The Rules of Restraint

by David Wilson

  “I can't kill you,” she said, eventually.

  “Come,” said Lomas. “Closer. All actions have consequences, but you have to have the courage to act on your convictions or others will take the gift of free will from you and yoke you to the machine, beat and humiliate you for the rest of your life. Come.”

  He suddenly lunged forward and wrapped his fist around Morag’s hands, shaking the knife free and before it hit the floor Lomas had caught the hilt in his good hand. It was so quick. He aimed the blade at her.

  He stared at her long and hard as she stood with her arms by her side, expressionless. He wondered how much despair there was crushing her soul, how much defeat and wretchedness.

  He threw the knife to the corner of the room. “You wouldn’t kill me. We’re too committed. I won’t harm you.”

  “Then let me go,” said Morag, quietly. She could feel the nausea rising through her belly, sense the corrosive, oily damp of the room climb up her body, smell the fetid stench of the dead and dying in this place where only vermin skulk and scorn.

  “There is not long to wait,” said Lomas.

  “Wait for what? This is, it’s… pathetic.”

  “We wait for the end, it will come sooner than you think, then you will embark on a new adventure, but you will always return, you can never escape.”

  “Your bullshit is dragging me down, I don't want any more bullshit, I don't want you in my life, you’re a fucking seedy creep and a murderer, you’ve assaulted and abused me against my will, locked me in this toilet, I don’t want it, I don’t want it, can’t you see that, cut me free?” Waves of despair broke over her but she was determined to stand firm.

  “It will happen. I’ll tell you this: I’ve been clean for over two decades, committed no crimes, I am five-star rehabilitated, but the cracks will always appear, broken and mended is never as strong as not broken at all. I have a simple task to complete, it was forced on me by the ghosts of the past, the living hell that is remembering, the retribution from the sons, and the sons of sons who emerge from the anguish of a long slow dying. I escaped from prison, I was assisted, and charged with the sole task of finding you. There is a plan, it is madness, but the plan has to be fulfilled.”

  “What fucking plan? You say you’ve learned things, you have the wisdom of experience and God knows enough time to reflect yet still you act like a common criminal, hiding in shadows, a rat down a sewer, you’re nothing more than the shit that gets pumped out to sea.”

  “We are all those things, every one of us, when we examine ourselves closely. I had dreams, as you must have now, but then there’s the worm, the cancer, humankind cannot bear too much reality, that is a harsh lesson to learn, but if you do not come too close, if you do not come too close, on a summer midnight, you can hear the music. You must listen to the music, listen hard to the music, remember the harmonies, play them in your head, never stop listening to the music. I broke that rule, the music in me was false, I wrote my own score, and listened to my own broken tunes. The music in me was inside, I could not hear the melodies outside, the wind in the forests, the hum of freedom over wide open plains.”

  Suddenly there was a low crash above their heads, and the room seemed to vibrate, tremors running down the thin walls. A slow deliberate hammering began, muted, softened as if restrained by caution or fear, and the wooden staircase shuddered with each blow. From the open cellar hatch came a voice from outside the house, whispered but agitated, mouth pressed close to the front door: “Open it up Lomas, open the fucking door, do it now, don’t make me smash it down.”

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Kate felt her windpipe constricting and she struggled to find breath. How easy it is to die, to close down the body when its essential delicate tubes are disabled. Liz had dropped her weight across Kate’s body as her neck stretched over the back of the chair, pushing, pushing like a desperate entwined couple longing for an end. Liz’s hands were slippery with sweat as she sought purchase and Kate couldn’t see Liz’s eyes, couldn’t see if the hatred was helpless or stone cold and final. Kate was lightheaded but she could still just about breathe, the pain was bearable and slowly Liz’s grip lost its pressure and she fell forward as something in her was extinguished. Kate knew then that she wasn’t going to die and she held on tight to the weeping figure slumped upon her that shook and shook. She stroked her hair, giving her time, and between her tears Liz was murmuring words Kate couldn’t make out, a moan from deep within that was stop-start and then Kate could make out softly – “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  They stayed together for some moments, against Kate’s professional rules of no contact with patients. She’d broken the rules before and nothing but bad had come from it, but this time the need was too great. She knew the limits of her therapy, that sometimes to make whole, the inarticulate was all that could be called upon to begin repair.

  “I’m sorry,” said Liz again. She’d composed herself and moved back to her chair. She hung her head. “No excuses, press charges if you want, I’ll take anything you throw at me, I deserve nothing less.”

  Kate rubbed her neck, the pain was harsh but forgettable, the assault an outpouring rather than an attempt to cause serious harm.

  “This will be just between the two of us,” said Kate. “I don’t scare easy.”

  Liz looked up, “Thank you. You’re a special person. I was brought up in violence, it’s haunted me all my life, and now I’m right back where it all started, men sorting out problems with their fists, when the problems are often theirs alone. Then knives and guns, and more effective means of power over others, or punishment or revenge.”

  “You must get out of this, you must start over again. I can help you,” said Kate.

  Liz nodded and Kate held out her hand. They touched. Liz’s fingers were hot, trembling. Kate was wary, there could easily be a next time, and then no going back.

  “Will Brock came up with a plan of revenge,” said Liz. “I think he was a little in love with me. He was conflicted, obviously, but you can tell that fire in someone’s eyes. His way of showing love was to take everything to extremes, do the biggest thing for you which turned out to be the worst. Chris Sandel went along with it, he couldn’t see a reason not to. I didn’t discourage either of them. Mazurski was the target, they joined the staff at Greenbank, they did their stuff initially with care and meticulous planning, and then it all went wrong.”

  *

  “Bobby Lomas,” said Sandel. “He was this big shot con at Greenbank, been there a while, reckoned he was totally rehabilitated, straightened out, someone the other prisoners could look up to, and a lot of them did. He’s an autodidact, reads everything he can get his hands on, highbrow stuff like philosophy, poetry, serious literature, obscure unreadable crap, he can quote great chunks at you, but not in a show-off way, he just knows it and appreciates it, wants to apply it to life as wisdom for living. He isn’t arrogant in that way self-taught people often are, but he has some weird obsessions, occult, paranormal, serial killers like his Charles Manson thing that Will also shares. They got pally, but Will was always distant, suspicious, as if he was sizing Lomas up, testing him to see how he’d measure up. Lomas is a serial killer, he’d murdered six girls; Will couldn’t deal with that, kept him awake at night, thinking how to reconcile this broken man who was never really whole in his eyes. Lomas disgusted him on a profound level, I could see him agitating when we were at home or in the pub, ‘Is he good or is he bad?’ Will kept asking the same question, obsessively. It was strange. I’d tell him to knock it off, he’s only another long-term con scumbag. But he isn’t a scumbag, Lomas is impressive, has an aura, a look about him that says, ‘I don’t take any shit, but if you want me to help you, I’m open to that.’ It’s rare in people. He’s also a good artist, has the simple ability to see and recreate on paper or canvas with his own imaginative twist. But he’s fundamentally a deeply melancholy man though, troubled, sad beyond belief, he knows he’s fucked up his life, and it’s n
ever coming back, he’ll never get a second chance. Will said he deserves to suffer, deserves to suffer more.”

  “Why did you let him escape?” said Knight.

  Sandel shuffled uneasily in his chair. “It was a stunt to start things off, create a bit of mayhem, a diversion, see where the cracks would appear, work out where the real power lay in the prison. Will wanted to make a statement.”

  “What kind of statement?”

  “That these lifers were not benign, they could easily be activated and cause harm, but this was a soft stunt.”

  “What the fuck do you mean by ‘soft stunt’?” said Knight.

  “Will chose Lomas, because he wanted to beat him up a bit, blow his good record, say to the establishment that he may be a model prisoner, harmless now, but he can go AWOL anytime, so don’t go being too liberal with the rest of the prisoners. It was for Munro’s benefit.”

  Sandel started to scratch his arm, began to look worried.

  “And…” said Knight.

  “Will didn’t want the new governor to go soft, wanted to teach him a lesson in the hard realities of prison life, Will didn’t want him to go the Wooldridge way, which was, in his mind, sickening, too caring, therapy for the prisoners, too considerate.”

  “So you had Wooldridge killed?”

  “I had nothing to do with that, I swear, that was Brock’s scheme. That’s when it started to get out of hand, seriously out of hand.”

  “So Brock killed Wooldridge?”

  “No, Brock put a contract on him. Wooldridge had a thing for Lomas, Brock knew they had a relationship, had been going on for years, Brock thought it was incredibly unprofessional, and it repulsed him somehow, Brock’s never been very confident about his sexuality, has long periods of self-loathing, less now that we’re together, but the thought of Wooldridge and Lomas together didn’t impress him. With Lomas out of the prison and roaming free it drew Wooldridge out into to open, a sitting duck. I never wanted it to happen.”

  “And you knew all about this?” said Knight.

  “I knew the basics,” said Sandel, “I wasn’t party to the details.”

  “Then that makes you an accessory.”

  “Yeah I know.”

  “You’ll go down for a long time. You’re not going to blame it all on Brock? I can erase this part of our interview from the tape if you like, you can be charged for Mazurski only, plead coercion, the rest can be clean for you.”

  “I can’t do it man, I can’t, I can’t shop Brock, it’s not who I am. You’re a decent cop Knight.”

  “Your call.”

  “No deal. I’m not interested in saving my own skin.” Sandel pulled up his sleeve. His arm was striated with white scars, criss-crossings, “X” after “X” cancelling each other out. “My skin crawls all the time,” he said. “Feels like termites constantly burrowing their way into my flesh, feeding on night sweats, that’s the worst time, night time, ever since this all started happening.” He pulled up his other sleeve, it was pockmarked with pinprick marks. “I do smack, it’s the only way I can get through.”

  Sandel struggled to regain the narrative. “Wooldridge, by all accounts a regular guy, Brock had a bloke from the Midlands come down and take Wooldridge out, a pro, Brummie I think, did a smart job, cost Brock a lot of money. It was wrong, it was sickening.”

  “Why didn’t you pull out?”

  “I didn’t that’s all, and we had Mazurski to deal with.”

  “Why was Brock wasting his time on the other killings before taking out Mazurski and finishing the job, what the fuck was he up to?”

  “I couldn’t figure it out at first. There was a night at The White Hart, we’d been drinking hard, I think Brock had taken some coke or speed, always a danger sign, we exited the pub and he suddenly set upon some wino outside, Danny. Brock went mental, I dragged him off. I knew Brock could get into a fight and he enjoyed a ruck, but this was insane, cold-blooded, a defenceless guy, no harm to anyone. It made no sense at all and I told him so.”

  “What happened?”

  “He told me to fuck off, stick or twist he said, join the ride or get left behind. Then there was the Ian Clark murder, nasty business, Brock said he’d done it, it was practice, getting into the swing of things. But he let on his intention was to cleanse the prison of the worst offenders, the child killers and paedos that he hated so much.”

  “McCabe?”

  Sandel put his hands up, “Not one of Brock’s, genuine suicide, no assist, but he was shit scared of Brock, sixth sense maybe. McCabe was close to Lomas, probably also had a thing going with him, a lot of prisoners do amongst themselves, keep it quiet, no harm done, but when Lomas legged it McCabe cracked.”

  “Ok, but why Penny?”

  “She was threatening to blow the Lomas stunt, let on that Wooldridge and Lomas had their thing, help locate him. Brock didn’t want his plan messed with. He liked every detail to run like clockwork, precision. The same Brummie guy took her out, is what I was told. Brock started improvising and tried to get John Johnsson fingered by planting the wedding ring on him. Brock was out of control, too many angles, each one a new adventure. It was really fucking bad, the Penny thing made me sick to my stomach, that’s when I knew I had to cut and run.”

  “But you still had Mazurski to deal with, the whole reason you started all this.”

  “Yeah, Mazurski, I hung around too long for that. I had to do it for Liz, that sounds really fucking lame, but I did.”

  “You killed Mazurski?”

  “We both pulled him over, roughed him up, Brock used the knife, he had the expertise, I gave the guy a good hiding, felt his pain, felt Liz’s pain, felt Sammy’s pain, thought that Sammy could rest in peace at last, that his soul would maybe smile again.”

  “Bang goes your coercion plea.”

  “I’ll take what comes.”

  “What about Walker?”

  “I had nothing to do with that; first I heard was when it all blew up afterwards. Brock had a taste for it all, he was on a mission, eradicating the prison of the people he didn’t like, he was red hot with fury, you didn’t want to be around him.”

  “Where is Brock now? His scope isn’t just the prison at this moment,” said Knight.

  “I don’t know, seriously I don’t know.”

  “Well think, we’ve got to bring him in, yeah? That’s not rocket science is it? You’ve gone this far now tell me where he is. Where’s he likely to be, take a wild guess. He have a secret hiding place?”

  “He could be chasing down Lomas.”

  “Where’s Lomas?”

  “His old hunting ground I think, Oxford.”

  “Oxford, what the hell is he doing there?”

  “There’s a house there Brock likes to use, rents it, place where he hides, does his thinking, ruminates, does yoga whatever, I don’t know, I’ve never been there. Could be he has Lomas locked up there.”

  “Come on man, spill, you know more.”

  “Relax, it’s a soft stunt.”

  “There’s no such thing, not with Brock, you know that, come on, get real, you’re not making sense.”

  “No I don’t see it, Brock wouldn’t harm her, Lomas hasn’t got it in him.”

  “Her? Who’s her, what are you on about?”

  “Munro, simple abduction, Lomas takes his daughter, gentle like, hides her away, missing person, Lomas still a threat, the system isn’t working, Munro goes more hardline, that’s the theory. Munro’s not the enemy, the kid is released unharmed, job done.”

  “But she hasn’t been reported missing yet,” said Knight. “It’s a damp squib, unless Brock has something else in mind. What’s the address?”

  “I don’t know, I’ve never been there.”

  “Come on Sandel, give me the address, you have it, you know it, this isn’t going to stop unless you put a brake on it all. Do you want Munro’s daughter harmed? She’s got a name by the way, Morag, she’s young, she’s bright, she’s a student goddammit, learning new thi
ngs about the world, you want her scarred for life. Or dead?”

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  When he was young, Will Brock would strap his fishing rod, wrapped in its long green bag, on his back and cycle to the river several miles out of town. It was a private trout stream and he’d hide behind the bushes whenever he saw anyone else walking along the riverbank. He liked to swish his rod like a samurai sword, decapitating nettles and tall plants. He knew all the best places for fishing, in deep bends of the river, under the weir where the trout liked to swim upstream in the cold deep water, unaware that the lunge they’d make at the silver spinner flashing past their mouths would be their last. Brock loved that rod, the green bag made him think of warm summers and good catches of muscular brown trout that he’d take home for his dad to cook.

  Brock cruised slowly down the high street on his Fireblade, keeping the revs to a minimum to avoid attracting attention from the loud exhaust. On his back he was carrying a long black canvas bag, one end of which jutted above his helmeted head.

  He banked to the left down a residential side street, then took the next right and then another left. The houses were thirties semis with a wide road dividing the two sides of the street. He parked between two cars on the other side of the road at least a hundred yards away and took off his helmet. He crouched low behind his bike pretending to inspect the drive chain, his lack of obvious movement making him more difficult to spot. He slipped the bag off his shoulder, laid it on the ground and unzipped it. Inside was a Heckler & Koch PSG-1 sniper rifle. He screwed the sound suppressor to the end of the barrel and fitted the telescopic sights. He armed the rifle and peered over the petrol tank of his bike.

  There was a police car to the left of the house with two occupants. He had a clear view of the front of the house. He replaced his helmet and took aim at the front door. He had no idea of the whereabouts of Collette and Harriet inside the house, they could be in the front room, the kitchen, the upstairs bedroom, the back rooms, the hallway, any number of random places. Chance would determine the outcome, it was a roll of life’s dice, and he was the playmaker.