Informant

by Susan Wilkins

  ‘Who’s that new DC . . . the pretty one?’

  ‘You mean DC Forbes, sir?’

  ‘No no, not her, the lad. Dark curly hair, looks a bit like a male model.’

  ‘Oh, you mean DC Bradley.’

  ‘Bradley! That’s him. I want to see him as soon as I get back. And find out exactly when Karen Phelps is due for release. Ring the prison governor, say we want a delay so we can interview her again.’

  3

  It was over six years since Kaz had travelled on the tube. She’d been given a rail pass for the journey down to Euston but now she was on her own. She stood in front of the ticket machine like a tourist. The queue behind her was getting restive. People somehow seemed different, impatient, aggressive. The city was full of foreigners and snatches of languages she couldn’t begin to fathom. Behind her some Slavic-looking type was jabbering away to her mate; as Kaz continued to dither, the woman glanced at her with contempt, asked if she planned to buy a ticket any time soon. Kaz turned. Inside she wouldn’t have taken that kind of lip, she wouldn’t have had to. She fixed the woman with a glacial stare.

  ‘In a hurry are you?’

  The woman caught her steely look, glanced nervously at her friend. Kaz smiled.

  ‘Only I been in the nick. Armed robbery and GBH. They just let me out. Can’t remember how you work these things. Maybe you could help me?’

  Kaz had their attention now, she had the attention of the whole queue. The two women backed away, mumbling something in Bulgarian. A tall, sleek black dude behind them grinned to himself.

  ‘You touch the screen, love. Don’t matter where. Then it brings up your choices.’

  Kaz followed his instructions. A list of options flashed up before her.

  ‘Blimey, bit full on innit?’

  The black dude looked her up and down. Tall for a woman, slender but with no hint of fragility; you could tell she worked out. The hair was thick, silky brown, grazing her collar. But what struck him most were the eyes, dark and watchful. She was fit and then some. He toyed with getting her number, but he was in enough trouble already with his old lady. He smiled wistfully.

  ‘I had the same problem when I got out. Spent the first month feeling like a fucking Martian.’

  Kaz selected a travel card, fed in the coins, collected her ticket and gave him an appreciative nod.

  ‘Cheers mate.’

  ‘You take it easy, eh.’

  Their eyes met. She knew exactly what he meant. She wanted more than anything to take it easy, if only people would let her.

  Kaz emerged from St Paul’s tube station and consulted the scrap of paper in her hand. The offices of Crowley Sheridan Moore occupied a whole floor of a refurbished sixties block off Cheapside. Metal-framed windows and plastic cladding had been ripped away to be replaced with wall to ceiling smoked glass. The lobby was now a double-height atrium with what looked to be a full-sized palm tree in the middle. She gave her name at the desk and a chirpy receptionist suggested she wait in the coffee shop. Someone would be down to collect her.

  Kaz skirted round the tree and wandered into the coffee franchise. Several earnest-looking suits sat at separate tables busy with their laptops. A boy with broken English and ‘barista’ on his T-shirt served her. She ended up with a huge corrugated cardboard cup of coffee and foam and not much change from a fiver. Inside, coffee came in white Styrofoam cups and tasted stewed and bitter. What she held in her hand now was three times the size, a sculpted artefact. She set it down on a table and was about to take out her sketchbook to draw it when she saw Helen Warner sailing towards her through the security scanners.

  Dark tailored jacket, pencil skirt. Kaz had never seen her wear anything else. But today the shirt was dove-grey, reflecting her eyes. Helen grinned broadly, threw out her hands, palms upwards, as she clipped across the floor towards Kaz.

  ‘Karen, this is a surprise. When I phoned the governor’s office, they said your release had been delayed until tomorrow.’

  Kaz shrugged and smiled. She’d waited too long for this moment. Now it felt really weird, finally being on the outside, no one watching every move, listening to every word, meeting in a coffee shop like anyone else. It floored her. She thought Helen was about to hug her, so she stepped back then immediately regretted it. They faced each other awkwardly. Helen took charge.

  ‘Typical prison service. Right hand doesn’t know what the left hand’s doing. But hey, you’re out! That’s the important thing. Can I get you another coffee?’

  ‘Nah, this one’s big as a bucket. Hope you don’t mind me just turning up. I sort of, I dunno, I came to say thank you . . .’

  Kaz could feel her colour rising even as she tried to laugh off her embarrassment.

  ‘Fuck, I had this all planned out! Proper little speech. I probably shouldn’t have come.’

  Helen shook her head and smiled.

  ‘Don’t be silly. It’s great to see you.’ She glanced around. ‘Quite a change of scene, odd for both of us. Come up to the office and we can have a chat.’

  Helen brushed Kaz’s shoulder with the tips of her manicured nails and steered her towards the lift.

  It was more than five years now since the elegant Ms Warner had strolled into the visitors’ pen at Styal and informed Kaz that Fred Sheridan, the Phelps’s family brief since the dawn of time, had succumbed to a heart attack and died. Helen introduced herself as a newly qualified solicitor in Fred’s firm and explained she was now Kaz’s legal representative.

  At the time Kaz was puzzled. How did a posh bird like Helen Warner end up working for a renowned villain’s brief, money launderer and rogue like Fred Sheridan? But she didn’t ask. She didn’t talk much back then. Little more than a kid, on remand, but with the prospect of serious time to do, she scored all the gear she could get and let the rest wash over her. Still, from the outset she was mesmerized by Helen.

  As they stood side by side in the mirrored lift, with half a dozen others, Helen glanced at her and smiled.

  ‘No family reception committee then?’

  ‘Didn’t tell them.’

  Helen nodded. The lift doors opened at the fifth floor. ‘Probably wise.’

  From their earliest days Helen had trodden a fine line, never directly critical of the Phelps clan, yet always encouraging Kaz to look at her loyalty to the family. For the first year of her sentence Kaz refused to cooperate with the prison authorities in any way. She was hard then, rock-obstinate like her old man. She wouldn’t talk about the robbery; an appeal failed because she refused to drop Joey in it, even though he was the one who’d given the cashier a murderous kicking. If he’d taken the GBH rap instead of her, her sentence would’ve been halved. And Joey was barely seventeen at the time. A couple of years in a young offenders’ unit. For him, it would’ve been a doss. But Kaz kept her mouth shut.

  With infinite patience Helen finally coaxed Kaz into revealing why. In the first place it never occurred to her not to. She was the one who got nicked, that was just bad luck. But to have told the filth the truth, pointed the finger at her own brother, it was simply unthinkable. Everyone would’ve turned their backs. The old man himself would’ve been shamed into doing something about it.

  At this point Helen had laughed; surely even a gangster like Terry Phelps wouldn’t harm his own daughter. Kaz, still hollow-eyed then on prison crack, shook her head. They lived on different planets, her and her posh new brief. Kaz knew only too well what it felt like to have the old man’s calloused paw leave a bruising imprint on her throat. And when he had plenty of whisky inside him, he had enough rage to kill anyone. At the age of five, through a chink in the door, she had seen with her own eyes what Terry did to her cousin Val. Val went on a date with a local plod who fancied her, drank a bit too much, talked a bit too much. Kaz’s mum later explained that Val had gone away, to live abroad. They wouldn’t be seeing her again.

  Little by little Kaz began to trust Helen. The lawyer’s visits continued and Kaz simply assumed she was com
ing every few weeks because the old man paid her to do so. Helen, by this time, had an agenda of her own; Kaz was her special project, her experiment. The girl had a razor-sharp brain if she could get clean for long enough to start using it. In the second year of her incarceration Helen persuaded Kaz to try out an art class. Kaz habitually and restlessly scrawled patterns with her finger in the spilt tea on tabletops, doodled in the margins of any form she had to fill in. Helen wondered what would happen if someone put proper drawing materials in her hands. The result had surprised everyone.

  Helen shepherded her client into the office, a spacious glass-walled box. The desk was large but overloaded: neat piles of papers and a stack of files on either end. After six years in a prison cell, where they could spy on you any moment of the night or day, Kaz couldn’t understand why anyone would choose to work in a goldfish bowl. But Helen seemed comfortable wherever she was. She removed a briefcase from the leather sofa and invited Kaz to sit.

  ‘So you haven’t been to the hostel yet?’

  ‘Came straight here.’

  ‘Well, I think you’re going to like it. Of all the places they could’ve allocated you, I happen to know this one is five star. The Ritz of APs.’

  Kaz smiled. Now she was relaxing, her eyes darting around, taking in every detail of her new environment. Helen watched, trying to ignore the tension in her lower abdomen as she noticed yet again how beautiful her client had become. The junkie that Helen first encountered had been painfully thin, avoided eye contact; a broken, hunted creature. The young woman in front of her now couldn’t be more different. Athletic, alert, with a quiet confidence.

  ‘Yeah, okay, I know you wangled me a good place. And I’m grateful for that too.’

  Helen brushed this off. ‘Down to your offender manager, not me.’

  Kaz’s gaze had come to rest on Helen’s face and it was unnerving. Helen realized that her feelings, which she always kept carefully under wraps, were in danger of spiralling out of control. She glanced at her desk, grabbed the nearest file and opened it.

  When Kaz was inside it had all been so simple. The formal structures of prison visiting had dictated the nature of every encounter. They also helped Helen avoid asking herself why, in a busy schedule when there was really no reason, she took time out to trek all the way up to Cheshire to visit this particular client. Now she was thrown off balance, she could feel her cheeks reddening; Jesus Christ, she was reacting like a bloody lovesick teenager, she needed to get a grip!

  Kaz continued to look, mentally sketching her face, though truth be told she could draw Helen in her sleep. But the lawyer was resolutely avoiding her eye. Pulling another file from halfway down the neat pile, Helen sent the whole lot tottering.

  ‘Oh honestly. The workload they expect you to carry in this place, it’s bloody ridiculous!’

  Kaz watched Helen struggle. She wanted to reach out, touch her hand; the sexual frisson zapping between them was unmistakable. But she held back.

  ‘I’m taking up your time, I’m sorry. Shouldn’t have come.’

  ‘No no!’ Helen flapped her hands about as if to bat away the uncomfortable feelings. ‘Now tell me about college. When do you start?’

  ‘Not ’til the autumn. That’s if I get my grades.’

  ‘Oh you’ll walk it.’

  ‘The art maybe, not so sure about the English and Maths.’

  Helen gave her a confident smile, the blush in her cheeks subsiding. ‘Karen, you’ll get in.’

  Now Kaz was the one having problems meeting Helen’s eye. She started to pick at the loose sole of her trainer.

  ‘Well, we’ll see. Anyway I’m gonna do some courses over the summer, mainly drawing, get me up to speed.’

  Helen nodded. She folded her hands neatly in her lap, took a deep breath. ‘That’s excellent.’

  The excitement of Kaz’s release had got the better of her, that was all. Now she was retreating behind the professional facade. Karen Phelps was just another client. Okay – her first real success story. Still, that was no excuse. Of course she was fond of the girl, and Kaz was grateful to her. But the boundaries between them had to remain clear.

  Kaz continued to pick at her shabby trainers, they were coming apart, a small private smile crept across her features. Helen’s reaction was telling her everything she needed to know. Inside, every meeting had been freighted with tension and longing. That was the nature of jail time, it distorted relationships, made equality impossible. Getting close to serious felons, that in itself could be a potent drug and Kaz had seen plenty of counsellors, volunteers, do-gooders and even screws who were hooked on the power, turned on by the sexual buzz of helping needy women and basking in their desperate adoration. But what had happened between her and Helen, Kaz knew that had to be different.

  Getting clean was the most frightening thing Kaz had ever done. Stripping away the layers of protection had left her raw and exposed. She knew she’d never have set out on such a parlous course if it hadn’t been for her desire to impress Helen, to retain her interest, keep her coming back. Every therapy group she attended was just a sideshow for the main event: reporting her progress to Helen.

  In spite of the drugs Kaz had always been quick; whatever situation she found herself in, she soon figured out how to play it to her advantage. In the Phelps family, manipulation was the key to survival. Art classes, the gym, she poured her energy into whatever project Helen suggested to her. Then an odd thing happened. She found she was really enjoying doing all this stuff. She found she was hooked. And when she told the lawyer this, she could see from Helen’s triumphant expression she’d hit pay dirt. From then on she morphed into the model prisoner. But really it was all about pleasing Helen.

  Helen gathered up the papers from the spilt files and put them in order. She gave Kaz her standard professional smile; it was sympathetic but also detached, she’d spent years perfecting it.

  ‘And what about the family?’

  Kaz sighed.

  ‘Come on Helen, we been through all this. I know Joey’s into all kinds of villainy, but that’s not my concern. I’m staying right out of it. I want my life back. I done my time, I’m going to college.’

  Helen smiled. Yes, things were back under control, she could relax a bit.

  ‘Have you met the new probation officer yet?’

  ‘I got an appointment Thursday.’

  ‘You understand the terms of the licence?’

  Kaz gave her an irritated look. ‘Well yeah, ’course I do. Behave or you’re back in the nick.’

  ‘There’ll be random drug-testing at the hostel. The curfew’s ten o’clock. But once the senior PO gets to know you I’m sure there’ll be room for negotiation.’

  Kaz cocked her head, a mischievous glint in her eye.

  ‘Why? You gonna take me to the theatre?’

  Helen looked puzzled. ‘The theatre?’

  ‘You don’t remember? Few years back, I told you I’d never been to the theatre. You said when I got out, you’d take me.’

  Helen gave her a wry smile. She rearranged her body in the chair, but still felt absurdly self-conscious.

  ‘Well, we could always see a matinee.’

  ‘Is that a date?’

  Helen was used to fencing, the cut and thrust of legal repartee. But this wrong-footed her.

  ‘I’d be happy to take you to the theatre. But let’s be clear; I’m your lawyer. This is a professional relationship. Technically you’re still serving your sentence, although you’ve been released on licence.’

  Kaz huffed. ‘Lighten up. I was only teasing. You don’t have to hide behind the lawyer crap.’

  ‘It’s not crap.’

  Helen’s tone was far sharper than she’d intended. It found its mark. Kaz jumped to her feet.

  ‘Okay, look, this was a bad idea. I shouldn’t have come . . .’

  ‘I’m not hiding. All I’m saying is we have rules for a reason . . .’

  Their eyes met, but Helen looked away. She raked h
er fingers through her hundred and fifty pound haircut. Even in her sharp suit surrounded by all the trappings of the legal profession she had the look of a confused teenager. Kaz could see she was floundering and her anger evaporated. She loved this woman, there was no question of that and no other word for it. What had she expected though, Helen to jump her there and then on the office sofa? Kaz shook her head and laughed.

  ‘This is mental. I didn’t come here to upset you. What I wanted was to give you this.’

  She pulled a large envelope out of her holdall and offered it to Helen.

  ‘Go on, open it.’

  The envelope contained a small pen-and-ink sketch of a woman, a back view of naked shoulders and tumbling hair. The drawing was elegant, the lines delicate with enough detail, but not too much. Helen gazed at it in amazement.

  ‘It’s beautiful. Thank you.’

  ‘Just something I copied from a magazine photo. Anyway, you’re busy, I can see that. Stuff to do. So I really should go and check out this hostel.’

  Wrong-footed yet again, Helen started to get up.

  ‘Oh, okay . . . but—’

  Kaz hoisted the holdall on to her shoulder and was already halfway out the door.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll find my own way out.’

  Helen stared at her awkwardly, unthinkable scenarios cascading through her head.

  ‘Well . . . if you need—’

  Kaz flashed a smile at her. ‘Yeah, I’ll give you a call.’

  Kaz strode through the outer office towards the lifts, a satisfied smile on her face. She didn’t look back; she didn’t have to. She knew Helen Warner was watching her.