Slipknot

by Priscilla Masters

  Agnetha and Sukey staggered downstairs minutes later, both brushing long blonde hair out of their eyes. Agnetha was the more awake. ‘Good morning, Mrs Gunn. I hope you had a good evening last night with your friend.’ Agnetha, in baby-doll pyjamas, gave her a sly wink.

  ‘I did, thank you, Agnetha. Morning, Sukey.’

  ‘Hello, Mum.’ Sukey gave her a sleepy kiss, putting her arms around her. ‘How’s things?’

  ‘OK.’ Martha had never involved her children in her work. Having lost their father it was hardly necessary to remind either of them about the consequences of mortality. It was there, staring down at them from the mantelpiece every day of their young lives. She didn’t want them to think too much about death.

  ‘How’s your new class, Sukes?’

  ‘OK.’ Sukey was winding a lock of hair around her finger so Martha knew she wanted to ask something. She watched her and picked up on some of the agitation. But Sukey was not to be hurried. She eyed Martha’s grey work-suit with undisguised distaste. ‘Are you off to work?’

  Martha nodded.

  ‘What time’ll you be home, Mum?’

  ‘Darling – I can’t say.’

  Sukey nodded then tugged Agnetha by the hand. ‘Come on. I want you to braid my hair.’

  They both skipped out of the room and Martha felt a sudden pang.

  In concentrating on providing I have failed both my children.

  She started up her car and headed towards the bypass. Stoke Heath is to the north-east of Shrewsbury, an easy twenty-minute drive starting on the Shrewsbury bypass, fanning out along the A53 towards the Potteries and then a right turn at Tern Hill Barracks, south, down the A41 in the direction of Wolverhampton. Stoke Heath Young Offenders’ Institute is a little way down, on the right hand side. You cannot miss it. High fences, flood lighting throughout the hours of dusk and darkness, numerous road signs to guide in the relatives who travel, sometimes from far away.

  Martha was tuned in to the local news station. The news was of the financial problems at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and the report of a horrific car crash along one of the many country roads. The news hadn’t broken yet. When it did it would soon take over the headlines.

  It is not strictly speaking necessary for a coroner to visit the scene of the crime but Martha knew, from experience, that mere computer simulations were never as good as the real thing. In a case such as this, actually seeing the room in which the suicide had occurred was invaluable. This would be a high profile case with numerous enquiries to follow. She would need to have a clear picture of what had happened.

  When Jericho, her assistant, rang her at a little after eight on her car phone she took malicious delight in telling him that she knew about the suicide and was already on her way to Stoke Heath. ‘Well,’ he said, miffed, ‘why didn’t they inform me?’

  She took pity on him. ‘Detective Inspector Randall rang me just before seven,’ she explained. ‘I don’t suppose he thought you’d be in the office so early.’

  She was smiling as she spoke, thankful she and Jericho did not have a video link. But she knew that Jericho was as reliable as the BBC one o’clock pips. He always arrived at eight am. Not before.

  He was mollified. ‘Well Doctor Sullivan’s been on the line and I didn’t know anything about it. He wants to know when he can do the post-mortem.’

  ‘Ring him back, Jericho, can you? I’m driving. I’m going to be in Stoke Heath until late morning then I’d better call in on you. Tell him some time this afternoon would be best.’

  There was a pause. She pictured him scratching his grey pate to find some fact he knew which she so far did not. Then he cleared his throat. ‘The deceased’s name is Callum Hughes,’ he said importantly. ‘And the next of kin has been informed.’

  She had to hand it to him. ‘Thank you, Jerry,’ she said politely. ‘Who is his next of kin?’

  ‘His mother. She lives in Harlescott. She’s identifying him now.’

  ‘Poor woman,’ she said.

  Poor woman, she thought. Poor woman. On one day she learns her son has stabbed another boy. The next she is at the magistrate’s court. And on the third she learns that he is dead by his own hand. Poor woman.

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed and rung off.

  Martha had reached Stoke Heath. She pulled onto the small car park set aside for visitors and approached the front door.

  It was not the first time that she had been here and she had always been surprised that she was so sensitive to this place and its atmosphere. A naughty boys’ correction centre with the underlying flavour of prison.

  They were expecting her. The two prison guards who had been on night duty were hanging on in a small ante-room. They would already have been questioned by the police. As she was signed in a familiar tall figure walked through the door.

  ‘Alex,’ she said. ‘You’re still here.’

  His eyes lit up. ‘I’m so glad you came out, Martha,’ he said. ‘We didn’t expect you for another half hour.’

  ‘The traffic was light and you woke me early.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, still smiling. And there was not a hint of an apology in his voice. He looked around him at the watching guards, a few police officers and the very public corridor. ‘Is there somewhere private we can talk?’

  He led her to a room at the side of the main hatch, Martha aware, all the time, that the beady eye of CCTV was following their every move along the corridor.

  They sat down in scruffy, red armchairs, either side of a scratched pine coffee table. This was obviously an interview room for the relatives.

  ‘So?’

  Alex’s eyes were intelligent, perceptive, hazel-tinged and curiously sharp.

  ‘The deceased is a lad named Callum Hughes. Thirteen years old. No sign of Dad. Lives with Mum up towards Harlescott in a small, privately-owned semi-detached. She works as a cleaner in a local office block. On Tuesday afternoon Callum assaulted a classmate, Roger Gough, outside the school. Stabbed him once in the chest with a knife. Gough is currently at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital with a collapsed lung. He’s not in any danger but he’s pretty uncomfortable.’

  ‘Just stop there a minute, Alex. Right or left lung?’

  ‘Left.’

  ‘How near the heart?’

  He held up his hand, his finger and his thumb one inch apart. Martha winced.

  ‘Had Callum ever used a knife before?’

  Alex shook his head.

  ‘Had he ever threatened this boy before?’

  Another shake of the head.

  ‘Did he have a record of criminal activity?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So are you saying that a perfectly normal schoolboy with absolutely no record whatsoever of previous violence took out a knife and without provocation stabbed a schoolmate an inch from the heart?’

  ‘That’s about it.’

  She watched his face. ‘And?’ she prompted.

  ‘He bought the knife specifically for the purpose a couple of weeks ago – just before the schools went back.’

  She waited.

  ‘At the same time as he bought the knife he also bought a sharpening stone. We could see the marks on the knife where he’d used it. I think it was that that made us charge him with attempted murder rather than GBH. There was no question of bail for the lad.’

  She nodded. She could see the logic behind this. ‘Did he offer any explanation?’

  ‘He was fairly shocked by it all. He said very little.’

  ‘Yet he must have planned something. Did you ask that question?’

  Alex gave a tired smile and she remembered that he would have been up from first light. Deaths in custody were always bad news – particularly when the victim was a first offender and a minor. It made the prison service appear uncivilised. Monstrous. One offence and you died?

  ‘Did you get any sort of explanation?’

  ‘His mother made allegations that Gough had been bullying her son.’

  ‘What do yo
u think, Alex? Are we looking at a potential killer? Or a young boy trying to defend himself?’

  Alex sighed. ‘I don’t know. By all accounts on Tuesday it was a completely unprovoked attack. I didn’t know last night what sort of person Callum was. I just couldn’t make up my mind. One minute he looked like a no-hoper then next it all fitted. He was a violent villain. And yet, Martha, his mother is a pleasant, decent sort of a woman. And he seemed a decent sort of boy. Their claims hung together even though there was no corroboration. None of the boys’ schoolmates have confirmed the bullying story.’

  ‘And the boy he stabbed?’

  ‘I’d only seen Roger Gough when he was in agony having all sorts done to him in the hospital. I could imagine him being a bully whereas Hughes appeared a frightened rabbit. A very scared and very young boy. Gough must have been twice the weight of Callum Hughes. If he’d wanted to bully him he could easily have done it – particularly with a cheering gang around.’

  ‘A cheering gang? Then why haven’t any of them come forward? Surely young Callum must have had some friends, someone to speak up for him?’

  ‘Not so far.’

  Martha knew what they were both doing. Not questioning Callum Hughes’s suicide at all but looking into his state of mind as he had committed the act.

  ‘And now Callum Hughes is dead.’

  Alex nodded.

  ‘So wind me on to last night,’ she said. ‘I take it he was in front of the magistrate yesterday?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And arrived here?’

  ‘Late afternoon in one of the vans.’

  ‘You’ll want to speak to the security guards who sat in the back with him.’

  Alex nodded again.

  ‘So he was brought here. Was he judged a suicide risk?’

  Alex’s eyes met hers for a moment. His frown deepened. ‘To some extent they all are here,’ he said. ‘They’re all little boys frightened of what’s going to happen to them. Those that come from good homes – and they’re in the minority – are frightened of physical violence. The others – well – they’re all too used to it. But it doesn’t make things any easier. And, Martha, the prison officers can’t protect the inmates all the time. They can’t be everywhere twenty-four-seven. It simply isn’t possible. With so many youths clustered together there are bound to be incidents.’

  For some reason Martha’s mind flashed to her own son. Sam. There were plenty of young, active youths in the Liverpool Academy. Were there incidents there too? Were there? Could they be prevented? What was happening to him? Text messages tell you so very little. Things are hotting up, had been the last one, with a tacked on, Hope Bobby is fine. She must go and see him, satisfy herself that he was well and happy.

  ‘I sense you have more to tell me, Alex.’

  Again Alex Randall looked deeply troubled. ‘Callum was, unfortunately, put in a cell with a complete psychopath,’ he said, his jaw tight and angry, his mouth pressed into a thin gash. ‘Tyrone Smith is vicious and unpredictable.’ His eyes gleamed briefly. ‘I wouldn’t fancy being locked in a small room, through the hours of darkness, with him.’

  ‘What are you suggesting?’

  Alex looked uncomfortable. ‘Callum Hughes was put into his cell at 10 p.m. last night. The night duty officers actually went into the cell at eleven and at midnight and everything seemed fine. They say that Callum was sleeping, Smith too. They left and locked up. The next thing they knew it was six-thirty in the morning and they found him slumped on the floor, a ligature round his neck, which had been looped round the bed. He was quite cold. The assumption was that he’d been faking his sleep and had hanged himself soon after the second visit of the officers.’

  ‘Why? I don’t understand what you’re saying. Are you suggesting that Smith had a hand in his death?’

  ‘No – but, he was the wrong cell mate. Tyrone Smith is fifteen years old. He’s six feet tall. Half Afro-Caribbean and half Liverpudlian. His mother was a prostitute. His father is a complete unknown. Almost certainly one of the drug dealers she consorted with. I tell you, Martha, that guy has lived in places we wouldn’t even visit in our nastiest nightmares. He was in for a long stretch for a brutal, armed burglary. He blinded the occupant of the house by sticking a knife through his eye. The guy was lucky to live but he lost his eye and will never sleep easy again. It was a terrible crime. Tyrone Smith always worked alone. He was a loner, a dangerous loner with no friends. Barred from school at six years old, in and out of institutions. The man was seventy-six years old, elderly and harmless. Smith could simply have robbed him and left. There was no need for that level of violence. He simply enjoyed it. Tyrone Smith is one of those characters born to offend.’

  Martha was picking up on the reason behind this interview. ‘And Hughes – who was arguably defending himself against another such type – was locked in a cell for eight and a half hours with this guy?’

  Randall nodded.

  ‘You can almost understand his thought processes,’ Martha said. ‘He would have got sent down for how long?’

  ‘He’d have got a couple of years. The defence would have gathered up a couple of character witnesses. They may even have hit lucky with some corroboration of the bullying story but with the evidence of the sharpened knife deliberately placed in his schoolbag you can’t duck out of the premeditation charge. He would definitely have got a custodial sentence and he knew it. Look at it this way, Martha,’ Alex appealed. ‘We can’t have youths armed like that roaming the streets. Quite apart from the issue of public safety there is the issue of sending out messages to other would-be offenders. Give a good enough reason and you get away with murder. We have to protect the public. It’s what we’re here for. Callum Hughes had to be locked away. Anything else would have made a mockery of our justice system.’

  ‘So what did he use?’

  Alex Randall looked uncomfortable. ‘Tyrone Smith, being in for a long stretch, was allowed certain privileges.’

  Martha raised her eyebrows.

  ‘He had a computer. Not linked to the Internet. Just to play games on. While Tyrone Smith was apparently sleeping the sleep of the innocent Callum unloosed a length of computer cable, looped it around the bed end and hanged himself. When the warders unlocked the door in the morning Callum was well – dead and Smith was still asleep. Delyth Fontaine said Hughes was quite cold when she attended at a quarter to seven and Mark agreed that he’d been dead for a good few hours. Resuscitation was out of the question.’

  ‘Wasn’t he on an hourly watch?’

  Alex Randall shook his head.

  ‘Did no one go in his cell to check later?’

  Again Alex looked uneasy. ‘We’ve already interviewed the two warders at some length. They say they didn’t go in after midnight. They looked in through the spyhole but all seemed quiet and they thought it better not to disturb him.’

  ‘So what’s bothering you, Alex?’

  ‘Your antennae,’ he said, ‘awesome.’

  She waited.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing really.’

  ‘Except?’

  ‘It really is nothing. It’s just opportune. There’s a victim. And Callum Hughes was a victim. He had it written all over him. Skinny, frightened-looking, no confidence, that horrible sag these youngsters have in their shoulders. He was inviting people to pick on him. So there is he and there is Tyrone Smith, a psychopath, who’s always on the lookout for a victim.’

  ‘Are you suggesting Tyrone Smith incited Hughes to hang himself?’

  ‘No. He wasn’t clever enough to do that.’

  ‘Intimidated him then?’

  Randall’s expression was pained. ‘I can’t prove it,’ he began awkwardly. ‘I don’t know. And what difference would it make?’

  ‘Maybe a great deal – to his mother.’

  ‘But then what? Would it make the prison service culpable for mixing and matching inmates?’

  ‘Alex,’ she said softly. ‘Whatever the cost we
must find out the truth. We owe it to this boy and to justice.’

  ‘Well then – in that case – we must make sure that Mark Sullivan does a thorough post-mortem.’

  ‘Should I be speaking to the prison officers?’

  Alex rubbed the back of his neck. ‘I’d quite like to start that off first,’ he said. ‘If I can get to the bottom of it on my own I’d feel happier. I can ask whether Smith has ever assaulted anyone before. I have to say, Martha, I’d be very surprised if he hadn’t.’

  Martha nodded.

  ‘I’d better take a look round the cell,’ she said. ‘That’s what I came for. I take it Tyrone Smith’s been moved elsewhere?’

  ‘Of course.’

  They walked along the corridor, a prison officer locking and unlocking the doors in front and behind them.

  It was a small, crowded, claustrophobic room, painted cream, a sink and a toilet (without a seat) at the far end beneath a frosted window. On the right side were bunks stripped down to the bedsprings. The police had removed all the bedding and the mattresses. The window had been opened an inch or two but there was still the sour scent of stale vomit.

  Tyrone Smith had made his temporary home quite comfortable with a computer, stacks of games, pin-ups of women with impossibly large breasts and strangest of all a magazine picture of a giant four-tiered beefburger complete with bright red relish. Martha studied the picture with interest.

  Alex pointed to some tape on the side of the bed frame of the upper bunk. ‘Hughes was in the lower bunk,’ he said, ‘Smith in the upper one. He had been sharing with a youth called Gavin Morrison but he’s been moved nearer London so his family can visit.’

  ‘It might be an idea if you interviewed Gavin Morrison,’ she said, ‘and asked him what sort of a cell mate Tyrone Smith made.’

  She looked round the room and saw a pair of shoes, neatly paired, side by side. Reebok trainers.

  Sam had an identical pair.

  Suddenly overcome with claustrophobia she turned around. She had seen enough. She felt a desperation to escape, to get of here.