by Linda Coles
“Were friends? She didn't say you ‘were’ friends.”
“But I haven't seen her for a long time, so we are more acquaintances now, I guess. In fact, the last time I saw her was after Peterson's death. I interviewed her.” He drained the last of his coffee. “Well, I've got work to do. I'm going to see if I can get in and see Hardesty and leave you to your fantastical mind. I'll be on my mobile if you need me.”
Amanda sniggered under her breath that she had riled him up a bit about a woman. When he was well out of earshot, she mumbled to herself, “That was a bit mean, Amanda. The guy is allowed a personal life.” She stood and stretched and headed back to the coffee cupboard for a refill. From the doorway she could see Jack gathering the manila folder and its contents again before he headed back out to his car.
She frowned. If Vivian had been interviewed during the Peterson case, she’d be on file.
“Worth taking a look,” she mumbled to herself. “Out of nosey curiosity.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
The prison was situated on the site of the former Banstead Psychiatric Hospital. The ancient, crumbling building had been bulldozed and a modern prison built in its place; it housed all kinds of inmates as well as remand prisoners. The last time Jack had met with Michael Hardesty was when he’d been on remand 15 years ago. Jack navigated his car over the mini-roundabout and headed for the main reception block.
It was a modern-looking concrete building from the outside; it could have been a new hospital but for the enormous chocolate-coloured main doors that reached almost two stories high. They were a bit of a giveaway that something a tad more sinister than a children’s ward was behind them. Jack parked his car and made his way to the visitor entrance, a separate building opposite that looked like a cheap motorway motel. He hadn't taken Amanda's advice and called first, but he was hoping that as a serving police officer it wouldn’t be an issue and they’d see fit to let him in. He glanced at the plastic Sainsbury’s bag in his hand.
He approached the reception desk and a huge, unsmiling man in uniform looked up from one of his many screens. He looked like he belonged to a beanstalk somewhere, Jack thought. He smiled as pleasantly as he could manage. He’d dealt with many prison staff it his time and one thing they all lacked was a sense of humour. It must be a prerequisite at the interview stage that they didn’t smile a great deal. The only jokers who operated between these walls were the inmates.
As usual, the officer’s smile didn't appear to be working at all, though he did say “Good morning.” Jack placed the bag on the counter, and the officer glared at it disapprovingly.
“DC Jack Rutherford,” Jack said firmly. “I'm hoping that Michael Hardesty will agree to see me this morning.” The officer raised an eyebrow in question and Jack answered before the man opened his mouth. “No, I haven't made an appointment and since I was not far away, I thought I would drop in on the off chance.” He opened his carrier bag and pulled out a tin of assorted luxury chocolate biscuits. “But I haven't come empty-handed. I dropped in to Sainsbury’s and picked up a little something for you and the boys so your cuppa isn't so wet this morning.” He slipped the tin towards the man, who looked down at with interest. On the lid were images of various delicious-looking chocolate biscuits, and Jack could see it was going to do the trick. The man grunted his approval and pulled the tin closer to his ample stomach.
“So, what do you say?” said Jack. “While you're dunking those with your pals in the tea room, might I have a chat with Mr Hardesty? It's been a good few years since I was last in here.” He looked around the reception area. “You've done it up a bit.” The man raised his eyebrow questioningly and again Jack wondered if he might actually speak. He pre-empted him just in case. “I'll just wait over here,” he said. “If you wouldn't mind telling Mr Hardesty I'm here?” The officer pulled the tin of biscuits closer to himself. Jack wondered if his pals would in fact see any of those chocolate biscuits at all. It didn’t much matter, as long as it granted Jack entrance.
“I'll see what I can do,” the guard said, running his hand over his heavily Brylcreemed head. He picked up the telephone and turned his back to Jack, who could see white flakes across the tops of his mountainous shoulders. Having seen the man run his hand over his greasy head, Jack wondered what the telephone handset held by way of bacteria. He was reminded of the grubby windows in the squad room and the petri dish of bacteria growing all around them. He bet the man's keyboard was slippery with grease too.
A moment later the call was finished and the guard turned back around to face Jack, who wandered back so the man didn't have to shout.
“He'll be ready in ten minutes.”
Jack said his thanks and sat back in one of the plastic chairs alongside the window. As he sat down, he heard the Sellotape being taken off the biscuit tin seal, then the faint tinny sound of the lid lifting. Jack smiled to himself. He knew what breaking bread meant; that's why he'd stopped for the tin of biscuits. It was a nice thing to do, a custom, and the reason you found a chocolate on your pillow in an upmarket hotel—a gift. It had worked back in ancient times, so it should work in a concrete prison near Croydon, he’d reasoned. It was £5 well spent.
Jack was tempted to go back to his French app while he waited, but he’d no doubt get disapproving looks as he repeated the sentences out loud. Instead, he pulled out the manila folder and flipped through the pages like he was a barrister about to see his client.
Fifteen minutes later, the guard called him back over to his desk.
“They’ve put him in an interview room for you. I'll take you through.” Still no smile, no nothing. The man appeared to wear a permanent, flat mask of jowly skin. Jack wondered if he was married. Poor woman, if he was. He followed the broad, dandruff-covered shoulders down through concrete corridors with locked doors on each side, and on to an interview room that looked like any other he'd been in. Its concrete block walls had been painted a depressing pale grey, and the only furnishings in the room were a Formica table and two plastic chairs. He couldn't see any cameras or any audio equipment, but he asked anyway.
“I'm assuming we won't be overheard,” Jack said. “This is private between Michael and the police.”
The man nodded, which Jack took to mean he was correct, and left the room. Jack sat down in one of the chairs, placed the file on the table in front of him and waited. A couple of minutes later he heard voices approaching from the corridor and he looked up to see Michael Hardesty enter with another officer. His hands were cuffed in front of him, but the first thing Jack noticed was how frail the man now seemed after so many years. While he was still tall, there wasn't much of him. Jack was reminded of a young Rodney Trotter - a walking rack of bones with thin skin holding everything together but without his jovial sidekick. Prison life hadn’t been kind to him over the years; he wondered if the man was ill.
Michael sat down in the other chair, his eyes never leaving Jack's. The officer left them to it.
“Why now?” Michael asked, without any preamble.
“Good question,” replied Jack.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“How have you been, Michael?” In hindsight it was probably a stupid first question.
“How do I look like the I've been? Let me ask you again,” Michael said. “Why now? After all these years, you come and see me. Not that I particularly want to see you, but I'm curious what brings you here now. Has something happened to Barbara or Cassy?”
“No. Not that I am aware of, anyway. I'm here on another matter. It's good of you to meet with me today.”
“I’ve hardly got a busy social calendar.” Michael rolled his eyes sarcastically. “You’re something to fill the abundance of time with, that’s all.”
Jack ignored the comment. “There is a case at the moment that we are working on, and it has some similarities to your own case back then. And me being a picky individual, I thought it would be a good idea to come and talk to you about what happened all those years ago.”
> Michael scoffed loudly. “You’re only now taking an interest in the sentence that I should never have had, in the fact that I should never have been put away for murder?” he said incredulously. “At best it was manslaughter, but I've been stuck in here almost since the turn of the century—and it feels like the nineteenth century. So, I'm not sure I can tell you much more, DC Rutherford,” he said. “But fire away. It will pass the time.”
Jack nodded his understanding. He’d be pissed at being in prison for murder, too, if he hadn’t done it. “Can we go back to the accident and what happened that night? I know you've been through it a million times, but just humour me.”
Michael sat back fully in his chair, his handcuffed wrists out on the table in front of him. He twiddled his thumbs, searching for a place to start. Jack waited patiently; he’d got all the time in the world. When Michael had his thoughts together, he began to speak.
“It was just an accident. The car came out of nowhere and we collided. We both got out to inspect the damage. When I realised it was Chesney McAllister, I didn't think ‘This is your chance to kill him.’ We might have had our differences over the years, but killing was never on my agenda—though the prosecution would have you believe differently. There was a scuffle, he went down. Then suddenly, a couple of witnesses came forward from nowhere and here I am now. They said our known fractious relationship, and the fact that we were two warring local criminals, gave me reason to want the man dead. I’d threatened it often enough. But then so had he.” Jack let the moment of silence between them stay empty until Michael was ready to go on. “I don't think my barrister was the best. I shouldn't be in here, but I've come to terms with it now.”
“What do you think happened, Michael?”
“Well, see, I've had plenty of thinking time while I’ve been here, and as you said at the beginning, there isn’t much to do. So, to answer your question I was set up, scapegoated; call it what you wish. Yes, it sounds cliché, but it just happens to be the truth. The accident and Chesney's subsequent death—it was all too convenient to put away a man that the police had been after some time. And that's what I think happened.”
“So, you think the police fitted you up? Is that what you're saying, Michael?”
“I am, yes.”
“And how do you think it happened? Why don't you think the McAllister family were behind it all?”
“I think they had their place in it. Mac McAllister would have tightened the screw somewhere, maybe provided the last-minute witnesses, but he would have needed it to be something official to get false witness statements, and that's where I think their involvement lies. They were paying, and someone turned a blind eye.”
Jack thought for a moment. “I've been looking at the file again, and I wonder about some of those testimonies from some of the people who came forward as witness at the end. I'm sorry to say I didn't pay that much attention at the time; you were one more criminal off the street, and it wasn’t up to me what happened.” Michael grunted and Jack carried on. “A couple of them seemed a little too obvious for my liking, when I reflected back, and when I spent a little time recently cross-checking those names, I couldn't honestly say they would be what I would call reliable witness.”
Michael grunted again. “So, tell me,” he said, “what's brought all this on? Why are you bringing this up now? What’s your interest? Has one of them confessed or something?”
“I guess you don't watch the TV much, the news?”
“Can't say as I've got TV in my cell. Why don't you enlighten me?”
“A similar incident happened on Sunday, to our detective inspector, in fact; a man called Dupin. He was off duty at the time, and he attended the scene of an accident nearby. The driver lashed out, and Dupin smacked him on the chin in retaliation. That man is dead now.”
“So now it's one of your own you figure maybe it was an accident and not murder?” Michael shook his head in disbelief. “Perhaps if I'd been a police officer, I wouldn't be sat here talking to you now, eh?”
“As you can imagine, there's a bit of grief.”
“And the family know it's a police officer and are shouting cover-up, right?” Michael had put the pieces together quickly, he wasn’t stupid.
Jack nodded. “The autopsy results from your case say there was blood inside the victim’s skull when they took the brain out, which is similar to what happened in this case. We’re investigating, though we haven't had the official autopsy report back yet. I only know about it because I attended the autopsy. It says on your file that the blow you delivered could have been the one that killed him. But it was the premeditated angle that the prosecution pushed that drove things up to another level. Your past relationship with your opponent. Had that not been the case, who knows what you'd be in for. Maybe you would have got manslaughter, be home by now.”
“Thanks for pointing out the obvious,” Michael said wearily. “But nothing's going to change now. I've got two years to go on my sentence, then I’ve served my time.”
Jack knew all this but let the man have his say. He doubted Michael received many visitors other than Barbara and Cassy—if they did indeed still visit. Many families moved on with their lives when a family member was imprisoned for so many years. It was a sad fact.
Jack knew there wasn't much more Michael could tell him at that moment, so he closed the manila folder before he stood up. “I might need to come and talk to you again, Michael. Will that be okay?”
“If it helps me get out of here, yes. I have nothing better to do. But if you're just trying to help your police friend, don't bother coming back.”
Jack nodded his understanding and banged on the door to alert the officer he was ready to leave.
“I hear you, Michael. I'll be seeing you.”
As Jack made his way back down the concrete corridor and out into the fresh air, he wondered about what had gone on back then—the prosecution, the police involvement, the witnesses, all of it. And who had been behind it, if anyone.
More to the point, could he make a difference now?
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The young prison officer who showed Jack out was a bit more pleasant than the Brylcreemed mountain with dandruff.
“Thanks for the chocolate biscuits, Detective. We have to buy our own around here, and no one ever wants to fork out for anything other than Rich Tea.”
Jack turned to the man. He must have been one of the youngest prison guards in the building, likely in his early 20s, and Jack wondered what had driven a youngster to choose a life working as a prison officer. It wasn't a common career choice for young men; prison work was more suited to the middle-aged, those with a bit more life experience. This young man looked like he had hardly started shaving; he still had some fresh acne across his cheeks, and scars from old acne were visible down to his jawline. Being the ‘baby’ of the unit, he’d probably get the piss taken out of him all the time by his colleagues, and was no doubt taken advantage of by the inmates. His light-heartedness hadn’t been ripped out of him just yet, but working with colleagues who'd already lost all sense of humour and seen it all, Jack knew, it wouldn't be long before the young lad would be just the same as the rest of them.
“What's your name, son?” asked Jack.
“Kyle. Kyle Greenly, but my friends call me Mino.”
Jack was perplexed. “Why Mino? That’s a freshwater fish, isn’t it?”
“No, you’re thinking of M-I-N-N-O-W.” He spelt it out for Jack. “I’m M-I-N-O, as in Kylie Minogue. I swear my mother wanted a girl, hence the Kyle. I guess she got her wish since my mates call me Mino now.”
Jack had to smile, and since the kid was smiling too, he didn't feel so bad about the lad’s name. Educated in freshwater fish too.
“Well, Mino, you don't often see a young prison officer such as yourself, and I was kind of wondering back there what made you choose this as a profession. Is your dad in here somewhere and you’re hoping to get him out? Through a back door, perhaps?” Jack w
as being jovial as he said it, hoping to get another officer on his side.
“No,” Mino said, smiling. “They do background checks on us, so I wouldn't have got away with that, had it been the case. My dad’s dead anyway.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Jack said.
“I just thought it would be interesting, that's all. I wanted to join the police, myself, but I didn't get the grades at school. So, this was my second choice.” They strolled slowly through the concrete corridor back towards the reception area. They were in no hurry.
“Well, I guess you meet some interesting folks in this line of work, like I do,” Jack said casually.
“Too right you do. There’re all sorts in here. Take that Michael Hardesty that you were just visiting—he's not a bad bloke, unlike the other party in his crime.”
Jack was confused. “What do you mean, the other party in his crime?”
“I did a bit of research on him, as I do for most of the inmates, so I know what I'm dealing with. The family whose brother Hardesty killed, the McAllisters. Well, Mac McAllister is here in the same prison—over in a different wing, though.”
“Oh? Mac McAllister is here? Hardesty didn’t mention it.”
“Yes, he's been here about a year. He’ll be out soon.”
Jack remembered McAllister well enough. He’d been done for his part in an organised dogfighting ring that he and Amanda had busted. Remembering the setup in the big old shed—the filth, the suffering dogs—made Jack's stomach roll. People like McAllister deserved to be put away; it was a shame he'd be out again soon. And back to his old tricks, no doubt.
They’d reached the front door again; the main reception entrance was bathed in the mid-morning sun. The two men stood for a moment, enjoying the feeling of the warmth on their skin.
Jack had an idea. “What would you say the chances are of me seeing Mac McAllister now, while I’m here?”