by Sarah Hilary
‘It’s to do with where he tied the knot, that’s what kept his eye open.’ He shows me the sketch he’s drawn of this boy who hanged himself after six weeks in the same cell.
I’m not surprised by the hanging but the picture is surprising, full of pity, wrenching at me. That one open eye so bewildered, his mouth dragged sideways, sloppy with pain. It makes me pull at my fingers until the joints crack. Yet there’s no pity in Mickey. How does he do that, stay so empty when his drawings are so full? Seeing everything. Feeling nothing.
He studies the sketch as if he’s reading a menu of things he doesn’t want to eat, then crumples it and throws it at the bin. Lies back on my bunk, full stretch. ‘Read me one of Ruth’s letters.’
I’m past the point of arguing with him. The letters are in a brown envelope, like porn. I set the seed catalogue aside and leaf through the latest batch from Lara, for a letter from Ruth. She’s written out a Bible quote at the top, but I ignore that. Mickey hates the cant.
‘“I’ve taken to collecting sheet music,”’ I read. ‘Anything and everything, it’s a cheap hobby. I haunt charity shops and car boot sales. So far I’ve filled three boxes with scores and nursery rhymes, pop songs and violin solos. Would it surprise you to hear I’m tone deaf? I can’t read music any more than I can play it. That makes me sad, I’d like to be musical. You’re so artistic! I’d like us to have that in common. Not that I could ever produce anything as beautiful as your art.’
I’m sick of Ruth. She’s such a liar, and so patronising, pretending to lower herself to his level. I’d like to lower her. Into the ground.
‘I cannot carry a tune,’ I read, ‘no matter how I try. And I do try! Not operas, I wouldn’t dare, not until I have you to go with anyway. Just little jingles on the radio, muzak in supermarkets when I’m queuing for a bag of oranges.’
Lime for Lara. Oranges for Ruth. She’s so Biblical it makes my teeth itch.
‘Music can be orange,’ I read, ‘or blue or green. It has a scent and a colour. You don’t need your ears. Let it in through your other senses! See it. Taste it. Touch it.’
Mickey doesn’t need this prompt. He’s been touching it since I started reading.
‘Your tune’s the colour of pomegranates, dearest. A quick flavour, surrendered a single note at a time. It’s in my fingertips. It fills my palms and dances under my skin. I carry you with me everywhere and it makes me lighter, and it makes me less.’
I stumble over the last line, because this is the first time she’s been honest. All these letters and this is the first time I’ve believed her.
‘It makes me less.’ I see her in my mind’s eye, punched full of holes like a breaker where the tide comes in, water worming, wearing away the stone. She looks solid but she’s riddled with holes, narrow passages where Mickey moved in. ‘So until I can sit with you, I sit with my boxes of sheet music and search for you there, for the sound and smell and taste of you. I believe that if I piece together enough sheets, the right sheets, I’ll be able to make a whole. Because I believe in you, dearest. Just as He does. Because music lifts us up, takes us far beyond ourselves. Sets us free.’
You’re not free, Ruth. You’re in a prison of your own making, wooing your gaoler.
‘Your edges,’ I turn the page, ‘your edges are in the clefs and empty eyes of notes. I have searched, and I have found you there.’
I fold the page with the hot press of tears in my eyes.
Oh Ruth, you mad, miserable cow. You’ve made me cry.
Her poetry’s wasted on Mickey. She’s opening her heart to a brute, a minotaur. It’s all wasted. The ache in her words is the ringing of a lead tongue in a ruined bell.
He grunts, and finishes.
A balled tissue’s thrown towards the bin, landing alongside the crumpled sketch of the boy from Leeds who hanged himself rather than spend another night like this—
With Mickey scooping the poetry from everything, scraping it all back to hollow bone.
20
Anita Quayle knew her son was weak. Marnie sensed it must have troubled her when Darren chose to join the prison service, which was no job for anyone with insecurities or hoping to prove himself. Too easy to see how Darren had fallen under Michael Vokey’s spell. Marnie had witnessed the same brand of slavery many times over, in homes as well as prisons. She saw it in the servility shown to Aidan Duffy by his cohorts. When it wasn’t fetishistic it was corrosive, eroding one’s sense of self. Some people welcomed that erosion, of course. In the case of Darren, she didn’t believe it was a conscious act of self-effacement. He’d bound himself to Michael in the belief such slavery would lead to greater things – elevated status, respect – that he would become more, not less.
‘We’re concerned Darren may have recorded an interview online,’ Marnie said. ‘About the inmate who escaped from Cloverton last week.’
Anita’s face flinched into a frown. ‘Why would he do that? What sort of interview?’
‘About the riot, conditions at the prison.’
‘They’re appalling.’ She moved one hand in an abrupt gesture of condemnation. ‘Up and down the country. Overcrowding, staff shortages, drugs. It’s revolting, inhumane—’ She edited herself, reaching to remove the dead petals from a plant on the windowsill.
They were standing outside the sitting room, in a hall where doors were closed in all directions. Marnie had expected to be taken to the kitchen. She hadn’t wanted Darren clamming up when Noah looked to be on the verge of extracting a confession, or a confidence. Unresponsive to flattery, Darren was nevertheless responding to Noah’s tougher tactic. Had Michael Vokey been as quick to recognise which buttons to press to get what he wanted from Anita’s son?
It was cool in the hall, with the starchy scent of polish. Anita was listening to the murmur of voices from the other side of the door, Noah’s and Darren’s, her body angled in that direction.
‘Is there somewhere we can sit?’ Marnie asked her.
‘To talk about Cloverton? What is it you imagine I know? You’re accusing my son of – what, exactly? Telling the truth about the state of this country’s prison service?’ She twisted her head away, exhaustion softening the stiff line of her jaw. ‘It’s making him ill working in that place, it’s driving him into the ground. Just the thought of what he sees and hears every day, I can’t bear it.’
Marnie touched a hand to the woman’s elbow, feeling the thrum of stress there. ‘Can we sit somewhere? I want to help, if I can. I think Darren needs our help, and that you do too.’
Anita searched her face for a second, before she nodded. She turned her back, showing the creases in her linen dress and the frayed heels of her slippers, all the small signs of wear and tear. The nape of her neck was narrow, fragile bones just beneath the surface, the loose chignon of her hair unravelling in pale, staticky strands. Marnie caught her scent, green and opaline, Je Reviens. A jolt of memory tightened her throat; she’d not smelt that scent in years.
Anita led her to the back of the house, opening a door into a space so different to the other it was hard to believe both rooms were in the same house. Light fell from a long, wide window onto a honeyed oak floor spread with silk rugs that shone with age and wear. A tapestry sofa stood facing an upright piano used as a shelf for vases of tightly cupped white roses. Elegant bookcases, shaded lamps, small tables cluttered with glass paperweights and enamel boxes – it was a beautiful room, so unexpected. No television, just books and well-chosen pieces of art. Sculpture and pottery, a pair of tiny luminous landscapes painted in oils.
‘Darren doesn’t use this room. No television, for one thing.’ Anita was a different woman in here. Warmer, easier. She nodded at the sofa. ‘You wanted to sit.’ Seeing the surprise in Marnie’s face, she added, ‘I was an army wife. We were always moving. I learnt not to get too comfortable, or rather to ration my comforts. Living out of boxes has a strange effect on one.’
Rationing her comforts to this one room where her son’s absence was guara
nteed.
‘Darren’s father doesn’t live here?’
‘He died when Darren was nine.’ She shook her head before Marnie could frame an apology or offer her condolences. ‘While he was alive I told people I was an army widow, we saw so little of him, but of course that shorthand’s open to misunderstanding now.’ She smiled a full stop.
An absent father, a mother accustomed to packing up and moving on, to always being in control. Did that explain some of Darren’s oddness? His attraction to danger perhaps, or his failure to consider the consequences of his actions. Marnie watched Anita lift a book from a lacquered shelf, a travel guide to Valencia. Anita opened it, extracting a slim postcard. The sunlight showed the card as a white rectangle, blank. ‘Here.’ She held it out.
Marnie took it from her hand, seeing an address printed in cramped letters, Chalk Farm Road, London NW1. She turned the postcard over, flinching at what she found: a grotesque monochrome print. No shape or form or perspective, just a series of serrated lines jagging and tearing across the card, scarring its surface. She had to concentrate to stop herself from dropping the postcard or passing it back to Anita, who was wiping her hands on the sleeves of her dress as if her fingers were gritty from handling it. Six inches by three shouldn’t look so obscenely abusive.
‘Where did you get this?’ Marnie asked.
‘Darren brought it back from the prison, a gift from the man who escaped.’
‘From Michael Vokey?’
Anita nodded. ‘It was part of an exhibition, he said, held a few years ago. They’re exhibiting his work again now. Lots of people find merit in it, apparently.’ Her tone was baked dry with an undercurrent of revulsion. ‘Darren likes it. Admires it.’
Marnie checked the back of the postcard. ‘NW1?’
‘Camden.’ Anita twisted her fingers into a fist. ‘They didn’t have any kind of permission as far as I could tell from what Darren said. No licence. That man told him they needed a place to show the real works of art, all the things turned down for legitimate exhibitions. My son was so excited about it.’ She pressed her lips into a white line. ‘It’s not healthy. You’re right, I’m worried about him. This obsession of his isn’t right. It feels terribly wrong.’
Marnie studied the front of the postcard. ‘Michael Vokey drew this?’
‘Appalling, isn’t it?’ Anita reclaimed the card, slotting it back into the pages of the travel guide. ‘I thought you should see it given the manhunt that’s underway. I don’t understand why Darren isn’t more afraid of that man being out there. He could be anywhere.’ She straightened the shelf of books and turned to face Marnie, tidying the worry back beneath the surface.
Organising everything, putting it all back in place. One room kept for visitors, discouragingly bland, exposing nothing of what was truly inside. Had she tried and failed to perform the same trick with her son? Marnie thought of the young man she’d first met at Cloverton, shrugging off her questions, wearing a mask of indifference. No, not a mask, not quite. The indifference was Darren’s native expression, adopted during a childhood of orderly disruption dictated by an absent father and a mother whose competence must on occasion have felt like coldness.
‘Did Darren tell you anything else about Michael Vokey?’
‘Nothing worth reporting,’ Anita replied. ‘Otherwise I’d have gone to the police before you came here.’
‘But he told you he admires Michael. Was this before or after the events of last week?’
‘Before.’ She tried to smile the exhaustion from her face. ‘He’s been different since the riot. I suppose he saw the true extent of his hero’s . . . talent.’
‘He sees Michael as a hero?’ Marnie was surprised to hear Anita use the word.
‘He latched onto Michael in that way. It’s not the first time it’s happened, but it’s the first time with a prisoner, especially one as dangerous – repugnant – as this.’ Anita looked out of the window, her profile faltering in the light. ‘At one time I blamed myself for not having a man about the place. A good man, I mean, someone he might learn from. He was always desperate to learn, attaching himself to friends’ husbands, neighbours, even gardeners on the allotment. Always going for the least savoury ones, making bad choices. If I’d known how important it was for him to have a man around, I’d have tried harder. After his father died, I mean.’ She picked a stray rose petal from the piano, pushing it into the pocket of her dress. ‘This interview you’re saying he gave, what was it like? Not the speech about overcrowding. The parts about him. Michael Vokey.’ She said the name with disgust, and fear. She was afraid for her son. ‘What was it like?’
‘Exactly as you said,’ Marnie told her. ‘Unhealthy. An obsession.’
Anita dropped her eyes with a nod, accepting this. ‘He used to collect little model cars, you know. Not new ones, they had to be old. We went to flea markets and boot sales. He devoted all his time to it, all our weekends at one point.’ She kept her hand in the pocket of her dress, pressing the rose petal between her fingers until its apricot scent filled the room. ‘He collected them the way other children collect seashells, or conkers.’ Her forehead creased as if with pain. ‘Except the cars weren’t to be played with. He had shelves and shelves of them but not to play with, only to look at.’
Loss could compel a person to collect, but Marnie hesitated to put a dark meaning to Darren’s collecting. The little cars may have felt like the only constants in a volatile childhood, an innocent pastime for a lonely little boy. Or a way to bond with his mother, sending the pair of them in search of his chosen treasure, all their weekends spent together.
‘Mrs Quayle. Has your son been burning letters and photographs?’
Anita didn’t hesitate: ‘Yes.’
Marnie waited, hearing the low knocking of a carriage clock on the table at her side. It felt wrong to speak about Vokey in here, as if she’d released a polecat into the elegant room.
‘At least,’ Anita said, ‘he’s been burning something. I didn’t ask what it was. I’m too afraid to find out.’ She took another rose petal from the piano, turning it between her fingers. ‘I’m a coward.’
‘I questioned him at the prison. About letters and photos missing from Michael’s cell. Darren denied it, but if he’s been burning evidence we need to know.’
‘There’s more.’ Anita’s shoulders shook. She turned her face towards the window. ‘He was out all night, seven days ago. The night of the riot. He didn’t come home until the morning, and he was soaking wet.’ Her throat convulsed. ‘He wouldn’t tell me where he’d been, just walking, he said. It rained all night and he was walking in it to clear his head after the horror at the prison. But it was more than that.’ She swallowed. ‘He took food from the house, and money. I didn’t mind about the taking, but I can’t bear the thought it might have been for him.’
‘For Michael Vokey.’
Anita nodded, holding her elbows in her hands, arms tight to her chest. ‘I hope I’m wrong. I’d more or less convinced myself I was, until you came. But now you’re saying he gave an interview, that letters are missing. And he was out that night, I know he was. All night.’ Her voice shook with tears and anger. She wasn’t simply afraid for her son, she was angry with him.
Another petal fell from the vase, a miniature tremor running the length of Anita’s lovely room.
She turned her ruined face to Marnie. ‘Take him away. Please. I know you need to do that, it’s your job. And I can’t have him here, I’m afraid of what I’ll say to him.’ She twisted the petal in her fingers. ‘I don’t know him any longer. I can’t understand him. Michael Vokey is an animal, the things he did—’ Her face cracked with pain. ‘If my son helped a man like that, I don’t want him under my roof. I can’t live like that, with him. Please. Take him away.’
A squad car came for Darren, and a forensic team for the house. Anita took the team to her son’s bedroom, a big dark box of a room filled with other boxes, gaming consoles, a television and two laptops. Black
sheets on the bed, like the sheet used as a backdrop for the online interview. Marnie briefed the investigators, but shook her head when Noah produced gloves for the pair of them. ‘We need to get back to the station. He’s had over a week to dispose of any evidence in here. Let the team do a sweep, but I’ll be surprised if we find anything.’
Noah put the gloves back into his pocket. ‘He wouldn’t admit to much, after you left the room. Just that everything changed at Cloverton after Mickey came. He denies helping him to escape, denies burning anything that amounts to evidence. And he’s running a temperature, says he’s sick.’
‘Let’s see what he has to say under caution.’
Marnie looked for Anita, finding her in the ugly sitting room, clearing away the coffee cups.
‘We’ll need a statement from you, Mrs Quayle. Do you want to come with us now, to the station?’
‘I’ll drive.’ She was hiding behind the politeness of an hour ago. ‘You said it would be a good idea to bring a change of clothes for Darren.’
‘Yes.’ Marnie held out her hand. ‘I’m sorry.’
Anita paused before putting her hand into Marnie’s, her fingers stiff, the handshake as brief as she could make it. ‘I understand, yes. I appreciate it.’ She wasn’t in shock, not yet. That would come later, when she was alone in the house.
‘Is there someone who can be with you, later today?’
Anita shook her head but said, ‘I’ll call someone. Thank you.’ She straightened, her eyes snagging on the chair where her son had sat in his dirty clothes. ‘I’d like to stay here until the search is over. I’d rather be the one locking up the house, if that’s all right.’
‘Of course.’ Marnie nodded. She’d asked the team upstairs to be careful with Darren’s mother, to keep an eye on her and to treat her gently.
