by Nicola Haken
“Oh, of course. If you could excuse us for a moment,” he said, turning to the waitress. “Take a seat,” he added, returning his attention to Jake. With a polite smile, the waitress scurried off back to wherever she came from. Jake sat down and I pulled up a chair next to him, coughing to clear my throat.
“What the hell is this about?” Ryder’s father, who if I remembered correctly was called Malcolm, spat venomously the second we were alone.
“Ryder. He’s in trouble.”
“That boy is none of my concern anymore. Now if you’ll excuse me…”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, you see I want to help him, and I think you can help me do that.”
“Well whoever told you that, is wrong.”
“Nobody told me. I’ve found out everything I need to know about you by myself.”
“Who the hell are you?” he snapped, anger causing his cheeks to flush.
“A friend of Ryder’s, and you will help me.”
“Is that some kind of threat?”
“No, sir. It’s a factual statement.”
“Look, I don’t know who you are or what you think I can do for you, but the kid’s a junkie. Prison was always on the cards for him.”
“I never mentioned anything about him being in prison.”
Whoa…
The way the blood drained from Malcolm’s face so abruptly, and so quickly, his face turning to a shade of deathly grey in a nanosecond, was like something out of a cartoon.
“I suggest you leave now before I have you removed.”
“We both know you don’t have the power to do that. This is just a restaurant and you’re just a customer. So it was you who framed Ryder? Your own son? I’m also guessing it was you who tipped off the police too?”
“You have no idea how much shame that boy has caused me, and if that wasn’t enough I’ve lost my wife because of him. So go on, do your worst. Tell me what a bastard I am. Tell whoever the hell you want because whoever you are I will drag your name through the dirt faster than you can say shit.”
Personally, I was shitting myself, but the smirk on Jake’s face which made him look altogether amused calmed me a little. Whereas I would’ve run away crying like a little girl, Jake seemed to still know exactly what he was doing.
“Excuse me!” Malcolm called out, summoning a waiter with a snap of his fingers. “Could you ask these people to leave please? They’re bothering me.”
The waiter nodded, and began his approach towards the table. Then Jake reached into his jacket and pulled out the brown envelope from earlier. This was it. The big showdown, and fuck I was crapping myself.
“I don’t think you want to do that,” Jake said confidently, slapping the envelope down on the table right under Malcolm’s nose. Noticing the waiter coming towards him, Malcolm held up his forefinger, signaling him to retreat.
“What’s this?” Malcolm asked, sounding apprehensive for the first time since we got here.
“Why don’t you open it and see?” Jake encouraged, sitting coolly back in his chair. I could literally see his chest rising and falling a little faster as he snuck his fingertip into the envelope seal. He pulled one photo just barely out, before shoving it straight back in and scanning his surroundings with his eyes to make sure no one else saw.
“Where the fuck did you get these? I could have you jailed for invasion of my privacy by morning.”
“But you won’t. You see, Malcolm, I have contacts too, many of whom are in the media. My bet is, I could have these prints in the newspaper before you had time to get back to your car, let alone have me arrested. So I suppose now you just need to choose which option you’d prefer. Having me arrested and letting the world in on your dirty little secret, or getting Ryder out of prison and having those photos, the copies, and the original memory card handed over to you to do with as you wish?”
“And how do I know you won’t still have other copies and send them to print anyway?”
“You don’t.”
“Are you fucking him? Why does he mean so much to you?”
“Because he’s family, and it seems we have different perceptions on what that word actually means.”
“Why should I trust you?”
“Because I’m leaving you with no other choice.”
“I can’t just get him out, you know. You say it like it’s so easy.”
“I believe Detective Superintendent Turner owes you a favor. Now is his time to repay it.”
“How do you…Who are you?”
“I want Ryder out of that hell hole by the weekend, Mr. Richardson, then, on Sunday, meet me back here at 1 PM and I will give you all the incriminating evidence I have against you.”
“I…I’ll see what I can do.”
Holy freakin’ shit.
“It’s been a pleasure doing business with you,” Jake said condescendingly, his confident smile never faltering. He offered his hand out to shake, but naturally Malcolm simply sneered at the gesture and turned his head. “You can keep those,” Jake tacked on, nodding towards the envelope in Malcolm’s hand. “I have plenty more.”
“Son of a…”
“Come on, Mason. Time for us to go.”
I felt some pathetic need to smile awkwardly at Ryder’s father as I stood up from the table, almost feeling sorry for him for what Jake had just put him through. Then I remembered Ryder and what the sick motherfucker had allowed, no planned to happen to him and I scowled instead.
“Holy shit!” I practically sang when we stepped out onto the sidewalk. “You did it!”
“Nothing has changed yet, Mason. Don’t get your hopes up until you receive that call from Ryder telling you he’s free.”
“But…but he will though, right? Get him out? The look on his face when he saw those photos, he was petrified.”
“Time will tell. But do not tell Ryder any of this. The last thing he needs is optimism when there’s no guarantee it will happen.”
“Okay, okay, got it,” I agreed, yet still I couldn’t stop the feeling of my heart fluttering back to life. We may not have had a solid guarantee, but for the first time since Elle got Ryder’s call, we had hope.
Chapter Twelve
~Ryder~
Prison completely fucks with your head. The white walls, the steel bars, the artificial light… Sometimes it was kind of surreal – like I wasn’t really there. I’d often just sit on the edge of my hard mattress in my cell watching prison life go by through the door. There were all sorts of people in prison, not just the bald-headed, scowling hard-nuts you imagine. Some are young, some are old. Some are scary, some are timid. And some are just natural born arseholes.
Overall I kept myself to myself. There was one guy – Eli – who recognized me the second he saw me. He was a creep. He would rub up against me in the dinner queue, wait for me in the showers, show up in my cell when I was alone. He intimidated me. Every time he came near me goosebumps erupted on the surface of my skin from the discomfort.
Everyday I’d tell myself it would get easier, yet each day my fight faded a little more. I honestly didn’t know how I was going to make it through. I’d lived this persona of being cocky and confident for so long, yet now I felt like a frightened little boy. They’d stripped me of everything that made me who I tried to be – my clothes, my jewellery…material things granted, but they were what helped me put on the show. They were what hid the demons clawing away at my insides, leaving me with nothing but my torturous thoughts and a baggy grey tracksuit.
I didn’t call Mason last night like I said I would. Hearing his voice hurt too much. He’d ask me how I was and I would hope he didn’t hear the quiver in my voice as I lied to him. He was suffering too, I knew he was. He would try to hide it, just like I did. He’d force his voice a notch higher, talk about trivial shit, and purposely avoid telling me about his day, because that would entail him discussing his freedom, but I knew. I knew he was hurting and I knew I was the cause.
With little else to do but
think, I was slowly starting to believe I deserved this. Sure, I wasn’t actually guilty this time, but I’d done bad shit in the past. I’d used, stolen from and hurt people I loved. I was lucky enough not to get caught those times, but they say everything catches up with you eventually, and now this was my time.
For the past two days I’d had a cutlery knife tucked into my sock. I grabbed it one lunchtime, using the slight of hand manoeuvre I’d perfected from buying pot in public places so many times. I got it because I felt the stirrings of ‘the itch’, but as yet hadn’t done anything with it. I didn’t even know if it would cut anything firmer than cheese. It sure didn’t feel sharp when I ran my finger across the length of the serrated blade.
I would take it out during the middle of the night and stare at it in my hand, just like I was doing now. My heart was so swollen, the pain radiating from it drilled right into my veins and circulated around my entire body. I tried to think of Mason’s words – to come to him first. But he wasn’t here, and the probability was that he wouldn’t be for a long time.
The pain of that realisation was too much. It was crushing me from the inside out and I needed it to go away. I needed to let it bleed, to let it drain from my body before it suffocated me. So instead of tucking the knife away again like I usually would, I placed it against my thigh. I didn’t have the energy to care where I was placing it, whether it would be easy to hide. What was the point? Nobody was going to see it while I was rotting away in here.
I ran the knife edge across my skin, but of course it left little more than a slight scratch. I pressed harder, and again nothing happened. Frustrated, I threw it down onto the mattress, only to pick it up again when an idea crossed my mind. The walls were painted, and it some places the white paint had chipped away, revealing exposed stone. A couple of grazes against the rough surface might sharpen it just enough to break the skin, so glancing over to make sure my cellmate Razz was fast asleep, I crept out of my bed and crouched down between the steel frame and the toilet. Gently, I rubbed the knife up against the wall, testing out how much sound it would make. Not too much, so I did it again only a little harder, this time causing tiny specs of stone and paint to fall to the floor like glitter. I kept my eyes on Razz the whole time, stopping when he grunted and turned over in his bed. Just a couple more strikes, I decided, and after doing so, I used my t-shirt to wipe the dust clean from the shiny metal and climbed back into bed.
I ran my fingertip over the enticing edge once again. It still wasn’t sharp by any stretch of the imagination, it couldn’t have done nearly as much damage as a blade, or as easily too. But it was all I had and I needed to try. I felt like I was dying. Choking. Like there was an invisible rope tied around my lungs, pulling them up towards my throat. Dragging in a deep breath, I placed the knife firmly against the flesh of my thigh. I knew I would have to dig deeper than usual with it, and that it would hurt more, but that’s what I wanted, what I needed.
I dragged it across my skin slowly, meticulously. It was dark, but when I lifted it away I could just about see a few tiny bubbles of blood starting to pop from the surface. The sight of it fuelled me, fuelled me to go deeper, to open it wider. Those tiny bubbles were merely specks of sand in a whole beach of pain that was quickly burying me alive. At least I had a starting point now, a small gap in my skin. Tucking the tip of the knife’s edge snugly inside, I inhaled again while I pushed down and dragged even harder. The relief caused me to sigh. The pain in my heart trickled from the wound and down over the top of my leg. It throbbed, letting me know it hadn’t finished, and I rested my head back against the wall, closing my eyes and letting the hurt bleed away.
After several minutes the blood started to dry, coagulating in sticky clumps on top of the fresh scar. But it was still there – the anxiety, the memories, the fear. So I repeated the process, then again, then once more, before my leg was pulsating so intensely with pain that it was all I could focus on. I’d done it. It took me almost an hour but I’d succeeded. I’d redirected my thoughts, passed on the pain to an area I could cope so much more easily with. And so, after giving myself a quick clean up at the basin by the toilet, I held a clean t-shirt to the wounds while pulling my sleep pants up with my free hand before climbing back onto the hard, lumpy mattress.
Feeling more relaxed than I had done since I arrived, I tucked the blanket right up under my chin and stared at the faint ribbons of moonlight filtering through the bars at the window until I eventually fell asleep.
**********
“Watch where the fuck you’re going, arsehole!” a burly guy who I’d accidently knocked into yelled at me as we queued up for dinner.
“S-sorry,” I muttered, not knowing where to look. He had menacing tattoos all over his face, images of guns and knives adorned his neck and half of his earlobe was missing with a jagged, healed scar that made it look like it’d been bitten off. I’d always been so smug, so self-assured – on the outside at least – but being in here made me realise just what a scared little boy I really was.
“Richardson!” I turned around towards the sound of my name being barked across the room. Officer Patterson summoned me over with a wave of his hand and so I put my empty lunch tray back and headed over to him, cursing to myself the whole time that I would now be at the back of the queue and would only have the option of the dregs.
“Richardson, you’re wanted in the governor’s office.”
Wordlessly, I nodded and followed him. Was this when they told me I had no chance of ever getting out? Had someone seen the knife in my room? Or was he going to tell me I was being moved into a cell with the freaky arsehole who almost punched my lights out for nudging him? Nerves swelled in my throat when we reached the office. I’d been here long enough to know you were only summonsed to the governor’s office if you were in deep shit or getting transferred out of here.
“Ryder,” Governor Smith greeted, proffering his hand towards the chair opposite his desk. “Take a seat.” Coughing once to clear my throat, I sat. “I need to go through these papers with you. You’re being released today.”
“I’m what?” I urged, jolting back in my chair completely stunned and unsure I’d heard correctly.
“Being released. Getting the hell out of here. Going home, however you want to put it.”
“But…how? Why?”
“All charges against you have been dropped. It’s not my job to know why. If you want to know any more then you need to take it up with the police, but I’d suggest you just sign these papers and don’t look back instead.”
“So, what? I can just…leave?”
“Once you’ve signed these and arranged someone to pick you up, then yes.”
In a complete haze, I took the ballpoint pen he was offering me and signed the papers on the desk without even bothering to read through them. What was happening didn’t make any sense to me. My lawyer had already told me the evidence was too strong to not be believed.
“Officer Patterson, escort Ryder back to his cell to collect his things and then you’re free to begin the discharge process. Any questions before you go?” he addressed me.
“Um, n-no. Thank you,” was all I could think to say. “Thank you.”
I walked back to my cell feeling numb. I couldn’t quite grasp the fact I was leaving. Sure, I’d not been in here long, but already the thought of being out in the open, being free to wander wherever I wanted stabbed me with a sense of vulnerability. I knew I would call Mason to come and pick me up, but I was already panicking about how he’d react to me, or me to him. I was a mess. My body and my mind completely fucked. But most of all, I was ashamed.
It was only when I reached my cell I realised I didn’t actually have any belongings to take with me. There were the toiletries and cigarettes that Mason brought in for me, but I decided to leave those behind for Razz. I can’t say we became friends, but he left me to myself and didn’t cause me any grief so that made him a decent guy in my opinion.
“I’m done,” I announced
, turning to Officer Patterson. “There’s nothing here I need to take.”
“Okay then, this way,” he said, stepping aside so I could pass him. He overtook me and led me across the landing, down the metal stairs and to the reception area.
After having to wait under the watchful eye of another officer for twenty minutes, I was taken into the back room and given the clothes I arrived in. I wrinkled my nose when they were placed in my hands, the smell of stale alcohol, sweat and tobacco invading my senses. Before I could change I had to be stripped and searched. The officer conducting the search eyed up the cuts on my leg suspiciously, raising his eyebrow, but then seemingly dismissed it. Probably wasn’t worth the paperwork. Finally, I was watched while I re-dressed myself in my own clothes, before being taken back out front.
The belongings that were confiscated from me the day I was brought in were waiting for me on the desk in a clear bag - my jewellery, wallet, phone and even the couple of half-empty packets of gum. Next, after signing yet more papers, a corded phone was pushed towards me.
Swallowing hard, I punched in Mason’s number which was now committed to memory. It rang four times before he answered, each ring making my heart plummet a little further.
“Hello?” he answered, sounding out of breath as if he’d had to run to catch his phone.
“Mason, it’s me. I-I’m being released,” I said, still not quite believing the words. “Can you come and pick me up?”
“Oh thank fucking God,” he sighed down the line. “Oh my God are you okay? Please tell me you’re okay?”
“I’m okay,” I assured him, lying only slightly.
“I’m leaving right now, okay? I’ll be with you very soon.”
“Thank you,” I muttered, tears stinging the back of my eyes.
“Fuck I can’t wait to hold you.”
“Me too.”
“Okay, I’m already out the door. I’ll get Jake to bring me. Half an hour and you’ll be coming home. You’re coming home,” he tacked on the end, more to himself than me I suspected. “And I love you. I love you so fucking much.”