Osama

He stared at it, vaguely aware that Eva had joined him at the screen.

‘What is it?’ she whispered.

He didn’t immediately answer.

‘Joe, what is it?’

‘Instructions,’ he said quietly.

‘I don’t understand.’

He pointed at the first sequence. ‘Tomorrow’s date,’ he said. ‘May 11. Time, 0600 hours.’

‘But what about the last numbers?’

‘Coordinates,’ he said. ‘Latitude and longitude.’

‘But… where?’

Joe navigated to Google Maps, but even as he did so, he was thinking out loud, remembering the details of the YouTube video that was no more. The sea, and the darkness of the sky despite the fact that it had been taken after sunrise. ‘The west coast,’ he said. ‘Somewhere remote.’ As he spoke, he tapped in the grid reference. Five seconds later he had zoomed in to a beach on the Pembrokeshire coast. The satellite image was indistinct.

‘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