For a moment, Harry heard nothing but stuttered breathing. He wanted to be there, to be with his brother, sorting him out, protecting him.
‘It’s Dad,’ Ben said then, breaking the silence. ‘He . . .’
Harry’s breath caught in his throat and the shiver of ice that pierced him turned his skin to goose flesh. ‘He what, Ben?’
No reply came, just the sound of more crying.
‘He what? Speak to me!’
Harry’s voice was hard as an axe.
‘He contacted me,’ Ben said. ‘Yesterday.’
Harry was so stunned by Ben’s words that he stumbled backwards a little. He shook his head in disbelief, squeezed his eyes shut so tightly that he saw sparks fly in the darkness, his hand covering them, feeling the scars on his face, a topography of pain he wore proudly.
‘How? He can’t have done! He’s not allowed to! He doesn’t even know where you are!’
Ben was quiet again, just his breathing on the other end of the call, slow and shallow.
Harry’s mind was in sixth gear and still accelerating, crashing through possibilities, reasons, anything that he could think of which would have allowed their father to somehow reach out to Ben.
The last time Harry had seen the man was over twenty years ago. Ben had been ten years old. Harry had come back from another tour to find a broken front door, and in the house beyond, splintered furniture, blood on the walls, a family ruined. He should have been there to protect them, to keep his mother, his brother, safe. But he hadn’t been, and it still haunted him. It always would. Professional counsellors and therapists had told him that he needed to move on. Harry, however, refused. Moving on meant the bastard had gotten away with it. And Harry would never allow that.
‘Listen Ben,’ Harry said, his voice all menace, ‘whoever’s responsible, they’re going to regret it, you hear me? I’ll call my boss, we’ll get you safe, I promise.’
‘You can’t,’ Ben said, cutting in before Harry had even finished speaking. ‘He said so. He warned me! He warned me . . . to warn you.’
Harry could feel his rage building, his hand gripping his phone so tight he half wondered if it would soon just give up under the pressure, the shattered screen slicing into his palm.
‘Warn me? Ben, what the hell are you talking about? Warn me of what? Did he call you? I need to know if he called you, Ben. We need to find out how this happened, what went wrong, and who the hell is responsible!’
‘It was one of the other lads in here,’ Ben said. ‘Told me he had a message.’
Harry said nothing, just listened. His brother was talking now and an interruption might just put a halt on that, one neither of them could afford.
‘He said that dad told him to talk to me so that I would talk to you, right? And that if I told anyone other than you, he would know. He said he’d been watching me for years, keeping an eye on me. On you, too, Harry.’
‘On me?’ Harry said.
‘Said he knew all about why you’d been sent up north. That you’d roughed up a couple of blokes, chucked them in the back of a van.’
Harry swallowed hard. He’d never told Ben anything about any of his cases, period. So how the hell had this information got to him?
‘What else did he say, Ben?’ Harry asked, concerned that his brother’s crackling voice could give up at any moment, while in the darker part of his own mind, his thoughts were already threading together what he would do to whoever was responsible for this.
‘He . . . He said he was sorry for what happened. To Mum, to me. He said you had to let it go, to stop going after him.’
‘Bollocks to that,’ Harry spat. ‘After what he did? No chance, Ben, and you know it.’
‘He said he could get to us if he really wanted to. Get to me.’
Ben’s voice broke on his words and Harry patiently listened to his kid brother as he tried to pull himself together just enough to keep talking.
‘He said . . . He said that he would come for me first, Harry. Not you, me. He said that was very important for you to know. That he would come for me. Get me. In prison.’
Harry clenched his jaws so tightly that a jolt of pain shot through his skull like a drill bit chewing through bone. The notion that their supposed father was swaddling an apology for what he had done in the mean cloth of a threat sent him cold.
‘Ben,’ Harry said, but Ben cut him off, his voice rising in pitch, his words tumbling and crashing into each other.
‘He can get to me, Harry! He can get to me! I need to get out! I can’t take this! I can’t take it any more! I need to get out, to get out now! I need to get out!’
‘Ben!’
Harry’s voice was the roar of a soldier’s battle cry and Ben shut down, his voice dropping to a pathetic whimper.
‘You need to listen to me,’ Harry said, his voice quieter now, but no less dangerous.
No response, just a sniff.
‘I’m going to sort this out right now. When we end this conversation you are to speak to a prison officer immediately. Tell them you are in danger and need immediate isolation and protection. I will talk to everyone I need to and I promise you nothing will happen to you. Do you understand?’
Still no response.
‘Ben? Do you understand?’
‘I can’t, Harry,’ Ben said, his voice quiet and weak, the whisper of a ghost. ‘I can’t.’
‘Yes, you can,’ Harry said. ‘You have to.’
‘He’ll know,’ Ben said. ‘He’ll know and then he’ll send people to get me. He’ll know.’
‘You need to do what I’ve said,’ Harry said, working hard to keep his voice calm and measured. ‘You have to.’
‘I . . . I can’t.’
‘Ben .
