Blacklands: A Novel

by Belinda Bauer

  IN MEMORY OF LUKE DEWBERRY, AGED 10.

  Oh, his benches were his ticket out of here all right. But they were also tickets to previously unimagined pleasure while he was still stuck in this grimy hellhole.

  Now his benches graced the yard and walkways that already evidenced the work of other prisoners, with their foolproof flowerbeds and neat verges. And every time he was allowed out for exercise, Avery made a beeline for one of them.

  Other prisoners made benches. Other prisoners now started to put little plaques on them, most with the names of their children or lovers or mothers.

  But Avery had no interest in sitting on other benches. He luxuriated against the plaque IN MEMORY OF MILLY LEWIS-CRUPP; he pressed JOHN ELLIOT, AGED 7 with a thumb he’d rubbed dirty just for the occasion; and, on one memorable afternoon, he rubbed himself discreetly against the back of a bench while staring at the brass words:

  IN MEMORY OF LOUISE LEVERETT.

  And while he did, a large part of him savoured the delicious irony. He was way too smart to show Leaver just how clever he really was.

  Or how angry.

  Or how desperate to hear from SL.

  Despite his newfound control and patience, Avery could not help wondering whether he’d done the right thing in not replying to SL’s last demanding missive.

  For the first two weeks after he’d received the bald “WP?” he’d enjoyed knowing that SL was waiting for something that he, Arnold Avery, wasn’t going to give him. That had been satisfying and empowering, and Avery had been energized by the experience.

  The next two weeks had been more difficult. While his self-satisfaction continued to some degree, he also missed anticipating SL’s reply to any letter he might have sent. He had to keep reminding himself that he was doing the right thing. But his resolve was tested and he started to wonder if SL had given up. People had no staying power, he worried. Avery had staying power, but he was exceptional. SL had been impatient, so maybe he had also been angry or frustrated or just tired of the sport. The thought that SL might not realize that he was now required to make a concession to appease Avery scared him.

  SL’s first communication had heralded the most interesting four months of Avery’s entire incarceration, and he was loath for it to end. Every missive had been a reminder of his heyday, and everyone likes to be reminded of their finest hour, he reasoned.

  Week five of Avery’s unilateral moratorium brought despondency. SL was tough. Avery lay awake at nights and worried. He resented it bitterly; his nights had become oases of pleasure since SL’s first letter had allowed him to reexamine his memories in fresh detail in a way he’d thought was long gone. But now he lay awake, unable to recapture those baser feelings and fretting instead over practicalities like the unreliability of the postal system, or the thought that SL might have concocted the correspondence as a kind of sick hoax to bring about the very punishment he was now experiencing.

  It was this last thought that finally raised the anger in Avery that kept him strong. Anger was an emotion he had rarely given in to since his arrest. Avery knew that anger was counterproductive to life inside, which required resignation above all else.

  Resignation had been his constant companion for years, with his anger at Finlay or Leaver never being allowed to break the surface, although he could feel it boiling in his guts whenever he saw either of them.

  Now, in the pitch-black cell which did not even shed the light of a half-full moon on his darkness, Avery mentally added SL to his short but heartfelt list of fury, and resolved that his erstwhile correspondent would get nothing from him—not a word, not a symbol, not a carefully folded piece of Avery’s shit-stained toilet paper—until he’d said sorry.

  It was five weeks and four days since SL’s last letter before Avery received the next one.

  There was no map, no initials, no question marks, just the single word:

  Avery grinned. It had more grudge than grovel about it, but it would do. SL had learned the lesson and had realized that he was not in control in this game, and that Avery should therefore be accorded due deference. With that single word he had acknowledged Avery’s power.

  Now Avery sat and wondered how best to wield it.

  Chapter 18

  IF ARNOLD AVERY HAD REALIZED HOW STEVEN HAD STRUGGLED to write that single word, he would have been more appreciative of it.

  Once he’d recognized that he’d offended and needed to make peace, Steven had written a dozen letters and posted none. They ranged from a rambling litany of the reasons he was so desperate for knowledge, through a sycophantic plea for guidance, to an angry rant at the callousness of the distant prisoner.

  So it had gone on. A roller coaster of emotions that lasted for weeks and left Steven’s mind sick with pleading and dizzy with anger. In short, he had found it a lot harder to swallow what little pride he had than he’d thought he would.

  Finally—going with the brevity that had brought him the genius of “Sincerely”—he simply wrote “Sorry,” hoping that Avery would read into it whatever underlying motivation would best serve Steven’s purpose. He could do no less, but he was not prepared to do more.

  Another week passed, during which Lewis claimed that Chantelle Cox had a crush on him.

  It was not the first time Lewis had been convinced of the power of his own sexual attraction. Last summer Lewis had casually told him Melanie Spark had let him touch her tit. Steven had been stunned and it was only his careful and insistent probing that revealed that it had been through a cardigan and a blouse, and had really been more of a rib, and that fickle Melanie had immediately elbowed Lewis in the throat for it. When Steven hesitantly suggested that—just maybe—Melanie Spark hadn’t been an active participant in the tit-touching episode, Lewis had merely grinned at him pityingly and revealed that women always changed their minds about sex; that it was what they were known for.

  But apparently Chantelle Cox had not changed her mind; at least Lewis had no fresh bruises to indicate that she might have.

  “Lalo and me were the snipers and she ran round the back of the shed and I went after her—”

  “Where was Lalo?”

  “He was too scared. Last time he chased her round there she hit him with the hose. But I went round cos I knew Dad had used the hose to wash the car yesterday and it was out front. And she was just standing there, so I shot her, but she wouldn’t fall down cos of that muck, you know?”

  Steven knew. He’d died into the muck round the back of Lewis’s shed a few times.

  “So I says, ‘If you don’t fall down, I’m taking you prisoner,’ so she says, ‘Okay, then,’ so I put her arms behind her and tied them with my jumper, right?”

  Steven nodded. He’d also been tied with Lewis’s jumper on a number of occasions. It didn’t hurt and wasn’t hard to get out of.

  “And then she kissed me, right on the lips.”

  “She kissed you?”

  “She kissed me.”

  “With tongues?”

  “Tongues?” Lewis looked puzzled.

  “Yeah,” said Steven. “Did she put her tongue in your mouth?”

  A look of revulsion flashed across Lewis’s face. “That’s disgusting!”

  Steven flushed. Somewhere he’d heard that that was what girls did, but now—flustered by Lewis’s instant disapproval—he couldn’t remember where he’d heard it and whether the source was reputable. His natural deference to Lewis in all things worldly was an integral part of their friendship and now he felt that not only had he stepped out of line but he’d stepped out of line into a bog, and he needed to turn around fast and get back onto solid ground.

  He shrugged and looked apologetic. Lewis scowled at him.

  “Did you touch her tit too?” Steven thought that handing Lewis the opportunity to brag would be his path back to terra firma, and he wasn’t wrong.

  Lewis looked glazed for a moment and then nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah, both of them. At the same time. I got a stiffie and everything.�
��

  Steven knew it was a lie. Not all of it. He was sure Chantelle Cox had kissed—or been kissed by—Lewis. But he could always tell when Lewis left his own path and strayed haphazardly and inexpertly into the minefield of lies. A tiny, shifty look in his eyes preceded any such deviation, as if his inner eye were scanning the horizon for the possible pitfalls of his imminent dishonesty. Steven always let it go. It was like the good half of a sandwich. What was the point in arguing?

  And besides, he thought with a sudden rush of unfamiliar maturity, just last week he’d apologized to a real-life serial killer; allowing Lewis his imaginary stiffie behind the garden shed seemed paltry by comparison.

  Plus, kissing Chantelle Cox was something to boast about. She wasn’t that pretty, and she was a tomboy, but she definitely had little breasts, although she never teased boys with them the way Alison Lovacott did. Apparently. Steven had heard that Alison Lovacott had flashed her boobs to John Cubby in the lunch queue. He could hardly believe it, but if it had happened to anybody it would have happened to John Cubby, who captained the Under-16s soccer team and was plainly the best-looking boy in the school.

  This reminded Steven that it was John Cubby he’d overheard about the tongues and that it was therefore almost certain to be true. Too late now—he’d already backed down over that. The thought of Chantelle Cox putting her tongue in his mouth didn’t disgust him, though. In fact, the idea sent a little shiver through him that was not at all unpleasant. He blushed. Maybe he was not normal. Not normal the way that Arnold Avery was not normal. He frowned, disturbed by the thought, and wished it had never entered his head.

  “What’s with you?” Lewis was staring at him quizzically.

  “Nothing,” he knee-jerked, and looked up to see they were almost at Lewis’s house.

  They said good-bye and Steven walked on to his house alone.

  He smiled at Nan in the window but she just pursed her lips at him as if he’d done something wrong just by walking home from school.

  Davey had spread every toy he owned in the hallway behind the front door. Something cracked under Steven’s foot as he entered and he looked down to see a broken pink jack. He kicked it skittering towards the skirting board.

  “Steven?”

  His mother’s voice sounded strained and Steven stood motionless, wondering whether he could still back out of the front door without her knowing he’d ever been in.

  “He’s just come in.” Nan’s voice was sly.

  Steven couldn’t keep the wariness out of his voice: “What?”

  “Could you come in here please?”

  He looked up to see that Nan had come to the door of the front room to enjoy his heavy walk to the guillotine of the kitchen.

  His mother was sitting at the kitchen table holding a letter from Arnold Avery.

  Steven felt his bladder clench in terror and almost doubled over as he barely managed to stop himself pissing down his legs. It was the Lego space station all over again.

  Lettie looked at him coldly.

  “You got a letter.”

  He couldn’t find words. Couldn’t remember how to find words. He felt the back of his neck prickle and burn. His life was over.

  Lettie looked down at the letter and cleared her throat.

  “A photo would be nice,” she read.

  “A photo! Disgusting!” Nan was standing behind him. Now she pushed him aside so she could cross to Lettie, and tried to take the letter from her hands. Lettie kept it from her.

  “It’s all right, Mum, I’m dealing with it.”

  Nan snorted. They all knew the snort. It meant she knew best.

  While their attention was momentarily elsewhere, Steven glanced at the brown envelope. As before, there was nothing on it to indicate where it had come from. He knew the notepaper Avery used had no prison markings on it. It was cheap schoolbook paper. It could have come from anywhere. Avery always wrote his prison number along the top of the page but, without context, that meant nothing.

  The fact that the envelope and the notepaper were anonymous gave Steven hope, and hope gave him courage.

  “Can I read it?”

  Lettie and Nan both looked at him as if he’d asked for new underpants made of pure gold.

  “It is mine. Isn’t it?” He even managed to inject a very small note of anger into the words and suddenly Lettie was on the back foot. She’d opened a letter that didn’t belong to her. Whatever the circumstances, that was difficult to justify.

  But she tried.

  “It might be your letter, Steven, but if this is from some girl, then the business of it is mine too. I have a right to know if you’re about to knock some girl up and leave me holding the baby, understand?”

  Steven’s mind raced to catch up along the path his mother’s had long since travelled. Finally, after an agony of mental confusion that made him want to slap some sense into himself, he got there. His mother thought the letter was from a girl. A secret girlfriend. A girlfriend he might actually have had sex with.

  Steven almost laughed out loud. He was so far from having sex with a girl that he wasn’t even sure whether tongues was real or a sick joke. The closest he’d ever got to having sex with a girl was listening to Lewis’s fantasies about tits and stiffies.

  If Steven Lamb had been the boy he was at the beginning of spring, he would have laughed out loud. But the Steven Lamb who had written to a serial killer in a secret quest for a dead body saw the opportunity—and took it.

  He held out his hand firmly but casually. “I don’t know who it’s from until I read it, do I?”

  His calm tone and her burgeoning guilt made Lettie hand him the letter even as Nan ground her teeth behind her.

  Steven only needed a brief glance.

  That was all there was. Not even Avery’s initials. Nothing incriminating. Nothing he even understood yet, but he would. He was sure now that he would understand it. The “D” and the “B” were capitalized, but the initials DB meant nothing to him off the top of his head. No victim’s name started with DB. No matter. He’d seen the letter; he understood the code. He’d work it out.

  And—more importantly—his mother never would.

  “Is it from that AA?”

  With a coolness that made him question his own basic honesty, Steven shrugged.

  “It’s just a girl, Mum.”

  “A girl wanting a photo of you!” Lettie tried hard to recapture her suspicion and anger but Steven’s openness had taken the wind out of her sails.

  He only shrugged again, at the same time as he slid the letter back into the envelope and shoved both into the back pocket of his black school trousers.

  “Not my fault if I’m gorgeous.”

  It could have gone either way but, for once, it went his way. Lettie’s face relaxed and she smiled at him, then slid her arms around his waist while he wriggled halfheartedly not to be kissed on the cheek.

  She won that battle and they both laughed and Nan turned away to the sink, but not before Steven had seen her face relax at his joke and—for a single blissful moment—Steven remembered why he’d been digging.

  For this.

  For moments like this—when a reminder that they could one day be a real family suddenly burst through the crust of pain and resentment and poverty and left him feeling happy and achingly sad all at once.

  He stopped wrestling and let his mother hold him in a way she hadn’t for many years, allowing himself to relax his head onto her shoulder while she stroked his back as she might a tired toddler.

  “You will be careful, won’t you, Steven?”

  “Of course, Mum.”

  “I’m only worried you’ll get hurt.”

  “I know. I’ll be careful.”

  “Ask him about protection,” said Nan, who’d reverted to type faster than he’d ever have thought possible.

  Lettie let him go and scowled up at her mother. The moment was gone, and Steven straightened up a little reluctantly.

  “Don’t give
me that look, my girl. I wish I’d done it for you and then you wouldn’t have got yourself …” She tailed off but jerked her head meaningfully at Steven.

  He flushed—partly with anger at his nan—and his mother slipped her hand around his.

  “You know about protection, don’t you, Steven?”

  “Mum!” He flamed with embarrassment but a very small part of him felt rather smug that his mother and nan could entertain the possibility that he, Steven Lamb, could be desirable enough for somebody—at some indeterminate point in the future—to consider having sex with him.