Strangeways

by Matthew Samm

  “Then you aren’t breaking any protocol by giving me ten minutes, are you?”

  He thought for another second and then he decided. Alix could see the moment when he agreed with her. “OK. Wait here for a moment, ma’am. I’ll be right back.”

  “Thank you,” she said, keeping her tone and words as formal as possible.

  He returned about five minutes later with another guard. This man was larger, and Alix recognized him as the supervisor. “Officer Donaldson,” Alix greeted him. “How are you today?”

  “Very well, Warden Venner,” he replied, his voice far deeper than the guards. He paused for a second, clearly uneasy with what was about to happen. “Warden Venner, you understand how unusual your request is. Despite what my colleague here has told you, I’d like to contact your father to check we’re allowed to have anyone access prisoner Venner.”

  For a second, Alix knew how unusual ‘prisoner Venner’ sounded, not only because it was a member of her family in the cells, but also that he wasn’t really a member of their family anymore. It was as if he had shaken off the mantle of ‘Venner’ and become something…different; someone without an identity. She didn’t know what to call him or think about him.

  It was part of the reason behind her visit. She wanted to gain back the recognition she had of her ‘brother’. She wanted to know who it was that sat in the jail; who it was that she’d shared a cave with for six weeks.

  Alix was still suffering some of the effects of that time in Mad Jack’s captivity and she knew Isaac would be as well. She couldn’t allow Donaldson to contact her father. “I understand officer, you want to check with my father. That’s fair. I can warn you, however, that I am here on his business. He has sent me to speak to his son because, between you and me, he is quite ashamed of one of his family being in this position. He wanted to speak to him, but he can’t face him right now. He’s still furious. If you want to call him to check, that’s fair, but I warn you…he might not appreciate the call.” She let the sinister threat hang in the air for a few moments before adding “and you know what happens to people who…disappoint him.”

  It was a long shot, but Alix knew that her father had a past now. He was involved with things that were dubious in their legality and ethics. The reporter on Strangeways, the women and children on Strangeways, the alliance with Mad Jack.

  All of these things hinted at a man, her father, who had crossed the line. He was no longer a beacon of law and justice, he was using the Wardens and his connections to the police as his own private army, using their respect and public adoration to manipulate more power and influence for himself.

  If he needed someone ‘removed’, they would be taken to Strangeways after ‘dying’ as an innocent victim of a make-believe crime. He’d then arrest a random person, perhaps a connection to Mad Jack who wanted to curry favor, and they’d be punished in the cells for the thirsty public. It worked perfectly for him. Her father knew how to work a crowd and he knew how to run a business. Alix was counting on rumors spreading to the prison guards that would scare them into doing what she wanted. It worked.

  “I don’t think that will be necessary, Warden Venner. Please follow me.”

  She smiled at him, an innocent smile, one that put his mind at ease and allowed him to think he hadn’t been manipulated.

  He led the way through the back door of the reception and along a shining floor, with cream walls interspersed with metal bars at regular intervals. These weren’t the cells, however, there were protocols in place and barriers for if anyone ever escaped the block.

  The ‘Guards’ Gateway’ as it was known led to the main rotunda, an open space, dominated by a guard room with a full field of vision and a retinal secured weapons locker.

  An elevator sat in the middle, which would take them either down to the cells or up to the watchtower, which soared above the New Manchester skyline. It was a city monument and merged 19th-century architecture with modern security features.

  Donaldson led the way and Alix followed, pulling the hood from her hoodie over her head. It was exceptionally large for her, allowing her to pull it further down her eyes and shield her face from onlookers. She didn’t want to be spotted here. She wanted it to be her word against the guard’s if it ever came down to it, plus, she’d punished quite a number of these inmates in their previous bouts.

  She didn’t want to court any feelings of vengeance against her while she was in there. She was particularly worried about this. Prisons were fluid places. Whereas in years past, prisoners would be sentenced to life and spend at least fifteen years behind bars, now they would face their first bout within a month of conviction, recover for another month or two and then proceed to their second bout. This continued until their sentence was served.

  A ten-year sentence could now be completed in as little as two years and victims gained a greater sense of justice than hearing their aggressor was sat in a cushy cell for years at a time with three squares a day, exercise and a color video. Hardly seemed like justice to Alix, and the people of New Manchester agreed with her.

  The elevator arrived and the doors opened. Donaldson motioned her inside and she entered. He pushed the button to the cells below and she took notice of where her brother was. Lower fourth: A-Wing. Isaac wallowed in the deepest hole of them all on the most dangerous wing. He was certainly secure. No one could escape from A-Wing.

  When the elevator stopped, the door slid open, but Donaldson didn’t move. “You do know what you’re doing, don’t you, Warden Venner?”

  “What do you mean, officer?” Alix replied.

  “You understand that there are some undesirable characters on this floor, don’t you ma’am? They are people who have given up on life and are just waiting for a chance to get in that arena and take their anger out on the world. Down here, they’re in their own world and it’s totally separate from ours. Down here, they only know pain and struggle and misery, ma’am.” His face fell. “I’m sorry your brother is down here, ma’am, but I wouldn’t spend too much time. You don’t want to be with these…people for any longer than you have to be.”

  He spoke the word ‘people’ as if he wasn’t quite sure of the label, but it was simply the closest one to accurate.

  “I will have one of my men accompany you through this wing,” Donaldson said.

  “That is out of the question, officer,” Alix snapped immediately. “I intend to speak with my brother, and I intend to do it alone. Point me in the correct direction and I’ll be absolutely fine.” Alix’s voice was stern and commanding and didn’t give an inch.

  “But…but…ma’am, I have to insist. Your safety is of utmost importance and your father would surely hold us responsible if anything were to happen to you…”

  “I’m going to stop you there, Officer Donaldson,” Alix said, holding up her hand to shush the officer. “My father puts me in a cell, closes the door, bolts it shut and allows me to take my time with whoever is unlucky enough to go in there with me. I will not take a step back and he knows this. I understand your hesitation at letting me go down here, however, it is for the wrong reasons. You should be worried that one of your inmates will be hurt if I do.”

  Donaldson considered what she said and appeared to be in two minds. On the one hand, he wanted to go back to the surface and forget that there was a Warden in the prison. He could turn a blind eye and if the worst came to worst, he could pour the blame onto one of his subordinates, perhaps the guard who allowed her entry in the first place. On the other, there was still a reliance on the rules, and this was highly unorthodox.

  Alix saw he was teetering and gave him the final push. “Your diligence is admirable, Officer Donaldson. I know my father is highly impressed with your work and I have already kept you from it for long enough. He wouldn’t have sent me if he had any concern that I couldn’t handle myself. This is his wish…and just remember how he rewards those who grant his wishes.”

  “I understand, ma’am. How long will you need?” aske
d Donaldson.

  “Not long. Ten minutes.”

  “Of course, ma’am.” He moved aside and Alix exited the elevator. “Walk down the corridor. A guard will be at the station down there. Show him this,” he said, handing her an official prison pass. “He will open the gate and allow you through. All the inmates are in their cells. Isaac has been placed in the holding cell at the end of the hallway. There is a room off to the right. He’s in there.” Donaldson suddenly looked sheepish. “He’s only a kid and he’s the boss’ son. We didn’t want to keep him with the other animals.”

  Alix looked Donaldson in the eye and muttered a genuine, heartfelt “thank you.” He didn’t have to do that. He didn’t have to give Isaac any special consideration at all, but he did because he was a kid and because he wasn’t quite the animal the others were.

  It was a small gesture, but it was one that spoke of deep consideration for the wellbeing of those in his charge. At that moment, Alix liked Donaldson and felt an urge to come clean about why she was there and how her father hadn’t sent her. She held it in, however. This was too important. She had to speak to her brother. She had to know if he knew the truth and where they were going to go from here.

  “You have ten minutes, ma’am,” Donaldson told her, smiling from his belly. Then he turned around, re-entered the elevator and disappeared.

  Alix turned and focused down the corridor. It was cream colored like the upstairs but there was a hint of something in the air; an aura of fear and despair tinging the halls.

  She began to walk down this corridor and quickly saw the guard’s room. It was off to the side and as she approached, the guard came out. They didn’t say a word to each other, she simply flashed him the badge and then walked to the door expectantly. The guard disappeared back inside the room and hit a button, which buzzed the heavy iron bars open.

  Alix stepped through and they closed behind her. The guard nodded to her as the door closed again. “You know where you’re going?” He didn’t question why she was there. Perhaps he’d had a call on the radio from Donaldson.

  “I do,” Alix said.

  “Good. Be careful. This isn’t the place for girls.”

  Just as she’d liked Donaldson in a moment, Alix hated this one. She was a Warden. This is exactly the place for her. It astonished Alix that there were still people in the world who thought women should sit down and shut up, or, better yet, stand by the stove top and create food for their husband and provider. It sickened her. She briefly considered making an issue out of it, but then remembered why she was there and let it go, leaving him with a scowl, but nothing more.

  She pulled her hoodie tight over her head, leaving a slim circle through which to peer out the front. When she began to pass the cells, she could hear the inmates inside grunt and pull themselves towards the bars, eagerly wanting to know who this was and why they were there without a chaperone. Alix moved forward, but it was near the end of the corridor when the first comments came.

  She looked like a woman under the thick hoodie and training pants. She couldn’t hide her curves completely, and for many of these inmates, guilty of severe and serious crimes, it was all they needed to set the predator loose in them.

  “Hey darling!” one of them shouted, slamming something against the bars as he shouted it, startling Alix and making her flex uncontrollably. There was a hint of mocking laughter afterwards. Whoever it was, knew they’d startled her, and they’d loved it.

  She quickened her step as the wolf whistles and jeers began to echo around her. The room she wanted was also off to the right. It was in darkness, for the most part, the only light coming from a lamp on a table at one end of the room.

  Alix stood in the doorway and saw her brother, clearly visible in the cell standing against the wall, about halfway down the small room. A thick red line travelled around the room, starting at the wall and leading around the cage before disappearing into the darkness. It was a clear warning. DO NOT CROSS.

  Alix was unsure whether it was for the visitor’s protection, or whether it was a protocol thing. If she gave her brother a hug and broke the line, would the guards have to search Isaac for contraband? She decided not to cross, even though she desperately wanted to give her half-brother a hug. It was instinctive and formed from years of habit.

  “Hi sis,” he said, giving her a knowing look. Did he know?

  “Hi Isaac,” she replied, giving him an understanding smile. “I had to see you.”

  “He doesn’t know you’re here?”

  “No, although I told….”

  Isaac waved his hands frantically, shushing her. “Keep your voice down, Alix,” he whispered. “If you told them a lie, they’ll hear if you’re not careful. The whole place is bugged, so they can listen in.”

  Alix nodded, indicating she understood. “I can’t believe he’s done this to you,” she said, shaking her head ruefully.

  “Really? This is exactly what I thought might happen.”

  “How? How could you think this might happen?”

  “It was something in his voice on the night Jack came for me. I could just tell there was something different like the dynamic had changed. I don’t quite know how to explain it, but it was like he’d given up on me. I didn’t really know what that meant at the time, but could you not sense it?”

  Alix thought back to that night. Her father had been harsh on him, she knew that, and it had stuck in her throat like a bitter pill for her to defend her father for a time because of it. She thought about all the times she’d defended him and his actions as just the effects of a man with an impossible and burdensome job. That had changed now.

  She saw him for what he was. Someone who needed to be stopped…in due time. “You’re right.”

  “I know, Alix, I can tell about things like that, and he gave up.”

  “There’s more, Isaac. He told me everything and you were right about it all.”

  Isaac’s eyes bored into her with a look of surprise. To hear that he’d been right about their father came as a shock to him as if he hadn’t quite believed it himself. “What do you mean, sis?”

  ‘Sis’. That word rang hollow in Alix’s ears. She wasn’t really his sister anymore, but as she looked at her brother’s form through the bars, she tried to see the similarities; almost willing the truth to be a lie. There weren’t many. After scanning his features, all she could pinpoint were their eyes. They shared their mother’s eyes. “Isaac, he told me it all. I don’t know if you know any of it, but it’s really bad.”

  “Tell me,” he said.

  So, she did. She told him all of it. She told him about their mother and how she’d had an affair with someone, but she wouldn’t say who and that Isaac and Alice, their baby sister, were the products of that affair. She told him how their mother had laughed at her father and that put the nail in her coffin.

  She told him about her father’s relationship with Mad Jack and how Mad Jack had sent his son to carry out the orders of her father to murder their mother, but little Alice had been caught in the crossfire. She told him how Robert Brooks was supposed to merge back into the city and head back to Strangeways afterwards, but couldn’t believe he’d killed a little girl and got himself arrested.

  Isaac’s face dropped open with each sentence spoken. Tears began to drip silently from his eyes when she spoke about their mother. He was hearing something far worse than he thought. He’d heard rumors at school about their father, but despite saying he believed them, he never truly did. He always thought they were rumors, and even those were nowhere near as bad as what he was hearing now. His head spun with each new revelation; new layers of devastation laying on him.

  Alix wasn’t finished. She’d reached the point in her story where Isaac was taken. “You were supposed to be taken to Strangeways and killed. All because you’d disappointed…him and, like you say, he’d given up on you.”

  “What else did he say?” Isaac asked.

  “Well, he said that…” she paused. She didn’
t want to say the critical things his father had said to her about him. They were somehow worse than the act. They cut deeper. “He said that he wanted you and Alice, but you had let him down. You’d messed up your life and he wished he could trade you for Alice.”

  She saw the cut open. Isaac knew it was all true, but he didn’t know how true it really was. The man he’d believed was his father and who had brought him up had tried to have him killed. “Why are you telling me this?” he snapped at her.

  She recoiled slightly, taken by surprise at the suddenness of the outburst. “I wanted you to know because I don’t know what father has planned for you now.”

  “Isn’t it obvious, Alix?”

  Alix thought for the obvious answer but wasn’t satisfied with it. She thought how Isaac would be punished in the cells for crimes committed on Strangeways or before. It didn’t matter which, her father just needed a story he could sell to the public.

  Then she thought that he’d send Isaac back to Strangeways, where he could live out his fantasy of being a gangster with Mad Jack and his crew. It just didn’t fit. He’d tried to have him killed before on the island, but Mad Jack had failed, which was why Mad Jack was down here somewhere as well, waiting for his time back in the cells.

  “He plans to have him killed in the cells,” came a deep voice from the right-hand side of Isaac’s cage.

  Alix’s eyes flicked immediately to the right and she saw him. He’d been standing there, watching them both, his face appearing ghostly pale in the weak lamplight. His prominent features caught the light, but the recesses of his face created deep pockets of darkness. His eyes appeared black in the dim light. Mad Jack. Alix recoiled again, shocked at the terrifying visage she hadn’t known was there but had been watching and listening the entire time.

  “He wanted him killed on my island, but I couldn’t let a talent like young Isaac go to waste,” he said, sounding like the father Isaac wanted. “He was one of us, I could tell from the start. As soon as he took my little test, I could tell he was special.”