HM Prison Belmarsh, which housed the most dangerous criminals in the UK, was renowned for its uniquely penal ‘Close Supervision Centre’ – a specially contained unit for inmates with dangerous and severe personality disorders. Inside this prison within a prison, the governor had recently constructed the ‘Really Very Close Supervision Centre’, a prison within a prison within a prison and inside this, sat Hosiah Regolith Two Swords – the psychotic axe-wielding homicidal maniac’s psychotic axe wielding homicidal maniac. Every shit Two Swords shat was interrogated, every sneeze was dissected, every morsel Two Swords munched had already been masticated by the governor’s hand-picked crew of elite prison commandos – his ‘impenetrable wall of steel’ as the governor liked to call them. ‘This man,’ Governor Tatty Francis told the assembled world’s media, ‘this treacherous, savage, wild, vicious man is going nowhere,’ and nowhere was exactly where Two Swords went for the first 342 days, 12 hours and 13 seconds of his sentence.
‘He’s fucking escaped, how can he have fucking escaped?’ squawked Governor Francis into the face of Craig Pestle, the commanding commando of the evidently penetrable wall of steel. ‘Escaped where?’
‘I just mean,’ croaked Pestle, swallowing back the tears, ‘I just mean that he isn’t in his cell any more, which led me to deduce, to reach the conclusion that…’
‘What about the motion detectors, what about the infrared alarms, what about the CCTV, what does the CCTV show?’ yodeled Governor Francis.
‘It shows…’ stammered Pestle, ‘it shows him being there and then him not being there and now it shows…’
‘What does it show now?’ shrieked Governor Francis.
‘It shows him still not being there,’ winced Pestle.
‘What about your crack team?’ howled Governor Francis. ‘Seven men, who have had the finest training in the art of the observation and containment of dangerous felons that money can buy. They are supposed to have eyes on him 24–7, to track his every move, to map his every gesture, seven men who cannot be bought, who can withstand any form of physical assault, men who are unassailable, unimpeachable. What happened to them?’
‘He had a migraine and had to have a bit of a lie down,’ replied Pestle.
‘He,’ roared Governor Francis, ‘what about the other six?’
‘Well, Tony’s on long-term sick at the moment with varicose veins, Simon has gone off prisons and is training to become a ballet dancer, the three lads from work experience didn’t turn up and Terry helps his wife with their weekly big shop in Tesco on a Tuesday morning.’
Governor Francis took in this explanation as Stalin might have greeted the news that a team of NKVD officers had failed to interrogate a political dissident because they ‘weren’t really feeling up for it’.
‘That still doesn’t explain how Two Swords could have escaped from the most secure interior and exterior encasement unit in Western Europe,’ retched Governor Francis. ‘Has anyone been in his cell to verify this apart from you?’
‘No,’ sniveled Pestle, ‘no one.’
‘So what does that lead you to conclude, you fucking moron?’ honked Governor Francis.
‘It leads me to conclude that Two Swords must have surreptitiously enticed me into his cell, ripped my face off with his teeth in order to use it as a disguise and that I am in fact Hosiah Regolith Two Swords,’ said Hosiah Regolith Two Swords, discarding Pestle’s severed face which he had been gripping by its trailing sinews and grabbing Governor Francis by the throat.
‘Oh,’ snorkeled Governor Francis.
‘Exactly,’ said Two Swords, preparing to eat his second breakfast of the day.
*
‘I don’t do prison escapes, not with my back, not even if I was directly outside the prison where it was happening,’ said M, from directly outside the prison where it was happening.
‘Think about your career trajectory,’ pleaded Inspector Thrace, ‘you need to acquire some forward momentum and own the moment.’
‘Don’t talk to me about career trajectories you shitbaking, arselicking, cuntsandwich,’ said M between spadefuls of fried egg and a ladle of coffee that was darker than the blank-eyed heart of the universe, ‘I’m hardly going to make Commissioner of the Metropolitan police anytime soon. You know that I have breakfast between 9am and 11am every day, how am I going to take on enough fuel to make it through to lunch? Look at your watch you pigfucking piss-shredder, 10.55am, 5 minutes and three plates of full English to go.’
‘You are, as it were, our man on the spot, M. This is your chance to save lives,’ pleaded Thrace.
‘Lives,’ choked M, ‘don’t make me upchuck on my shirt you, fercockt momzer, I don’t care if Two Swords himself comes in this cafe, sits down opposite me and demands my car keys, until Big Ben strikes clean-plate-o’clock in three minutes time I am not a policeman.’
M went to the toilet, gently popped his police issue radio transmitter into the piss-filled urinal and returned to his table to find Hosiah Regolith Two Swords sitting opposite him. ‘Give me your car keys,’ demanded Two Swords, holding out a hand branded with the hallmarks of a thousand years of quietus. M pointed at the time, Two Swords was about to speak again but M leaned over, placed his finger across Two Swords’ lips and nodded at the clock again.
The two men sat in silence until the time was exactly 11am.
‘No,’ said M.
‘I’m not a man who understands the word no,’ replied Two Swords, rippling a giant pectoral in M’s direction.
‘Excuse me,’ said M beckoning over the waitress, ‘this man does not know the meaning of the word no – do you have a dictionary in this fine establishment?’
Two Swords grasped M’s car keys in his grandiose mitt but his hand was quickly swallowed up by M’s leather-gloved paw.
In an instant both men had grabbed the other by the throat – M’s neck was the size of the average woman’s waist but Two Swords’ graffitied hand was up to the challenge.
‘I would hate for the two of us to fall out over this after our relationship had begun so positively,’ said M, who was surprised to find that his attempt to wring the life out of Two Swords’ muscle-wracked neck was making not the slightest impression on his adversary’s ability to breathe. It was a neck that had survived two public executions by hanging in the USA and in honesty it was partial to a bit of a squeeze. For the first time in M’s life he sucked the bitter cough sweet of equality. It was not a taste he intended to become accustomed to.
‘I wouldn’t normally share my breakfast but given that you have been on a prison diet…’ said M, letting go of Two Sword’s hand, picking up a plate piled high with half eaten fried eggs and baked beans and smashing it into the side of Two Swords’ head with murderous force.
‘I perfectly understand and appreciate your generosity,’ said Two Swords, stabbing M’s car keys into the hand that had just delivered the breakfast and twisting them.
‘Then you won’t mind me suggesting that you add a little of this excellent home-made gentleman’s relish provided gratis by this purveyor of the finest in traditional British cuisine to your already delicious petit dejeuner,’ replied M, grabbing Two Swords by the hair, ramming a yellow plastic condiment dispenser up his right nostril and crushing it until projectile mustard bounced off Two Swords’ frontal lobe and back down and out of his left nostril.
Two Swords wrenched his head backwards, leaving a bounteous quantity of scalp and slaughter percolating between M’s fingers, and removing the double razor-bladed shank he had assembled in prison from his jacket pocket, he ran over to the table opposite and held it against the throat of a seven-year-old girl.
‘As much as I was enjoying our tête-à-tête,’ said Two Swords, ‘it has been so very long since I have experienced the sights and sounds of old London town and I thought I might just take a little promenade in your lovely police car.’ He dragged the struggling child by her arm towards the door of the cafe. ‘I’m sure you are aware of how much of a butterfingers I can be with people and sharp objects, officer, we both know that at some stage this sweet little skull,’ he gripped the girl’s face between his fingers, ‘will have to come off – beheadings are just so moreish.’
Two Swords pirouetted triumphantly and was halfway out of the door before it was closed in his face by a fully-grown Kevlar-clad walrus.
‘I don’t think so,’ said M.
‘I’m afraid I must demur,’ replied Two Swords, removing the shank from the girl’s neck where it left two angry tram lines across the full length of her throat and slashing it across M’s Brobdingnagian stomach. When M saw the child’s blood-pearled neck, he felt suddenly defective. His brain received the news that his belly had been julienned with knee-juddering uncertainty and sent him scuttering backwards.
Dragging the girl by the wrist, Two Swords exited the cafe. He forced the girl into the front seat of the police car which was parked outside, turned the key in the ignition and leaned over to tune in the radio whilst maintaining the pressure of the shank against the girl’s throat.
‘Nee naar nee naar nee naar – dat the sound a da poleece,’ said the disembodied leather-gloved hand which had appeared from the back seat of the car and now held a penknife against Two Swords’ jugular vein.
‘Dear me officer, we are persistent, aren’t we losing rather a lot of blood, what with having our prodigious tummy all unzipped?’ rasped Two Swords.
‘Stab vest, fuck pig,’ replied M, ‘not a scratch.’
Two Swords paused. He seemed to be luxuriating in the moment.
‘We appear to have arrived at something of a Mexican standoff, officer. I intend to kill this child – it is my purpose and one I have fulfilled excellently so many times before. I fear your attempt to save her will be as dull as the blade of your little knife.’
‘If you harm her it will be the end of you, piss lake,’ said M, pressing the point of the knife into Two Swords’ neck until blood began to pool under his skin.
‘This is my calling, to divest, to dispatch, I am love, the true face of love. My victims are smitten with me, I see it in their eyes before lights out. I complete them, I fill them, I possess them. It cannot end, not with you, with something like you, not in here, like this. My end will be beauteous, it will be torrential, I will unleash an ungovernable concupiscence for violence upon the planet.’
M breathed out through his nose and watched the window blemish and clear.
‘If you let her live,’ said M, ‘if this one child survives, you’ll get another chance, you know they can’t hold you – I’ll fucking help you escape myself, just let this one child…’
‘You can’t save her, you can’t save anyone, you can only destroy,’ sneered Two Swords. ‘To protect you have to believe, I’ve seen your eyes, they don’t believe in anything or anyone, they have forgotten how, they have deserted you.’
Another pause but the silence was exhausting.
‘Why is this child so important to you, officer? Why is saving any child important to you?’
The question. M awaited his own answer with nervous anticipation. He pointed his mouth at it and jumped.
‘Because she has not been vandalised like you and I have,’ replied M, ‘because there are still parts of her that have not been desecrated by the stench of humanity.’
Why save this child and not his own? M asked himself as the knife teetered between his fingers. But he knew why – this was his trajectory – his father had pushed him off a snowy mountainside in a sled with no brakes. The accumulating chicanes, the sinuous masses of those whose lives M had destroyed as he careered through his sorry version of existence, did not slow him down, he doubted that even the death of his remaining son would cause his deceleration.
‘Children are nothing more than grainy images – defective recordings of generations passed,’ said Two Swords. ‘They are ruined before they are born. Put down your knife and stop fighting.’ He sensed that M was beaten, that he had finally overpowered him as he did everyone. He was magnificent, he was imperious. He turned to M and smiled, gently stroking M’s hand and removing M’s knife from his throat.
‘You really are a verbose cuntrocket,’ said M, ramming the penknife through Two Swords’ jugular vein in an aurora borealis of blood.
The silence of the little girl from the front seat of the car was deafening. M tore open the passenger door and her bloodied limp body flopped into his arms. Helpless, as he had been in that hospital ward when he bore the terrible weight of his own son, he beseeched capricious life into lungs that had forgotten how to breathe.
M cried. He cried for this little girl, for the son he had lost and the one he was about to lose, he cried for the childhood he could never retrieve but although he cried, there were no tears, there was only sand.
The girl’s mother was at his side, howling her name, tearing her from M’s hands and as she did so, her daughter’s lips parted into an enfeebled cough. The blood which covered her face belonged to Two Swords alone, her mother had been released from the hell where she had resided.
But for M, hell was boundless.