by Jan Needle
Not too drunk, though, he told himself. Not too drunk to put the chain on. He did, then called out softly: ‘Who’s that? I’m in bed.’
There was a short pause, then a muffled laugh. A voice said gruffly, ‘Open up. it’s the feds. We know you’re in there,’
For a moment his stomach lurched, then Peter Smith laughed in his turn.
‘Daft bastards’ he muttered. He unhitched the chain, and turned the Yale knob. ‘Daft bastards’ he repeated, opening the door. ‘You’re early.’
The two men were both small and stocky. One, with blond hair, was in his twenties. The other, older man was bald. They both wore short open overcoats, over dark suits.
‘Never mind that,’ said the older man. ‘We’ve got the money. What more d’you want?’
They walked before him into the living room, and warmed themselves in front of the gas fire. The blond man went to the back window, which overlooked a garden, then over the backs of other houses. He pulled the curtains closed.
‘Want a drink?’ asked Peter Smith. ‘I’ve got one somewhere myself. It’s Scotch. Want some?’
The blond man was looking round the room. The television was still on, quite loud. He went and stood beside it.
The other man said: ‘So what went wrong?’
Peter Smith, by the bottle cupboard, turned, startled.
‘Nothing!’ he said. ‘It all went perfect. She done the job.’
‘Aye,’ said the man. ‘We watched.’
‘So what’s up then? Here – you’re not trying to get out of that last grand are you? Fucking hell.’
The man reached into his jacket contemptuously. He withdrew a brown envelope and tossed it onto the sofa.
‘She opened up her fucking mouth, didn’t she?’ he said. ‘She was in a pub in Levenshulme, weren’t she? Clacking on. She got pissed and fucking maudlin, didn’t she? Said you made her smuggle stuff, and then you fucked her. Said you were a bastard, said her old man’d kill you when he comes out of the Scar, you’re a bastard.’
‘But I didn’t fuck her! What, that fat tart? I didn’t fuck her!’
‘Not the fat one, cunt. The thin one. Tony Geraghty’s. She’s put it all over, ain’t she? Every bastard knows about it.’
Peter Smith found himself a tumbler and poured whisky into it. He had gone white.
‘Oh Jesus Christ,’ he said. ‘Not about the gun? She didn’t know it was a gun. I never told her nothing.’
The young man spoke from beside the television. His voice was very light.
‘Fair play,’ he said. ‘We don’t know if she said it were a gun. Fair play.’
Smith had an overwhelming surge of relief. He took a mouthful of neat whisky, gratefully, and coughed.
‘It’s not my fault,’ he gasped. ‘I made the fucking gun, that’s all. I arranged to get it in. I did everything. It’s not my fault if some moronic tart... I’m not responsible for that.’
They waited patiently until he got his breath back. He was still very pale. The older man said quietly: ‘You’re responsible for everything, Peter. That’s the deal. This woman could have caused a lot of trouble. People are upset.’
‘Yeah,’ said Peter Smith. His eyes moved to the fat envelope. ‘I can accept that. I’m sorry, honestly. What are you going to do to her? Do I have to buy her off?’
‘No need for that,’ said the bald man. ‘She’s dead. We’ve got her body in the car. We want you to look after her.’
Peter Smith looked from one to the other. All the drink he had taken began to rise against him. He felt sick.
‘Is this a joke?’
The young man said: ‘No joke, Peter. You’ve got your little cellar, haven’t you? You’ve told us lots of times. Your security is excellent. Brilliant. Nobody ever calls. Not even the milkman or a paperboy.’
The older said: ‘That’s why we chose you, Peter. For the job. That and the fact that you’re the best. It won’t be for long, old son. Just temporary. Come and help us in with her.’
‘I’ve got to go upstairs! I’m going to throw up!’
He had gone greenish. The bald man sighed.
‘We’ll do it then, you idle bastard. Off you go. Peter? Don’t close the door on us, will you? We’re very serious men.’
He shook his head, willing his stomach not to lose control. He ran up to the bathroom. When he returned, shakily, the men were in the living room, as before. But he had heard what they had done, while his head had rested on the cool porcelain of the cistern.
‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘The booze. Where is she?’
‘Downstairs, as agreed. No one saw. The only problem is, Peter, that you’re going to have to join her, mate. Sorry.’
He stared like a mesmerised rabbit as the older man withdrew a pistol from his belt. It had a silencer that he recognised. He had made it.
‘I won’t tell anyone,’ he said. His voice was just a croak. ‘You might need me again, you know. I’m the best.’
The bald man smiled, regretfully.
‘You are,’ he said. ‘A genius. You just shouldn’t have blown the cover, should you? And for a bit of skinny little cunt.’
Peter Smith’s head was rising. His neck was stretching. His eyes were opening wide. He was about to start to scream. The younger man, bending swiftly, turned the TV volume up to cover the two shots, just in case. Then down again and off. It sounded as if someone had accidentally turned the knob the wrong way. Drunk, no doubt. Peter Smith, once drunk this night, now dead, had jacknifed to the floor. The blond man checked his pulse.
‘He’s only twenty-nine,’ he said. ‘Tragic, in’t it? And what an armourer. Fucking magician.’
‘Good time to go, though,’ said the older man. He opened the cellar door, so that they could push him down the stairs. ‘I mean, he would have had an awful bloody hangover!’
Five minutes later, both bodies were sealed in vacuum bags in the coolest part of the cellar. The men sat in their car in the deserted street, outside the darkened house, satisfied that nobody had noticed anything unusual.
‘They’ll do there,’ said the older man. ‘Who were they anyway? Nobody’ll miss them.’
They drove away.
*
Bowscar. Masters, Jerrold, Hughes.
‘What you missing, guy?’
Michael Masters, lying on his back in the bunk underneath Matthew Jerrold’s, considered the question. He did not know whether he had made a noise, a sigh or a groan, or if the black man was just making conversation. But he was missing. He was missing everything.
‘It’s a long list, Matt,’ he said. ‘But nothing interesting. No pussy in it. Not directly.’
The bed-springs creaked.
‘Cunt not everything,’ said Jerrold. ‘Know what I miss most? Tube trains. The Underground. The smell. Know what I mean?’
Alan Hughes said: ‘I miss my garden. I had a lovely garden.’ He made a peculiar noise, halfway between a sigh and a snort. ‘It got a really good digging over, one way and another. When they tried to find my wife.’
Normally, if Hughes had expressed a willingness to talk about his crime, Masters would have been eager to glean everything. Hughes knew that he was fascinated, and had once told him it was because of Sarah Williams. All married men with mistresses, he said, had fantasies of murdering their wives – until later, if things took their normal course, the mistress became the object of the homicidal dreaming.
Today, though, Masters did not follow up the lead. Today, he was too involved in his own sense of loss. Since the riot a depression had descended on the Scar, an emotional wound that would not quickly heal, and because he was in love, Masters had been severely affected. There was a tension growing in him. His pain was getting physical.
It was hot in the cell, with the radiator clanking moodily from time to time, and suddenly he swung his feet out from his bed and put them on the tiled floor.
‘Look, Alan,’ he said, harshly, ‘I’ve had enough of this. I’ve got the horr
ors coming on. Something’s got to happen. I’m serious. I’m going mad. I’ll have to see the doctor.’
It had happened so abruptly, that for a moment Hughes only stared. Jerrold put his face over, concerned.
‘You serious, man? What goin’ off?’
Masters stood up, cracking his shoulder against the upper bunk. His face was white, beaded with sweat. His upper lip was trembling. Hughes stood as well.
‘Steady, steady feller,’ he said. ‘Steady on.’
There was nothing to be done. No glass of water could be fetched, no tot of spirits, or cup of tea. No garden that he could be led to, to get a breath of air. There was hardly room for him to throw his arms back, fill his lungs and shout. Masters sat down on Hughes’s chair, one hand to his mouth, his left fist clenched on the table top. Jerrold, quietly, left his bed and came to stand nearby.
‘Talking of philosophy,’ Alan Hughes said, after a long silence. ‘Which we weren’t – you’re suffering from a blocked catharsis. We’ve had a blow-up, a releasing of emotions, an orgasm if you like. Only for you it didn’t happen. Michael, we’ve got to get you out of here.’
Masters smiled wanly.
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘The good old talking therapy. It’ll be the mystic escape committee, I suppose? Listen, Alan, don’t mock the afflicted. Escape fantasies I can do without. I had one of my own.’
Hughes nodded.
‘Michael, I’m not saying I can get you out of here. Not on your own, just like that. But there are things going on in prison, things I’ve thought about for years. I’m an academic, remember? I’ve got this theory. I can’t just switch my brain off.’
Masters wiped the moisture off his face. He could feel his heart rate easing down. He could be soothed.
‘Go on. I’ll buy it. Do you want your chair back?’ Hughes did not. He settled on his bunk. Jerrold, the excitement over, climbed back onto his.
‘You know how the place has been since the riot,’ said Hughes. ‘The screws bad-tempered, cells smashed, cons all suicidal. It only needs another trigger, some other incident that gets under anybody’s skin, and it could go again tomorrow. Or today.’
Masters considered it. To him, that was quite feasible. Much more and he’d go stark insane. He couldn’t be the only one.
‘The point is, Michael, that if it does kick off again, it might be just a waste of time – again. The trouble is the lot of us, all of us, we let it happen. We’re sentenced to a loss of liberty, sometimes arbitrarily, often unfairly, and we go along with it. As if it’s reasonable, as if it’s our part in some kind of bargain. We let them put us into prisons which by anybody’s standards – even their own – are unfit and inhumane. To be fed bad food, breathe bad air, shit like animals, and risk Aids, hepatitis, rape and drug addiction. So what if we just said no? Suddenly, en masse, just like that? My theory is we’d be unstoppable. Except, of course, by the use of the most brutal level of force. Which would be completely unacceptable. Any questions?’
He had spoken very calmly, like a lecturer talking a thesis through with a valued tutorial group. Master, despite himself, was smiling now.
‘Well, as a snap reaction, how about this?’ he said. ‘Just what level of violent repression do you think this fucking government would consider unacceptable? And as most of the prats in this place can’t be persuaded to even fart in unison, how do we orchestrate a protest? And how would we get out? They’re hardly going to unlock the doors for us, are they? Just because we say we’re going home?’
Hughes was slightly hurt.
‘That’s where rioting comes in,’ he said. ‘Haven’t you been listening? We need a riot as the basis, but we’ve had one, haven’t we? We’ve got the atmosphere, the seedbed, we’re in a riot situation. It could go off again. It could be made to go off.’
‘Sounds good to me,’ said Matthew Jerrold. ‘So Mickie – are you in, or are you in? What say?’
It was a long-term joke, Masters could read that, a routine they’d developed to pass the time. But before he could ask if there was a serious intent there somewhere, keys rattled and the door was opened. Outside stood four prison officers. They were carrying a mattress, blankets and a pillow. Hughes got up.
‘What’s this?’ he said. ‘No room at the inn. Haven’t you read the European Convention on prison overcrowding, sir?’
‘Don’t blame us,’ said one of them. ‘We didn’t start the riots. You’ve got a spare bed, we’ve got a spare bod.’
‘That’s not spare,’ said Hughes. ‘There’s just no one on it. This is a one-man cell, remember? Circa 1870.’
The officers were unrolling the mattress onto the top bunk above where Hughes slept.
‘You’ll have to sort that out with your new bum chum,’ the screw said. ‘He fell out with his last two cell-mates, though. He wouldn’t stay with them. They seemed…how shall I put it? Shit-scared of him. Poor old Mickie White, you know?’
With a swift movement, Matthew Jerrold sat upright. His dark look, the look that made men nervous, clamped down on his ebony features. The officers regrouped imperceptibly.
‘Not that Yank?’ he demanded. ‘You ain’t putting that Yank in here?’
‘Yes we are,’ said the spokesman. ‘And you call us sir remember, black boy. Two gorillas in one cage. All the shit in a single bucket.’
They were waiting for him to jump. They were looking forward to it. Jerrold did not move.
Alan Hughes said: ‘Officer, I’m not trying to be funny. Sir.’ He indicated Masters. ‘This man here is suffering from claustrophobia. Badly.’
‘Tough,’ said the spokesman. ‘He should have gone private, shouldn’t he?’
The other three guffawed. One said: ‘Maybe Mr Pendlebury’ll let him use his suite. He’s fucking soft enough.’
‘I think if the MO—’ Hughes began. He was not allowed to finish. The spokesman took him by the shoulder and pushed him down onto his chair.
‘Listen, you barrack-room lawyer twat,’ he said, ‘I said tough shit. Now why don’t you just sit quietly and think how you can make your visitor welcome? He’s a gentleman!’
Another officer jerked the blankets and pillow up onto the bed.
‘For starters, why don’t you make his bed up for him? As a gesture. And I wouldn’t advise you to apple-pie it!’
Laughing, the prison officers left. For the first time, Masters shared the nervousness of waiting for a new cell companion. But Charlie Lister, they knew about already. Everybody did.
*
America. Judith and Sinclair.
Judith Parker was quite surprised by Sinclair’s response when he was finally told about the Bowscar problem. The information was dropped into a telephone conversation by Christian Fortyne, and Sinclair, as far as she could see, took it at face value. He did demand to know, quite sharply, why he had not been informed earlier, but Fortyne soothed him easily. It was, as Sinclair told Judith afterwards over a drink, a very minor affair that need not affect his strategy in any way. One broken arm, ninety or a hundred thousand pounds’ worth of damage, no escapes. What was the problem?
Judith was not so sure.
‘It’s the timing, that’s all. I mean, you’re out of the country, and in the public mind that’s because you’ve drawn the Buckie poison, made the prisons safe. Now this happens and you’re away. You can’t defend yourself, or explain it.’
‘But the public doesn’t know,’ he said. ‘I told you.’
‘But they might find out. So might prisoners in other jails. You know the grapevine. Are you sure we hadn’t better go back, just in case?’
Donald was sure, or at least insistent. They were due at Marion next morning, the sort of jail he couldn’t wait to see.
‘Marion,’ he said. ‘Remember Marion.’
‘Should I know her?’
An hour before, they had made love in the shower after their work session, and finished off with a lot of gin. Sinclair was euphoric.
‘Ha ha,’ he said. ‘She’s
into correction in a big way and I think I’m going to like her. The men are kept in chains and never touch another human being.’
‘Chains? You can’t be serious?’
‘Of course I’m serious. Leg-irons, waistbands, manacles, cattle prods, eternal solitary, it’s the coming thing. We’re in the land of the free, remember.’
‘Yes, Middle Ages style. Don’t get too liberal, will you, Don? You’re too young to be Prime Minister!’
Sinclair laughed.
‘It works, apparently,’ he said. ‘That’s the interesting thing. Apparently, it works.’
*
Cherry Orchard. Solitary.
Raymond Orchard lasted only five and a half hours in the hospital wing before he was moved to an isolation cell. In that time he had been mysteriously attacked three times, during the last of which a determined effort had been made to break the plaster cast on his left arm. His nose was bloodied, a tooth had gone, and he had been tipped onto the floor and kicked.
Orchard, according to the medical staff who moved him, seemed resigned to the attitude of his fellow prisoners. The cell he was put into was not a padded one, because he was not considered to be a danger, either to himself or others.
It had a standard door and standard window fittings, but a hospital bed instead of the regulation bunk. He spoke little during the transfer operation, although he was in some discomfort. Strangely, as the cell was a secure one, he was noted over the next few days to have sustained several new injuries and abrasions of a minor sort, which were assumed to have been self-inflicted. When asked, Orchard made no comment.
He had been in the isolation room for nearly a week when an orderly, alerted by a noise as he passed at 2.40 in the morning, flipped back the spy-hole cover and looked in. On seeing Orchard hanging from the ceiling light fitting, he immediately raised the alarm. He then waited until three prison officers arrived to unlock the cell, when Orchard was cut down and given artificial respiration and cardiac massage. By coincidence, one of the first officers to arrive was a man called Arthur Probert, who had been involved in the fracas at the sluice room which had caused the prisoner’s initial injuries. After giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation he became visibly upset, and was then sick in a corner of the cell. Later, the MO put him under mild sedation.
