Sixty-six
21.13
Tina signed the last of the papers giving her custody of Fox and handed them back to the worried-looking prison officer behind the reception desk. There was a definite tension in the air. The riot might not have been audible from where Tina was standing, but its effects were etched on the features of all the prison staff.
She felt the fear as much anybody. She’d seen more than her fair share of destruction today. On her way here in the helicopter she’d had to pass the burning Shard, its base surrounded by emergency services vehicles, and as they’d come in to land a large fire in one of the prison’s wings had been clearly visible. It reminded her of the riots of August 2011 as they’d spread across London and the rest of the country like wildfire. It had seemed then as if society was on the verge of complete collapse. In a way, it felt like that now.
But Tina had always been a fighter. Rather than letting the fear overwhelm her, she used it to keep her steadily building exhaustion at bay. She might not have been feeling top of her game but there was no way she was going to show Fox that as he stopped in front of her, flanked by his prison escort.
‘Hello, Miss Boyd,’ he said, keeping his tone neutral.
‘Hello, Mr Garrett,’ she answered curtly, once again struck by how insignificant he looked. Barely an inch taller than her, and probably no more than eleven stone at most, his thinning hair making him appear prematurely middle-aged, he stood there with shoulders slumped and his head bent forward. But she knew it was an act. Fox was a dangerous killer, however much he tried to hide it. ‘Are you ready?’
‘Whenever you are.’
Tina nodded to the prison officer who’d escorted her to the interview with Fox on her first visit, ten hours and a whole lifetime ago. Thomson, she thought his name was. ‘Thanks, we’ll take him from here.’
‘He’s all yours,’ said Thomson, giving Fox a hard shove in the back. ‘He’s been given a full body search, but I’d watch him if I were you. He’s a slippery bastard.’
‘Can I ask a favour, Miss Boyd?’ said Fox, as Tina led him by the arm out of the main doors and on to the front steps of the prison, where two police cars and a van waited to take him away. ‘Do you mind if I wear the cuffs in front of me rather than behind? They’re making the stitches on my arm rub in this position.’
Tina met his eyes. There was none of the cockiness that he’d exhibited earlier, and his request seemed a genuine one, but she wasn’t fooled. ‘I’m afraid not.’ She gave his arm a tug and carried on down the steps.
‘That’s not getting us off to a very good start.’
‘Give me the names of everyone involved in today’s attacks and I’ll think about it.’
‘If I do that, you’ll just march me straight back in there. I need some leverage, and there’s no way I’m telling you anything until I’ve got it in writing that you’re keeping me in the safehouse until my trial.’
‘Then you’re going to have to travel in some discomfort.’
‘Let’s compromise,’ said Fox as they stopped next to the van where four more armed officers waited. ‘I’ll give you one name — the name of someone who was one hundred per cent involved today. Just to show willing. And then you show me a little respect by letting me travel with my hands cuffed in the front. Look at all these people escorting me. It’s not as if I can do anything anyway.’
Tina thought about it. There were twelve armed officers in the convoy, plus herself. It was more than enough to keep Fox on a tight leash. And if she was honest with herself, she saw an opportunity to look good by squeezing out a second name before the real questioning had even begun.
‘Go on then. Give me a name.’
‘Cecil Boorman. Ex-soldier. Very reliable. He should have been involved at the Stanhope, but he had salmonella of all things. He’ll be part of this too, although not at a senior level. Cecil’s just a grunt.’
Tina remembered Bolt telling her earlier that Boorman was the man his informant had been trying to get close to. ‘And you’ve got evidence to back this up?’
‘Plenty.’
Tina sighed. Agreeing to Fox’s request went against all her instincts, but he’d now given her two useful names — more than anyone else had done.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘Let’s do it.’
Sixty-seven
21.20
The key is to stay conscious. If you shut your eyes, even if it’s just for one moment, then that’s it. You’re dead. That’s why the medics keep talking to you while they wait for help. Because they know it’s the only way they’re going to keep you alive.
But when there’s no one there to talk to you, it’s hard. Jesus, it’s hard.
I had no idea how long I’d been lying there for. An hour. Two hours. Maybe even more. I’d tried crawling out of my hiding place but had managed barely a few feet on my belly before what little energy I had left simply slipped away. Now I was half in, half out of the tangle of bushes, lying on my side on the gravel curled up in a foetal position, surrounded by the blood that was dripping steadily from my wounds and wondering how long I had left. I could see the lights on in the old lady’s flat, no more than twenty yards away, yet it might as well have been twenty miles for all the good it would do me. I was stuck there, alone in the freezing cold, and it was taking all my resolve to keep myself fighting through the minutes, waiting for someone to turn up in the car park and see me.
I had a vague recollection of a car containing two men turning up some time earlier. Of them getting out and walking round to the front of the house, missing my neighbour’s corpse completely, before comin g back. At least I thought they must have come back, because the car was no longer there, and neither were they.
Lying there now, I was reminded of a time just after I’d arrived on my first tour of Afghanistan. Our platoon had been stationed in an old brick fort five miles away from the Forward Operating Base in Southern Helmand, and one day we’d gone out on patrol and walked straight into a 360-degree ambush. Surrounded on all sides by dozens of Taliban fighters, and hopelessly outnumbered, we’d taken refuge in an irrigation ditch. As we engaged the enemy at close quarters, the radio operator tried to call in air support, only to discover that the radio had been hit by enemy gunfire and was totally useless. So there we were, trapped in no-man’s-land, with no hope of rescue, fighting for our lives, as the bullets and the RPGs whizzed around us, and I remember thinking at the time that if I had to die, I’d want it to be here, surrounded by my friends and fighting. The adrenalin was incredible. Like nothing you can imagine.
And then the platoon commander, a good guy with a calm head called Mike Travers, got hit by a Taliban bullet. He was only ten feet away when he went down into the knee-deep, sludgy water clutching his shoulder, his face screwed up in pain. As some of the guys went to help him, he’d shouted for them to get back to the fight, which was typical of him. He didn’t want to be fussed over. But within a few minutes he’d gone very pale and, as the medic stripped off his body armour and examined the wound, things took a serious turn for the worse. The bullet had severed a major artery, and without a rapid blood transfusion there was no way he’d survive. The medic patched him up as best he could, but the commander kept bleeding, his blood turning the muddy water red as it dripped steadily out of him.
We had to make a decision. Stay put until either we got the radio working or FOB realized we were missing and sent reinforcements, or fight our way back to base, carrying the commander as we went. The sergeant, who was now in charge, chose the latter, and I’ll always remember those brutal twenty-five minutes as we made our way along the irrigation ditches, before finally breaking cover a hundred yards from the base and running along completely open ground, firing as we went, faint and exhausted in the murderous forty-five-degree heat, knowing that at any moment any one of us could be the next casualty. Two of our number had volunteered to carry the commander over that open ground, knowing that as the slowest group they’d make the biggest and easiest targets. One of those men was Cecil. The other was me. He had the front. I had the back. And we’d done it. As Cecil had pointed out afterwards, if the Taliban had been as good shots as we were we’d have been peppered with more
