Jailbird Detective

by Helen Jacey

  Near the entrance, Muriel yanks aimlessly at the bindweed, watching the proceedings. As I pass, she gives me a sneaky wink.

  I shoot her a quick smile.

  In reply, she silently mouths, bonne chance.

  5

  ‘I am aware you know a prisoner has died.’ The governor, Lucinda Seldon, sits opposite me. Steam from cups of tea forms a protective veil between us.

  The small table has a white lacy cloth and there’s a pretty plate with fruitcake on it.

  A very civilized inquisition.

  Seldon is as immaculate as ever. I envy her the plum suit of the finest wool, and the ivory silk blouse with its elegant tie and creamy pearl buttons. But she’s exhausted. Her skin has a yellow pallor like lampshade parchment and, unusually for her, dark rings under her eyes.

  Dealing with Lena’s killing must be a nightmare. Seldon is a by-the-book type. A defender of the faith, a rampart of decency.

  Murder under her watch must be intolerable, especially if she has to turn a blind eye.

  ‘I know it was Lena,’ I blurt out. ‘Who killed her?’

  Is this the right card to play? I am out of practice, dulled by years of inertia – thinking on my feet is difficult.

  Seldon arches her brows, incredulous. ‘What? Lena took her own life. I’m very sorry. I know you were friendly.’

  So this is the line. But she’s a bad liar. Ordered to keep mum, but her features scream the truth.

  A manufactured tear rolls down my cheek. I sniff. ‘I can’t believe it! She was happy last night.’

  Seldon surveys me. She’s buying the act, and hands me a starched white handkerchief from her own jacket pocket. Pure white, with embroidered dark violets adorning each corner. The prettiest thing I’ve seen in years. I dab my nose and a breeze of fresh lavender water fills my nostrils. Maybe a French brand. Eau de Provence.

  When I lower it, it is smeared with dirt.

  Eau de Hell.

  Seldon gestures for me to keep it. She carefully puts her teacup down, her gaze all frosty officialdom. ‘We will hold a small service in Lena’s memory, in the Chapel. I’m afraid you won’t be able to attend. We’re releasing you.’

  Released?

  Lena is dead, and I am free?

  The rotten stench of a cover-up fills the room. ‘Is this something to do with Lena?’ I ask.

  ‘Of course not.’ Seldon’s eyes flick to the left.

  Liar’s left.

  She goes on, all reason. ‘The war’s almost over. You are no longer deemed a risk to national security. Just like the others that have already been released.’

  Is someone after me, too? Is she protecting me? I know I am one of Seldon’s favorites. I was caught in ’41 and dreaded another institution run by a bully. She seemed then, and still is, reasonable. And to give Seldon her due, she has changed things slightly for the better over the years. A rare creature, a woman who actually gives a shit about doomed women.

  I must look stunned. Seldon allows herself a small smile. ‘You will be free, subject to a short period of rehabilitation in the community.’ She produces a white letter from her lap but she doesn’t hand it to me, instead just waving it around for effect. It could be a shopping list for all I know. ‘You are being transferred to the South West. You will work on a Land Army farm in Torridge, Devon, for three months. Victory doesn’t mean food shortages are over, so it’s a chance to do your bit. You will go today, by train from Waterloo. With an escort.’

  Land girl? Devon? The furthest west out of London I’ve ever been is Stonehenge, marveling at the stones while Billy and his gang looted a country house.

  A farm in Torridge? Three months of rain and digging cow shit.

  Another sentence.

  Worst of all, more women. No, thanks. I am sick of the sight of women.

  Seldon rattles on, gaining confidence in her bluff. ‘Quite lovely countryside. Perhaps a bit more rain than London. You will have to report to a probation officer every week.’

  ‘Probation? Aren’t I free?’

  Her eyes flash with irritated pity. I keep on saying the wrong thing. Seldon meets my eye. ‘You will be free in three months. In cases like yours, where your innocence remains in doubt, probation is a test. Do not fail it. If you choose to break the terms, you will be returned here, no doubt branded a traitor. Women who leave here often fall back into their old ways. Don’t be one of them. You must avoid the criminals who put you inside in the first place, the ones I suspect you have protected. Take this opportunity for change.’

  The face of her handsome husband taunts me from its frame on her desk. He has an Errol Flynn moustache and spectacles. Bookish, but sexy. Next to the one of the husband, a family portrait; Seldon, the hubby and three little girls. Proud and happy. I look away but not in time. She caught me peeking.

  Your husband would never betray you, Dr. Seldon. But the man I loved did and he was all I had. And I won’t be getting on that train.

  ‘I understand.’

  Seldon offers the plate with the cake. I take it, reluctantly, but I don’t eat it. She goes on. ‘You have no family. If you could find a good man, marry and become a mother, it would give you more contentment than you have ever known.’

  Contentment? A hot bath with rose-scented salts, a new silk dress, is more like it. Throw in a bottle of scotch or two, a snort of cocaine and some bubbly. Instead, I hear my voice sounding idiotic. ‘A husband? I should be so lucky!’

  At last, she gives me an encouraging smile.

  We make small talk for a few more minutes about whatever a soon-to-be-released convict and a prison governor have in common. The conversation dries up fast enough and finally, Seldon rises.

  She’s done her duty and has got me out of the way.

  Now it is all up to me.

  At the door, she hovers. ‘Stay in touch, Jemima. Write to let me know how you get on. I would very much like to hear about your new life.’

  6

  I quickly dress in the icebox of a changing room. My hands are shaking and I know it’s not the cold.

  It’s the thrill of freedom.

  Almost five years of my life down the drain because the higher-ups of society have decreed me a danger to the state. More fool them. They credit me with believing in something beyond looking out for myself.

  I did, once. I believed in love. But Holloway put that right. In that respect, the nick’s education beat a few years of grammar school.

  Seldon thinks I’m protecting people. No, it’s not love or loyalty that has kept me quiet for almost five years of lockup. I have been simply sticking to a pledge I made years ago. No pledge of honor among thieves, nothing like that. Just a pledge between two lowlifes, me and Billy, to keep the other safe if one got caught. But then he set me up, and I’ve still stuck to it. Why? Not to protect the bastard. Simple. Grassing on Billy will drastically cut my options when I get out. I have had no choice but to play a silent long game, which comes arm-in-arm with the high price of endless incarceration, and the authorities’ unshakable belief that I’m loyal to some cause.

  I’ve had no defense solicitor, no appeals, no attempts to shorten my stretch. All I could do, as the weeks turned into months, was let Holloway’s stale blanket smother me.

  Hush, hush, child. I’ll wake you up when it’s all over.

  Then Lena arrived with all her big-mouthed Aussie brilliance and dragged it off me.

  Like Muriel, I’ve lost weight. Turns out dread and paranoia is the best diet regime. The clothes they handed back are the same ones I wore when I was picked up, that rainy day in October ‘41. Now they are strangers from the past. The burgundy crepe dress hangs shapelessly, and the hem is coming down. The stockings are definitely not mine, vile rayon affairs in flat beige. One is laddered at the heel and as I slip it on, the ladder runs all the way up my leg. My seamed French ones have long gone, no doubt nicked by some magpie wardresses. Bloody cheek.

  My black suede peep-toe shoes were brand new in ’41. Not Ut
ility. Now the heels are ground down and scuffed, the once velvety suede stretched and scratched. My feet slide around in them. Then it hits me what could be going on. The screws could have a weekend rota, pilfering the inmates’ clobber as and when it takes their fancy.

  My tilt hat, a faux fur little number, has seen better days. The ribbon at the back is bent and frayed. It whiffs, musty, or ripe with the stale odor of somebody else’s head. My brown faux fox jacket has lost its shine. The only thing that has got off lightly is my green and red silk scarf. Crumpled and smelling of damp.

  Like me, but the scarf is redeemable.

  I’ve shared worse inside so grit my teeth and pin the hat on. Before I went down, I was a stickler for hygiene. Billy used to put it down to early teenage years on the street, never knowing when the next bath would come. ‘Making up for lost time, sweetheart.’ I blame my neurosis on the children’s home I lived in after Violet, my mother, disappeared. Dead, the nun with the black eyes said. Black eyes that matched her habit. Pneumonia, she said. But she never let me say goodbye.

  The home was a filthy place, only cleaned up when inspectors or visitors came. Us kids slept in sheets that stank of dried piss for weeks on end. Sometimes, the way we smelt was an excuse for some nun or other to give us a thrashing – teaching us that the system was rigged from the start. We ate bread with inky mold, stale biscuits that crumbled.

  The only item as I remember it is my black handbag. Bedraggled, crumpled, dusty and ageless. Violet’s old bag. The nun had given it to me. My heirloom. She said would look after it for me. But she hid it from me at the orphanage. It dangled from her arm when she went into town. When I escaped from the shithole, I broke into her room and pinched it back. She’d even kept my mother’s unposted love letters and my birth certificate inside. I used to wonder if the letters gave the nun a cheap thrill or were some kind of validation of her choice.

  I open the bag. Empty. Unused. The warders hadn’t been interested in this. I pop Dr. Seldon’s hanky into it. An unlikely prison souvenir.

  There is no mirror, of course, nothing to help us pass as normal on the outside.

  Don’t get ahead of yourselves.

  Looking down at myself, one word comes to mind. Dowdy. The outfit would be ditched – and fast.

  I notice something. Words that someone else has scratched into the wall.

  Truth is the slowest torture.

  My truth? Billy was behind my stretch. Torture? Not really, it didn’t eat me up. Just a sad fact I didn’t count for him anymore. Hardly worse than anything the Secret Service bastards did, with their bullyboy tactics.

  Another truth – Lena’s murder is something I can’t do a thing about. I can’t let it torture me. I’ll let it go. Forget I know her.

  And the final truth, one that has defined my whole life – Violet’s disappearing act. A crushing blow when I was six, but the nuns instilled enough hatred in me as a distraction. Now the memory of Violet is a nuisance, like my Holloway hip. Hardly torture.

  Don’t cry over spilt milk.

  I look at the writing again. The inmate must have used her nails to write it. Silly cow. Torturing herself, more like.

  I leave the cubicle, bracing myself for life on the outside.

  Goodbye, Holloway, you old bitch.

  7

  London.

  The city is a tragic, pathetic heap. A gangster’s girl after one too many thrashings. Blacked-out windows for kohl, bomb dust for powder. Jerry has beaten her good and proper – but she fought back. Defended herself and saw the back of him. And she will recover.

  I won’t be around to see her rise from the ashes. I’ll be long gone.

  I gaze out of the prison car at the alleys, side streets and parades of shops. People in heavy coats, queuing outside bakeries, grocers, fishmongers.

  It’s all unknown to me. I never spent much time north of the River, or in the East End. South London is my manor and by the time I went down I prayed it had been through the worst of the Blitz.

  Bolting from the car is risky. I’ll soon get lost, hurtling into likely dead ends. These loose shoes won’t help either. Waterloo Station offers the only real shot to run for it. It could be busy and crowds mean cover. Caught, I’m as good as dead. That was Seldon’s threat.

  Don’t confirm our suspicions.

  After the tiny cells and narrow corridors, the vast height of the station is overwhelming, the noise disorientating. Engines, whistles, rowdy groups hanging around, the laughter of women. Eager newspaper boys shout out about victory, that Winnie’s declaration is imminent.

  Excitement sparks the atmosphere. Everywhere, men and women in uniform. All sorts, far more than I remember. I’ll need a uniform to blend in. Red Cross nurse? WAAF? Sally Army, even? I’m not feeling choosy.

  Doodlebag bustles through the throng to the ticket office. I follow dutifully but she barely looks back to check. The cow is willing me to bolt. She wants to be the hero, save the day and be the one to prove to Seldon I was a waste of trust.

  Well, dearie, you’ve underestimated the dull little inmate. I’ll bolt all right, but you’ll have egg on your face. I escape on your watch.

  A mass of khaki catches my eye. Returning heroes, swamped by their families. Family gatherings always sickened me and they still do. I look away. Against a far wall, a long row of injured men, slumped in wheelchairs. Some without legs, others without arms. Their ashen faces are barely visible behind luggage stands, casting shadows like prison bars. These chaps have to endure the odd member of the public shaking their hands, kissing them, like they own them. They have to smile, and nod.

  Piss off, I lost my legs for you and I don’t even know you.

  I feel the first feeble flicker of patriotism in a very long time. Compared to the soldiers, we’ve had it easy inside.

  At the ticket office, Doodlebag pushes the door. A long queue. Handy, but for what I don’t quite know. I hover, coughing. ‘Could I wait here? I just want to…watch the world go by.’ I simper. ‘Won’t do anything silly. Free as a bird in three months.’

  She glances at her watch and back at me with her fish eyes. ‘Wait on that bench. Stay where I can see you.’

  A very funny game of chess. I nod. ‘Thank you.’ I wander over to the wooden bench and sit, aware she’s watching from the ticket office door. Satisfied, she waddles back in. The bench offers a good vantage point to scan the scene, and my mind is racing. Through the window, Doodlebag has joined the queue. She regularly looks up to glare at me.

  You won’t see me when I run. You won’t have a clue.

  But how? Should I just do it, go now? No. I don’t have long enough. I’ve got to wait until she’s being served, her attention off me. I fidget with the bag, noticing something trapped in the lining.

  Yes!

  Five years ago, I hid my engagement ring from my captors’ eyes. Carted off in the back of the van, I’d quickly slipped it from my finger, shoving it through a split in the lining. All this time, it’s stayed hidden. I bet if they had found it, the wardresses wouldn’t have returned it.

  My finger feels for the same split in the crumpled lining, as I look up and watch the passersby. There. I stick my finger in and poke around until I hook the ring.

  I hold it low in the bag, buffing it slightly. The garnets and pearls glimmer back at me. Blood and bandages, Billy had joked, slipping it on my finger. Devil and angel, I’d answered. He had the final word as usual.

  Love and hope.

  Billy. He had his romantic moments. Knew how to treat a lady. Furs, pearls and the rest.

  Pawnbrokers would be doing a roaring trade now, and surely the ring should fetch a few bob? Billy’s meaningless proposal could finance my freedom, or at least pay for a new getup.

  A girl saunters over to the bench, her head stuck in a women’smagazine. She is about seventeen, with mousy blonde hair. It’s longer than mine but the curls are limp. She looks careless and free. The war hasn’t ground youth out of her. She’s enthralled by the f
ashion pages.

  She sits down next to me. I glance at the pages of her magazine. Haughty models in evening gowns glare out. Untouchable goddesses, the world at their feet. Features like ‘Ration Recipes’ and ‘Winning your war against wrinkles’ are new to me. They will stay that way.

  The girl is pretty, with a snub nose. A baby-faced look. I feel like an old prune next to her.

  It’s her clothes that interest me. Her hat is dove gray, with a wide rim, blue ribbon, and a fake blue rose with silky petals. Her jacket is dark gray ribbed wool, with matching gray buttons up the front, and curved side pockets, matching a curved collar. Very different to my getup; she blends in, while I stand out. Nobody else is wearing in fur in May.

  The conwoman’s rush of adrenaline surges up. She’s the mark, surely? If I let this one go, I’m stuck in Devon, digging cow shit in the cold and wet.

  ‘Do you like this?’ I say, my voice low, displaying the ring in my palm.

  She glances down, then up again at me. ‘Give over. I ain’t got a penny.’ The accent is pure South London.

  ‘It’s your lucky day, then.’

  ‘Says who?’

  ‘Says me. You can have it for nothing. Well, for a swap.’

  ‘Swap what? This?’ She raises her magazine, incredulous, but keeps her voice low, too. Instantly game, instantly on the make.

  My type.

  ‘Your hat and coat for mine. Hardly been worn.’ I lied. ‘But you have to put them on and sit here.’

  ‘You having me on? What do you want my clothes for?’

  ‘I know it sounds mad. I’m just in a bit of a pickle.’

  The girl surveys my downbeat clothes and my gaunt face. She bristles and leans away from me. ‘You in trouble?’