by Sarah Hilary
‘Was there anything or anyone in particular making him feel unsafe?’
‘Everyone,’ Ruth said. ‘The guards, the governors, his cellmate, his sister—!’
Marnie looked up. ‘His sister was making him feel unsafe. He told you that.’
‘Alyson,’ Ruth said in disgust. ‘Threatening to sell the house, his family home. The place he grew up in. He loves that house, all of his childhood is there.’ She smoothed her face virtuously. ‘I tried to make him see that home comes in many different guises and family needn’t mean the people you’re born into. But he’s scared of losing the house. It matters to him, that’s what he said.’
Hardly surprising given the walls of faces, and the pit dug so purposefully in the cellar.
‘If they’d let him attend services in the prison,’ Ruth went on, ‘he’d have felt less isolated. It was hard to make him understand that he wasn’t alone.’
She’d stuck her fingers through his cage, stroked the ego of a dangerous sadist. Worse than that, she’d patronised him with her faith and education, her better understanding of what he wanted and needed. No wonder Vokey’s sketches were so pitiless.
‘You tried to make him feel less alone. By sending letters and intimate pictures of yourself.’ Marnie cut the fat from Ruth’s speech, serving her the raw meat of what she’d revealed of her obsession. ‘You gave him your address.’
‘It’s a church mission.’ The pious smile made a comeback. ‘Everyone is welcome there.’
So many layers to her self-delusion, but Vokey had stripped each one away, laying her bare in those life studies she held so reverentially in her hands. It wasn’t simply that she failed to see how savagely he’d exposed her. She saw some other version of the truth. About him, and about herself. And she valued this other version. In her letters she’d begged for more sketches, with all the self-scourging urgency of a fanatic. She couldn’t wait for the day when he was drawing her from life, sharing the same room, breathing the same air. Together.
‘We know Michael didn’t go to you,’ Marnie said. ‘Otherwise you’d be with him rather than sitting here. On the other hand, there’s evidence to suggest you may have encouraged or incited him to escape. Which is an offence, as I’m sure you’re aware.’
‘Why would I post him letters after his escape if I had prior knowledge of it? You don’t suspect me. There’s no evidence or you’d have arrested me.’ Ruth smoothed the lap of her dress. ‘This is precisely the sort of intimidation I’m talking about. And I’m not locked in a cell with a threatening fetishist. Edward Elms.’ She spoke the name with loathing, as if she’d committed it to memory. ‘They let him have scissors, did you know that? He attacked Michael with scissors. That’s why he asked to be put into isolation. Begged to be put into isolation.’
‘Ted Elms is in hospital,’ Noah said. ‘On life support.’
She pushed her face forward, the light sitting in the cracked skin of her lips. ‘Where’s your evidence it was Michael who did that? Cloverton doesn’t have any evidence of the part he played in the riot, if he played a part at all. The statements coming out are so vague it’s obvious they have no idea what happened. Just because Michael’s the one who ran, they think they can pin it all on him. Very convenient. But I don’t believe it. I don’t believe any of it.’
‘Yet you don’t condone his recent behaviour.’ Noah studied her. ‘That’s what you said. If he played no part in the riot, what did you mean by his recent behaviour?’
‘Running away!’ Ruth swept her hand towards the door. ‘He shouldn’t have done that. We can’t solve our problems by running away.’ Rapping out each syllable like a machine gun. ‘I thought he understood that, from my letters.’
It was a miracle Vokey hadn’t gone after her to fill the grave in his mother’s house. The kind of man he was, and Ruth with her tireless virtue-signalling. It was a miracle.
Marnie was saying, ‘Harbouring an escaped prisoner is an offence under the Criminal Justice Act 1961. As you’ll know from your research. For the record, no complaint was ever lodged at HMP Cloverton by Michael John Vokey. Plenty of complaints lodged against him, but none by him. At any point.’ She spoke slowly and precisely. ‘No request to see the chaplain was ever made, or refused. No request was made by Michael to be put into isolation.’ She watched Ruth stiffen in the chair. ‘You wanted to know whether we’d been to Cloverton, and if we’d asked awkward questions there. We’ve seen everything Michael signed during his time inside, including his visitor list. His sister’s name is on that list because he asked for it to be added. Your name is on that list because you requested it. There was a problem, however. Michael was made aware of your request to be an official prison visitor, and he refused it. He told prison staff he didn’t want to see you.’
‘He didn’t want me going into that place.’ But Ruth’s smile curdled. She hadn’t known this, and she didn’t like it. ‘He was protecting me.’
‘He approved his sister’s visits,’ Marnie said. ‘In fact, he asked that her name be added to the list. But not yours.’
‘Chivalry.’ Her eyes glinted palely, arrow slits in the tan fortress of her face. ‘He didn’t need to protect me, but I admire his instinct to do so. You see? He isn’t a monster, he’s a man who needs a friend. Desperately. But still his instinct was to keep me safe from that place.’
‘That’s the explanation he gave you for his refusal? That he was protecting you.’
‘He didn’t need to give me an explanation. He knew I’d understand.’ She tidied her face back into a smile. ‘Everything we have is founded on understanding.’
‘Everything you have,’ Marnie echoed.
‘Friendship. Support. Love.’ The smile settled and grew confident, even radiant. ‘It’s not a dirty word. I’m proud of what we have. What we are. It’s a beautiful thing. We’re beautiful.’
13
Love is a dirty word, the way Mickey says it. He uses it all the time to describe Lara and Ruth, and Julie. ‘She loved it,’ he says, and I’ve learnt to keep my mouth shut or else to agree, because that’s what he needs. Mickey needs a lot of things, more than most. If he were here in hospital with me, one lucky nurse wouldn’t be enough. He’d want a troop, starting with mine. He wouldn’t notice the gap in her teeth or the smell of her hair. Just, ‘I’ll take Ted’s,’ and she’d go to him because that’s what happens with Mickey and me. He covets and acquires, everything. Even the things he’s no use for, like that bedpan or this catheter. If I’ve got it, he wants it.
Prison’s all about learning to do without. Acclimatising, lowering your standards without losing them altogether. Unless you’re Mickey Vokey. Then it’s about growing, getting grabby.
‘She loves me.’ Sniffing at Lara’s letters, and Ruth’s. ‘She loves me lots.’
I went into Cloverton as someone who likes to wash twice a day and can’t sleep without a hollow-fibre pillow and real cotton sheets, who doesn’t eat meat, eggs or fish, or anything with preservatives if he can help it. I like strong coffee, made from scratch. With tea, I put the milk in first and it has to be semi-skimmed, not skimmed and not full fat. I can’t read a newspaper if someone’s got to it before me, because it seems I’m the only person in the world capable of folding a newspaper correctly. I’ll cross the street rather than walk under a ladder. I have my little ways, that’s what Mum said: ‘You have your little ways, Teddy, but I’m not complaining.’ She kept that up even at the end, pretending I was awful, awkward, and she was the only one who could handle me.
‘She loves me.’ Sniffing. ‘She loves me lots.’
I close my eyes at the closeness of the ceiling, and put my thoughts out there, away. Far away from Mickey and his women, and his blunt words like bullets. Lara sent him a photo of the view from her window: an empty acre of grass tortured into lawn. He hates it when she does that, a waste of good film. He wants photos of her, close-ups, the muckier the better. He despises landscapes.
So I send my thoughts out of th
e cell, miles away, to my favourite landscape. We lived in the countryside-proper, Mum and me, a place where it still floods every spring. We’d go walking in the hills when the winter thawed, high up where the waters couldn’t reach us. I never told Mickey about that. He wasn’t interested in my stories, only in his.
One spring when we were up there in the hills, Mum and I met a man walking two dogs, a big white and brown cross-breed, part-husky by the look of it, and a terrier with an apologetic grin. The terrier stayed close to the ground, its breath panting blackly. I’ve never liked dogs, but these two were enjoying the springtime so much it was hard not to smile and say hello. Not many walkers braved the back end of winter, so it was nice to see a new face. The earth was iron-clad, crimping underfoot, a low-lying mist giving the impression that the sky had caved in.
‘Look at that!’ Mum pointed to where the last of the flood was boiling downhill, swelling what had been a stream, churning it with twigs and branches.
I watched a dozen rafts take form in the water as the jumble of wood rushed together before sweeping apart again. Frightening what water can do. I’ve always thought it worse than fire.
‘Come along!’ Mum moved fast in those days, I had to stride to keep up. She hated any idea that she was ageing. Where we lived the thought of getting old was hair-raising, cut off the way we were and with the hard winters and spring floods. ‘Keep up, Teddy!’
A sandstone village sat over the next hill, postcard-perfect like Lara’s, woodsmoke shrivelling from its chimneys. At the foot of the hill, the flood separated either side of an oak tree, creating a small lake. There in its edging current we saw a lamb. Newborn, its ear clipped, drowned. The water carried it close to where we were walking, its little body like a phantom floating in the flood’s tide. The current took it towards the trees, Mum oh-Teddying as if she hadn’t grown up in the countryside, didn’t know its savageries, so casual and constant. We watched the drowned lamb all the way downstream, its woolly head nod-nod-nodding, and Mum didn’t shut up the whole time. So, yes. I know how to downsize my expectations. It’s only Mickey who hasn’t a clue.
‘Love’s a dirty word,’ Michael says. As if he’s the only person who’s ever had to give anything up. ‘Ruth’s in love with me.’ He folds her letter into a plane and flies it into the top bunk. ‘Get a load of this shit.’
The plane lands on my leg. I unfold its wings, straighten the nose, smooth the undercarriage.
‘Dear Michael,’ Ruth has written, ‘I’ve asked if I can come and visit you. I’ve been a prisoner visitor before so I’m sure they’ll approve my request. Then we can talk properly. And we can pray together! I’m praying for you every day, that you’re given guidance, shown the way.’
‘Photos, too.’ Mickey’s busy in the bottom bunk. I wouldn’t want that bunk now if I could have it. ‘On her knees, praying for me. I’ll draw her for you.’ He kicks at the underside of my mattress. ‘Stop you getting lonely up there. I’ll do one just for you. Life study. Close-up.’ He groans.
I block my ears by concentrating on the memory of the drowned lamb, the whiteness of it, the way it held the water in a pearly collar round its little throat. Mum at my side, nearly sobbing at the sight of it. Smoke rising over the hill where all the houses were owned by Londoners, strangers who hardly ever set foot there and never ventured abroad in bad weather.
‘Life studies. You’d like that.’
I can’t shut out the sound of him groaning, panting. It’s monstrous. He’s crude, and vicious, and despicable. I think of what he did to Julie, everything he’s told me, and I have to shut my eyes I’m shaking so hard. I have to shut my eyes and wait until the hot red fades to pink and finally to white.
‘Oh, Teddy,’ all the way home, as if she’d never seen what happens when nature swoops in and sorts out the weak from the strong, before sending down a flood to wash it all away.
14
DS Joe Coen was training to be a pilot. His sister gave him a trial flying lesson as a birthday present and he fell in love with the sky when it opened up in a rainbow as he was coming to land, all red bands and purple spokes and the instructor saying, ‘Wow, that’s a gift in itself.’ It left such an impression, Joe found himself learning about supernumeraries and twinned bows, cloud and moon bows. Rainbows are incredibly rare, he discovered. In any one place in England, you can expect to see fewer than ten a year. Halos and coronae occur more frequently, coronae when thin clouds scud across a bright moon. In very cold weather, if you’re lucky, the sky will fill with perfect diamond dust crystals, interlacing like a glittering spider’s web. Joe wanted to be up there when it happened, in the open sky, flying a plane. Until then he was a detective sergeant with West Cumbria CID.
Debbie Tanner had been right to say Joe didn’t miss a trick. He’d contacted Marnie and the team to give them the scene examiner’s report from Alyson Vokey’s house the minute it was filed. Alyson was found at the foot of her stairs, unconscious and bleeding from a head injury consistent with having fallen from a height. The hall radiator had trapped traces of her blood and hair. No injuries other than those you’d expect from a fall down a steep flight of stairs. Bruises, but no broken bones. Alyson lived alone. Always better to be safe than sorry though, especially after Joe discovered her relationship to Michael Vokey, whose oddly forgettable face was flagged all over the system. Joe went back to Alyson’s house and checked everything twice, finding no evidence of a break-in, or foul play. Just this ticking in his head like a beetle when he was inside, searching.
‘It’s a busy street,’ he was explaining over the phone to DS Noah Jake, ‘lots of people milling about. Makes it harder for neighbours to notice anything odd.’
The homes on the street were similar, but not identical. Variety was one of the things Joe liked about his part of the world. Alyson’s house was a former brewery built over three storeys in whitewashed grey stone, its windows at wonky intervals. A narrow garden at the front was gated to the street but the gate didn’t close, swinging open easily due to the slope of the path. No burglar alarm, but that was usual around here. Joe would’ve been suspicious if Alyson had fitted an alarm. He’d thought the Met team might grit their teeth at the lack of security, but DS Jake took it in his stride.
‘How hard was it for you to get inside the house?’ he asked Joe.
‘The neighbour had a set of keys. Two locks on the front door, but she hadn’t secured the second one, or put the chain on.’
Joe had knocked twice before he tried the key in the front door, calling out to let Alyson know he was police, because the neighbours were getting worried they’d not seen her in a while. Not a job he’d normally have been involved in but he knew the street and was over that way for another case, plus Vokey’s name was lighting the system like Christmas. The smell hit him right away. She’d soiled herself, poor woman. Joe was just glad she was alive, and that she’d stayed that way.
‘I checked the back door,’ he told DS Jake. ‘It was locked, but not bolted.’
‘She felt safe, in other words.’
‘I’d say so.’ He’d knelt beside her until the ambulance came. The house felt lonely, the way some houses do. Her hand was chilly so he’d chafed it between his. ‘It’s a decent part of town, friendly street, good neighbours. They’re the ones raised the alarm.’
‘You still think it was an accident,’ DS Jake said. ‘Nothing’s changed that?’
‘Hang on,’ Joe said, since his other phone was buzzing. It was a text from Annie, cheerful but exasperated. She still wasn’t in labour. ‘Sorry. My wife’s about to have a baby so I’m on standby for a call. DS Jake?’
‘Noah. And congratulations.’ Genuine warmth in his voice. ‘Your first?’
‘Second. A little brother for our five-year-old, Bobby. He’s the only one of us keeping calm.’
‘Let’s hope it lasts. You were saying you’d been back to the house to take a second look. Do you still think it was an accident?’
‘No new reason to t
hink otherwise,’ Joe said.
‘But—? It sounds like something’s eating at you.’
He had sharp ears, Noah Jake, as if he could hear the beetle ticking in Joe’s brain.
‘My mum lives alone,’ Joe told him. ‘She’s older than Alyson and she’s never tripped on her stairs. You get to know your own house, and Alyson’s lived there a long while. I went up and down the stairs a couple of times and they’re steep, sure. But she’d have known that. She was in her slippers, sensible ones with rubber soles. It’s eating at me, like you said.’
Sensible slippers and a bathrobe over her nightie, no belt to trip over. Nothing in the pockets of the bathrobe, other than a balled up tissue and a little loop of her own hair, tugged from a hairbrush and pocketed en route to the pedal bin. Toothpaste on her lower lip, her face wiped clean by baby lotion. She’d been getting ready for bed, her routine so like his mum’s that Joe kept hold of her hand long after the ambulance arrived, talking to her so she’d know she wasn’t alone.
‘The neighbours haven’t seen anyone else recently?’ Noah asked. ‘No strangers?’
‘No one who raised any eyebrows. There’s a house for sale two doors up, so they’ve had estate agents and people round for viewings. Then there’s pizza deliveries, and Jehovahs, and couriers for online shoppers. It’s a busy street. People are used to seeing new faces. I asked a lot of questions, but didn’t get anything useful.’
‘Did Alyson have any deliveries? Or – any religious pamphlets in the house?’
Did he think Jehovahs did this? Maybe they had aggressive types in London, but round here the Jehovahs wouldn’t say boo to a goose, not even at Easter.
‘Not that I saw. Her friends say she uses online shopping to avoid the town centre. She’s not a recluse, just doesn’t like crowds. And the parking’s a joke.’
Joe’s mum was the same, except she didn’t have WiFi so Joe organised her online groceries, glad of the chance to help. Otherwise it was his sister who shouldered everything.
