Bright Spark

by Gavin Smith

  While Hoskins chatted amiably with the room supervisor, a prison officer seated on a raised dais that afforded a grandstand view of the long, open room, Harkness was obliged to empty his pockets to be frisked and scanned. A few visitors had moved to the tables allocated by the supervisor. Some conversed quietly with blue-suited inmates. Others stared into space, waiting, or hissed and spat orders at giddy or griping children. The furniture, bolted to the floor, ensured just enough separation to highlight any physical contact for the spherical camera modules speckling the ceiling.

  The formalities concluded, Harkness was rejoined by Hoskins who led him past the rows of desks to a bank of interview rooms. Inside, Harkness produced his notebook and a bulbous fountain pen he’d finally found a use for. The room reeked of sweat and mildew as if infected by the darkness that swallowed up the feeble wattage of the caged light bulbs.

  “Can you write, with your hands like that?”

  “I can produce a childish scrawl with this thing, which will have to do.”

  A sharp rap punctuated the gloom and the prison officer who had frisked Harkness escorted a youth into the room and instructed him to sit opposite Harkness. Hoskins stood and left the room, whispering to the other officer as he eased the door shut.

  The two men studied each other. Harkness knew from Slowey’s notes that the youth was nineteen-years old with plenty of form for commercial burglary and simple possession of class ‘A’ drugs; which made him very much a low-ranking con. Tall and rangy, he sat almost eye to eye with Harkness, his glaring eyes starker for his completely shaven head and hollow cheeks. He’d placed his palms on the scuffed and torn vinyl of the table, the index finger of his right hand twitching as if palsied, the knuckles scraped and bloodied.

  “Hello Jake. I’m here,” offered Harkness. “Detective Sergeant Harkness. Say what you want to say. About me or anything else. You’re not on tape. You’re a witness. I’m not even going to bug you for a formal statement. I couldn’t write it out anyway.” He raised his hands to illustrate his point, hoping that he appeared conciliatory, fearing that he looked like a maniac brandishing stigmata.

  “I know who you are,” said Barnaby, in a thick, guttural Nottinghamshire accent. “He told me all about you. And I know how he died. You’ve got some neck, you murdering prick.”

  “Is that it? That all you’ve got? Try harder, Jake. Come on. Now’s your chance. Easy, isn’t it, chuntering to yourself in that cell like a schoolgirl? Not so easy in the…..”

  “Fuck you, you murdering pig,” Barnaby intoned, sotto voce, too smart to shout, needing to finish the dialogue without summoning the gaolers. “I hope you burn like he did. I hope you fucking roast with an apple in your stupid, fat, lying pig face. Prick!”

  “That’s more like it. My turn now,” began Harkness in his own low growl, ticking off the points on his split and flaking fingers. “I nicked your mate Nigel because I thought he was guilty of…..”

  “You know nowt….”

  “Shut you mouth when it’s my turn or I’ll have you back in your box before you can say ‘basic courtesy’.”

  Harkness bunched his shoulders and fists and leaned across the desk until he could smell Barnaby’s stale sweat, staring into his eyes, willing him to submit, almost toppling his chair, wondering if he was about to get his nose broken. Cornered, confused, Barnaby blinked first. Harkness uncoiled by a notch, allowing the youth a few more inches of personal space.

  “Better. Now, you know and I know he had form for it and a real taste for it. He also had a motive which is why you summoned me here, Jake, before you forget. He ran. I asked him some questions. Politely. I bailed him out. I drove him home. He sneaked out, got some petrol and flash-fried himself because he had a broken mind. I tried to save his life and got myself some scars to remember him by. The End.”

  “Drugs.”

  “What about ‘em?”

  “It were always about drugs. Always is.”

  Harkness opened his notebook, slid the cap off his pen and reclined in the chair which groaned under his bulk.

  “He were bent.”

  “Help me out a bit, Jake. First, tell me exactly why you want to talk to the cops and let’s just take it as read that I’m a black-hearted bastard.”

  “’Cause Nigel were my mate. ‘Cause that bent screw Murphy sold drugs on the wing. ‘Cause Nigel took a beating and got killed ‘cause of Murphy. ‘Cause no bugger wants the truth. ‘Cause I need to set the record straight. ‘Cause when I’m done with the buggers who killed my mate, I’m going to sue the prison ‘til I’m minted. ‘Cause mates look out for each other. ‘Cause Nigel asked me to do it if owt happened to him.”

  “Good enough. So, let’s break it down. How long have you been inside now?”

  “Sixteen months and five days. I’m out end of next month.”

  “How did you meet Firth?”

  “Nigel!”

  “Nigel then.”

  “I got knocked about. Didn’t mind coming in here too much. Eighteen months is nowt considering what I got away with. And I thought I could get off the gear. But plenty of people selling that shite in here. I kept telling ‘em where to stick it. Got myself a few good kickings. Screws re-housed me with Nigel. Another victim.”

  “You two hit it off?”

  “He were a bright lad. Didn’t touch the gear, not the hard stuff anyway. He read books. Understood stuff. Talked a lot of cosmic bollocks though. Astrology and all that shite. He weren’t a murderer or a maniac like you made him out to be.”

  “Told you that, did he?”

  “And more besides. Lucky, I was. Bunking with someone honest in here. Someone who wasn’t smacked up or looking to nick your stuff or clucking all night. I’m a thief so I know.”

  “How close were you?”

  “Mates. Good mates. What else you want? You think I’m queer?”

  “No, Jake, I don’t. Couldn’t give a monkey’s either. So, what about Murphy?”

  “Thought he was king of the wing. He’d been around since I came in here. Didn’t have much to do with him. Nobody talked back to him, except the hard cases. Used to make small-talk on his rounds. Talk a load of old bollocks about the news and sport. Then he’d always get round to drugs. Wanted to know if we’d had a problem. What we’d been using. Whether we’d knocked it on the head. Never got beyond that with me.

  “Then Nige starts spliffing up at night. And he’s a good lad so he shared. I were impressed. Proper stuff. Not just dried seeds and stuff you wouldn’t stick in your granddad’s pipe. I want to know how he got it. Wouldn’t tell me at first, then he does. Murphy brings it in. For a reasonable price. Offers harder stuff too. Slips him some amphet. Few tabs of ‘e’. I won’t touch that shite but Nige were bouncing off them walls. Don’t know how Nige paid. Maybe he never did.

  “Course that’s how it turned sour. Whatever Nige had promised, he couldn’t deliver. He didn’t have no-one on the outside could pay. Didn’t have a pot to piss in either. His three pound a week pocket money weren’t going to cut it. And he loved his weed. So Murphy put the screws on. Verbals at first. Then the beatings. I reckon Murphy wrote it up as self-defence on his clipboard.

  “Knew what he were doing too, Murphy. He were quick. Jabbing into what d’you call ‘em, pressure points. Punching away at thighs and back where it doesn’t show so much. Sticking on the cuffs and twisting ‘em so it almost broke Nige’s wrists. I saw it once. He told me I’d get some if I talked so I didn’t. Not interested in me. I wasn’t a customer.

  “If his mates saw it, they did nowt. They must have heard it, ‘cause Nige just kept screaming at Murphy one time ‘til Murphy put the pillow over his face. Thought he were going to kill him but he were too smart for that. All about fear with Murphy. That were in solitary too. Heard about it later.

  “So Nige does a bit of solitary. Don’t help himself by threatening to shop Murphy. He wouldn’t have done. He’d have had to admit doing drugs and that would’ve got him longer in here.
But that just earned him more of the same. Don’t know how much Nige owed that bastard but Murphy really had it in for him.

  “Funny thing is, Nige gets released on time. No extra porridge for all the disciplinaries Murphy must have stuck him on for. Then Murphy disappears and they’re both dead now.”

  “You have a theory?”

  “No, youth. I’ve said what I had to say. I ain’t got theories. Won’t bring him back anyway. I want to get out of here on time. After that, I’ll sign anything you shove in front of me.”

  “Who did Murphy get his gear from?”

  “You don’t listen, do you,” Barnaby snorted. “I’ve said my piece. I don’t know. If I did, I wouldn’t tell you. Where I’m from, people get their brains blown out the backs of their silly heads out for grassing up dealers.”

  “Then I’m obliged for your help.”

  “There is one thing though. Murphy thought he were a funny man. Used to talk about the weed, saying it were organic, fair trade, his supplier had green fingers, shit like that. Whether it were amphet or smack, he said it all came from the allotment. Like he were a market gardener.”

  Slowey helped himself to another digestive biscuit, dunking it in his tea for precisely long enough to make it deliciously soggy without having it disintegrate into sludge at the bottom of his mug, or drip khaki blotches onto the casual shirt and corduroy trousers that he hoped made him look as harmless as a social worker or a children’s TV presenter.

  He smiled timidly at the hushed huddle of people in the opposite corner of the room: a middle-aged woman who looked like her hair was greying by the second; a pretty teenage girl effusing hormones and unsure whether to giggle or cry or sneer so opting for all three in quick succession; and the female detective who specialised in interviewing vulnerable witnesses on video and carried with her an air of the confessional.

  The space imposed calmness on its occupants. Occupying the top floor of an annex to a nondescript office building, the video suite didn’t advertise its presence. Nobody came here other than to attest to violations of innocence, or to patiently listen to those who did. For that reason, it was nowhere near a police station in any sense. Both of its larger rooms were furnished with soft and ample sofas, painted in muted pastel tones and strewn with magazines and books with innocuous themes. The kitchen, as Slowey had discovered, was well stocked with tea and biscuits and mugs whose randomness, chipped rims and ample volume was comforting and informal; to Slowey at least, already on his second brew and sixth biscuit.

  Sharing this room with Slowey, another detective from the same unit operated the recording gear linked to the camera and microphones in the adjoining interview room. Slowey had been explained away by the interviewer as an officer new to the unit and learning the ropes.

  The teenage girl, Kelly Somerby, had clearly made an unaccustomed effort to look her age for the detectives, no doubt goaded by her careworn mother. Her face seemed blanched, as if she habitually caked it in make-up; the navy blue skirt of her school uniform bore the bright sheen of newness and she compulsively fiddled with its hem where it touched her knees; she flicked her pony-tails away when they fell forward over her shoulders as if she were unused to finding them there.

  Ushered into the interview room, pouting with her arms folded over her breasts, Slowey watched her on the larger of the outer room’s two screens as she lowered herself onto the easy chair opposite the interviewer, hunched forward as if ready to flee. Her mother took a seat nearby, just out of view.

  For fifteen minutes, Slowey watched the girl’s identity flicker into and out of focus, one minute a sulking child, the next minute a self-assured young woman, as the interviewer plodded through the preliminaries. Kelly understood the purpose of the interview and was here of her own free will. Kelly understood the need to speak clearly, forsaking the surly grunt that she might have hoped to rely on. Kelly passed the ‘truth and lies’ exercise with aplomb, accepting the falsehood of the statement that she had been driven to the interview in a pink Cadillac by Snoop Dogg, and the truth of the statements that her mother was a woman and the interviewer had blonde hair.

  Invited to tell the interviewer about her relationship with Kevin Braxton, she’d stumbled, either unwilling to cooperate or uncomfortable with speaking at length.

  “Tell her, Kelly!” Her mother had hissed.

  “Please, Anne, it’s alright,” said the interviewer, soothing. “We’re just here to help you, Kelly. Nobody wants to pressure you or make you say anything. It’s your chance to tell us how it really was.”

  “But you’re all treating me like I’m a victim, yeah. Like I’ve got a disease or something,” blurted Kelly, brushing aside the ponytail she’d been plucking at. “Listen, yeah, I’m only here ‘cause of her but I ain’t gonna lie, yeah, ‘cause that ain’t me. Like, I’ll tell you what you wanna know, yeah, ‘cause then you’ll see the real me an’ see I’m a woman yeah with my own body and there ain’t nothin’ to worry about ‘cause I’m the only one can worry about me, yeah.”

  “I don’t know who you are any more, Kelly, I really don’t.”

  “Anne, we discussed this. Now, please, just try to relax. Kelly, that’s great, I absolutely understand. Just take a deep breath and tell me all about your relationship with Kevin.”

  Over the next hour, Kelly recounted her relationship with Kevin Braxton in excruciating and sometimes gleeful detail, the look on her mother’s face off camera evidently as gratifying to her as any frisson she ever got from Braxton. It had started at the school gates before her fifteenth birthday with sweet words – “he’s funny, dead clever, romantic, yeah” – and swagger – “he takes care of me, yeah, he don’t take no shit off no-one.”

  Slowey assumed there was substance abuse but she was coyer about that than she was about their fumbling and coupling. The points needed to prove the likely criminal offences doubtless itemised in her notebook, the interviewer built up a detailed chronology of sexual acts between Kelly and Braxton, including dates, places and the nature of the penetration.

  Slowey noted the details himself, appalled and fascinated. There were few acts they hadn’t tried, in various locations, all of them consensual but still illegal and likely to be prosecuted given their relative ages. It was hard to decide whether it was the physical degradations themselves or the candid glee of their telling that dragged a series of ragged groans from the girl’s mother.

  “I thought it was just the once, Kelly,” she cried. “For God’s sake, why? You’re so pretty, so bright. You were anyway.”

  “Anne…” began the interviewer without enthusiasm.

  “I’m like 14, yeah. And I take precautions, yeah. He’s so like tender and passionate. I ain’t shagging around either. I love him. I’m not a slapper.”

  “Tell me, Kelly,” asked the interviewer, “what prompted you to come forward now and talk to us?”

  “It’s like my mum, yeah, found out I’d been bunking off school, yeah, so she like follows me to Kevin’s dad’s allotment and goes mental, calling him a pervert an’ a rapist an’ screaming an’ bawlin’ an’ that. And, like, now I have to do all this, yeah, an’ I ain’t been allowed out an’ Kevin ain’t texted or nothin’.”

  Slowey took careful notes as Kelly described how the allotment plot could be found, underlined some key phrases with a scrawl of finality, slammed his notebook shut and wondered outside to find some clean air to breathe. He wondered how the law would react if he walled his daughters inside the family home until their thirtieth birthdays.

  “Never underestimate the power of pure, dumb luck. This schmuck Braxton has given us an awful lot of rope to dangle him from.”

  Slowey sank his teeth into the burger, bending forward in the plastic garden chair to allow the steady trickle of grease from the lump of offal, lard and white bread between his hands to miss his trousers and puddle on the concrete.

  “Not hungry?”

  “Not any more,” said Harkness, hiding behind his sunglasses and sippi
ng sugary coffee from a styrofoam cup. They’d met at a greasy spoon café on an industrial estate a few minutes’ drive from the town-centre to exchange their news. Harkness had recounted his interview with Firth’s cell-mate, while Slowey could boast a sudden and unforeseen glut of well evidenced, chargeable offences he could hang around Kevin Braxton’s neck.

  “Why are we meeting here by the way?” asked Slowey, belching in readiness for the next fist-sized mouthful of heart-stopping goodness.

  “Home is no longer where the heart is….”

  “Or where your balls are.”

  “Go on. Say it.”

  “I told you so. Damn, that wasn’t as enjoyable as I expected. Found out and threw you out, did she?”

  “I got sloppy. Must have wanted her to find out. I’ve become the weasel you read about in all those women’s magazines.”

  “Hardly. Weasels are sleek.”

  “Anyway, I’ve got a few weeks. Then she wants me to get out or buy her out of the place.”

  “Big mortgage?”

  “Eye-watering.”

  “Ouch. Want to talk about it?”

  “Christ, no. Anything but. Come on, let’s do some work.”

  “Good man,” said Slowey, wiping his fingers and dabbing his mouth with yet another of Mrs Slowey’s pristine handkerchiefs. He then slid a stapled print-out from his notebook and slid it across the table. “Feast your eyes. Take your time. It doesn’t have Dale Murphy’s name on it but it’s him.”

  Harkness studied the print-out which largely comprised one member’s social ‘wall’ captured from the ‘Facebook’ website. The owner of this section of the wall went by the name ‘DungeonMaster1336’ and every comment or reply they’d left featured their signature image, a thumbnail photograph of a blonde child with vaguely familiar features sucking its thumb. Assuming it was Murphy’s work, was the image intended as an ironic display of innocence or idiocy? An appended profile page told him the owner had first registered three years earlier. A date of birth of 1st January 1901 clearly expressed a desire for anonymity.