by Caro Savage
In the open palm of Bailey’s hand were three cling-filmed rocks of crack cocaine. As a member of a drug-dealing gang, getting hold of them hadn’t presented her with too much of a problem.
Mel sat entranced on the edge of her bunk, staring at them with a slavering hunger.
The two of them were alone in Mel’s cell. Mel’s current cellmate, the one who practised yoga, didn’t appear to be around at the moment and Bailey was hoping she’d remain absent until Bailey had finished her forthcoming business with Mel.
Mel’s eyes were wide, like a kid in a toyshop. She reached up greedily. Bailey closed her hand and lifted the drugs out of reach.
Mel’s face turned sullen.
‘Gimme the rocks!’ she said petulantly.
‘When you’ve told me what you know.’
Mel sat back on her bunk, arms crossed, looking away. She wasn’t going to say anything.
When Mel had demanded crack cocaine in exchange for answers, Bailey had been dubious, to say the least, about supplying someone who was already pretty strung out with a drug that was renowned for inducing severe paranoia. But she had no choice if she wanted to find out what Mel knew.
Bailey plucked a single rock from her palm and tossed it into Mel’s lap. Mel looked down and furiously scrabbled for it as it fell onto the bedclothes.
She looked up wildly at Bailey. ‘The others!’
‘When you’ve told me who the killer is.’
‘I want them now! No rocks no killer!’
Bailey walked backwards a few steps until she was standing above the small toilet in the corner of the cell. She held her hand up over the toilet and placed her other hand on the flush.
‘I’ll just flush these away. I promise I will. I’ve got no use for them.’
Mel’s face morphed into an expression of alarm and she leant forward, her arm outstretched. ‘Nooo… don’t do that! I’ll tell you.’
Bailey moved forwards and sat down on the chair by the table, positioning herself so she was facing Mel.
Mel scowled at her, huffed and then reached beneath her bunk and groped about under there for a few moments. Her hand emerged holding a plastic bottle with an empty biro tube taped to a hole in the top. A dark cloudy liquid slopped around inside the bottle. Wrapped across the mouth of the bottle was a piece of blackened foil punctured with small holes. The inside of the bottle and tube were encrusted with a brown residue.
Bailey realised that it was a home-made pipe.
Mel reached into a pocket and, after a bit of fumbling, pulled out a small plastic lighter. She carefully unwrapped the rock and placed it on the foil on top of the pipe.
The routine was meticulous and deliberate. Bailey watched her with a grim fascination.
Mel lifted the pipe and placed the tip of the biro tube in her mouth. A brief glance at Bailey and then she flicked the lighter and lowered the flame towards the rock. She sucked in and the flame curled downwards into the foil.
The rock glowed red and crackled as it burned. Dense white smoke filled the inside of the bottle. Mel sucked furiously, her eyes closed, her chest expanding and expanding and expanding. The murky water inside the pipe bubbled as the smoke passed through it, cooling it on the way into her mouth. Then, when she couldn’t inhale any more, when she had reached her full lung capacity, she stopped, her mouth tightly closed, her eyes clenched shut.
A few moments passed. Then she exhaled a long stream of white smoke which instantly suffused the cell with a sharp chemical odour. It seemed to take ages for her to empty her lungs of it.
Bailey coughed and waved the smoke out of her face.
Mel slumped back against the wall and emitted a deep orgasmic moan. ‘Oh god!’
Bailey watched her, emotionless, tapping her fingers gently against the side of the chair, waiting…
Mel lay there for what may have been a few minutes, bathed in drug bliss. Then, without opening her eyes, she started speaking. To Bailey’s surprise, her voice was measured and quite sane-sounding. This was a completely different Mel…
‘I used to work the streets around Walsall and Wolverhampton. That’s where I’m from. The Midlands. Know it?’
‘I’ve passed through it on the train a few times.’
‘I worked in the red-light district there. All Saints it’s called. Me and my friends. We did good business. When I came down to London, I did the same thing because that was the only thing I knew how to do. It’s what I was best at.’
She sighed and opened her eyes a crack and looked at Bailey, who was listening intently.
‘The men are rank and the sex is shit. And it’s dodgy as hell. But it’s easy money. And if you’re desperate for cash because you need to buy drugs, then you do it. You just close your eyes and get on with it.’
Bailey stared at her, saddened that someone could live their life in such a way.
Mel’s glazed eyes stared back into the past. ‘But then it gets to the point where you’re taking the drugs just so you can deal with the sex, which you’re doing just so you can buy more drugs. And that’s how it goes…’
Bailey didn’t want to seem insensitive, but right now she needed to get the name of the killer.
‘Yes, Mel, that’s, er, interesting, but how does it relate—’
‘They found the first one dumped in a car park in Walsall.’
Bailey leaned in closer. Mel had her full attention.
‘He’d killed her with a knife. Stabbed her. Cut her throat. But he’d also done… an odd thing.’
‘What kind of “odd thing”?’
‘He cut her hair off.’
‘Cut her hair off?’ Bailey frowned, puzzled.
‘Yeah. Chopped off a load and took it. Don’t ask me why because I don’t know.’ Mel sighed – a soft sad sound. ‘I knew her. She was my friend. They were all my friends. He killed a whole load of them. They were just trying to get by… just like me. We were all just trying to make a living the only way we knew how.’
Her face twisted now, bitter.
‘But he didn’t care. He killed and killed and killed… girls like me. Easy prey. Girls that had nothing… who had nobody… nobody who cared about them. Maybe that’s why they never caught him… because no one really cared enough about us.’
Mel looked distant, lost in the same kind of trance that Bailey had seen her in earlier.
‘The Hairdresser. That’s what they called him in the newspapers. The Hairdresser… because he took their hair. Killed them and took their hair. Silly name. But he wasn’t silly. No no. Not silly at all.’
‘When was this?’ said Bailey with a frown. She didn’t recall hearing about it.
‘2014,’ said Mel. ‘That was the year all my friends were killed. I’ll never forget it.’
Mel paused, breathing heavily, her eyes wide, but she was calm. Not manic and paranoid like before, but more collected.
‘It got to the point where I was carrying a razor blade for self-protection. Kept it up here.’ She rubbed her hand through her tangled afro. ‘It’s the only place you can keep it when you don’t have any clothes on.’
She reached up into her hair and pulled out a razor blade. She held up the rectangular sliver of steel between her forefinger and thumb. It had been smuggled into the prison somehow.
‘So what happened?’ Bailey was breathless. She felt there was some climax to Mel’s story and she was desperate to know what it was.
‘It was a freezing winter night when I met him, when he came for Mel. I was standing there naked when he got out the knife and that’s when I knew it was him. All I remember was seeing that blade shining like… like a star.’
She shuddered, lost in a haze of memory.
‘I jumped straight out of the window. Smashed through the glass. A second-floor window. That’s how I fucked my leg up. Landed on the cobblestones. Freezing-cold cobblestones. But I managed to get away. Mel got away. Mel survived.’
The gravity of what she was saying suddenly hit Bailey.
> ‘So you’re saying that this Hairdresser killer who killed your friends in the Midlands several years ago has now come back… has come here to this prison… to continue killing?’
Mel nodded gravely, her gaze never leaving Bailey.
‘When I heard about the scalps I knew it was him. Taking their hair.’
Bailey was sceptical. ‘Hair’s one thing. Scalps are something else.’
‘Don’t you see?’ hissed Mel. ‘He’s getting worse. Getting badder. It’s like an addiction with him. With an addiction, you start small but you always end up needing more. It’s not enough just to take their hair any more. Now he needs their scalps.’ Mel was breathing hard now. ‘I always knew he’d come back… come back for Mel!’
Her voice had gone up an octave. She shuddered and hunched up into a ball.
‘I thought I’d got away from him when I came to London but no… he’s back!’
Mel was returning to her normal self. The effects of the drug were wearing off.
‘Tell me what he looked like,’ said Bailey.
‘I didn’t see his face.’
‘But you said you were close.’
‘It was dark, I was off my head, he had a baseball cap pulled down low.’
‘Surely you must remember something.’
Mel unhunched herself and leaned forward, staring into Bailey’s eyes with a full-on intensity.
‘He’s a duppy. That’s what he is. He ain’t no normal killer. He’s a duppy. And that’s why Mel’s scared of him.’
‘I’m sorry, hold up a sec. Can you explain just what a duppy is exactly?’
‘Duppies are evil. They come from the land of the dead to hunt the living. Bad, very bad,’ whispered Mel. ‘My grandmother used to tell me about them when I was a kid. Stories from Jamaica, old stories from way back. She believed in them, thought they were real, as real as you and me. When I grew up, I left those stories behind, thought they were nothing more than fairy tales for kids and old women, just spook talk of evil spirits. But when I met the Hairdresser, that’s when I knew that duppies were real.’ She started to breathe harder. ‘Dem ah real. Aal along mi grandmoda was rite…’
The cast-iron conviction in Mel’s voice sent an eldritch chill through Bailey. She shook it off. She had never believed in the supernatural and she wasn’t about to start now.
‘I don’t believe in the supernatural,’ said Bailey. ‘I think your cellmate Ally—’
Mel cut in with a sharp hiss. ‘Mi friend Ally, shi dead cuz shi neva believe inna duppies! Dem all dead cuz dem nuh believe!’
She pointed a long bony brown finger at Bailey.
‘An yuh wi dead eff yuh nuh believe.’
Bailey couldn’t help but shiver at Mel’s pronouncement. She needed to get the conversation back in the world of the real.
‘After you met the Hairdresser, did you go to the police and tell them about him?’
Mel shook her head vigorously. ‘Mel hates the police. Mel would never go to the police.’
Of course, she’d been a prostitute and they weren’t renowned for having the greatest relationship with the police. Bailey sighed and chewed her lip. She still hadn’t got what she’d come here for.
‘If he’s a bloke, like you say, then he must be one of the prison officers. You must remember something about him. Even just the smallest detail?’
Mel rolled her eyes and bared her teeth.
‘Mi told yuh aredi. Him ain’t nuh bloke. Him a duppy.’
‘That’s no good to me. I need to find out who he is!’
‘Him de Hairdressa!’ screeched Mel. ‘Fuck yuh!’
She slumped back on the bunk and started sobbing, long painful whiny sobs.
‘Mi friends… aal ded… bess friends mi eva had…’
Bailey stood up. She looked down on the sobbing Mel with pity. She tossed the rocks of crack onto the bunk next to Mel, who ignored them and continued sobbing. Bailey turned and left the cell, feeling now more than ever like she was chasing a shadowy mirage.
72
The prison library appeared to be completely deserted. Bailey stood there, looking around, wondering where the librarian had got to. She wasn’t sitting at her usual position at her desk by the door. She was probably off shelving books somewhere.
Bailey had been to the library a few times before. Inmates were allowed to visit it once a week and borrow up to six books. The selection of books wasn’t great, but the tranquil atmosphere made for a pleasant retreat from everyday prison existence.
She turned her head and jumped in surprise to see the librarian suddenly standing there right next to her. For someone so muscular and bulky, she was remarkably light on her feet.
Her name was Jacqui Sigmundsen and Bailey had learned from other inmates that she was a former biker serving an eighteen-year stretch for armed robbery and murder. Probably in her late forties, her thick arms were etched with tattoos of lightning bolts and daggers which were now starting to blur with age. She peered at Bailey over the top of a pair of half-moon spectacles which seemed incongruous with the rest of her look.
‘Gosh! I didn’t hear you at all,’ said Bailey.
‘On edge, are we?’ said Jacqui in her thick raspy smoker’s voice. ‘I guess everyone is these days, what with everything that’s been going on.’
‘I was wondering if you could help me out.’
At that point, seeing that she had a captive audience, Jacqui held up her hand to signal Bailey’s silence. She opened a small slim volume that she had been holding and began to read aloud from it:
‘Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage;
If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone, that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty.’
She closed the volume and raised one eyebrow archly at Bailey.
Bailey wasn’t quite sure how she should respond.
‘Er… that’s nice.’
‘Robert Lovelace. He was an English poet from the seventeenth century. “To Althea, from Prison” is the name of the poem. He wrote it in 1642 while he was imprisoned in London during the English Civil War. Do you understand what he’s saying?’
Bailey hadn’t been expecting an impromptu English examination and certainly not from the likes of Jacqui, but seeing as she needed Jacqui’s assistance today she gamely attempted to play along.
‘It sounds like he’s saying that because his mind is free the walls and the bars can’t imprison him.’
Jacqui nodded, impressed with Bailey’s analysis. ‘Exactly. The poem is a paradox. The imprisoned man is actually free. He’s free to think and dream of anything he wants to. And not only that, he believes that because he’s innocent the prison has actually been transformed into a hermitage – a haven – for him to concentrate on what’s important to him, like his love for the woman Althea to whom he’s dedicated the poem.’
‘Reframing,’ said Bailey. ‘It’s a psychological trick to help you make the best out of a bad situation, to look on the bright side.’
‘This poem has got me through many hard times over the eleven years that I’ve been in here and it’ll get me through many more. I actually know it off by heart. I always find it helps to read it when I’m down. And so should you.’
She offered the book to Bailey.
‘Thanks. But I’m not that into poetry, to be honest with you. I was actually looking for a book in your true crime section.’
Jacqui sighed, a little disappointed. ‘Well, that is the most popular bit of the library. Unsurprisingly. What book are you looking for?’
‘Any book that might have something about the Hairdresser.’
Jacqui nodded. She seemed to know what Bailey was talking about.
‘Follow me.’
Bailey followed her along the aisles to the true crime section.
Jacqui peer
ed over the tops of her half-moon spectacles and scanned the spines of the titles on the shelves.
‘I’ve read almost every book in this library and…’ she reached past Bailey to pull out a small paperback, ‘…I think this should cover what you’re looking for.’ She handed it to Bailey.
It was a dog-eared paperback printed on cheap paper, its black cover embossed with a large silver title that read Cold Cases Vol. 3.
Bailey wasn’t a big reader, but even she could see that this was from the trashier and more salacious end of the true crime spectrum. She flicked through it, pausing briefly at the photo sections – black and white images of blood-spattered crime scenes, discarded murder weapons, body dump sites, smiling graduation photos of unsuspecting victims and the inevitable police mugshots of killers who seemed to carry a universal expression of mild indifference.
She leafed through to the section on the Hairdresser. She began to read to herself. This was exactly what she was looking for.
She glanced up to see that the librarian had disappeared as silently as she had appeared.
73
Bailey glanced around the visit hall, leaned forward across the table and lowered her voice.
‘How’s it going with the drugs squad?’
‘They want to know what your new angle is,’ said Frank. ‘They’re really breathing down my neck on it.’
‘You said you’d give me two weeks, right?’
He sighed and rolled his eyes.
She forced an optimistic smile onto her face.
‘I think I might be onto something interesting,’ she said. ‘The Hairdresser. Heard of him?’
Frank creased his brow as he tried to recall the significance of the name. ‘Vaguely. A serial killer who murdered prostitutes up in the Midlands. That was quite a few years back. He was never caught. I think he got his name because he used to—’ He stopped and stared at her in disbelief. ‘Wait a minute, you don’t really think…?’
‘He used to cut their hair off, didn’t he?’
‘And you think he’s now graduated to scalping?’
‘It’s well-documented that serial killers often start out on small animals before eventually moving onto humans. What I’m saying is that as they grow older their tastes evolve. And their methods change accordingly.’