The Key

It wasn’t a mistake at all.

When she was a girl he had also taught her how their ancestors had kept their secrets. One method was to record messages on paper using lemon juice instead of ink. When the juice dried it was invisible, but the acids affected the paper so that a flame held against it would darken these sections first and reveal the hidden words on the page. When Oscar had written that he wanted her to light a candle ‘to’ his name so he might talk to her still, he had meant precisely that.

There was another message in the space beneath his signature. All she needed to read it was a flame.

14

Police Headquarters, Ruin

Gabriel’s body flooded with adrenalin as his mind ran through possible scenarios. If he ended up alone in the cell with the giant he would die. He had to do something in the next few seconds, before the guard locked him in. He glanced up at the low ceiling of the cell block, less than a foot above his head at the highest point. Not much room for manoeuvre. Fortunately the guard was short, which gave him a few extra inches, but he was also built like an Olympic weightlifter – and he was armed. As well as a taser he had a riot baton and a can of pepper spray clipped to his belt. At least he didn’t have a gun.

A loud clang echoed in the cramped space as the guard unlocked the gate to the cell. Gabriel stepped slightly away from the wall, his back to the guard, the weight on the balls of his feet and his knees bending slightly to give him a light, central balance.

‘One thousand lira if you put me in another cell,’ he said.

There was a snort from behind. ‘What you going to do, write me a cheque?’

Gabriel shook his head. ‘Cash. Right now.’

He was banking on the cop being an old-school turnkey who wouldn’t baulk at boosting his salary with a bit of freelancing. Cash was a drug to a dirty cop and like any junkie he wouldn’t care where it came from so long as he got a fix.

‘Where you going to get a thousand lira?’

‘My lawyer just slipped it to me. It’s in my right pocket. Take me to another cell and it’s yours.’

There was a pause. Gabriel could almost hear the cogs of the man’s brain working.

He felt something press into the small of his back. ‘Move and you get tasered, straight in your spine. And if that pocket comes up empty, I’m going to keep my finger on the button ’til you piss yourself, understand?’

Gabriel nodded. ‘What about my new cell?’

‘We talk about that later.’

Gabriel sank a little lower to the ground, focusing on a spot on the wall where the uneven surface jutted slightly. He felt the guard’s hand frisking the outside of his pocket, then slip inside to extract what was in fact a business card his lawyer had given him.

As part of his military training, Gabriel had undergone several sessions of ‘torture accustomization’, which included being tasered to see how it affected him. Size or fitness didn’t seem to have any bearing. Some of the bigger guys dropped like sacks of potatoes, while others recovered almost immediately. He’d been somewhere in the middle; not totally incapacitated, but pretty close, so he knew if he got this wrong he wouldn’t get a second chance. A zap to the spine would disrupt his whole nervous system and by the time he recovered he would be locked in the cell with the blond gorilla. He focused on the electrodes pressing harder as the guard leaned down. Timing and speed would be everything. The guard leaned lower, his fingertips touched the business card at the bottom of the pocket. Gabriel sprang.

He threw his cuffed hands to the right, knocking the taser away from his spine. At the same moment he raised his leg, trapping the guard’s hand in the folds of his pocket and kicked hard against the wall using the crevice for leverage. As he rose up, the loop of his arms slipped cleanly over the guard’s perfectly positioned head and he squeezed as hard as he could just as the staccato crackle of the taser ripped through the small space.

Gabriel’s right arm, now tight round the guard’s neck, went slack as 50,000 volts pulsed into it. He felt his grip weaken and pulled harder with his unaffected left arm, dragging the slack one tight where the handcuffs linked them and holding on with everything he had. They stumbled backwards and hit the wall, the jolt driving the electrodes deeper into Gabriel’s flesh. His stronger arm began to slacken and the guard twisted his head away as he felt the pressure ease. He was getting free.

Gabriel let his legs crumple beneath him. They hit the floor hard, the guard getting most of the impact, and the taser jarred clear of his flesh. The moment the strength-sapping voltage was gone Gabriel squeezed with both arms, clamping hard on to the guard’s thick neck. He rolled to his right, moving his weight over him as the dry crack of the charge started up once more. This time it made no difference. Gabriel’s arm was now locked in place and every time the taser crackled it just turned him into a dead weight that pressed down harder on the guard’s neck.

The human neck has three distinct areas of weakness that can be exploited by a chokehold: the carotid artery, the jugular vein and the windpipe. All three transport oxygen around the body. If one is cut off, for even a short amount of time, it leads to oxygen starvation and a gradual loss of consciousness. If all three are shut down, this happens in seconds.

It took about ten for the guard to go limp.

He sped things up by frantically stabbing the taser into different parts of Gabriel’s body, but all this did was burn up what little oxygen he had left while Gabriel clung on, weathering the electrical storm, switching the tension to whichever arm was stronger during each attack until the guard stopped moving and the taser clattered to the hard floor. Gabriel glanced up at the giant, making sure it hadn’t fallen where he could get hold of it. His face was a mask of eerie calm, his huge hands shackled in front of him as though praying. ‘What’s your plan now?’ he asked in a surprisingly soft tone. ‘What’s your in-ten-tion? Hoping to make bail before he wakes up?’

Gabriel ignored him. He could feel the blood flowing back into his fingers as fast as it would now be returning to the guard’s oxygen-starved brain. He didn’t have long. He grabbed the keys from the guard’s belt, found the small handcuff key and fumbled it into the lock. His hands sprang apart with a mixture of pain and relief. He rubbed some life into wrists that were cut and sore then quickly started stripping the guard.

‘You like boys?’ The soft voice mocked from behind.

Gabriel pulled the guard’s shirt off and fitted it over his own. ‘I like freedom,’ he said, buttoning it up then doing the same with the uniform trousers. They slipped neatly over his prison-issue jeans but were too wide in the waist and too short in the leg. He fixed them low on his hips, stuffed the tail of the shirt into the waistband and cinched the belt tight just as the guard began to stir. Gabriel grabbed him under the shoulders and rolled him over to the cell, being careful to stay out of range of the giant. He scooped the handcuffs off the floor, snapped one end on the guard’s wrist and the other round the bars of the open cell door just as the guard woke up. His eyes rolled down, focused on Gabriel then he lunged forward. Gabriel sprang back and the handcuff caught on the lower cross bar with a loud clang, yanking the guard to a sudden stop. He looked down at what held him, then back up at Gabriel, just in time to take a face-full of pepper spray. A strangled wheeze squeaked from his constricting throat and he fell to the floor, choking and rubbing at his burning eyes with his free hand.

Gabriel stepped away from the cloud of spray and reached into the uniform shirt pocket for the guard’s pack of cigarettes.

‘Those things’ll kill ya,’ the giant said from behind the bars. ‘Car-cin-o-gen-ic.’

Gabriel pulled a disposable lighter out from inside the packet and clamped a cigarette between his lips. ‘Ah, but that which doesn’t kill you,’ he said, flicking the wheel of the lighter to get a flame, ‘just makes you stronger.’

He lit the cigarette, drew on it deeply, then tilted his head towards the ceiling and emptied his lungs at the smoke detector.

15

Officer Lunz jackknifed forward in his chair. He’d been daydreaming about fishing in his favourite pool in the Taurus foothills when the clanging bell had snatched him back to the control room. He scanned the bank of monitors, his heart thumping in his chest, looking for signs of what might have tripped the alarm.

The images were fuzzy at the best of times but with the sprinklers now filling the corridors with a fine spray, they revealed almost nothing. He could hear the muffled sound of banging and roars of complaint from the twenty or so inmates now being soaked in their cells. At least he hoped that was what the noise was about. He wondered how long it would take for the backup guards to get here. The system was always tripping itself, so response times had been getting slower. The cameras had started shorting out too. The whole system needed replacing, but the city didn’t want to pay for it. Maybe the fact that the sprinklers had gone off this time might make them reconsider.

He reached over to silence the alarm then stopped when he saw a dark shape appear on one of the screens. It was a man stumbling through the spray, an arm covering his face. He was in D section, at the far end of the complex. Lunz pushed his glasses up on his nose and leaned into the screen. The figure left one screen and appeared on another, making its steady way towards him.

He glanced over at the closed door of the control room. Beyond it a gate of steel bars stood between him and whoever was now approaching. He unlocked a drawer in the desk, pulled it open and fumbled his holstered gun from inside. He felt its comforting weight in his hand and continued to watch the dark figure moving from screen to screen, drawing ever closer, while he waited for backup to arrive. The other screens remained empty. It obviously wasn’t some kind of breakout. The figure was also dressed in dark clothes which meant he must be a guard. All the inmates were given light olive army surplus T-shirts to wear. He must have got caught in the spray. Lunz checked one last time that the other screens were empty, then rose from his chair and headed out into the corridor, taking his gun with him – just in case.

Outside, the hiss of the water was much louder. He squinted through the bars at the indoor rain until a uniformed figure appeared at the end of the corridor, stumbling towards him through the water haze. The man shouted something, but his voice was muffled by hissing water and the arm clamped across his face.

Lunz felt there was something wrong. He popped the thumb strap and slid his gun clear of the leather holster. ‘You OK?’ he shouted.

The figure continued to bump its way blindly along the wet walls, one hand feeling the way, the other rubbing his face. ‘Pepper spray,’ he shouted. ‘Someone jumped me – grabbed my keys.’

Lunz stared past him towards the closed door at the end of the corridor.

They had his keys.

They’d attacked him with pepper spray.

It wasn’t a false alarm – it was the real deal.

He gulped damp air, trying to clear his head. He pictured arms reaching through the bars of a cell at the far end of the block, fumbling various keys into the outside locks. How long before they found the right one?

The staggering guard stumbled the last few metres of corridor and banged heavily into the gate, doubling over in a spasm of coughs. Even if they were out and already surging along the corridor, he would have time to open the gate, get him out and lock it again. He could do it. But it had to be now. He ducked into the control room, hit a button on the desk and was back out in the corridor as the gate slid open. The guard was still doubled over, coughing and wheezing, both hands on his face rubbing furiously at his burning skin. Lunz grabbed his arm and heaved him backwards as another loud noise rang in the corridor and a voice from behind made him jump.

‘What happened?’

The backup team had arrived.

‘Breakout in D block,’ Lunz said, adrenalin running things now.

The two cops pushed past, guns drawn, but stopped short of where the water was coming down. ‘Switch the sprinklers off, would you!’