Osama

on the clipboard – Joe could hear the sound of his pencil on the paper.

‘Pockets!’ Joe could smell the tobacco on the breath of the man behind the counter. He noticed a signet ring on the little finger of his right hand, and dirt under the fingernails. ‘Come on, I haven’t got all fucking night!’

Joe pulled a five-pound note and a handful of change from the front pocket of his jeans. From the back pocket he removed a folded piece of paper. For a moment he didn’t know what it was, but then he remembered. Conor’s picture, the one his lad had given him in his bedroom back home.

‘You’re not having this,’ Joe muttered, making to put it back in his jeans.

The thug with the truncheon didn’t hesitate. The second blow was even more violent than the first, and Joe felt the paper being ripped from his hands even as he bent double with pain. It took five seconds to grab his breath. When he straightened up, he saw that the man with the moustache had unfolded the paper. With a malicious glint in his watery eyes, he tore it in two, then in two again.

Something snapped in Joe. He hurled himself at the counter, grabbing the officer by his greasy ginger hair and slamming his head down so that it smashed against the counter. The guy cried out. When he stood up again, blood was flowing from his nostrils and he had his hand pressed to his face. Vaguely aware that the thin screw with the clipboard had run from the room at the first sign of trouble, Joe turned to the two guards. They were edging away from him, the thug with the truncheon holding it forward threateningly like a sword. Joe was ready to jump them, but at that moment the armed police officers burst in. Total confusion. Four of them, MP5s dug into their shoulders, shouting at the tops of their voices: ‘Hit the ground, hit the fucking ground! ’ Joe dropped to his knees, his hands raised, fully expecting the brutal kicks that his two guards now delivered to the side of his stomach with their heavy black boots. The thin screw reappeared behind the armed police, watched for thirty agonizing seconds, before saying ‘Stop!’

The two prison guards straightened up, leaving Joe in a pile on the floor.

The silence that followed was broken only by the pained swearing of the guy with the ginger moustache. As he tried to stem the flow of blood from his nose, he staggered backwards through the door behind the counter and out of sight. The thin screw gave a nod to one of the ARU. They lowered their weapons and withdrew to the entrance.

‘Stand up.’

Joe stood.

‘Look, pal,’ the screw said. ‘In twenty minutes’ time you’ll either be in a cell or in the hospital wing. The duty nurse is six foot three and called Albert. Lovely bloke. Family man. It’s a very funny thing, but last time he had a wife-beater in there, another inmate managed to stab the little shit with a dirty needle while Albert’s back was turned. Cunt got a nice case of Hep C off of it. Now I might be wrong, but I reckon someone who just killed his missus could find Albert’s got his back turned on him, too…’

‘I didn’t kill her,’ Joe muttered, his voice hoarse.

‘Save it for the beak, pal. Now take the rest of your fucking clothes off before we give Albert something to ignore.’

Joe blinked stupidly up at him. ‘What the fuck?’

‘Clothes!’ barked the screw. ‘Off?! And don’t look at me like that. There’s plenty of faggots on the block, but we’ve all got WAGs to suck us off at home. Your arsehole’s safe on this side of the door…’

Joe stood up slowly. Without taking his gaze from the screw, and aware that everyone in the crowded room – the two guards, the thin screw, the four armed police by the door – were watching him, he stripped, then stood up straight.

‘All right, He-Man, turn round.’

Joe turned.

‘Squat.’

Joe didn’t move.

‘Squat!’

Joe squatted.

‘Cough.’

He did as he was told.

‘All right, you’re clean. Put your fucking trousers back on. Just so’s you know, we’ve got a nasty habit of asking you to do that whenever we feel like it. Remember that if you get tempted to keister anything…’

Joe pulled his jeans back on, then felt himself being yanked towards the counter. The guy with the bloody nose was still missing. Another screw, bald and thickset, had emerged from the room behind the counter. ‘Hand,’ he said, and pointed to the scanner. Joe stretched out his bloodstained hand. The guy grabbed him by the wrist and looked at his palm. He didn’t seem at all bothered by the gore, other than to say: ‘Too much blood. Won’t work. Give me the other one.’

The next thing Joe knew, his clean hand was palm downwards on the scanner bed, and a fluorescent white strip was moving from top to bottom under the glass. ‘What is it?’ he demanded.

‘Biometric ID,’ the screw said proudly as he held up the webcam, looked at the screen and pressed the button. ‘Matches your palm print to your face. Course, clever bloke like you won’t be thinking of no funny business.’ He seemed to find this amusing, and grinned at the others.

The thin screw started talking. ‘My name’s Sowden,’ he said. ‘You call me guv and you do what I tell you. Trust me, sunshine, we’ve heard it all and seen it all. You want a quiet life, put your head down and do as you’re told.’

Joe had zoned out. Sowden continued talking – a list of rules and regulations, something about a lawyer and remand custody. His words barely registered.

The bald man handed Joe a bundle of beige clothes, then took a set of keys, walked round to the other side of the counter and opened up the heavy metal door. It was a good eight inches thick with two sets of internal locking bolts each at least three inches in diameter. Joe felt himself being nudged through the door.

He found himself in what felt like a cell – three metres by three, with an identical metal door on the opposite wall. The two prison guards and Sowden joined him, leaving the ARU in the reception area. The door clanged shut behind them. Joe heard the bolts closing. Thirty seconds passed before the second door opened. Another screw was there, his keys attached to his belt by a length of cord. Joe’s guards pushed him out into the corridor beyond, and the door was locked behind him.

This corridor had yellow-painted concrete walls and bright strip lighting. After fifteen metres it led to a second set of double security doors, then to another courtyard, half the size of a football pitch and surrounded by imposing brick buildings four storeys high. Even though it was still night, the sky was bathed in light – Joe had the sense that the whole exterior was lit by floodlights. Every window he could see had bars over it. He counted four prison guards circling the courtyard, each with a German shepherd on a lead. One of the dogs looked in his direction, its ears flattened. Its handler yanked its lead sharply and continued to circle the courtyard.

The building to which the guards led Joe was on the opposite side of the courtyard at his ten o’clock. This time they passed through a single security door, which Sowden carefully locked behind them. They were in a small annexe with a sign on the opposite wall: ‘Category A’.

‘You said remand,’ Joe muttered.

‘We’ve been advised you’re a flight risk. You’re under observation. Do yourself a favour and keep your head down.’ Joe opened his mouth to argue. He didn’t get the chance. ‘Give me any more trouble, fella, I’ll stick you with the fucking Irish. I reckon they’d make short work of a nice army lad like you. Trust me, mate, you’re better off with Hunter.’

Joe didn’t ask who Hunter was. He figured he’d find out soon enough.

The block Sowden and the two guards led him to consisted of three landings, each with a set of security bars at intervals of fifteen metres and lined with solid metal doors with shuttered peepholes every seven or eight metres on either side. Joe’s guards led him to the third door on the right of the ground-floor landing. One of them rapped on the door – three heavy thumps – then unlocked it.

‘In,’ said Sowden.

Joe entered: he had no other option. The cell door clanged shut behind him. He found himself in almost total darkness.

Silence.