by Simon Booker
Morgan spots Anjelica Fry straight away. Apart from two officers, hers is the only black face on the wing. Newspaper photos showed a plump woman, but the transformation is shocking. Gaunt. Dark circles under puffy eyes. Thin to the point of emaciation. The convicted murderer is twenty-seven, but could be mistaken for forty, maybe older.
She’s sitting on the floor of a playpen staring dully at a baby boy who prods at a stack of plastic bricks. Registering her visitor’s arrival, the woman blinks slowly then gives a frown, as if trying to work out the answer to a puzzle. Morgan makes a quick assumption: Anjelica is on powerful medication, her brain addled by a cocktail of chemicals designed to dull her emotional pain and, above all, keep her quiet.
Morgan smiles, holding up a wait-a-moment finger as she shows her visitor’s order to the prison officer, a borderline-obese woman in her thirties. She can see Anjelica getting to her feet, lifting her baby from the playpen and handing him to one of the other mothers.
Looking around for Trevor Jukes, Morgan sees him muttering in the ear of another screw. She overhears the words ‘Care Bear’ and stifles a flicker of irritation. Prison visitors, art therapists, social workers – all are damned as ‘bleeding-heart liberals’ or ‘busybodies’. That people think this way makes Morgan seethe. Is it just a British thing? Do other countries and cultures use ‘do-gooder’ as a term of abuse?
She’s relieved when Jukes leaves without saying goodbye.
‘Miss Fry – visitor.’
The overweight officer beckons to Anjelica who plants a half-hearted kiss on her baby’s forehead then leaves him with her fellow prisoner and shuffles towards the wing office. Everything about the woman is in slow motion – the way she walks, blinks, swings her arms. She has bruises on her forearm, cuts to her cheek and her forehead is bandaged. If asked, she will say she ‘fell in the shower’.
Visits usually take place in the visitors’ centre, but thanks to an initiative by ‘Genghis’ Carne, mothers have dispensation to receive people on MBU itself, so they can show their babies to family and friends without disrupting other visits. A baby can stay till he or she reaches the age of eighteen months. After that, ‘the system’ takes over. Fostering. Adoption. ‘Care’.
The officer nods the two women into a side room. A circle of chairs. Posters offer tired homilies.
Change your thoughts, change your world.
Forgiveness means giving up all hope of a better past.
‘Your baby’s gorgeous,’ says Morgan.
As icebreakers go it’s far from subtle, but has the virtue of being true. Something approaching a smile crosses Anjelica’s face.
‘Yeah.’
Her voice is barely audible, a croak. She fingers a gold crucifix around her neck.
‘What’s his name?’
‘Marlon.’
‘As in Brando?’
Anjelica shakes her head.
‘It was Karl’s dad’s name.’ She frowns. Blinks. A thought fights its way through the cocktail of drugs. ‘I keep thinking they’re going to take him away, put him in care.’
She refocuses her gaze, as though seeing her visitor for the first time. Her eyes flicker towards the guard stationed outside the door then back to Morgan.
‘I’m not a strong person. I can’t stay in here. Please?’
Morgan keeps her voice steady. Firm but gentle.
‘I need to be honest from the start. I can’t promise anything. Are we clear?’
A nod.
‘So, tell me your story.’
Anjelica blows her nose. She clears her throat then tucks the tissue into her sleeve, like a little girl.
‘Where do I begin?’
*
Anjelica Fry met Karl Savage in a Starbucks near the care home where she cooked two meals a day for thirty-five elderly residents. He spilt her coffee, paid for a replacement and made her laugh so much she thought she was going to wet her knickers. A week later he charmed her into bed – her first white boyfriend, her first big love. She got pregnant almost immediately, even though they were scrupulous about protection.
One in a billion, Karl called it, but with hindsight she wonders if he might have pricked holes in the condoms.
‘He made a joke about it once,’ says Anjelica. ‘Looking back, I think he was being serious. He was desperate for kids. “I want hundreds of mini-mes”, he said. “Karl Savage is prime daddy material”.’
Morgan raises an eyebrow.
‘Did he often talk about himself in the third person?’
‘Sometimes. Why?’
‘Never mind. Go on.’
As the pregnancy progressed, Karl persuaded Anjelica to move in to his Dalston flat, above a Vietnamese restaurant. Only then did the ‘charmer’ slowly reveal his true nature: a control freak, obsessively jealous, incapable of passing up any chance to bed other women, sometimes two in a day. He told Anjelica he’d worked for years as an electrician but now dealt in second-hand cars. A week after Marlon was born she discovered the truth: her baby’s father was a drug dealer. Karl specialised in what he called the ‘ack drugs’ – crack and smack – and was full of grandiose ideas. Had she heard of Pablo Escobar? Worth thirty billion dollars? Karl was going to be bigger than Escobar.
Anjelica pointed out that the drug lord had died in a hail of bullets, but he’d shrugged, retorting that 25,000 people had turned out for Escobar’s funeral, and you didn’t get a Netflix show about your life if you were a nobody.
He’d flashed the tattoo on the soft, white flesh inside his forearm.
Rather die on my feet than live on my knees.
She spent months plotting her escape, getting herself fixed up with a housing association flat back in her old manor, Croydon, to be near her widowed father, but he’d died of lung cancer before she could make the move. The day after the funeral, while Karl was ‘at work’, Anjelica took Marlon to the park. She never came back.
Cue Karl’s charm offensive. Tearful apologies. Doggerel copied from greetings cards and written in red biro. Flowers stolen from the local cemetery. When these tactics failed, the harassment began. Stalking. Yelling in the street. Obsessive messaging. Nearly three hundred texts in one insane forty-eight-hour period. Standing outside her flat, staring up at her bedroom window, finger pressing on the buzzer.
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. BUZZZZZZZ.
Anjelica tried to reason with the man she’d loved. She borrowed books from the library and, after reading widely, told her ex that he had abandonment issues, a legacy of having lost his father at a young age and being maltreated by his mother. She also told him that he had a borderline personality disorder and exhibited many of the tendencies associated with being a sociopath. He called her a bitch. And worse. But she didn’t sever all ties.
‘Why not?’ says Morgan.
A shrug.
‘He could be sweet. And he was good looking, sexy, exciting.’
‘Exciting in what way?’
Anjelica screws up her eyes, thinking hard.
‘He picked me up one night in a taxi. Not a minicab, a proper black taxi. I asked where we were going. He wouldn’t say. Told the driver to go to the West End and keep driving around Knightsbridge, Park Lane, all these posh places. Then he gave him a hundred quid cash so we could do it in the back of the cab, outside Buckingham Palace.’
‘Classy guy.’
The sarcasm is lost on Anjelica.
‘Yeah.’ A slow smile plays on her lips. ‘But crazy.’
‘What kind of crazy?’
Anjelica stretches her arms above her head.
‘Sometimes good crazy, like the taxi thing. But bad crazy too. Like the night with the ambulance.’
‘Ambulance?’
The woman cracks her knuckles then puts her hands in her pockets.
‘We were driving home. He’d borrowed a flash car – a red Porsche – and we got stuck in rush-hour traffic. Total gridlock. And this ambulance was trying to get through – siren blaring, lights flashing. All the cars were d
esperately trying to get out of the way, clearing the road, but Karl didn’t move a muscle. Just kept looking in his rear-view mirror, with the ambulance stuck behind us, trying to get past, honking and flashing its lights. And he was laughing, happy as Larry, blocking the road.’
Morgan’s eyes widen.
‘Deliberately?’
The woman nods.
‘I said, “Someone’s in that ambulance. They need to get to hospital.” He told me to shut the eff up.’
‘So what happened?’
‘The other cars managed to manoeuvre out of the way, so the ambulance could get by. Then the gridlock cleared and he drove me home. I told him he had a sick soul. He told me not to make a fuss. Then he came up with one of his sayings: “Keep all the rules, miss all the fun.”’ The woman sniffs. ‘He had all these stupid sayings.’
‘Like?’
Anjelica thinks for a moment.
‘Like, “Whatever you do in life, you need to go up like a rocket, even if you come down like a stick.”’
‘That’s the first thing he’s said that makes sense,’ says Morgan.
‘That was Karl. One minute he was smart and funny and kind, the next he was like Jekyll and Hyde. After I had the baby, it was all flowers and lovey-dovey stuff at first. But then we had a mega row and he told me I was a terrible mother. Threatened to snatch Marlon and take him out of the country.’
‘Was he being serious?’
‘Absolutely.’ She takes a breath. ‘So that’s why I did what I had to do.’
‘Which was?’
‘I told the police he sold drugs.’
Anjelica’s voice has taken on a steely edge. Morgan holds her breath. She’s forgotten the ache in her ribs.
‘He had another saying: “What Karl Savage wants, Karl Savage gets”,’ says Anjelica, shifting in her chair. ‘It was true. He wanted me, he got me. He wanted a baby, he got a baby. He wanted other women, he got them. So if he wanted his son . . .’ She tails off, tugging the tissue from her sleeve and blowing her nose again. ‘Then the fire happened.’
Morgan remembers the newspaper accounts. Karl’s body was so badly burned that he was identifiable only through dental records.
‘Where were you the night he died?’
She’s read the accounts in the papers but wants to hear Anjelica’s version. To look into her eyes. Watch her body language. Searching for a tell.
‘At home. Marlon was sick. His temperature was so high I was terrified. The doctor said it probably wasn’t serious, just a fever, but I stayed up all night. I phoned NHS Direct around 2 a.m. They said to take him to A & E if he got worse, otherwise leave it till the surgery opened in the morning.’
‘And?’
‘I stayed awake all night, taking his temperature every hour and praying like I never prayed before. I didn’t leave the flat. I swear on the Bible.’
Glancing at the crucifix dangling from the woman’s neck, Morgan feels a pang of guilt. Assuming Anjelica is telling the truth, she succeeded where Morgan failed. The most important job of all. Keeping her child from harm.
Pushing the thought away, Morgan recalls many sleepless nights with Lissa, often a sickly baby. Obsessively checking her temperature. No one to turn to. She may not have been the world’s best mother but she could never have left her baby alone for hours. Could Anjelica Fry?
‘Tell me about the petrol can. The one the police found in your car.’
‘Dad’s old car.’ Anjelica is twisting her tissue in her fingers. ‘He left it to me when he died. I was going to sell it, but—’
‘Forget the car. Tell me about the petrol can.’
Anjelica has told the story many times. To police. To lawyers. To the jury. Maybe that’s why it sounds rehearsed.
‘I had a bad experience when I was eighteen, just after I passed my driving test. I borrowed Dad’s car one night. Ran out of petrol in the middle of nowhere. This guy offered me a lift in his van. Made me laugh for a couple of miles then pulled into a lay-by and raped me.’ She takes a deep breath and falls silent for a moment. When she speaks again her voice is barely audible. ‘After I inherited the car I kept petrol in the boot so I’d never run out again.’
Morgan leans forward.
‘The police said the can was empty. The prosecution said it contained traces of the brand of petrol used by the arsonist.’
Angelica nods, rolling her eyes.
‘The whole additives thing, yeah.’
The whole additives thing is what did for Angelica, along with the Spanish matches found in her flat. Fire investigators identified distinctive molecules from additives used by BP. The police retrieved CCTV of Angelica filling the can on a BP forecourt. So far, so unexceptional: hundreds of BP stations, millions of gallons of fuel. But the investigators also managed to identify diatoms from matches in Anjelica’s kitchen – a Spanish brand with which she shared her name. She admitted bringing the ‘Anjelica’ matches home from a holiday in Lanzarote – just a quirky souvenir, but without it she might be at home now, or taking Marlon to the park.
Her solicitor said the evidence against her was purely circumstantial. No jury would convict.
But here she is. And here she’ll stay, unless someone champions her cause.
‘They said I’d have done anything to stop Karl taking my baby, which was true.’ Angelica checks herself, swallowing. ‘But not that. Not setting fire to his flat . . .’ She swallows again, eyes brimming with tears.
Morgan lets Anjelica sob. She scans the woman’s bruises, the cuts on her cheek. She doesn’t need to ask how they got there. The woman is unpopular. Weeks of hostile press coverage cemented her reputation as a callous killer. A heartless mother.
Mum murdered lover while sick baby cried.
Devil woman.
‘Time’s up.’
The overweight prison officer is in the doorway, hands on her hips.
Morgan checks her watch.
‘Still got twenty minutes.’
‘My shift’s over. There’s no one to supervise.’
Anjelica looks panic-stricken.
‘We don’t need anyone to supervise.’
The officer rolls her eyes.
‘Two minutes – make ’em count.’
She steps outside. Anjelica starts to babble, running out of time.
‘The good Lord knows I’m telling the truth but he’s testing me every day. I need you to believe me. There’s no CCTV of me driving across London, the car doesn’t show up on the number plate recognition thing – the ANPR . . .’
She knows all the jargon. But still Morgan isn’t convinced.
You could have taken a friend’s car. Or a night bus. Or a minicab.
‘I need to review everything,’ she says. Her ribs are aching now.
Anjelica fixes her with a glare.
‘Easy to write a book, make money,’ she says. ‘Harder to help people.’
Morgan forces half a smile. The woman is short on charm, but has a point.
‘I’ll give you an answer as soon as I can.’
She gets to her feet. Anjelica follows suit, fear in her eyes, panic in her voice.
‘I can’t lose my baby. I can’t be in here. Not for something I didn’t do.’ She pauses, her voice falling to a whisper. ‘God forgive me for saying this, but if you don’t help me, I’ll kill myself.’
The threat makes Morgan bristle with anger. The words harden her heart.
‘You know I’ll have to report what you just said.’
A steely stare.
‘Just being honest.’
The officer is back, tapping her watch, lips pursed.
‘I’ll be in touch,’ Morgan says. But Anjelica isn’t finished.
‘I read your book. It says you have a daughter.’
‘Yes.’
The woman stares Morgan in the eye.
‘Think about me tonight, when you’re trying to get to sleep. Picture me here. Imagine I’m your daughter.’
‘I’ll do what I
can. I promise.’
Morgan follows the officer onto the landing. She turns. Anjelica is watching, twisting the tissue in her hands, a picture of anguish. Behind her head is a poster.
Today is the first day of the rest of your life.
*
On the landing, Morgan relays Anjelica’s threat to the officer. The woman gives a weary sigh then produces a form. Morgan completes it, recording Anjelica’s desperate attempt at emotional blackmail. Across the landing, the two prisoners are returning with Jukes. Morgan hears Port Wine Stain whisper to her fellow inmate, the hefty woman with pink hair.
‘I’ll hold the bitch down, you kick her tits.’
Little doubt who she’s talking about. Morgan scans Jukes’s face but he remains impassive.
‘Did you hear that?’
‘Hear what, Miss?’
Morgan considers her options. She could make a fuss, but knows it would be counter-productive, especially if she needs to see Anjelica again. She has yet to make a decision, but the fact she didn’t warm to the woman is irrelevant. She’s not looking for friends, she’s looking for justice. And maybe an investigation for Pro Bono with a decent pay cheque attached. But she needs to be sure of her ground.
Trevor Jukes escorts her back to the exit, his jaunty whistling echoing along the corridors. In reception, he retrieves her leather jacket from the locker. Feeling in its pockets, she gives nothing away, but her heart is galloping, her brain racing.
Reaching the safety of her car, she scrutinises the jacket carefully, turning it over in her hands.
The lining has been slit open.
Then sewn up again.
Four
‘What am I? Your drug mule?’
Morgan is trying to keep her temper, but the throbbing in her ribs is doing nothing to improve her mood. Sitting cross-legged on the sofa, her daughter has assumed a defensive posture: arms crossed, shoulders hunched, lips pursed.
‘Fuck’s sake, Mum. You’re acting like I’m a criminal.’