by Jennie Finch
Inside the house, standing back from the filthy windows, his eyes followed her every move. There was a tense moment when her car misfired, stuttering in the heavy rain, but finally she bumped and rolled her way out of sight and he felt himself relax. Turning to the hearth he considered lighting a fire, balancing his yearning for comfort against his need for secrecy, when the front door opened and it all became academic.
‘Hello Frank,’ said a familiar voice. ‘Fancy seeing you back here.’
He turned to face his old neighbour, the person he least wanted to see in the whole world.
‘Derek, now look, let’s just sit down and talk about things, right?’
Derek Johns shook his head as he reached behind him. ‘I don’t think there’s much to talk about d’you? You’re a grass, Frank Mallory. You got out by selling my lads to the police and now you think you can come back here and pick up where you left off, just like that. Not going to happen, boy. My youngest, he hung himself. You know ‘bout that? All on his own, locked up at night in the cells, they didn’t keep no eye on him like they’re meant to. By the time they found him he was gone. My Iris, she had to go identify him, look at him with his face all bruised and his eyes near popping out of his head. Do you know about that then Frankie-boy?’
Frank backed away, his hands raised as if pleading. Derek pulled a knife from his pocket and moved towards him, slow, smooth steps like a cat stalking its prey.
‘So now your boy’ll know what it’s like. He’s in Bristol ain’t he? Nasty lock-up, Bristol. Reckon they might take to a little lad like Kevin – know what I mean?’
Derek aimed a vicious blow, the knife ripping through Frank Mallory’s raised hand and into his soft stomach. Frank gasped, jerking on the knife as Derek twisted and pulled upwards, gutting him like a fish. Frank collapsed making low, keening sounds as his chest and throat filled with blood. Derek turned away and stared out of the window until the sounds stopped. Walking over to the hearth he aimed a final kick to the head.
‘Two down, three to go,’ muttered Derek as he rummaged through Frank’s pockets. Then he cleaned up the mess in the fireplace.
Alex was spared having to face Lauren the next morning. Driving out to the Mallorys’ place she mused on her wasted trip the night before, but the sight of Ada Mallory dressed for visiting the prison shook her out of her sombre mood. Like a galleon in full sail, she swept down the muddy path resplendent in vivid pink polyester. The whole outfit, complete with matching gloves and hat, was only marred by her sensible brown boots. Alex opened the passenger door and helped to prod and tuck her into the front seat. Closing the door carefully she reflected the ensemble was likely to generate enough static electricity to constitute a fire hazard.
‘Have you got the visiting order?’ she asked, as she squeezed into the space left behind the wheel.
Mrs Mallory opened her pink vinyl handbag and rummaged through it. There was a significant delay as she emptied most of the contents onto her lap before flourishing the brown envelope in triumph.
Alex looked carefully at the array of objects as they were packed back into the bag.
‘Um, I don’t think you can take some of those in with you,’ she said.
Mrs Mallory stopped and stared at her, the brim of her hat quivering with indignation. ‘What you mean then? ’Tis nothing bad I got. Just a few things I reckon Kev might need. Anyway, no gennlemun would go looking through a lady’s handbag.’
Privately Alex agreed, but the guards were not likely to be gentlemen, though they would need to be very brave to delve into Mrs Mallory’s handbag.
‘We want to see Kevin don’t we? So maybe we should just – be very sensible until we know how things work. He’s in a proper prison now, on remand. It’s not like the Young Offenders places he was in last time. So maybe, well, I’d leave the penknife in the car. And the lighters.’
Mrs Mallory glared at her but removed the offending items and shoved them into the door pocket.
‘Anything else?’ she asked.
‘Well, he’s not allowed to take a packet of cigarettes, just smoke one with us ….’
Mrs Mallory pulled out more items and added them to the door.
‘So I suppose he can’t have no sweets neither?’
‘They might be okay – we’ll ask as we go in.’ Alex glanced at her passenger, who was turning an angry shade of red, and hurried on. ‘And maybe you should leave the scissors behind.’
‘Now you’m just being daft! They’s nail scissors, for his toes. Kevin suffers terrible with his toes.’
This was too much detail for Alex, who turned her full attention to the bumpy road. There was a moment’s silence before Ada Mallory burst out, ‘And why’re we goin’ this way anyway? ’Tis miles out of the way. You just take this left here, see, and follow Sedgemoor for a bit ‘til you get to the proper road.’
Alex turned left as instructed and found herself bumping along beside the huge canal cut over the years to help reclaim the rich peat lands of the Levels. The rest of the journey passed in silence as Ada Mallory brooded on her son’s plight and Alex, mindful of Lauren’s warnings, mused on hers.
There is a particular, peculiar smell to a prison which is quite unlike anywhere else. The first big hit is cheap, strong carbolic soap, used day after day on walls and floors until it seeps into every pore of the building’s fabric. Under this is the counterpoint of the transient beings, the sad and lonely men housed within this pungent environment. The smell of feet, sweat and a whiff of stale tobacco smoke hangs in the air, gradually gaining strength as the visitor moves further into the institution. Alex hated visiting prisons but then she doubted many people enjoyed it very much. She parked in the official visitor spaces below the walls and had her warrant card out before she left the car. Within seconds an attendant pounced, ready to send them away to find a place in nearby streets or more distant car parks. His face fell when he saw her official status.
‘She’s with me,’ said Alex firmly, as she took Ada Mallory’s arm and hustled her away. The attendant hesitated but forgot all about them as another car pulled in to try its luck. Alex closed her ears to the raised voices behind her and guided her charge towards the gatehouse.
‘Remember, they may take some things from your bag but you get them back when we leave. Don’t make a fuss or they can refuse to let you in. You don’t want to disappoint Kevin, do you?’ She glanced at Ada whose face was wearing what she had come to think of as her ‘mutinous’ look.
‘Why do they all have to be so nasty?’ she demanded. ‘Having a lad in prison’s bad enough. Don’t cost nothing to be polite, show a bit of respect. ’Tis not necessary, all this pushing people about.’
There wasn’t enough time left in the day to try to explain the psychology of the prison service to Ada Mallory and anyway, sometimes Alex suspected pushing people about was one of the few perks of the job for some officers.
Alex presented her card and emptied her pockets, calmly waiting with her arms out as a female officer patted her down. She nodded as the guard warned her against passing anything to the prisoners but was allowed to take the packet of cigarettes and a small disposable lighter after being reminded she could only give Kevin one at a time, after the last one had been smoked right down to the butt. She stepped through the metal detector and watched anxiously as Ada plonked her bag on the counter. She had hoped her example would be reassuring but from the look on her face this was probably wishful thinking. Despite Alex’s warnings there were still several packets of cigarettes in the pink handbag as well as a few boxes of matches. These went into a metal drawer along with the nail scissors, a nail file (what had she been thinking, Alex asked herself), a girlie magazine, two pairs of rather moth-eaten socks and the sweets. The guard shook his head at the haul as he handed it to his assistant. It was a struggle to get the drawer in the rack and closed, Alex noted with some amusement. The female attendant stepped forward and began patting at her coat rather cautiously. Ada drew herself up to her fu
ll height and stood rigid as the check was completed.
‘Could you, er, remove your hat?’ the attendant asked. She received the full force of Mrs Mallory’s fury directed through a single glare. Alex leaned round so she could be seen and made encouraging gestures, nodding hopefully. With a huge sigh Ada reached up and withdrew a long, lethal hatpin, a good six inches in length. The hat came off and was laid on the counter, the pin by its side as the guards looked at it in horror for a moment.
‘You’d better keep that safe too. Takes ages to fix it does and I’m wanting to see my boy now.’ With that she stepped through the metal detector and looked pointedly at the door barring her way. Alex caught the eye of the female officer as she turned to unlock the entrance and both of them struggled not to smile. As she set off down the corridor to the visitors’ room she heard, ‘Bloody hell – never seen that before …’ as the Gatehouse officers contemplated how close they had come to letting the pin, a truly deadly object in a prison, get past.
The visitors’ room was almost as unwelcoming as the Gatehouse. Despite attempts to make it seem less like part of the prison there was no disguising the blank walls, the furniture fixed to the floor or the all-pervading smell. Metal doors admitted visitors at one end and a trickle of prisoners at the other. The windows were covered with some sort of heavy plastic, designed to be shatterproof, and it had faded over the years so the little light that made it over the encircling wall was filtered and polluted to a sickly yellow. The refreshment bar offered grey tea or equally grey coffee dispensed by an unsmiling volunteer in thin, squashy plastic beakers. It did little to lighten the mood. Every time the door opened the sounds of keys and chains echoed around the room, rendering normal conversation impossible. Alex sat next to Ada, waiting patiently for Kevin’s arrival whilst around them families settled to their meetings with questions, pleading, a few angry words, more questions until the sounds became one huge, desperate babble. Alex glanced at Ada and realized she was on the verge of tears. Hurriedly breaking in to the pack of emergency tissues she always carried in her pocket, she thrust several into the crying woman’s hand and was startled when Ada squeezed her hand in thanks. Then the door opened and Kevin sloped in, head down.
Ada rose to her feet and moved to embrace her wayward son but Kevin pulled away, dropping into a chair opposite and slumping over the table.
‘Oh, oh Kev…’ she began, tears flowing. Kevin turned his head away and stared at Alex.
‘Got a fag?’
She passed him a cigarette from the packet and lit it for him, leaning back slightly to avoid the cloud of smoke. Kevin puffed away for a moment, then pinched out the glowing end and tucked the butt behind his ear where it was hidden by his hair. He glanced at Alex hopefully and she handed him another, lit it and pointedly pulled the packet back to her side of the table.
‘Don’t make a fuss now,’ he muttered to his mother. ‘This ain’t like Young Offenders. There’s real hard’ns in here. Can’t have no woman crying over us like I’m a kid.’
Alex glanced around, casually thinking he wasn’t much more than a kid, especially compared to most of the men sitting at the other tables. Some, like Kevin, wore their own clothes but most were dressed in the prison uniform of blue shirts, dark trousers and grey jumpers. Her eye was caught by one young man resplendent in yellow and blue harlequin trousers and she stared for a moment before Kevin’s voice said, ‘Escaper, he is. Won’t get far in them now will he?’
She turned back to the young man in front of her.
‘This isn’t an official probation visit Kevin, so we can talk properly next time. Still, if there’s anything you need let me know and I’ll do what I can to get it sent.’
Kevin took a final puff of his cigarette and placed the filter in the ashtray.
‘Could use some more clothes. These is damp in the morning from washing ’um. Any chance of some cash for the commissary?’ he asked his mother. She began to rummage in her bag before realizing her purse was back at the gatehouse. Alex laid a hand on her shoulder in an attempt to reassure her.
‘We’ll sort that out,’ she said. ‘Now, you’ve got a solicitor haven’t you?’
Kevin shook his head, ‘Not yet I’ve not. I’m makin’ do with the duty muppet. You was going to sort that out Mum!’
Ada shook her head, her mouth working, though she seemed unable to say anything. Alex pushed her chair back from the table and stood up.
‘I’ll go out now,’ she said. ‘You can have a chat in private’. As she walked to the back of the room, she decided that this was probably the least private place in the whole City of Bristol.
On the way home, Ada was uncharacteristically silent. After a few attempts at conversation Alex abandoned all pretence of sociability and they drove through the gloom of the overcast afternoon, both occupied with their own thoughts. Alex was concerned about Kevin. He had seemed so young, almost fragile seen next to so many muscular older men. She had long been of the opinion that the much celebrated ‘short sharp shock’ programme did nothing except take weedy, wheezy lads and turn them into strong, fit hooligans who could fight back and run away. Her encounter with the inmates of Bristol Prison had done nothing to change her mind. The silence was finally broken as they turned off the main road and began to bump along the track towards the Mallory place.
‘I don’t reckon he’s safe in that place,’ said Ada fiercely.
Alex’s job was to uphold the orders of the court but privately she agreed with her. She didn’t think Kevin was safe there either. Despite his tough talk he had looked lonely and scared.
‘You try an’ get him moved.’
Alex almost swerved into the ditch running next to the track.
‘I can’t do that. It’s down to the court and the police. They just allocate them after the hearing.’
‘I don’t care. He’s not safe there. I’ll not rest.’
Alex waited for a moment before saying, ‘Maybe if you get him a solicitor …’
Ada rounded on her, ‘I’m trying! Think I don’t know he needs one? But how do I choose one, eh? And how can I pay for one. Real solicitors, they cost a sight more than legal aid, and Smythe – he’s got my boy’s papers anyway. So what’m I supposed to do?’
Her anger swirled around the car, heavy and rank like the stale tobacco smoke seeping out of Alex’s clothes.
‘Anyway, I went looking last week but I’m not sure some of them as I talked to was solicitors. A couple, they looked so young I think they was just grammar school boys, as made up a certificate for their walls.’ Ada nodded her head as she stared out of the windscreen leaving Alex at a loss for words. Just when she began to feel some empathy with the Mallorys she ran up hard against their own special view of the world …
It was just gone four o’clock when she dropped Ada Mallory at her house and set off to find the road back to town. She felt she really ought to go into the office, just in case anything had come up. Be honest, she told herself, she should go in and see Lauren. Despite the stresses of the day she was still squirming at the memory of her behaviour the night before. She had been rude, arrogant and childish and the sooner she put it right the better she would feel. At the turning onto the town road she hesitated – town or home, she wondered. She could no longer stand the smell of herself, the odour of the prison that rose from her clothes and hair. Feeling guilty, but also slightly relieved, she turned right and headed for the calm of her clean, tidy home.
The next morning there was a note on her desk from Garry demanding her immediate attendance. It was dated the day before and she read it with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. She flipped through her diary and realized she’d not entered the Bristol visit – she’d not been sure whether it was ‘official’ and she doubted whether driving prisoner’s relatives around the country counted as part of her duties. She hesitated before picking up the phone. Lauren would know, she thought, only Lauren was not in the office – she had rung in the day before and taken a few days of
f, Pauline informed her rather briskly. Alex replaced the phone, picked up the note and headed upstairs feeling utterly alone.
Garry was reading a file and waved her to a chair without looking up. She sat for a few minutes as he continued to ignore her, the silence broken by the rustling of turned pages and the frantic buzzing of a fly trapped behind the half-drawn blinds. The windows were tightly closed against the warm spring air and the room was stuffy. Garry was wearing a particularly strong aftershave lotion and the pungent smell began to make her feel quite dizzy. Finally he laid the report down on his desk and looked at her.
‘So, you’ve not made contact with Mr Hinton yet?’
She felt a rush of relief – this wasn’t about her absence yesterday after all.
‘I went out the same evening,’ she said, ‘but there was no-one home. I thought I might try again today.’ She heard her ingratiating tones and despised herself for this show of weakness. Garry, on the other hand, looked rather pleased. He nodded approvingly and tapped the file in front of him.
‘We’ve got a few more details come through,’ he said, and then lowered his voice forcing her to lean forwards. The aftershave became almost overwhelming as he continued.
‘Mr Hinton is a special case. The police will be looking after him for a while, whilst he’s with us. You should not mention him to anyone. Do you understand?’
Her confusion must have shown on her face and Garry gave a deep sigh sending a wave of peppermint mouthwash in her direction.
‘He is a special case, an early release for – co-operation shall we say. He’ll only be in the area for a short while and then he’ll move on somewhere where he’s not going to be recognized. Now do you understand?’