Vicious Circle

by Wilbur Smith

  The following morning at eight o’clock Bonzo Barnes drove Bryoni to school. Henry wanted her to return to her normal routine as soon as possible. He had arranged long-term counselling for her and he had spoken at length to the school principal and Bryoni’s class teacher. Henry was satisfied that he had done everything in his power to help her weather the hurricane and get her life back on an even keel. He had been warned that it might be a long process, but Henry had faith in his daughter’s strength of character and her maturity.

  Henry left for the courthouse in an angry and vengeful mood. At ten o’clock precisely the bailiff called the court to order.

  Henry Bannock sat with Ronnie Bunter in his usual place in the front row of the visitors’ gallery.

  Carl Peter Bannock was led up the staircase from the holding section by two uniformed guards. He was manacled and restrained by leg irons. He was pale, unshaven and unkempt. There were dark shadows under his bloodshot eyes. He looked pleadingly across the courtroom at Henry.

  Henry’s expression was cold and angry. He held Carl’s eyes for a long moment. Carl smiled uncertainly and his lips quivered. Deliberately, Henry turned his face away from him in total and final rejection.

  Carl’s shoulders slumped and he shuffled across the floor to stand in the dock facing Judge Chamberlain.

  ‘Prisoner at the bar, you have heard the verdict of the jury. Do you have anything to say in mitigation of the sentence which will be passed upon you?’

  Carl looked down at the irons locked to his ankles. ‘I am truly sorry for the anguish I have caused to my father and the other members of my family. I will try to make it up to them all in any way I can.’

  ‘Is that all you have to say?’

  ‘Yes, Judge, I am very sorry.’

  ‘This court takes cognizance of your contrition in mitigation of sentence,’ Judge Chamberlain said, and looked down to rearrange the papers on the desk in front of him. He looked up again.

  ‘The sentence of this court is as follows:

  ‘On the charge of corrupting the morals of a minor I sentence you to five years’ detention in a federal penitentiary.

  ‘On the charge of incest I sentence you to six years’ detention in a federal penitentiary.

  ‘On the charge of common assault and grievous bodily harm I sentence you to six years’ detention in a federal penitentiary.

  ‘On the charge of aggravated sexual assault on a minor I sentence you to twenty years’ detention in a federal penitentiary.

  ‘On the charge of common rape I sentence you to fifteen years’ detention in a federal penitentiary.

  ‘On the charge of statutory rape of a minor I sentence you to fifteen years’ detention in a federal penitentiary.

  ‘I direct that the sentences shall run concurrently, and that you shall be incarcerated for a minimum period of fifteen years.’

  Judge Chamberlain looked across at John Martius expectantly. Martius rose to his feet.

  ‘Your Honour, I beg your permission to lodge an appeal to the Supreme Court against the sentence.’

  ‘Permission is granted,’ Joshua Chamberlain said. ‘However, the prisoner will be taken directly from this court to the Holliday Induction Unit in Huntsville and from thence to the penitentiary assigned to him to commence serving the sentence of this court immediately.’

  He looked back at the two guards. ‘Gentlemen, please do your duty.’

  Each of the guards seized one of Carl Bannock’s arms and they guided him to the head of the staircase. His leg irons clanked as he descended the stairs to the holding area.

  ‘The court will rise,’ called out the bailiff.

  Henry and Ronnie were the last two remaining in the courtroom.

  ‘It could have been better,’ Ronnie gave his opinion. ‘I was very much hoping for twenty-five years minimum. But fifteen years will have to do. At least it’s all over at last, and you have gotten rid of the rotten seed that has poisoned your family.’

  ‘I wonder,’ Henry said darkly. ‘Is it really over, and have my girls and I truly seen the last of that perverted animal?’

  *

  The truck was parked hard up against the rear door of the court building, in the gated secure compound. The rear doors were open to receive Carl Bannock. The sides of the truck were signwritten with the letters TDCJ–CID, for Texas Department of Criminal Justice – Correctional Institutions Division. Carl was bundled in through the rear doors and his leg irons were locked into the ring-bolts on the floor between his legs. The doors were slammed shut and locked and the truck pulled away on its seventy-mile journey to the Huntsville induction centre.

  The Holloway Induction Unit was a square concrete block four levels high, with heavily barred windows. It was protected by guard towers and a triple row of ring-fencing. At each of the three gates the truck passed through heavy security checks. When it reached the main building Carl’s leg irons were unlocked, and he was shepherded by his guards through a series of electronic gates to the primary reception area.

  His papers were checked once again and Carl’s name and details were entered in the register. Then the sergeant behind the desk signed the receipt for his delivery. Two new guards took over from those who had brought him down from Houston. He was led through another remotely controlled gate into the main reception area. All his personal possessions, including his gold signet ring, his wallet and his gold Rolex wristwatch, and his civilian clothing were taken from him. They were inventoried and bagged. When the guard gave him the receipt book to sign he handed him back a ten-dollar bill from his wallet.

  ‘What’s this for?’ Carl asked.

  ‘You are a sex offender. It’s for essential toiletries.’

  ‘What has my conviction got to do with it?’

  ‘You’ll find out.’ The guard gave him a sly grin.

  He led Carl to the barber shop, where his hair was cropped down to the skull. The barber stood back to admire his handiwork.

  ‘Stunning!’ He gave his opinion. ‘Them good ol’ boys in Holloway are going to love you, baby.’

  The guards took him on to the showers to scrub up. Then, naked and wet, he went on to the tailor, where he was handed his uniform through a hatch. His new uniform was made up of a white tee shirt and underpants, baggy white canvas jacket and trousers with a drawstring waist, and white canvas slip-on shoes.

  Through another electronic gate he was taken to a single cell in a long row of cells and locked down. The furnishing consisted of a squat-pan toilet and a wooden bunk that was fixed firmly to the floor and side wall. There was a single blanket but no mattress. Later, his dinner was handed to him through the hatch. It was a bowl of watery stew with a thick slice of bread dunked in it.

  Early the next morning he was taken from his cell to the interview room, where three members of the induction board were waiting for him, seated at a steel table. All three of them were uniformed members of the Correctional Institutions Division staff.

  ‘Carl Peter Bannock. Is that correct?’ the man seated in the middle of the trio asked without looking up.

  ‘Yes,’ Carl replied.

  ‘Sir!’ the inquisitor corrected him.

  ‘Sir,’ Carl agreed dutifully.

  ‘Fifteen years’ sentence, minimum. Is that correct?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Sex offender and paedophile. Is that correct?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Carl said through gritted teeth.

  ‘Better send him to Holloway Long Term Correctional Unit,’ said one of the other members of the panel.

  The senior member of the panel suggested, ‘Send him to the sixth level, where the other long-termers can’t get at him?’

  ‘The only place those good ol’ boys won’t get at him is in heaven, and this pretty boy ain’t never going that high.’ The third member of the panel sniggered and the others chuckled.

  That afternoon another TDCJ–CID truck carried Carl a further twenty miles south into the historic cotton slavery belt where the
Holloway penitentiary stood in a bleak and featureless landscape like a massive grey concrete monument to the infamy of mankind.

  Here the security was even more forbidding than it had been at the induction centre. It took twenty minutes for the vehicle to pass through the three ring-fences and to park at the prisoner reception entrance. Then it was a further twenty-five minutes before Carl had his manacles and leg irons removed and he was transferred from the ground level to his final destination on the sixth and top level of the building.

  From the elevator he was marched down a short passageway to a green-painted door which was signed OFFICE OF THE LEVEL SUPERVISOR. One of the guards knocked on the door and was rewarded with a muffled bellow from within. He opened the door and jerked his head at Carl to enter. The level supervisor was sitting behind his desk. The plastic name tag pinned to his shirt proclaimed him to be LUCAS HELLER.

  His chair was teetering on its two back legs and Lucas’s booted feet were planted on the desktop. With a crash he let the chair fall forward onto all four legs and he stood up. He was tall, round shouldered and lean. His sandy hair was thinning, but what was left of it flopped onto his forehead. His ears were disproportionally large for his long pale face. His eyes were also pale and watery, but the tip of his nose was pink and the nostrils moist with rhinitis. His two upper front teeth protruded to give him the air of an anaemic rabbit.

  He carried a riding crop in his right hand. He came around from behind his desk and circled Carl slowly on his long stork-like legs. He sniffed wetly as he reached out with the riding crop and stroked Carl’s buttocks with the leather flap on the end of the crop. Carl started with surprise and Lucas sniffed again and giggled like a girl.

  ‘Nice,’ he said. ‘Very nice. You should fit in very nicely here.’ He winked at one of the guards. ‘A nice tight fit. Get it?’

  ‘Yeah! I got it, Super.’ The guard guffawed.

  Lucas came around in front of Carl and sat on the edge of his desk.

  ‘Have you got your ten dollars for the essential toiletries, Beauty Bannock?’

  ‘Yes, Super.’

  ‘Let’s have it.’ Lucas held out his hand and snapped his fingers. Carl groped in the pocket of his white canvas pants and brought out the crumpled bill. Lucas plucked it from his hand. Then he went back behind his desk and opened one of the drawers. He took out a large plastic bottle and slid it across the desktop towards Carl.

  ‘There you have it.’

  Carl picked up the bottle and examined the label. ‘Best Quality Macassar essential oil. Great for the hair,’ he read aloud and looked puzzled.

  ‘What should I do with this, Super?’

  ‘You will know when the time comes,’ Lucas assured him. ‘Just keep it handy.’ Then he glanced at the guard. ‘Have you got the check for this piece of goods?’

  ‘Right here, Super.’ The guard laid the check-in book in front of him, and Lucas dashed off his signature.

  ‘Okay, boys. Bring him along.’ They marched Carl back along the passageway, through another massive door and into a long gallery of grey steel and darker grey concrete. The vaulted ceiling high overhead was covered with armoured glass. Sharp rectangular shafts of brilliant sunlight burned down, filled with dancing silver dust motes. On each side of the gallery stood a long row of barred steel cages. Shadowy figures clung to the bars or crouched behind them, peering through as Carl was led past. Some of them called out sardonic greetings and blew wolf whistles, giggled and hooted and reached through the bars to make obscene gestures at him.

  Lucas stopped at the last cell in the row and opened the door with his electronic master key.

  ‘Welcome to cell number 601. The Honeymoon Suite.’ Lucas grinned and waved him through. As Carl stepped over the threshold the door slid closed behind him. Lucas and his escort left him and returned the way they had come, without looking back.

  Carl went to sit on the single bunk, and surveyed cell 601. It was no larger than his cell at the induction centre had been. The only improvement was the tiny stainless-steel washbasin beside the squat pan of the toilet and a stool set at a bare writing desk. Every piece of furniture was bolted to the walls so it could not be used as a weapon.

  This was to be his home for at least the next fifteen years, and his spirits quailed.

  At six o’clock that evening a bell rang and Carl, taking his cue from the other inmates, went to stand at the door of his cell. All the cell doors on the level opened simultaneously, and the prisoners stepped out into the gallery.

  On shouted commands from the armed guards on the steel catwalk high above, they turned and filed down to the canteen at the other end of the gallery. As each prisoner passed the kitchen hatch a small plastic tray was shoved at him by one of the kitchen staff. Dinner was a bowl of soup, another bowl of mutton stew and a round of white bread. Carl took his place at one of the bare steel tables, but none of the other inmates came to join him. They formed cliques with others of the same ethnic backgrounds. Some of them were obviously discussing Carl, but he could not hear what they were saying, so he ignored them. He told himself bitterly that he would have many more years to find his place in this warped society.

  They were given twenty minutes to eat, and then the guards on the walkways up above chivvied them back to their cells.

  Lock-down was at precisely seven thirty. Carl lay on his back on the bunk with his ankles crossed and his hands behind his head. He was exhausted. It had been a day of worry and uncertainty. At least the dinner had been edible and he longed for the arc lights that burned down into his cell to be switched off for the night. But he had been warned by the guards that was never going to happen.

  Gradually he became aware that the voices of the prisoners in the cells around him had sunk to expectant whispers and muffled sniggers. Carl sat up and looked out through his bars into the long gallery, but his view was limited and he could see no reason for the charged mood that seemed to grip the other inmates on Level Six.

  Then he sat up again and swung his legs off the bunk as he became aware of the tramp of many feet approaching down the gallery. Lucas Heller, the level supervisor, came into his line of sight. He was carrying his riding crop. He wore a regulation hat and a crisply ironed uniform.

  ‘Prisoner, on your feet!’ he ordered.

  Carl stood up from the bed.

  ‘How are you enjoying your first night in Holloway, Bannock?’

  ‘Fine, Super.’

  ‘Dinner okay?’

  ‘No complaints, Super.’

  ‘Bored, are you?’

  ‘Not really, Super.’

  ‘That’s bad luck, Bannock. Because I brought some good ol’ boys to keep you company. A number of them been here twenty years and more, and they bored as all hell. None of them had a woman in all that time, and they hot as all hell, too, I can tell you!’

  Carl stood to attention, and he felt his skin crawl. He had heard the jokes and rumours, but he had wanted to believe they were not true and that it would never happen to him. But there were strange men crowding forward behind Lucas.

  ‘May I introduce to you Mr Johnny Congo?’ Lucas put his hand on the shoulder of the man nearest to him. Lucas was tall but he had to reach up to his own head level to do so. The man seemed to be a massive mountain of anthracite. His head was round and smooth as a cannon ball. He wore only a tee shirt and shorts, so Carl could see that his limbs were like baulks of ebony hardwood, solid muscle and bone almost devoid of any trace of fat.

  ‘Mr Congo lives on death row downstairs while the Supreme Court considers his appeal. He has been with us eight years and is highly respected here in Holloway, so he’s got special visiting rights.’ Lucas held his hand out, palm upwards, and Johnny Congo placed a twenty-dollar bill in it. Lucas smiled his thanks and pressed the door release. The bars slid aside.

  ‘Go ahead, Mr Congo. Take all the time you want; just enjoy yourself.’ Congo stepped into the cell, and the other men crowded up to the barred cell door behind him, jostling
each other for position, grinning in anticipation.

  ‘You got your Macassar oil, white boy?’ Congo asked Carl. ‘You got about thirty seconds to get yourself lubed up, and down on your knees, otherwise I’m coming in dry.’

  Carl backed away from him. He was speechless with terror, and he was beginning to blubber. ‘No. No, please leave me alone.’

  The cell was small and with three giant strides Congo had him trapped in the corner. He reached out and grabbed Carl’s upper arm. With a casual flick of the wrist he hurled him face down on his bunk.

  ‘Get your pants down, white boy. Give me the oil.’ Then Congo saw for himself the Macassar oil bottle on the shelf above the washbasin where Carl had placed it. He took it down and screwed off the cap. He went back to the bunk. Carl had rolled himself into a ball, with his knees under his chin. Congo flipped Carl over onto his face, then placed his knee between Carl’s shoulder blades and ripped down the elastic top of his pants. He held the bottle up high and poured half the contents over Carl’s buttocks.

  ‘Ready or not, here I come!’ Congo said as he got into position behind Carl.

  ‘No…’ Carl blubbered, and then he screamed. It was a sound of utmost anguish. Each of the waiting men handed their entrance fee to Lucas, like the spectators at a ball game, and then they crowded into the cell behind the pair on the bunk. Their voices were thick with lust and excitement. One of them sang out, ‘Go, Congo! Go, go, go!’

  The others laughed and took up the refrain.

  ‘Go, Congo, go!’

  Suddenly Congo arched his back, threw back his head and gave a cry like a bull moose in rut. The man behind him helped him off, and then immediately took his place. Carl screamed again.

  ‘My Lordy, but he do sing sweet,’ said the third man in the line.

  By the time the fifth man came over him Carl was no longer screaming. When the last man was finished, he shook his head sorrowfully as he pulled away.