by Caro Savage
‘Lie down on the bed, on your front.’
Bailey obeyed, positioning herself on the lower bunk, her head facing the door.
The chair creaked as Poppy stood up. She pulled the chair over to the side of the bed. On the chair, she placed a home-made contraption which Bailey assumed was the tattoo gun, along with an upturned bottle cap containing a small amount of a dense black liquid.
Poppy picked up the tattoo gun. Bailey eyed it with trepidation.
‘Don’t worry. It’s sterilised,’ said Poppy.
Looking closer, Bailey could see that the tattoo gun appeared to be constructed out of a toothbrush which had been cut down and bent or melted out of shape. The lower half of a biro formed the top of the gun, a tiny piece of wire poking out from where the ballpoint had been chopped off. Bailey assumed that was the needle. A small electric motor was taped to the back of the device. Bailey couldn’t even begin to imagine where that had come from. Two long thin wires connected the motor to a battery that lay on the chair next to the gun. It was ingeniously constructed and Bailey marvelled at the resourcefulness it entailed.
‘Very clever.’
‘You have to make do with whatever’s available in here.’
Bailey frowned. ‘Does that mean you’re going to use biro ink?’
Poppy tutted in disgust and shook her head. ‘Your flesh’ll rot if you use that. The biro tube is just a housing for the needle.’ She pointed to the upturned bottle cap with its small amount of viscous black liquid. ‘This is what we’ll be using. It’s my own personal recipe. It basically contains soot, which you get from burning cotton wool, a few drops of baby oil to thicken it and – to disinfect it – a dash of ethyl alcohol distilled from hand sanitiser. So there’s no need to worry.’
She gave Bailey a brief thin smile. It was the first time she had smiled.
Without further ado, Poppy got onto the bunk and straddled Bailey. It was cramped and Bailey was acutely aware of Poppy’s proximity. It was strangely intimate, to be so close to a stranger. Bailey realised she hadn’t been naked and this close to another human being since…
Since her torture and violation at the hands of him.
At the thought of him, her nostrils filled with the phantom whiff of clove smoke, sweet and cloying. That’s what he’d smoked – clove cigarettes. And she’d hated the smell ever since.
With some effort, she pushed those painful memories away from the light of day back down into the darkness where they belonged.
She felt Poppy run her fingertips lightly over the scars and burn marks on her back. Bailey flinched at the contact, even though it was fleeting and surprisingly tender.
‘Sharp things and hot things by the looks of it. So how did these come about?’
The memories bubbled up again as Bailey flashed back to her previous undercover job. The nightmares. The razor blades. The burning tip of a clove cigarette. The horror.
‘I’d rather not talk about it,’ she said.
‘Suit yourself.’
Poppy fiddled with the wire on the tattoo gun. It buzzed into life. The tiny needle turned into a blur as it went back and forth at high speed.
‘Now keep still,’ she instructed.
Bailey placed her head sideways on her crossed arms. She felt the needle penetrate the skin of her lower back, at the base of her spine. The pain was acute and concentrated. She winced and tensed.
Poppy immediately stopped. ‘Does it hurt?’
It did hurt, although it was nothing compared to what she’d experienced before, to what had given her the scars that she bore. Anyhow, she reasoned that to admit any kind of pain would look weak to a member of a prison gang.
‘It’s fine. I can hardly feel a thing.’
Poppy gave a small murmur of approval and recommenced the tattooing, pausing from time to time to dip the needle into the tiny pot of tattoo ink.
Eventually, the area began to numb as Bailey’s brain released pain-suppressing endorphins. It was an almost pleasurable feeling. She began to relax a little.
‘What are you in for?’ Poppy asked eventually.
Bailey recounted her cover story about being an accountant and embezzling money, reciting much the same as what she’d told Sharon. She felt the cover story rolling off her tongue easily enough. It felt good to say it out loud. Each time she spoke it, it made it feel a little more real, made it a little easier to say.
‘That’s interesting,’ murmured Poppy.
To Bailey’s surprise, she actually sounded sincere. ‘Most people find accountancy very boring.’
‘Being good at maths is a useful skill to have.’
‘How did you end up in here?’
Poppy lifted the needle. The gun still buzzed. There were a few moments of silence.
‘It’s coming along nicely,’ she said, dabbing at Bailey’s lower back with a tissue.
Bailey realised she was referring to the tattoo. She guessed Poppy didn’t want to talk about her crime, whatever that had been, so she didn’t probe.
‘The tattoo is more than just an ornament for us,’ said Poppy.
‘I guessed as much.’
‘It’s a way for us to recognise each other, to recognise another member, from another prison, if we’ve never met them before. We see the tattoo and instantly know we can trust them. We know they’re one of us.’
‘What’s stopping just anyone from getting one that looks the same?’
‘If someone was stupid enough to get one of our gang tattoos without actually being a member of our gang, and we found out… well, we’d catch them, hold them down, and slice it out of their skin.’ She paused thoughtfully. ‘And then Toni would probably make them eat it. Just to make a point. Because that’s the kind of person she is.’
Bailey shuddered at the thought of it.
She lay there in silence, subordinate to the buzzing tattoo gun drilling into her flesh. After a while, the numbing effect of the endorphins started to wear off, so she was relieved when Poppy finally stopped.
Poppy disconnected the battery from the tattoo gun and the buzzing stopped. She placed the gun on the chair.
She dabbed at her work with a tissue and dropped it onto the chair. Bailey saw that the tissue was soaked crimson with her blood.
Poppy got off the bunk and stood up.
‘You can get up now.’
‘Is that it?’ said Bailey. She estimated they had been there for around half an hour.
Poppy shook her head. ‘It’s going to take several sessions. I don’t want to overwork the skin. It’ll end up scarred otherwise. Anyhow, after forty minutes or so, the pain tends to get quite uncomfortable. This is just the beginning. No need to rush it. After all, you want something good, don’t you? It’s going to last you your whole life.’
Bailey put her clothes back on and left Poppy’s cell, her lower back tender and sore. As she walked along the landing, she wondered just how much it would cost to get the tattoo lasered off once she was out of this place.
34
‘What the hell happened to you?’
Frank Grinham’s dead watery eyes displayed an uncharacteristic glimmer of concern when Bailey sat down at his table in the visit hall. Her black eye and bruises were still visible enough to elicit concern.
‘It was an initiation,’ she said. ‘I submitted to it voluntarily. It looks worse than it is.’
‘If you say so. I was getting a bit worried I hadn’t heard from you.’ He paused and scrutinised her injuries. ‘Does that mean you’re in with them?’
She nodded, glancing around the busy visit hall, grateful that the noise and clamour, mostly from visiting children, was able to mask the sound of their conversation. They were sitting at the same corner table that they’d occupied on Frank’s previous visit. This time, Bailey took careful note to keep an eye out for Sharon, but it didn’t look like there was any sign of her in the visit hall today, which was a relief.
‘And?’ he said.
She turned her attention back to Frank.
‘It seems that the ABC operate in other prisons besides this one,’ she said. ‘They recognise each other by means of the distinctive tattoos on the lower back.’
‘I see. So they’re fairly well-organised. This is good stuff, Bailey. Now we’re starting to get a picture of how this drugs ring works.’
‘The head honcho here is a psycho called Toni Quinn. She’s in for murder and I think she’s more than capable of scalping somebody. Her lieutenant is called Keisha Stone. There’s another member called Rong Xi and a big one they call Muscles, who they use as an enforcer; her real name is Jane Foot. And then there’s their tattooist; her name is Poppy O’Shea.’
‘How are they getting the drugs into the prison?’
‘I haven’t found out yet. I’ve only just joined, remember? Plus, I’ve had a three-day unscheduled stay in the hospital. Anyhow, they’re not going to start dishing out all their secrets just yet.’
‘You need to locate the source. Remember what Alice said about him or her being well concealed.’
At that moment, a prison officer walked slowly by their table, patrolling the circuit of the visit hall.
‘Auntie Jean’s knitting you a sweater,’ said Frank in a normal volume of voice.
‘Oh, that’s nice,’ said Bailey. ‘It does get a bit draughty in here sometimes.’
The prison officer passed out of earshot. The brotherly smile dropped off Frank’s face, leaving him cold and exacting once more. He leaned across the table towards her.
‘Just don’t forget the focus of this operation. The drugs squad are the ones funding it, and their priorities are your priorities.’
‘And what about Alice’s murderer?’
‘Follow the drugs and you’ll find out who killed her.’
‘Drugs or no drugs, I’ll find out who killed her.’
35
The Governor was thinking about his yacht. Well, technically it wasn’t his yacht just yet. In about six months he’d have enough money to buy it. Sailing was his passion and he’d been wanting to own a yacht for years and now the dream was soon to become a reality. He was a long-time subscriber to Yachting World magazine and had done plenty of research to identify the exact model he planned to purchase – a forty-foot Beneteau Oceanis. Once he got it, he’d sail it down to the Mediterranean and take a nice leisurely cruise around the Greek islands—
There was a knock on the door. He looked up, his pleasant fantasy dissipating immediately as he remembered with a sinking heart that he had to do an adjudication. That was the reason he was sitting by himself in this whitewashed room on this uncomfortable metal chair.
The adjudication was just one more thing on his plate that he didn’t need right now, what with all the extra work he’d had to take on whilst they found an interim replacement for the Deputy Governor who’d just gone on maternity leave. They’d had someone lined up to fill her shoes, but the person had dropped out at the last minute due to other commitments and they were having problems finding a suitable replacement.
He sighed and opened up the inmate’s folder, which was lying on the desk in front of him. He’d lost count of the number of adjudications he’d done over the long course of his career as a prison governor. He generally found them tedious, but they were a necessary part of his job.
An adjudication happened when an inmate committed an offence. If the offence was serious, like being caught in possession of a mobile phone, or assaulting another inmate, then they would be dealt with by an external adjudicator, who could award up to an additional forty-two days of imprisonment for each guilty verdict.
This offence, however, wasn’t serious enough to warrant an external adjudication, hence his involvement. It was more of a simple disciplinary action.
‘Come in,’ he said.
The door opened and one of the male prison officers, Dylan, entered with an inmate. He nodded to Dylan, who left the room, closing the door behind him.
The inmate stood there, head bowed, hair hanging down over her face.
‘Well don’t just stand there. Take a seat,’ he said, nodding at the empty chair on the other side of the table.
She sat down in the chair, hands in her lap, glancing up at him, hanging her head in a funny way as if she was hiding behind her fringe, unwilling to look him directly in the eye. He noticed then that she had a nasty black eye, several bruises on her face and stitches in her lip. All in all, she didn’t look in a good way.
He looked down at her file. It contained details of her criminal history, her prison record and any other relevant information about her such as that gathered during her induction. She didn’t come across much better in the mugshot which was stapled to the top left corner of the file. Dark rings under the eyes, barely able to look into the camera. He’d seen so many of these files and so many of these criminals had the same look about them.
This one’s name was Bailey Pike and according to her criminal history she had been an accountant who’d embezzled money from her employers.
He looked up at her. Her apparent reluctance to meet his gaze only served to contribute to the kind of shifty furtive manner that he would have expected an embezzler to have.
Another one who’d thought she could get away with it but hadn’t been smart enough to. He often thought that plain stupidity was the reason that most of them ended up in here. He imagined that she’d probably stolen the money and immediately gone out and bought a Porsche, which she’d then driven to work the next day. And then wondered why she’d got caught.
He scanned over the adjudication sheet in front of him, which contained the set of standard questions that he was required to recite by law. He had conducted so many adjudications that he knew the questions off by heart without any real need to look at the piece of paper.
‘Have you received the form DIS1?’ he asked.
That was the nicking sheet.
She nodded.
‘Have you received the form DIS2?’
That was a record of how the hearing would progress.
She nodded.
‘I’m now going to read out the charge,’ he said.
She nodded.
He sighed to himself. So far she hadn’t said a single word. She must have been terrible in court. One more reason that she’d ended up in prison.
He cleared his throat. ‘The charge is one of reckless behaviour and attempted endangerment of your life. According to Shelley, it seems that you were playing some kind of silly game. She’s under the impression that you were trying to pull a “fast one” on her. She says you told her that you saw some inmates selling drugs, but then you proceeded to jump off the balcony, much to the amusement of everyone who was there.’
He looked up at her.
‘Is that correct?’
She nodded.
‘Do you want legal advice or help during the hearing before we proceed any further?’
She shook her head.
‘Have you had time to think about what you want to tell me and prepare a defence?’
She nodded.
‘Will you be calling any witnesses?’
She shook her head.
‘How do you plead? Guilty or not guilty?’
‘I just haven’t been myself since I’ve got in here,’ she said.
Finally. She was speaking. He smiled.
‘Guilty or not guilty?’ he repeated gently but firmly.
‘Not guilty.’
He made a note on the adjudication paper.
Now that the boring questions and procedure were out of the way, he would give her the talk that he gave them all, especially if it was their first adjudication.
‘Look, I understand that things can be difficult in here and I want you to know that I want the best for you. I’m not the hang ’em and flog ’em type. I have an open-door policy, which means that you can request to come and see me in my office any time, within reason, to discuss anything that might be on your mind. Office hours, Monday to Friday.’
She nodd
ed, disinterested.
He sighed and continued, ‘I believe that all of you deserve a second chance. I know that many of you didn’t have the right opportunities to start with or you may have made bad life choices for whatever reason.’ He didn’t mention plain stupidity.
She looked bored. She was a proper no-hoper this one.
He put on his most paternal tone. ‘I want you to know that I genuinely care. I have three teenage daughters of my own and I certainly wouldn’t want them to end up in here.’
They had better not, considering how much their private schooling was costing him. If he hadn’t had to pay for that he could have bought his yacht years ago, but he supposed it would be worth it in the end.
The Governor did believe in the power of rehabilitation, but he also believed, from long experience, that it didn’t work for all inmates. Some were just too far gone, and he was beginning to wonder if this one fitted into that category. And, by the sounds of things, she was mentally unstable.
‘I think that the most productive outcome of this adjudication would be for me to refer you to the prison psychologist,’ he said. ‘So that’s what I’m going to do.’
She rolled her eyes.
‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘I really don’t need to see a shrink.’
‘You don’t have a choice in the matter.’
He closed her file and took a long look at her bruised features.
‘And a word of advice before you go. I’d be careful about the kinds of people you get mixed up with in here. It’s a small world and it can be very unforgiving… as it looks like you’re already finding out.’
36
For lunch today, Bailey had been veering between the choice of jacket potato or beef goulash. She’d eventually gone for the beef goulash as it smelt particularly appetising.
She was sitting with the ABC at their corner table in the canteen. They were friendly now that they had accepted her as one of their own, but she was still careful to be wary. With people like this, you could never be quite sure. She knew from past experience that criminals could be the most amiable people one minute but then switch to the complete opposite in the blink of an eye. And when they turned nasty, they were capable of doing very bad things indeed.