One afternoon I was crouching down in a corner, studying the spines of books, trying to find something that might help occupy my thoughts, when a prisoner accosted me. Serving a long sentence for offences including drug dealing, soliciting, and aggravated robbery, Layla was the sort of prisoner I was keen to avoid. We came, as the expression goes, from different sides of the track. More than anything else, her reputation for violence terrified me. But on this occasion, I was unaware of her approach. Too late to effect an escape, I avoided her gaze and tried to conceal my fear without provoking her by appearing defiant. Layla’s dark hair was scraped back off her face in a high pony-tail, accentuating her sharp features and bulging eyes, and, as she squatted down beside me, I caught a whiff of her stale sweat.
‘Want to score?’ she hissed, her blue eyes glittering with a strange fervour.
Caught off guard, I stumbled backwards in surprise, hitting my head on the shelf behind me. As a couple of books landed on the floor, Layla let out a low laugh, amused at my discomfiture. Edging forward, she trapped me in the corner.
‘Spice?’ she hissed. ‘I got some good shit.’
My eyes flicked to a poster on the library wall warning of severe penalties for drug dealing. Hardly daring to look at her, I backed away and knocked another book on the floor. It was impossible to remain oblivious of the prison authorities’ battle against drugs, with signs and posters displayed in every room discouraging the use of illicit substances.
‘No... ’ I stammered. ‘No... thank you. I don’t... I never have done. It’s not for me.’
‘Fucking rookie,’ she snarled.
Mesmerised by a tiny trickle of saliva sliding down the side of her chin, I prayed that my silence wouldn’t be interpreted as provocative.
‘You’ll be begging for it soon enough, rookie.’
Snapping her fingers in my face, she spun round and darted away leaving me trembling in the corner. After a few moments, I grabbed one of the books that had fallen on the floor and hurried to join a few prisoners who were sitting around a table reading. No one glanced at me as I sat staring at a pristine copy of Jane Eyre. I must have been the first prisoner to remove it from the shelf.
‘How do they get hold of drugs in here?’ I asked Tracey the next time we went outside for a walk in the garden.
‘Why? Are you looking for ways to numb the pain of existence?’
I wasn’t sure if her question was serious or not. ‘I just wondered how they did it, that’s all. No reason. I mean, why doesn’t anyone stop them? It seems ironic that they’re allowed to break the law in here, when the whole purpose of the place is to punish people for doing just that. It doesn’t make sense.’
‘Some prisoners ask their visitors to bring in whatever they want.’
‘I thought visitors were searched when they arrive?’
She grunted. ‘They are. So what? They still smuggle stuff in. Everyone knows it goes on, but they can’t seem to stop it. And then there are prison staff who aren't as clean as they should be, and a few of them bring stuff in for the prisoners. It’s a problem. Some of the women here are stoned a lot of the time, and they keep the doctor busy with their adverse reactions to the shit they shove into themselves. If you ask me, they should just let them pass out and leave them to it. Let them rot. Doctors shouldn’t be wasting their time saving the lives of drug-crazed criminals.’
‘They’re entitled to medical care when they’re ill.’
‘Not if they bring it on themselves.’
‘What about alcoholics?’
She shrugged. ‘Alcohol’s a different matter. For a start it’s not illegal.’
I didn’t want to argue with my only friend in the prison, so I let the matter drop. It hadn't occurred to me that many of the prisoners were using drugs. In my naïveté I had assumed the prisoners were mainly docile because, worn down by the system, they had come to accept their condition. Tracey told me some of the prisoners had violent outbursts, which she said were drug induced, although I couldn't help wondering if some prisoners were only quiet when they were under the influence of drugs. Possibly the truth was that the authorities tolerated the abuse in order to maintain the peace. When I raised the question of drugs being available in the prison with one of the older officers, she told me the situation had deteriorated when a raft of senior officers had all left within the space of a few months, resulting in a high proportion of inexperienced officers running the facility.
‘Why weren't they replaced with experienced staff?’
She sniffed. ‘Budgets. Government cuts are making it impossible for us to do our job properly. We’re already understaffed, and the prison population keeps growing, and we’re expected to carry on improving the service. Lack of funding is putting a real strain on the system. But it all goes on behind locked doors, literally, and so everyone turns a blind eye.’
‘It doesn't help if prison officers are smuggling in drugs,’ I said.
She gave me a disapproving frown. ‘Where on earth did you get that from? You don't want to believe everything you hear in this place.’
Observing the erratic behaviour of a few of the prisoners, I was inclined to believe what Tracey had told me. My experience of prison life was growing increasingly uncomfortable as time went on. In addition to my separation from Dan, my loss of liberty, and the endless boredom, I now had Layla to worry about. Whatever else happened, I would have to make sure I never found myself alone with her again.
24
I stared in genuine disbelief. It seemed like a miracle, although Andrew assured me it wasn’t unusual.
‘Family concerns always get court sympathy,’ he said. ‘And quite rightly so. The fact that you broke the terms of your bail to go and see your son definitely counted in your favour. We couldn’t have swung it without your mother-in-law’s statement confirming she saw you in Edinburgh on the afternoon of your release. Pity you didn’t see her later that night,’ he added with a shake of his head. ‘The police are doing everything they can to implicate you in the death of your husband’s mistress, but they haven’t come up with any concrete evidence yet. And without anything that proves you were there, it’s all speculation. They won’t find evidence to place you anywhere near the scene of the second murder, will they?’
‘No. They haven’t found any evidence, because I wasn’t there. I mean, I have been to her flat but they already know that. They arrested me there.’
‘Which means any traces of your DNA found in her flat will be useless.’ He smiled at me.
‘If I hadn’t gone to see her that evening, there wouldn’t be any of my DNA there. I’ve only been to her flat that one time, and I was hardly there five minutes before the police turned up.’
I broke off, feeling churlish. Andrew had just arrived to inform me that he had succeeded in renewing my bail and instead of thanking him, I was complaining.
‘Anyway,’ I said brightly, ‘this is wonderful news. I really can’t tell you how grateful I am. So, what happens now?’
‘You pack your bag and walk out of here. Go straight home. The same conditions apply as before but this time you won’t need to report to your local police station. Instead you’ll be subject to electronic monitoring with a six o’clock curfew which means you have to stay in your house after six o’clock every day. At some point this evening, a supplier will arrive to install the monitoring equipment at your home. There’s no need to look so worried. It’s a very straightforward system. You might have heard it called tagging. You'll be fitted with a transmitter device around your ankle, and if you remain at home after six in the evening, the receiver device fitted in your home will send radio messages to the monitoring unit. If you leave the curfew address, the signal from the tag automatically stops and an alert sounds at the monitoring centre within a minute of your departure and, basically, the police will turn up before you have a chance to go anywhere. It’s just a way of keeping tabs on you, and it saves you having to go along to the police station every day. You’re
free to go out and about during the day and, under trousers, no one will even see you’re wearing a tag.’
‘What if I take it off?’
‘The short answer to that is you can’t, not without damaging the tag and that will set off the alarm. This is serious, Julie. You can’t afford to mess up again. Next time the courts won’t be lenient. They’ll leave you languishing in prison until your trial comes up. To be honest, you wouldn’t have been released at all if they weren’t desperate to get people out on bail to relieve the pressure on overcrowded prisons.’
I promised to obey the conditions. In a way it was like still being in prison except I had to be back inside by six instead of seven, and I would have to feed myself from now on. But my comfortable home was vastly preferable to my prison cell, and I wouldn’t have to worry about bumping into Layla again. Dan might even come home. I cried with relief as I packed my bag. It only remained to say goodbye to my few friends in the prison.
Tracey said she was pleased to see the back of me. I knew what she meant. Neither of us wanted to stay in prison any longer than we had to. We shook hands and then hugged, and she wished me luck.
‘The same to you,’ I replied.
She nodded. Her case was due to come up in court soon and then she would know the length of her sentence.
‘I could come and visit you,’ I said.
We both knew that was never going to happen.
‘I don’t intend to be here long enough to have visitors,’ she answered.
Without such bravado, our stay in prison would have been unbearable.
‘See you on the dark side,’ she smiled.
The only other person I would have said goodbye to was Polly, but I couldn’t see her anywhere. She must have been in the gym, working in the kitchen, or perhaps at the doctor’s. I didn’t want to hang around, so I left. I don’t suppose she would have cared, one way or the other. People were constantly arriving and departing, and once they had gone they were quickly forgotten.
It felt strange and wonderful to be walking back into my house. The place had a dusty in feel to it, as though it had been uninhabited for years. I switched on the television to people the silence. Grabbing a black bin liner, I emptied the contents of my fridge: a half litre of milk which had been turning sour for weeks, a pot of mouldy yoghurt, a portion of cooked chicken which smelled disgusting, half a loaf of bread which had turned green, and other bits and pieces at various stages of decay. It was only four o’clock, so I went out to Sainsbury’s.
My credit card didn’t work. I tried three times before I realised what had happened.
‘Shit!’
The cashier smiled wearily at me. ‘Have you got another card?’
I shook my head. If the police had stopped one of my cards, they must have stopped all of them.
‘Are you paying cash then?’
I checked my purse. ‘Yes, but I’ll just have to put a few things back.’
Mortified, I glanced apologetically at the customers waiting behind me as I manoeuvred my way past them back into the store. Only one woman grumbled at me as I pushed by her.
‘Oh piss off,’ I growled, and she fell back, scowling.
‘How rude,’ someone else said, loudly enough for everyone in the queue to hear. ‘Some people have no manners.’
I stalked off to replace my most expensive items, taking a puerile pleasure in putting them on the wrong shelves. Jars of olives, artichokes, and sun-dried tomatoes from the deli counter found their way to the dairy section, a welcome home present of a bottle of Champagne appeared on the bottom cheese shelf, to be substituted with a cheap Pinot Grigio, until my trolley contained less than a basket’s worth of bargains. After all that hassle, I barely made it home by six.
While I was unpacking my shopping, a fitter arrived to install my monitoring equipment. She assured me the box would leave no unsightly marks, and I had no choice but to accept her word. The unit was much smaller than I had anticipated and once she set it up in a corner of the living room, out of sight behind the television cabinet, it wouldn’t really have mattered if it did leave any traces. Next, she handed me a chunky grey plastic bracelet and instructed me to fit it around my ankle. Once it was on I could twist it around, but it wouldn’t come off unless I physically cut through the band holding it in place.
‘What happens if it gets wet?’
She assured me there was no need to worry about that as it was waterproof, and she handed me a booklet which she said ought to answer any queries I had. There was a number to call if I had any trouble with it, although she assured me that thousands of people had been fitted with these devices without any problems.
‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘You’re all set.’
She had only been in my house for a short time, but she left me wearing a constant reminder of my status, as though I had been branded with a hot iron. Crying with self-pity, I opened my cheap bottle of Pinot Grigio. This was all Paul’s fault. I wished he were still alive, just so I could tell him what I thought of him. I was overcome with fury, but it didn’t matter. There was no one to see me punching the sofa. No one to hear my howls of rage.
25
My head ached after my crying fit, but somehow I felt better for having given voice to my anger, and ready to focus on practical problems again.
That evening I called Ackerman to ask him for more money, but there was no answer. With my purse empty, and no more expensive jewellery to sell, I had to find a way of raising some cash. First I raided my bedroom and found a string of pearls and a pair of pearl and diamond earrings that had belonged to my mother. They wouldn’t raise much, but anything was going to be useful to help tide me over until I could access my bank account again. I blessed my mother’s hankering after expensive jewellery.
Next, I came across an old watch which had belonged to my father. It looked as though it was gold, which could fetch a few pounds. But my find of the evening was an old bank book from a savings account I had opened years earlier, before I was married. It was hidden down the back of a drawer where I had kept it concealed from Paul, just in case I ever needed it. I had forgotten about it. The fact that the book was still in its hiding place in my bedroom raised my hopes that the police hadn’t stumbled on it. They had been looking for evidence of murder, not old bank books. There was a chance they didn’t know about the account which had over three thousand pounds in it the last time the book had been updated. With interest accrued over the years, there might be considerably more in there by now. The only problem was getting hold of it without my driving licence which the police had retained. I could hardly ask them to return it. Once again, I would have to ask for Ackerman’s help.
Having fixed myself a supper of toast and baked beans, quick, nourishing and cheap, I switched on the television and settled down with my bottle of Pinot for company. I must admit, I wasn’t unhappy, despite my situation. There could be few women as well off as I now was who were reduced to eating on next to nothing, but that was a temporary cash flow problem. As soon as Ackerman returned my calls, he would sort out my finances. With luck, there might even be sufficient funds in my savings account to keep me going until this whole sorry business was over and I could access the rest of my money again.
When I still hadn’t heard from Ackerman by ten o’clock, I decided to try his number one last time before turning in. His failure to answer his phone or respond to my increasingly frantic messages was beginning to worry me. If anything happened to him, I would be in trouble. With no money at my disposal, it wouldn’t be easy to replace him.
By the time he picked up his phone, I had drunk nearly the whole bottle of wine. Not having touched a drop for over a month, I was almost incapable of stringing two sentences together.
‘Where have you been?’ I demanded.
‘You sound drunk.’
‘I had a drink, yes. So what? Wouldn’t you if you were me? Wouldn’t you have a drink? If you were me, wouldn’t you have a drink?’
‘Prob
ably not,’ he replied. ‘I think I’d be careful to keep my wits about me.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean? Do you think I’ve lost it? Do you think I’ve lost my wits?’
‘Never mind. There’s no call to get angry. I’m on your side, remember? So, have you been calling me for a reason?’
‘Too right I have. Calling and calling.’
‘How much have you had to drink?’
‘Never mind. Do you know they’ve tagged me?’
‘Yes, I heard. So no more trips to Scotland for a while.’
‘That’s not the point.’
‘What is the point?’ he asked.
I gesticulated fiercely, forgetting that he couldn’t see me. ‘I’ve run out of cash. Purse is empty. And I had to put nearly everything back. Even the tomatoes.’
‘Are you calling to ask me to bring you some tomatoes?’ He sounded as though he was laughing.
‘I’m celebrating my homecoming with a cheap bottle of wine and one tin of baked beans,’ I told him.
‘Are you drinking alone?’
‘I’m not inviting you round to share it, if that’s what you’re after.’ I picked up the bottle. ‘This is mine.’
‘I most certainly am not interested in joining you.’ He sounded indignant.
‘There’s no need to be like that. I’m an attractive woman. I’m… ’ I struggled to find the right word. ‘I’m a woman.’
‘I was referring to the wine,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t go out for a bottle of cheap plonk, however attractive the person issuing the invitation was.’
The Adulterer's Wife Page 13