Embarrassments to the British prison system had accumulated over the years. The old, forbidding structures that inhabited such desolate places as Dartmoor in Cornwall had turned out to be amazingly easy to escape from, and as a result two new maximum-security facilities, Albany and Parkhurst, had been built on the Isle of Wight. There were many advantages to this. An island by definition was easier to secure, and this one had only four regular entry points. More importantly, this island was a clannish place even by English standards, and any stranger on the loose would at least be noticed, and might even be commented upon. The new prisons were somewhat more comfortable than those constructed in the previous century. It was an accident, but one to which Highland did not object. Along with the better living conditions for the prisoners came facilities designed to make escape very difficult — nothing made them impossible, but these new prisons had television cameras to cover every inch of wall, electronic alarms in the most unlikely of places, and guards armed with automatic weapons.
Highland stretched and yawned. With luck he’d get home by early afternoon and still salvage something of Christmas Day with his family.
“I don’t see anything at all to concern us,” the other constable said, his nose against the small glass rectangle in the door. “Only a handful of vehicles on the street, and none are following us.”
“I shouldn’t complain,” Highland observed. He turned around to look at Miller.
The prisoner sat all the way forward on the left-hand bench. His hands were manacled, a chain running from the cuffs to a similar pair on his ankles. With luck and a little assistance, a man so restrained might be able to keep pace with a crawling infant, but he’d have little chance of outracing a two-year-old. Miller just sat there, his head back against the wall of the van, his eyes closed as the vehicle bounced and jolted over the road. He looked to be asleep, but Highland knew better. Miller had withdrawn into himself again, lost in some kind of contemplation.
What are you thinking about, Mr. Miller? the policeman wanted to ask. It wasn’t that he’d failed to ask questions. Almost every day since the incident on The Mall, Highland and several other detectives had sat across a rugged wood table from this young man and tried to start some kind of conversation. He was a strong one. Highland admitted to himself. He had spoken but one unnecessary word, and that only nine days before. A jailer with more indignation than professionalism had used the excuse of a plumbing problem in Miller’s cell to move him temporarily to another. In the other were two ODCs, as they were called: Ordinary Decent Criminals, as opposed to the political kind that C-13 dealt with. One was awaiting sentencing for a series of vicious street robberies, the other for the gun-murder of a shop owner in Kensington. Both knew who Miller was, and hated him enough to look at the small young man as a way to atone for the crimes which they little regretted in any case. When Highland had shown up for yet another fruitless interrogation session, he’d found Miller facedown on the floor of the cell, his pants gone, and the robber sodomizing him so brutally that the policeman had actually felt sympathy for the terrorist.
The Ordinary Decent Criminals had withdrawn at Highland’s command, and when the cell door was opened, Highland had himself picked Miller up and helped him to the dispensary. And there Miller had actually spoken to him as though to another human being. A single word from the puffy, split lips; “Thanks.”
Cop rescues terrorist. Highland thought to himself, some headline that would be. The jailer had pleaded innocence, of course. There was a problem with the plumbing in Miller’s cell — somehow the work order had got mislaid, you see — and the jailer had been called to quell a disturbance elsewhere. Hadn’t heard a sound from that end of the cell block. Not a sound. Miller’s face had been beaten to a bloody pulp, and certainly he’d have no toilet problems for a few more days. His sympathy for Miller had been short-lived. Highland was still angry with the jailer. It was his professionalism that was offended. What the jailer had done was, quite simply, wrong, and potentially the first step on a path that could lead back to the rack and hot pincers. The law was not so much designed to protect society from the criminals, but more profoundly to protect society from itself. This was a truth that not even all policemen understood fully, but it was the single lesson that Highland had learned from five years in the Anti-Terrorist Branch. It was a hard lesson to believe when you’d seen the work of the terrorists.
Miller’s face still bore some of the marks, but he was a young man and he was healing quickly. Only for a brief few minutes had he been a victim, a human victim. Now he was an animal again. Highland was hard-pressed to think of him as a fellow man — but that was what his professionalism was for. Even for the likes of you. The policeman looked back out the rear window.
It was a boring drive, as it had to be with no radio, no conversation, only vigilance for something that almost certainly wasn’t out there. Highland wished that he’d put coffee in his thermos instead of tea. They watched the truck pass out of Woking, then Aldershot and Farnham. They were in the estate country of Southern England now. All around them were stately homes belonging to the horse crowd, and the less stately homes of those whom they employed. It was a pity it was dark. Highland thought, this could be a very pleasant drive. As it was, the fog hung in the numerous valleys, and rain pelted the flat metal top of the van, and the van’s driver had to be especially careful as he negotiated the narrow, twisting roads that characterize the English countryside. The only good news was the near-total absence of traffic. Here and there Highland saw a solitary light over some distant door, but there was little more than that.
An hour later, the van used the M-27 motorway to bypass Southampton, then turned south on a secondary — “Class A” — road for Lymington. Every few miles they passed through a small village. There were the beginnings of life here and there. A few bakeries had cars parked outside while their owners got fresh, hot bread for the day’s dinner. Early church services were under way already, but the real traveling wouldn’t start until the sun was up, and that was still over two hours off. The weather was worsening. They were only a few miles from the coast now, and the wind was gusting at thirty miles per hour. It blew away the fog, but also drove sheets of cold rain and rocked the van on its wheels.
“Miserable bloody day to take a boat ride,” the other cop in the back commented.
“Only supposed to be thirty minutes,” Highland said, his own stomach already queasy at the thought. Born in a nation of seamen, Bob Highland detested traveling on the water.
“On a day like this? An hour, more like.” The man started humming “A Life on the Rolling Wave” while Highland started regretting the large breakfast he’d fixed before leaving home.
Nothing for it, he told himself. After we deliver young Mr. Miller, it’s home for Christmas and two days off. I’ve bloody earned it. Thirty minutes later they arrived in Lymington.
Highland had been there once before, but he remembered more than he could see. The wind off the water was now a good forty miles per hour, a full gale out of the southwest. He remembered from the map that most of the boat ride to the Isle of Wight was in sheltered waters — a relative term, but something to depend on nonetheless. The ferry Cenlac waited at the dock for them. Only half an hour before, the boat’s captain had been told that a special passenger was en route. That explained the four armed officers who stood or sat in various places around the ferry. A low-profile operation, to be sure, and it didn’t interfere with the ferry’s other passengers, many of them carrying bundles whose identity didn’t need to be guessed at.
The Lymington to Yarmouth ferry cast off her lines at 8:30 exactly. Highland and the other officer remained in the van while the driver and another armed constable who’d ridden in front stood outside. Another hour, he told himself, then a few more minutes to deliver Miller to the prison, and then a leisurely drive back to London. I might even stretch out and get a few winks. Christmas Dinner was scheduled for four in the afternoon — his contemplation of that event stopped abruptly.