Then he stared out through the window.
A cop stood beside the guillotine. A tall, thin man wearing an ill-fitting uniform, scratching the back of his neck.
He grasped the wooden frame with his other hand, placing his fingers beside a short lever that protruded from the side of the frame below the blade. His fingers tapped against the wood, as though he had better things to do that morning, then he leaned against the frame, and whistled quietly to himself.
The rusty, riveted iron door in the grey stone wall on the far side of the courtyard creaked open. A male face moved out of the doorway into the yellow morning light. A sullen and scrawny face, with the skin pulled close to the bones. The man’s scraggly brown hair fluttered in the wind as another cop pushed him out into the courtyard.
The grey prison uniform flapped around the man’s arms and legs as he crossed the courtyard on his bare feet, wincing as the gravel dug into his flesh. He looked even thinner than Logan had become in his time in jail. How long had he been there?
The cop following the prisoner grabbed his wrists, and pulled them behind his back. Then twisted his arms against their sockets until he grimaced with the pain.
“No,” the man gasped.
The cop leaned close to his ear. “Don’t fight it, man. Do what you’re told, and the pain will be over in a minute. If you struggle, it’ll only hurt more.”
He pushed the prisoner across the courtyard to the rear of the guillotine, then down to his knees.
The wooden necklace at the base of the guillotine clacked together as the cop pushed the top half down hard against the prisoner’s neck, then it clunked as the cop locked it shut. The man pushed up with his arms, pressing his neck against the wood, and trying to push it open. But the lock held it firmly closed. It didn’t even rattle as the prisoner struggled.
The cop stepped in front of the guillotine, raised his right arm high in the air, and glared down at the prisoner.
“Any last words?”
The man spat into the bucket. “Fuck you, flics.”
The cop lowered his arm. The other pulled the lever at the side of the guillotine. Wood creaked and clunked.
The blade flashed in the sunlight as it fell, reaching the base in a split second. As it clunked to a stop, the prisoner’s head tumbled down into the bucket. Blood sprayed from his neck as his body fell to the ground.
Logan looked away.
They were just messing with him again. Making him watch them executing other men, to scare him. To try to make him talk, and tell them things they thought he knew, but didn’t.
Assholes.
He slumped down on the bed, and leaned against the corner of the cell wall, barely moving.
If they really were going to execute him if he couldn’t tell them what they wanted to hear, what was the point in doing anything else? He would die, either way.
He didn’t even bother eating the meal the guard left, and fell asleep to the sound of the cops yelling at the prisoners in the other cells. Now he knew his life was about to end, it was the best sleep he’d had in months.
They came for him in the morning.
“Is it my turn?” he said.
The cop spat through the bars, onto the concrete floor of the cell. “Someone wants to see you.”
They unlocked the thick barred door, then nodded for him to come out. Should be believe them? Who would want to see him? Who even knew he was there?
Jacques? Angelique?
No-one he’d met in Section 19 was likely to be allowed in, even if they wanted to visit. If they weren’t already in the cells themselves, being tortured to find out what they might know.
His thumping heartbeat seemed to echo back from the hard walls as he took what could be has last look around the stone and concrete of the cell, then stepped out into the corridor.
What else was he going to do?
They took him from the cell, one cop in front, one behind. He might be able to fight one of them, but not two. Not in his condition, Probably not even at his best.
His face felt like it was glowing in the cold air, and sweat oozed from his forehead. His body shook. He struggled to keep one foot moving in front of the other, but the cop behind nudged him and told him to hurry up every time he slowed.
Their footsteps, his bare feet and the guards’ boots, echoed from the stone walls of the prison as they led him downstairs, through metal gates with bars as thick as his thumb. Then on toward a dark, metal door. The cop in front of Logan opened it, and motioned him to go in.
He stepped through the doorway, and the door clanged shut behind him.
A man sat at a small wooden table in the centre of the room, in the striped glow of the sunlight shining through a barred window behind him that opened onto the courtyard. He was staring at a tablet screen on the table, but looked up at Logan as he entered the room. The man’s eyes studied Logan from a middle-aged face with a long, thick scar across the right cheek, on a head topped with black hair shaved almost to the scalp.
“Logan McCoy?”
Logan nodded. “That’s me.”
The man pointed at the simple wooden chair on the far side of the table. “Sit,” he said, in English.
Logan glanced around the room. The two of them were alone, as far as he could tell. The walls were bare, aside from the window opening on the execution yard. If they planned to kill him, this was a strange way to do it.
He pulled the chair back from his side of the table, then slumped down in it, and crossed his arms over his chest.
The man tapped his fingers together as his hard eyes stared into Logan’s face in silence. Logan wanted to look away, but he stared back for what seemed like an hour, until the man finally spoke again.
“Do you know who I am?”
Logan shook his head. All he knew was that the man could speak English with only a hint of a French accent. He looked like a toff, but how was Logan supposed to know any more about him than that?
They’d never met before, unless it was during some kind of torture session that his mind had blanked out. He’d never even seen the man before, that he knew of.
The man lowered his hands, and flipped through pictures of the dead aristo on his tablet. Logan couldn’t help glancing that way as the pictures slid across the screen. The last time he’d seen that dead face was back in the heat of the moment, with his mind filled by the lust for blood.
At the time, the details hadn’t really sunk in. Now he could see every bruise on the aristo’s body, every broken bone, all the details of his smashed face.
All the things he’d done.
The old man looked up. “I am Colonel Rousseau, of the French Foreign Legion. The man you chose to murder was my nephew, Alphonse.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do it.”
“You beat him to death with your bare hands. Pummelled him so hard that they found some of his nose bones inside his brain. Does knowing you’re capable of doing that to a man worry you? Upset you?”
“He was hurting a girl…”
Rousseau slid the tablet aside.
“I wasn’t reprimanding you. He was never my favourite nephew, and I can see the flics have already done enough of that. I want to understand what happened, and why. The flics say you told them he was beating up a whore?”
Logan nodded, and said nothing.
But Rousseau referred to the cops in street slang, as though he had little more respect for them than Logan did. Would a toff really think of them that way? Back home, the cops served mostly to protect the toffs from the workers and the chavs.
Rousseau should be on their side.
“I’m afraid that part doesn’t surprise me at all. I gather poor Alphonse had some rather peculiar tastes, and liked to indulge them whenever he could. But what would possibly make you kill another man to protect a cheap ZUS whore?”