Either Side of Midnight : A Novel (2020)

by Stevenson, Benjamin

  Jack’s thoughts were interrupted when someone knocked twice and paused. Jack knew the beat was procedure, so inmates could move back from the door. Based on Jack’s spindly physique and general threat level, he could only assume the policy was arbitrary.

  The guard who entered was young, strawberry blond and wearing a uniform several sizes too big. Even if Jack hadn’t known Lee McCormack, the uniform alone would peg him as a new recruit, recycled from one of the more hirsute seniors.

  ‘Looks good on you,’ said Jack, sitting up.

  ‘Man, I wish they’d deliver mine already. I feel like a medium chips in a large pack.’ McCormack hen-pecked his shirt’s shoulders, lifted them so they engulfed his frame, and let them flop back down. ‘Whoops.’ He stopped himself. ‘Is that offensive?’

  ‘You’re allowed to talk about food around me.’

  ‘I did this extra training for in-clus-iv-ity.’ He sounded it out, and Jack could almost see the bouncing karaoke ball skim across his forehead as he built the word. ‘Know you’re not supposed to, like, ask someone “where are you from” these days. But, man, you’re not fat. I don’t get it. I ain’t never seen a bloke spew before that ain’t had gastro or a skinful.’

  ‘If it helps you to think of it like gastro, it’s like gastro. Except you don’t get it in Bali,’ Jack said, because Kensington had encouraged him to articulate his illness more often. He still didn’t call it the medical term. Couldn’t wrap his tongue around the burr of that first ‘B’, recoiled at the way it spat from his lips. So much had passed through those lips. But not that word. Because to people like McCormack, he had no claim to it. They’d never seen a bloke spew before. ‘What do you need?’

  ‘Sam Midford’s here to see you.’

  ‘Wait? Who?’ Jack hopped off the bunk. Icy concrete seared his bare feet.

  ‘Midford.’ The guard shrugged. The shoulders of his too-large shirt barely moved. ‘Said you might know him better by Mr Midnight.’

  ‘You don’t watch the news much, do you?’

  ‘He famous or something?’

  ‘Was.’

  ‘You want to see him or what?’

  Jack looked out the window; it flared orange. ‘Sure. What’s the time?’

  ‘Five o’clock,’ McCormack answered without looking at his watch.

  Another one down. Jack walked to the opposite wall, rubbed out one of the chalk tally marks queued across the flaking blue paint. Forty-eight left now. As expected.

  ‘Most people count time served.’ McCormack gestured at the line of markings. ‘You’re the only person I’ve ever met who counts down the days left in business hours.’

  ‘Have to measure it somehow.’

  ‘You got your days wrong, anyways. You’ve got heaps less than that left.’

  ‘Means I’ll be surprised when it comes early.’ Jack turned to his shelves, lifted a black garbage bag from one of them and untwirled the lazy knot at the top. ‘Now. Visitor after hours. Requires payment, I think.’ He upended the bag on the desk. ‘Which one do you want?’

  McCormack thought for a second, and then picked up a Snickers from the motley collection of chocolate bars. He made to put it in his pocket, but Jack gave a small cough and held out a flat palm. McCormack’s mouth formed a ring of understanding. He unwrapped the chocolate, then handed the packaging back to Jack, who put it in the bin. Doctor’s orders. Kensington would check the bin, pat Jack on his battle-axe shoulder-blades and tell him he was making progress. And he was. But Jack still enjoyed this small rebellion. He had always been good at breaking the rules. That’s why he was here.

  McCormack, munching on his Snickers, led Jack out of his cell and down rows of closed doors. Long Bay had three levels; the cells ringed a vacant, floor-to-ceiling central column, with metal stairways crisscrossing at the end of each level. Early in Jack’s sentence he’d been woken by two sounds: a loud yelp and the whip-like crack of something slapping concrete. The guards had made everyone stay in their cells through the morning. Chores were skipped. When they were let out, a wide broom leaned against the far wall, stiff bristles soap-sudded. The floor was already scrubbed, although that was supposed to be an inmate’s job. No one mentioned when the headcount was one under.

  ‘Reckon one of the guards pushed him?’ Jack had overheard someone say over dinner. The cafeteria had been chatty that night. Their repetitious existence starved them of events worthy of conversation, so some might say the dead man had made a worthy sacrifice, if only because he’d given them something to talk about.

  ‘Nah. I heard he managed to jam the lock,’ said another. ‘Got himself out.’

  ‘Jumped,’ a gravel-dusted voice chipped in. Jack knew that one. Ivan Fraye. Ivan spoke in single words because he’d been shot in the throat resisting arrest and it hurt to say more. The documentary producer inside Jack tickled, as it did sometimes, if only to retreat to a fantasy of his old life. Ivan’s punctured rasp and word economy would sound great on a podcast.

  ‘I didn’t say he jumped,’ said the other guy. ‘Sometimes the world pushes you.’ Semi-meaningless, pop psychology aphorisms ran riot in prisons: the original Instagram.

  ‘Pussy,’ rasped Ivan.

  Jack had poked at his traded meal and thought of his brother.

  Now Jack subconsciously walked on the inside of McCormack, away from the railing, still thinking about the sound a fallen body makes. He didn’t like heights. His brother, Liam, falling. Gone in a cloud of dust. Jack shook the memory. On the top level, before they descended the stairs, the flooring changed from polished concrete to corrugated iron, hastily laid over some ancient gap in the floor. Above was a thick wooden beam. Non-structural. A new floor and a strong mount left little mystery. They used to hang them here.

  Capital punishment was well past its use-by date, but the prison kept it like that as a reminder. It always made Jack’s stomach roll. How many men had hung here? How many ghosts haunted these walls?

  Ghosts like Sam Midford.

  Jack refocused. What the hell would Sam want with him? He quickened his steps. He figured it was bad manners to keep a dead man waiting.

  Sam Midford not only wasn’t dead, he was grinning.

  ‘Jack Quick!’ Sam stood and extended his hand, his voice like a drum, deep and booming. Like many people Jack had met in television, he had a large frame. It wouldn’t be fair to describe him as exclusively tall or fat, but he filled a room. He had presence, that was certain, in the way that celebrity often struggled to distinguish between charisma and volume. Jack pegged him as thirty, if that, which made his charisma all the more remarkable. Jack gingerly shook his hand. It didn’t feel quite real, like this was a man in costume. His eyes darted around the walls. Hidden cameras? Some stupid reality TV stitch-up?

  They sat down in two white plastic chairs on either side of a gleaming steel table, which had an eye-bolt drilled into the surface. In a rarity, this furniture was not bolted down (Jack assumed this was because it was hard to bash a skull in with a garden chair). Jack held his wrists out while McCormack threaded a pair of handcuffs through the bolt, and then slid the cuffs on loose. His breath was sickly with chocolate as he leaned over Jack to secure them. Jack could shake them off if he wanted; it was for show. Like the pause after knocking on the cell door. That’s what prisons were all about, anyway: the illusion of safety, so people could say to their kids, ‘We’ve rounded up all the bad people in one spot.’ So society could pretend evil only existed in this one protected place. And that we could catch, control it.

  ‘Sporting some cold hands there, mate,’ said the recently deceased sitting across from him.

  ‘Bad circulation.’ Jack’s hands were a roadmap to his illness. Icy from malnutrition. Scars on the backs of his knuckles from jamming his fingers down his throat: skin broken and re-healed, split under teeth. And how thin his fingers were. Could pick locks. ‘Not as cold as yours should be.’

  ‘Right. Of course.’ Sam drummed the table.

  ‘W
ell?’

  ‘You’ve probably guessed, but I’m not Sam Midford.’ He let out a small laugh. Nerves. ‘Look. Sam shot himself in the head three days ago. You know that. I just figured lots of people try to visit you, with crimes and murders and shit, and I heard you were a bit of a curmudgeon. But I thought if Mr Midnight came to see you, that might get your attention.’

  ‘You had it. Now you don’t. Who are you?’

  ‘I’m Sam’s twin brother. And I want you to solve his murder.’

  CHAPTER 2

  Not-Sam peered expectantly at Jack, as if he’d leap to his feet, whisk an overcoat and a fedora from thin air, and swing into detective mode. The sad clink of Jack’s cuffs against the table broke the fantasy. Jack opened his mouth to say something, but Not-Sam started shaking his head.

  ‘I know what you’re going to say. Don’t say it. Everybody’s said it.’

  ‘It must be . . .’

  ‘It is. And you’re sorry for my loss. And I’m holding up okay. And I never could have seen it coming. And you never could have expected me to. And’ – he tilted his head back, top teeth perched on bottom lip, there’s only one word that gets loaded in the chamber like that – ‘fuck all that.’ Not-Sam threaded his fingers, lowered his head and exhaled. ‘I’m not asking for sympathy, I’m asking for help.’

  ‘If we’re skipping the platitudes . . .’ Jack said.

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Your brother wasn’t murdered. He killed himself. I know you don’t want me to say it, but I am sorry. And there’s no crime here. I saw it.’

  Since his sentencing Jack had avoided most factual crime shows, but he didn’t mind watching Midnight Tonight. It was light entertainment masquerading as news: human interest stories laced with gentle political ribbing. Harmless stuff.

  Until the host had told his girlfriend to change the channel.

  ‘So did I.’ Not-Sam nodded slowly.

  Jack felt a pang of pity. He remembered half-watching in bed, his pulse in his neck as he sat up, gawking at the frozen screen. He was trying to decipher if he’d seen what he thought he had, but the body’s innate sense for tragedy – the dip in his stomach, that cold fluid across his chest – worked faster than cognisance.

  Live TV usually factored in a seven-second dump, and someone in the studio had hit it just in time. Jack’s screen was frozen with Sam’s death mask, the pistol a blur of grey motion in his right hand: recoil, Jack knew, shattering teeth. His mouth was still clamped in the picture, but his cheeks were puffed out, rippled. His eyes had been scrunched shut, and the freeze-frame had caught the moment his left eye flew open. One more millisecond and it would have shown the top of his head dissolving. They’d caught the feed just before the blood. There were leaked videos of the rest popping up on YouTube, other sites, culled as fast as they were uploaded, but not so hard to find. Jack didn’t bother. That one-eyed squint was enough.

  The image had held on the screen for almost twenty seconds, and then it all cut to static. Slowly, the static was overwhelmed by the sounds of the prison moving: people banging on doors; yelling. The violence invigorating. Cell by cell the news travelled from those who had seen it. An almost gleeful gossip.

  But sitting across from the brother, Jack now recalled Mr Midnight’s final words. ‘I love you. Forgive me. Change the channel.’ He imagined Sam’s family – his parents, his partner, his child (Jack had read with horror in the news that Mr Midnight had a young daughter) – watching him on television. Maybe as they always did. Maybe his kid got a pushed-back bedtime sometimes when Daddy was on television. God. Had they all been watching? He imagined Sam’s partner, screaming, rushing for the telephone, trying to cover their daughter’s eyes. How old was the daughter? Jack didn’t know. Old enough to understand? Sam’s parents, looking at the frozen screen and grumbling that they didn’t understand the new digital television anyway. His father standing – Jack’s mind added a groan with the effort – and smacking the top of the television. Oblivious until much later. Jack imagined Sam’s brother, the weight on his chest, the is-this-real onset of horror that Jack himself had felt, multiplied. Before he could even blink twice and process what Sam had just pulled out from under the desk. Before he could question whether this was a skit or a prank. Then a bang.

  Thinking of them made it so much more real. A constellation of Sam’s life bound together by signals soaring through the air. Jack, too, in prison, and so many others, brought into this strange familial bond with the man sitting across from him. A spiderweb of radio signals. They’d shared a death.

  Jack felt like he understood a tiny piece of Sam’s brother then. How do you deal with seeing that? You build yourself a fantasy and try to find someone to blame. You try to make sense of it, any way you can. That’s why he was here, asking Jack to solve a murder that didn’t exist.

  ‘You’re not telling me anything I haven’t already heard,’ Not-Sam said. He was quite relaxed in the face of Jack’s obvious doubt. ‘I heard you like the tough cases.’

  ‘What I don’t like is talking to a dead man. What’s your name?’

  ‘Harry,’ he relented, squinting back at Jack. Squeeze one eye a little tighter, Jack thought, and you’ll look like your brother’s death mask. ‘Harry Midford. And you’re Jack Quick. You solved that murder up at that vineyard a while back. The cops wouldn’t touch that either. It’s no surprise, but they’re not treating Sam’s death as suspicious.’ Harry shrugged. ‘Seemed up your alley.’

  ‘I don’t have an alley,’ Jack said, hoping to shut down further discussion of the murder that had been the subject of his last television documentary, and that had sent him to prison for impeding the concurrent police investigation – the fact that he’d solved it, kind of, be damned. ‘And I’m getting pretty sick of people knowing who I am.’

  ‘If you didn’t want people to know your name, you probably shouldn’t have got yourself caught interfering in a quadruple homicide. Not that I’m criticising.’ He cracked a laugh in surrender. ‘That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘It was two homicides,’ Jack said bluntly. ‘The other deaths were self-defence. I’m not in here for murder.’

  ‘I know,’ Harry said. ‘I read up on you. You’re here for perverting the course of justice. Obstructing a murder investigation. Evidence tampering. Two years. But I hear you’re a gold-star pupil. You’re getting out soon.’

  He said it as a fact, not a question, and it irked Jack that he was still in the press. Seventeen months into a two-year sentence. They’d told Jack it was good behaviour, but he suspected they needed the bed. Besides, he was more expensive and less dangerous than a regular inmate, so he was the perfect person to function on the outside. Because prisons only spent money to stop people hurting someone else. Outside, Jack would only hurt himself. Bargain.

  ‘I figure you might need a fresh start. A new show,’ Harry said. ‘Take this on and you can record it, sell it. All the rights are yours. I don’t want any money.’

  Jack tsked. ‘And here I thought you’d done your research. I don’t make documentaries anymore.’

  ‘You don’t make the bullshit ones.’ Harry leaned forward and lowered his voice, as if the interview room was full of people, ‘but you still like the hunt for a good story. I listened to a few of your podcasts from in here. They’re good. Simple.’

  Jack averted his eyes. After the colossal mistakes that had ruined his television career and sent him here, he had waved away the glorified production and television spectacle of high-profile crimes and had launched a simple podcast that focused on inmates’ stories. Despite the rigorous supervision process, the demonetisation and the direction of the warden not to interview anyone vile, Jack felt it had been an enjoyable and important step forward, like going back to where he started; just a microphone and a free platform to publish it online. Jack tried his best to be impartial, his voice barely present except for an occasional ‘Tell me more on that’ or ‘And how did that make you feel?’ But Harry had sensed something d
eeper. That if Jack wasn’t making these stories, what was he even worth?

  Harry continued. ‘But you still like the mystery. You still like being the one who gets to find, to tell, the truth. You can’t walk away from that.’ Harry placed a hand on his front, below his ribs. ‘You and me, my brother, we’re all entertainers. And there’s a need. Whether it’s under lights or with a microphone. Tugs you like a string in your navel. You’ll want to tell this story, I know it.’

  Jack wondered what Harry had walked away from that he could understand this feeling. Jack wasn’t a man who walked away from an unanswered question. Wasn’t that why he’d started making programs – podcasts, then moving into television – in the first place? Before he’d been corrupted, and layered on lie after lie in a hunt for ratings. But even then, he’d gone back out to the Hunter Valley wineries with the aim of setting things right. With the aim of finding out the truth. And he still felt it in that hollow beneath his ribs, just like this faux-dead man said he did. Did he miss it? Goddamn right he did.

  But there was no mystery here. Just shattered teeth wrapped around cold metal. Static on a prison television.

  ‘Everything you’ve said is wrong,’ Jack lied. And then, because he wanted to hurt him: ‘Your brother pulled the trigger. I’m not going to pretend to investigate a murder just because you can’t accept that.’

  ‘I’m not wrong about everything.’ Harry straightened up, smiled again with his bright-white TV-ready smile. Just a little bit dimmer than his brother’s? ‘You are a bit of a curmudgeon.’ It was almost like discussing his brother’s death was secondary to working the room, making an impression; Harry’s energy would swing to jovial whenever he felt the conversation was tracking too seriously. He was trying to impress him, Jack thought. ‘I shouldn’t have editorialised. Maybe murder is too strong a word. I was trying to get your attention. But there was a crime, even if I don’t know which one it is yet. Coercion? At the very least blackmail. Surely.’ Harry reached into his jacket and pulled out an envelope. He placed it on the table and slid it into the centre. ‘You’ll still be interested. Promise.’