The Death of the Elver Man

by Jennie Finch

  ‘What will you have? Don’t worry, Eddie’s paying.’ He waved his hand vaguely behind him. ‘He lost the bet.’

  ‘You were betting on whether we’d come down or not?’ asked Alex scandalized.

  ‘No, of course not. We were betting on whether you would. I knew you’d make it – you have a strong streak of pragmatism running through that anti-social soul of yours. Now, come and join us. I don’t suppose you play dominoes do you?’ he added.

  Alex grinned at the group around the table. ‘Only for money,’ she said.

  The men shuffled round to make some space and Eddie raised his glass to the newcomers.

  ‘Here’s to you both. Good show today Alex – stopped the Maestro in his tracks. Almost as good as Lauren’s little tableau this morning,’ he added with a twinkle in his eye. There was a cheer at this remark and toasts were proposed in the direction of a rather embarrassed Lauren.

  There was a slight air of tension amidst the revelry, a glancing over the shoulder each time the door opened until finally Garry made his entrance, the determinedly cheerful Sally trailing in his wake. Sue had been right in her description of his involvement in the evening. After offering to buy a round he made a point of visiting every table to offer a greeting, a touch on the shoulder, and the occasional joke. They were fairly equally distributed, Alex noted cynically, rather as if he were running on a tape loop. She hoped she would escape the touch on the shoulder and found herself counting the remaining people in groups of three, wondering if it would be too obvious if she got up and changed places. When it came to it she got a slightly guarded nod and what sounded suspiciously like a veiled compliment.

  ‘Good questions today, Alex. I should have known you’d see through to the core of the issues.’ He moved on, towing Sally behind him, but not before she had leaned over, stared at Alex for a moment and added, ‘Ah yes, Alex. Of course …’

  Alex glowered at her back as she drifted off in Garry’s wake. ‘What the bloody hell did all that mean?’ she said.

  Gordon leaned over and said softly, ‘Don’t take it to heart. Most people find it threatening to have a subordinate who is cleverer than they are. Now, I believe you were boasting of your prowess at dominoes?’ He picked up the box, emptied the dominoes out onto the table with a great clatter and Alex’s chance to respond was lost.

  Once Garry had left (taking his familiar with him, as Sue rather waspishly put it) it was quite a good night. Alex had learned to play dominoes in the pubs of south London where elderly men from Jamaica, Antigua and Barbados hunched over battered tables fighting to the death for honour and a free pint. These matches were noisy affairs with shouting, laughter and dominoes slammed down at arms’ length. Alex had watched, then been invited to play a game for a bet and eventually, after two long years and several sprained fingers, found she could hold her own and even win occasionally. The Somerset game was tame in comparison and after a few whitewashes she felt a bit ashamed of taking their money, but when she tried to leave there was a chorus of disapproval from the men.

  ‘No, now then, you’ve got to give us a chance to win it back – you can’t just clear off when you’re winning,’ said Eddie.

  ‘I want to work out how you seem to know where the numbers are,’ mused Paul Malcolm. ‘Is it like counting cards?’

  ‘It’s a “tell” of some kind,’ mused Gordon. ‘You’re reading our body language and drawing out the numbers to suit your hand.’

  Alex snorted in disgust. ‘Set them up you sad losers,’ she said. ‘I’m just a better player than you are.’ She was feeling warm, comfortable and more at ease than she had since leaving London, possibly due to the numerous drinks that kept appearing in front of her.

  Some time much later, when Alex, seven colleagues and three boxes of dominoes were involved in a riotous and physically challenging game, Alex heard herself say to Eddie, ‘Of course I can. I’m actually a qualified life-saver. Why?’

  ‘Oh, well, it’s always good to know. Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ she said, struggling to recall the earlier parts of the conversation, but the pieces had just been dealt and she forgot all about it as she was swept up in the thrill of competition.

  It is the norm in prisons that remand and convicted inmates are housed separately. They have different living areas, separate recreation rooms and take their exercise at different times but there are points where the two worlds collide. Although the remand prisoners had their own dining room the food was cooked and served by men from the main population and Kevin came to dread mealtimes. Bristol was the temporary home to a small but cohesive traveller population, victims of the government crackdown on the burgeoning ‘New Age’ movement that swept up peace activists, tinkers and Romany with a fine lack of discrimination. Relying on income from fringe enterprises, they were united in their hostility to Kevin from the moment they learned what he was charged with. The Elver Man, it seemed, was one of their own, a respected and vital link in their trading network and his loss had hit them hard. Kevin protested his innocence, loud and long, but it made no difference. He tried to survive by slinking around the wing with his head down, ever vigilant and always afraid. His meagre belongings were stolen or broken, his cell was smeared with excrement and he was constantly jostled and tripped in the exercise yard. He was a marked man.

  Chapter Nine

  The next morning Alex sat at the breakfast table feeling sick, dizzy and with several nasty bruises on her hands. She was puzzling over the fragment of conversation about lifesaving when Lauren popped up beside her.

  ‘You right then?’ she asked.

  Alex nodded warily, trying to avoid the sight of Lauren’s full fried breakfast. She picked at her own piece of toast and sipped at her coffee.

  ‘You was a bit blathered last night,’ Lauren went on cheerfully. She sliced through a fried egg, smeared it on to some bread and butter and proceeded to eat it with every sign of enjoyment. Alex suppressed a shudder.

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Reckon you is normally a bit more careful around Eddie. Not like you, volunteering like that. Bit reckless if you ask me.’ She finished the egg, took a slurp of her tea and started on the sausages. Fragments of last night began to float into Alex’s memory.

  ‘What exactly did I volunteer for?’ she asked.

  ‘Why, making up the numbers on the raft race. You bein’ a life-saver and all, you’s perfect for it. Now me, I’m no good. Ain’t big enough for a start, but anyway I can’t swim. Ain’t never been able to no matter how hard I tried. My Mum, she used to take me and my brother to the pool every week until the big lads got too much. She gave up in the end – about the only thing she did give up on mind.’

  Despite her frail physical condition Alex was drawn to the story. She had wondered sometimes what it had been like to grow up like Lauren, in a world full of giants. Cruel giants from some of the hints she’d picked up over the past year. She risked digging a bit deeper.

  ‘What sort of things did they do then, the big lads?’ she asked.

  Lauren finished her sausages and looked over at Alex’s unfinished toast.

  ‘You eating that? Thanks.’ She screwed up her eyes as she munched through the last of the bread. ‘They was just stupid most of the time but it was really bad down the pool. They splashed and come close, making waves and pushing. I kept going under and it was really frightening. They’d hang around outside too, sniggering and following us home. They took to calling me “live-bait” and that was when Mum stopped taking me.’ Lauren blinked rapidly and looked down at her plate before staring up at Alex defiantly.

  ‘Was the only time I was ever scared. I could live with ‘Bridget’ but there’s something real nasty about “live-bait”.’

  Before Alex could ask what “live bait” meant there was a call from the doorway and the team began to trudge off dutifully to the second day of their training.

  When Derek had arrived back at his house that night he was surprised
but pleased to see Iris was still up and moving about the front room, tidying and clearing up. He looked at her approvingly for a moment before she rounded on him, waving the local paper at him.

  ‘What’s this then?’ she demanded, her face a mask of fury. He opened his mouth to protest his ignorance of whatever she was shouting about when he spotted the headline. “Body found on the Levels!” it said in inch-high lettering, “Police warn of gangland style vendetta!” His eyes met Iris’s over the paper and she snatched it from his hands, screwing it up and flinging the crumpled ball on to the floor. As she advanced on him, Derek took a step back, tripping against a small table set beside the couch. He reached out a hand towards her but she slapped it aside. He’d not seen her this angry since – well, he couldn’t properly recall her ever being this angry before.

  ‘Now then,’ he said, ‘don’t you be getting on at me. ‘Taint none of my doing. What’d I want to do something like that for – him being my best mate and all?’

  Iris stopped, hand raised to deliver another slap. She looked him full in the face and said softly, ‘Swear it then. Tell me you had nothing to do with this, that you didn’t kill him.’

  Derek looked his wife straight in the eyes and said, ‘I swear to you, I didn’t have nothing to do with it. Not done it, not ordered it.’

  She turned away, her shoulders beginning to slump again as she sat down in her familiar place by the fire and Derek felt his heart begin to slow from its frantic pounding. Iris leaned back in the armchair and closed her eyes. He could see the marks of tears on her cheeks and he wondered, not for the first time, why it was she seemed so fond of Big Bill.

  ‘I’ll go and change then,’ he said ‘Reckon ’tis time for bed.’

  Without moving she said, ‘You’d better not be lying to me Derek Johns. You remember, if I catch you lying you’ll live your life in fear. You may be a big strong man but you got to sleep sometime.’

  The second day’s training was, if anything, worse than the first. In a theoretical exercise masquerading as ‘an exploration of the exciting new direction in Criminal Justice’, as Garry put it, the entire morning was taken up with mapping the ideas in the SNOP documents on to the SLOP and finally the STOP papers. Basically, Alex and Sue agreed, it was an attempt to take the increasingly redundant ideas of ‘advise, assist and befriend’ and twist them into a pattern that allowed the government to show it was punishing those who transgressed. The day centre was supposed to be one of the lynch pins of this new approach but the whole plan was fatally flawed, relying as it did on the existing staff, all of whom had been trained to help their clients overcome whatever had led them into crime in the first place so they could become useful and fulfilled members of society.

  ‘I’ve not been in the job a year and I feel I’m outdated already,’ grumbled Sue over lunch. ‘If I wanted to punish people I’d have joined the bloody prison service. What’s the point of taking social workers and training us as probation officers if we’re not supposed to help people?’

  Gordon sat down at the table with them and cast a jaundiced eye over the gathering. There was a distinct air of gloom about them all, not all of it due to the excesses of the previous evening in the bar.

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t take it too much to heart,’ he said. ‘Ideas and plans come and go. I’ve seen a lot of changes and a number of these new initiatives in my time and most of them get rubbed down a bit, smoothed off over time. As you say, Sue, the people doing the work are the same and we can’t easily be changed, though I don’t like this “top down” approach. We’ve always started with the client and worked with what we get from them not taken a policy and forced our clients to conform to it. This day centre, though, it could be really positive if we set it up to offer the right sort of thing. We might have the money for some education, a workshop, special groups for prisoners’ families and alcohol abuse and all sorts of things. Don’t go resigning in disgust quite yet.’

  Alex nodded, somewhat cautiously. She trusted Gordon and if he thought they could still do a good job under the new system she was ready to give it a chance. Gordon moved on to motivate a few more glum colleagues and Alex realized she’d missed the chance to ask him why he was always cleaning his car. Sue shrugged, equally at a loss.

  ‘Maybe he’s a bit OCD,’ she suggested. ‘Tell you what, let’s ask Lauren. She’s bound to know.’

  Lauren laughed aloud when they cornered her outside before the final session. ‘Oh, now, he’s just too nice,’ she said. ‘Last week was taking Mick’s dog to the vet. Before that was a family off to see their Dad in prison. Three little ones, one without a proper nappy and two as got real car-sick. I hear he even gave “Cider” Rosie a lift once when she was legless and desperate.’ She paused and added, ‘Course, next week he had to get another car. Don’t think even Gordon’ll do that again in a hurry.’

  The next morning was bright and sunny but Kevin struggled to stop himself from shivering as he sat in the little cell waiting to be called for his bail hearing. It was cool in the tiny, dim space but the constant sounds of footsteps, doors opening and clanging shut and voices from the corridor were making his head ache. He wriggled his shoulders and tugged at the tie his solicitor had supplied at their last meeting. The formal, unfamiliar clothing made him feel insecure, uncomfortable in himself, and Smythe had done little to give him confidence in the proceedings.

  ‘I don’t want you getting your hopes up,’ he’d confided. ‘We’ve got a decent enough young barrister and I’m sure he’ll do his best, but we really don’t have much to convince the court. I’m not even sure why we’re here today ….’ And he’d gone off, muttering and shaking his head.

  Kevin had wanted to jump up and shout at him. ‘We’re here because I didn’t do it! I was poaching, alright, I knows that, but I never killed no-one. And if I’m sent back to Bristol tonight I’m the one goin’ to end up dead. So we is here to save my life ’cos I ain’t gonna last much longer in that place.’

  Of course he didn’t jump up or shout. He just sat quietly with his head bowed, staring at his hands and hearing the whispers of his fellow remand prisoners: ‘Better pray you’m not coming back boy ’cos we got plans for you t’night and ’tis a long weekend you’ve got coming.’

  He’d marched to the prison van, their sniggering and hissing still ringing in his ears. Whatever the outcome today, he wasn’t going back on to the remand wing. He pulled at his tie again and for the first time had an idea of what had made Biff do what he had.

  Back in the office on Friday morning, Alex tried to concentrate, but she jumped every time the phone rang, grabbing at the receiver and even knocking it off the desk, so eager was she for news. As the day wore on she managed to bring the notes on several clients’ files up to date, made a total pig’s ear of a social enquiry report and stared in despair at the self-appraisal form she was supposed to complete for her next supervision meeting with Garry later on that month. Finally she shoved the whole thing into her desk drawer and went in search of Sue and some lunch. As she turned down the corridor into the other wing she heard Sue’s voice coming from her office.

  ‘Darren, get down.’ There was a pause.

  ‘I said get down!’ Hovering outside the door Alex could barely make out a mumbling sound in response.

  ‘If you don’t get off that fucking window-sill now I’ll push you out myself!’

  There was a heavy thud and Alex flung the door open in time to see Darren, a most unprepossessing young man with greasy hair and spots on his spots, tumble to the floor, overturning a chair and knocking several books off the nearby shelf.

  ‘That’s not right,’ he said rubbing his head. ‘Girt assault, that.’ He glared at Alex as if she were somehow responsible.

  Alex nodded to Sue before saying, ‘I know she’s good but even she can’t reach six feet over the desk and up to there.’ She nodded to the window-sill set in the eaves. Sue smiled sweetly at them both.

  ‘Well Darren, I expect you to be here nex
t Friday to help with the workshop. Off you go now.’

  ‘Fancy some lunch?’ suggested Alex when Darren had left the room.

  Sue sighed and nodded. ‘Sounds good. I gather from your rather tense state there’s no news yet?’

  Alex groaned. ‘Nothing. It all takes so long.’

  Sue swept down the stairs ahead of her. ‘Try not to fret so much. After all, there’s nothing you can do.’

  ‘That just makes it worse! Why does everyone keep saying that as if it’s somehow comforting?’

  Sue turned to her friend and shook her head. ‘You have to admit you are a bit of a control-freak sometimes,’ she said in tones of irritating sweet reason.

  ‘I am not a bit of a control freak, I’m a total control freak. I always have been and it’s the only way I manage to get this damn job done at all!’

  At that moment Garry poked his head around the door and frowned at them.

  ‘I can hear you right down the corridor,’ he said. ‘We aim to provide a calm and respectful atmosphere in which we can all work together. Please try to remember that. And Sue, perhaps you could moderate your language especially when talking to clients.’

  He closed the door behind him and Sue and Alex looked at one another and began to giggle.

  ‘God, what a tight-arsed dick he really is,’ snorted Sue.

  ‘Now then, please try to moderate your language,’ said Alex.

  ‘Ah, that’s cheered me up no end,’ said Sue filling the kettle. ‘Go on, your turn to fish for mugs.’

  Alex peered into the sink searching for some glimpse of what lurked beneath the scummy water. She picked up a brush and began to poke around hopefully but nothing recognizable surfaced. With a sigh she put the brush down, screwed her face up in disgust and plunged her arm into the cold, greasy water, rummaging for the plug. The water rushed away with a throaty gurgle and she stepped back, halfway up to her elbow in tea leaves and congealed fat.