Blacklands

by Belinda Bauer

  “Shit on tin,” he agreed sociably, happy that Ellis was now leading the conversation. “You got money for the shop?”

  The shop sold biscuits and chocolate and fruit at inflated prices that meant a day’s work might yield an overripe banana if you were very lucky.

  “Yeah,” said Ellis, “my wife sends me cash.” He reached into his back pocket for a fold of clear plastic laminate which held a photo. He held it out proudly, openly inviting and plainly expecting compliments on his choice of mate.

  Avery took the photo from him and studied Mrs. Ellis looking up from an ugly but expensive-looking flock couch. Doe eyed, pale skin. Early thirties. She would have been stunning twenty-five years ago.

  He heard Finlay approaching. Those flat feet, those careless keys.

  “What have we got here?” said Finlay with mock camaraderie.

  “Photo of Sean’s wife, Mr. Finlay.”

  “Let’s have a look, then.” Finlay took the photo from Avery’s hand without waiting for permission and squinted at the woman who now starred in his most lurid fantasies.

  “Very nice, Ellis,” he said carefully.

  “Breathtaking,” added Avery, trying but failing to keep a touch of irony from his voice.

  “Yeah, she is,” said Ellis.

  Finlay handed the photo back to Ellis and Avery watched the big man’s dark brown eyes soften with a chimplike quality as he stroked a callused thumb across his wife’s face before putting it in his pocket.

  “Later, mate,” said Ellis as he turned away and wandered off down the walkway with a slump to his broad shoulders.

  “Later,” said Avery, although he despised the ungrammatical.

  He didn’t know love but he had a hound’s nose for vulnerability, and he added that to the small but growing collection of information that he’d started hoarding like trinkets.

  Finlay winked at Avery. “Wonder who’s nailing her now …”

  Avery shrugged and Finlay changed tack—regarding him through what he fondly imagined were cunning eyes.

  “Not like you to socialize, Arnold.”

  “Just fancied a change, Mr. Finlay.”

  “Your shrink’ll be pleased.” Finlay laughed at his own joke, and Avery raised his eyebrows in apparent appreciation. “You ever give your mate that old computer?” The oaf twirled his keys, unaware of how tenuous his grip on personal safety really was.

  “Not yet, Mr. Finlay.” Avery gave a very small smile. “But when someone keeps asking for something, you know that eventually you’re going to have to give it to them.”

  “That’s very true, Arnold.”

  The keys clanked to the floor and he drew in a deep breath as if preparing to dive to a reef to retrieve them.

  Avery moved swiftly to scoop them up. He saw a flicker of panic in Finlay’s eyes in the moment before he casually handed them back and turned to gaze down through the safety netting, as if the action had barely registered on him. Beside him he heard Finlay clip his keys to his belt. It didn’t worry him; Finlay was a lazy bastard and the caution wouldn’t last.

  “Thank you, Avery.”

  “My pleasure, Mr. Finlay.”

  Chapter 24

  MIRACULOUSLY, IT TOOK STEVEN AND UNCLE JUDE ONLY HOURS to clear years of vegetation and rubbish from the back garden.

  Both were stripped to the waist and sweating—Steven wiry and pale, Uncle Jude broad and nut brown.

  Steven blew his cheeks out in satisfaction, sweat dribbling into his eyes; he wiped it away, happily aware that he’d left dirt in its place.

  Lewis was unimpressed. “What about snipers?” he whined. “There’s nowhere to hide now!”

  True to form, Lewis had come round at ten to help clear the back garden, and had proceeded to direct operations through mouth-fuls of Lettie’s cold leftover spaghetti Bolognese which he spooned straight from the Pyrex dish.

  Uncle Jude winked at Steven and Steven grinned. Lewis clattered the spoon back into the empty dish.

  “I don’t know why you don’t just buy some fucking carrots.”

  Steven said nothing. Buying carrots did seem like the more sensible option. He felt stupid but also angry with Lewis, so he just kept on digging.

  Lewis slid off the low wall. “See you later,” he said coldly.

  “Aren’t you going to help dig?” said Steven appeasingly.

  “Nah,” said Lewis, “you’re doing it all wrong anyway.”

  He disappeared through the back door and Steven frowned after him.

  “Don’t mind him,” said Uncle Jude.

  So Steven didn’t.

  He and Uncle Jude drank from the hose and laughed about stupid things, and when his nan refused to let them in for tea so grubby, they stripped down and marched into the kitchen in bare feet and underpants, making Davey and Lettie laugh. Nan turned away but Steven knew she wasn’t angry—or even mildly annoyed—by the way she didn’t purse her lips or bang the spoon as she dished out the stringy grey stew.

  By nightfall he was aching and exhausted but there was a patch of newly turned, newly weeded black earth in the garden, seeded and marked in neat rows with string, and protected from cats and birds by a canopy of chicken wire.

  As he drifted off to sleep, Steven thought that his spade had never felt so right in his hands as it had today, and that Arnold Avery and Uncle Billy and the Sheepsjaw Incident seemed like a bad dream he had once had as a very small and distant boy.

  Chapter 25

  WHEN SEAN ELLIS’S HOT WIFE BURST INTO TEARS HE WAS shocked, then embarrassed by the outburst. He was not a man who liked to show emotion in public. Even when the judge had sentenced him to a minimum of sixteen years, he’d maintained his composure, and had turned to wink reassuringly at his wife as he was taken down to the cells.

  Now, as she bawled, his first look was around at his fellow cons to gauge their reactions. When he saw only mild interest, he turned his attention back to his wife, whose name was Hilary.

  “Hilly,” he said softly, “what’s up, baby?”

  Hilary Ellis bawled harder into her clenched fists, her face becoming hot with emotion, her cheeks streaking with mascara.

  “You don’t want me anymore.”

  “What?”

  “You don’t want me anymore!”

  Sean Ellis was confused. He adored his wife. He missed his wife so badly sometimes it hurt. He wanted her—had always wanted her—and had never wanted anybody else since he met her. The torture of being in prison was not his confinement, but the fear that she would gradually drift away from him; that she would start to leave longer and longer gaps between visits; and that one day he would receive, not a visit from his hot wife, but divorce papers from a cold lawyer. The near expectation of those divorce papers had kept Sean Ellis awake at nights for two long years in a way that the faces of a couple of surprised bank tellers had never managed to do. The terror of losing her had even led him to turn in his drug-dealing cellmate—a betrayal that had earned him two years off his sentence, and a swift trip to the VPU where he might have a chance of completing his time in safety.

  And here she was, crying that he did not want her!

  Sean Ellis was as confused as it’s possible for a man to be—which is very.

  “Sweetheart, how can you say that?” He grasped her hands and looked with love and amazement at her red, blotchy, black-streaked face. “I love you! I want you! Of course I do! Are you nuts? Who wouldn’t want you?”

  “But the pictures!” she wailed. “You don’t like the pictures! You never say anything about them! You think I’m a whore!”

  Conveniently within earshot, Officer Ryan Finlay twirled his keys nervously. Fuck.

  Ellis pushed tear-dampened hair from his wife’s face and cupped her cheek. “What pictures, baby?”

  He listened to her hitching, halting, hiccuping description of the photos she’d been sending him every week since his incarceration, and felt himself move grindingly from confusion to cold, cold fury.

&
nbsp; Chapter 26

  WHEN ARNOLD AVERY’S LATEST LETTER WHISPERED SILENTLY onto the doormat, Steven was not there to pick it up.

  Lettie said she’d make tea and slid quietly out of the warm bed.

  She looked in on the boys as she passed the half-open bedroom door. In the flat grey of dawn, Davey was a crooked splay of arms and legs, while Steven was pressed against the wall, flat and out of the way in the too-small Spider-Man pajamas she’d bought him for last Christmas. They were halfway up his shins, and the top and bottoms no longer met, exposing a pale slice of skin and the vague knobs of the base of his spine. The sheet and duvet were in a haphazard bundle at Davey’s feet.

  Only the kitchen clock kept company with the sound of the two boys’ quiet breathing and Lettie felt a small electric tingle pass through her like the ghost of love.

  At the foot of the stairs she picked up the post, mentally sighing at all the little windows.

  Nan was in the kitchen pouring the last of a pint of milk over two Weetabix.

  “I didn’t hear you,” said Lettie, unreasonably put out that she was no longer alone.

  “Couldn’t sleep,” said Nan.

  Lettie put the kettle on and sifted through the bills. The only envelope without a window was a flimsy brown one addressed to SL, 111 Barnstaple Road, Shipcott, Exmoor, Somerset. Must be for Steven.

  She felt her mood sour further and checked the postmark. Plymouth. She didn’t know anyone in Devon. They didn’t know anyone in Devon.

  The slag.

  “What you got there?”

  “Only bills.”

  She opened all the windowed envelopes as she waited for the water. The low rumble of the kettle mercifully rose to mask the sound of her mother dripping milk back into the bowl from her spoon.

  She left the brown envelope unopened, staring down at it as if she could divine its message through some psychic gift.

  SL. Steven Lamb.

  Secrets. Codes. Intrigue.

  Something meant only for Steven’s eyes and not for hers.

  To Lettie, there was no such thing as a good secret. If something was good, you didn’t keep it a secret—you told everyone and bought Mr. Kipling French Fancies for tea.

  She frowned at the envelope and stacked it onto the pile of bills, then poured the water onto the bags and went to the fridge.

  “Did you use all the milk?”

  Nan spooned sodden cereal into her mouth. “Milkman will be here soon.”

  Lettie thumped the fridge door shut and poured the tea into the sink, bags and all—banging the mugs down on the draining board.

  Nan shrugged. “These Weetabix suck it up like sponges.”

  It was too much.

  Lettie grabbed up the brown envelope and ripped it open. Nan eyed her carefully.

  “Is that a bill too, then?”

  Lettie scanned the page. A meaningless number at the top; not the date. The same as the other two letters. And a brief message.

  Good news for whom? Her? Unlikely. Steven? Just as unlikely.

  If this was from that girl. If that girl was pregnant. If the baby was due … Only a stupid slag in expectation of a council house could possibly think that was good news.

  Lettie almost squealed with the unfairness of it all. Just as things were looking up! Why could nothing go right and stay right for any of them?

  She almost called Steven downstairs, but the thought of confronting him about something like this while he stood all tousled and sleepy eyed in his little-boy pajamas was more than she could bear.

  After a few seconds of brooding, Lettie lit the gas ring and—ignoring her mother’s tutting—burned the letter.

  Arnold Avery’s trinket box was full to overflowing. In a few short weeks he had stuffed it with careful observations of casual slips, sneaky shortcuts, skirted regulations, and the failing fabric of the very walls around him. He was almost spoiled for choice.

  The keys were the most attractive option—stolen from Ryan Finlay or pressed furtively into his disgusting soap, he could make a mold. Into that mold he would pour wood filler of the type used to repair nicks and chips in old furniture; there was some in the workshop. A coat of varnish to seal and strengthen and he would have the means to stroll from his cell, from his block, from … who knew where? He had narrowed it down to two keys—one opened both the double doors onto the block, the other unlocked one of the four gates in the chain-link which lined the prison wall. Two keys might be enough. One on one side of the soap, one the other. Avery spent long hours practicing little other than the sleight of hand he might need to complete the task—pressing his toothbrush into the bar, gauging the exact degree of push that would yield a workable mold, and rewarding himself with glimpses of the boy reflected in the wing mirror. He rarely allowed himself more—even when he got two perfect impressions in under five seconds. Time—of which he’d once had so much—now seemed precious and fleeting, and Avery kept himself from SL’s photograph as much as possible. He knew that whole days might be lost in the fantasies he wove around the picture. Whole days that it was now vital to spend getting out of prison and replacing the fantasy with the real thing.

  He continued to work on the bars of his window at night—his oh-so-versatile toothbrush exposing ever-increasing inches of bar, but with no end in sight either literally or figuratively. Avery didn’t care. His prison-nurtured patience was refined and he continued to work on the window because every grain of grey mortar dust that coated his fingers symbolized potential progress to a goal so desirable that he finally understood what the hell Buddhism was all about.

  Avery made a couple more forays into engaging other cons in conversation. Careful ventures which nonetheless earned him one swift “Fuck off, nonce,” and one kick so close to his balls as made no difference, in that it left him curled on the lino, hoarse with fear and hatred—before Andy Ralph stepped between him and his assailant.

  So he returned to Ellis, but found there had been a change in the big man’s demeanor. From calm to twitchy; from open to brooding and irritable by turn.

  Something had happened.

  He had no time to waste waiting for Ellis’s fugue to be over, so he inquired and Ellis told him. Simple as that.

  Hilly had been sending Ellis photos and he hadn’t been getting them. Now Hilly thought he didn’t love her anymore. And if Hilly thought he didn’t love her anymore then why would she wait for him? In Ellis’s mind, the chances of him getting those divorce papers had increased a thousandfold. And if Hilly divorced him there’d be nothing to hope for at the end of this soulless, harsh incarceration—no Hilly waiting for his return with a hot kiss, no surprising him at the door in the baby doll nightie she’d got from Ann Summers: no evenings in front of the telly with a bottle of white, no tasting the strawberry lip gloss she wore just for him. He’d never find another woman like Hilly and if she divorced him, they might as well hang him.

  By the time he said it, he was close to tears: “They might as well hang me.”

  Avery had to keep from laughing. Truly. The melodramatic twit. Hang him! Over lipstick and knickers! People like Ellis deserved hanging. He’d happily tighten the knot around the man’s neck himself just to be rid of the self-pitying, lovelorn whiner.

  For a moment Avery indulged a sweet fantasy where he looked into those chimpy little eyes all shiny and brimming with monkey emotion, before springing the trapdoor and watching the big man’s dumb head pop off his shoulders.

  He wanted to tell Sean Ellis that his whore of a wife wouldn’t have been sending him photos of her tits if she didn’t want them masturbated over by anyone who laid eyes on them.

  Instead he told him conspiratorially: “He reads everything, you know. Steals whatever he likes too.”

  “Who?” inquired a puzzled Ellis.

  “Finlay.” He shrugged.

  It never hurt to plant a seed of hatred.

  Ryan Finlay had never had occasion to speak to Dr. Leaver. “Mollycoddling” was a word he and hi
s fellow guards tossed about with practiced ease when speaking of their charges, and Finlay felt without thinking that what Leaver did fell neatly into that category along with television privileges and a vegetarian option at mealtimes.

  So when Finlay passed Dr. Leaver outside his office door, staring down the corridor after Arnold Avery as the prisoner was led back to his cell one afternoon, it was with no small degree of sarcasm that he inquired: “Another one cured, Doc?”

  Leaver flicked his eyes quickly at Finlay, then returned to watching Avery’s disappearing form—flanked as it was by Andy Ralph and Martin Strong, who were charged with keeping him alive on the short journey between blocks.

  “Treatment is their right,” he said, a little stiffly.

  Finlay snorted but Leaver didn’t look at him. This irritated Finlay. He was used to being listened to at work. Obeyed. Not ignored.

  “Those kiddies he killed had rights too, didn’t they?”

  Ralph and Strong had reached the barred door at the end of the block. Strong unlocked it while Ralph looked idly at his fingernails. Avery stood to one side—a slight, inoffensive figure beside the two beefy guards.

  Leaver finally answered: “Those children were not my patients.”

  Fucking bleeding heart! And still the man didn’t look at him! Finlay felt like shoving Leaver hard in his bony chest; roughing him up a little. Make Dr. High-and-Mighty Leaver give him the respect he deserved.

  “So someone like that gets sent to a cushy nick like this and he does a bit of woodwork and you write your little reports and block up his window and he keeps his nose clean and says, ‘Yes, Dr. Leaver,’ and ‘No, Dr. Leaver,’ but at the end of the day it all means nothing because we’re like a fucking hospital. We just have to patch ‘em up and kick ’em out because we need the beds.”

  Hoping to prod Leaver into a response, Finlay had only succeeded in getting all red in the face. He glared at Leaver now but the doctor calmly watched Avery until he’d disappeared from view through the double doors. Then for the first time Leaver turned and looked directly at Finlay—and for the first time the prison officer looked into the eyes that had sought light in the black souls of a thousand twisted killers, and felt a chill straight out of a bad horror film.