Free Lynch by Peter J Merrigan

faux-clever men. You were the insider, and now we need a new one.’
    He could almost hear the slamming of cell doors and the sobs of lesser men. Miguel Fernandez hated prisons.
    He had been incarcerated twice and the second time, whilst it had been a shorter stint, had been no less taxing. You either rule or be ruled. He learned that on his first day in prison five years ago. He had been brought in with two other greens—new inmates never before exposed to the system. Fernandez was already a hard and fast criminal, but the experience hardened him further. When three skinheads swaggered into his cell and started rooting through his few possessions, Fernandez assumed it wouldn’t be long before one of them asked him to bend over, a fate he would never accept.
    His first attempt at reasoning with the gang of petty thieves was met with tempered violence. He would not make a second attempt. He broke the nose of one, broke the arm of another, and almost tore the ear from the third. He stepped out of his cell and looked around at the pack of prisoners. He shouted, ‘Any of you pussies need your arses wiping, you come to me now.’ He still had the man’s skin under his fingernails when a guard pressed a Taser against the back of his neck and threw him in solitary.
    ‘There will be someone inside Interpol that we can speak with, yes?’ he asked Dixon . He kept his voice level, his brown eyes hard on Dixon ’s face.
    ‘I was the best asset you guys had in there,’ Dixon said.
    ‘We’ll take the second best,’ Fernandez said and it seemed Dixon took this as a compliment when it was actually smeared in sarcasm. He needed to get a handle on this mocking language of the English.
    ‘No one is going to invite you in for a champagne breakfast willingly.’
    ‘You got into bed with Bernhard fairly easily.’
    ‘I’m a different kettle of fish.’
    ‘How many fish are in the Interpol kettle?’ Fernandez asked.
    ‘Have you found Bernhard’s bitch of a wife yet?’
    Fernandez folded the fingers of his left hand over the fist of his right. ‘If someone could access sealed Interpol files, we would have done. This is why we need your information.’
    ‘You mean you want a favour.’
    ‘I mean I want your information or you die. It is simple.’
    In the Spanish prison, Fernandez had survived at the top of the food chain, ruling the cons with fear. Fear was what modern country leaders were lacking. Without it, you do not have the complete support of your people. Without fear, you get uprisings and revolution. Pol Pot knew it; Hitler knew it. Their downfall—which would never happen to Fernandez—was their hotheadedness. When anger clouds your actions, you mess things up. And that was exactly what got Jim Dixon locked up.
    ‘How long did it take before they found out you were a bent cop?’ Fernandez asked him, knowing that you can’t keep secrets like that behind bars, that cops were every prisoner’s plaything.
    Dixon looked down at the table. ‘Half an hour. When they put you in High Risk, you’re either a nonce, a wife beater or a cop.’
    ‘Who can we trust inside Interpol?’
    ‘No one,’ Dixon said.
    Fernandez was getting impatient now. ‘That’s not very helpful, Mr Dixon. I need a name.’
    ‘There was a girl,’ Dixon said. ‘Lucy. She’s a bit stuck up, but she’s got clearance. If you treat her right, she might be the one.’

 
     
    Chapter 10
     
     
    Katherine came in from the kitchen as Clark was saying goodbye to someone on the phone. ‘Work?’ she asked when Clark put her phone away.
    ‘Hardly,’ Clark said. ‘It was Wilson . He’s as angry about the suspension as my own father would be.’ She sat down on the sofa and picked up her weeping glass of iced tea. Even with the windows open, the old farmhouse was a sweatbox in this summer heat. The light cotton shirt she wore was sticking to her back and she was conscious of the darker patches spreading under her arms. Her forehead and the