Jailbird

by Caro Savage

  ‘Can’t you read the sign?’ said a voice with a hint of alarm.

  Bailey turned around. A small tubby inmate was standing there. She had pale blotchy skin and the kind of cheap glasses which made her eyes look huge.

  ‘What sign?’

  ‘That one.’

  The inmate was pointing to a piece of A4 paper taped over the washing machine’s control panel. Written on it in crude felt-tip pen were the words: ‘OUT OF ORDER – ELECTROCUTION HAZARD!’

  Bailey jerked away from the machine, letting the lid drop shut with a clang.

  ‘Thanks,’ she muttered.

  The inmate squinted at the handful of rags she was holding. ‘You shouldn’t be washing that stuff anyway. We’re leaving all the mops and rags until Friday. Today it’s sheets, pillowcases, towels and blankets.’

  Bailey looked at the stinking handful of rags.

  ‘Oh right. Sure.’ She dropped them back into the trolley and watched the inmate trudge away, dwarfed by the huge trolley she was pushing.

  Bailey left the trolley full of smelly rags where it was and stealthily made her way around the back of the laundry so she could walk along the other side of the racking.

  As she did so, she noticed an odd contraption standing next to the wall. It had a large cast-iron frame and two thick wooden rollers. It took her a few moments to realise that it was an industrial mangle, a relic from Victorian times. Surely they still didn’t use this to dry clothes? She smiled to herself at the thought of it. More likely they’d just never got round to moving it – it looked like it weighed a ton.

  ‘Who are you?’

  Bailey spun around, her heart thumping in surprise.

  The stern-looking prison officer she had seen a short while earlier was standing there, arms crossed, eyeing her suspiciously. She was short and heavily built, like a female gorilla, and she didn’t look like the kind of person who brooked any messing around.

  ‘I don’t recognise you,’ said the prison officer. ‘You weren’t in here ten minutes ago.’

  ‘Oh hello…’ said Bailey, smiling affably and clicking her fingers in attempted recall. ‘Sorry what was your name again?’

  ‘Shelley Foster,’ the officer replied without smiling. ‘And you are…?’

  ‘Bailey Pike.’ Bailey smiled and held out her hand. Shelley made no attempt to shake it.

  ‘You haven’t answered my question,’ said Shelley. ‘What are you doing in here?’

  ‘I was just… er… admiring this antique mangle.’

  Bailey cringed inside at her excuse. Surely she could do better than that. What had happened to her ability to think on her feet? She must be rusty.

  Shelley curled her lip in a sceptical sneer and tapped one of her chunky black shoes on the floor impatiently.

  ‘Do you work in here?’ she asked.

  ‘Um… No.’

  ‘Then you shouldn’t be in here. The laundry is off limits to anyone who doesn’t work here.’

  ‘I guess I’ll be going then.’

  ‘Inmates need to stay in the right areas. If I see you out of bounds again, I’ll put you on the nicking sheet.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m new here. I didn’t know the rules.’

  ‘You should have been paying more attention at induction.’

  Bailey nodded meekly and rapidly made her way out of the laundry, disappointed that her investigation had yielded no useful information so far.

  12

  When Bailey got to the phones, she found a large noisy queue. The opportunity to make phone calls was limited to a few hours a day during the association period, and everyone wanted to make calls at the same time – off-peak and out of office hours.

  She joined the end of the queue and stood there eavesdropping on the conversations going on around her, listening out for any nuggets of gossip which might concern Alice. But she didn’t pick up anything about the murder. The inmates’ talk seemed to revolve mainly around their lawyers and their appeals, their kids and what to get them for their birthdays, and their husbands and boyfriends and whether they were cheating on them whilst they were in prison. The lives she was hearing about put the prison demographic firmly at the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum.

  Standing there in the queue, she reflected that she would have liked to have called her parents, particularly her father. She’d talked to him briefly on the phone before entering the prison, in an attempt to clear the air, but he hadn’t really been very receptive to her overtures and she was now going to have to wait until this job was over before trying again. For the period that she was incarcerated in the prison, she would be unable to conduct any kind of communication with them for security reasons. It would just be too risky. Her parents knew about her undercover work and that she could never reveal any more than the vaguest details about whatever job she was working on. All they knew was that she could be out of touch for indeterminate periods of time and she always tried to warn them in advance when it looked like this might be the case so they didn’t get too worried about her. On this occasion though, she hadn’t had the chance to properly inform them before her father had ended the call in a frosty huff, making her remember once again that it was pointless trying to communicate with him when he was in one of his moods.

  Finally her turn came and she ducked into a booth. She punched her PIN number into the metal keypad of the phone and then dialled Frank’s number. The phone rang for a few rings, then Rita answered it in her characteristic Essex accent.

  ‘Hello, Sullivan Knight Solicitors. How can I help?’

  It sounded pretty authentic, Bailey had to admit. Rita did indeed come across exactly like a secretary in a law firm somewhere.

  ‘It’s Bailey Pike speaking. I’d like to talk to Mr Knight please.’

  ‘Just putting you through.’

  Some holding music came on – a sorrowful and hypnotic piano melody that she’d heard before but which, like most classical music, she couldn’t put a name to.

  It stopped abruptly as Frank came on the line.

  ‘Hello Bailey.’

  ‘What’s the holding music? It sounds familiar.’

  ‘Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’.’

  ‘A personal choice?’

  ‘It’s one of his most popular pieces.’

  ‘It’s kind of… funereal-sounding.’

  ‘I’m sure it’ll grow on you.’ He paused. ‘Are you okay to talk?’

  She glanced around and pushed herself further into the booth. There wasn’t a lot of privacy, but the general background noise would help to drown out her conversation.

  ‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘No one can hear me.’

  ‘What’s the status of your investigation?’

  ‘I checked out the laundry. Looks like it’s a dead end. And so far I haven’t heard anything to suggest that Alice’s cover was blown.’

  ‘What about the drugs ring?’

  ‘Nothing yet. But then I’ve only been in here two days.’

  ‘Maybe it’s time you started making some friends.’

  ‘You don’t need to tell me how to do my job.’

  ‘Sorry. I don’t mean to rush you. It’s just that I’m certain someone in there must know something. Have you managed to talk to her cellmate?’

  ‘I’m working on it. If someone in here knows something, I’ll find them and I’ll find out what they know. But I’ll do it my way.’

  There was a pregnant pause on the other end of the line.

  ‘A slight complication has arisen that you should be aware of,’ he said.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Alice’s family are unhappy about the fact that her death’s been covered up. They want to know what happened to her and they’ve threatened to go to the newspapers.’

  Bailey let the news sink in. She tried to get her head around the potential ramifications of what he’d just told her. ‘What’s the official version of events?’

  ‘They were told that she died in the line of
duty on an unspecified undercover operation.’

  ‘And they want to know the specifics?’

  ‘Yeah. We’ve told them it could jeopardise ongoing operations and even the lives of people involved, but they’re pretty persistent. They’re upset and angry. Understandably.’

  ‘Hold them off for as long as you can. I don’t think there’s any need to panic just yet.’

  ‘Glad to see you’re keeping cool.’

  ‘I used to do this for a living, remember?’

  She hung up the phone and went back to her cell, already feeling an acute sense that the pressure on her was starting to ramp up.

  13

  ‘And that’s why it’s called Foxbrook.’

  ‘Eh?’ said Amber. She had momentarily switched off whilst Maggie had been explaining the etymology of the prison’s name.

  ‘Because of the Foxbrook.’

  ‘Oh right,’ said Amber, collecting herself. ‘The river yeah? The one that used to flow nearby.’

  Maggie nodded and smiled, satisfied that Amber had been paying attention to her.

  They were walking together at a leisurely pace along the upper landing of C-Wing. It was mid-morning, the cells were open and most of the inmates on this wing were out in the yard, ostensibly to take exercise although it seemed to Amber that most of them just stood around out there smoking and talking.

  Maggie had been at the prison for donkey’s years and seemed to know everything there was to know about it. How it was named after a nearby river. How there had been a gallows here at one time in the north end of the yard. How the prison used to hold men but had switched to women just after World War Two. How in Victorian times the prisoners used to have to go on treadmills as a form of punishment. How the whole reason that prison officers came to be known as screws was because they were the ones who’d tighten the screws on the treadmills to make them more difficult for the prisoners to walk on.

  She liked to regale the inmates with these anecdotes and facts, and Amber would often notice them glancing at one another, not quite understanding why she was boring them with trivia. But Amber could see that Maggie was actually being rather clever. The prison’s history was a neutral topic through which she could engage with the inmates without overstepping any kind of personal boundaries. And, who knew, perhaps some of them even came to appreciate the place a little more with a deeper understanding of its historical context.

  Maggie did go on a bit, but Amber was grateful for her protective guidance. Maggie had taken Amber under her wing, so to speak, and had certainly helped to accelerate her learning, letting her in on all the little tips and shortcuts that they didn’t teach you in training.

  Today, they were both on general duty as landing officers. This meant that first thing in the morning they would unlock the landings of the various wings and let the inmates know that they had an hour for exercise. Whilst the prisoners were on exercise in the yard, they would remain on the wing and check the LBBs – the locks, bolts and bars – and carry out any individual cell searches that needed to be done. Once the inmates were back on the wing, they were free to patrol the prison as they wished, keeping a general eye out for trouble, sorting out any petty problems and lending a helping ear if need be.

  Out of all the roles that the guards had to perform, this was the one that Amber enjoyed the most. It meant that she could get out and about and have a chat. She liked to chat. Perhaps not quite as much as Maggie though.

  As they walked along, she nodded to the inmates who were returning from the yard. Some of them nodded back. Some of them ignored her. The odd one scowled at her. Generally, they were fairly closed when it came to communicating with the guards, except when they wanted something like an extra privilege such as cigarettes or additional visiting time.

  ‘Well they mostly seem in a good mood today,’ said Amber. ‘It looks like it’ll be a day without friction.’

  Friction meant trouble.

  Maggie smiled in a knowing manner and looked at her watch. ‘It’s nine thirty now. Let’s hope it’s still that way by twenty-one thirty.’

  ‘Are there many fights in here?’ she asked.

  Amber hadn’t seen any serious occurrences since she’d started, something she was quite grateful for, but she knew it was only a matter of time before something did happen and she was kind of dreading it, especially if it entailed anything approaching the kind of viciousness that had been seen with the murder.

  ‘You should always be prepared for a slam,’ said Maggie matter-of-factly.

  ‘A slam?’

  ‘A fight. They’re much less of an occurrence in female prisons than they are in male prisons… but when something does kick off you never know what might happen.’

  As prison officers, they weren’t allowed to carry batons and thus had to rely on techniques of unarmed physical restraint, and on each other. That was why it was so important to be able to trust your fellow officers. The personal safety of the guards was something Terry was always sounding off about amongst other things.

  ‘Any trouble that kicks off mostly boils down to their routines,’ said Maggie.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Time passes slowly in here and the only way most of them stay sane is to have a routine of some sort. Most problems start when the inmates mess with each other’s routines.’

  Maggie paused and nodded politely to a passing inmate, then she continued.

  ‘The same goes for us. We need to respect their routines as well. If you respect their routines, they’re much more compliant, much easier to get along with, and that’s so much better for everyone in the long run.’

  ‘Sometimes it’s hard to know how friendly to be. I feel that we’re not supposed to be too friendly. But I want them to like me.’

  ‘Be friendly but don’t be friends,’ said Maggie. ‘Respect them and they’ll respect you. But remember there’s always a line between us and them.’

  ‘There’s just so much to learn here that isn’t in the book.’

  ‘The book will only get you so far. You’ll be fine just so long as you remember the following things.’ Maggie counted the points off on her fingers. ‘Always help an officer in trouble. Always back up an officer in an argument with the inmates. Never rat on an officer. Never make an officer look bad in front of the inmates. And, most importantly, don’t let yourself get corrupted by them. The main thing is that your fellow officer always comes first. Above this lot. Always.’

  Amber gritted her teeth and nodded. She was rapidly learning that hard experience was the only thing that could truly prepare her for the reality of this job.

  14

  Bailey stood in the lunch queue scanning the inmates sitting in the canteen, wondering if Alice’s killer was sitting somewhere among them right now. Much as Alice was the reason that she had elected to come in here, she had to remind herself that her operational priority was to find out about the drugs ring, and if she didn’t do that then Frank would be unhappy and the pressure on her would only increase.

  Her best bet, in terms of finding out useful information, was to start talking to her fellow convicts. But where was the best place to start? Where was the best place to sit? Which one of them was Melanie Clarke? Bailey had no idea what she even looked like.

  She glanced from table to table, trying to spot the right opportunity. She ruled out the table of butch-looking dykes sitting together whispering furtively amongst themselves. They looked too cliquey to break into. Likewise with the group of black inmates over by the window. As she’d already found out, by its very nature prison was cliquey and inmates tended to gravitate towards groups formed of their own types. Bailey had known that this would present a challenge for a new lone inmate such as herself.

  Then she noticed the girl she’d seen in the shower, the one with the track marks on her arms. Her bleached hair, shaved at the back and sides, was tied up in a distinctive topknot, and she was wearing a long-sleeved jogging top which concealed her punctured forearm
s. As luck would have it, she was sitting by herself.

  As soon as she got served her food, Bailey headed over to the girl’s table, and stood there, her tray poised.

  ‘Mind if I sit here?’

  The girl looked up at her with pained dark-rimmed eyes. Her pale skin glistened with a faint sheen of perspiration and she appeared to be shivering slightly.

  ‘Fuck off,’ she muttered.

  Okay, maybe some other time, thought Bailey.

  She shrugged and looked around for somewhere else to sit. She spotted an empty table in the corner. She headed over to it and placed her tray down. Maybe it would work the other way round. Hopefully someone would come and sit down at her table and start a conversation with her.

  She started eating. She’d opted for the chicken chasseur and it tasted surprisingly good. In between mouthfuls, she began to notice other people in the canteen staring at her. The table of dykes were murmuring and looking in her direction. She wondered what they were saying about her. She was starting to get a bad feeling. Something wasn’t quite right.

  She got her answer a short while later, but not quite in the way she was hoping.

  ‘You’re sitting in my seat,’ said a harsh, rough voice.

  Bailey looked up. Standing over her was a blonde inmate with short spiky hair. She was accompanied by several others who all had the same hard, sinewy look about them. There was a black one, an oriental one who appeared to have a squint, and a huge one, looming up behind them, who looked like she’d been hewn from a large block of concrete.

  ‘I didn’t realise reservations applied here,’ said Bailey.

  ‘You trying to be clever?’ The blonde inmate drew her lips back in an aggressive sneer, revealing a gold tooth set in her upper jaw.