Guilty

by Jane Bidder

  ‘What do you think this is? The bleeding Intercontinental? She’ll be informed, when the paperwork is ready.’

  ‘But when …?’

  Too late, Simon found his arm being yanked by another officer and marched out of the cell yet again and along the corridor. Out into a yard and then another and into a large white van along with a dark youth whose face was marked by a long scar down the right-hand side.

  ‘Hi, man!’ The boy put up his hand in a high five. For some reason he couldn’t explain, Simon did the same. The boy’s palm felt hot and sweaty against his. Instantly he felt the urgent need to wash his hands.

  ‘What did you get, man?’

  ‘Two years.’

  ‘ʼSnothing, issit! I’ve only got nine more months to do, meself!’ He was grinning as though they were swapping exam grades. ‘Great, innit?’

  Simon felt like he’d stumbled into the wrong play. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Freetown, man,’ said the boy. ‘Didn’t they tell you?’ His face shone. ‘It’s an open prison. Cool man. Really cool.’

  He knew about open prisons of course, but only from a lawyer’s perspective. Spencer, the boy who had the scar, was determined to fill him in.

  ‘You can’t just wander in and out like. You have to prove yourself like.’ He grinned, scratching himself in the groin region; an area which was disturbingly revealed by a hole in his jeans. ‘My brothers say it’s like a holiday camp.ʼ His eyes grew wistful. ‘I’d love to go to that kind of place one day with girls, discos, and as much scram as you can scoff. Can you imagine, man?’

  He didn’t want to. All he could think about was Claire. Someone had to tell her where he was. Still, Alex and Rosemarie would be looking after her, he reassured himself. They’d have asked her and Ben over for supper after the verdict. They’d be comforting her right now …

  ‘Freetown is great, man, though you’ve got to do what the screws tell you. They don’t take any crap. But the best thing is that you can walk around! Breathe fresh air. I tell yer. I’ve been waiting for my D cat. for years.’

  ‘D cat.?’

  Despite having helped to send people to prison (or not) for years, Simon realised to his shame that his knowledge of HMP categories wasn’t particularly deep.

  ‘Man, you a prison virgin or something? D cat. is the best you can get.’ He puffed out his chest. ‘Started off in a B cat., I did. Did eight years there and then spent four years in a shitty C cat. And now here!’

  Simon mentally totted up the years in his head. That meant Spencer had been in prison for a total of nearly twelve years. He didn’t look old enough. He must have done something pretty awful but it seemed rude to ask. Then it occurred to him that he might well be locked up in a van with a rapist or murderer. ’I’m not like him,’ he wanted to tell the prison guard. ‘I’m not a criminal.’

  ‘Really?’ tinkled Joanna. ‘So what do you call murder then?’

  Initially Joanna’s voice, which kept coming into his head, had seemed no more than his own guilty conscience but now it had taken on a distinct presence. ‘You killed me just as surely as some of the other guys in this place have chopped up others, darling,’ sang Joanna . ‘ I’m not sure about your new friend either. Look at the way he’s eyeing your bits and pieces – and I’m not just talking about your body. ’

  The boy was indeed eyeing his watch keenly. It wasn’t valuable in monetary terms – especially now it had been smashed from The Accident – but his father had given it to him all those years ago and now, too late, he was wishing he had left it at home.

  ‘Distract him, darling,’ prompted Joanna. ‘ It’s what I used to do with Hugh when he got threatening. Make small talk. Good gracious, don’t they teach you anything at law school? ’

  ‘So tell me,’ Simon began carefully, ‘what’s this place like?’

  Spencer yawned, revealing the gap of teeth once more and a couple of gold ones glinting from the back. ‘There are huts, mate. Not cells. You have to share for the first few months and that can be crap if you don’t like the person you’re with. Or you might learn a bit from him, if you know what I mean. The good bit is that you get to go in and out of the huts. No locked doors or that kind of stuff. You have to put yer name down for a work party.’ He leaned forward. ‘Want a tip from me? Get yourself onto farms and gardens. Then you get to do outside stuff round the prison like cleaning the drains. Don’t go on to stores.’

  Despite having been introduced to Stores in Holdfast, Simon had a mental picture of a London department store. He’d had a girlfriend once, who was a PR for Harvey Nicks, one of his favourites. The store that was; not the girl, who’d been another wanting too much, too soon in the days before he was ready for commitment. Before he’d met Claire.

  ‘If you work in Stores, you have to hand out clean clothes to people. You’re allowed noo joggers every week but everyone comes in and says they’ve lost their trainers so can they have some more but they’re lying like. Then if you say no, you can get beaten up.’

  Simon waited for Spencer to say he was only joking but he didn’t. His skin began to crawl.

  ‘There’s Education mind but I don’t want none of that meself.’

  A possibility arose in Simon’s mind of maybe doing another degree. Memories of Jeffrey Archer came to mind. He’d always fancied studying Chinese and it would keep his mind occupied. Would there be a library there? Then he pulled himself up. For Christ’s sake, what was he thinking of? He’d just killed a woman and wrecked his own family and here he was, already planning his next year’s reading programme. ‘Why don’t you want anything to do with education?’ he asked, more out of politeness than anything else.

  Spencer snorted. His nostrils were wide suggesting that of a wild horse. Was that genetic or was it related to sniffing something, Simon wondered. ‘It’s just not for me.’

  ‘Didn’t you go to school?’

  Another snort. ‘Me mam tried to get me to go so she could entertain her man friends when I was out but the teachers gave up on me ʼcos I used to keep climbing the tree outside and staying up there.’ He beamed with pride. ‘Can’t tell you how many times they had to call the cops out and the fire engines too.’

  ‘To get you down?’

  Spencer shot him a pitying look. ‘Nah. When I tried to set the school kitchens on fire.’ He gave another yawn and stretched out his legs to reveal part of a blue and pink flame tattoo above his sock.

  ‘None of this shit would have happened if we’d grown up somewhere different like.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It was the estates wot did it. We didn’t expect to be teachers or nothing clever like that.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘It was like what are you going to do then? Credit cards? Nicking stuff from shops? Grab cars? Drive them as getaways for the older boys on the estate who did post offices? Pick up stash for the dealers? Take it to get weighed and then drop it off?’

  He began to look pleased with himself. ‘I was on the way up when I got done. But you know what the best job is?’

  Simon waited, hooked despite himself.

  ‘It’s not handling your stash. Getting others to do it for you and then pocketing the money.’ Spencer looked wistful. ‘But you have to go a long way before you can get that far!’

  There was no repentance, Simon saw with a shock. To Spencer and thousands like him, this was just a way of life. A career path. Just then the van began to slow down.

  ‘Here we are mate.’ Spencer laughed, revealing another flash of gold at the back of his mouth. ‘Home at last.’

  Curious and scared, Simon peered out of the tiny gap at the top of the window between the blacked-out bit and the frame. There was a high wire fence which had rolls of more barbed wire on top. It looked forbidding; impenetrable.

  Spencer shuddered. ‘That’s the Dark Side next to our bit.’

  ‘The Dark Side?’

  ‘Blimey man, keep up. Grimville, it’s called. It’s a Cat. B that is, like the one I w
as in ʼcept I’m not a psycho like half those nutters there. You don’t want to go near that place. It even scares me.’

  Simon looked across at the high barbed wire fence and the dark grey building behind and shivered. What kind of men were inside?

  ‘The same kind as you, darling!’ trilled Joanna. ‘Murderers. Now are we going in or not?’

  Chapter Eleven

  Claire had been waiting on tenterhooks for a phone call from Simon when the mobile rang. ‘Patrick’ it said on the screen. She answered it with a mixture of crashing disappointment and also expectation. Her husband, it seemed, had been moved to some prison called Freetown which was in Essex, of all places – a seven-hour drive away.

  ‘It’s an open prison which is excellent news,’ Patrick had told her in a tone that suggested she ought to be extremely grateful. ‘It means that when the paperwork is sorted, you’ll be allowed to visit twice a week. After a while, Simon will be allowed out on town visits provided he’s escorted. You’ll be able to take him out for a day every now and then. And the good news is that it’s the softest kind of prison you can get so he won’t just be mixing with hard criminals. Offences normally centre around drugs, fraud, drink, and of course driving. There’ll be some men who are coming up for the end of their sentences from other prisons but on the whole, Simon should be in reasonable company.’

  It was so much to take in, this world which she knew nothing about! Town visits. Fraudsters. Men coming up for the end of their sentences. Did that mean they had committed more serious crimes such as … She paused, unable to form the word ‘murder’ or ‘rape’ in her head. No, she reassured herself. They wouldn’t put him in a place with people like that.

  ‘How are you doing?’ asked Patrick.

  Claire almost laughed. She was an ordinary woman who, until not long ago, had led a fairly normal life, give or take a marriage break up. Now she had a new husband in prison, a rebellious teenage son who was due to start a new term at school and a house that wasn’t safe to live in any more. How did he think she was doing?

  ‘Not great.’ She glanced down at the list of rental houses she’d picked up from an agency in town. ‘I’m still wondering if we really have to go.’

  As she spoke, Claire peered out through the pretty pink and blue chintz curtains of the drawing room which she’d had to keep shut since the brick incident two days ago. The local handyman had come in to board it up but he had done so silently, giving her dolorous looks as though she too was responsible for Joanna’s death.

  ‘I think it’s wise to move out for a bit, for your own safety.’ Patrick’s tone was slow and steady rather like the doctor’s when he’d given her a prescription for tranquillisers that morning.

  She nodded silently, thinking of the call she’d made to the rental agency. ‘But they want references so I’ll have to give my real name and then they might recognise me which will defeat the whole purpose.’

  Claire could almost hear Patrick considering this. ‘You might have a point. It’s a pity the trial was covered so extensively by the local press.’

  ‘There’s something else.’ Her hand tightened on the list of flats. ‘Do you know any more about Simon being paid?’

  ‘Hasn’t he received the letter?’

  She shook her head, even though he couldn’t see her.

  ‘I’m sorry about this, Claire, but I gather he’s been struck off. It often happens if someone is convicted. Simon won’t be able to practise as a lawyer again.’

  Never work as a lawyer again? Her mind whirled with the implications. Simon lived for his job! Once she’d been to see him handle a case in court and had sat, mesmerised, in the gallery, stunned by the way he had strutted across the floor like an actor. When one of the witnesses for the other side had insisted that he had seen the defendant on a certain night, Simon had produced a document from the file in front of him and waved it in the air. ‘Are you absolutely certain?’ he had demanded.

  The inference had been that Simon’s document proved otherwise. Afterwards, Simon had told her that this was a trick he sometimes used. The ‘document’ had in fact been blank but the defendant, who couldn’t see that from the distance between them, had been rattled enough to withdraw his ‘evidence’.

  Claire had been both impressed and unnerved by the scene. If her husband could be manipulative like that in his public life, who was to say he wasn’t like that in private?

  It was then that she heard the crash. ‘Mum!’ called out Ben from downstairs. She flew down, three steps at a time to find her son standing by the kitchen window, giant shards of glass around his feet and a scared expression on his white face.

  Not again! ‘You’re cut,’ she said appalled, glancing at the blood seeping out from under the shoulder of his t-shirt. ‘No. Don’t press that tea-towel against it – there might be glass inside.’

  ‘I was just standing there and the brick came through, just like last time.’ He was gabbling from shock. She was shaking too but with anger. ‘Grab your things.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We’re going.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Anywhere. But we need to go to Casualty on the way.’

  It was then that her mobile rang showing a number that she didn’t recognise. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Claire.’ Her husband’s voice sounded distant.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry. I can’t talk. Something’s happened. I’ll ring you back.’

  ‘You can’t. It’s taken me ages to buy my pin number from Canteen and then queue up at the phone. You don’t understand.’

  ‘And you,’ she said fiercely, bundling Ben towards the front door while cramming the mobile between her ear and shoulder, ‘don’t understand either.’

  Chapter Twelve

  What had happened? Why hadn’t Claire want to talk to him? Had she given up on him already? Simon sat on the thin grey blanket covering his bed and covered his face with his hands. He could cope with any of this shit around him. But only if Claire was still there, waiting for him.

  He’d waited days to ring her. Days. There were so many questions he needed to ask. How was she doing? Was she all right? Was Ben all right? He needed to tell her too about this place. What it had been like when he’d arrived. His mind went back …

  There had been so much to take in. Stumbling out of the van, Simon had had to screw up his eyes in the light and looked wildly around at the unfamiliar surroundings.

  Spencer had been right. The huts did look a bit like a holiday camp although there were grey and cream Portakabins too, dotted around like faded holiday caravans. These were for admin, apparently. Men were everywhere in maroon sweat shirts and jogging bottoms and long necklace-like identity cards round their necks. Huge men with shaved heads and thick necks. Small ones who had frightened-mouse expressions. A chalk-skinned albino who had bright red hair and negro-like lips. An old man leaning on a stick. Some walking. Some striding. One was running and Simon had to step sideways to avoid him. They seemed to be on a mission, he thought. But where? Surely there was nowhere to go?

  ‘This way, Mr Mills,’ one of the officers had said sharply with a sarcastic emphasis on ‘Mr’. He followed, desperately trying to familiarise himself. Behind one of the Portakabins, he could glimpse a high wire fence looming out of the ground and bending round in a semi-circle as though it wanted as little to do with the open prison as the latter did with it. There was a door in the middle and in the distance, he could just about make out someone in black going inside just as another, in identical uniform, came out.

  Nutters, Spencer had said nervously. Really? And if so, what on earth were the authorities thinking of to put an open prison next to a place for (apparently) seriously disturbed criminals?

  ‘In here, please Mr Mills.’

  He was shepherded into one of the Portakabins.

  ‘Bag, please.’

  Reluctantly, Simon watched as the officer, a tall thin, dark-haired man who had a chain round his waist, went through his belongings. Som
e were put to one side – like his razor – and the rest were handed back in a plastic bag.

  ‘Can’t I take that in? He pointed to the razor in its smart black leather case.

  ‘Not allowed. Your watch please.’

  ‘My watch?’ Dismayed, Simon undid the gold clasp and reluctantly handed it over. The officer gave it an admiring glance, despite the cracked face, and Simon wanted to knock his lights out. ‘My father gave it to me,’ he said quietly. ‘For my twenty-first.’

  The officer’s face tightened. ‘You’ll get it back when you’re released.’

  It was all he could do not to leap up and grab it. ‘Remember,’ his father had said when he’d given it to him, ‘always do the right thing. Don’t just do the best you can. Do better. People like us have to prove ourselves. Never forget that.’

  People like us. His father had come from a time when being half-Indian was a definite disadvantage. Hadn’t he suffered the same at school when boys who had aristocratic accents had clicked their fingers and called him a ‘coolie’? It wasn’t until he went to Oxford and found that his coffee complexion was actually a magnet for women that he began to be grateful for his looks. But he was in prison now. And he had a nasty feeling that his colour wasn’t going to be an advantage.

  ‘This way, Mr Mills.’

  Feeling naked without his watch, Simon followed the officer through the camp, past more Portakabins until finally stopping outside a squat looking bungalow-type building which had ‘G block’ scrawled on a homemade sign outside.

  ‘This is your pad,’ said the officer carelessly sweeping his arm in an extravagant gesture at the corridor inside with rooms leading off on either side. ‘First on the right.’

  Determined not to show his emotions – one of the first rules he’d learned at school – Simon took in the metal bed and its blue plastic mattress; the thin blanket; the grey lino on the floor which was ripped and stained; the thin black curtain at the window, hanging half off its rail. He could do this. He had to.