The Rules of Restraint

by David Wilson

  “Briefings like these really help, Donald,” she said, and as she did so she touched his arm for added sincerity. “Let’s hope Greenbank gets back to normal as soon as possible. And you take care of yourself. Remember, I’m fully behind you in everything that you do.” She smiled and Munro made his way back to the lift, waving to Tim as he left.

  Munro felt an increasing sense of disconnection. He nodded to the civilian on the front desk, who didn’t bother to acknowledge him, and pushed open the revolving door that freed him from headquarters.

  Outside, Munro headed towards the river Thames and considered what seditious acts he could perform to catch the eye of MI5 whose green Lego confection of a building loomed in front of him like the HQ of a seventies communist state. He stopped to gaze at the slow brown water of the river below as it lugubriously shuffled downstream like an old man hiding the poison in his body beneath a thick stinking overcoat.

  Munro wondered if he could hold it together, so many forces were pulling him in all directions and he couldn’t decide which one was right. He thought of the Thames making its way through Oxford, the Isis flowing past Christ Church Meadow, students punting, the promise of youth as elemental as the sunshine. He’d sat by the river with Morag on her first day at university, eating Magnum ice creams together, he nodding and occasionally lobbing a small stone into the water and watching the ripples, while she spoke endlessly of the future, of her dreams.

  Suddenly Munro turned around and broke into a run.

  Back at Cleland House, Hardy had already called Tim into her office.

  “What did he really want?” she said, but answered her own question before Tim could speak. “Sniffing the air? Trying to find out if we were plotting against him? Was that what he was up to?”

  “Sure,” said Tim, “but he has to be worried – wouldn’t you be?”

  “What did he say to you?”

  “Nothing much,” replied Tim. “Just gossip. That’s all.”

  “Did you tell him anything?”

  “No. Nothing. But, you know, he’s a good sort.”

  She waved her hand dismissing him thinking I’ll be the judge of that. She would take him down and it wouldn’t be pretty. She had no choice. She picked up the phone and called the Home Secretary’s office.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  “I appreciate your concern sir, but a university student who has not been in touch with his or her parents for a few or several days does not necessarily indicate anything untoward, or mean they are a missing person. This lack of communication with parents is often the case in the first few weeks of term. It is something we deal with and have had to deal with many times over the years with anxious parents.”

  Munro was edging his way along the Cromwell Road past Earl’s Court, and the traffic, as always in London at most times of the day, was heavy. He found it a challenge to coordinate his thoughts with his stop-start progress and considered excessive use of a car speakerphone a certain route to mild schizophrenia. He had managed to get hold of Morag’s college warden’s PA. Her tone was robotically neutral.

  “Yes but she’s an only child, and I’m telling you this is entirely out of character,” said Munro.

  “Yes, sir, it is always out of character, students become different people when they leave home, they try on new personalities, in fact not to be in contact with their parents as much as they used to or even as much as they would like to is entirely consistent with their new sense of self and the process of self-discovery. I do not think you should worry. We have a safe college here, we have a strong pastoral care service with experienced, sympathetic staff…”

  “Of course, of course but I know her better than anyone else.”

  “Sometimes, Mr Munro the parents are the ones who need the pastoral care in these circumstances as the child leaves home they are left disorientated. With respect, sir, do please take a longer view.”

  “With respect madam, I’m doing my bloody best, but I have a hunch, I have a bad feeling about this; is there any way I can talk to her?”

  “Has she spoken to her mother recently?”

  “I don’t know, her mother and I rarely speak, we’re divorced.”

  “Then I think you should perhaps explore that option, quite often parents who are separated have an excessive sense of paranoia and overcompensate with attitudes of extreme protection towards their children.”

  Munro was slowly passing along the Hammersmith flyover with the Odeon to his left where he once saw Miles Davis perform with his back to the audience. He was getting agitated with the college PA’s cod-psychotherapy, God knows he’d had enough of that at Greenbank.

  “Look is there anyone I can contact who might know where she is, gently request that she contact her father for whatever spurious reason, if only a one-word text? Not to intrude on the delicate progress of the student’s settling in and all that?”

  “I understand, I will get the home bursar to give you a call to reassure you and perhaps we will be able to give you more information on her state of mind and how she is coping. I’m sure that will be no trouble at all.”

  “Much appreciated, really, very much appreciated,” said Munro and he rang off.

  Munro slipped on a CD of Kind of Blue by Miles Davis which approximated to his mood but cool he wasn’t as the traffic ground to a halt on the A4 just past Fuller’s brewery. He dreaded the temporary imprisonment of traffic jams, and felt a growing panic as all options for escape were closing on him. At least on a train you could get up and go for a walk. His phone rang. It was the college home bursar.

  “I understand you’re concerned about the welfare your daughter?” she said. There was an impatience in her voice.

  “I am indeed, I’ll be frank with you, I’m twisted up inside about all this.”

  “I’m sure Mr Munro, but this is entirely normal, you have to be led by your daughter, she is no longer in your charge and it is she who will decide when to get in touch or not. I have had parents metaphorically camping in the university to keep an eye on their children, I’m afraid that will only damage their development.”

  “Look here, I’m not a bloody stalker, all I want is to know if she is all right, communicated by any third party, be it her friends or tutors or yourself. Have you spoken to her lately?”

  There was a pause. “And her first name is?”

  “Morag,” said Munro. The driver of the car behind him was blaring his horn in a continuous, angry complaint. Munro spun round to see if the driver had slumped unconscious onto his steering wheel but the sound changed to an intermittent protest against God knows what.

  “No I haven’t seen her for a while but I will make enquires and get back to you. I’ll find out who her friendship groups are and all that. I’m certain there is nothing to worry about.” She ended the call.

  Munro gave the driver behind him the finger as they started to move forward and regretted it instantly, envisaging the eruption of a road rage incident leaving him lying on the road with a knife in his belly. He accelerated away switching lanes until he was finally cruising on the M4 towards the M25.

  He called Knight but received his voicemail: “Knight, I’m on my way to Oxford, I can’t bloody wait for you guys to come up with any answers about Lomas and the danger my daughter is in. I’m convinced he’s up there, he’s into some sort of weird head-fuck I know he is and I want him stopped, get more of your cops up there, stretch the resources. In the meantime Jim Dabell is in charge of Greenbank in my absence.”

  Munro knew none of the pieces were in the right place and he felt an aching emptiness. It wasn’t certain Lomas was in Oxford, he could be anywhere, why would he return so brazenly to the scene of his previous crimes? He hadn’t heard from his daughter, but that didn’t necessarily mean she was in any danger; there were police scouring the city as it was, going through the motions no doubt, their search based on guesswork and no hard evidence that Lomas might be in Oxford, and all because he said his favourite place was some museum
or other in the city, the Ashmolean. It was fanciful, paranoid. Munro thought he was going mad.

  His phone rang, it was Margery Hardy, he let it run to voicemail. “Donald, I know you’re under a considerable amount of pressure what with one thing and another but the Home Secretary has very strong opinions about how we tackle these issues and he would like to share these with you as soon as possible. Please call back and suggest a time for a meeting at your absolute earliest convenience. Thank you.”

  Munro sensed the slow grind of the engines of destruction. The state would trample him underfoot to keep up the appearance of good governance, his career and a lifetime of self-sacrifice as significant as the dirt on their shoes. What’s important he thought, what really matters? He put his foot down on the accelerator and was nearly doing a ton when he reached the junction of the M40.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Knight parked his Alpha in the prison carpark. It was a grey neuralgic Monday morning. He noticed there was only one Fireblade in the parking bay that Brock and Sandel used for their motorcycles. He couldn’t tell the bikes apart so didn’t know who was clocked in and who wasn’t. Knight had spent his Sunday neck deep in files: criminal case histories, psychiatric reports, court hearings, lawyers’ submissions, prisoner referrals, Crown judgements, employment CVs, employment reports, any piece of paperwork he could get hold of that might shed some light on a case that was rapidly slipping through his fingers. He had thought of meeting up with Kate to ease the burden, go for a Sunday afternoon walk, share a glass of wine, but he’d felt hamstrung by inertia.

  He’d shaped his research into a pyramid with Bobby Lomas at the apex, escapee, presumably still alive, the first sign of trouble. Lomas had chosen to run away from a prison record of good behaviour, the relative comforts of a therapeutic prison regime and an environment of trust and nurture to risk being banged up in the system again with its latent violence and harsh privations. There followed soon after prisoner John McCabe’s suicide. Knight had discovered that Lomas and McCabe shared an interest in cult leader Charles Manson. After their cells had been stripped, a cache of correspondence between the two was found, including an article from seventies underground newspaper Tuesday’s Child proclaiming Manson to be “Man of the Year”, and underlinings in Manson prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi’s book Helter Skelter asserting the existence of a growing “neo Manson cult”. There were also references to the rock band Kasabian and Manson’s own studio album: Lie: The Love and Terror Cult, which had gained a strong underground following. Then there was Danny’s assault and eventual death; he’d been released from Greenbank, he’d not reoffended, he’d ended up a harmless derelict. Knight had uncovered correspondence between Lomas and Danny mostly referring to the occult, afterlife and cosmic forgiveness, sins-of-the-father type material and Nietzscheian platitudes such as “keep strong” or “to love is to suffer”. There were the two civilian murders of Martin Wooldridge and Penny; Wooldridge having enthusiastically promoted the therapeutic regime at Greenbank to such an extent that it was the leading prison in the country to practise psychotherapy as rehabilitation. Knight had discovered that Wooldridge enjoyed the company of men and was possibly gay – there were numerous ticket stubs to gay nightclubs in London and some old-fashioned pen-and-ink letters to and from men of a discreetly passionate but explicit nature. There was nothing revelatory on his computers however, which were pristine clean with purely professional content, and no evidence that he had gay relationships with any of the prisoners. Knight couldn’t find the letter that Penny claimed she possessed before Wooldridge left home for his ill-fated journey to London. Her husband, Pat had searched all over their house to no avail, determined it would shed light on Penny’s demise, but was she simply collateral damage?

  Finally the baseline of murders involved the two prisoners Ian Clark and John Mazurski, both sexual serial killers, Mazurski a child killer. Knight had the full background on Clark’s crimes, but documentary detail of Mazurski’s victims was missing. Knight resolved to investigate further; there must be duplicates on record. The files of the other three new staff in the admin department had thrown up nothing of interest. He noted that Liz Duffield had kept her married name, but there was nothing in her records about her first marriage, who her husband was, what he was doing now or whether they had children.

  “Where the hell’s Officer Brock?” Knight had commandeered Munro’s office in his absence at Cleland House that morning. “I arranged to meet him here at 10.00 a.m.” The senior on-site officer Jim Dabell wasn’t used to being shouted at.

  “Law unto himself, I’ll put a call out,” said Dabell.

  “He’s got fifteen minutes, then I go from Smiley Face to Godzilla,” said Knight.

  He called Kate: “I appreciate this is a favour but I need documentation of Mazurski’s crimes, what he did and to whom, his rap sheet has gone missing, maybe an admin error. Could you get the Crown Prosecution Office to send over scans? Dinner on me next time, I promise.”

  That night they were going to enact Kate’s plan; he hoped it would shed some light, but he had his doubts.

  Knight considered the Manson angle and the cult leader’s glorification by performers like Guns ’N’ Roses and Marilyn Manson, his status burnished by film documentaries such as Charles Manson Superstar, which claimed his apocalyptic vision was forged by a lifetime of imprisonment: “the hallways of the all ways”. His shamanistic, religious philosophy was incredibly dangerous to fragile minds – antisocial, murderous, cleansing – but then there’s global terrorism and what’s the difference when compared to Al-Qaeda or Islamic State as movements of mass destruction? Knight didn’t believe that the insurrection at Greenbank, if organized, could be sustainable. There was too much chaos, like Manson and his followers, too much of a sense of frenzy. Something was going to break down, someone would crack.

  Brock wasn’t showing. He was going to interview John Johnsson in half an hour. The deputy governor was in the local hospital, he’d suffered an emotional collapse and was under observation, also as a suicide risk. Knight needed to get as much information out of him before he was more heavily sedated or went under, perhaps never to return.

  It was a ten-minute drive to West Green Hospital and he presented his badge to reception. There were two coppers outside Johnsson’s door, his wife had insisted on a separate room. Knight nodded to the PCs, knocked and entered. A nurse with a pen behind her ear was checking Johnsson’s drip.

  “Detective Inspector Knight,” he said.

  “Half an hour that’s all,” said the nurse. “I don’t care who he is or what he’s done, I have a duty of care. If he gets visibly agitated you’re to back off? Understood?”

  “Of course,” said Knight. The nurse left the room, leaving the door ajar.

  Knight took a seat. Johnsson was staring into space like a stroke victim, his face a featureless mask hiding the turmoil within. His hair was grey, his nose pointed like a truffling animal and Knight sensed that he’d spent most of his life snouting in the undergrowth, searching for answers to life’s impossible questions, a nearly man.

  “John Johnsson, it’s Knight, let’s not make a fuss about this, you have to tell me everything you know.”

  Johnsson shook his head.

  “Ok, I’ll start with this. I don’t think you had anything to do with Penny’s murder, the wedding ring is bullshit. How it ended up in your pocket is the stuff of Paul Daniels, that’s my guess. I’m throwing you a float, grab hold and I’ll start pulling you back in.”

  Johnsson closed his eyes.

  “Tell me about Wooldridge,” said Knight.

  “Decent man,” said Johnsson, wincing like he’d just been punched. “Didn’t always keep his promises, compassionate, visionary, mercurial, perhaps more imagination than common sense, risk-taker.”

  “Gay?”

  “I think so but he never came out. He wasn’t concerned, not a big deal was his attitude. I know he had a number of boyfriends, stayed out late at gay
clubs, heavy weekends of partying, enjoyed his freedom.”

  “Did you have a problem with his sexual orientation?”

  “Not in the slightest.”

  Knight paused, listening for clues, monitoring the tone of Johnsson’s voice, watching his facial expression, the subtlest of movements in his eyes.

  “What about the prisoners? Did he have intimate relations with any of them?”

  “I think he was close to Bobby Lomas, and there may have been more.”

  “Proof?”

  “None, rumours, McCabe spoke to me about it, I think he was deeply in love with Lomas, master–slave sort of thing, terrified that Wooldridge was going to take Lomas away from him, but over the years it settled down.”

  “Then it all went tits up.”

  “Wooldridge was leaving, I would say he overstepped the mark with Lomas.”

  “In what way?”

  “Favouritism, long discussions with him in Wooldridge’s office, I was there sometimes, they were talking about philosophy, Nietzche, Kant, some weird Frenchie called Derrida, the concept of freedom, spouting names of theorists and thinkers they both admired, drove me nuts when I had to run the prison virtually single-handed, guys like McCabe going out of their minds, other prisoners getting the hump.”

  “Wooly passed you over for governor didn’t he?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Did you kill him or have him killed?”