The Panopticon

by Jenni Fagan

  THEY’VE GIVEN ME warm tea in a styrofoam cup, with lots of sugar in it. An empty bin has been placed by my feet – in case I’m sick again. Remembering that last whitey in here, with PC Craig, it sparked me right into another one. Cold. Clammy. Dizzy-feel-sick-want-tae-puke. Shouldnae-ever-smoke-skunk. Fuck!

  One policeman’s sat in the corner, the other one’s at the table eyeballing me. Helen had to leave. Another emergency – maybe there’s an elephant at the zoo needs some fucking Reiki or something. He clicks the Record button to begin the interview.

  ‘Can you say your full name, please?’

  ‘Annette Curtains.’

  ‘Dinnae take the piss,’ he says.

  I lean into the recorder.

  ‘Minnie Mouse, address: Disneyland,’ I squeak.

  ‘Recording started at three seventeen, 1st October 2011, interviewing Anais Hendricks, who evidently has no middle names,’ he says, unimpressed.

  The recording light flashes red.

  ‘Her body lay on Love Lane for hours,’ the first policeman says.

  The light glares down and a sign on the wall reads Exit Only.

  ‘Where were you on Wednesday 23rd September at eleven a.m., Anais?’

  ‘School.’

  ‘That’s not true, we checked with your school. Where were you?’

  ‘Skiving.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Wanking.’

  ‘Have you any witnesses tae that, Miss Hendricks?’

  I shake my head.

  Cold skin. Shivery. I dinnae feel right and it isnae the skunk, that just opened the door. Truth of it is I’m mental, or I’m gonnae be mental. Maybe I should just say it. I’m Anais Hendricks and I’m mental in the head.

  Sweating. I hate it when this kicks in. They should just lock me away. Stick a needle in my vein. Fry it all out. Fry out rooms without windows and doors, and red bicycles and Teresa’s kimono. The policeman reminds me of a dog. I’m scared of dogs. What a fanny, ay? Scared of dogs. I’d never tell anyone.

  ‘Are you okay, Anais?’

  ‘I think I have flu.’

  ‘Really. So, what did you hit her with?’

  ‘I didnae hit her.’

  ‘Then who did?’

  ‘I dinnae know, do I? That’s your job.’

  ‘Dinnae get lippy, Anais.’

  ‘We know you did it,’ the one in the corner says.

  ‘Noh, you dinnae, or you’d have charged me by now.’

  He leans over the table into my face and his breath stinks of curry. Dinnae breathe. Just remember what the wishes look like, down the woods in summer. Wee silver orbs. Totally magical.

  ‘Speak!’ the policeman roars.

  Wipe the spittle off my face. I’m done answering now.

  Say nothing. Just stare. The pigs’ nerves begin tae fray. They get angry. They get calm. They offer me a smoke. They try bullying, threats, bribes. I’m not shrinking any more. It went. It does that. It just goes. You think this is it – permanent psychosis – then it goes. I will beat these pricks. I dinnae give a flying fuck how long they keep me here.

  The faces look from me to the policeman, like we’re at Wimbledon, but there’s nae umpire. The thing is to think of other things. That’s the thing. Like when I was a kid, things were different then – even when it was shit, it wasnae shit. The sun smelled like the sun, and summers were warmer. I remember I had this amazing bike, a chopper with a flag on the back. I had tae use stabilisers even though I was nine; I learnt to ride it so late it was embarrassing.

  ‘Why did you not learn before you were nine?’ some kid asked me.

  I wobbled around him with one stabiliser lifting off the ground.

  ‘My mum was too busy tae teach me.’

  ‘Too busy doing what?’

  ‘Your da.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘And your brother.’

  ‘What?’

  The kid skidded his bike intae the gravel and clenched his fists.

  ‘Aye, and anyone else who’ll fucking pay.’

  Helen should have come back for the rest of the interview, but they’ve said she’s still called away. She’ll be uploading elephant photos on Shitebook. Just focus on enunciating. It will all be okay. Just enunciate.

  ‘You have a long history of violence.’

  Paris, think of Paris. New York. Florence. Think of Jay. Think of kissing Jay. Think of being held that way. The policeman begins to shrink; first it’s his head that seems the wrong size, then his nose elongates and he accelerates – further and further away.

  ‘Possession of marijuana.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Possession of hydroponics, one harvest in a school shed.’

  Focus on the space between his eyebrows.

  ‘Possession of an offensive weapon. Let’s see, three times: one hammer, one baseball bat and a nineteen-millimetre easy-gauge gun.’

  The second policeman begins tae shrink.

  ‘Possession of seventeen grams of heroin.’

  ‘That wasnae smack and it wasnae proven,’ I say.

  ‘Seventeen grams of heroin, charged fully for. The hospital speed was the other one, Anais, can you no even remember what you were charged with?’

  It wasnae heroin. It wasnae my heroin. Fingers look weird. Don’t fingers look weird? They think I’m scummy as fuck, maybe I am? But I bet I know more about paintings than they do. I dinnae know much, like, but I bet it’s more than they do. They dinnae know I know about sub alterns. Old Professor True specialised in that, he was my favourite client of Teresa’s, old True, even if he was old and fat and ugly. I know what the meaning of empathy is. I know how to outline my lips in red liner.

  I umnay meant to be here. I was meant to be born in Paris.

  ‘Over one hundred charges in the last sixteen months, Miss Hendricks. Now, the Ecstasy tablets and, let’s see,’ he runs his pen down a long list, ‘three sheets of LSD, a half-ounce of ketamine, a quarter of hash, an eighth of sinsemilla, a nine-bar in December. How have you stayed out of secure?’

  Because I get grade As at school, when I go. Cos I move so much that each department forgets where I am and where I’ve been. Because the experiment find me amusing.

  ‘Two drunken disorderly, seven breaches of the peace – oh, and of course your weekly absconding phase, how can we forget that, Anais? Let’s see: forty-eight times you have absconded, only caught once?’

  I know what the experiment would like tae see. They’d like to see me hang myself in a secure unit. One knot. One neck. Vertebrae. Snapped.

  ‘How were you only caught once?’

  ‘Luck?’

  The faces are gone. Almost. They are fading all over the walls. I focus on the bit between the police officer’s eyebrows; you can sometimes get a shrinking person back if you look at that space between their eyebrows and focus. Or sometimes, like now, it just makes their head a minuscule fucking pin. Tiny Head shakes from left tae right. His tiny eyes glare. His tiny mouth squeaks.

  ‘You’re in a bit of a mess, aren’t you, Anais?’

  There is nothing at the end of the rainbow. Not a fucking thing. Fact.

  ‘Battery of an eighteen-year-old.’

  ‘She was picking on a kid I know.’

  ‘Two broken bones, a broken nose, broken ribs. Stolen property. Shoplifting. Destruction of social-work property. Brandishing a hammer at an officer of the peace. Joyriding. Smashing the window of Continental Jewellers. Inciting a riot in Valleyfield children’s unit. Inciting another riot in The Braids children’s unit. And, oh, this is lovely, Anais, destruction of police property – a prolonged campaign of terror by one Anais Hendricks of 13/9 Loam Terrace, Handerly Estate, against one officer now in a coma, our own officer: PC Dawn Craig.’

  Tiny Head turns a laptop round. The CCTV footage is in order of dates; he presses Play. It’s me. I’m a movie star, Mama, are you proud? Me walking through the police-station door with my arms full. I know what’s coming.

  I chor
e the first polis light off PC Craig’s pigmobile at 6 a.m. It is February. It’s still cold and the ground is frosty. Foam the CCTV with cheap-as-shit shaving foam, climb on top of the car and unscrew the bolts holding the light down. Wear a Buddha bag on my head, with holes cut out, so I can see. They know it’s me, but they cannae prove it.

  Run up to my dealer’s after and chap on his window until he wakes up. He’s the vicar’s son. Hold out the police light for him, it’s a love-token. He’s well impressed. He stashes it under his bed and says he always wanted some genuine police memorabilia for a keepsake. He fancies me, and he’s totally – hot.

  Do the next car at 3 a.m. This one is double-screwed and an extra CCTV camera is on the roof. Spray the camera with fluorescent-pink paint. Dawn Craig strips me twice that week.

  Strip the third car at 4 p.m. on a Sunday while the church bells ring. This one has two screws and has been glued down, so I have tae use a Stanley knife tae get the light off. Almost give up, but I get it off in the end. Strip the stickers off the side of the car. Take the hubcaps off. Remove anything I can get. Climb up on the roof of the car and surf for the cameras; my Buddha bag is squint and over the eye-holes I’m wearing star-shaped sunglasses.

  Three more searches from Dawn Craig.

  Wait, wait, wait. Three long weeks pass, then I do two more cars.

  Five visits by the police to the children’s unit. My room gets searched. Staff quizz me. The polis look in the woods for stolen blue lights, and give me a lecture on how much money vandalism costs the average taxpayer a year. They talk to me a lot about the taxpayers. The taxpayers hate me. Why am I costing them so much money? I am selfish and personally responsible for their high taxes – they would like to see me hanging from the old oak tree.

  They ask if I’m a Buddhist.

  ‘Are you a Buddhist, Anais?’

  ‘Do I look like a fucking Buddhist?’

  They come again, the next morning – just before breakfast – and say there is a witness. They show me my bag with the Buddha and the holes cut out. I have no fucking idea how they found that. They’re so chuffed to have caught me, they’re almost being chatty. They are cowboys and I am the only Indian left now. They have my tomahawk and they’re gonnae burn my settlement to the ground.

  ‘It will be better for you if you can return the stolen police goods, Anais. Can you do that?’ the police officer asks me in the station. They are so smug in their victory of catching me that they probably didnae even spit in my tea.

  ‘Can you give me half an hour?’

  ‘Ten minutes, no more.’

  He’s the only nice policeman I’ve ever met. I run all the way to my dealer’s; from outside his window I can hear his spotty bird laughing in his room. I shagged him last week. I didnae know about Spotty until after the shag, like. When I was putting my jeans back on he told me Spotty was his bird, then she turns up at the door and just knows we’ve been shagging.

  Hammer on his door.

  ‘I need the lights back, all of them – they’ve fucking caught me, ay.’

  She’s sniggering and he’s telling her to shut up, and he goes to get the lights out from under his bed. I cannae fucking believe it when he hands me them. The two of them are in hysterics, but I umnay laughing. I can still hear them roaring away to each other as I run down the road.

  Me and the two policeman sit watching the footage on his laptop. Me spraying the CCTV. Me crouched on the roof of a police car with a knife. The next bit of footage is the last one they’ve got, and the policeman turns up the brightness on his laptop.

  I walk into the station, up to the counter. I am holding an armful of police sirens. A wee boy and his mum are sitting in the waiting room. The wee boy stops crying when he see’s what I’m carrying. The pigs all watch from behind the reception desk, their cups of tea poised in mid-air as I line the police lights up carefully. Six of them. Official police lights. Neatly placed in a row. Each one has been spray-painted fluorescent-pink and covered in glitter.

  It still makes me smile.

  The policeman stops the footage.

  ‘So, your vendetta against PC Dawn Craig started over a year ago?’ he states.

  ‘I didnae have a vendetta.’

  ‘You threatened tae kill her. Is that friendly behaviour, in your world?’

  ‘When’s Helen coming back?’

  ‘She’s not.’

  11

  IT’S PEACEFUL ON the roof and there’s a big yellow full moon. I’ve been listening out for Britney, but she’s not around tonight. I keep thinking about my biological mum – it’s probably cos Helen’s finally taking me to the nuthouse I was born in. She wants me to meet the old schizo who supposedly saw bio-mum when she got committed. I still have the monk’s wee pencil picture, a scrawl of a cat with wings.

  I don’t know what to think about it: someone who actually claims to have seen me, actually being born. Well, not actually being born, but he reckons he was there (in the building) when it happened. Helen says the old guy actually saw me, when I was a baby. Like not in a test-tube, or a Petri dish, or a lab, not growing in a glass jar. He saw me. A real wee baby, born the usual way, and this wee frantic part of me is hoping – for what?

  I’ve been thinking about the experiment growing me for so long – I almost cannae imagine anything else now. Maybe this is just a ruse. The experiment urnay fucking stupid. Helen thinks it will help my identity problem. I fucking doubt it. She keeps saying she’s leaving the social soon, tae go and help people in other countries. Wish she’d fucking hurry up about it.

  7652.4 – Section 48 was my first name. Seriously, they couldnae even give me a name until they’d filed me and discussed me and decided what I came under for sectioning. I hate the first name they gave me after that one; I wouldnae even tell anyone it, ever. It was shit. At least Teresa picked something better: Anais – she named me after one of her favourite writers.

  A glow from the window below spills out into the dark and stars appear. Pull a half-smoked cigarette out my jeans pocket, spark my lighter, the silver bit hurts my thumb, but it catches. Inhale until I’m dizzy. My jeans smell now, that burnt-umber kind of way. I’ll have to put them in the laundry tomorrow. I might just quit smoking. Why follow the crowd?

  The wind is picking up, trees rustle all the way down the drive. Malcolm, the flying cat, is waiting for me tae go and say hello.

  Are you fucking ignoring me?

  I look at the text twice. Mind-games. Delete the message and look at my photos. There’s a beautiful one of me and Hayley, one night up on Calton Hill, with the Beltane behind us, fire-breathers and drummers and me – feeling like a white witch on LSD.

  I’m in debt, the pigs are saying I grassed someone. They’re gonnae kill me, Anais.

  Cold. Cold in my heart. I dinnae know how tae tell him that, since I’ve been away from him, I see things differently. All the times he – I dunno, it’s like he manipulated. But maybe he didnae. Maybe I’m just being a bitch? Maybe everyone deserves a second chance.

  Hang on xx.

  I tried to get in the watchtower again, but it’s locked. The experiment are like the watchtower: they can see in everywhere, but nobody can see them. But they’re even cleverer, they can see you anywhere you are. You could imagine them like a man with a wide-rimmed hat staring in your bedroom window while you sleep. Every night he comes and watches your dreams like he’s watching the telly. Sometimes he sits by your bed and whispers words to rearrange them, so you might start out dreaming of something nice, then he’ll whisper tae you about something bad. It’s always something bad. The experiment are like that.

  I was in hospital once, and I saw them – just under the curtain, four guys in suits; all I could see was the bottom of their trousers and identical shiny shoes. Then Teresa. Kimono. On the floor. Blood. The walls. Her cigarettes. Kraft macaroni cheese congealing in a pot while Tom chases Jerry and a siren roars. They’d been there then as well.

  If you sit really quietly and focu
s, you can feel the experiment. You will. You’ll feel them right fucking there, in the room. Just watching. Dinnae ever let them know that you know about them. If they find out that you know about them – then it will just be a matter of time. Just a matter of time. You’ll walk down a street one day and a bus’ll fly by, and where you were stood – just a second ago – there’ll be nothing but empty space!

  Gone.

  Game over.

  It happens all the time. There are hundreds of thousands of people go missing every year in the UK, never-seen-again. Gone. A few come back, like. Most dinnae. It’s getting worse every year, and it’s not just nobodies; I mean mostly it’s nobodies, but in all truth, they’ll take anybody. They hate. You. Me. Everyone really.

  Like ming-bag Elaine last spring, I watched the final footage of her on some train’s CCTV on the local news. They never found her body, just her bag at some dump.

  Then there was Brendan, in fuzzy footage – shoplifting, just before he climbed into some taxi. A taxi where? Nobody knows, Your Honour.

  ‘Who was driving the taxi?’

  ‘I dinnae ken.’

  ‘How not?’

  ‘Didnae ask.’

  ‘Did anyone ask?’

  ‘Nope.’

  It could have been anyone driving that cab. It could have been Elvis. It might have been some sick cunt with a space in his sex circle, who knows? Maybe Brendan is cement under a patio right now. What a waste, ay, he was a fucking great shoplifter. I bet he didnae look at the number on the back of that cab when he got in. I bet he didnae memorise it. I memorise every number in every car I get in. I memorise nameplates. I did it on the docks for Mary when she went on the game, and Mary never went missing on my shift, not fucking once. She used to give me twenty fags tae keep track of the registration numbers for her, and a drink at the end of the night. It was better than a paper round. Teresa went fucking mental when she found out.

  Disappearing, ay. It can happen alright. Any time, anywhere. Even from a nice leafy street, or a dark cinema, or the dinner queue, or the back of the bus, or straight from bed, all cosy in the morning.

  I could be stood out on somebody’s car sunroof on a summer’s night, a fat bassline vibrating, my arms flung out wide, and just as the driver turns to shout something up and touch my bare leg – he finds nothing. Only air. Gone.