by Sarah Hilary
‘Where’s DI Rome?’ Noah’s skin crept at his neck. ‘She needs to see this.’
‘She’s at the prison,’ Ron said. ‘And yeah. She really does.’
This house in West Ealing had stood empty for months. There was no longer any furniture in its rooms, no curtains or carpets, only bare boards and scuffed vinyl like the floor in here, a sitting room where the window should have looked out onto the back garden but instead looked inwards, solid with stares. The house was cold, but this room was clammy with its Polaroid-cladding, like standing inside a polythene tent. Noah found himself holding his breath hard in his chest.
‘If this is Michael Vokey’s house, why didn’t we know about it until now?’
‘Not in his name,’ Ron said. ‘His mum’s house, we reckon. Colin’s going at the paperwork. But this’ll get us extra bodies on the case, right? Has to.’ It was why he’d said this was better than finding Vokey. The house, even just this one room, made the investigation so much bigger.
The Polaroids amplified the silence, although whether this was due to the emulsive quality of the film or the urgent muteness of the faces, Noah couldn’t be sure. He’d attended many appalling crime scenes, but few had felt as ominous as this. He moved closer to the wall on the right. Not all the photos were faces, some were paintings. The longer he looked, the more he saw. Shoulders and shins, hands and feet. But it was the faces which wouldn’t leave him alone, staring from all sides.
Ron sucked at his teeth unhappily. Above their heads, the brittle Polaroid scales expanded and contracted, as if the ceiling was breathing. Under their feet—
The floor wasn’t flat, undulating in grey waves towards the window.
Noah studied the stained vinyl. ‘We should take this up.’
‘Shit,’ Ron said. ‘You think there’s more, under there?’
‘One way to find out.’
Of the assorted weaponry used in the Cloverton riot, smoke had done the most damage, worse even than the fire. Two men died in their beds after smoke found its way under their cell doors and into their lungs. Unlikely, Marnie imagined, that they were sleeping at the time. Stoned, or spiced; it was easier to get hold of drugs in here than it was to lay your hands on a clean towel. Michael Vokey hadn’t needed a weapon, using his bare hands to maim and cripple his fellow inmates. Only the smoke had done worse damage. Five men remained in hospital including Vokey’s cellmate, the one man with a decent idea of where Vokey might have gone to ground. Unless Marnie was about to catch a break, courtesy of Aidan Duffy.
‘You’ll want to catch him fast.’ Even after a week, Aidan’s eyes were wet from the smoke. ‘Vokey. Before he does his worst.’
‘That’s the plan,’ Marnie told him.
‘You’re thinking I can help?’ The smoke had ruined his voice, stealing all the softness from its southern Irish lilt, reducing it to a rasp. ‘I would, except he cut me out.’
It was the story Marnie was hearing from everyone in the prison. ‘Even you?’
‘Even me.’ Aidan wiped at his eyes, attempting a smile. ‘I’m small fry.’
‘You survived, better than most.’
He was the same handsome devil she’d first met eight weeks ago, with his black curls and stormy grey eyes, killer cheekbones. But the riot had stolen a layer of his gloss, leaving him pale and shaken. He looked down at his hands for a moment, remembering what? The slipperiness of the corridor after Vokey had finished smearing the inside of a man’s skull on the floor and walls. Aidan was a con-artist, an embezzler. He’d hurt people, it was true, but nothing on this scale.
‘Tommy Walton’s no friend of mine,’ he whispered. ‘But he didn’t deserve that. No one did.’
‘Who might be able to give us a lead on Michael? Nothing we have is getting us anywhere.’
‘CCTV on the fritz, is it?’ No sarcasm in his voice, just acceptance. He knew this prison intimately, its cracks and flaws, all the places it was failing to do its job.
‘Fire damage,’ Marnie said. The few working cameras had given them three long hours of thick smoke hiding everything. ‘No one who was in that corridor seems to want to help us.’
‘I guessed you weren’t here for your health.’ He bent his head over the table, rubbing with both hands until a light dusting of soot fell from his curls. ‘That’s after a couple of showers. This place isn’t fit for habitation, not even by scum like us.’
Marnie said steadily, ‘I haven’t any influence over transfers. You know that.’
‘I do know.’ He looked up, pain sharpening his eyes. ‘But you can get word to my boy, yes? To my Finn. Let him know I’m okay in case he’s seen the news and thinks I’m one of those with his eyes—’ He edited the sentence, as if saying the words would conjure the horror of what Vokey had done, not to Aidan but to Tommy Walton and Neil Bayer.
‘Finn knows you’re safe.’ As safe as anyone here. She felt a familiar ache for Aidan’s son. Finn Duffy, ten years old and ready to take on the world, was currently consigned to a foster home.
‘I’d ask to see him but I wouldn’t want him within a thousand feet of this place, now less than ever.’ Aidan propped his head on his hand. ‘Is he seeing much of his mother?’
‘I doubt it. Children’s Services don’t seem to think that’s a good idea.’
‘They’re right. I can’t pass judgement on anyone, I know that, but she’s no mother. She doesn’t have a bone in her body fit for that. Not for my boy. She does harm, you know?’
Marnie wanted to ask why, in that case, Aidan hadn’t taken better care to stay out of prison. If he knew Finn had only one functioning parent. ‘Tell me about Michael’s cellmate, Ted Elms.’
‘He’s a stranger.’ Aidan pushed the ball of his thumb at the soot on the table. ‘I’ve not met one quieter in here. It’s like he shut himself away to save anyone else the job. Doesn’t talk about what he did to deserve it. Once upon a time you knew how bad it was based on where they put you, but that’s all over now.’ He moved his fingers, scattering the soot. ‘You’ve only to look at Mickey Vokey to know that’s true. Transferred here because of overcrowding or underfunding, or no-fucks-given. They wanted him in with me.’ He blinked at Marnie, grey eyes liquid-bright. ‘Took me for a cosy chat and a cup of tea, stroked my ego ’til it could’ve stood up all on its little own. “Aidan, we know you’re respected in here,” “Aidan, you’ve got it all locked down.” Like I’m the psycho-whisperer. Like I can take a man like Mickey and just – make him behave.’
He sat back, leaving his hands on the table. A shadow scarred his face from the overhead light, but he hadn’t lost teeth, or eyes. He was one of the lucky ones.
‘You know this place hasn’t been run by the screws,’ lavishing the word with irony, ‘in a long while. Not since they stopped hiring the ex-soldiers and started bringing in the schoolboys. Saved a fortune in salaries so they could stop shouting orders and start begging us to behave. Only begging gets you about where you’d expect. Them on their knees and us . . .’ He shook his head in disgust.
‘They wanted Michael Vokey in with you,’ Marnie prompted. ‘But he ended up sharing a cell with Ted Elms. Why? Because Elms wasn’t the type to object? Quiet, you said.’
‘Two types of quiet, Marnie Jane. I’d’ve said you know all about that.’
‘At least two,’ she agreed.
Aidan Duffy had form with Marnie. She didn’t react to his proprietary use of her name – she needed him right now, just as he’d once needed her. Noise reached them in solid waves, the unedited soundtrack of forty inmates being rehoused, the slap of feet on floors, a thumping of doors. Underneath it all, a low rumble of discontent like the shallow bubbling in the pit of a volcano. How long before it all boiled over again?
‘You’re not going to ask what they had planned for Stephen?’ Aidan pushed his thumb at the table. ‘If I’d said yes to the offer of a new cellmate.’
‘Was it even an option?’ Marnie asked. ‘Three to a cell is the norm now, isn’t it?’<
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‘And they wonder why we riot.’ He watched her, moving his mouth tenderly. ‘Have you been to see him?’ He used his softest voice, as if he might break her by bringing the ghost of her parents’ killer into this room where seven weeks ago she’d faced Stephen Keele across a table like this one, freckled now by Aidan’s soot. ‘Have you seen him?’
She held his gaze. ‘He’s not allowed visitors.’
The hospital had custody of Stephen now, shackled to a bed by the tubing needed to keep him alive. He wouldn’t be looking at her across any tables any time soon, withholding his answers to her questions about why six years ago her parents had to die such brutal deaths.
‘I’m sorry for you. Truthfully. Of all the ways it could’ve ended.’
Nothing had ended, Aidan knew that. But she didn’t doubt his sympathy was genuine. Back when they were strangers he’d baited her about her foster brother Stephen, the sort of boy he was before her parents took him in, the ways in which Stella Keele had shaped her son’s childhood with her abuse and neglect, and her torture. Stories which gave Marnie nightmares, stoking her guilt. Eight weeks ago, Aidan Duffy hadn’t wanted her conscience clear of anything. But since then she’d tackled his son Finn away from a sociopath. Things had changed between them even before the riot.
‘Is Ted Elms likely to know where Vokey’s gone? Contacts, people who might hide him?’
‘We’re all hiding,’ Aidan said in his raw whisper. ‘Isn’t that what they say?’
‘Skipping the psychology. We’ve found a house that’s not registered in his name but Michael Vokey was living there, we’re in no doubt about that.’ She paused. ‘Did you see his cell here?’
‘Before the mess, you mean?’ Dislike danced in Aidan’s eyes. ‘I saw it.’
‘And?’ She needed his sharp eyes that didn’t miss a trick. Her witness, on the inside. Aidan owed her, and he knew it.
‘Mickey’s got a thing for photos.’ He rolled his neck. ‘Lots of them, all over the walls. Not family photos like the rest of us poor bastards, not unless he’s sixty sisters who look nothing like him.’ He scratched at his eyebrow. ‘Still, I didn’t get the bad vibe from him, and I’ve a good radar for the psychos, don’t ask me how he slipped under it. Ted now, he tweaked my antennae with the cacti and the rest of it. That cell was a jungle before Vokey got to work, pinning up his pictures.’
Pictures sounded innocent but they could be deadly, like the photos Stephen Keele had gifted to Marnie the last time they met. Photos which had been burning a hole in her bag ever since.
‘Ted keeps cacti.’ She nodded. ‘Tell me about Vokey’s photos. Of women?’
‘And girls, yes. Not what you’re thinking, not smutty. Mugshots, you’d call them. Selfies.’
‘Who were they, do you know?’
‘Hybristophilia – only you said to skip the psychology.’
‘What do you know about hybristophilia?’
‘Too much.’ He moved his legs under the table, stretching his spine in the chair. ‘My therapist likes to talk about it, her pet subject. Sexual attraction to bad boys. Liars, thieves and much worse than that. There’s those who think they can cure us, and those who prefer not to.’ Carving a smile with his mouth. ‘The ones who like us just the way we are.’
‘So the photos in Vokey’s cell were fan mail. From women who were writing to him here?’
‘That’s how it looked.’ Aidan ran his fingers through his curls, dipping his head to the side.
‘How many women?’
‘No idea. I try to tune out the gossip.’
She looked at him. He gazed limpidly back at her.
‘But this was more than gossip,’ Marnie said. ‘You saw the photos, in his cell.’
‘He was drawing pictures from the photos.’ His cheek hollowed. ‘I got him charcoals. He wanted paints, but they wouldn’t let him. Too messy, they said.’ He stopped, looking nauseated.
Remembering the much worse mess Michael Vokey had made?
‘No paints,’ she prompted.
‘I suppose that’s why he improvised.’
Blood and ashes in place of paint, and for brushes—
From the room above them a blast of sound cut off so suddenly it left a space. Aidan didn’t flinch, but he rubbed the heels of his hands at his eyes. He was bone-tired. It showed in his face and the restless movements of his fingers, the unnatural polish to his eyes. And it showed in the set of his neck and shoulders, the way he sat with his head tilted, light drawing lines along every angle of his face. When did he last get a decent night’s sleep? Perhaps that wasn’t possible in a place like this, even for a man like Aidan Duffy who had a knack for getting his own way, and staying wide of trouble. He’d retreated to his cell at the first sign of rioting, but the smoke had found him all the same. Marnie held hard to the questions she wanted to ask him about Stephen. How the pair of them could have been in the same cell breathing the same smoke, yet only one was in hospital, seriously ill. When she tried to picture it she saw a frantic fight for air, Aidan’s teeth bared, Stephen’s fists landing, the shove of their feet on the floor, a slam of bodies hitting the ground. Battling for what little air was left, a fight to the death. Did that account for Aidan’s sleeplessness?
‘Tell me about the riot.’
‘I didn’t see anything, stayed in my cell, we both did, ’til the smoke started coming through the vents. Then you know what they did, Marnie Jane?’ Aidan shut his eyes, pain thinning his face. ‘They locked us in. We were trapped, just us and the smoke. You’ve no idea how scary it is being locked in a box with smoke coming in and no way out. We wet everything we could, sheets and blankets and clothes. Soaked it all and stuffed it against the vent and under the door, but it was like fighting the air and we lost— We lost.’ He pressed the heels of his hands to the sockets of his eyes. ‘Stephen came off worst, but we were a team in there. It wasn’t each man for himself. I didn’t have to fight him for it, not like Arran and Jabal next door. Jesus, that was a bloodbath.’ He uncovered his eyes, blinking up at her. ‘I missed him. Mickey. He went under my radar. A psycho like that and I didn’t spot him. I wasn’t scared, not like I should’ve been, not until it was too late.’
How often did he admit to getting things wrong, missing tricks, being scared? Not often, Marnie guessed. ‘Thank you. You’ve been helpful. One last thing.’ She reached for her phone, scrolling to the images of the man they were hunting. ‘Does this look to you like Michael Vokey?’
An odd question. Had DCS Ferguson been here, Marnie might have hesitated to ask it. ‘It is him.’ She held out the phone. ‘But does it look like him?’
Aidan leaned forward, his eyes narrowed. She was showing him the image they’d released to the press and shared with police forces across the UK, with border control and passport officials, airports and train stations, anyone who might be able to help the police find the man responsible for the havoc here a week ago. Aidan studied the image for a long moment. Then he said what everyone was saying: ‘It looks nothing like him.’
Marnie scrolled to the next photo, and then the next. Pictures published in the press, and those taken from every passport, bus pass and driving licence held by Michael Vokey. Family snaps, and ones posted on Facebook by workmates or associates. Not friends, Vokey didn’t have friends, but his image turned up enough times to run the collection into double figures. She scrolled through the whole lot, pausing to allow Aidan time to consider each image in turn.
To each one he repeated the same words: ‘It looks nothing like him.’
Marnie’s head began to ache, the skin at her temples stiffening to a bruise.
‘It looks nothing like him.’
How were they going to find Michael Vokey?
How were they going to find a man who looked nothing like himself?
‘You’ve been staring at that foot for the last five minutes,’ Ron complained. ‘I’m starting to think you’ve got a fetish.’
‘I recognise it,’ Noah said.
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‘The foot?’
‘The style.’ He shifted on the stepping plate to get a better view. ‘I’ve seen it before.’
The floor in the sitting room, like the walls and ceiling, was scaly with images. Under the vinyl, tacked into place methodically, repetitively – Polaroids again, but of artwork. Oil paintings mostly, one of a human foot, cartoonish at first glance but the longer you looked the truer it became.
‘Did we know he fancied himself as Andy Warhol?’ Ron was crouched on a second stepping plate, to preserve whatever DNA evidence the floor might hold.
‘Dan’s curating a collection of prisoner art. This style, the brushstrokes?’ Noah pointed at the Polaroid of the foot. ‘It’s in the collection, I’m sure of it.’
‘Know what it looks like to me?’ Ron bent his head at the picture. ‘A car crash. Like being in a smash and surviving but with the wreckage right here,’ pressing his thumb to the bridge of his nose, ‘up in your face.’
‘Break Out. That’s the piece it reminds me of.’
Noah took out his phone and searched, scrolling until he could show Ron the scanned thumbnail from the catalogue his partner Dan was curating. The solid block of colour at the painting’s core might easily have been a burning car. Seeing it, you heard tyres ripping at the road, smelt the reek of rubber. The painting pulled you inside the burning vehicle as it bounced back into the collision to be hit again and again. You felt it – the shriek of metal-on-metal as the collision’s perimeter spread in a savagery of shrapnel, its heart hidden under a cloud of fiery smoke. Technically, it was a tremendous painting. Horrible and horrific, the kind to give you nightmares. Not unlike the scene Michael Vokey had left behind at Cloverton.
‘Jesus.’ Ron peered at the picture. ‘This’s up your alley. Loony tunes written right through it. All else fails you can hire your boyfriend as a consultant. He’s an art critic, isn’t he?’
‘Curator, but yes. Dan would be interested in this.’ Noah tried again for a perspective on the room, but only ended up with a crick in his neck. ‘We need to photograph all this, from every angle, before we take it apart. There might be a message here.’