by Caro Savage
One thing she had noticed since joining the gang was the marked difference in how she was treated by the other inmates. Now that they knew she was a member of the ABC, they generally made a point of staying out of her way and she caught a few of them looking at her with something approaching fear in their eyes. She had to admit, it felt kind of good.
Bailey casually scanned the canteen and noticed the skinny carrot-haired inmate who had tripped her up and spat on her not so long ago. She was sitting by herself a few tables away. Bailey fixed her with a piercing stare and soon caught the girl’s eye. The girl appeared to recognise her, and when she saw who Bailey was sitting with, her eyes widened in fear. She went pale, dropped her gaze and suddenly took a very strong interest in the contents of her plate. Bailey allowed herself a little smirk.
‘The last time I had beef goulash here,’ said Keisha, eyeing Bailey’s plate, ‘I got the shits like you would not believe. Sometimes the food here just goes straight through me.’
Bailey looked at her plate of beef goulash. She poked at the brown lumpy stew with her plastic fork and stirred it around a little bit. For some reason, it didn’t look quite so appealing any more.
‘Did you know that diarrhoea is actually a genetic condition?’ said Rong.
Keisha looked at her with mild surprise. ‘Genetic condition? Really? I never knew that.’
‘Yeah. It runs in the family.’
There was a brief pause, then a chorus of boos at the bad joke.
Muscles was frowning to herself. She didn’t seem to get it.
‘Man, you had me going there for a minute,’ said Keisha, laughing and shaking her head. ‘Genetic condition!’
Now that they were laughing and in a relatively good mood, Bailey decided that this would be an opportune moment to test the waters.
‘So who am I replacing?’ she asked, recalling Toni’s mention in the hospital that the gang had been short of one member before she joined.
They all fell quiet and once again dark, cryptic looks passed between them.
Toni turned to look at Bailey with her cold hard gaze.
‘Never you mind about that,’ she said in a tone that firmly put an end to any further questions on the matter.
‘Just remember what we said,’ growled Keisha. ‘Blood in. Blood out.’
It was an overt warning. More of a threat really. The harsh granite expressions on their faces said it all.
Bailey nodded obediently and went back to poking around in her beef goulash and they returned to talking about more mundane matters.
What Bailey found odd was that so far she hadn’t heard the gang talking about the one thing that seemed to be on the lips of every inmate in here – the recent murders. The conspicuous absence of this topic in their conversation seemed somewhat suspicious to her. She decided to probe a little. Seeing as everyone else in the place was gossiping about it, surely it wouldn’t sound too odd if she mentioned it.
‘So what do you think is going on with these murders then?’ she asked.
They all fell quiet and the mood suddenly turned distinctly chilly.
All eyes turned to Bailey. Toni’s in particular seemed to bore into her.
Bailey swallowed. Had she overstepped the mark?
‘You ask a lot of questions, don’t you?’ said Toni.
Bailey instantly regretted broaching the subject. The question had been too direct, too blunt. Her eagerness to find out what had happened to Alice had obscured her judgement. But she couldn’t unsay it.
‘What?’ said Toni softly. ‘Are you scared? Scared of getting scalped?’ There was a taunting, mocking tone in her voice.
Toni slowly began to mimic a scalping, using her jacket potato as an ersatz human head. She sawed the skin off the top of it with the serrated edge of the plastic knife, revealing the white flesh of the potato underneath. All of them watched, transfixed.
When she’d sawn off the ‘scalp’, she held it up, dangling it between her thumb and forefinger and then she popped it into her mouth and started chewing it.
The others all burst out laughing. Bailey joined in, forcing herself to laugh along, even though she could find no humour in the situation.
Was it just a joke or was there a deeper truth to be uncovered?
‘I’m not scared,’ said Bailey. ‘Just wanted to know if I need to buy any new shampoo in the shop or not. Won’t be needing quite as much as normal if I get scalped.’
Toni and the others snorted in amusement.
Any tension that might have been there now disappeared, and the conversation turned to dessert.
Bailey decided there and then to be more careful about pursuing the issue. She didn’t want to look suspicious. She’d have to be patient and bide her time. Softly, softly, catchee monkey, as the old proverb went.
She laughed and chatted with them for a while longer, then eventually made her excuses and got up to put her tray in the rack and leave the canteen.
Just as she was sliding her tray into the rack, a voice next to her said: ‘I recognise you from somewhere.’
Bailey turned around. Standing next to her was an inmate she hadn’t noticed before. She was small, with sallow rodent-like features. It took Bailey a few seconds to recognise her, but when she did her stomach dropped.
‘Yeah. I’m sure I know you,’ the inmate continued, her eyes narrowing as she tried to place Bailey. ‘Have we met before?’
Her name was Carly Potson and she had been some scrote junkie Bailey had arrested way back in her uniformed days, long before she’d started undercover work. She was surprised at the girl’s power of recall, especially considering how many drugs she’d probably ingested over the years. If Carly made the connection, Bailey would be in big trouble as she would likely blurt it out right there in the canteen.
She should have known this might happen. Having arrested as many people as she had done in her career, it was always going to be a possibility that she would encounter one of them in here. She desperately tried to think what she could do to prevent her cover getting blown.
Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Toni and the others standing up and walking towards her to put their trays in the rack.
Shit.
She could only pray that her appearance was sufficiently different, and that the context of the prison was sufficiently removed, that Carly wouldn’t make the connection.
‘No. You must be mistaken,’ said Bailey.
Carly shook her head slowly. ‘I swear I’ve seen you before.’
‘Must be déjà vu.’
Carly peered hard at Bailey. ‘No I don’t think so… now where on earth was it?’
Toni and the others had now arrived at the rack. They were looking on with interest, hovering next to her. Perhaps because Bailey was new to their gang, they didn’t quite trust her completely as yet and wanted to gauge who else she communicated with.
Bailey realised she had to do something right now to make Carly go away. As the undercover training instructor had repeatedly drummed into them, the ability to think on your feet and use your initiative were key attributes of being a successful undercover police officer. And right now she was thinking pretty hard…
She flicked her hair aside to reveal the jagged scar on the side of her face.
‘See this?’ she muttered.
Carly’s eyes widened. She nodded.
‘Seen it before?’ said Bailey.
Carly shook her head. Bailey had obtained the scar some time after dealing with Carly, so Carly wouldn’t have known her with the scar.
‘Quite recognisable, isn’t it?’ She injected a mean tone into her voice.
Carly nodded, staring at the scar.
‘I can give you one just like it if you want. Then everyone will recognise you very easily.’
Carly’s eyes widened in fear. She shrank away from Bailey.
‘Now fuck off and don’t bother me again,’ hissed Bailey.
Carly cowered and scuttled away out of the can
teen.
The rest of the gang laughed and sniggered.
Toni patted her on the back. ‘Way to go, champ!’
Bailey breathed a sigh of relief and brushed her hair back down over her scar.
She might have deflected suspicion this time, but that didn’t mean this was the end of it by any means. Knowing that there was someone in here who could potentially identify her as a policewoman made her very, very uneasy. It made her situation inestimably more precarious. She couldn’t afford to let it eat away at her though. She took a deep breath to calm herself. She’d just have to roll with it and pray that her act just now had done the trick. Hopefully she wouldn’t be seeing any more of Carly Potson.
37
Bailey lay awake on her bunk in the darkness of the night, pondering her progress so far. From below came the gurgle of Sharon’s snoring and the sporadic creak of the springs in her mattress as she shifted position in her sleep.
Beyond the locked cell, distant sounds echoed through the sepulchral Victorian edifice. The clang of a door opening and closing. The croak of muffled sobbing. The shout of a prison officer barking something to someone.
She’d been in here for almost three weeks, but it felt like considerably longer. She supposed it was good that she had adapted to prison life so quickly, but on the other hand, she had almost forgotten what life was like on the outside. Either way, she felt like she was making good headway in her investigation now that she had succeeded in infiltrating the gang.
It hadn’t taken long, of course, for Sharon to notice her bruises and nascent tattoo, along with her new lunch buddies in the prison canteen. Sharon knew exactly who the ABC were and what they did, and apart from a few minor asides, she was uncharacteristically restrained when it came to asking Bailey about her involvement with them. Bailey guessed Sharon held them in the same wary regard as everyone else in the place. At the very least, she was grateful for anything that might help to keep Sharon off her case.
She turned onto her side to try and find a more comfortable posture, wincing slightly as she did so, the aches and pains from her beating a week ago still somewhat tender.
She was afraid, as always, to give in to the pull of tiredness for she knew what the night would bring. But the day’s activities had drained her and she felt worn out. Slowly, inexorably, she closed her eyes and succumbed to sleep.
And the nightmares descended upon her, like they did every night, always the same…
She is in a dark cavernous room. A cold bare room with a concrete floor and metal girders for rafters. She is hanging from one of the metal rafters, chained up to a meat hook.
She knows that however loud she screams for help, no one will be able to hear her because this place is too isolated.
Her feet are not touching the ground and she can feel the hard metal chains biting into her wrists. She can feel the stress on her shoulder muscles as they support her body weight. But she knows this discomfort is nothing compared to what is to come.
As she hangs there, she realises that she is at the mercy of the figure waiting in the shadows.
Her torturer.
He is visible only by the red glow of a cigarette tip. Spiced smoke drifting towards her. The smell of a clove cigarette being smoked in the darkness.
Vainly, she peers into the shadows. Always she does this.
She tries to reason with him. Pleads with him. But it is no good. It is never any good. He is silent. He is watching her. He is relishing her discomfort.
He steps forward into the small pool of light cast by the bare overhead bulb. He is dressed in expensive clothes, metropolitan in appearance, very well-groomed, and there is a deceptively affable smile on his face.
He demands the name.
Always, he asks the name.
And always she refuses.
He takes the cigarette he is smoking and grinds the burning tip into her flesh.
She screams and writhes on the meat hook, but to no avail. She can smell her flesh burning. She can hear the sound of it sizzling. The hiss of the fat bubbling.
Once more, he demands the name.
Once more, she refuses.
Again with the cigarette. Again and again.
Still, she refuses to say the name.
Then he takes the cut-throat razor from the inside pocket of his designer jacket. Slowly, he opens it up, brandishing it in front of her, the wafer-thin steel blade sparkling in the light.
The name.
She refuses.
And he begins to slice into her flesh.
The blood running down her body. Slick and wet. Running in rivulets. Dripping off the ends of her clenched toes to drip, splat, splat, splat, onto the concrete floor, forming a crimson puddle beneath her.
The name.
She refuses. Screaming and crying.
The name.
The name.
The name.
The name.
She tries to force the name down. But the pain and horror always win out. In the end, she always succumbs. Please just make it stop. Anything to make it stop.
The name rises to the surface like a bubble of air escaping and there is nothing she can do to stop it bursting from her mouth.
Saying it over and over again.
‘Spyros!’
Bailey jerked awake the next morning, the stench of her burning flesh still strong in her nostrils.
As always, she reflexively checked herself, running her hands over her body, surprised to discover that she wasn’t bleeding and her flesh wasn’t raw. The scars were now thin hard ridges of flesh and the burns were now coarse discoloured patches.
She rolled off her bunk and put the kettle on, noticing a faint shaking in her hands as she opened her breakfast packet. Not long after, Sharon yawned, stretched and got up to join her for tea.
They both sat there in the cell, drinking tea, neither of them saying much to the other. Sharon seemed uncharacteristically quiet and Bailey got the impression she wanted to say something. Eventually, she tilted her head at Bailey, a faintly quizzical expression on her face.
‘You were saying stuff in your sleep last night.’
Bailey felt a burst of panic. What had she revealed?
‘What was I saying?’
‘You were tossing and turning a lot. That’s what woke me up, see. The bed springs creaking. You were murmuring and moaning. You didn’t sound happy. And then you started saying stuff.’
She cursed to herself. What if she had given her cover away?
‘What kind of stuff?’ she asked. She had to know if she’d revealed anything compromising.
‘Something about Spyros. You kept saying the word Spyros. What’s Spyros?’
Her heart thumped hard.
The name.
She’d said the name.
‘Oh nothing.’ She tried to sound casual.
‘Sounds like a Greek restaurant.’
Bailey tried to emit what she hoped was a casually dismissive laugh.
‘Is it a person?’ Sharon enquired.
Bailey shrugged. ‘I don’t know. People say all kinds of stuff in their dreams.’
‘I’ve heard you say it before when you’ve been sleeping. It must have some kind of meaning. Is it a bloke?’ Sharon winked suggestively.
Bailey realised she needed to give Sharon something to sate her curiosity.
‘Yeah, it was a bloke.’
‘Ahh… thought so. You’re a dark horse, Bailey.’
‘But I don’t want to talk about him,’ said Bailey, deliberately flicking her lock of hair aside to reveal the scar on her face.
Sharon’s face went serious, almost in a caricature of shock. ‘Oh… he did that to you, did he? What a bastard!’
She didn’t know the half of it.
38
Doctor Malcolm Bodie winced as he fingered the bruise on the side of his bald head and prayed that his next appointment wasn’t the volatile type like the one who’d punched him the day before yesterday.
&nbs
p; Still, as a forensic psychologist, it wasn’t as if he was blind to these occasional risks of the job. They came with the territory. His particular profession was regarded as one of the most demanding positions within the field of clinical psychology and the circumstances could often be stressful. But, despite that, he never lost sight of the fact that it was necessary to maintain compassion for the inmates. After all, many of them had experienced the worst types of violence, abuse and drug addiction, and had become trapped in the kind of negative life cycles that he was here to help them break out of. The odd mishap aside, he generally enjoyed his job and derived a great deal of fulfilment from it.
His office was located in the administration block, not far from that of the Governor, and the decor was something he had given careful consideration to. On one shelf stood a variety of academic psychology tomes, none of which he actually needed to keep in there as he had read them all already, but he figured their presence lent a certain authority to his words and made the inmates take him more seriously. On another shelf was a ceramic phrenology head with the different parts of the mind traced out across its white glazed surface. Phrenology had been a nineteenth-century fad that was completely discredited these days, but he found that the inmates enjoyed looking at it and, like the books, it hopefully reinforced the clinical setting.
On his desk sat a framed photograph of his two children and a mug that bore the words ‘World’s Okayest Dad’. These again were calculated props to put the inmates at ease and make them feel able to connect with him as a human being. He knew that many of them had kids and he was happy to talk about his own if they asked. And they often did.
He peered through his wire-rimmed glasses at the file lying open on the desk in front of him. Reading through the notes, it appeared that his next appointment, Bailey Pike, had possible suicidal tendencies. She had been referred to him by the Governor as the result of an adjudication following an apparent attempt at self-harm. Suicide and self-harm were very serious issues and an increasingly prevalent problem inside the prison system. In today’s one-to-one assessment, he hoped to get to the root cause of her suicidal thoughts and assess how far she might try to do something similar again.