Shepherd with one eye.

‘Sorry, Jason,’ said Shepherd. The lack of privacy was one of the worst things about his confinement. The only time he could be alone was when he was sitting on the tiny toilet: it had a thin plastic door but even then every bodily function could be heard in the cell. Since he’d been in prison he had always been just a few feet from another human being. He promised himself that the first thing he would do when he got out was go for a long walk in the countryside. The Brecon Beacons, maybe, where he’d done the SAS selection course. He’d hated the wilderness then, hated the bleak hillsides and the icy, clinging rain that had soaked him to the skin and chilled him to the bone, hated the freezing streams that poured into his boots, hated the wind that froze his cheeks and hands. But now he’d give anything to be out in the open, breathing fresh air that hadn’t been through the lungs of a hundred other men. ‘What time is it?’

Lee squinted at his watch. ‘Twenty past seven. They’ll be doing roll-call soon.’

‘You okay if I keep exercising?’

‘Sure,’ said Lee sleepily. He rolled over and put his head next to the wall.

Shepherd carried on doing press-ups, sit-ups and leg raises. He heard boots on the stairs, then inspection hatches.

It was Hamilton who opened theirs. ‘Macdonald, you get to shower this morning,’ he said.

Shepherd frowned. He hadn’t requested a shower and it wasn’t like Hamilton to offer him unnecessary privileges. He still hadn’t come up with a copy of the
Prison Rules
.

‘You’ve got an appointment with the governor at eight forty-five. RSVP isn’t necessary.’

The inspection hatch snapped shut. The governor had obviously been told of his presence, and Shepherd was pretty sure that he wouldn’t be happy to have an undercover cop in his prison.

In an ideal world, Shepherd would have preferred that no one knew his true role. But HM Prison Shelton was not an ideal world, and there might come a time when he needed a Get Out Of Jail Free card at short notice. The governor would be his only lifeline, so, whatever his reaction, Shepherd would have to handle him carefully.

The secure corridors were filled with inmates when Hamilton took Shepherd to the governor’s office. Prison officers stood at the corners of the corridors linking the various blocks. All the connecting doors were open and they watched the prisoners file past, singly and in groups. The atmosphere was relaxed as a university campus between lectures, and other than the prison uniforms and surveillance cameras there was no real sense that they were in a holding facility for the country’s most dangerous criminals.

Most of the prisoners were moving from their blocks to the workshops where they spent three hours each morning. Their jobs were mundane – filling the breakfast packs, assembling Christmas crackers for a high-street chain or electrical goods, putting junk mail into envelopes for financial institutions. Lee had told Shepherd there was a small computer department that did freelance programming work but the only prisoners who could work there had degrees and programming experience. Shepherd had been surprised to hear that half a dozen long-term prisoners fulfilled the requirements; most were in for murder.

The governor’s office was on the top floor of the administration block. A small outer office contained two middle-aged women, one working at a computer, the other talking on the phone. One side of the room was lined with metal filing cabinets; flow-charts and posters covered the other walls. Hamilton pointed at a plastic sofa and Shepherd sat down. He’d seen most of the posters in the reception area when he’d first been brought into the prison. How not to get Aids. The penalties for racial abuse. How to contact a Listener.