Foley stood by the door, waited patiently for it to be opened. Looking at the floor, his feet, showing a deference, a nervousness even, he never would on the wing.
The door opened. A young woman greeted him, hand on the edge of the frame, looking round, smiling, long hair falling to one side as she did so. ‘Hello Dean. Come in.’
The accompanying officer nodded at him to enter then walked away. No longer visible, but somewhere nearby. Dean Foley entered the room. The door was closed behind him.
The room was like no other in the prison. It didn’t even feel a part of the prison, which was the point. A desk at one end, bookshelves and files against one wall. Modern furniture. Tasteful, not the usual institutional kind. Even some decorations, paintings, flowers. A coffee maker on top of a filing cabinet filling the room with welcoming aromas. Recognisably branded supermarket milk and biscuits in their packaging gave a comforting but slightly melancholic glimpse of the outside world. In the centre of the room two comfortable Ikea armchairs.
Foley knew the procedure. He sat in one. Waited.
‘Coffee, Dean?’ Doctor Louisa Bradshaw knew the routine. She had established it.
‘Please,’ he said.
She poured a mug of coffee, added milk and one sugar. Foley smiled inwardly at her remembering. She passed it over as she seated herself opposite him.
‘Thank you,’ he said. His voice changed in here, layers of hardness stripped away, revealing something softer. He knew he did it but couldn’t help it. Now he no longer wanted to help it. He took a sip of the coffee, placed it down at his side.
‘So how’ve you been, Dean? How’s your week?’
He picked up the mug, took another mouthful. ‘Interesting, I suppose you might say.’ Replaced the mug. She was waiting for more. He knew she would be patient with him, wait until he found the right words.
He had never thought he would actually tolerate a visit to the psychologist. Not just tolerate, actually enjoy. Look forward to it, even. It had been one of the terms of his sentence. A reduction in time served if he agreed to address his underlying anger issues. With no choice, he’d agreed. It was the approach his barrister had taken during his trial. Dean Foley wasn’t a villain – not as such – just an angry man trying to make a living the only way he knew how. If he didn’t have the anger he might be a more useful member of society. All bullshit and he knew it. But if it reduced his sentence, he would play along.
And it worked. So when he was transferred to HMP Blackmoor he was told that he would be having regular weekly sessions with Doctor Louisa Bradshaw. Fair enough, he thought. He would find a way round that.
But he didn’t. He had taken one look at this young woman – pretty but not making the best of herself – and thought she would be a pushover. So he took charge, told her he didn’t need all this bollocks, that he was going to use these sessions to contact associates on the outside, check how his empire was running. He’d see she was handsomely compensated.
But this doctor, this young woman, had stood right in front of him and said no. You’re not going to do that. You might have your own way everywhere else in this prison but not in this room. And if you think you can try that then I’ll refuse to hold these sessions with you and whatever concessions you’ve managed to achieve for sentence reduction will be null and void and you’ll be back at the beginning. If you’re in here you do what you’ve come for. Or you don’t come at all and take the consequences.
Foley had been shocked. No one had spoken to him like that in years, certainly not a woman. He didn’t know what to do, how to respond. So he just looked at her speechless. And then did what she told him to do.
And it was the most difficult thing he had ever done in his life.
‘In what way interesting?’ she said.
‘Someone turned up. From my past. Turned up in this prison. The person who’s responsible for me being in here, you might say.’
Louisa’s eyes widened, then quickly regained her professional composure. ‘Before you say anything else, Dean, I have to remind you of my position here.’
‘I know. If I confess anything you have to pass it on. But other than that, everything in here stays in here, right?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Well it’s no secret. I was betrayed by my right-hand man, who turned out to be an undercover cop. And now he’s in here. Supposedly for assault.’
‘Why d’you say supposedly?’
‘Because he’s an undercover cop, isn’t he? Got to be working on something.’
‘Not necessarily. He might actually be in here for assault. It was a long time ago. His life might have changed. Have you spoken to him?’
‘Not as such.’ A smile crept onto his face. ‘But he’s seen me. He knows I’m here.’
Louisa picked up on the smile straight away. Knew it wasn’t a positive development. ‘And have you attempted to do anything? Take revenge against him?’
She looked at him directly. He tried to avoid her penetrating, unwavering gaze, but couldn’t. He could see beyond those eyes, knew decisions were being made about him. Like she knew and understood him better than he did himself. It used to unnerve him. Not anymore. Just made him want to find out what she knew, how she knew it. Wanted to understand himself as well as she seemed to understand him.
‘No,’ he said, eyes dropping away. ‘I haven’t.’
‘Do you intend to?’
He picked up the mug, took a mouthful of coffee. Tried to hide behind that before answering.
‘I . . . don’t know.’
Louisa sighed. ‘Your honesty’s commendable, at least. But I’ve got to remind you . . .’
‘I know. I’m just trying to tell the truth.’ He leaned forwards in the chair, hands clasped, engaged. ‘I mean I looked at him, went onto his wing to see him for myself. Made sure he saw me.’
‘And?’
Foley shrugged. ‘He kicked off. Got taken to the seg.’ He held his hands up. ‘Nothing to do with me. Honest. Didn’t touch him.’
‘And now what? Are you waiting for him to be released back into the general population?’
He frowned. Twisted his hands in his lap. ‘I’ve been thinking about this. For years, really. And honestly? I don’t know what I want to do. I mean, I know what I should do. And I’d do it in a heartbeat if I was on the out.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘Make him pay. Slowly. Then make sure he couldn’t do anything like that again. To anyone.’
‘And would that satisfy you?’
‘Yeah.’ Quickly, without reflection.
Louisa frowned. ‘Would it? Really?’
Foley thought. Again, he wanted to be honest with this woman. She demanded it of him. Deserved it. ‘I . . . It used to. In the past, like. You know? When someone does you a wrong turn you make them pay for it. Don’t think about it, it’s just the way it is. You have to do it, it has to happen.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you look weak if you don’t. And if you look weak, others’ll think you are weak. And they’ll attack you. Image, innit? Got to project a strong image or your enemies’ll find a way to get you. Like Chinese whispers. Word gets round. Before you know it everyone’s left you for the other side – because there’s always another side, always someone who wants to be where you are – and you’re on your own. And you won’t last long like that. So yeah. You’ve got to take revenge.’
‘But you haven’t answered the question. Does doing that, taking revenge, satisfy you?’
‘I . . .’ Foley thought. Hard. ‘I don’t know. I never look at it in those terms. Just what has to be done, you know? You do it without thinking. It’s what you have to do.’
She gave that penetrating gaze once more and he felt himself shrinking. Sometimes he wanted to shout: ‘What can you see? What am I really like? To you? To everyone? To me? Tell me . . .’ But he never had. Or at least not yet. But he never stopped thinking it, wanting to do it. He might do it one day. But he probably wouldn’t. He was too scared to hear the answer.
‘So you get no satisfaction from it, is that right?’ Her voice calm, as though she had all the answers to the questions she was asking and was waiting to see whether his measured up.
‘I’ve never . . . I don’t know. I suppose I must do. Yeah, I must do.’
He tried to imagine times in the past, draw those memories out and examine them in front of her. It was what she had taught him to do in these sessions and he found it so damned painful. Reliving his life. All the pain, tears, hurt, everything. But it was necessary, she had told him. To try and understand who he was now, where he was going from here, he had to discover and acknowledge how he had come to be here. And that meant opening everything up. Everything.
His father. The beatings. The childhood taken away from him by one man’s singular cruelty. Making himself so pathetic in front of his father he would turn his vicious, abusive attention to his younger brother. Letting his relief, his silence become complicity. Reliving all of that once more. Stripping himself emotionally bare in front of her.
And the life after that, in care. Foster homes. Institutionalised neglect. Abuse. That anger building up inside him, all the time, waiting for an outlet. Detention centres. Young offenders institutions. Feeling something within him die, something fragile, knowing once it was gone it could never be reborn. Then trying to harden himself round it. Not wasting time mourning the man he could have been but embracing the man he had no choice but to become.
Which led him here. And now this question. Did he enjoy his revenge?
He thought back on all the punishment beatings he’d orchestrated, the ones he’d carried out himself. Bones breaking bones, turning flesh into something unrecognisable, getting high off the screams, the prayers and the pleading. Seeing other faces on the bodies he hurt, older faces. One in particular. Hitting again and again until he had no strength left, until his arms were carved from jelly, until that face disappeared. And that would suffice, that exhaustion. That sense of accomplishment. Until the next time. And the next . . .
‘I . . . suppose so.’ He had tried lying on previous occasions and had been found out straight away. He had done it to look good in her eyes. But he soon realised the only way he could do that was by telling the truth.
‘How did it make you feel?’
‘Like . . .’ Back there again, in some anonymous warehouse or lock-up. Punching a hanging body like he was tenderising a side of meat. Blood pounding in his ears, the air rank with coppery blood, shouting all the while, drowning out the screams of his victim.
Trying to get rid of that one face.
‘I had to keep going,’ he said, eyes closed, mind somewhere else. ‘Had to make sure that face went away.’
‘Which face?’
He opened his eyes. What had he said? He was suddenly sweating, shaking from more than the coffee. He stared at her.
‘Which face?’ she asked again.
He hadn’t known he had said that. She had done it to him again. Forced him to admit something about himself that he hadn’t realised he was thinking or feeling.
‘You know which one.’
‘You need to say it.’
His voice had shrunk to near a whisper. ‘My father.’
Louisa nodded, as though her hypothesis had been confirmed. There was no triumph in her gaze though, just acknowledgement.
‘So all the time you were taking revenge on people you thought had done you wrong, you were trying to attack your father.’ Not a question, a statement.
He nodded.
‘So what are you going to do about this new person? The one you claim is responsible for you being in here?’
‘He is responsible.’ The words whiplash quick, coated in anger.
‘Is he? Aren’t you ultimately responsible for your own destiny? That’s what you’ve said previously.’
Foley didn’t answer. He knew to answer either way would incriminate him.
‘Dean?’
‘I trusted him. And he betrayed me. That’s the facts.’
‘So how did you feel when you saw him again? Did you want to take revenge on him for what he did? Are you planning on doing that? And if you do is it because of what he did to you or who he represents?’
‘I . . . I don’t know. I really don’t know.’
‘Were you and he close?’
He couldn’t look at her, didn’t trust himself to speak. He nodded.
‘Very close?’
‘Brothers,’ he managed.
‘And if you do decide to take revenge on him, this brother figure, for betraying you, how would you do that?’
He frowned at her.
‘You’ve just said that when you administered punishment beatings before you did them personally. Would you do that this time? Could you do that? To someone you considered a brother? Or would you have to get someone else to do it for you?’
He looked at her, frowning.
‘Come on, Dean, I’m not stupid. I know the sway you’ve got in this place. The hold you have over people. You say the word and something would happen to this man.’
‘That’s not—’
‘Yes it is true, Dean. We both know that. What I want to know is, what would be the point? For you, I mean. You could have him beaten up, even, I don’t know, killed. But what would be the point? He’s been out of your life these past, what is it, four years? I’m sure you don’t regard him as someone close to you anymore. So what would you gain?’
Foley said nothing.
‘Or do you think it’s something you have to do yourself? Are you trying to prove something? I mean, you wouldn’t be trying to hurt someone who can never be hurt again. It wouldn’t be your father. Not this time. And it wouldn’t be to save face on the out. So ask yourself. Why would you do it? And what would you gain?’
Foley stared at the floor. The coffee had gone cold. The room felt dark, as though a thunderstorm was about to hit. He felt tired. So, so tired.
‘I want to go back to the wing now, please.’
*
He was escorted by the same officer. Neither attempted conversation.
He felt like he had just done six rounds in the ring. The sessions did that to him. On other occasions he had screamed and thrown furniture. Other times he had curled up into a foetal ball and sobbed his heart out. But this time he just felt . . . different. Exhausted, but like a door had been opened inside him and he didn’t know which way he should go. All he knew was that he had better regrow his shell by the time they reached his cell.
Public persona back in place, he stepped onto the wing. And almost immediately ran straight into Clive.
Foley took in the other man’s dishevelled appearance, reddened features and black eyes. ‘Well, well, well . . . Killgannon’s done a number on you, hasn’t he?’
‘Yeah,’ Clive spat through missing teeth. ‘Got solitary for it, though. Bastard.’
Foley laughed. ‘Come into my room.’
The officer led the way to Foley’s cell, let them in, then, dismissed, drifted away.
‘Tell me what happened.’
‘I reckon Killgannon thought he was being clever,’ said Clive. ‘Attack me, get put in solitary. So you can’t get to him. Or so he thinks, anyway. But you can get him anywhere, can’t you, boss?’
Foley said nothing. Heard Louisa’s words rattle round his head, spinning so fast they gave him a headache.
He blinked them away. ‘Why?’
Clive frowned. ‘Why what?’
‘Why did Killgannon go for you?’
‘Like I said, so he could get put in solitary. For protection.’
‘I know that, Clive. I was on the wing and saw it happen. He could have gone for anyone. Why you and not someone else?’
Clive became suddenly impatient to be away from there. He could sense the mood in the cell had changed. ‘Because I led him to you. And he was angry because of it.’
‘And that was all?’
‘Yeah,’ said Clive, nervously, ‘That was all.’
Foley stared at him, unflinching. The kind of gaze Louisa had given him.
Clive wilted. ‘Well, I may have said something to annoy him. Nothing really.’
‘Like what?’
‘Nothing, just . . . to spark him off, see what he would do.’
Foley felt his anger rising. ‘Like what?’
Clive knew he had no choice but to tell the truth. ‘I mentioned his dead niece. That’s all.’
Foley turned his back on Clive, walked as far away from him as he could in the cramped space. Clive kept prattling on.
‘Shut it.’ Foley turned back, eyes blazing.
Clive shut it.
Foley’s voice, when he spoke, was dangerously calm and low. ‘That was a bad thing to do, Clive. A very bad thing.’
‘Yeah, I realise that now, Mr Foley, but—’
‘Don’t interrupt. You did a stupid thing. An unnecessary thing.’
Clive shook. ‘I’m . . . I’m sorry . . .’
‘So you should be, Clive. And you will be. But first you need to be taught a lesson.’
Clive was almost sobbing now. ‘Why?’
‘Because . . .’ Foley thought. About his session with Lousia. About what had been said, what he had experienced. The conclusions about himself he had reached. ‘Because it’s what I have to do. Because you’ve done me wrong and I have to punish you for it. Simple as that.’ The words said like a learned piece of church ritual. He sighed, felt something slip away inside him.
Clive was openly sobbing.
‘Baz.’
His right-hand man stepped into the cell.
Put something into it, he thought. ‘Little task that needs attending to, if you don’t mind. Clive here’s been a naughty boy and spoken out of turn, upsetting someone very badly. As such he needs to be taught a lesson. Nothing too major, just so he won’t do it again.’
‘What about a fall?’ asked Baz.
‘Yeah. A high one. With some stairs for a bit of variety.’
Baz nodded. Smirked.
‘Please, Mr Foley, no, please . . .’
Foley turned to Clive. Regarded him with contempt. ‘We’re all responsible for our own destinies, Clive. Be a man. Accept responsibility for yours.’
Baz dragged Clive out of the cell. Foley heard him pleading all the way up the stairs until, after a little while, his pleading crescendoed into a scream, then silence fell across the whole wing.
He sighed once more. Felt, in his mind’s eye, Louisa giving him that stern gaze.
Seeing right inside him.
Even when he closed his eyes she was still there.