by Knight, Ali
‘The people are nice.’
‘Shame about the inmates.’ She took a drag on the joint and laid her head back. ‘It’s funny. White vans. I thought their spiritual home was our manor, south London – but in fact they’re all here! White-van men and surfers go together as a tribe.’
‘They’re perfect for carting surfboards around.’
Chloe exhaled lazily, the smoke drifting round their heads. ‘And bodies. You could have bodies in there and no one would be any the wiser.’ She paused. ‘I’ve always thought that.’
44
Lincolnshire
The countryside was vast, mile upon mile of fields stretching away on either side of the long straight road, interrupted only by a solitary barn or an ancient tree, silhouetted against the moon and thrown into relief by the man’s headlights. He could finally relax out here, the suburbs of Peterborough far behind him, the urban sprawl of the south-east whipped away from him by the wind.
He was exhausted, struggling to keep his eyes open and focused on the road. He had had no sleep for thirty-six hours as his every whim, every impulse, had been indulged over and over and over, and the clean-up at the mews was always long and painstaking. Now that the manic impulses had been sated his military training kicked in, like a survival test on a winter mountain; he still had a lot to do, and limited time. He turned right on to a one-lane road with a stripe of grass down its middle. He passed a field of pick-your-own strawberries, then black fallow fields, before he hit the wheatfields stretching away on either side.
It was flat from here all the way to the Urals. Maybe that was where she had come from, heading west for something better, her pretty little head filled with girls’ dreams. Instead she had fallen through the gap and become one of the missing.
He slowed, anticipating the gate, and stopped. He got out and listened to the emptiness for a moment. A sense of history always struck him here at this point and he thought of all the peoples who had been here before him: the old British tribes like the Corieltauvi, the Romans, Danes, Scandinavians and Normans, fighting and killing, raiding and raping for thousands of years, their blood and bones mulching down in this fertile soil just as hers would do. He put on wellies and opened the boot, pulling out a shovel and hoisting the long object in the blue plastic sheeting on to his back. He locked the car and headed into the huge wheatfield.
Lincolnshire produced more fresh produce than any other county in Britain, its grade-one soil supporting bumper crops of everything from sugar beet to cauliflowers, potatoes and organic wheat. He began to dig the fertile soil; no roots or stones or pipes to impede him going deep. The night was mild and he began to sweat. It took him two hours of hard work digging in the moonlight to have a trench deep and wide enough to put her well under. He never normally even glanced at them after, but the wellies she was wearing caught and jarred his eye. He stepped down into the grave and pulled them off. Covering her over and tamping down the fresh soil took forty minutes. Replanting the wheat stems took another hour, including trudging back to the car to get the gallon drum of water to make sure the plants took. When they came to harvest in September, the threshers would move over her in the swarms of dust of a million particles of wheat, the cycle of life on another revolution.
He walked out of the field, closed the gate and threw his wellies, her wellies and the spade in the boot. He pulled sharply on the cuffs of his blue shirt, had a long drink of water and drove away.
45
On Monday morning Darren had thought long and hard about whether he would actually go back to Roehampton. He needed to come clean to Chloe, Olivia was detained somewhere where he would not be able to meet her, the security review meant he would soon be discovered and serious consequences would follow. But once he had got up and showered he had realised his desire to be back here was too great.
Now as he came out of the changing rooms to gather his cleaning materials for his shift, Kamal barrelled out of his office, waving a slip of paper. ‘You,’ he barked, waving it under Darren’s nose. ‘Fill this in and I’ll forgive you.’
It was a form to show he no longer worked at Roehampton. Darren shook his head and turned away towards the security door. Kamal came and stood behind him and Darren tensed, but Kamal whispered in his ear. ‘I’m giving you as many shitters to clean as I can this shift. You’re doing the accommodation blocks.’ Kamal walked away as the buzzer sounded and the security door slid open.
Kamal’s revenge was prolonged. Darren mopped floors in an area with no windows or people and cleaned a toilet block devoid of windows or people. He was staring at another wasted day. A few hours later he arrived at the accommodation area and took small comfort in the fact that at least another person was here. A large female guard with sleepy eyes let him in to the cell area, a long featureless corridor with no natural light, a shiny lino floor, doors leading off on both sides and a locked door at the far end.
The guard walked with him along the corridor but didn’t think it necessary to talk to him. She unlocked the first door. The room was small, with a stainless steel toilet in the corner with no seat or lid, the cistern hidden in the wall. A small square of towel hung from a stainless steel sink. There was a shelf that protruded from the wall and served as the bed. It was covered in a mattress and a small pillow. There was a desk, nailed to the floor, and a chair under a tiny window with bars across it, too high to see anything from but a small patch of sky.
Darren squirted bleach down the toilet and ran a brush round the pan. He put the brush back on his cart. He wiped down the sink and came out. He picked up a duster and ran it over the desk and a shelf. He mopped the floor. When he had finished the guard shut the door and opened the next one, where he repeated the process, and the next. The rooms were all identical; they only varied in where the women put the toilet paper – on the floor or on the desk – what pictures or photos clung to the walls – usually family snapshots taken a long time ago when presumably few could have imagined they would have fallen so far.
Darren had cleaned nearly all the cells when the guard began to talk into a radio, using codes and language Darren didn’t understand. He came out of a cell to find the exit door at the end of the corridor opening and three nurses arriving, one pushing a wheelchair and another holding restraints in his hands. He was ordered to pull his trolley further back down the corridor as they entered the last cell on the right.
He backed away with his trolley and waited, the guard leaning against the corridor wall.
A few moments later the little group emerged from the cell, pushing the wheelchair. They backed it up against the exit door and stood beside it.
‘You can go in and clean now,’ the guard said.
Darren was standing about twenty feet away from Olivia. She sat staring at him from the wheelchair, her legs shackled with restraints and her hands bound together in her lap.
No one spoke. Darren began to push the trolley down the corridor towards Olivia, one wheel making a gentle squeaking noise as he went. Her face appeared blank, impossible to read. He stopped the trolley and paused. Now he was closer to her he could see her eyes flaring with flecks of gold. He picked up the toilet brush and entered her room.
Olivia watched Darren push the cleaning trolley towards her. She noted the width of his shoulders; he was tall and rangy, his wrists wiry but strong. His youth and health telegraphed out from him. No wonder Helen was fucking him.
Jealousy shot through her. Helen was hers, she felt. His being here, breaking the rules and running risks, rifling through what few possessions she had, gave her strange sensations. She understood there was no space for regret or pity; she had shown that pretty forcefully to his mother, to other mourners over the years. She didn’t care. She didn’t like most mothers, her own included. She felt the pull of the straps holding her arms in place, her emotions flickering between hate for this naïve young boy who was trying so pathetically to find his sister and regard for the fact that at least he was attempting something.
Darren re-emerged from her room, tiny drops of water falling from the toilet brush and reflecting like a chain of jewels in the harsh strip lights. He’s here to follow a trail that I can lay down, she thought. Like a child in an enchanted forest, he yearns to see where the trail leads him. She felt her lip curl with disdain. He is so young, and so naïve. In the centre of this wilderness there isn’t a house made of sweets, but there is a cell and a wicked witch.
And no one to save you.
Darren picked up the duster and returned to Olivia’s room. He looked at the indentation in the mattress made by her slim body. He noted the hairbrush and a toothbrush in a plastic beaker; a book about ancient Greece and one about philosophy. The desk was stained with newspaper print that a water beaker had transferred to the table, but the papers were gone. He rubbed the stain away with his cloth. The walls were bare, except for one photo of a smiling teenage girl with blonde hair, her arm round the neck of a horse. Her likeness to Olivia was striking. It must be her sister Lauren. There was no photo of her son.
Darren cleaned and wiped and came back out into the corridor. Olivia was still staring at him, unreadable, the nurses waiting patiently on either side of her wheelchair.
Darren picked up the mop, dipped it in the water and twisted. He gripped the handle hard, flashes of what had happened to Linda about to overwhelm him. Poetic justice, revenge … He could just swing it right now and get her back. End it. Finish her. Olivia’s eyes were widening, glittering. She was waiting, almost willing him on, pulling him towards the darkness.
If I don’t leave here I’m going to go mad, he thought.
Darren thought he might faint. The corridor began to close in on him, the floor began to tip upright. He turned and with enormous effort re-entered her room. Tears stung his eyes. He wasn’t nearer to Carly here – he felt further away from her than ever. He thought about Molly, lying in the ground, all alone for all those years. He began to mop. On the floor was the meal tray from lunch. Olivia had eaten little, but the plastic tumbler that held her pills was empty. He managed to pick up the tray without falling over and put it on the floor outside her cell.
When the room was done he came back out and the guard said, ‘Can you take the tray back to the kitchens?’
Darren nodded and began to calm down. Maybe he’d see Chloe. He backed the trolley down the corridor and stood facing Olivia.
Olivia watched Darren, trembling as he held on to the trolley for dear life. Poor boy. He was out of his depth; groping in the dark, scanning her pathetic cell for any tiny clue – as if there was going to be anything left after all these years, as if it could be solved. He was seeing shadows and ghosts in every corner, meaning in the clouds, or tea leaves, or the mashed potato from her discarded meal.
He needs to leave here or he’s going to go mad.
Her pills often fogged her brain, but today she felt strong. She ran her tongue around her lips, like she was eating him up, and she grinned. She lost sight of him when the nurse pushed the wheelchair back into her cell.
Darren pushed the trolley down a long corridor towards the kitchen. The further away from Olivia’s cell the better he felt. When he turned a corner and light from an outside window shone on him, he felt better still. He stopped pushing as he looked at Olivia’s meal tray. Her scoop of mashed potato was untouched, except where it looked like she had traced a heart in the top of the scoop.
He was wondering what it meant, if anything, when the door he was waiting by buzzed open and Helen came through from the other side.
She stopped when she saw him, looked flustered and glanced around to check they were alone. ‘How are you?’ she asked. ‘Good weekend?’
He nodded grimly, itching to be gone.
Helen leaned back against a wall and smiled. ‘Get up to anything fun?’
How could he tell Helen that he had been with a girl in Devon all weekend when he had been fucking her against her office desk just days before?
He shrugged.
She looked him up and down, her eyes lazily roaming over his body. ‘I called you but you didn’t answer.’
‘Sorry, I never listen to messages. Text is the best way.’ Please don’t text me, he was silently begging her, please don’t text. ‘I really have to get this to the kitchens.’
She nodded and used the bunch of keys on her belt to open the door. She held it open for him to pass through. ‘We should get together again some time, Darren Smith. You maniac.’
He nodded balefully as she walked away.
The door to the kitchens buzzed open and Darren was in. It was light and bright in here, sunlight slanting across the lino floor. Behind the counter the catering team were still clearing up from lunch.
He placed Olivia’s tray on the metal countertop and waited as Berenice picked it up and cleared away the meal Olivia had barely touched.
‘You did her room today?’ Berenice asked. Darren nodded. Chloe saw him from the sink and came over.
‘You didn’t have to see her did you?’ Chloe asked.
Darren shrugged. ‘Only from a distance.’
‘That’s close enough,’ Chloe said. ‘You OK?’
‘I guess.’ He felt sweat break out down his spine.
She sighed. ‘I guess she’s going to be eating in that room for a long time after what she did. She used to line up here with everyone else.’ She waved at the space around Darren. ‘But now one of us has to take all her food to her room every day.’
‘I like the walk,’ Berenice said, patting her sides. ‘Gotta try and keep it off somehow.’ She looked at Darren. ‘I hear you and Chloe have a rather more pleasurable way of keeping the weight down.’ She winked.
Darren blushed.
Two lads in the kitchen behind Berenice began tossing ladles at each other in some kind of game. Daren was glad he was here, among normal people who had a laugh with each other, instead of stuck in the enclosed corridors and silent rooms.
A ladle clattered to the floor behind them and someone swore. Darren turned round and asked the guy, ‘Did she talk to you much when she was in here?’
The dropped-ladle guy came nearer. ‘Only to the women. She never talks to me. She’s got a real thing about women.’
Chloe and Berenice rolled their eyes. Darren pressed on. ‘In the dayroom one time she talked about Rollo being six foot two. What does that mean, I wonder?’
They all shrugged. Berenice wiped down the counter with a cloth. ‘Who knows? She’s mad remember.’
‘The really mad ones often sing, you know,’ ladle guy said.
‘Better that they sing than that they scream,’ Berenice added.
‘Yeah,’ Chloe said. ‘That’s the worst. The screaming.’
46
Kamal watched Darren Smith come through the security door from the facility. The little fucker had changed his name. Who knew what he was really called, what he was really trying to achieve turning up to this shithole every day?
It was hot in Kamal’s office and he had already jumped enough hurdles to leave him exhausted for the rest of the afternoon. The security review was giving him sleepless nights. It was a pointless exercise in his view – not that anyone asked him for his view; that was a luxury someone from his part of the world never experienced.
The pompous Andrew Casey-Jones had been in here only this morning, ordering the employee files to be inspection ready. Kamal’s assistant Roksandre had already complained that the printer was about to break under all the photocopying that was being done. The summer holidays were upon them; there was a blizzard of employees jacking in their jobs, or leaving for a break and not bothering to come back or send so much as a postcard. The governor had lost sight of the main point; no one had ever escaped from Roehampton and they weren’t likely to do it anytime soon – but Darren out the door with his security pass revoked would mean one less problem on Kamal’s desk.
He picked up the phone and made a call. It was time to give Darren whatever-the-fuck-his-name-was a taste of Tan
giers – brutal, spicy and ugly.
Darren waited near Kamal’s office to put the trolley back in the cupboard. His shift was over, and he was desperate to get out in the fresh air but there was something he needed to do first. Before he changed into his own clothes he turned round and headed up the stairs to the first floor and security control.
Sonny and Corey were there, surprised to see him. ‘Hi Darren, you not cleaning up here at this time of day are you?’ Sonny asked.
‘No, I just thought I’d come by and say hello. I’ve just finished.’
‘Well, that’s nice,’ Sonny said. ‘I wish we had something interesting to tell you, very quiet the days at the moment, eh Corey?’
Corey smiled, looking uncomfortable, giving Darren daggers behind Sonny’s turned back.
‘Let me take those,’ Darren said, leaning over and picking up a couple of mugs from the desk. ‘I’ll put them in the kitchen for you.’
Sonny pushed his hand away. ‘You work hard enough! Your shift is over for the day.’ He stood. ‘I have to stretch my bad back every opportunity I get, doctor’s orders. You want another drink, Corey?’
Corey smiled and shook his head as Sonny walked out of the room.
‘We should have another drink soon,’ Darren called as Sonny walked away.
‘A lovely idea,’ Sonny said.
‘What the fuck you coming up here for, man?’ Corey hissed. ‘People’ll get suspicious.’
‘Did you get his details yet?’
‘No man! Jesus!’ Corey got up and poked his head out of the door to check that Sonny wasn’t close.
‘I really need them—’
‘Yeah, yeah, my cuz could lose his job.’
‘If you get me the details I’ll stop coming up. Take my number and text me.’
Corey scribbled the number down on a piece of paper. Darren patted him on the shoulder and left the room.
