She wore only the long sports shirt he'd given her and an apron. In the routine, they'd have breakfast in bed, then the trays would go on the floor and it was back to what Heaven sent.
He told her he thought he had a cold coming on, wasn't himself, but that he'd have thrown it off by next weekend. They had breakfast in the kitchen. An hour later he rang his father and told him, it was necessary to be consistent in his deceit, that he was on his way home to Babs. He didn't talk while he ate, as if his silence was a symptom of his cold, but he could see Hannah's annoyance, which seemed to say she thought she'd been short-changed. He was far away, thinking of the brothers and whether on Monday morning, tomorrow, he'd have the bravado to look them in the eyes because he'd taken their money.
They walked round the exercise yard.
'Nothing to do but wait,' Ollie Curtis said. 'I hate waiting.'
It was a banal remark, but true. It was the third time that the younger brother had made it, and they were only on the fourth circuit of the small area used by Category A remand prisoners, and they would get in another twelve circuits before the prison officers called them in and locked them up.
His voice spattered on: 'Can only wait for the morning. I suppose then we'll hear fast enough what Benny's done for us, get it from the brief. I'm with you, Ozzie, it's the only bloody chance. I reckon you're right. The witness won't stand up to another year of hanging about. The mistrial's all we've to look to, then going after that witness, but the waiting's a bastard.'.
Beside him, Ozzie had his hands deep in his pockets, his head down, and he trudged the circuit at pace.
'What you reckon, Ozzie, are you feeling good or what?'
The elder brother shrugged, his mind elsewhere. Young Ollie was always a dripping tap and talked when there was nothing to say. The 'only bloody chance' was with the Nobbler. Why? Because they were in Belmarsh where the security was tighter than it was at any other gaol in the country. There was a joke question among the 'ordinary'
remand men: 'Where is the biggest and most flourishing Al Qaeda cell in the country?' And a joke answer: 'In Belmarsh.' The hate guys, the bomb-plotters, had damn near half a landing to themselves. They had their own cook and their own religion man and the officers stayed off their backs. But them being there meant more wire on top of the outer walls, and more supervision, and guns outside in the locked-up boots of the armed-response vehicles. Where the brothers walked now, in the piss-poor little yard, there was a heavy tangle of reinforced wire above them. And it would be no better when they went to court because there were more guns in the escort vehicles, and guns at the Snaresbrook holding cells and round the courtroom. The Nobbler was the 'only bloody chance' because the option of a break-out did not exist. In a year and a month on remand, Ozzie Curtis had searched for a chink of light peeping through the security, and had yet to see it.
'By now Benny'll have done his approach,' Ollie Curtis said. 'You think this jerk would double-cross us, take the money and not do the business? It's a hell of an amount of money, and there's no guarantee. Would he dare?'
There was a grimace from Ozzie. He would have preferred to walk alone, but could not. If young Ollie told his mother, when the cousin brought her up on the first Saturday of every month, that Ozzie wouldn't walk with her darling baby, aged forty-four, there would be tears and bloody shrieks. He walked with his younger brother…Let the jerk try. He'd get the full treatment. Given the spade out in a wood and told to dig the pit, then get down in it, and he'd look up at the barrel facing him. When half his bloody head was shot to hell the hole would be filled in on him. The life of Ozzie Curtis was one of 'service industries': a service to supply the wheels, another to fence, a third to provide a slaughter-house where cash and diamonds were stashed and safe, a fourth to hire out firearms. There was also an industry, expensive but worth it, for a man who double-crossed on a deal. But it wouldn't come to that because the Nobbler would have spelled out the consequences of a double-cross, and only a bloody idiot would have ignored him.
'What's getting to me, Ozzie — while we're waiting, and it's going on like a clock ticking — is this. If we get put away big-time, how long's the respect we're getting now going to last? Does respect last if we're down for fifteen or more?'
God, why couldn't his kid brother shut his damn mouth? Respect mattered to Ozzie Curtis. He was a blagger, not a druggie importer. He did not fraternize with Crime Squad detectives, did not have any cosy little relationship that meant informing on rivals. The druggie importers were crap and he didn't mix with them on the landing but he reckoned that any of them, if they learned something confidential about him that they could squeal on to their advantage, would shop him. Inside Belmarsh, Ozzie Curtis had status, but he would lose it if the sentence was heavy. He would just be another shuffling wreck, getting old, a target for any arrogant kid on the block, and he'd have his bloody brother whimpering in his ear. He depended on the Nobbler.
'If we go down, Ozzie, there'll be all of those Asset Recovery guys crawling all over us. They'll bloody strip us bare. You thought of that, Ozzie?'
Targets for Asset Recovery, and he didn't need to be told so, included his house down in Kent, which was worth, minimum, one point two five million, his Lexus four-wheel drive, the wife's top-of-the-range Audi, and the villa on the hills above Fuengirola — a place in Spain of that size was another three-quarters of a million — and there were the Cayman accounts, the Gibraltar money, the investments in the Black Sea apartments and…His status in Belmarsh would seep away once he was down and the Asset Recovery team were digging at him. He'd be a bloody pauper, and there was no respect on the landing for one of them.
'Nothing to do but wait,' Ollie said. 'I hate waiting.'
'He must have courage,' Faria whispered. Then the pitch of her voice was bolder: 'Which of us would do it?'
She had cooked chicken breasts and served them with rice and a curried sauce. It was what she would have given her parents if she had been at home, and her two brothers, if they had not been doing religious instruction in Pakistan. She had looked up before she put that question. The doors to the dining area were still closed. Before she had brought the food from the kitchen, she had called through the doors that their lunch was ready.
'Would you? Would you do what he is going to do?'
'I have not been asked,' Khalid answered, but looked away. 'It is immaterial what I say. It is not expected of me. You want honesty among ourselves and between ourselves? No.'
Her finger jabbed at Syed. 'Would you? Do you have that bravery?'
'If it were necessary, perhaps. But another has been chosen. I do not have to answer because the question is on a false premise. I do more for our struggle by staying alive, by continuing as the servant of the Organization. I was never a volunteer, and I am thankful I was not asked.'