by Martina Cole
‘Sit down and I’ll bring you in a pot of tea and something to eat. I have a wee bit of bannock outside, could you fit that in, maybe?’
Alan smiled. ‘Anything. We’re starving. What a lovely place you have here.’
The small woman glowed with happiness at the compliment and bustled out of the room.
‘This is hardly what I expected, I must say.’
Donna’s voice felt rusty through lack of use and nervousness. Since the argument earlier on there had been a tension between them that she knew would now be hard to break down.
Alan shrugged. ‘We don’t want to attract any kind of attention. This will do for what we want. It’s clean and out of the way. I hope the tea’s all right, I could murder a cup right now.’
Donna opened her bag and took out her cigarettes. Alan watched her light one, amazed that she could perform the act with such natural grace.
‘You’ll be glad of a bath, girl. We both will.’
Donna nodded.
‘What do you think of Scotland then?’
Donna enjoyed Alan’s discomfort. He wanted to talk now, did he? She shrugged nonchalantly.
‘It’s all right from what I’ve seen of it.’
The woman bustled in with a small trolley laden down with sandwiches, cakes, buns, tea and a large bottle of Grant’s whisky.
‘What a sight for sore eyes, Mrs . . .’
‘Mrs MacIntyre. But you can call me Emma. When you’ve had your fill I’ll show you to your rooms. It’s twenty-two pounds a head, payable in advance, and that includes a full Scottish breakfast.’
She laughed as she spoke. ‘That’s eggs and bacon, by the way - with porridge to start.’
Donna looked at the tantalising array of food and smiled wanly. ‘This looks absolutely lovely.’
Emma nodded as if acknowledging a great truth.
‘I do all my own baking. That fruit cake was fresh made this morning, as was the bread and bannock. The sandwiches are beef - Aberdeen Angus of course! I also made you a few ham and tomato. I like to see my guests eat well. Now if you need anything else, I’ll be through in the bar. It’s open till two-thirty in the morning if you fancy a bit of company. My husband will be glad to meet you both.’
Donna smiled at the woman. ‘Thanks, we might take you up on that. What do we owe you for all this?’
‘We’ll sort that out later. Eat up now.’
When Emma had left the room, Alan grinned.
‘Bit of all right this, ain’t it?’ He picked up a thick boiled ham sandwich. ‘Me mum used to boil her own bacon. Beats that shop-bought crap into a cocked hat.’
He poured out two large measures of whisky.
‘Get your laughing gear around that, Donna. It’ll help you sleep.’
She took the whisky and sipped it, while Alan, a sandwich stuck in his mouth, poured them both hot tea.
‘I feel so tired, I don’t think I’ll need anything to help me sleep.’
‘You’re not nervous then?’ His voice was low.
‘No, I’m not, actually, and I don’t want to go into all that again, if you don’t mind. I think you made yourself clear earlier on today.’
Alan swallowed the last of the sandwich.
‘You didn’t do too bad yourself. You certainly put me in me place.’
Donna picked up a beef sandwich. ‘Well, at least some good came out of it then.’ She bit into the smooth creaminess of real butter and thick beef. ‘This is lovely!’
They ate in greedy silence for a while.
‘I never meant to hurt you today, Donna. It’s just, I’m worried about you, that’s all.’
She sipped her tea. ‘Well, don’t be. I can take care of myself.’
‘If you insist then. But I wonder what your old man’s playing at? I wouldn’t ask of my wife what he’s asking of you.’ His voice was low, serious.
‘Maybe you and your wife didn’t have the same kind of relationship. Georgio and I are very close. Even with all that’s happened to him, and all I’ve found out, I still love him. In fact, I think I love him more if that’s possible.’
Alan tossed back his whisky. ‘That’s what surprises me. Doesn’t it bother you - all you’ve found out?’
She shook her head firmly. ‘Nothing I could find out about Georgio after this could really bother me.’
Alan picked up another sandwich. ‘Are you sure about that?’
Donna slammed the cup back into its saucer. ‘Yes, I am sure of that. Are you going to start all this again? I mean, what is it with you? You tear into me today because of what I’m doing. Now you try and make snide remarks about my husband - your so-called friend. If you have anything to say, Alan Cox, I wish you’d just open your big mouth and get it over with. I’m fed up with playing games! Christ knows I played enough of them with my husband to last me a lifetime.’ She was near to tears and she knew it.
Standing up, she walked across the room and stood at the window staring out into the darkness of the night. She heard Alan moving and sighed. When his arms came around her she pulled herself away from him.
‘Oh, please. Give me a break, would you?’
‘Look, I’m sorry if I upset you.’ Alan looked contrite. ‘I don’t know what’s got into me.’
Donna licked her lips slowly. ‘Can’t you just try to get on with me? I know you think I’m a liability, but believe me when I say I will be all right. Georgio trusts me implicitly, so can’t you just try and have some of his faith in me? This is difficult enough as it is, without you making it harder for me. I am trying, really trying, to help my husband, to get him home. I tried to do it legally, now I am willing to do it illegally. Whatever you say or do, you can’t change that. Georgio is all I ever had, all I ever wanted. He gave to me for more years than I care to remember, now I want to give something back to him. I want to help him, I need to help him. He’s all I’ve got.’
Alan stared down into her beautiful, unhappy face. Took in the highlights of her hair, the lines around her mouth, and the pallor of her skin. He could smell her odour of cigarette smoke and Chanel Number Five.
‘If he’s all you’ve got, love, then I pity you.’
Donna closed her eyes and turned back towards the window.
‘I wish you’d stop all this.’ His voice was low.
She laughed without humour. ‘I can’t. Now let’s get on with what we’ve got to do.’
She could feel his breath on the back of her neck.
‘All right then, Donna, you win. We’ll do what we have to do - on one condition.’
‘What’s that?’
Alan turned her around gently and stared into her eyes. ‘Promise me that when it does get too much for you, you’ll tell me? Until that time I’ll give you every bit of the respect I would give to Georgio, OK?’
Donna nodded. ‘I promise that if it all gets too much, you’ll be the first to know.’
‘I didn’t say if, Donna, I said when.’
‘The most irritating thing about you, Alan Cox, is that you’re so sure you know everything.’
He laughed. ‘My wife used to say that.’
Donna pushed past him and went back to the sofa. ‘Your wife also divorced you. I can see why.’
‘All right then, this round goes to you, but what I said still stands. When you want out, just let me know. Now let’s finish these sandwiches and get some shut eye.’
Donna poured herself another cup of tea. ‘My sentiments entirely, Mr Cox.’
Alan closed his eyes to hold on to his temper. ‘You’ve always got to have the last word, haven’t you?’
Donna bit into another sandwich and said through a mouthful of ham, ‘Yes, actually, I have. Especially where you’re concerned.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
Mr Ellington and Mr Borga were amazed to be invited into the cell of Eric Mates, normally a quiet man who kept himself to himself. The offer of a cup of tea and a look at his new paintings was too good to miss. Eric Mates was in on what was comm
only termed a ‘lump’ - a really big sentence. Convicted of murdering his wife, his children and his wife’s alleged lover, he was not getting out at any time. He had spent fourteen years on the ‘Nutcracker Suite’ - C wing, where the psychiatric cases were - and was noted for the number of ‘tear ups’ he’d had with cons and screws alike. Then he had discovered painting, and that was his salvation.
He painted stark pictures of the world as he saw it. He painted the children of Bosnia, dying, bedecked in flowers. ‘The beauty among the evil’ was what he called it.
His paintings were raffled for charity and he was now getting himself a name in the art world. He was respected by all, an unassuming man who made people forget within five minutes of talking to him exactly what he was banged up for. His days of tearing people to pieces, either physically or verbally, were long gone.
So the offer of a cup of tea and a look at his latest masterpieces was too good to miss. Mr Borga was contemplating the amount he would get from the Sun or the Mirror for this information. Mr Borga always had his eye on the main chance, which was why he got on well with the prisoners.
They could respect that.
As Eric slowly made the tea, the two men enjoyed looking at the paintings, unaware of what was going on outside the cell door, on the landing.
Benjamin Dawes wanted something, and he had wanted it for years. He had finally seen a way to get it and that was why Eric Mates was keeping the two screws company.
There was an unwritten law in Parkhurst SSB Unit. If you could get something back to your cell without the screws seeing it, it was yours to keep.
What Benjamin wanted was beyond the imagination of any of the screws and a good number of the cons themselves. However, when word went round the Wing what was going down, laughter was heard everywhere.
Twenty minutes later, when Mr Borga and Mr Ellington emerged from Eric Mates’s cell, the laughter had died down, joints had been lit, the air was heavy with the scent of cannabis and everything seemed normal.
Except there was a bed out on the landing.
‘Whose bed’s this, then?’
Benjamin Dawes strolled out of his cell.
‘Mine. I don’t want it any more.’
Mr Borga laughed. ‘The old back giving you one up?’
Many of the cons slept on the floor of their cells on a mattress. A bed abandoned on a landing wasn’t really a big deal.
‘Okey doke, I’ll get the cleaning crew to dismantle it. Don’t you want the mattress then?’
Benjamin Dawes laughed. ‘Nah, that’s all right. It won’t fit in here now I’ve got a three-piece suite!’
Everyone laughed and Benjamin walked back into his cell and shut his door.
‘Three-piece fucking suite! He wishes, eh, lads?’ And Mr Borga creased up laughing and carried on with his work. The bed was gone within fifteen minutes and the Wing went quiet, everyone waiting eagerly for the count-up after lunch. The air was alive with excitement, the men’s spirits were buoyant. The screws put it down to the large amount of skunk on the Wing. No one was that bothered, if as a result the prisoners were relaxed, happy and cheerful.
It made their job that much easier.
‘I want to know where you were, Davey, and I want to know now!’
Davey wiped a hand across his face in agitation.
‘Look, Carol, we’re married, not joined at the fucking hip. I went for a drink with a bloke, and that’s it.’
Carol snorted in a very unladylike fashion.
‘My name’s Gilly Hunt, not silly cunt, and I ain’t changing it for you or anyone else, mate. Now tell me the truth or I swear before God I’ll stick a fucking knife through your guts!’
‘Mum, can I have packed lunch tomorrow?’
Jennie Jackson, used to the violent arguing of her parents, walked casually into the room.
Turning on her daughter like a maniac, Carol bellowed, ‘Ask your father, because if I don’t get any answers here today, I’m fucking off out of this house and he can have the lot of you!’
Jennie, raising her eyes to the ceiling, said in a resigned voice, ‘I’ll take that as a no then, shall I?’ She wandered out again.
Carol stared into her husband’s face. Her voice lower now, and with a hint of tears running through it, she said, ‘I mean it, Davey. If you’re out shagging again, that’s it this time. I’ve taken just about all I can. There’s a bill for a restaurant in your trouser pocket, it’s for over a hundred nicker, and you sure as Christ never took me there!’
Davey stared into his wife’s miserable face. He could see the tiny thread veins that ran through her cheeks, from too many nights spent drinking Bacardi while waiting up for him. He saw the deep circles under her eyes and the faded blue of their irises. Her heavy figure, encased as usual in a dress two sizes too small, was a legacy of the kids and takeaway dinners. He felt a moment’s affection for her. Deciding that with Carol in this mood, and the odds on getting knifed growing shorter by the second, he would tell her the truth. One thing with Carol, if you held your hand up, she was quite fair.
‘You know me, Carol, a pair of bristols and I’m away. She was only a slag.’
‘Who was it, Davey? Do I know her?’
He sighed heavily. ‘Of course you don’t know her, what do you take me for? When have I ever made a grab for one of your mates? Give me a bit of savvy, would you? I might bat away from home now and again, but I have got some fucking morals, you know!’
Carol grinned now, and Davey knew he was halfway home. He might get a plant around the head, but the knife was no more a threat.
‘I still want to know who it was.’
‘Just some little bird,’ he said wearily. ‘I can’t even remember her name. She had a micro skirt on, plenty of perfume - Opium, I think - and loads of make-up. Her boatrace left a lot to be desired, but I’d had a drink.’ His voice was whining now.
‘Fucking hell, Cal, it’s not like it’s the first time, girl, is it? Why do we have to go through all this every time? I come home, don’t I? They’re just dogs. You’re me wife.’
Carol swallowed deeply. ‘You’re a piece of shite, Davey, do you know that?’
Smiling devilishly, he said, ‘So you keep telling me.’
As he walked out of the lounge doorway, a large terracotta plant pot hit him on the back of the head. It only grazed him, but he decided to play up to her.
Holding his head with both hands, he bent over, groaning.
‘Fuck you, Carol, that hurt!’
Jennie, pushing past her father, picked up her jacket from where it was hanging on the banisters and said gaily, ‘See you all later.’
As she opened the front door she stood stock still. ‘There’s a bird out here, Mum.’
Grinning at her father’s white face she tripped down the pathway back to school.
Pulling the door open properly with a meaty arm, Carol glared at the tall thin woman before her and snapped: ‘Yeah? What do you want? A bit off the beaten track here love, ain’t you?’
Bunty licked dry lips and said in her nasal tones, ‘May I speak to Mr Jackson, please?’
Davey, his face devoid of colour, stood behind his wife, slowly shaking his head as if to warn off the woman before him.
‘You’d better come in before the neighbours see you.’
‘Well, they must certainly have heard you, Carol. I heard you from the bottom of the road.’
She frowned. ‘What do you want, Bunty?’
‘I need to see Davey.’
His face was a picture and Carol, noticing this, said: ‘He looks a bit green round the gills because he’s just had a plant pot in the back of the head.’
Glancing at the dirt-covered carpet and broken plant pot, Bunty said sarcastically, ‘I never would have guessed.’
Underestimating Carol Jackson was her first big mistake of the day. Pointing a finger into the older woman’s face, Carol said nastily, ‘You know something, lady? You want to watch that big trap of yours before so
meone decides to fucking shut it for you - permanently!’
Davey pushed between the two women.
‘All right, Carol, go and make a cup of Rosie Lee.’ Steering Bunty into the lounge, he said, ‘Did your old man send you round here?’
Shutting the lounge door in Carol’s face he lowered his voice, praying in his heart of hearts that his wife wouldn’t insist on knowing what exactly was going on.
She knew too much already.
Stephen was in The Bordello, one of his peepshows in Soho. As he lifted the takings from the manager, they chatted about the general state of the economy. The manager was saying what everyone in the know in London believed, from black cab drivers to porn merchants and politicians.
‘Listen, boy, if the toms ain’t making it, then there’s no money about. Even the fucking tourists are few and far between, thanks to the IRA. All that lovely American money going to waste, eh? I wish they’d sort something out over there, I really do. I mean, we’re doing all right, but fuck me, not like last year, eh? Money was creaming in last year and the birds were right fucking ropey, some of ’em.’
Stephen nodded in full agreement.
‘It’s been a lousy summer, I grant you that. How much you salting away this year then?’
The two men smiled at one another.
‘Not as much as I could, Brunos, you know that. It’s why you employ me. I never did take the piss.’
Stephen grinned now.
‘Fair comment. How is the place?’
A record came on, a strident rock number, and the small office space was literally shaking with the bass line.
‘How the fuck that bird can even pretend to dance to that crap, I don’t know!’
Before Stephen could answer they heard a loud shriek.
Rolling his eyes at the ceiling, the manager pulled himself from his seat and barrelled along the corridor to the work area.
‘Oh, bollocks! Micky, get off that door and get down here!’
Stephen watched in amazement as the manager, Terry Rawlings, stepped through a hole in the wall. One of the peep cubicles was completely gone and a heavyset man was laying into a half-naked girl lying on a double bed.
