Slipknot

by Priscilla Masters

  ‘So you went to the police station?’

  ‘They let me take him in some clothes – his computer games, iPod.’

  ‘How did he seem?’

  ‘Like he was in a dream. Like he couldn’t believe what he’d just done.’

  ‘And he’d bought the knife quite a while before – and sharpened it.’

  ‘I know, I know.’ Now it was Shelley who was agitated – rising up out of her chair. ‘I know – but I don’t think until he stuck it in DreadNought that he thought he’d use it.’

  ‘So you think he was shocked?’

  Shelley nodded her head vigorously. ‘Yeah. It was just like that. He couldn’t believe what he’d done.’

  ‘Right.’

  Martha allowed the words to sink in for a while before pursuing her enquiry. ‘So he spent the night at the police station?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And I take it you were at the magistrates’ court on Wednesday morning?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have missed it. I had to be there for him. He needed someone. It was the last time I saw him. Until…’

  Martha could fill in. She tried to move Shelley Hughes on.

  ‘How was he after his first night in custody?’

  ‘He was still in a sort of dream,’ Shelley said. ‘Dazed. I don’t think it had hit him.’

  ‘Did you worry about how he would respond when it did?’

  The big eyes stared back at her, almost frozen. Then Shelley nodded again. ‘He asked me how DreadNought was. I understood then that he was going to be OK. He was upset that people were outside the court calling him names and the newspaper people took some pictures. I think he worried he’d always be labelled as this sort of psycho.’

  ‘Mrs Hughes,’ Martha said. ‘I want you to think carefully about this before you answer. Had Callum ever mentioned suicide to you? Had he ever tried before? Had you ever seen him experiment with ropes – a noose?’

  Shelley seemed to pause, as though suspended in time. Then slowly she shook her head. ‘Never before this,’ she said. ‘But yesterday, when I was talking to him after he’d been in the court, when they told him he was going to Stoke Heath, he said, ‘I might as well be dead.’ She lifted her big eyes to look straight at Martha. ‘I worried then but I thought they’d keep an eye on him.’

  To Martha it seemed final. Callum had said he might as well be dead and that night he had carried out his statement. It seemed to clinch things. She allowed Shelley Hughes some moments of silence to reach the same conclusion herself. And she did.

  ‘He couldn’t see his way to doing a stretch. Not years. It would have finished him. And he’d have been on remand for months. The police told him that. Cases take ages to come to court. Call wasn’t strong, you see, Mrs Gunn. He knew he’d be different from the other boys in there. He knew they’d pick on him, that every day would be like a school day with no break. No weekends when he could stay in with me and no Mum either. We were close. At least he had me to come home to. Much good I did him,’ she finished bitterly, her mouth tightening into a thin, straight line.

  The effort of saying this seemed to finish her. She covered her face with her hands and openly wept, great racking sobs. ‘He was all I had,’ she said. ‘I got nothing now.’

  It was a bleak statement.

  Martha sat by, motionless. Words of so-called comfort would have seemed an insult.

  When Shelley finally took her hands away and stopped crying, she handed her the box of tissues. As she had done to countless other relatives she explained the formality of the inquest system and said that Jericho would inform her when it was to be. Shelley stood up. Martha spoke. ‘If at any time you want to contact me Jericho will give you our telephone number. The inquest allows you the opportunity to speak about your son. You might feel you want someone to speak up for Callum. His case will not now be tried in a court of law but you may feel you want, in some way, to say something positive about him. Is there anyone?’

  Shelley Hughes didn’t even pause. ‘One of his teachers,’ she said. ‘His History teacher, Mr Farthing. He had a good opinion of my lad. He saw the good in him. I’ll contact him.’

  Once again Martha extended her condolences and promised to keep in touch and Shelley Hughes left.

  Martha sat alone.

  Until Jericho bustled back in with a mug of steaming coffee.

  Alex Randall had asked Police Constable Gethin Roberts to drive him out to Stoke Heath but even though the traffic was light and Roberts a competent driver he still sat, tensely, in the car, his mind disturbed by something intangible. A cold, uneasy feeling that something was wrong. His mind kept returning to the picture of the boy: thin, frightened, hunched over the table – and the lad’s mother: hostile, accusatory, her eyes begging him to do something. He didn’t relish meeting her again. He knew, however illogical it might be, that she must blame him for her son’s death and in a way this was the pig-end of a death in custody. The police were to some extent responsible. They were the failed protectors. On instinct he used the car phone to get Doctor Porter’s telephone number. Callum’s untimely death had robbed him of the chance to explain, maybe even to exonerate his actions. He connected with the doctor and asked him if he remembered having a phone call from Shelley Hughes, asking him about fractured ribs.

  It was a long shot. Which didn’t pay off. The doctor was friendly.

  ‘But to be honest, Inspector Randall, if Mrs Hughes had asked a general question I probably wouldn’t remember the telephone call and certainly wouldn’t have logged it on. I would have asked her if she had any specific concerns and left it at that.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Alex disconnected.

  Roberts parked the car neatly outside the high walls in one of the bays and they approached the huge doors, big enough for the security vans to drive right through. Alex Randall waited impatiently while the formalities were observed for entry to the institution. The desk officer was initially unfriendly, defensive. He knew that they were dreading this investigation. That the finger must ultimately point towards them for their failure.

  Alex pushed such sensitivities out of his mind. First of all he asked to speak, alone, to Tyrone Smith.

  It took them a few valuable minutes to locate Tyrone Smith and escort him down to the interview room. Smith was an overweight, lumbering guy, who had something dangerous which clung to the air around him. From the quick, jerky movements to the wild look held in the dark eyes he was a person to keep your eye on, a physical presence you could not help but be aware of, the sort of person you watched out of the corner of your eye and didn’t drop your guard with. He had big hands, which he quickly bunched into fists, as Randall questioned him. Once or twice he shifted in his chair and Randall immediately tensed up.

  He was the sort to enjoy inflicting pain.

  Randall surveyed him.

  Tyrone sniffed and watched him like an animal, tensing itself to pounce, snarling and clawing into its prey.

  Randall introduced himself. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Randall,’ he said. ‘I’m the senior officer investigating Callum Hughes’s death. I want you to tell me anything that you can.’

  Smith said nothing.

  ‘Then just tell me about last night,’ he began.

  ‘I had my tea,’ Smith said. His voice was lardy and slow, his accent rural Shropshire, with a distinct burr.

  ‘At what time?’

  ‘I don’t know. Same time as normal. Five. Six. Sumatt like that. We’re allowed to watch a bit of TV till ten. I was back in my cell when the screws come up with this fellah.’

  ‘Tell me about the fellah.’

  Smith considered. ‘He looked dead scared,’ he said, waving bravado with his hands.

  ‘I could tell he was a first-timer. A saddo. A mother-wanter.’

  Alex Randall watched Smith through half-closed eyes. He had thought that years in the police would have inured him to characters like this and yet, he could feel dislike seeping through his skin.

  �
��Go on.’

  ‘He was skinny and scared. The screws made some crack about him and left him with me.’

  ‘Did you speak to him?’

  ‘Hardly. He kept trying to offer me fags and chocolate and things like he could bribe me to like him. Actually I didn’t want nothin’ to do with him. I could tell he was bad news.’

  ‘What do you mean ‘bad news’?’

  ‘Unstable like.’

  ‘Are you saying you thought he was likely to hang himself?’

  Tyrone Smith puffed his chest out like a bird of paradise. ‘No. ’Course not. If I’d have thought that I’d have told the screws – wouldn’t I?’

  Almost intelligently he waited for Randall’s reply. ‘I suppose you would have done, Smith.’

  Tyrone looked a touch disappointed at the policeman’s response. ‘No, what I meant were, he was in for violent attack.’

  Like you, Alex thought.

  ‘Did you threaten him?’

  Slowly Smith shook his head.

  ‘Verbally or physically?’

  Again that slow, definite shake of the head.

  ‘Think carefully, Smith.’ Alex Randall leaned forward to eyeball him. ‘He had some injuries.’

  ‘Well they weren’t nothin’ to do with me.’

  He would say that, wouldn’t he?

  ‘Did anyone else come into the cell?’

  ‘Screws a couple of times. Just to check on my new little brother – as it were.’

  ‘Inside or outside the cell?’

  Smith eyed Randall curiously. ‘What’re you askin’ me for? Ask them. They was there.’ He stopped speaking, held his breath. ‘Look. It weren’t my fault he topped himself.’

  ‘What do you remember of his suicide?’

  ‘I slept right through it, Mr Policeman. Don’t remember a thing.’

  ‘Are you expecting me to believe that?’

  ‘I don’t care whether you believe it or not. You can’t prove otherwise.’

  Alex Randall felt a pricking of his mind. He watched Smith’s greasy face and saw a small, evasive fluttering of his eyes. Oh – there was something here. He’d rattled him. He kept his gaze on Smith, trying to sense what exactly Smith had witnessed but Smith’s face had sunk back into a bland expression. The flicker of fear had disappeared.

  ‘So then what?’

  ‘You know what. I woke up this mornin’ and he was hangin’ there. Dead as a dodo with great, starin’ eyes.’ Smith frowned. ‘Horrible they were. I was traumatised. I started bangin’ on my cell door. And then the two screws came.’

  ‘Which two?’

  ‘The two who’d been on all night,’ Smith said, as though explaining to a child. ‘The old one, Pembroke, and his new rookie, the woman. The little one with the big arse.’

  ‘And what did they do?’

  ‘What do you think? Cursed and swore, touched him and pressed the emergency bell. There was panic, I can tell you. Everyone scuttlin’ around, swearin’ and cursin’. They got me out of my cell and put me in a holdin’ bay. That’s all I know. That’s it. Sum total.’

  He tried to stare innocently at Randall. But Smith had very pale, blue eyes enveloped in podgy eyelids. Randall put his face close to Smith’s. ‘Are you trying to tell me that you heard nothing?’

  ‘Not a thing.’

  ‘You didn’t hear your cellmate get out of bed?’

  Smith shook his head.

  ‘Or remove the flex from the back of the computer?’

  Again Smith shook his head, his eyes firmly locked into the policeman’s. He was a good liar.

  ‘You didn’t hear him loop it around the bed – or fall?’

  Randall could anticipate what Smith’s next response would be.

  Correct.

  ‘You didn’t hear him die? Any sound at all?’

  ‘No, Sir.’ Smith stared right past him and for the briefest of moments Randall almost wondered if Smith had any feelings. Guilt? Pity?

  It would have been nice.

  Randall gave a deep sigh and wondered exactly what had happened because he didn’t believe this version.

  ‘Did you kick him? On the leg?’

  ‘No. As if. Mind you…’

  Randall could guess what would come next.

  ‘…Now I think about it he did bang himself against the desk. Quite hard.’

  Correct. Except.

  ‘The injury was more consistent with a kick than a bang against a flat surface. The pathologist could tell by the pattern of bruising.’

  ‘Clever – ain’t they?’

  Slowly Randall nodded.

  ‘You can go, Smith. But I may want to talk to you again.’ He couldn’t resist the jibe, ‘I’ll know where to find you.’

  It provoked a pugnacious squaring of the jaw but nothing else.

  So now Randall merely had to concentrate on the two prison officers who had been kept in the prison but allowed to sleep for the morning. Until the enquiry was complete they would be suspended from duty.

  He interviewed Walton Pembroke first.

  The senior prison officer sauntered in with an arrogant confidence, sat down without being asked and crossed his legs.

  Randall performed the introductions again.

  ‘How long have you been in the prison service?’

  ‘Thirty years. I go next year. On a full pension.’ Pembroke sounded well satisfied with his life.

  Randall managed a sympathy-smile. ‘That must be something to look forward to.’

  Walton Pembroke dipped his head in an acknowledgment. ‘After a lifetime here it is. I can tell you.’

  ‘Have you always worked here?’

  ‘Nope. Worked at Winson Green, Shrewsbury. Even a stretch at Gartree. Didn’t like it there though.’

  ‘You must have met some right villains.’

  Pembroke gave a grimace of a smile. ‘Nah,’ he said, attempting a joke. ‘They’re all innocent. Lovely people really.’

  Randall tried to laugh too but the humour was thin. The truth was that appeals from prison, long after they’d been sentenced, still sent shivers up his spine. It meant revising old cases instead of solving new. Quite apart from the aspersions it cast on the police force, false statements, erroneous evidence. It didn’t do the justice system any good. Dragging officers out of retirement. Half-remembered facts, memories playing tricks. ‘Is this your writing?’

  Who knew? Some of the officers, witnesses, would have died anyway. Reopening cases, in Randall’s opinion, always meant trouble.

  ‘Look, Mr Pembroke’ he said, his face deliberately straight. ‘We’re on the same side, you and I. Let’s work together. You know this is a serious case. I want you to tell me, right from the start, the encounter you had with young Callum Hughes.’

  The approach stopped Pembroke short. He narrowed his eyes as he looked back at Randall. Randall could hear his brain cranking into action to wonder whether to take the policeman at face value – or not.

  ‘Group 4 brought him to us at nine,’ he said. ‘By the time we’d checked him and clerked in all his belongings it was half past. It was ten by the time we took him to his cell.’

  Randall interrupted. ‘Whose choice was it to put him in with Tyrone Smith?’

  For the first time Walton Pembroke looked uncomfortable. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t rightly remember. It was probably decided by the day shift.’

  Randall leaned in closer. ‘And what did you think when you knew a vulnerable young lad like Hughes was to be locked up with a thug for ten hours?’

  Pembroke swallowed and Randall knew, he just knew that the prison officers had derived some ‘innocent fun’ out of it. Part of the job. Got to have a laugh at work – haven’t you?

  ‘They’re all young thugs,’ he said finally. ‘He wasn’t going to share a cell with Christopher Robin and Pooh Bear.’ It was the best he could come up with.

  ‘How many suicides have you had in Stoke Heath since you’ve been here?’

  Pemb
roke shook his head. ‘None.’

  ‘And at the other places where you have worked?’

  ‘One or two,’ Pembroke said. ‘You can’t stop people killing their selves. If they want to do it they’ll do it.’

  Randall kept his face impassive.

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘We did our rounds.’

  Again Randall sensed evasion. Little more than a change in the temperature of the room, a slight quickening of Pembroke’s breathing, a rubbing together of sweating palms. ‘At what time?’

  ‘We go round a couple of times early on in the night – eleven-ish, twelve-ish.’

  ‘Into the cells?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  Again Randall studied the prison officer for a few long moments. ‘Did you go into cell 101?’

  Pembroke nodded.

  ‘Both times?’

  Again Pembroke nodded.

  ‘Is this usual?’

  Pembroke shifted uncomfortably. ‘It depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘Whether they’re awake or asleep.’

  Randall squared his face against the other’s. ‘And in this case?’

  Junior officers would have recognised the deceptive softening of the tone.

  ‘Smith was out for the count.’ Pembroke licked his lips.

  ‘And Hughes,’ Randall queried, still softly, asking himself the question, why was he having to work so hard, teasing every tiny detail out of a senior officer?

  ‘Hughes was upset,’ Pembroke said. ‘He was crying the first time. We went in and he tried to jip it out of the cell. We let him out along the corridor. Just for a walk. They suffer like that a bit…’ Randall sensed the prison officer was back on home ground. Home and dry. Safe and sound.

  ‘First night and all that. Their stretch seems as if it’ll go on forever. They don’t think they’ll ever be out. No dates for hearings. Miss their mothers. Bound to get a bit upset.’

  ‘Understand young lads, do you?’

  Pembroke flushed. ‘I don’t get what you’re saying.’

  ‘You’re working in a Young Offenders’.’ Randall spoke smoothly. ‘I just thought you might have some special understanding with them. That’s all.’