by Sarah Hilary
She opened her eyes, still weeping. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t stop this. It’s upsetting, I know. Part of the symptoms, uncontrollable emotion.’ She wiped at her eyes and pulled a smile onto her face, shaking her head at Joe. ‘Don’t you get upset. This’s why I was putting off getting the diagnosis, not just for myself. Because of having to tell everyone. Friends, and Michael. I’ve no idea how he’ll cope, but I know it won’t be good.’ Her words ran into one another, jumbling. ‘He doesn’t know how to process things like grief, he just doesn’t. At Mum’s funeral he had to watch me, to see how to react. I don’t know who he’ll watch this time, because there isn’t anyone left and it’s so hard for him.’ She swallowed. ‘It’s terribly hard for him, please try and understand that. I know he’s not a good person, but he’s not all bad either. He’s just wrong. There’s something amiss with him, but it doesn’t make him evil. I only stopped visiting because I was afraid of his questions, and after that young mum, what happened up in London.’ She stared past Joe, to the window. ‘Perhaps you won’t find him and he’ll never need to know. About the diagnosis. Perhaps you won’t ever find him.’
He could see her imagining this outcome, her gaze fixed faraway, the tears running down her face to darken the neck of her hospital gown.
Her mouth plucked at a smile. ‘It would be one less thing to worry about.’
32
Cloverton was packed with noise that didn’t let up until Marnie was shown to the room where Aidan Duffy was waiting with a smile for her. He dropped the smile when he saw her eyes. ‘Is it Finn?’
‘It’s not your son.’ She sat. ‘It’s you. It’s the lies you told me the last time I was here.’
‘Did I lie to you, Marnie Jane?’ He moved his head away from her accusation. ‘Did I do that? I wasn’t well, it’s true. I was only just out of the hospital, but still—’
‘We’ve arrested Darren Quayle. He has a gun. I’m betting he’s going to say he got it from you.’
Aidan’s face tightened reflexively. ‘Bollocks to that. You don’t believe it.’
‘I believe you lied to me. At the very least you left something out. I want the full story of what was happening here, before and during the riot.’
‘You’ve arrested him.’ Aidan searched her face for some chink in this morning’s armour. ‘Quayle. For the gun?’
‘For assisting in Michael Vokey’s escape,’ Marnie said. ‘Harbouring an escaped prisoner.’
Forensics had confirmed that Vokey had been on the allotment, in the shed. The clothes, the food, the bodily waste. All his.
The air left Aidan in a long sigh. ‘He did that, then. Dazza. He helped Vokey get away.’
‘You suspected it?’ A pulse of anger made her eyes burn. ‘Because it might have been helpful to have heard that from you a week ago.’
‘A week ago I was in hospital.’ He narrowed his shoulders, making less of himself, hoping for her sympathy. ‘But even in the hospital I was hearing the whispers.’ He nodded at the walls. ‘The threats. You think it’s a coincidence not one person will tell you what went down that night he ran?’
‘Who’s threatening you?’
‘Directly? No one. But Dazza has a way of reminding us our loved ones are in the firing line now Vokey’s on the run. The way he put it you’d think Finn was sharing a cellar with that madman.’ His eyes grew stormy. ‘It’s the same for all of us with kiddies, wives. This’s what their expensive training did for Dazza. Taught him to make friends with the inmates, get us chatting about our home lives so he can throw a few names about, make the fear more real.’
Darren’s blackmail notebook had personal details from each inmate’s life. Finn Duffy’s name was in that book. Only two entries had no names next to them: Ted Elms, and Stephen Keele. For everyone else, Darren had a shortcut to getting what he wanted.
‘All those techniques they taught him to keep the peace, and he’s using them to wage war.’ Aidan pressed a knuckle to the bridge of his nose. ‘Not one of us feels safe talking to the police, not with Vokey out there.’
‘You didn’t think the solution might lie in finding him and putting him back behind bars?’
‘You make it sound so easy, Marnie Jane. But it’s been over a week and here you are, having to pick my brain for its crumbs because you’re no nearer finding him.’
The safety glass in the windows gave Aidan three reflections instead of one. Treachery in triplicate. She’d been a fool to trust him, a fool to think he trusted her just because she’d saved his son when that was her job. It was her job. Finn was out of her hands now, and Aidan had other allegiances to forge, new foes to fight. Loyalty was a commodity to a man like Duffy.
‘You could have made my job easier.’ She held onto her temper, but barely. ‘Instead, you chose to make it harder.’
‘Choice didn’t enter into it.’ Aidan shook his head, pleading with his eyes. ‘I’ve Finn to think about. Even Tommy Walton has a brother. We’ve all got someone, that’s how the world works. It finds out all your soft spots with its threats. We’ve all got someone who keeps us soft.’
Marnie changed tack, tired of banging her head against his brick wall. ‘Darren has told us he’s scared, too. For his mother, for himself. He has to go home at night and it’s safer in here than it is out there.’
‘He’s right about that. Look what happened to my boy Finn. If I was out there— The threats wouldn’t work as well.’ Aidan frowned at the table, looking more serious than she’d seen him in a long time. ‘You kid yourself you can do something if you’re on the ground. God knows I’d put myself in the way of any harm coming to him but in here? There’s nothing to do but lie awake at night imagining what Mickey might do just for the fun of it, because he’s bored or he didn’t like the way I looked at him that one time. The dads have it worst, worrying about their kids. We’re guilty enough we’re in here in the first place, as if that’s not proof enough of our shitty parenting.’
Marnie thought of Anita Quayle’s eyes, awful with emptiness.
‘Prison’s a bitch for working on your guilt,’ Aidan insisted. ‘And Dazza took lessons thanks to his training, all those tricks they taught him for making friends.’
‘Not only tricks,’ Marnie said. ‘He had a notebook, did you know about that? A notebook with Finn’s name in it, and the names of other dependants. He was keeping tabs on everyone.’
‘Not only names.’ He snapped the words, fear wearing anger’s mask.
‘What do you have that you’re holding back?’ Marnie demanded.
He pulled his left hand from the table and put it into the pocket of his sweatpants. Took out a screw of paper like a grubby roll-up, pressing it to the table with his thumb. A short moment passed with his eyes on her and his thumb on the paper, before Marnie reached out and took it, uncurling the roll-up to find a sketch of Finn looking up at her. Barely half a dozen lines in pencil but it captured all the boy’s bravery, his wariness and readiness to take on the world. Black brows like his father’s, eyes like a storm out at sea, the line of his jaw so delicate and assertive it could have been a butterfly’s wing. Marnie’s fingers fizzed with recognition, sharpening the ache she carried in her chest for Finn, her fear for him and her pride in his courage.
‘From a photo I had in my cell,’ Aidan whispered. ‘One look, that’s all he got. But tell me he hasn’t trapped my boy right there,’ pointing at the scrap of paper, ‘not just his face, his soul.’
‘It’s an extraordinary likeness.’ Marnie passed the drawing back, watching as Aidan rolled it tight and returned it to his pocket. ‘You thought it was a threat?’
‘What else would it be – a gift? He’s a crooked, intimidating bastard.’ Aidan’s eyes threw sparks. ‘I hope you’re going to put him away for good this time.’
They considered one another. He was in a corner, and he hated being in a corner. Unless Marnie could guarantee his son’s safety, he would give her nothing.
‘Did you know about the gun?’ she as
ked.
‘Only so far as I knew about the rest of it. Quayle’s a fantasist. I may as well’ve told you about the old army tank in his garden, or the Samurai swords. If I’d known the bastard was going to piss all over my feet with it, I’d have mentioned the gun weeks ago. I thought it was a fantasy.’
‘And yet you’re the one with the reputation for getting everyone what he wants. You got the charcoals for Michael Vokey. What else did you bring in here?’
‘Sweets. He had a sweet tooth. I got him Skittles.’
‘What else?’
Aidan dropped his head forward, linking his hands at the back of his neck. Guilt written right through him, like words through a stick of rock.
‘What else?’ Marnie demanded.
‘He has small feet.’ Speaking the words at the table. ‘Michael. He’s a size seven, small for a man. He’s not big, but that’s really small feet.’
Marnie’s silence forced him to look up.
‘He wanted shoes.’ Knuckles white on his own neck. ‘I got him shoes.’
‘You got Michael Vokey a pair of size seven shoes. What sort of shoes?’
‘That’s the thing.’ The Irish lilt softened, dimming his voice. ‘That’s why I wasn’t rushing to tell you. Running shoes. He wanted running shoes so that’s what I got him, and then – he ran.’
It explained his guilt, and his silence. That and the vivid sketch of his son.
‘We’re trying to work out when exactly he ran,’ Marnie said. ‘How soon into the riot?’
‘I was in the cell with Stephen.’ He drilled a thumb at the table. ‘You know that. I missed all the action. Once it kicked off, they locked us in.’
‘But you know what went down. You’ll have spoken to the others in the last week. You make it your business to know what happens around here.’
Aidan dropped his hands to the table, scratching at a mark on the metal, rolling his neck to the right. Calculating his currency with her, how far his stock had fallen with the revelation about the running shoes, what he had to claw back. Everything was a calculation with Aidan, a slow dance to make him feel in control no matter how much ground he’d ceded. Even the sketch in his pocket, his way of tugging on the leash of her affection for Finn.
She wasn’t in the mood for dancing. ‘Let me make it easy for you. Aidan Duffy, you do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence—’
He didn’t smile, but his mouth crooked. ‘You’ve beautiful eyes when you’re angry. Resolution blue. When Mickey wanted paints, he gave me a list of colours and that’s yours, Marnie Jane. Resolution blue.’ He straightened, becoming serious. ‘I didn’t see what went down on the night of the riot. I did the survivalist thing, stayed in my cell until they gave us no choice and locked us in. I heard the noise and I saw the smoke – nearly died from the smoke – and I heard screaming and it wasn’t like any sound I’ve ever heard, in here and out there. It was primal.’ He pressed his thumbs to his eyelids. ‘I went with Finn into the countryside once when he was tiny. It was the day they take the calves from their mothers to get their ears clipped and whatever else they do. I don’t know anything about farming or cattle, but I know terror when I hear it. The sound those cows made when their calves were taken and they couldn’t see what was happening, but they remembered, or they knew— They knew enough to cry about it.’ He dropped his hands to the table. ‘I never wanted to hear that noise again. So we did the seaside afterwards, never the country. But that night?’ He shuddered. ‘The night of the riot, I heard it. Terror and fury and pain and grief. It was unearthly.’
Marnie heard him out. When he’d finished she asked, ‘Who started the riot?’
‘Which version do you want?’ He put his hands in his hair, meeting her eyes. ‘The one I’ve heard, or the one I know? Because I don’t know. None of us do. We’ve been told. Dazza did a great job of feeding us all the official line, but we don’t know.’
He’d done a lot of thinking since she was last here. Marnie could see it in his face. He’d struggled with the same puzzle she had. Here at the crime scene, shut in with the evidence. He’d made it his business to find out what went down.
‘Tommy Walton. With a tray. In the corridor. Tommy, the Musical. That’s how it started.’
‘Go on.’
‘He hits the walls, he hits the floor, he hits Mickey.’ Aidan blinked slowly, his eyes going out of focus as he conjured the scene. ‘Mickey hits back, breaks his nose. Now Bayer wants a piece of it because Tommy’s his boy and he likes a scrap. He punches Mickey and that’s when Mickey goes for his eyes. And the next one just the same, like he’s a taste for it now.’
‘Who started the fire?’
‘Oh, that’s Mickey too. You might think he’d his hands full what with the GBH, but Mickey’s a man of many talents. He’s six sets of hands, and he can be in three places at once.’
‘Meaning it’s a lie.’ Her pulse skipped. ‘Which part don’t you believe? The GBH, or the arson?’
Aidan leaned towards her, hauling his eyes back into focus, pinning her with his grey stare. ‘None of it. None of it’s the truth. But he’s out there, and why ask awkward questions? Why give yourself extra work to do? There’s a hell of a mess and a man’s gone in the middle of it. So put him in the middle of it.’ He moved his hand expansively. ‘One ball to bring down all the pins.’ He sat back, his stare challenging her. ‘I didn’t know him well, it’s true, but Michael was a lazy bastard, the kind to eat soup from a can because he can’t be bothered heating it. Everything’s too much trouble for a man like that. He wouldn’t start a fire or a fight. If there was a way around wiping his own arse he’d have found it.’
Marnie’s wrists tightened. She didn’t want to believe Aidan’s version of events, but she was the one who’d told Noah they had it wrong. So much of this case, right from the start.
‘And yet he ran,’ she said to Aidan. ‘That took planning, required physical exertion.’
‘Oh, I’m not saying he’s incapable of being desperate. We all do things when we’re desperate. Things we wouldn’t usually do.’
This was Ruth’s version of Michael. Cornered, afraid, forced to run. ‘Why was he desperate?’
‘You need to ask yourself what he actually did,’ Aidan said. ‘What you know about Michael Vokey. Not what you’ve been told, or what you suspect. And you can forget whatever you’ve extrapolated. Strip it all back.’ His stare was the colour of polished pewter. ‘Slay the beast in your head, and look at the man.’
‘He attacked Julie Seton in front of her own child. Are you saying that’s not true?’
‘There’s Julie,’ Aidan said. ‘And there’s Charlie.’
‘Charlie?’
‘His cellmate in Leeds. Charlie Lamb. The reason he was transferred here. I’ve friends in Leeds who say Charlie would be alive if he hadn’t been put in a cell with Michael Vokey.’
Attempted suicides, and one that succeeded. The prison governor had likened Vokey’s influence to an outbreak of rabies. ‘Charlie Lamb was a suicide.’
‘Sure he was.’ Aidan moved his thumb on the table, tracing a shield knot, an ancient symbol for protection.
‘You know different?’ Marnie said.
‘I know Michael’s not the sort to lift a finger to save a boy who’s on a path like that.’ His voice was rigid, unforgiving. ‘I know he drew pictures of Charlie, showed them around the place, offered to sell to anyone who wanted to see what he’d looked like hanging in the cell they shared.’
‘He has a house full of photographs,’ Marnie said. ‘And artwork. Pictures like the one you’re describing.’
‘He likes to look.’ Aidan nodded. ‘In my experience, there’s lookers and doers. But they’re not usually the same people.’ He’d studied this from every angle, shut up in here with the evidence, all the whispers and rumours, and the truths no one would share with the police.<
br />
‘In that same house,’ Marnie said, ‘in the cellar. There’s an empty grave.’
Someone was kicking a ball in the yard outside, or hitting a punchbag. Rhythmic, repetitive. The table jumped with the echo of it, until Aidan stilled it with his thumb, pressing the pattern of the shield knot over and over into the metal as if he could score it in place. A symbol for protection and warding, keeping malevolent forces at bay.
‘A grave,’ he repeated. ‘Well, you’ve got me there. But since it’s empty . . .’ He spread his hands, palms up.
‘Why did he run? Why go to that effort, or take that risk?’
‘You’d have to be frantic,’ he agreed. ‘I only ever knew one other man who did it. He was being bullied by the guards, threatened by a couple of the inmates. He was scared. Not prison-is-a-scary-place scared. Out of his mind with it. It got so he couldn’t see straight, he’d duck if you spoke to him, scream at his own shadow. Or else he’d kick you, throw his fists at anything that moved. They said he was mad with rage, but it was fear. A man like that would run, whatever the risk.’
‘Where’s he gone?’ Marnie asked. ‘Where would a man like Michael run to?’
‘Somewhere he’s sure of a warm welcome. Or somewhere he thought’d be warm. A bit of peace and quiet, I’m thinking that’s what he’d be after.’ He dipped his head at her. ‘They told you about the night terrors? He’d tear up his cell with the shouting, nothing they could do to make him stop. I don’t know how Ted stayed sane. So I’m thinking Michael would want a warm bed to run to, a chance to catch up on his sleep. Peace, and quiet.’
Lara’s letters, the ones she’d written and the ones she hadn’t, all promised one thing. Sex. Not much peace there. And Ruth was full of lectures, wanting to pray, to save his soul.
‘His sister, Alyson. What do you know about her?’