Strangeways

by Matthew Samm

  “Yes.”

  It was short and to the point and said with finality. It was said in a way that suggested he expected something to end that day. The confrontation was an ending. At least, it might have been, had she not been murdered just days later.

  “What happened?”

  Her father didn’t answer immediately. He maintained a passive, yet quizzical look on his face. He was trying to see the threads of the future and gauging what he wanted to tell her. There were elements at play she would not hear today, but perhaps, she could coax enough out of him, to start her own investigation. She had to find out who the man in the car was.

  If what her father said was true, he was a key part of the near past and he could hold the key to Isaac’s future. Finally, her dad spoke. “She gave herself away like I said, and then tried to leave. She didn’t want to talk about it. You were all at school, so she had nothing that couldn’t wait. But she insisted on leaving. How dare she walk away from me, Alix! You would never do that, would you? You know how rude that is, don’t you?”

  “Did she manage to walk away?”

  “No. I stepped in front of the door and would not let her leave. I told her over my dead body would she walk out and leave this in the air.”

  “Did she stay?”

  Her dad smiled slyly. “I managed to convince her,” he said. There was a pause before he continued. “I told her I knew again, and she started to cry. She wanted me to feel sorry for her. Pathetic! She was not wronged here, I was!” His eyes darkened, his mind’s eye reliving the events vividly. He was simply narrating a video playing inside his skull. “I demanded an answer and she gave up immediately. She said I was right. She said she was glad I knew and that she was going to tell me anyway because she was tired of keeping it a secret for so long.”

  Alix felt a dislike for the previously untouchable mom. “For so long? How long had this been happening?”

  “More than a while Alix. I told her that she was lying and that she still had a chance to save our marriage. I told her that I had discovered her betrayal before there was too much harm done and that if she apologized and swore not to see him again, we might be able to save our marriage. It seems perfectly reasonable, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Alix was conflicted. It didn’t seem totally reasonable. She agreed that he had been wronged, but like any story, there were two sides and her father never delved into the why. Why had she felt it necessary to cheat on her husband?

  Alix felt guilty after asking this question. Despite what she knew now, her mother really was unimpeachable to her and it would take time for the truth to settle itself into her subconscious. To pacify her father, she nodded in answer to his question.

  Then he became sullen, the memory of the next words eating into his psyche as he remembered them. “I knew she wasn’t lying with what she told me next.” He paused once again and ran through the event in his mind. The wound seemed just as fresh as it had then. “She started laughing. It wasn’t a nervous chuckle either. It was full laughter. She was laughing at me! She said I was so blind and that I couldn’t see. She said it had been right under my nose for years and yet I was too absent to see it. Too absent? I was always there for her!”

  Alix disagreed. Her father had often been away on business for weeks at a time. He’d only just returned from a six-week trip which had left her in a cave for the whole time. He was the same at home. True, their lives had been somewhat more luxurious, but the abandonment had been the same. It had crossed Alix’s mind on more than one occasion that he might be having an affair himself. Even when he was at the house, he was absent; at least his love was.

  He was so driven and so successful that it felt there was no room for love and fatherhood. She had even considered herself, Isaac and indeed Alice, to be an inconvenience to him, although she would never let him know that. Alix knew her father, and at this moment he was busy telling her his secrets and she didn’t want that to cease, so she bit her tongue and allowed him to continue. “Why was she laughing, dad?”

  “I’m getting to that,” he snapped, the memory irritating him. “She said…she said they weren’t mine…” His mood descended to its lowest point, the pain he suffered still hurting even after time should have healed it to some degree. “Alice. Isaac. She said they weren’t mine.”

  Alix’s mouth gaped. The affair had sired two children, and neither of them were his. “Am I…” Alix began, wanting to know whether the man to whom she spoke, the man she considered her father was actually her father.

  He turned to her and smiled. It was filled with sweetness and showed that he genuinely cared for her. “Yes, Alix. You’re my daughter and I love you.”

  She smiled back. She couldn’t help it. She craved his praise and despite his imperfections, she knew he was a decent man, just trying to survive in an impossible role society had come to depend on.

  Then the realization hit home. She’d lost her brother so many times over the last two months and now, here was the next installment. He wasn’t her brother. Not really. He felt more distant to her than he had ever been. “What happened then?” she asked.

  “I confess, I may have…become angry, but that’s to be expected, I think. I have never experienced such betrayal. I only tell you this now because you’re my daughter and you have survived extraordinary events in the last few weeks. You are ready, I feel, to do what must be done. To make those difficult decisions. That’s why I am telling you this.”

  Alix felt her pride burst again. “Did Isaac know?” she asked.

  Her father shook his head. “Of course not. That useless halfwit could never survive our choices and our lives. He was content to throw his life away. If there was any justice in this world, he’d be dead instead of Alice.”

  Alix noticed her father silence himself quickly and a look of shame edge across his features, an edge he tried to hide. It was the same look of shame he so often reserved for her, except this time, it was aimed at himself. He’d said too much. He had let his guard drop and got too comfortable with his daughter. It was like he had always wanted to say how much he cared for his daughter, but by doing so removed the safeguards from what he had to say.

  When he remembered, the barriers immediately came back up and Alix sensed the change. She was on the inside now. She knew she shouldn’t probe more, but she couldn’t help it. She felt so close to absolute truth. “Isaac should be dead, you think?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Dad! That’s terrible! How could you think like that? He’s your son!” she said, but then stopped herself. He wasn’t. Her father had been raising another man’s child and for someone as powerful as him, it was both a great betrayal and a great embarrassment. His media savvy brain knew that he could be finished if it ever got out. Alix’s mind turned. He had trained her well. “She laughed at you…” Alix muttered under her breath.

  “Pardon, Alix?”

  Alix knew what her father would have done. “You would have wanted to kill her, wouldn’t you?”

  His eyes now bored into hers. He didn’t speak, but his eyes did.

  She was right. She just knew she was right. “You killed her, didn’t you?”

  He didn’t say anything still.

  Alix stood up and backed away, as far as the hovercraft would allow her. “She laughed at you. She betrayed you. She embarrassed you, so you had her killed, didn’t you? You killed my mother!” she screamed, her voice rising with the sentence.

  “Injustice cannot be accepted, Alix. You know this. She could have ended us all if she’d wanted. I’m afraid your mother dug her own grave. You still have one parent though. There are many others who don’t.”

  She looked at him, her eyes burning hate. He was serious. It was a numbers game for him. He never felt anything. To him, she hadn’t totally lost, because she still had him as a functioning parent. She should be glad that her father had despatched justice while preserving her one parent. “You’re serious, aren’t you?” she bellowed at him.


  He remained unmoved. He was definitely serious.

  Alix had never felt so angry, hurt and betrayed in all her life and yet, she was ice and fire. Burning hatred coupled with cool calmness. This man really was the devil; Isaac had been right when she’d been so certain he’d been wrong. “Did you do it yourself?” she asked, her eyes reddening as she struggled to keep her face as calm as she could.

  “A king never does the killing, Alix. You know this. The pawns do the killing,” he answered.

  “Why would Mad Jack’s son have done that? You somehow made Robert Brooks do it. How did you do that?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? You’ve just seen Jack and me in the same room, like old friends, and you’re still unsure why his son did it? Come on, Alix, I know I taught you better than that.”

  She thought, struggling to quieten her mind fully to reach the deeper areas where all the answers lay. “He works for you?”

  Her father mock applauded. “Of course, he does, Alix. They all do. We have an arrangement. I deliver him the best crates, as well as tell him which ones are trapped, most of the time at least, and deliver fresh men to him on demand and he…well, he does these little jobs for me.”

  Alix felt the anger and hatred spill over. “My mom was not a job!” she screamed.

  “No, Alix, she wasn’t worth the time I’d spend at a job. She needed to die. She threatened us, she threatened me, she threatened the Wardens. Imagine the embarrassment if the Tribune got a hold of her story. No, your mother’s only chance of life came with our marriage. When she spat on that, she signed her own death warrant. I think she probably knew it as well.”

  Tears started to trickle from Alix’s eyes, the emotional battle destabilizing. “You killed my mom. You killed Alice…” She noticed her father’s eyes grow sorrowful again. It was the truth, she could tell. He hadn’t meant for Alice to get hurt. “You didn’t want anything to happen to Alice, did you?”

  “No. Jack very kindly sent his dear son, Robert to assist me. I suppose he felt beholden to me, as partners often are. Only Robert wasn’t up to the task. He was only supposed to kill her; make it seem like a robbery gone wrong and then he was to blend back in and disappear back home; back to that hole from which we’ve just emerged. He couldn’t even do that. He managed to kill a child as well. When he didn’t even run, we had to arrest him and there is only ever one sentence for killing a child.”

  “What about Isaac, then? It wasn’t revenge, was it?”

  “I’ve taught you well, Alix. It can go either way with you. You could rule the Wardens one day and make everyone’s life better if you choose. No, Alice wasn’t meant to die. She had a long life ahead of her and I wanted to ensure she lived it to the full. She was always so strong. I didn’t kill her. She was innocent. I also gave Isaac all the chance and opportunity denied to Alice, but he threw them all away. He wants to be a gangster and now he has achieved his life’s ambition.”

  “So, why didn’t you just let him go down that path and then arrest him and let the Warden’s punish him?” She felt stupid as soon as she’d said it. It was obvious. It would have been fodder for those trying to tear the Warden’s down; a great embarrassment from which he might not recover.

  “You know yourself what a ridiculous question that is, don’t you Alix?”

  Now it was her turn to stay silent.

  “He was expelled from school. I could either let that be the story or ensure the Warden’s survival. They take him from the city to Strangeways; we make an effort to save him and he turns up dead, a great tragedy for all. We try someone and the Warden’s go from strength to strength, buoyed aloft by the people’s love.”

  “So, why did you send me?”

  “You’re my daughter and I love you. You’ve done so well. You wanted to go and what better final test for you. Survive this and you’d know what we do first hand. You’d know where we send people when the cells fail. You’d have seen it all. Don’t worry, my love. You were never meant to find him. No one was, at least not for weeks, when his body would wash up somewhere.”

  His love for her tasted like poison on her lips. She spat it out and asked, “Mad Jack was supposed to kill him, then?”

  “You should really never call him Mad Jack, you know. He really doesn’t like it. Yes, he was supposed to kill him, but he’d heard of Isaac’s penchant for fighting, and so must have given him one of his trials. I guess Isaac did well.”

  Alix felt her stomach lurch as the craft slowed dramatically and started dropping from the sky.

  “Home, sweet home,” her father said.

  Alix couldn’t even look at him. Her mind whirled with the emotion and information pumped into it. She could only turn her head and almost press it against the viewing pane, hating her father and not knowing where she stood in the world anymore.

  It was both hers for the conquering, and yet she didn’t want it. The Warden’s felt like a poisoned chalice to her.

  As the craft touched down, she asked one final question. “What now?”

  From behind her, he answered. “They’ll both be tried and punished in the cells, just as the people demand. True, it would have been simpler if he’d died, but since he didn’t, does he not deserve a chance? Besides, the Warden’s don’t discriminate. You break the law; you serve the punishment. No exceptions. I can sell that to the people and the networks.”

  Alix was about to point out that he should go into the cells himself then, but he interrupted her thoughts.

  “Everyone’s a criminal, even when they’ve never committed a crime. Just look at Strangeways. All of them guilty of something, I’m sure. How else do you think New Manchester runs so smoothly? We simply iron out the kinks, criminal or not.

  Alix’s mind drifted to Kat, wasting away like a caged animal on Strangeways. Innocent, but a threat. All the rumors were true. Her father ran the Wardens and the police like his own private army. He had to be stopped.

  Her mind struggling with the sheer volume of information, Alix made a plan of action. Her father must be punished in the cells, after all, there were no exceptions, but that came down the line.

  First, she had to save Isaac and take care of Mad Jack. There was, after all, still a score to settle.

  18

  Alix approached the imposing, solid wood doors of New Manchester Prison. They were thick brown and studded with iron as reinforcement. They looked like they were built in the 1800’s because they were. The prison was old, with stories and ghosts which oozed out of the brickwork.

  Alix had always seen the prison across the street from the arena and she knew that those destined for a spell in the cells would be staying in the prison at her majesty’s pleasure, before walking the underground road to the arena.

  The building truly was imposing. It wasn’t just the door that looked medieval, it was the entire aura of the prison. The walls, she knew were over 16 feet thick and said to be impenetrable from either inside or out. On the inside, the prison cells were divided into wings that radiated from a central zone. It was designed with a purpose.

  The guards could watch all the wings without needing separate entry points in each of them individually. There were exercise points between the wings, including a training area dedicated to those wanting to brush up on their fighting abilities for their sentence. They were never at the prison long enough to improve significantly, but the training here did usually give them the appearance of some ability, and the crowds loved that.

  Alix knew it was all a PR exercise. The criminals looked like they could fight. They looked imposing and yet, they were never usually good enough to threaten the Wardens. Her father wanted the criminals to seem unbeatable until they were beaten by the Wardens. That shift in dynamic is what kept the people coming back for more. They no longer needed to fear those that threatened them and any antidote to fear is a powerful motivator.

  Alix pushed the heavy wooden door open and stepped inside. The guards knew her, which is why she had no doubt they’d let her in, even t
hough her visit was highly irregular.

  She approached the main desk and pushed an attention button sitting on top. A chime echoed through the space and seemed to travel down the corridor. She heard a chair squeak as a body pressed themselves out of it, and then footsteps.

  A man appeared donning a white dress shirt, pants with polished workman’s boots and a prison system flat hat, the standard prison officer uniform. He was unshaven, thin and looked bored with his job. He recognized Alix immediately.

  “Good morning, Warden Venner,” he smiled at her. It always paid to be polite to the daughter of the Wardens.

  “Good morning. I’m here to see my brother,” she replied.

  The guard shifted uneasily. He knew it was unusual. There was no precedent to this. Visiting was strictly during specific hours. This was a visit outside those hours, to see a prisoner condemned to a spell in the cells. Also, there had never been a prisoner who’d been linked to the Wardens in any way. They were previously beyond reproach. Isaac was the first. “I’m sorry, Warden Venner, I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

  Alix knew then that she’d get her way. The movements of the guard suggested that he was in two minds about her request, caught between obeying a Warden and not having any precedent on which to fall back. “My brother is to be punished in the cells in the coming days, isn’t he?”

  The guard agreed. “He is, ma’am.”

  “Do you think I will be chosen to punish him?” she asked.

  The guard thought for a moment and then shook his head. “I don’t think so, ma’am.”

  “I agree,” said Alix. “In that case, I would like a word with my brother before the punishment commences. I do not know when I will get another chance to do so. I am a Warden beyond reproach, officer. There is no security risk for me. I would like to speak to him for ten minutes, and then I will be gone.”

  He still looked unsure.

  “Have you been given instructions not to allow me in?”

  He shook his head. “No, ma’am.”