by Caro Savage
He leafed through her file and briefly scanned her criminal history. The details were fairly sparse. An accountant who’d embezzled money from her employers. The nature of the crime gave little insight into her personality.
He turned to her intake evaluation – the psychometric tests she’d filled out when she’d been inducted into the prison – and began to study the results.
Interesting—
There was a knock on the door. He looked up. He positioned the mug so that the words ‘World’s Okayest Dad’ would be plainly visible to the person sitting opposite him.
‘Come in,’ he said.
The door opened and the inmate came in, accompanied by a female prison officer. He smiled and nodded at the prison officer, who left, closing the door behind her.
‘Hello, Bailey,’ he said. ‘I’m Doctor Bodie. Thank you for coming to see me. Please take a seat.’
She sat down on the other side of the desk, crossing both her arms and her legs. Her head hung forward to the left, her hair obscuring that side of her face. He could instantly tell from her body language that she appeared unwilling to engage.
He noticed that she had sustained some kind of beating as her face showed signs of cuts and bruising, not unlike his own, but somewhat worse.
He smiled at her. She smiled a thin perfunctory smile back at him. He knew she wasn’t here of her own volition, but he had to find a way to break down the barriers somehow.
‘It took me a while to find your file. It had been put back in the wrong place, probably by the Governor himself, I shouldn’t be surprised! They keep all the files in these big filing cabinets in the room next door. Quite an antiquated system really. You’d think it would all be on computer these days, but it isn’t. This place is so backward, they probably still use ledgers and quill pens like they did in Victorian times, eh?’
She sat there unmoved, looking at him with her grey eyes. So much for his attempt to break the ice.
He changed tack. ‘I notice you have some nasty bruises on your face. I myself got punched the other day.’ He pointed to the bruise on his forehead and attempted to laugh in an offhand manner. ‘I can’t say I enjoy being assaulted, especially when I’m just trying to do my job. Can I ask what happened to you?’
She sighed and rolled her eyes. ‘I slipped and fell.’
Finally. She’d spoken. Obviously she was lying though. She clearly didn’t want to reveal the true reason for her injuries, probably for fear of being perceived as a snitch. He could see that she was unwilling to disclose any further information.
Maybe a more direct approach would be better. He cleared his throat, leaned forward and steepled his fingers under his chin.
‘So… you jumped off the balcony. Why did you try and do that?’
She shrugged and looked away, indifferent, unwilling to answer.
A difficult one, he thought. So many of them were like this, reluctant to help themselves.
‘Have you attempted suicide or tried to self-harm before?’
‘No.’
‘Have you had psychiatric contact before?’
‘I can’t say I’ve ever found shrinks to be of much use in the past.’
‘I see.’ He began to scribble some notes on his notepad. ‘And have you ever been diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder?’
‘No.’
‘Are you sure? When it comes to suicide and self-harm, there’s often some kind of underlying psychiatric disorder lying at the root of it. Depression, panic, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder are among some of the things that can cause people to want to hurt themselves. Or sometimes substance abuse can be the problem. Drugs, alcohol and so on.’
‘I feel just fine.’
‘People who feel just fine don’t usually jump off balconies.’
‘Look, I just did it for a laugh, okay.’
‘Now we’re getting somewhere. Why would you do that? Why would you endanger your life “for a laugh”?’ He made quotation marks with his fingers.
She exhaled impatiently and looked at her watch.
‘Look, Doctor, I appreciate you trying to help me, but I assure you I’m perfectly okay.’
He was used to inmates being reticent but this one seemed to be particularly unforthcoming. He sighed.
‘I’m glad you feel that way, Bailey, but I have to be sure that you’re not at-risk. The fact that you conducted a near-lethal suicide attempt means that something’s not quite right and I’m determined to find out what it is.’
She rolled her eyes.
He continued with a firm no-nonsense tone in his voice. ‘I’m going to place you on the ACCT sheet. That stands for Assessment, Care in Custody and Teamwork and it means I’ll be monitoring your mental health very closely. I’m particularly concerned for you because you’re a relatively new inmate. Suicide rates are highest amongst those who’ve been incarcerated for less than thirty days, and you’ve been in here for just under three weeks.’
‘You’re wasting your time.’
This inmate’s attitude was starting to stretch his patience.
‘I’m here to help you, Bailey. But if you want me to help you, you have to want to help yourself. Remember, it’s me who advises the parole board on your suitability for release. If you’re not willing to improve, then you may be spending longer in here than you want to.’
A small smile flickered across her face.
‘I’ll leave here when I’m ready to leave,’ she said.
‘I’m glad you’re so confident, but I have to make sure that you’re fully rehabilitated and in a suitable mental state to be able to fit back into normal society. That’s what I do with all the inmates here and you’re no exception.’
He began to write down some further notes in her file, outlining the type of treatment programme he planned to follow with her.
‘Rehabilitation’s a waste of time,’ she said suddenly.
‘Really?’ he peered at her over the tops of his glasses. There was no denying that there was something intriguing about her. On one hand, she seemed so closed, yet here she was suddenly willing to engage with him. ‘Why do you think that?’ he asked.
‘Some people are bad people and they’ll always be that way. Full stop. And there’s nothing you or anyone else can do to change it.’
‘That’s a rather fatalistic view. So what do you suggest we do with these people?’
‘Lock them up and throw away the key.’
He frowned. ‘That’s an odd attitude for an inmate to have. Most inmates in here believe that they’ve been unjustly imprisoned. Do you not feel that way about yourself?’
She chewed her lip and looked into the distance.
‘I’m in here for a very good reason,’ she said.
‘I see. Well, at least you’re being honest. That’s a start. Being sent to prison is a big thing to happen to someone, Bailey. It often changes a person’s whole approach to their own personal psychology. You can choose to learn from your mistakes. You can look at the path which brought you here. You have the ability to analyse the chain of decisions which resulted in your imprisonment. This is an important thing to do if you want to make progress.’
‘Like I said, I’ll leave when I’m ready.’
She looked determinedly into his eyes. In the sudden pause in conversation he found himself momentarily mesmerised by her grey unblinking stare. He dropped his gaze to the papers on his desk.
‘You took some personality tests when you came in here. They make interesting reading. They indicate that you are intelligent, resourceful and enterprising, but also obstinate and perhaps even a little arrogant. You are self-contained and you place a heavy value on autonomy. You are not averse to taking risks and, in fact, it appears that you almost crave uncertainty and a distinct amount of stress. Is that true?’
She nodded slowly, smiling slightly. ‘Spot on, Doctor. I guess I do get bored easily. I get antsy just sitting around.’
‘Is that why you embezzled the money?’
She shrugged.
‘Strange though,’ he said with a frown on his face.
‘What?’
‘Well, your tests reveal a certain degree of social conscience which just doesn’t gel with the nature of your crime, nor with a criminal personality generally. Quite a puzzling contradiction.’
She observed him silently, almost suspiciously, as if he had touched on something sensitive. The fact that she appeared to have clammed up again only stoked his interest in wanting to find out more about how she ticked.
‘You have a lot of potential, Bailey. I think you genuinely possess the capability to turn your life around and make something of it. But I sense something else, something which is troubling you. Something lying just below the surface which you’re not telling me. Something to do with the reason that you ended up in here.’
She gazed at him coolly with her grey eyes. He could tell she wasn’t about to reveal anything further.
She looked at her watch. ‘Can I go now?’
‘Not just yet. I’d like to administer some further tests. Is that okay? Just to be on the safe side.’
‘What kind of tests?’
Again that suspicious look on her face, as if she almost felt threatened by the prospect.
‘They’re just simple tests which can help me better understand your mental health.’
He took out several sheets of paper from a drawer and pushed them across the table to her, along with a biro. She looked at the long list of questions and emitted a puff of boredom.
The tests were commonly used psychological tools in his profession. One was the Beck Suicide Intent Scale. The other was the Wessex Dissociation Scale. With these two tests, he was hoping to establish the level of her suicidal thoughts and the possible explanations behind them.
‘You’ll see that each question asks you about how you feel. All you have to do is score each one on a scale of one to ten. Please fill it out honestly. It’s in your best interests to do so.’
She sighed and began to fill out the questions. He watched her as she did so, noting for the first time the ugly white scar running down the side of her face and neck. She worked fast and diligently, marking the paper with confident flicks of the pen.
Many inmates needed help with the questions, often due to low levels of literacy, but this one was clearly smart and well-educated.
After a short while, she finished and pushed the completed tests back across the table to him.
She started to stand up.
‘We’re not done just yet.’
‘There’s more?’
‘I have some homework for you.’
‘Homework?’
‘I’d like you to keep a daily diary of your thoughts. Positive, negative, however you’re feeling at any given point of the day.’
‘Sure,’ she shrugged. ‘Whatever you say, Doctor.’
He had a feeling she wasn’t going to bother.
39
As Bailey made her way back to her cell, she reflected on her meeting with Doctor Bodie. She’d encountered his type on numerous occasions during the course of her police work – forensic psychologists often worked with the police on investigations to conduct criminal profiling. He came across as a bit of a do-gooder and she had found it mildly entertaining to toy with him, earnest as he was, but she was also wary of revealing too much of herself. After all, it was his job to be perceptive and she couldn’t afford to let him suspect that she wasn’t who she claimed to be. A couple of times he had got quite close to the mark and she was conscious of the need to stay on her toes the next time she saw him, that is, if she was still in here by the time her next appointment was due.
Once back in her cell, alone, she decided to examine her tattoo. Pulling her jogging bottoms down slightly to expose it at the base of her spine, she stood in front of the small plastic mirror, awkwardly twisting her head around so she could get a proper glimpse of it.
She touched it gingerly with her fingertips. Although it had scabbed over, it still felt tender and raw. But it looked fresh and sharp and there was no denying Poppy’s skill as a tattoo artist. This wasn’t some crude prison scrawl. It was an elegant and striking design, and it wasn’t even finished yet.
Poppy had completed the outlines of the three fanned-out playing cards and had drawn in the letters ‘ABC’, but she had yet to start on the skeleton clutching the ace of spades dagger.
The lines were clean and well-defined and the shading had been expertly executed with a finely stippled effect. It was amazing to think that she’d been able to accomplish this with such a basic tool as the home-made tattoo gun and ink.
When Bailey had woken up that morning, she had found that ink had drained out of the tattoo onto her bed linen. She had pulled back the covers to see, imprinted on the white sheets, an exact impression of the lines etched into her back. She wondered what they would think in the laundry.
Later on, when she’d taken a shower, more ink had run out of her, and bits of coloured skin had fallen off and washed down the plughole with the soapy water. It was kind of disgusting, but she guessed that her body was ejecting the excess ink. What remained there beneath the lower subcutaneous layers of skin would be there forever unless she had it removed, although she was now thinking twice about having it lasered off, so impressed was she with the quality of Poppy’s handiwork.
The good thing about the tattoo was that it increased her credibility as a convict, not just in the way that she was perceived by the other inmates but also in the way that she felt about herself – it helped her get into the right frame of mind psychologically to perform this role.
She had found when working undercover that the clothes you wore and the attitude you projected made people respond to you in a particular manner, which in turn reinforced the way you felt about yourself. It might have seemed like a superficial thing, but it was inestimably important when it came to maintaining a credible cover. It was the kind of thing which could mean the difference between gaining someone’s trust or not. It could even mean the difference between life and death.
Pretending to be someone else wasn’t as easy as it might have seemed though, especially when you had to act like you enjoyed the company of profoundly unpleasant people. Whatever you felt like on the inside, you couldn’t afford to let your cover slip for one moment.
Of course, there was always the concern in the back of the mind of every undercover police officer that a situation might arise where they would become so immersed in their role that they would forget who they had once been, that the person who would eventually emerge when the job was over would be someone completely different, someone permanently soiled by the darkness and corruption of that criminal world.
Bailey had never come close to that herself, but she certainly didn’t want to be in this prison any longer than she had to.
40
Natalie Spakes lay asleep on the bunk, her long thick hair splayed across the pillow, her young face banded with shadows cast by the bars of the window, beyond which a sharp crescent moon hung brightly in the clear black sky.
She breathed in and out softly, her chest gently rising and falling, an occasional indecipherable murmur escaping from her lips.
She was the sole occupant of the cell. That was because the cells in the segregation block were each designed to only accommodate one inmate.
The segregation block lay separate from the four main house-blocks over on the northern side of the prison complex. It housed those inmates who could not mix with the general prison population for whatever reason – those who were vulnerable to assault by other inmates, such as snitches and sex offenders, and those who were particularly violent or unstable.
Lying there asleep, it was hard to tell which category Natalie belonged in. She looked deceptively peaceful, with no outward indication of the kind of trouble that might have brought her into this special accommodation unit.
The gentlest of breezes ruffled the hairs on her head.
She stirred a little and rolled over.
The fine hairs on her earlobes swayed imperceptibly.
She inhaled suddenly and her eyes popped open. She lay there looking up at the ceiling, wondering why she had woken up in what seemed to be the middle of the night.
Her mind immediately went to her four-year-old son. His name was Kyle. He was usually the first thing she thought of when she woke up. She missed him a lot. Her boyfriend on the outside was currently taking care of him. All she wanted was to be reunited with Kyle and in an indirect way that was kind of the reason she’d ended up in segregation.
She had originally been imprisoned for handling stolen goods. It had started casually, with a few things here and there – stolen phones and the like – but had eventually escalated to larger-value items from the proceeds of professional burglary. She had been sentenced to two and a half years, but with any luck she’d be out before then, if everything worked out…
She had been in the segregation block for almost a month now and she was in here for her own protection. One thing she did like about it was that it was considerably quieter than the rest of the prison. Its isolated location and the fact that she didn’t have a cellmate meant that she usually slept much better, which was why she found it odd that she had woken up all of a sudden.
What the hell had woken her?
She turned her head to the side and slowly scanned the shadows of the cell. Then her eyes widened and her body tensed, awake now.
She squinted and did a double-take. She rubbed her eyes.
She had to still be dreaming surely.
She knew that she must still be dreaming because what she saw defied reality. It defied the reality she knew, that she had become accustomed to in this place.
The cell door was wide open. It was open and unlocked and beyond it lay the dark maw of the corridor.