The Rules of Restraint

by David Wilson

  Once inside he had to open two further gates and a locked door, and then make his way up a set of stairs to his office. There was someone already waiting to see him. It was Kate Crowther. “Can I have a word?” she asked, sounding determined and southern.

  His office was airy, almost cheerful. Munro wanted his working environment to be as comfortable as possible. He was often happier at work than what he now called home, which is why he would have slept in the prison last night, rather than The White Hart where he was alone with his thoughts, the stale air pungent with the smell of chip fat. There were original oil paintings on the walls of his office, a print of Mark Gertler’s Merry-Go-Round, beautiful hand-turned wooden bowls on the windowsill, and a couple of flower vases that were filled with daffodils. Not exactly the image of a hardliner, but who knew the real Munro? He looked at Kate, and wondered what lay behind her soft features, her southern beauty. He motioned to her to take a seat, and switched on a kettle.

  “Coffee?”

  Kate nodded. Then she said, almost to herself, “I didn’t sleep much last night.”

  Munro uncharitably conjured up a picture of Kate shagging Bobby Lomas but quickly erased it from his mind as he sat down. There was a knock on the door. It was an officer carrying a portable flat-screen TV.

  “You’d better watch this Guv, I hear we’re the top story.”

  Munro checked the officer’s name badge – “Officer R Collins”. They missed the opening credits, but caught the newsreader announcing: “We can now go live to Greenbank, where our reporter Jon Gilman is talking exclusively to a former governor of the prison.” Munro recognized Gilman as the person who had tried to stop him at the gate.

  “Thank you Peter, yes I’m here with Martin Wooldridge – who until he retired three months ago, was the governor of Greenbank, the only prison in the country that operates as a therapeutic community, and which last night allowed the escape of Bobby Lomas – the Varsity Blue. Mr Wooldridge, does this escape shock you?”

  Wooldridge looked directly into the camera:

  “Yes, it surprises me greatly. Terrible, and of course during all the years that I was governor, no escapes occurred whatsoever.”

  “Do you think that the new governor, Mr Munro, has to accept responsibility for this appalling lapse in security?”

  “Well, it is too early to apportion blame, and no doubt there will be an investigation Jon, but I am certain that Mr Munro is a very worried man.”

  “He’s known as a hardliner, and his appointment surprised many people. Do you think he simply isn’t suitable for this type of prison?”

  “Difficult to say, but we have to remember that running a therapeutic community isn’t like running just any old prison. It involves different skills and subtleties.”

  “And are you saying that Mr Munro does not have those skills?”

  “Still too early to say, but let’s hope for all our sakes that he has.”

  “How would you respond to the criticism that many commentators are making today that therapeutic communities are simply not a suitable place to punish some of the worst serial offenders that we have had in this country?”

  “Ah but Jon, that’s an old chestnut. You must remember that people come to prison as a punishment, not for punishment. The punishment is the sentence of the court, not what happens to them in jail. And Greenbank, unique amongst our prisons, can at the very least point to the fact that it offers some of these offenders a real opportunity to change. And do remember that by and large these prisoners are not going to be released.”

  “Although they can still escape! How do you feel about Lomas on the run and capable of further bloodshed? Are we safe in our homes?”

  Wooldridge was smooth: “It’s a worry and I’m sure Munro is doing everything he possibly can to catch this killer, there is a nationwide search underway, no stone will be left unturned…”

  Munro switched off the news, Officer Collins slipped quietly out of the governor’s office. Munro punched his fist into his palm. He could feel the small stabbing lasers of a headache forming behind his eyes, the black dog’s warning bark. He noted that Kate looked embarrassed. He handed her a coffee.

  “You wanted a word?”

  “Yes, look, it’s just,” Kate was struggling.

  “Take your time,” suggested Munro. He saw that the whites of her eyes were a little reddened.

  “Look, there are rumours that Bobby Lomas and I are some kind of lovers. That’s bullshit, and I just want you to know that the relationship that I have – had – with him is purely professional. I admit that I see him more than the rest, but that’s only because he was making such good progress. I was getting so much material. Really good material.” She knew she wasn’t telling the whole truth but that could wait.

  “How do you define a ‘professional relationship’?” asked Munro.

  Kate looked uneasy.

  “Our roles are clear, I ask the questions, he answers them and we try to put the pieces together.”

  “Objectively?”

  “Of course.”

  “But you must help him create his story with a highlight here, a direction there. You’re not a passive onlooker are you?”

  “My role is to record and document.”

  “Come on Kate, it’s not like he gives, you receive. You must empathize with him, enter his world, shape it for him, make it real and whole, fill in the gaps. Just by him telling his story to you he’s validating it. Doesn’t that make you feel a little… what’s the word, dirty?”

  “It’s my job.”

  “And the closer you get the better your job gets done?”

  “What are you suggesting? I told you this is professional. I have an objective, an aim, a thesis to write that will make the world a safer place. It’s work. I don’t get high on my own supply, I don’t fuck my clients.”

  “How do you know he’s not lying to you?”

  “I don’t.”

  Munro turned away. He glanced at the Gertler print, with its furious, endless rotation, the mannequin figures with their fixed expressions. A fly was buzzing against the window. He stood and inspected it more closely. It was actually a wasp, to Munro a malignant insect, a bolus of malice that served no purpose to mankind. It was drowsy with fatigue, drunk with its need to escape, to break the invisible barrier separating it from the outside world. Munro crushed it with a stab of his thumb.

  He turned to Kate. “Tell me about your research.”

  Chapter Five

  The road ran past the pub. It was single lane. You’d have to press your back against the hedge if a car came by. Which was rare at night. Most locals walked – there were too many cops doing random breath tests nowadays. Behind the hedge was the village green where the local cricket team played. The pavilion stood at the far end, its wooden structure leaning slightly, behind which school kids would smoke or grope each other on summer evenings. Breaking in was easy if you wanted a kip. Tonight the light came from the orange sodium glow of a streetlight on the corner where the road took a bend. Danny sat drawing on a rollup under the pub’s wooden sign, The White Hart, which creaked in the gentle breeze.

  “Danny boy, oh Danny boy, I love you so.” His mother used to sing that song to him as the sun went down over the Irish countryside. He was five or six years old when she went mad, said she was Satan’s mistress and he was Satan’s child, spawn of the devil. She used to do this weird thing with her hands, curling her fingers into claws and hissing. He got really thin; she never used to feed him until his teacher called round one day and did some explaining. Then he got given cat food from a tin which was pretty much better than nothing. His father was a Satanist, wore a Black Sabbath T-shirt with Paranoid written across it, or one with Venom and Welcome to Hell and this weird goat face. His father took drugs; that’s how Danny got into it, amphetamine was cheap in those days, and then heroin, his dad wouldn’t lose his rag and beat him so much when he had the smack. But his father didn’t give up his examinations, the pro
bings around Danny’s small body, nearly every day until Danny legged it. Bloody painful, worse than the beatings.

  Danny did crime, mostly in London and then some other shit that he prefers not to talk about, but they straightened him out at Greenbank, after years of in-out, Paddy jokes and worse. He’s not been out long, London scares him now so he’s back around here with a tartan cap on the ground, a few coins in it, a fiver he saved for bait. Most people ignore him; it’s the girlfriends who pop a silver one in sometimes, a brass or two. He gives them a big smile and salutes like Bilko, exaggerated and comic, sincere though.

  It’s getting to closing time and trade will pick up maybe but it’s midweek and a couple shamble out mumbling, the girl hanging onto his arm. Then two guys come out, walk by Danny and turn back. One of the men kicks his cap across the road, the coins spinning and he doesn’t have a chance to say anything or move, he’s sat there like a fat Buddha, in a trance, meditating as all the shit comes flooding back to him, ice cold, steel tipped, leather on skin, buckle wounds, as his chin disintegrates and his teeth bite through his tongue when a side-foot smashes into his skull. Over he goes roly-poly and another, this time a left foot shatters his nose spraying the magnolia pub wall with thick crimson trails and his mouth fills with metallic liquid and he thinks he’s going to drown first, there and then. He can’t breathe and blows though his nose but it’s jammed up with drool and broken bone but finally he lets out a moan, but a boot to his ribcage turns it into a pig-like squeal, a baby cry. Now it’s hurting like hell and two quick fly-hacks to his stomach rupture something but he’s dragged upwards so the man’s face is in his giving him a Glasgow kiss that almost knocks him senseless. He slumps onto the man’s shoulder and it’s hard like armour, as if this is a knight from the old days seeking retribution.

  “Hitler was a sensitive man,” the guy is singing some fucking song, while bang, bang a fist in the liver twice, and another and he throws up the contents of his stomach with some relief, like a balloon bursting, blood and bile and stuff that should never see the light of day coming out.

  “You dirty fucker.”

  “Leave him,” says the other man.

  “Fuck off.”

  “You’re making trouble man, leave him!”

  “Worthless piece of fucking shit, I know you, you’re nothing, nobody, no use to anyone, fucking with our lives, pollution.” He gives Danny a slap across the cheek with the flat of his hand like he’s angry with an ex-lover, then he brings it back again across the other cheek, slap, slap. The man’s making noises like an animal now, as if his world has imploded and in his head he’s running for his life. Danny feels his face being crushed, fingers in his eyes squeezing, what’s left of his face is being pulled off like a second skin and maybe his true self will be revealed underneath, a wheal of gore and veins and twitching muscles.

  “Let’s go!” says the other man, grappling with his mate.

  The first man cartwheels Danny into a rosebush in the flowerbed around the side of the pub, and he does a sort of backflip when his head hits the ground. He crawls to the corner by the porch and huddles as small as he can make himself. He hears a police car siren, but it won’t be for him. The two men walk off, he can hear them too.

  “Fuck.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Fuck, fuck.” He was brushing down his leather jacket.

  “I said you’re crazy.”

  “I know.”

  Chapter Six

  Kate thought for a moment and then explained that she had been interested in serial killers since her graduate work in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where she had been a doctoral student of the late Professor Jim House. House had been employed as a consultant in various cases by the FBI. It was his research that led to serial killers being defined as killers who murder at least three victims, usually killing one victim per incident, in a period of greater than thirty days, as a way of differentiating them from spree killers, or mass murderers: “Like Thomas Hamilton at Dunblane, Michael Ryan at Hungerford or Derrick Bird in Whitehaven or any number of US examples too numerous to mention, a consequence of their gun-obsessed culture,” Kate added. But more importantly, especially for Kate’s research project, House had suggested that serial killers fell into four broad categories: the visionary killer, who heard voices from God or the devil encouraging him to kill; the missionary killer, who sets out on a self-appointed mission to kill a particular type of person; the hedonistic killer who kills because the kill provides sexual fulfilment; and the power/control killer, who kills to dominate his victims and their terror is a turn-on. Invariably the victims of the power/control serial killer die a slow and agonizing death.

  “What type of killer is Bobby Lomas?” asked Munro.

  “Power/control; it stems from his childhood. His parents split up, his mother slipped into a spiral of drink and drugs. His father, who he adored, wanted nothing to do with the family and escaped to Thailand where he married a local girl; Lomas says she was a prostitute. His elder sister by this time had gone to Cambridge for her undergraduate degree and then Oxford for her doctorate. Lomas got his degree at Portsmouth Polytechnic, first class mind you. Ok it sounds a bit pat.” Kate looked embarrassed.

  “Not necessarily. Go on.”

  Kate explained that House had based his categorizations on a series of self-report studies and interviews with convicted serial killers, and she conceded it was almost impossible to validate whether these categorizations were accurate or not.

  “I know I don’t have to explain to you,” she said. “Offenders lie, they tell you things they want you to hear. They exaggerate, or embellish either to hide the truth or to impress you with their cunning or courage. And don’t forget, these are convicted killers. What about the serial offenders who don’t get caught? Do they fall into the same categories?”

  “But what does any of that matter – who cares if they fall into one category or another?”

  “Well,” said Kate, encouraged that Munro was listening. “They are important because they help us profile unsolved murders in a more precise way. If these categories are accurate, and based on clues that are left at the crime scene, we can tell how the killer went about the murder, and this helps build a better profile of who did it, which in turn allows the police to target their investigation.”

  Munro appreciated the logic but wondered how much more of this claptrap he could take. He had a crisis on his hands, a serial killer was on the loose, his balls were in a vice. Nonetheless, there might be something in this he could use and he could do with someone on his side right now. He let Kate continue.

  “Visionary killers, for example tend to be very disorganized, or at least that’s the theory, so will usually kill in their surrounding locality, so you concentrate your activities in the area where the victim is found. Mission serial killers, on the other hand, often travel outside of their local area, so you consider how they move about: do they have a motorbike, a car, use public transport, and what sort of work do they do that allows them to travel?”

  “Right,” said Munro. “But Lomas was a convicted serial killer, isn’t he a type, just like the people that were interviewed by your professor? Job done, pat explanation provided, so why are you getting so involved with him?”

  “Yes, and no,” replied Kate. “Professor House never managed to spend any length of time with the serial killers who agreed to speak to him. Remember this was America and so most were executed, and for one reason or another most don’t speak at all. Some get killed just before they are caught; others commit suicide after they are in custody, like Fred West. Here at Greenbank, I have a huge laboratory to see how serial killers live their lives in a setting that is as close to reality as possible. And through therapy I have an opportunity to listen to them describe in detail their childhood and the trigger points that transform them from being normal into killers.”

  “But, you yourself said that Lomas’ explanation was suspect, a bit…”

  “Pat,” fi
nished Kate. “But you have to remember that getting a serial killer to open up takes time. It isn’t going to happen in a week, or a month, or even a year. Bobby…”

  Kate hesitated, she’d tripped up, she had used his first name.

  “…Lomas was only beginning to understand the enormity of what he’d done. He’d been in denial, telling me things he thought I wanted to hear, and the stuff about his sister and his family, which let’s face it we could have found out about from newspaper reports of his murders, was his defence mechanism. He’s a smart guy, he manipulates, he sucks you into his world but only on his own terms. I was getting close, really close to breaking through, breaking down his psychic armour, to have him tell me the truth.”

  There was a knock at the door, Kate jumped slightly.

  “Come,” barked Munro, hoping that no one had been stupid enough to let Wooldridge into the jail.

  The door opened, and a tall, dark-haired man in his late thirties walked in, accompanied by John Johnsson, who smiled at Munro and then left, leaving the stranger to introduce himself.

  “Governor Munro, good morning sir, my name is Detective Inspector Nick Knight from the National Crime Squad.”

  They shook hands. Munro quickly eyed him up, assessing whether he was trustworthy or yet another young cop with an agenda. Knight was confident, relaxed, maybe too laid-back; he had his hands in his pockets. Munro wondered what demons lurked behind those smiling eyes; everyone has their serpents to slay.

  “Let me introduce you to our principal psychologist…” said Munro.

  Before he got any further Knight had already shaken Kate’s hand, “…I already know some of Dr Crowther’s work.”

  Kate was taken aback. His manner was a little too forward. Mid to late thirties, she guessed, keeps himself fit. He works out; his shoulders are defined, and there’s no middle-aged spread. Unusual in an Englishman. But he’s vain, but aren’t all men? He’s wearing a designer suit, looks like a Paul Smith, how can he afford that? His shoes are incredibly polished, that shine! What is it with men and their don’t-fuck-with-me shiny shoes? Dominance, efficiency, composure? The glimpse of a pistol in a shoulder holster. Perhaps he’s ex-army. Blue eyes, no wedding ring.