by David Wilson
“There is tolerance here, yes,” said Kate. “For example, homosexual partners are quite common, even though the government defines prison as a ‘public place’ and homosexuality is illegal in public places.”
“And you’d know if Lomas had a partner wouldn’t you? Despite his taste for female students?”
“He refused to name names, but I’m sure he had several.”
Including you? Knight considered. Was she withholding? He would have to draw it out of her.
Just as they were about to reach D wing, his phone rang.
“Ok,” he spoke. “Not far from here? On my way.”
He turned to Kate.
“Bloke found unconscious by the river, in the woods. They’ve revived him. Said his name was Danny, something about The White Hart. He’s been badly beaten, wandering around for a day or two. He might not make it. Who would do that around here? Know any likely flashpoints?”
“I’ll ask some questions,” said Kate.
She started breathing heavily, her head spinning. He’d do it clean surely, she thought, he wouldn’t leave someone hanging on the precipice like that, a living death. It was a release, an escape.
Chapter Eleven
It was night. He’d drawn the curtains. He sat on his bed with his knees clasped to his chest. He began to rock, the springs of the bed squeaking, a slow gentle rhythm which reminded him of rowing a boat on a placid lake with the sun setting in the distance, sailing away, forever in motion towards a promise of destination. The room was small, a box room if you were an estate agent; it felt even smaller in the dark. Woodlice curl themselves into a ball when threatened, and worms, if you cut them in two, will spasm into a tight knot of flesh. He was weeping silently.
When the sun goes down, there’s no escape. Doors are closed and locked and you’re inside with the ghosts and the screamers, the contorted faces, the eyes bursting their liquid, the sudden automatic jerking, and here we go down, too easily, far below the surface of things. He didn’t know if death would free him or whether death was like this only ten times worse, maybe a hundred times. Psychotherapy. They never gave him painkillers over the years of treatment, no offer of anaesthetic as they carved away, slicing through the soft parts of his brain, teasing at the rotten flesh, tying up loose ends, remaking a cat’s cradle of jumbled, useless wiring.
There was a fist at the door, a double beat of soft flesh, not the hard rap of knuckles.
“Clarkey.”
A whisper, the guy’s lips were right up to the crack where the door met the frame. He sounded out of breath as if he’d run a mile.
The light under the door shimmied. He imagined beetles or cockroaches, their hard carapaces shining, climbing over one another. He kept still, played dead.
“Clarkey.”
A key slipped into the lock and the door opened and closed. Suddenly the light was on. The man stood and stared, relocked the door.
“Is everything all right Ian?”
Ian Clark slipped from the bed and sat on the chair in front of the window. He wiped his face with his sleeve.
“Sure boss, what’s up?”
He noticed the prisoner’s red-rimmed eyes.
“You like music? It’s good therapy.”
“Right,” said Ian.
The room was carpeted, an ugly floral pattern like the ones found in pubs. The curtains were blue and white striped, matching the blue of the bedspread. On the wall above the bed was a small framed watercolour of a landscape with a lake. Next to it hung three highly polished horse brasses. There was a television on a narrow chest of draws opposite the bed, an old Sony. A toilet and shower cubicle occupied one corner.
“Looking after you are they Ian?”
“Could be worse.”
“This therapy doing your head in?”
“Nah, it’s all light-bulb moments, one big Christmas tree.”
“What you in for, Clarkey?”
“Come on boss, you know.”
“I’m doing the rounds mate, I want more detail, I’m looking for the bigger picture.”
“Got any magazines or books?”
“Books are banned.”
“Geddaway. Since when?”
“New law.”
“Jeez.”
“It’s true.”
“Fucking mental.”
“World’s gone mad.”
“Too right.”
“Tell me your story Clarkey. You were given the moniker ‘The Dark Angel’, am I right?”
“Back when.”
“So you’re cured?”
“Well…”
“You’re a better man, you’ve been rewired? You’re not going to chop any more heads off?”
“I never chopped anyone’s head off.”
“So what did you do?”
“It’s all on the record man, court reports, evidence files, psych documents, assessments, referrals, it’s all over the internet if you want to get digging, piles of the stuff, you can’t get rid of it, how am I supposed to forget about all that shit?”
“You’re not.”
“You’re messing with my head, boss. Why are you doing this?”
“I have a craving for truth.”
He moved over to the bed and lifted up one of the horse brasses, holding it to the light. “You can see your face in that shine.”
Eventually he said to Clark, “Go on.”
Clark looked down at his hands, his fingernails were bitten to the quick. He had scrawled several reminders on the back of his hand with a biro but he couldn’t read his own writing.
“I thought I was on a mission from the Lord to rid the world of prostitutes,” said Clark.
“How many?”
“Seven.”
“Nice.”
“After each one I wrote to the newspapers informing them that I had taken care of another ‘undesirable’.”
A nod. The man considered, imagined, stories going this way and that, testimonies revised and rewritten, endlessly. Where was the source, the drop in the ocean that made these huge crashing waves?
“That’s after you drugged them, Clarkey. Then I think you raped them, smeared them with your body fluids, tied them up, hung them from a hook, watching as that flesh bulged out from the ropes so tight they couldn’t breathe, that thick, fat, flesh Clark, anatomy spilling out, things pushed and poked in places where they shouldn’t be, twisted and bent and helpless, the fear in their eyes like electricity, giving you a hard on.” He turned his back, faced the door and snapped on a pair of rubber gloves.
“I never hurt them.”
The chokehold caught Clark by surprise and he let out a half scream that he swallowed just as quickly. His breath smelled of sulphur. The pressure on his throat made his eyes stand out like they were about to pop free. He was lifted from the chair and thrust face down onto the floor. With a foot on the back of his neck, both hands were secured with a plastic cable tie.
“No one escaped, someone’s broken in,” moaned Clark. “Bobby Lomas is among us, the Lord has sent his messengers, they’ve come to kill us all.”
He was flipped onto his back, and industrial tape was wound round his head sealing his mouth and nose, leaving his eyes as witnesses. The kick to the groin doubled him up, and then the feet were flying with the frenzy of a street brawl. Clark heard the man singing, You Turn Me On, repeated, then Alive and Kicking, over and over. Simple Minds, Clark hated the song, always had. The kicking stopped, the tune continued as a hum, and he saw a flash of silver. It was a Halcyon H diver’s knife, just like the one he’d used all those years ago on his victims; titanium 2.5-inch blade, it even had a stainless steel strike on the handle to bang on an underwater air tank or smash skulls. His pupils glazed over, his last lungful of air was draining the colour from his eyes, the tiny keyholes to his soul.
The blade moved swiftly, piercing each eyeball easily, their contents exploding as the tip of the knife juddered against the bone at the back of each eye socket. The man left a fil
thy mess but at least there’d be none of his own DNA. The job was a little noisier than he’d have liked, but the walls were thick. He wiped the blade on Clark’s shirt and washed it spotlessly clean in the sink by the toilet. He turned out the lights and quietly left the cell.
Chapter Twelve
DI Knight took the corner a little too fast in his Alfa Romeo. The car was prone to understeer but he corrected it easily. The ’86 Spider had great balance and feel and was his only indulgence. It was blood red, which he was embarrassed about, but its sleek craftsmanship and promise of untroubled, joyful escape helped take his mind off his work. He’d slept badly. The homeless guy, Danny, had been carted off to intensive care. Hypothermia amongst other things; he’d not seen so many injuries on someone still breathing, black and blue, his face half hanging off. He was hardened to GBH but the sight of a defenceless geezer smashed to pieces like that knotted him up. If it became a murder case, the endless paperwork he’d have to shuffle sucked. Enquiries established that the guy was an ex-con from Greenbank, begging his way back into civilian life. Deaf ears there mate, welcome to the “fuck-you” world; he would have been better treated in prison. What’s the connection with Lomas’ escape, he thought, if any? Maybe just a random act of hate, there’s a lot of it about.
He drove into the car park of the prison, cruised around for an empty space. He noticed a couple of motorbikes, side by side, occupying a whole space, both Honda Fireblades with identical custom paintjobs, showroom clean, sparkling like tarts’ tiaras. Knight parked and went over to give the bikes some eyeball. He’d owned a Ducati Monster 996 when he was younger; loved its gut-punching power, the thrill of unfettered speed. Too dangerous though, the temptation to whack it well past the ton was too great, so he sold it. He missed the company of bikers, they were amusing, obsessive, if slightly off the wall.
He went through the prison’s security, the gatekeeper looking particularly bleary-eyed this morning. Inside the main building, he hunted around for a coffee machine. Now that Kate had mentioned it, he noticed the eerie quiet, introspective, like a crematorium. Today he sensed an extra chill, wondered if it was just his nerves or if there was some malevolence in the air. He was early, so he texted Kate saying he was by the coffee machine on the M1 corridor and did she take sugar. A prison guard walked past carrying a black body bag over his shoulder. It couldn’t be. A rolled up carpet in a plastic bag more like, not heavy enough. A dead body had a surprising weight, bloody awkward to shift with arms and legs everywhere. He thought back to Danny, the paramedics had lifted him onto the stretcher, heart still beating when they got him into the ambulance.
The coffee was scalding. Another guard passed, he had a pencil behind his ear, blunt he hoped. He nodded at Knight. He saw Kate come round the corner of the corridor and walk towards him. She was wearing a denim skirt with a white shirt and Dr Marten boots, he tried not to notice her figure.
As she came up to him, the prison’s alarm went off, shattering the silence, and suddenly prison officers appeared from every direction, speaking anxiously into radios. It was mayhem.
“Fuck,” said Knight involuntarily, spilling his coffee. Then, “So much for this place being quiet.”
“What’s up?” Kate asked of the first officer she recognized.
He shrugged, and suggested “false alarm?” but it was clear he didn’t have a clue what was happening. In prison-speak he was a “mushroom” – fed shit, and kept in the dark. Kate and Knight sought refuge in the D wing staff office, where there was just as much confusion as there was on the M1. No one seemed to know why the alarm had been sounded. A “trusted prisoner” with a red band around his arm indicating his status, popped his head around the door, and asked if anyone wanted a cup of tea. Kate nodded yes, but Knight refused; this wasn’t a social visit to a school, but an investigation into an escape of a dangerous prisoner; this wasn’t the time to drink tea.
The phone rang. Kate took the call. It was Munro: “You’d better get up to my office right away.”
They didn’t speak until they reached Munro’s office. As they pushed open his door, Munro was whispering on the phone, and from the brief exchange Kate could tell he was talking to someone at headquarters. He motioned for them to sit, and Kate tried to read his body language: she sensed he was a man concentrating most of his energies on keeping himself together, all sharp edges and angles. He replaced the phone on the receiver. He turned and looked out of the window.
“Body found in B wing, cell thirteen, unlucky for some clearly,” said Munro. He took a deep breath. There are men who crack instantaneously, like stepping on an IED, thought Kate, for others it’s a slow attrition until the hollowed-out core caves in.
“It appears to be suicide, McCabe hanged himself.” He continued.
Kate went white. “That just doesn’t happen around here,” she said.
“Well it does now,” said Munro gathering himself. “Sheet wound round his neck, attached to the bed frame, long, slow death. Christ.”
“Suicide is painless,” said Knight, “I never understood what that meant. MASH wasn’t it?”
Kate turned to him, her contempt dissolving a little when she decided he was trying to alleviate the shock of the situation through distraction.
“Any signs of stress, Kate, in your dealings with McCabe?” asked Munro. “He was found with cuts all over his arms and chest. Did you know he was self-harming?”
“I think he was close to Lomas,” she replied.
“He’s popular around here isn’t he,” said Munro, nodding in her direction.
Knight studied her closely. There was a tear in her eye.
“Poor fucker,” said Munro. “We’ll have to review how to prevent this sort of thing, God knows how. This place is wide open, we trust them not to kill themselves.”
Knight’s phone rang. He left the room for a moment, returning soon after.
“Another stiff,” he said, ignoring Kate’s glare. “The wino we found last night, Danny’s his name, beaten to a pulp, passed away this morning.”
“A wino? Not the bloke outside the pub? Christ that’s a bit close for comfort,” said Munro.
“That’s the guy. Said his patch was The White Hart, now it’s a murder inquiry. Two stiffs in as many days. It’s like the Bronx around here.”
“DI, show some respect, please,” said Kate.
“Apologies,” said Knight. He needed to calm down. “Now it transpires that Danny is an ex-resident of this institution, so we’ll get forensics to do their thing and come up with sweet fuck all no doubt, but the motions will be gone through with fine attention to detail. Prepare to be swabbed and questions asked you two.”
Munro’s phone rang. He picked it up. A pause, and then he said, “Right.” After a longer pause, he said, “Ok.” He put the phone down. This time it was his turn to go white.
“Make that three,” he said. There was a gleam in his eye. “Another murder; Ian Clark’s been found in his cell, dead, stabbed in both eyes. God-awful mess.”
A page had been turned, a whole new narrative was beginning, and nothing would ever be the same again.
Chapter Thirteen
She scrolled through Facebook on her phone, browsed Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat and then skimmed her college app to see if she had any lectures tomorrow. There was so much more, and so much less. She was depressed by how trivial things were, empty gestures and noise and everyone talking over each other. She could measure out her life with message alerts. The internet was her nightmare, a place where she was constantly harassed; adverts like a slap in the face, picked on and mugged with every click. She wasn’t a person she was a mark, a potential victim, to be conned out of her money, her privacy, intimate things stolen by digital liars, thieves, cheats and pickpockets. She felt the cold hand of loneliness tugging her down the familiar dark fault line, the endless waking night. Life was so scary. “Remind me to kill myself before I reach twenty,” a school friend had said that to her once; she had laughed. Maybe i
t’s true; the condemned person’s only rational response.
She heard Jim Morrison’s frantic voice, a Doors song was coming from the iPod behind the bar, it was Hello, I Love You, the Adam Freeland mix, Jim screaming, “Hello,” into the void; “I love you,” to anyone who would listen, that blissful derangement, and on the dance floor with an “E” coursing through her veins, sound and motion, rhythm and heartbeat, the world becoming one, it was pure ecstasy. She shivered, her foot started tapping; she wanted to float away on cascading, rippling, sweet harmony.
“Like it?” it was the barman, a blonde guy wearing a Joy Division Unknown Pleasures T-shirt, a resting actor or student, she’d never met him. He was polishing a glass, nonchalantly. He eyed her askance, in the way men do nowadays when they see a young woman, alone. He explained the architecture of the Doors track mix, its breakbeat base, the DJ’s vision and she zoned out, willing him to stop.
“Chance of a bowl of chips?” she asked. “Ketchup?”
“Of course,” he said.
She ordered another pint of Kronenbourg and unfolded the knife and fork wrapped in a blue paper napkin that the barman had placed in front of her. She lifted the knife, felt its weight, drew the serrated blade across her finger. If she slammed the tip of the blade into her hand, pinning it to the wooden table, would she feel heroic like Mathieu in Sartre’s Age of Reason? She wanted to do it, but knew it would be painful, and the point of the knife was blunt. She was a “no” person she decided, dissenting, rebellious, argumentative, not one of those mindless nodding dogs that perpetuate the evils of the world. She had choices.
The chips were too hot but they were ok.
One of the three men in the pub, middle-aged, grey beard, brown leather jacket, rose from his chair and walked unsteadily to her table.
“Share a chip?” he asked.
“No,” she said.
He looked crestfallen; he took a sip from his pint, peered into the glass, eddied the brown liquid.