The Rules of Restraint

by David Wilson

“Please,” said Kate. “This is human being you’re talking about.”

  “How could someone do that?” said Munro.

  “Shove a pencil in the eyeball so it stays stuck in the eye, pull it out so the eye bulges like one of those weird oriental goldfishes, smack the temple of the victim’s head hard, maybe quite a few times, like over and over, and the eye will eventually fall out connected to tendons and the optic nerve, you snip them off, you have a glistening peephole in the palm of your hand,” said Knight.

  “Hells bells, Knight, you’re a sick man,” said Munro.

  “You asked,” he said.

  “And Mazurski was alive while this was happening to him?” asked Kate.

  “It would appear so, a slow death through suffocation. There were lesions around his anus, traces of graphite where a pencil had been used to push his eyeballs deep into the rectal passage. Considerable force was used, the anal canal was torn, the buttocks received numerous puncture wounds. Other differences between the murders: Clark was fully clothed, no sexual assault, Mazurski was naked, clearly he was interfered with. Weapon used on Clark was a knife, Mazurski gets the sharp end of a pencil for his sins. No evidence of more than one assailant in the Clark murder, we cannot assume the same with Mazurski from a logistics point of view. We believe someone would have had to hold him down while the sexual assault was taking place. Mazurski was attacked unawares, post-therapy treatment while walking down a public corridor now that was risky, out in the open, there could have been witnesses. As it is there are no witnesses. Significant that no one has come forward? Collusion, closed ranks? Or expert planning. Clark was visited in his cell, allowing the murder to occur behind closed doors. A key was used to gain entry, stolen? A copy made in metalwork class? A prison officer with access to cell keys? Kate what do you think?”

  “There’s a progression,” she said. “From sole trader assault to possibly group or at least a partner. The rage exhibited in the violence of Clark’s attack has turned into a more exhibitionist performance in Mazurski’s case, with an overtly perverse sexual element and a heavily ironic statement message with the ‘Handle with Care’ duct tape. His eyes were not just destroyed, they were removed and hidden somewhere ‘where the sun don’t shine’, like a game of hide and seek. It’s provocative, goading; as you say risks are being taken, someone, or more than one person, is having a good time. The pencil as assault weapon, it’s not MOD equipment is it. And the pencil could have come from anywhere, internally or externally whereas the knife suggests an external source, a non-prisoner.”

  “And Wooldridge? Linked?” said Munro.

  “That was a pro job,” said Knight. “No fuss, no mess, delivered unto his maker if not entirely intact, missing his mouth organ, but a neat enough package. We have yet to establish any link with our Greenbank victims. We’ll know more pretty soon when we have a word with his housekeeper, whose damn name I’ve forgotten.”

  “Penny,” said Kate.

  *

  Behind closed doors… he couldn’t get the song out of his head, the Dolly Parton version, with that plinky-plonky piano, …bringing out the tiger in me, she’s growling, all tits and come hither, the chorus nagging incessantly, driving him a little bit mad. He’d been left out in the cold, no one calling on his expertise or experience, with that wet dream of a psychotherapist, Kate Crowther, Munro’s pet, in on all the meetings, even though he thought her job was bollocks. He could hear most of what was going on through the closed door if he kept absolutely still and held his breath. They were discussing the murders. There was a pattern emerging and a story unfolding, they were piecing it all together but they had a long way to go. Wooldridge’s murder rattled them, but hardly a surprise, the reaper was getting closer, giving them sleepless nights, not just prisoners afraid of the blade, but all the staff now looking over their shoulder, tiptoeing around corners, fearing the shift in the shadows.

  He heard someone down the corridor approaching Munro’s office. He stood away from the door, adjusted himself, looked at his watch as if time was of the essence.

  “Mr John Johnsson, you been sent to see the headmaster? Used to happen to me all the time at school, waiting outside his office, crapping my pants.” It was Brock.

  “There’s a meeting in there,” said Johnsson. “Waiting my turn.” Johnsson watched Brock’s eyes, convinced he could see in them a sneer, a twitch of a smile, a pinprick of a snigger because Johnsson wasn’t part of the prison’s inner circle. There was an arrogance about Brock that had Johnsson considering how to break his nose.

  “As you were,” said Johnsson. “Move along.” Brock stood still, sizing him up as if Johnsson had just jumped the queue at the chip shop or cut him up in traffic. Johnsson began to get anxious. Suddenly Brock leant forward and slid his fingers down the lapels of Johnsson’s jacket.

  “Fluff there mate, got to look smart for the boss.”

  “Get your hands off me,” said Johnsson, stepping backwards. As he did so Brock moved with him and whispered in his ear making him redden and, unnoticed, he slipped something into Johnsson’s jacket pocket.

  Brock straightened, “Bit of a rumpus around here Deputy Gov, we’ve got to catch the bad guys, problem is the prison’s chock full of them, how do you sort the bad guys from the bad guys?”

  “Know your place, Brock,” said Johnsson waving a finger at him, “and stop fucking around or you’ll be next.”

  “Righto, boss, point taken,” said Brock, and he walked away.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  He imagined her strung out, eviscerated, her soul wrung dry - faking it. Welcome to the machine and its ugly conglomeration of horror and dread, each piece of you minutely excised, examined and discarded. He’d laid her on the carpet, her arms outstretched. She looked beautiful that way, an Egon Schiele painting, all angles and soft distortion. He had the knife in his hand and several more effective means of disablement hidden away should the need arise. She was safe here, the curtains closed, no chance of a peeping Tom, just him and her sharing their body warmth, the overwhelming heat of their desolation.

  Out there they’ll trample you underfoot in the blind rush, flay you with expectation, make you go glassy-eyed like a porn star, all that hope and promise and nurture and you end up with zero hours, a timekeeper on your wrist like a manacle, a two-minute toilet break with permission. Did they tell you that when you were growing up? Did they? They told you to always do your best, to be kind to those less fortunate than yourself, that the enchanted garden was as big as your imagination but you found the fruit was just out of reach. Who is the jailer? Who is the abuser? Who is the rapist? Who is the murderer?

  He never wanted to be part of that, it would cut him in two, watching his child-soul slipping away, pink dye in a clear cold lake endlessly uncoiling. But now he knew, he was in possession of the facts of his life, and he burned with a bitter flame.

  Her hair had lustre, it had youth, it was splayed about her head like a halo shock at the moment of floating or drowning. She went out like a light, a jab of ketamine and she was meat, another student casualty of the booze being carried home. Old enough to be her father, well maybe he was, or perhaps a tutor fancying his chances, make hay, the night is still young. He got her here in a trice, he couldn’t have done it alone. A quiet street of Victorian terraces, a red and white striped traffic cone in the front garden, student larks.

  She’ll emerge from the “k-hole” eventually, the mind and body in different orbits, drawn back together by gravity. Better it never happens and you stay high up there, can you hear me Major Tom? Calling you, calling you… immune to pain.

  He dropped the knife and put his head between his knees. He was going to be sick. It had all gone terribly wrong. He clawed at his temples and dragged his fingers through his hair feeling the roots almost coming away. That woman had seriously messed with his head, took some pliers and snipped some wires, a tinker here, a tinker there and now you’re mine Bobby Lomas, the monster tamed. And for a moment he be
lieved her, his guard down, the long fine blade of her words gliding deep and true between his exposed ribs, into the red tissue of his heart. Kate Crowther, a Serengeti leopard, adept at prowling the wilderness, picking off her prey, her lips on his throat and then bringing her jaws together. It was the first time, without brutality, without fear, without contempt. He felt it. There was no restraint, no judgement, only forgiving. But there never was going to be any escape because hope is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torment…

  The students so many years ago, he didn’t deny it, but he wouldn’t plead guilty. Far from it, they were begging for deliverance, each one merging into another, wave after wave, a sea of despair. He gave them another way, they didn’t have to follow the path that had been chosen for them. He tried to make them beautiful, their awkward young bodies were too malleable, their skin too tender, their minds too impulsive and unthinking. He reshaped them, straightening their erratic curves, giving them proportion and geometry. He would sit for hours drawing them, taking in every line and angle, arranging light, dark and shade, calculating the best composition. He did the same for their minds, shoring up their insecurities, the hideous deformity of their birth, hearing the cries of their abandonment, feeling the soul-sapping emptiness in their heart of hearts. They could see he could see it all. They went willingly to the other side. He set them free.

  He thought he was free but the past crawled up his back and took him in a choke hold, twisted his neck and forced him to look at the abomination he truly was. Everything changed after Wooldridge. He hadn’t had time to get to know Governor Munro, but here he was in the same room as his daughter, the irony brittle bone dry, ashes in the mouth. It was laughable. Time enough to get to know her, the apple of his eye. There were things he had to do, the way blood runs through a family, from father to son, from father to daughter, they were unstoppable, sweeping everything aside. Munro will be broken, like he knew he would be from the day she was born. All human history is a history of violence, he knew that; his father told him so. He returned from the war all crooked and bent. He was a foot soldier in a tank regiment, pushing forward on D-Day through the fields of France, killing everything that moved. He never knew his father whole, only saw the anger, the night terrors, the poison that turned the veins in his clenched fists blue. Fatherhood, a microscopic splitting in an instant, a night-time stain followed by a lifetime of sadness. Sons forced to carry the burden of their fathers through the killing fields to a place of absolute terror. And it’s never enough, it’s never enough…

  He heard her stir, cry out, her eyelids fluttering. Morag, her name meaning “embracing the sun”. He picked up the knife and watched, drinking her in, for the demon waits and waits and will be satisfied…

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The police investigation was concentrating on interviewing the other prisoners and the staff, and would start in earnest immediately. Knight looked at Kate. She ignored him and continued: “I’ll get a list of all the new prison staff in the last twelve months from the personnel office. I’ll also try and ascertain how many new prisoners have been admitted over the same time period. That shouldn’t be difficult – it’s not as if prisoners come and go all the time. But I don’t think this is prisoner-on-prisoner.”

  “So your guess is staff. Why?” Munro tapped a pencil on his desk.

  “Access – the killer has got to be able to move around the prison freely, and whilst the prisoners have a certain amount of freedom, these murders relied on the killer being able to strike quickly, and then to disappear into the shadows. I just don’t see how that could be done by anyone other than a member of staff – and perhaps more than one.”

  Munro was drawing concentric circles with his pencil on a notepad. He pressed hard and the lead broke.

  “And?”

  “There are other issues that we shouldn’t overlook.”

  “Go on,” said Munro.

  “We can’t ignore the possibility that instead of a new member of staff, the killer or killers have been here for a long time, and have simply been waiting for their chance. My guess is someone new, but I am flagging up other possibilities. We have yet to discover a motive. I doubt that prisoners here in Greenbank, in therapy for God’s sake, are going to kill one another for the usual petty reasons that dominate in the system.”

  Kate paused.

  “Look, I know you’re telling me that it is likely to be a staff member,” said Munro, “but there is a possibility that it could be a prisoner-on-prisoner, surely.” The thought that the enlightened system in his prison was corrupt terrified him. He took out his mobile phone. There were no messages.

  “Right,” said Knight. “We’re going round in circles. Last question, is there anything to be seen on the CCTV tapes of the M1 when Mazurski disappeared?”

  Munro, who had checked the tapes as soon as he had come into the prison, shook his head: “No, but the CCTV coverage of the prison is poor. We have Mazurski on camera for a little of the way, but he moves out of the camera’s range. I’ve been trying to get the coverage upgraded ever since I first came here.”

  The meeting had ground to a halt. “Ok,” said Munro, “the police will start interviewing prisoners, I’ll get Johnsson to organize that. Liaise with him Nick if there is any other help that you need. I’m presuming that you’ll use official visits, and remember some might ask for their lawyers to be present. I’d be grateful if you would both come back and see me here at close of play. By then Kate you should have a list of the new staff and prisoners. Meantime I have agreed to speak to Mazurski’s parents, who are coming in to see me. No doubt they’ll be looking to sue us for failing to prevent their son being murdered, Christ on a bike.”

  Knight’s phone buzzed, he pulled it from his pocket. “Yes…yes… the sun is shining in Dorset, thank you, that’s too much information PC, cut to the chase… right.” There was a long pause, Knight ground his teeth, he gestured to Munro for the pencil he was holding but saw that the lead was broken so Kate gave him a pen and he scribbled notes on a scrap of paper he found on Munro’s desk. “Broad daylight, no witnesses? Hairpin or straight? Skid marks? Speed? Send me a full report, every speck of forensics itemized, you know that magnifying glass in your detective kit you were given for Christmas as a kid, use it.”

  Knight turned off his phone and ran his hand through his hair. He looked shaken. “The lady we were going to interview this morning, Wooldridge’s housekeeper, on the south coast.”

  “Penny?” said Kate.

  “She was found last night in a heap, hit and run, she’d been out on her bicycle apparently, a couple of school kids found her in a pool of blood, hardly recognizable, they are receiving counselling at the local health centre. Her right femur was shattered and bones in her right arm broken, and there are massive crush injuries to her chest and head consistent with a vehicle passing over her body. Her husband, name of Pat, came to identify her, he’s in shock, suffered some sort of seizure and is in hospital. He said it was his wife but her wedding ring was missing, her purse, handbag, not touched. They are house-to-housing for a badly dented car of currently unknown model and make.”

  Munro was silent, nodding imperceptivity as if affirming a series of questions he had been quietly mulling over in his mind for a long time. Another senseless death, caught in the crossfire of this madness.

  “It’s too much of a coincidence not to be linked to what’s going on here,” said Munro.

  “Let’s not jump to conclusions,” said Knight.

  “The cesspit is leaking,” said Munro. “Spreading its poison to all corners. What possible motive could anyone have to murder Wooldridge’s cleaning lady? What information did she have of significance? And who knew of her relationship with Wooldridge, working or otherwise?” He remembered taking the phone call from her, a death sentence maybe. He looked around the room.

  “First off Greenbank is not a cesspit,” said Kate. “Let’s keep some proportion here.”

  “And no
more speculation until we see the report and can examine the forensics. This isn’t a B-movie, these lives, and deaths, are real,” said Knight.

  They were quiet for a while, searching for narratives that could be used as barricades against the incoming storm. Munro began texting Morag again, it was an obsessive tick he was suffering now, even he would acknowledge that. As soon as he could get away he’d call the university and then take a trip to Oxford and pound the streets himself. It was early days, he didn’t want to come across as a neurotic, possessive single parent. The police were all over Oxford, Lomas wouldn’t go back there, how could he make it on his own? He’d be spotted immediately, but then his sister studied at Oxford and he knows the city well, its crepuscular hiding places, its twists and turns that nobody wants to notice.

  “Let’s go,” said Knight, and he and Kate rose from their chairs.

  “Kate, get Johnsson to pay me a visit when he’s free, thank you,” said Munro.

  Chapter Thirty

  Kate spent all morning in the personnel office gathering details about the number of staff who had joined the prison in the last twelve months. She worked urgently and methodically. There was a total of eight: Governor Munro, an electrician called Foster who had joined the works department, Officers Sandel and Brock, and four staff – all women who worked in the administration department. She then spent an hour on the local inmate database system – known as LIDS – working out how many new prisoners had come into the prison over the same period. She was surprised to find that the total was fifty-two, and had forgotten how many prisoners failed to make it through the assessment unit where all the prisoners spend their first eight weeks, before being allocated to one of the therapy wings. Clearly therapy wasn’t for everybody, and Kate was able to narrow that number down to under twenty, simply by excluding those prisoners who hadn’t made it through their first two months.