Kicking Off Read online

  KICKING OFF

  Jan Needle

  © Jan Needle 2014

  Jan Needle has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 2014 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY ONE

  TWENTY TWO

  TWENTY THREE

  TWENTY FOUR

  TWENTY FIVE

  TWENTY SIX

  TWENTY SEVEN

  Extract from Death Order by Jan Needle

  TOP SECRET

  HOME OFFICE. QUEEN ANNE’S GATE. SECURE BOX 13/11. FOR XXXXXX ONLY

  FROM: XXXXXXX

  SECURITY CODING R+EI. (All restrictions)

  Look, we’re in the shit. You know it, I know it, everyone with half a brain knows it, even Our Glorious Leader. I’ve seen prisons in eastern Ukraine more civilised than some of ours, I’ve met ISIS cut-throats with a greater grasp of human rights. It’s going to blow, and I’d say very soon.

  Brief rundown: Career crims, alkies, nutters, druggies, gangsters. Yardies, Roma, paedos, rapists, thugs. Murderers, gunmen, terrorists, the Koran. No, that is not a fucking joke. Half the youngest inmates – black, white and khaki – are flocking to the Mullahs now, and rumour has it our home-grown Padres might be getting jealous. One’s even converting. He says (NB this IS a joke) he’s lonely on a Friday afternoon!

  What’s to be done? Well, OGL hasn’t got a clue, for starters, and the grey man was disastrous. Cut prison officers, cut leisure, cut work, cut pay, cut privileges (like breathing fresh air for half an hour a day), he even tried to stop books coming in in case they distracted people from their punishment. It’s as if you cure a faulty boiler by screwing down the pressure valve, and the numbers just go up and up and up. Ten years ago we were terrified we’d have fifty thousand in. Fifty? I wish! So what happens when we hit the hundred? How long does the lid stay on?

  All right, the purpose of this note. And for Christ’s sake eat it when you’ve read it, that’s why it’s not a bleeding email. Because at the risk of sounding cynical, I think this is your chance. Call me sycophantic, but I think it’s you this problem needs – that killer combination of brains and ruthlessness. I’m sure OGL thinks so, too, although he’ll need a bit of prodding. Think hard, be brilliant, and don’t overplay your hand. Someone, my friend, has got to get a grip, and that someone, my friend, is you. I’m laying down the poison for you now.

  ONE

  Buckie Prison. Rosanna Nixon.

  On the ground at Buckie, on the southern shoreline of the Moray Firth, the press contingent had long gone to seek the warmth of Eliot’s Bar. Watching lunatics was no job for grown men, and what was going to happen, anyway?

  The light was fading now, the damp chill was rising off the turf and concrete. Only a fool would stay outside, they told themselves. Only a girl, an idiot. Only the Mouse. Rosanna Nixon knew what they were thinking when they left her, and she knew the nickname she had won. Quick workers, pressmen, and not without a fine insulting wit. Her small form was hunched inside a big wool coat, her nose was red and somewhat pointy, and her hands were claws of pain. Still she stood there, huddled stubbornly beside a wall, as the shadows lengthened.

  She had been there a day now, since relieving a sick colleague, during which time she had filed two stories back to Glasgow, and nothing – absolutely nothing – had happened. The wind had howled across the firth from the north and east, there had been occasional flurries of snow, and she had stood and stared at Buckie Jail.

  It was, she had decided, the most extraordinary, the most terrible, sight she had ever seen, and also the most frustrating. It rose black and square from the green fields on the cliff top, stark granite against the pale, cloud-flecked sky, and it had an air of ancient malice, of malevolence.

  It was designed to take in human beings, and grind them down, and break their spirits, it was a crushing mill. And nobody, no one at all, seemed to give a damn. Least of all her colleagues. The TV men had been pulled back long ago, to turn their lenses on more lively misery. Nothing moved slowly any more. Needs must, and they’d fly back like vultures.

  As the light drained slowly from the sky, and the western hills turned from dark green to black, Rosanna tried – and failed again – to drag her eyes from the men who refused to be crushed. Blinking away the tears of exposure, she tried to count the small dark shapes among the chimney stacks, whom, all day, the police had photographed obsessively from their helicopters. Shapes that came and went, emerged, and moved, and stopped, and melted. And even, sometimes, waved.

  According to the government at Holyrood, they were thugs and murderers and worse, who had gone up to escape retribution after rioting and injuring eleven prison officers. According to the government, and all the experts they had cited, the men were savages.

  But their banners told a different story. Of violence and sadism, of a cruel regime and cold indifference to complaints, of prisoners cut off from all human company, of others sent in secret off to England where no relatives could afford to go to visit them.

  They wanted an inquiry.

  *

  London. Fat Man and Paddy Collins.

  ‘What I can’t see,’ said Paddy Collins, ‘is what he gets out of life. I mean, for Christ’s sake. The Porsche’s never run. It’s lying there, bleeding rotting. I mean, a Porsche, in a street like this, I ask you. And it’s never moved, in two months to my certain knowledge. It’s got a flat, front near side. What’s he got it for?’

  The fat man and Paddy Collins had a grievance. The target had a Porsche, they had a Lada. It was meant to be inconspicuous, but it was old, a ghastly vomit-green, and quite possibly the only Lada left running in the south of England, perhaps the world. As inconspicuous as a sore green thumb, and they were stuck in it.

  The fat man did not reply. He looked at the Porsche, though, because it was something for his eyes to do. Not something different – the men had been in the street for three hours now. Three hours and seventeen minutes, to be precise. He eased his buttocks on the driver’s seat. He sucked his teeth.

  ‘I’m bored,’ he said. ‘News time.’

  Paddy Collins turned the radio on, and they listened in silence for a while. For the third day running the main news was the jail siege, somewhere north of the Border, somewhere where the savages ran around in skirts, and that was just the men. According to the reporter, there was snow on the ground up there. Snow on the ground, and snow on the roof where sixty-seven prisoners were standing, dressed in overalls and blankets. Collins shivered.

  ‘Mad,’ he said. ‘Fucking insane. They ought to bring back hanging, didn’t they, as a human kindness? Or transportation, to a warmer clime. No fucking snow down here.’

  The fat man sucked his teeth. He did it several times a minute, and most of his colleagues were driven mad by it, it made surveillance hell. But Paddy Collins did not even notice.

  ‘That’s what they’re complaining about,’ said the fat man. ‘Transportation. Some of the precious darlings have been sent across the Border, haven’t they? Dispersed to English jails away from mummy. Prats. Next it’ll be because the porridge is too lumpy.’

  ‘I’m surprised there’s room for them,’ said Paddy Collins. ‘Way I read it our lot are about to go
off bang. D’you remember when they used to complain about two in a cell? Fucking luxury. It’s three in a bed now. They have to take it in turns to fart in case they gas each other.’

  ‘Yeah,’ the fat man said. ‘Talking about porridge, though, do you know that one? There’s these monks, see, who’ve got a vow of silence in their monastery? Appar ently, there’s one monk--’

  There were some things much worse than sucked teeth. Paddy Collins jumped in quickly.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I do. Hey, look there! Black tart. Jesus, she don’t live down here. Wow, look at the tits on that one, eh?’

  The monks, thank God, stayed with their lumpy porridge…

  *

  On the cut. Michael Masters. Sarah.

  Maybe no snow in England, but the air around the narrowboat was dank, and chill, and turning to thick mist. She was called Cynthia’s Beam, and her roof and sides streamed moisture. A dying curl of smoke came from her forward chimney.

  Inside the cabin, the coal dropped gently in the iron stove. It hardly made a sound, but it woke up Sarah Williams, although the man beside her didn’t stir. She looked at his back, the shoulder covered in fine blonde hair, and smiled. Despite the stove, the air inside the boat was getting raw, so she carefully took the corner of the multi-coloured counterpane. As she began to draw it up to cover him, he awoke.

  ‘Oh. Sorry. I was trying to keep you warm.’

  Michael Masters grinned. He was lying on his front, and as he rolled over, to see her better, the counterpane moved too, wrapping itself round him, slipping across the bed, across Sarah, and into the small gap between them. Sarah, naked, laughed.

  ‘So much for my act of kindness. Thanks a bunch!’ Masters lifted the covers as Sarah moved her body into his. She felt his penis hardening against her stomach.

  ‘Michael, you’re ridiculous. Not again!’

  Their eyes were close. They had to squint to see each other.

  ‘Not really. Just an old man’s whim. Although come to think of it, perhaps I ought to. They probably don’t have girls like you in jail.’

  He said it with a laugh, but Sarah’s face clouded. She did not like it, not even as a joke.

  ‘Shut up, darling. Please.’

  She closed her eyes, and Michael began to stroke her hair, gazing across her shoulder, across the cabin of the narrowboat, and into the cold grey sky. The branches of a tree were visible, already showing buds. They were shaking in the bitter, gusty wind.

  ‘I’m not going to a proper prison,’ he said, quietly. ‘Six months, that’s all, in Ford Open. For God’s sake, it’ll be nicer than being at home, in some ways. No bloody kids and dogs, for starters.’

  Sarah left a tiny, timed, pause.

  ‘So it’s nice then, is it? Being at home?’

  He patted her bare backside in the warmth of the bed.

  He squeezed.

  ‘You know what I mean, Thing,’ he said. ‘I can have anything I want in Ford, John says, that’s the deal. Booze, books, bloody caviare on toast. It’ll be a rest cure.’

  She kept her eyes tight closed.

  ‘Not even you, to wear me out,’ he added. ‘Luxury!’

  He began to stroke her.

  ‘My balls’ll be like hand grenades,’ he said, ‘just think of that. Count to five and I’ll go off like a bomb.’

  Sarah laughed, despite herself. She pushed him in the chest, swinging her legs out from underneath the counterpane, her bare toes feeling delicately for the floor.

  ‘Later,’ she said. ‘I’m not ready yet. I need a pee and a gin. Cover that thing up. Disgusting.’

  Masters did so, making a little boy face.

  ‘Not so much tonic this time, Thing,’ he said. ‘And put some coal on the stove, eh? Make yourself useful.’

  Sarah Williams stood facing him. She was five feet four, black-haired, magnificent.

  ‘You’re a cheeky sod,’ she said. ‘I shan’t miss you at all. Not in the slightest.’

  He rolled onto his back, studying the smoke-darkened wood of the ceiliing.

  ‘I’ll be out in under four months assuming I’m a good boy,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if I can pretend I’m still inside for two more? I wonder if she’d believe me? Now wouldn’t that be nice?’

  Sarah, framed in the doorway between the cabin and the lavatory, did not smile. Inside, she was completely hollow.

  *

  Fat Man and Paddy Collins.

  The tits were good, and no mistake.

  The street, not far north from London’s heart, was an eyesore, stunned with poverty, and had black women along in plenty. Most of them had children in buggies, though, and all of them were poorly dressed, as were the Asians and the whites. Whom Paddy Collins – his name and ancestry of no significance that he remembered – categorised as feckless Micks. These tits were good.

  As they swung confidently along the dirty pavement towards them, the two men eased their backs and stretched their legs, and watched. Collins leaned forward and switched the radio off. He twiddled a knob on the dashboard, and a red light came on. The computer bleeped.

  ‘One for the record,’ he said. ‘Jesus, wouldn’t you just love to screw the arse off that?’

  The woman, tall and elegant in slim black skirt and short white jacket, approached without apparently seeing them. Why should she, indeed? Among the sad array of old and seedy cars along the gutter, only the Porsche was vaguely out of place, despite its filthy paintwork and dilapidated air. Their Lada looked at home. Even if she had glanced at it, however, she would not have noticed that the rusty aerial was swivelling in its socket. The metal button on its top was only normal size, despite the camera lens inside it. Her features, as they were photographed, were firm, relaxed, and beautiful.

  ‘One for the album,’ said Paddy Collins, with satisfaction. Then: ‘Jesus. I don’t believe it!’

  The fat man grinned at him.

  ‘You can’t see what he gets out of life, eh cock? There’s things I’d rather do than drive a Porsche, any time!’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Paddy Collins. ‘But how does he do it, that’s what I’d like to know. How does the bastard do it?’

  The tall and lovely black woman was at the top of the steps, her finger on the bell. After a moment or two, the door opened, and Andrew Forbes, thirty-nine and scruffy, was blinking at her in the daylight.

  Their target.

  ‘Fuck,’ said Paddy Collins. ‘The jammy fucking bastard.’

  The camera in the aerial blinked simultaneously. Two perfect mugshots, in one frame.

  *

  Buckie. Donald Sinclair.

  Donald Sinclair’s arrival at Buckie, like his departure from London, had gone unnoticed, just as he’d intended. He had flown from Heathrow to Aberdeen, alone, and taken a taxi the fifty-odd miles to the cold, bleak little port. The cab driver was not surprised by the extravagance involved, assuming he was another pressman. A pretty miserable one, however, for unlike most reporters he would not talk about the siege at all. In fact, after several conversational gambits had been rebuffed, the driver lapsed into silence, while the passenger appeared to go to sleep.

  He had not slept, however. Although there was nothing more he could do to affect the outcome of the operation – except perhaps abort it – it was a matter of total, absorbing interest to him. It was his plan, his masterplan, and it was his alone. What’s more, if it came off, he would be made. By the time he got his first glimpse of the jail as the taxi swung around a coast-road bend, he was in an odd state indeed. The startling vision, black granite against the wild, clean sky, made his stomach lurch. On TV it was a craggy lump of sculpted architecture. In life it was a masterpiece of gothic horror.

  ‘Stop!’ he said. ‘Stop the taxi! That is amazing!’

  The driver was more amazed by the sudden decision to communicate. It did not improve his mood, however. He liked to talk, especially on long trips, and he was resentful. He came to an ungracious halt.

  ‘Bit closer an
d you’d see the cabaret, so you wud. If they had any sense at Holyrood, they’d bomb the place awa’ tae fuck. Send in the SAS to shoot the scum. Naebody here would mourn them, wud they?’

  But the fare had reverted back to type, apparently. He did not answer, and glanced at in the mirror, he was staring at the jail, expression rapt. The driver banged the car into bottom gear, and moved off harshly. Probably some nutter, he thought. Probably on the side of they bastards on the roof. He looks like a psychiatrist. He’d be getting paid to make it fucking worse. Nae danger.

  In fact the fare was there to end the siege, in a way he hoped was going to define such actions for a generation. He was there to defuse the bomb that was threatening to destroy all of Britain’s prisons, not just this suppurating carbuncle on the Moray Firth.

  Today he was a minor politician, acting under cover. Tomorrow, if his plan went well – he would achieve the ultimate.

  It was a dummy run.

  *

  Eliot’s Bar. Rosanna.

  When Rosanna finally went into the back room at Eliot’s, an ironic cheer arose. She was known to many of the Glasgow crew as young and inexperienced, with a degree in five eighths of fuck all. She was quiet and a trifle superior, and she had Bleeding Heart written all over her. In her granny coat and boots, her woollen hat pulled down so far it almost touched her dripping nose, she did not even look worth trying to get to bed. Tonight, as usual, the Mouse put her own hand in her pocket. Hospitality.

  Later, though, when they’d got a few big ones inside them, they were friendlier. This involved mocking her unmercifully, but in a jocular way, about her absurd belief that the Buckie Jail siege mattered, or that anybody really cared.

  ‘Forget it, hen, God’s sake!’ yelled a man called Angus. ‘They bastards up there are just thickarses. The government’ll see them freeze or starve to death before they lift a finger. Damn right too.’

  ‘How is it right?’ yelled Rosanna. She had to yell because the bar was full, and everyone was drinking whisky in full-throated cry. ‘They’ve been brutalised! Conditions in Buckie are appalling!’