by Chris Ryan
And she couldn’t see them.
All the inmates had entered. Joe wasn’t among them.
Maybe she’d missed him. She stood up from her yellow chair and scanned the room again. There was the old black man, sitting and talking quietly with a guy in his thirties who shared his features. Next to him, the Asian man was talking with two others who wore plain prison clothes but had their heads covered according to the rules of their religion. She was so distracted that she didn’t see a final figure appear in the doorway. When she did notice him, she had the feeling he’d been staring at her for several seconds.
Her eyes widened. She swallowed hard. He looked terrible.
His face was covered in scabs, as though he’d been in some kind of accident, and he had a couple of days’ dark stubble. He was leaner about the face than Eva remembered, but it was his eyes that shocked her the most. They were haunted. Unfriendly. Mistrustful. He didn’t smile as he looked at her. In fact, his face barely registered any expression. And he didn’t move.
Eva felt Joe might have just stood staring at her for the duration of the visit, but the screw instructed him to walk into the room.
He walked slowly, his face still set. A kid ran in front of him but he barely seemed to notice. When he reached the little group of four chairs at which Eva was standing, he stopped. Still he didn’t talk.
‘Inmates on the red!’ shouted a screw from across the room. Joe sat down. Eva sat opposite him.
‘Hi,’ she said. Her voice cracked, so she swallowed, smiled and tried again. ‘Hi.’
No reply.
‘It’s Eva,’ she said.
Joe looked around and beckoned to the female screw who was patrolling about five metres away. ‘I want to go back to my cell,’ he said.
‘Visiting time one hour. You go back then. No exceptions.’
The room was a hum of quiet conversation. About ten people were queuing up at the hatch.
‘I could get you a coffee,’ Eva suggested, ‘or some chocolate . . .’
‘Why are you here?’
Eva blinked in surprise. ‘Joe . . .’ she whispered.
‘Who sent you?’
‘Nobody sent me. Joe, it’s me . . .’
She saw his eyes narrow as he looked briefly around the room.
‘I saw . . .’ Her voice cracked again. ‘I saw it in the paper . . .’
‘I didn’t kill her.’ He said it quietly. Not much more than a whisper. For an instant his gruff, unfriendly voice sounded just like the kid she’d grown up with.
‘I know you didn’t. I just thought . . . I could help?’
Silence.
‘You want some ch—?’
‘No.’
A screw walked past. They sat in silence until he was out of earshot.
‘What happened?’ Eva said. ‘Who did this?’
He leaned forward. Eva did the same. For a moment she was back in Lady Margaret Road with him.
‘You expect me to believe that you just happened to get a sudden itch to see me after ten years? You think my brains have dribbled out my fucking ears?’
‘Joe . . .’
‘I don’t know who’s got to you, Eva. The Firm? Someone else? But whoever sent you, you can tell them this from me. I don’t care what happened in the compound. But I do care what happened to Ricky and Caitlin. You tell them that. You tell them, if they think they can set me up for this, they got another think coming. And when I’m out, I’m going to track them down and do something that is worth sending me down for . . .’
‘Joe, I don’t know what you’re talking about. What compound? You’re not making sense.’ She looked around the room. ‘Are they . . . taking care of you here? You know you’re only on remand? They shouldn’t be treating you like you’re convicted.’ She paused, while Joe made a hissing sound from behind his teeth. ‘Have you seen a lawyer?’ And then, more quietly: ‘A doctor?’
Joe stood up. Immediately two screws bore down on him. ‘Red chair,’ one of them called across from ten metres away, and everyone in the room turned to look at him. With a dark expression on his face, Joe sat down again. He didn’t look at Eva, but stared into the middle distance.
They sat like that, in silence, for five minutes. Eva found that she was holding back tears.
‘You’re different,’ she said finally.
No reply.
‘Do you remember the last time we met at the bandstand?’ she whispered.
It had been a cloudy Saturday afternoon, two days before what Joe had called ‘selection week’, whatever that was. Joe had told her that he was applying to join a different regiment. A ‘special’ regiment, he had said. Eva hadn’t known what he was talking about, though she had a good idea now. It would mean a lot of travel. Staying away for months at a time, or leaving the UK at short notice. She’d made him promise to keep in touch, but he hadn’t. Not really. Their paths had diverged. An uncomfortable thought crossed Eva’s mind. Maybe she didn’t know Joe as well as she thought. Maybe the things he’d seen, the things he’d done, had changed him.
She wondered how many people he had killed in the line of duty. And she wondered if once you’d killed one person, it was easier to kill the rest.
‘I’ll get us some coffee,’ she said weakly, and she stood up immediately because she knew Joe wouldn’t give her any response.
The queue was still long, which was a relief. It gave her time out. When she returned to the seating area ten minutes later, Joe hadn’t moved. He was staring into space. He didn’t take the coffee, nor did he speak as Eva drank hers.
‘I shouldn’t have come,’ she said when she had drained the dregs from her plastic cup. ‘I’m sorr—’
‘You ever been in the jungle, Eva?’ He still didn’t look at her, but he seemed to know that she had shaken her head. ‘Last time I was there, I spent five days lying on the jungle floor. Hard rations. Mosquitoes, snakes, fuck knows what else. Had to piss and shit where I was. Didn’t move more than half a metre in any direction.’
He turned to look at her, his eyes flat.
‘You tell them that.’
‘Tell who?’
‘You tell them I can do my time better than any man alive. And when I’m done, when I’m out of here, I’m going to find out who they are and—’
‘Joe . . .’ Eva knew that the tears were flooding her eyes now. He sounded paranoid. And what was it she’d read in the newspaper? About soldiers coming back with their heads messed up. Maybe he really had lost it.
Maybe he really had killed her.
‘Joe,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Really I don’t.’
But the conversation was over. Eva was left counting down the minutes until visiting was over. She made an awkward goodbye: ‘I still live in the same place . . . Dawson Street . . . if you need anything.’ Joe didn’t respond. The inmates and visitors divided into two groups. One standing by the door that led further into the bowels of the prison, the other by the exit that would take them back to the freedom of the outside world. And as the lags waved at their kids and wives and girlfriends across the open room, Joe stood by the door with his back to them.
Ten minutes later Eva was walking away from Barfield. The world was misty with tears. As she waited at a zebra crossing, she became aware of a man standing next to her. She recognized his suit, his stooped shoulders and his hooked nose, and she sensed that he was looking at her with interest. But Eva just kept her head down and crossed the road as soon as the little green man told her she could. It had been a traumatic afternoon, and she really wasn’t in the mood for talking with strangers.
‘Who’s your girlfriend, army boy?’
Finch was two steps behind Joe and talking in a quiet, taunting voice. ‘Wouldn’t mind getting her sweet lips round my chubby.’
Before Joe knew it, he had grabbed Finch by the neck and forced him up against the corridor wall. Instantly they were surrounded by a semicircle of inmates.
‘Go on then,
army boy,’ he rasped. ‘Take your best shot, why don’t you? Might be your last chance.’
Joe squeezed his fist. He could feel Finch’s stubble against the palm of his hand, and the pulse of his jugular. There was a thickening of the neck as the blood constricted. Finch tried to kick him in the shins, but Joe barely felt it. He threw the bastard down. ‘I wouldn’t waste it on a piece of shit like you, Finch.’
Finch just grinned at him.
‘Be seeing you, army boy,’ he said. ‘Sooner than you’d think, eh?’
He dusted himself down and pushed through the semicircle of onlookers, who dissolved among the other inmates walking the corridor.
TWELVE
Douglas McGuire looked more like a con than a screw. Cropped hair, tattooed forearms. A stench of Golden Virginia roll-ups followed the prison officer everywhere. But there the similarity ended. McGuire had never met an inmate he trusted. These two – Hunter and Mansfield, the nonce and the soldier who’d done his missus – were no exception.
‘Strip.’
McGuire stood by the door while Sowden gave the instruction. It was 6 p.m. Dinner time. Out in the corridor there was the bustle of inmates making their way to the dining hall. Sowden was showing McGuire the ropes. Or as he had put it, ‘clue you up to how we do things around here’. It was only his first day in Barfield.
‘You gone deaf, Action Man? I said, strip.’
The soldier looked unwilling. But he did as he was told and started slowly unbuttoning his top.
‘No need to grin, Hunter,’ said Sowden. ‘You’re next.’ He looked back at McGuire. ‘So, what made you transfer from Whitemoor?’ he asked.
Like McGuire was going to tell anybody that. Like he was going to talk in front of a couple of inmates about the piece of scum he’d found smearing a shiv – made from a shard of mirror, the thick end wrapped in black electrical tape to form a handle – with his own shit, in the hope that his victim would get infected with AIDS. Like he was going to mention that one of his bitches who served up in the canteen had melted down a Mars Bar and spattered the burning caramel over his face.
‘Change of scene,’ he said. ‘Missus wanted to move to the smoke.’
‘Don’t know why you’d want to come and work in this dump.’
Sowden stopped. The soldier had removed his trousers without saying a word. He was now naked in front of them.
‘What do you think we are?’ Sowden whispered in near disbelief. ‘Fucking idiots?’
McGuire wasn’t surprised to see what this surly con had been hiding beneath his trousers. A length of electrical flex was wound several times around his shin. The screw could see at once that it had been ripped from the small television on the table. A good weapon, in the right hands.
‘Take it off, Mansfield, and give it to me,’ Sowden instructed. The soldier gave him a baleful stare, but still he didn’t open his mouth as he bent down, unwound the flex and plonked it into the screw’s waiting hands.
Sowden looked over his shoulder at McGuire again. ‘They’ll try anything,’ he said. His nose wrinkled as he turned back to the soldier. ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘You stink. You need to get your arse down to the shower block, Mansfield. And speaking of arses – crouch and cough.’
McGuire didn’t like the look the prisoner gave them as he crouched down, fully naked, opened his lips just a fraction and cleared his throat.
‘Stand up and pass me your clothes.’
Mansfield did as he was told and Sowden started going through them minutely, checking all the pockets and seams for anything he might have hidden there. ‘I’ll give you the pleasure of doing Hunter,’ he muttered as he worked. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘You’re clean. Get dressed and get the fuck out of here.’
McGuire opened the door and watched Mansfield leave. There was something about him that he really didn’t like. Really didn’t trust. He prided himself on being able to spot the rotten apples. That soldier was a bad ’un through and through.
Left alone with Hunter, McGuire felt ill. The dumpy little nonce stripped off in front of him, rolls of pasty fat wobbling as he crouched and coughed. He sent him to the dining hall as quickly as possible. McGuire didn’t suppose he was long for this world. Most sex cases like him were segregated from the rest of the prison population, for obvious reasons. Someone had decided that this guy should have a bit of freedom. And that could only end one way.
Besides, he wanted a few minutes alone in this room.
The bedclothes on the bottom bunk were neatly squared away, unlike Hunter’s bunk at the top, which was a mess of blankets. McGuire stripped them both back and stared at the mattresses below. He didn’t know quite what he was expecting, but whatever it was, he didn’t see it. He cursed, turned and walked towards the door.
But then he stopped. Something had caught his eye. A small thing, but it screamed at him.
There were two posters on the wall. They showed pictures of two young pop stars, a boy and a girl, whom McGuire couldn’t have identified himself, but he wasn’t really looking at the images. He was looking at the bottom right-hand corner of the nearest poster. The Blu-tack had come away from the wall.
He stepped towards it and lifted up the loose corner.
His tiny eyes narrowed.
Stuck to the back of the poster were two pieces of masking tape. One of them was sticking a razor blade to the paper. The second had been peeled back. Whatever had once been there was there no longer.
‘Bastard,’ McGuire said under his breath. That flex round his ankle had been a decoy. The cunt had a blade on him.
The new prison officer left the cell and stormed down the corridor towards the dining hall.
The razor blade Joe had secreted under his tongue nicked the soft flesh inside his mouth. He could taste his own blood, but kept his lips tightly closed as he entered the dining hall.
He sensed the mood immediately. Atmospherics. Like going into an enemy village when the enemy know you’re coming. The buzz of conversation was quieter, the dull tapping of plastic cutlery against steel trays louder. More than usual, Joe saw inmates cast furtive glances in his direction as he walked slowly up the gangway towards the serving area. Even a couple of the screws standing along the side walls looked anxious.
Joe had covered a third of the gangway when he spotted Finch. He was sitting ten metres ahead and to his right, at the table closest to the serving area and with his back to it. His eyes were fixed on Joe, and he was chewing very slowly.
Joe walked on, the blade still needling at the underside of his tongue.
He recognized two members of Finch’s crew sitting to the left of the gangway, also with their backs to the serving area.
Also watching him.
His every sense was heightened as he walked. He felt he could hear every chink of cutlery.
Now he was next to Finch. The guy was two metres to his right and had laid his fork across his half-eaten tray of food. He followed Joe with his gaze as he passed, but he didn’t stand up.
Two metres from the serving area, Joe stopped. He could feel something dripping from the left corner of his mouth.
Three cons were waiting behind the hotplate, dressed in grease-spotted aprons and white paper hats. They were staring at the crimson trickle on his chin.
Joe saw himself distorted in the tea urn – like in a funfair.
And there were four men behind him.
They were not Finch’s. He recognized the Middle Eastern men who had been sitting cross-legged in the exercise yard that morning. He couldn’t tell how close they were because the distance was warped by the urn. Five metres? Less?
But they were definitely gaining on him quickly.
Joe spun round. So many things happened at once.
McGuire had appeared at the far end of the gangway. He was shouting something, but Joe didn’t register what it was. He was too busy with the Middle Eastern guys. The closest of them was three metres away, the other three a metre behind that. They were all carrying som
ething. Two of them had bootlaces. One had the plastic tube of a ballpoint pen, its end sanded sharp. The leader had a broken bathroom tile, fashioned into a jagged blade. He was holding it like a dagger.
The whole room had fallen silent. There wasn’t a single inmate in the dining hall who didn’t have his eyes on the violence they knew was about to happen. But Joe’s focus wasn’t on the audience. It was on the enemy, two metres away.
He opened his mouth, pulled out the razor blade and spat a gobful of blood into the face of the fucker with the bathroom tile. He knocked the tile away with his left hand, and slashed with the razor in his right. It was exquisitely sharp, and cut a gash into the left side of his assailant’s throat as if the flesh wasn’t there. Blood spurted from the wound. There was pressure behind it – so much that the dark liquid sprayed over one of Finch’s men’s food – until the guy fell to his knees, a horrific gurgling coming from the back of his mouth. It was the only noise in the suddenly silenced room. Joe felt several hundred eyes on him – not least those of Finch and his crew. Even the screws had momentarily frozen, clearly shocked by the sudden violence. But Joe’s own attention was already on his other attackers. They had stopped in their tracks as their leader went down, but their eyes still shone and Joe could tell they didn’t intend to back off. He stepped over the puddle that was leaching from the dying man and grabbed the one carrying the sharpened plastic tube. He sliced his hand, causing him automatically to drop the makeshift weapon.
Suddenly the silence erupted into a storm of chaos. Finch and one other man Joe hadn’t seen before jumped from their seats and started laying into the two remaining attackers. Within seconds they had brought them to the floor and were kicking and pummelling them. The gangway filled with inmates, some pressing towards them to see what was happening, others struggling to get away as if they were afraid to be linked with, or affected by, the violence. The hall was filled with roars of encouragement, or shrieks at other inmates to get out of the way. Joe was deaf to it all. He muscled his man to the floor half a metre from the twitching body of his comrade, grabbed his hair with his left hand and positioned the bloody razor blade millimetres from his pumping jugular.