by Caro Savage
Bailey’s ears perked up at the mention of Alice. She glanced at Mel. Mel had started to fidget uncomfortably.
‘Yeah I heard about her,’ said Bailey carefully. ‘Did she die in the same way then?’
Kay nodded. ‘Yeah. Scalped. Like what the Native Americans used to do. Puts the fear of God into your enemies. You do that to enough people, no one will fuck with you.’
Bailey scanned the three of them. ‘Do you think this ABC gang killed her as well then?’
Kay and Seema once again exchanged nervous looks.
‘Maybe,’ said Kay. ‘Maybe she crossed them. They don’t mess around. You even just look at them the wrong way and you’re in trouble.’
‘What do you think, Mel?’ asked Seema. ‘Do you think they did it?’
Mel’s fidgeting got more agitated and a muscle in her left eye began to twitch.
‘Stop talking about killing!’ she said, her voice coming out in fits and spurts. ‘Mel doesn’t like it.’
‘Mel’s been getting a bit jittery about this murder business ever since her cellmate got killed,’ explained Seema. ‘A bit too close to home, eh Mel?’
‘What was she like?’ said Bailey. ‘This cellmate?’
She suddenly craved some morsel of detail about her deceased friend, something that would momentarily bring her back to life.
Seema shrugged. ‘Never talked to her.’
‘Kept herself to herself,’ said Kay.
‘Bit of a loner,’ added Seema.
‘Just like you,’ murmured Kay, fixing Bailey with a curious stare. ‘Loners don’t always last too long in a place like this. You gotta have mates, y’know. Safety in numbers, know what I mean?’
Bailey nodded slowly, recalling all the different cliques she’d seen around the prison. It felt like a warning. She guessed it was.
‘Ally was nice to Mel,’ said Mel in a quiet voice. ‘Mel liked Ally.’
Bailey looked at Mel. She was staring dejectedly at her feet with a melancholy look on her face.
That figured, thought Bailey. Alice had always been a compassionate person. She was the kind of person who would have had time even for a spaced-out headcase like Mel. She’d had time for Bailey when Bailey had been going through a rough patch, after she’d split up with Mark, and then later also, after that last undercover job had gone so wrong. That’s what friends were for. They were there when you needed them. It was just a shame that Bailey hadn’t been able to be there for Alice when she’d been in her greatest hour of need. Bailey felt like she’d let her down.
‘Can you die from being scalped?’ asked Seema, creasing her brow quizzically.
‘I reckon the shock alone would kill you,’ said Kay.
‘I heard there was blood everywhere. Like, everywhere.’
‘Scalp wounds bleed a lot. That’s because there are more capillaries under the scalp.’
‘But I heard she was stabbed as well. Like, properly carved up. Throat cut and all that. Like a frenzy. Poodle as well. Both of them done the same way. That’s what I heard.’
‘Stop talking about this!’ screeched Mel suddenly, clapping her hands over her ears. ‘Mel doesn’t like it! It’s horrible!’
Bailey recoiled at the outburst. They all went silent and their attention turned to Mel.
Kay smiled vindictively and leaned forward towards Mel and mimed the scalping.
‘Yeah… all ripped off… rrriiiiipppp!!! Blood everywhere!!!! Uuuurrrgggghhhh!!! Cut her scalp right off!’
Mel screamed louder, clamping her hands tighter over her ears, shutting her eyes and banging her legs on the bunk.
Kay collapsed into stitches of laughter.
Mel’s eyes popped open. She snatched the joint out from Seema’s fingers and took a huge drag on it. The tip glowed orange and a big end of ash formed. The ash trembled dangerously before falling squarely in her lap. She didn’t seem to notice.
Bailey tensed, concerned at what she might do next.
Mel turned to stare at her with big bloodshot saucers of eyes. Bailey shivered, transfixed by these twin whirlpools of torment. She wondered exactly what traumas Mel had undergone in her past to fracture her reality so.
‘Stop talking about killing,’ said Mel in a low voice. ‘It makes me paranoid.’
Seema laughed nervously. ‘You sure don’t want to make Mel paranoid. We don’t call her Crazy Mel for nothing…’
And with that, Seema suddenly leaned across to the table at the end of the cell and plucked a small square of coloured paper from a pile lying there. She thrust it out to Mel, who was still staring at Bailey.
‘Here, Mel, calm yourself down,’ she said.
Mel looked down and noticed the piece of paper. She suddenly seemed to snap out of whatever trance she was in. With a deft gesture, she swapped the joint for the piece of paper in Seema’s hand and started folding it furiously.
Bailey exhaled in relief and then watched her in bemusement.
Mel’s long brown fingers moved rapidly to fold and crease the paper. Bailey could see her visibly relax as she engaged completely with her task, now oblivious to the rest of them.
Seema nodded at Bailey and winked. ‘Origami. It chills her out, y’know… eastern mind–body shit.’
It explained all the little coloured paper animals lying around the cell.
‘Maybe she should just smoke less dope,’ said Bailey.
Mel grinned happily and looked up at the rest of them. She proudly displayed her outstretched palm to Bailey.
Standing there was a small origami duck.
27
There were the customary large, noisy queues down by the phones. As she waited there, Bailey noticed Sharon join the end of the line. They made eye contact. Bailey smiled at her. Sharon smiled back.
After a few minutes, Bailey glanced over her shoulder again. Sharon was staring hard at her as if intensely curious. Bailey felt a pang of annoyance. One thing she didn’t need was a nosey parker like Sharon marking her every move.
When her turn came, Bailey pushed herself into the phone booth, twisting her head away from Sharon’s view, just in case she happened to be good at lip-reading.
She entered her PIN and then dialled the number. The phone rang for a few rings, then Rita answered in her nasal voice.
‘Hello, Sullivan Knight Solicitors. How can I help?’
‘It’s Bailey Pike speaking. I’d like to talk to Mr Knight please.’
‘Just putting you through.’
This brief exchange between Rita and Bailey took exactly the same format every time, the strict protocol decided in advance for the sake of security.
For a few seconds, Bailey enjoyed the sweeping melancholy tones of Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’, and then it broke off as Frank Grinham came on the line.
‘So what have you got for me?’
‘It appears that a prison gang who call themselves the Ace Blade Crew hold a virtual monopoly on drug distribution within the prison.’
‘Ace Blade Crew?’
‘ABC for short. They’ve got these distinctive tattoos. I noticed them in the shower. Apparently they carry knives and they’re not averse to using them. People in here seem to be really scared of them. I think it’s highly possible that they killed both Alice and Poodle. Alice because she was a police officer, Poodle because she owed them drug debts.’
‘Good work. Now we’re getting somewhere. But—’
‘It’s not enough. Yes, I know. We need something more tangible than say-so and conjecture.’
‘So what’s your next move?’
‘I need to find a way in somehow.’
‘Prison gangs are notoriously hard to infiltrate. It would be somewhat easier if we had an informant in place to vouch for you.’
‘But we don’t. And that’s fine by me.’
He was quiet for a few moments. She knew he was well aware of how her previous job had panned out. The whole debacle had centred around an informant.
‘Oh, yeah, and
I’m going to need some more money in my canteen account to buy stuff like cigarettes.’
‘You don’t smoke.’
‘They’re used as currency in here. I made a small drugs buy the other day and it wasn’t cheap, I can tell you that.’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said.
‘Thanks.’
‘By the way,’ he said. ‘I think it’ll be okay with Alice’s family. I think I managed to smooth it over with them and convince them not to go to the papers.’
‘That’s good news.’
There was a loaded pause. ‘Bailey?’
‘Yes.’
‘Be careful.’
She nodded without saying anything, not that he could see her, and hung up the phone. She looked around. Sharon was nowhere to be seen and she guessed that was a good thing.
28
Bailey observed Toni through the anti-suicide netting that was strung between the balconies at an interval of every two floors.
Now that she knew Toni was the leader, Bailey had switched the focus of her surveillance onto her. Toni was walking along the landing below with her customary self-assured swagger, her lip curled in an expression of permanent disdain.
She glanced upwards and Bailey drew back behind the thin cover of a cast-iron balcony column. Her stomach turned over, for she feared that Toni might have spotted her. But peeking out from behind the pillar it seemed that she hadn’t.
Bailey took off, moving parallel to Toni on the landing above, weaving between the inmates who were lounging there. Utilising her covert surveillance skills, she trailed her at a distance as she reached the end of the landing and descended to the floor below. It looked like she was heading for the house-block exit and the prison yard. Bailey moved rapidly, her heart beating hard as she skipped down the metal stairs, determined not to lose sight of her target.
She had been secretly observing the movements and activities of Toni and her gang for several days now, determined to generate some useful information. But she was careful to be very discreet and stay well out of their way. After all, she now knew that they carried weapons and had few qualms about using them.
Her observations so far confirmed what she had assumed – that Toni was the leader of the gang, for it was she who appeared to be the one issuing commands to the others. It seemed that her second-in-command, or lieutenant, was Keisha. The oriental one with the squint was called Rong, she’d overheard, but she still didn’t know the name of the big one that looked like a bodybuilder.
Toni had indeed left the house-block for the yard and Bailey followed her outside. It was overcast and spitting lightly with rain. Scanning around, she spotted Toni walking towards the north end of the yard. Bailey cursed the bad weather. The rain meant that there weren’t many inmates in the yard so she would be much more conspicuous in the large open space. Keeping close to the outside wall of C-Wing, she headed briskly after Toni.
Up this end of the yard lay nothing much besides the library and the chapel, neither of which were places she would have associated with someone like Toni. Bailey reached the end of C-Wing and stopped there, peering around the corner of the wall. She was surprised to see Toni enter the prison chapel.
She didn’t expect Toni would have much respect for religion. Unless of course there was some other reason for her entering the chapel…
Bailey decided not to follow her directly in. Although she had never been inside the chapel, she imagined it was a fairly small place which would make her presence quite obvious. So she stood in the yard and watched while the spitting rain grew ever steadier, making dark blotches on her grey tracksuit.
She huddled, small and insignificant in the shadow of the huge granite walls, the leaden sky only serving to compound the bleak penal atmosphere.
After about ten minutes, the chapel door opened and Toni emerged. She looked around shiftily and then started to head back across the yard in Bailey’s direction, back the way she had come. With a burst of panic, Bailey realised that she was exposed and that Toni would spot her when she came around the corner of C-Wing, which she would do in a few seconds. Why would she be out alone in the rain in the middle of the yard? It would look mightily suspicious. There was no time to run anywhere and it was too far to go back to the entrance to the house-blocks.
Toni was almost upon her. Looking around frantically, Bailey’s eye was caught by the numerous cigarette butts littering the dirt by the wall. Thinking fast, she rapidly swooped down and picked one up. She then pulled her tracksuit hood up over her head and dropped her face to conceal her features. She slumped against the wall in an imitation of the junkie-style slouch that she had seen other inmates adopting, clutching the cigarette butt between her fingers, pretending as if she were part-way through smoking it.
Moments later, Toni strode by, passing her by a matter of centimetres, giving her little more than a cursory hostile glance up and down. Just another inmate out in the yard putting up with the rain for the sake of a smoke…
And then she was gone, heading back to the main entrance to the house-blocks.
Letting out a sigh of relief, Bailey flicked the cigarette butt away in disgust. She pulled her hood down and looked at Toni’s retreating back. Then she turned and made her way quickly across the yard to the chapel. Pushing the heavy wooden door open, she entered it for the first time since she had been in the prison. Inside, it was cool and dark and it presented an oasis of tranquillity in the otherwise tense atmosphere of the prison.
A number of wooden pews lined either side of the aisle, hymn books lying here and there on them. The pews were empty and the chapel appeared to be completely devoid of inmates.
Dominating the front of the chapel was the altar. Resting on top of the altar block was a large wooden cross, upon which was a model of the crucified Jesus painted in full gory colour.
Also at the front of the chapel was a simple wooden lectern and to one side of that was an organ festooned with pipes and buttons. On the far left-hand side of the chapel were two carved wooden confessional booths, side by side, one for the chaplain and one for the confessor. On the right-hand side of the chapel, Bailey noticed a door which was slightly ajar.
She sat down on a pew and reflected on things. Why would Toni have come here, and only for ten minutes? There were no other inmates in the chapel, so she couldn’t have been meeting anyone.
Perhaps she was being too cynical. Perhaps even a brutal bully like Toni was religious. Religion didn’t always engender the most rational behaviour in people.
Bailey’s own mother was a great example. Although she had always been religious, Jennifer’s abduction had tipped her gradually into an almost fanatical devotion to the Christian faith, to the point where it had now become impossible to reason with her about anything which remotely contravened her very literal interpretation of its doctrines. She’d forced Bailey to attend Sunday school throughout the majority of her childhood, giving her a great knowledge of the Bible, along with a strong awareness of the fact that she couldn’t bring herself to believe in God, however hard she tried. How could He let bad things happen to good people like Jennifer? She still felt much the same way today.
As she sat there, she slowly became aware of a strange snorting noise. She tilted her head to try and better ascertain what it was. Perhaps she wasn’t alone in here after all. She stood up slowly and looked around, trying to locate its source.
After a few moments, she realised that it was emanating from the partially open door on the right side of the chapel.
She walked up the aisle and approached the door. She leaned in. The noise was definitely coming from the other side. Gently, she pushed the door and it silently swung open to reveal a small wood-panelled office. Sprawled in a chair by the desk, asleep, was the prison chaplain, Father O’Malley. The noise she had heard was that of his snoring, a horrible nasal, rasping sound.
During her induction process, she’d been informed about Father O’Malley and the spiritual services he provided. Sh
e had only ever seen him from a distance, but even then he cut a distinctive figure, lumbering along in his cassock, constantly muttering to himself. Up close here, she could see that beneath the receding tangle of grey hair he had the veined face of a heavy drinker.
Some part of him sensed her presence as he promptly twitched, then awoke. He looked up at her blankly and then started with a panic, sitting up sharply in his chair.
‘What are you doing here?’ he exclaimed, affronted. ‘This office is out of bounds to inmates!’
‘Sorry. I just heard a noise…’
‘No respect! That’s the problem with you lot. Not one of you harlots knows the meaning of the word “respect”. That’s why you’re all in here.’
‘You’re drunk,’ said Bailey in disgust.
‘I am not!’ he said indignantly.
‘I can smell it on your breath. Even from here.’
He looked her up and down critically.
‘For by means of a harlot a man is reduced to a crust of bread.’ He nodded and smiled to himself. ‘Proverbs, chapter six, verse twenty-six.’
‘How about Proverbs, chapter twenty-three? As I recall, it’s got a bit about those who “tarry too long at the wine”.’
He stared at her sullenly with his glassy bloodshot eyes.
‘Do you want to confess or not?’ he slurred aggressively.
‘To you? I don’t think so.’
She backed rapidly out of his office, leaving him to rant to himself.
One thing seemed likely. Toni probably hadn’t gone to the chapel to talk to Father O’Malley, because he’d been asleep in a drunken stupor.
So why had she gone there?
29
Normally, the way it worked was that an informant introduced the undercover police officer to the criminal group that they were trying to infiltrate. This was usually arranged as part of some kind of deal that the informant had done with the police in order to avoid prosecution or jail time. Having an informant who was already a member of the group to vouch for the police officer was crucial in gaining their trust.