by John Macken
‘Like what?’
‘Who knows? You just hear rumours. That’s all you do hear in this place. Rumours. How someone bumped someone else, or is connected to the guts, or takes it in the greenhouse . . .’ Cormack glanced up from his paper. ‘Trouble is, you never get to know what’s right and what isn’t.’ He smiled, a boyish, cheeky grin that Reuben imagined had saved him from the odd bollocking at school. ‘Take Laughing Boy, for example.’ Cormack jerked his thumb in the direction of Damian.
‘What?’
‘I heard the other day he accidentally smiled.’
Damian scowled at him. ‘Cocksucker.’
‘And that as well.’
Despite himself, Damian broke into a brief grin, which quickly faded. His characteristic apprehension returned with a vengeance. He stood up, smoothing the crease on the bed where he had just been sitting.
‘Anyway,’ he said quietly, pacing to the door.
‘What?’
‘Don’t wreck my cell. Leave it tidy.’
‘Where you going?’ Cormack asked.
‘Visiting time.’
‘Who’s coming?’
Damian’s sigh was more visible than audible. His whole chest heaved up and fell back again. ‘My old lady.’
He left the room, and Cormack raised his eyebrows at Reuben.
‘What’s the story?’ Reuben said.
Cormack returned his attention to the paper. ‘Some things are best left unasked,’ he muttered.
Reuben lifted his sleeve a couple of inches, keeping it out of Cormack’s view. The toilet paper was dark red, the blood dry and brittle. Between bouts of pulsing and throbbing, the wound had begun to itch. Reuben lowered his sleeve, ignoring the temptation to scratch it. As he did, an image hunted him down, sparked by two words Damian had said.
Visiting time.
Seated next to his brother Aaron, fidgeting, thirteen-year-old boys unable to sit still. A sparse room with empty tables and chairs. His mother Ina opposite, sharing her scolding looks between the two of them. Appreciating that his mother looked drawn, her fine features burdened by bags and wrinkles. Looking uncomfortable and out of place. Waiting and waiting, the room gradually filling up. The noise level rising, whispers turning to murmurs becoming chatter rising to shouts. And then Dad approaching, shuffling, his head down. Dressed in drab blue clothes, picking his way between tables towards them, gruff and awkward. Wanting to hug him, to hold him, anything. But something in his eyes holding Reuben back. His mother asking, so how are they treating you? His father replying, fine.
Oh, George . . .
I said, fine.
Aaron asking, when are they going to let you go?
And Reuben chipping in, soon, Dad?
His mum and dad exchanging quick glances.
Ina Maitland saying, we’ll talk about this later, boys. But for now, give your dad a hug.
Reuben rubbed his face slowly, his eyes screwed tight with the memory. The place was starting to fuck with his head. This was the problem, he understood, the very thing that happens in prison. You fester. All the time in the world to sit and think does you no good at all.
Reuben stood up. ‘I’ve got to get out of this place,’ he muttered.
‘Haven’t we all,’ Cormack replied laconically. After a couple of seconds he asked, ‘What were you asking about Brawn for?’
Reuben rolled up his right sleeve and pulled the wad of tissue away. It clung to the wound, and congealed blood came away with it.
‘He ran a knife through this.’
Cormack sat up on the bed and leaned forward for a closer look. He whistled through his teeth. ‘You’re kidding.’
Reuben shook his head, defiant and angry, something he didn’t like the feeling of welling up inside him.
‘And I’m going to make the fucker pay for it.’
He walked out of Damian’s cell and back towards his own, where his small scalpel blade lay, ready to be used for something a good deal nastier than he had originally intended.
14
Laura Beckman, a petite female in a tight red cardigan and dark blue jeans, stands up and waits by the doors for the night bus to stop. The brakes grind and squeal and the vehicle shudders to a halt. There is the sharp hiss of pneumatics and the doors fold open. He stands up and follows her off.
She leaves the vehicle and turns down an empty street. On the other side to her lies a school. There are zigzag lines in the road, multiple signs and speed bumps. A white painted railing on a small wall runs almost the length of the two-storey building. He remains twenty paces back, blotting out memories of his own schooling, suppressing his own pathetic and ineffectual efforts inside the classroom and out of it, still seeing the playground fights, the crush of eager pupils chanting ‘Scrap, scrap, scrap!’ while on the inside he or someone else was pulverized by boys who knew they wouldn’t lose.
He doesn’t know what time it is, except that the pubs kicked out seemingly an age ago. They are on the other side of the Thames and moving away from it. It is warmer tonight than it has been, but is still by no means pleasant. He wonders momentarily whether the woman is cold, and why she isn’t wearing a coat. He knows that if he had dressed more . . . nothingness. And back again. A short blankness. He shakes his head. He is still walking, on automatic pilot, the woman just about in sight. He quickens his pace. The black-outs are becoming more frequent and less predictable. He has no idea what happens or where he goes, but he knows they can’t last more than a few seconds at a time.
The rules should have changed by now, but they haven’t. He takes some reassurance from this, gradually closing in on the red cardigan ahead. There have been theories in the papers, but nothing more, no details. Besides, they have been consumed with the death of a footballer and his bimbo wife. But no official statement. No warning to stay off the streets. Just vague articles saying the police are still trying to link the death of this one with that one. And so the women of London continue to roam the streets, all dolled up, looking their best and remaining available.
He squeezes his fists tight, muscles hardening. She is ten paces ahead now, turning past a row of terraced houses. He glances around. The street is empty. There are no CCTV cameras and no cars. Most of the houses are unlit. The moment is coming. The surge, somewhere deep in his stomach. A tightness in his groin. Chewing his teeth hard. The show is about to begin. Time to make one more of them understand the truth about power.
The tablets from earlier are fully in his system now. He senses the energy they bring, expanding his chest, breathing deeply and quickly. The doctor talked again about side-effects, but that’s all they are. It is the main effect that really matters, not the small and unimportant changes they smuggle along with them for the ride. And what a ride. He is, he firmly believes, unstoppable. What would it take to bring him down when he is in full flow? A van-load of coppers might be in with a chance. But a large proportion of them would end up with broken skulls and smashed-open noses.
The slag in front takes a left turn up a side street. The lighting is worse, the houses sparser and separated by commercial buildings and lock-ups. As she walks, she spins her head sharply round. Through the dark, he sees her face for the first time. It is pale, pretty and etched with concern. She is on to him. It is time to do it. Her pace increases, the heels of her shoes stabbing hard into the pavement. No black-outs, he says to himself. No black-outs.
He concentrates, the anger rising, the sick dread, the nervous anticipation. He starts to run, full tilt, leaning forward, his arms thumping through the air. She looks back again. He sees the fear, and it turns him on. He sprints faster, a lion in the chase, utterly focused on the kill. He feels light and strong, pounding towards her. Seven or eight paces back. Gaining with every stride. He can see she doesn’t know what to do, other than run for her life. Again, this spurs him on, sends his excitement up a notch.
And then she stops. Turns round and faces him. She is breathing hard, mustering some defiance. He doesn’t hesitate
. She raises her hands, palms up. He leaps forward, lunging through the air. Flattens her, like at rugby. Her skull thuds into the pavement, a hollow sound, a coconut dropped on to concrete. He is on top of her, tearing at her clothes. She is dazed, maybe even concussed. He leaves her jeans and slaps her round the face. Come on, bitch, come on, he says to himself. Wake the fuck up.
There is blood in the back of her hair. He looks at the surgical glove on his right hand, which is smeared in red. He slaps her again in the face, shaking her body. Nothing. She is out cold. He glances around. The street is quiet. ‘You have to wake up,’ he growls. Her breathing is shallow, despite the chase. He feels the side of her neck for a pulse. It is difficult to detect through the gloves. This is no good. He screws his eyes up. It cannot be accidental. You have to know what I’m doing to you.
Suddenly he wonders, what if she doesn’t come round? What then? She dies outright from a head injury. He knows the excitement is ebbing. He has lost control of the situation. And with no control, there is no point to be made. He wipes the bloody glove across her breasts, still tightly wrapped in the cardigan. Slowly, he stands up. If he blacks out again now . . . He turns and walks away, angry, frustrated, upset. Not looking back and staying in the shadows now. A lesson learned. Sometimes showing a woman too much power can be a bad thing.
15
Reuben strode into the pool room, an unhealthy anger raging. It had refused to abate, just as his wound was refusing to scab over. Inside, fifteen prisoners were standing or leaning, quietly smoking, intent on the game in progress. Michael Brawn languished in the corner, holding a pool cue, his hands in front of his chest. By the look of him, Reuben guessed that he had just played his shot and missed. A well-built inmate with dreadlocks was leaning over the table, taking his time. The atmosphere was tense with the suggestion that this was more than merely a game of pool. Something was riding on this. Maybe money, maybe cigarettes, maybe favours, Reuben didn’t know. But a couple of paces to the right of Brawn, Reuben noticed Aiden Boucher among the spectators, intense and wide-eyed, his beard sharp with hostility.
Reuben walked round the table and stood in front of Michael Brawn.
‘I want a fucking word with you,’ he said.
Michael Brawn surveyed Reuben. The room fell silent, Brawn’s opponent slowly straightening from his shot. All attention transferred from the game and on to Reuben. Brawn passed his cue to the inmate closest to him and stepped closer to Reuben.
‘I’m all ears.’
‘You put a knife through my tattoo.’
Reuben pushed his arm towards him, the evidence in red, an angry slit five inches long, bleeding thin, watery fluid.
‘You’re lucky it wasn’t your heart,’ Brawn said.
A couple of the spectators wolf-whistled, and Reuben sensed that this was going to get nasty.
‘Now I’m going to fuck your tattoo up,’ Reuben continued.
Michael Brawn laughed, his face never changing expression, his mouth barely open.
Reuben darted his left hand forward and grabbed Brawn’s forearm. He pulled the scalpel blade from his back pocket with his right.
‘Still think it’s funny?’ he asked, burning into his eyes.
‘Hilarious.’
‘You’re not so tough.’
Brawn snorted. ‘Tougher than you.’
‘You think so?’
‘Come on, streak of piss. Do it.’
Reuben moved the blade closer to Michael Brawn’s arm, holding it above one of his tattoos. It was a crude skull, the standard bluey green of prison tattoos. The orbits of the eyes were red and the lower jaw bone missing. The thickness of its lines spoke of a blunt needle and repeated puncturing of the skin.
Brawn fixed his stare. The spectators stood in rapt attention. Reuben was aware that this was a hell of a lot more important than the game they had been watching. He gripped the scalpel blade perfectly still, the fingers of his other hand digging into Brawn’s wrist.
‘Because, deep down,’ Brawn taunted him, ‘you ain’t got the balls.’
Reuben held his nerve. ‘Only one way to find out.’ He lowered the blade until it was touching the fine dark hairs of Brawn’s arm.
‘That’s it, new boy. Nearly there.’
Reuben scanned the room with his peripheral vision. In the prisoners’ expressions he detected a hunger for blood. Aiden Boucher monitored him intently, almost quivering with expectation. Reuben glanced back at the blade. His fingers had started to tremble slightly. As he watched them, fighting it, they shook more obviously, almost as if someone else was controlling their movements.
Don’t panic, he told himself. You can do this.
‘I mean, fair’s fair,’ Michael Brawn sneered. ‘I cut you, and now it’s your turn.’
Reuben pinched the small blade hard. All around, prisoners craned their necks for a direct line of sight. Michael Brawn’s eyes continued to bore into Reuben, willing him to dare. Despite gripping harder, Reuben failed to stop the shakes. The anger was still there, but it was becoming muddied by events and feelings beyond his control.
‘Shut the fuck up!’ he shouted.
Brawn raised his arm slightly. ‘I’ll make it easy for you, yellow boy.’
The blade touched skin, juddering on the flesh, making a shallow depression in the inky tattoo. Reuben was sweating, telling himself he was waiting for the right moment. He needed to do this.
There was suddenly something ablaze in Brawn’s face. ‘Come on, you motherfucker! Cut me! Cut me!’ he screamed.
Behind him, Boucher shouted, ‘Slice him, for fuck’s sake!’
A few more spectators joined in the chorus. The words ‘Slice him!’ echoed around the walls of the room.
Reuben looked up from the blade and into Michael Brawn’s psychopathic face. The pupils were huge, the pale cheeks filling with red, the stained and worn teeth clamped together. He sensed the sweat from his fingertips wetting the blade, loosening his grip. He held it tighter and ground his teeth. He closed his eyes and pushed deeper. Into Michael Brawn’s tattoo, into Michael Brawn’s skin.
And then he stopped. Something somewhere said, ‘Enough!’ There was nothing more to gain. He lifted the blade, pocketed it and glanced around the room, sensing the reaction. There was an instant outpouring of derision, inmates booing, laughing or making the universal ‘chicken’ noise. Reuben turned from Brawn’s pitying grin and walked away. His chin dug into his breastbone, his head held low, his walk slow and dejected.
But as he turned the corner, Reuben smiled, his lips pulled back, his teeth bared. He punched the air with his fist. He brought the fingers of his left hand up to his face and examined them intently. A small dab of double-sided sticky tape was still in place on each fingertip, and each held a hair or skin fragment or some other microscopic part of Michael Brawn tightly to its surface. Reuben punched the air again. He had DNA-sampled Brawn in front of a room full of witnesses without anyone knowing. Including Michael Brawn.
Reuben made his way to his cell. Thankfully, Narc was elsewhere. He sat down on his bed, the door swinging shut behind him. Leaning forward, he took the Kinder egg out of a pair of socks under his pillow and placed it on top of the chest of drawers. He used the small pair of tweezers to remove the strips of tape from his fingers, manoeuvring them into the Eppendorf tube with the pink fluid. Then he carefully removed the scalpel blade from his pocket and rubbed a cottonwool bud along its surface, before snipping the bud into the Eppendorf tube.
Monitoring the door, Reuben unfolded a letter he had written the previous night. He carefully poured a few drops from the tube on to each corner of the page, wafting it for a couple of minutes to allow it to dry. Then he folded it back up and slotted it into an envelope.
He glanced up as the door opened, quickly hiding the contents of his forensic kit in a drawer. Narc entered, a rolled-up magazine under his arm, whistling contentedly.
‘What time’s the post?’ Reuben asked him.
‘Six,’ Narc re
plied, between tuneless bars of a song Reuben didn’t recognize.
Reuben licked the envelope and sealed it, leaving the cell at a brisk walk. The postbox, a hangover from the jail’s Victorian days, was ornate and bore the embossed words ‘Her Majesty’s Prison Service’. Reuben hesitated a second, savouring the victory. Then he slid the letter into the sealed metal box. Job done. He sauntered down to the dining room where dinner was about to be served.
16
In the morning, Reuben ate breakfast then made his way to the governor’s office, as agreed with Sarah. A weight had been lifted from somewhere and he walked with the easy nonchalance of someone about to be released. The only problem that remained was his son, who had been lying in a children’s hospital the previous day having a series of tests. Lucy had been vague, but from what Reuben could tell, the GP was playing it safe. Lucy had that effect on men. But not, it turned out, on Reuben. Perhaps if she had, he conceded while queuing for a phone, he might still be a dutiful husband in a respected job.
As far as he knew from his restricted contact, Joshua had been unwell for around three months. Nothing more than a series of colds and other nursery-borne ailments, all of which had sapped his strength and slowed him down. But he was secretly pleased that Joshua was having the tests anyway. When he had the all-clear, there would be no more excuses for blocking access, no more being turned away from Shaun Graves’ immaculate house to trudge back down that immaculate drive, Joshua supposedly too unwell to stand a day out with his father.
A phone became available, and Reuben went through the rigmarole of phone cards, of dialling through the prison operator, of waiting to be connected. When the call was answered, it was clear that Lucy was fighting her way through the early-morning traffic.
‘I’ll get straight to the point,’ she said.
Her voice sounded deeply sincere. It was unlike Lucy to be anything else. In fact, this had been one of Reuben’s favourite things about his wife when they were together. Just coming out and saying what was on her mind, with no agenda or prevarication. Although she had, of course, failed to mention the small matter of the affair she was having.