As she walked through A-Wing, Bailey looked up through the mesh of the anti-suicide netting which was strung across the balconies and noticed Crazy Mel standing by herself on the landing above. She was swaying slightly, staring vacantly into space, her hands jammed in the pockets of her jogging top, her hair sticking up in its usual chaotic tangle. She glanced downwards and for a brief moment their eyes met. But there was no recognition there, only a frazzled blankness.
Bailey lowered her head and continued on her way, weaving deftly between the groups of inmates lounging outside their cells, making sure that she didn’t lose sight of Dylan. He was striding along about ten metres ahead of her and by the looks of it he was headed towards the stairwell at the end of the landing. She had been covertly following him around all morning in the increasingly desperate hope that she would uncover something tangible that linked him to the murders.
As far as she was concerned, she was sure that she was on the right track with him. She just needed some sort of confirmation. The more she thought about it, the more she had become convinced that his experiences in Afghanistan had unleashed a mental trauma of some sort. Suffering as she did from PTSD, she could identify with him to a certain degree for they both lay on the same spectrum, he was just at the most extreme end of it. And that was the reason he also scared her, not just because of what he might have done, but because of what he represented – a human being lost to madness, the same kind of madness that nipped at the edges of her own mind in the greyness of the pre-dawn.
He began to descend the cast-iron stairwell, whistling to himself as he did so. She caught a snatch of it, that same military marching tune he’d been whistling before. What was the name of it again? She couldn’t remember. It didn’t matter.
She followed in his footsteps, hopping down the metal stairs, trying to keep up with him whilst also trying to remain as inconspicuous as possible.
When he reached the ground floor, he made his way towards the stairwell that led down to the basement, and at that point it occurred to her that he might be on his way to another rendezvous with Agata. But then again he might be up to something completely different. She wouldn’t know unless she followed him down there. So she did.
Once down in the basement, she hung further back, keeping behind the corners where possible to remain out of his line of sight should he suddenly turn around. There was just the sound of his soft whistling echoing back up the dingy corridors that told her that he was still somewhere up there ahead of her.
Then suddenly the whistling stopped.
Coming to a halt, she peeked cautiously around the next corner. The corridor was empty. He must have gone into one of the rooms. But which one and why?
She decided to wait where she was, reasoning that he would emerge eventually. If he doubled back up the corridor in her direction, she would have enough of a head-start to make it back up to the atrium before he reached her position.
It was perhaps three minutes that she had to wait there before the door to the workshop opened and Dylan emerged. He set off down the corridor in the opposite direction, away from her. The question now on her mind was whether his visit to the workshop had been part of a routine patrol or whether he’d gone in there for some other, possibly more sinister, reason.
She weighed up whether to continue following him or whether to check out the workshop. In the end, she decided on the workshop.
Waiting until he’d disappeared around the next corner, she stepped out and made her way to the workshop. She peered in through the wire-reinforced glass window. It didn’t look like there was anyone in there. She tried the door handle. The door opened. That was odd. She would have expected the room to have been locked when it wasn’t occupied. Maybe he’d forgotten to lock it. She pushed the door open and went in.
When in use, the workshop was probably one of the noisiest rooms in the prison, resounding with the racket of power tools drilling and grinding, but right now it couldn’t have been quieter. All the machinery sat dormant, switched off, and the only sound was the faint crunching of metal shavings beneath her feet as she paced slowly along the centre of the room between the rows of workbenches.
As she walked along, she looked around the room, taking in the racks of drills and woodworking tools hanging on the walls, the oxyacetylene tanks with their red and green rubber cables, the industrial lathe… the tiny reflections of herself in the chrome handles of the clamps on the benches.
The problem was that she didn’t know what she was looking for exactly. Something out of the ordinary. Something that didn’t quite fit. She figured she’d know it when she saw it.
She stopped and sniffed the air. Beyond the smell of sawdust and oil there was some other odour which she recognised, distinct and out of place in here…
The smell of cologne.
She spun around.
Dylan was standing right behind her. She jumped back in surprise. He had somehow snuck up on her.
‘You were following me,’ he said softly, his blue eyes boring into her.
‘No I wasn’t.’
‘I’m not stupid. Why were you following me?’
That was why he’d left the door unlocked – to lure her in here and trap her. The question was, what was he going to do next? A bolt of fear spiked through her.
She swallowed and forced an expression of casual innocence onto her face. ‘It’s just a coincidence that I’m down here the same time as you.’
He shook his head and smiled as if he found something amusing. ‘You suddenly come up to me out of the blue and start striking up conversations, wanting to know all about me. Why would you do that? Inmates are never friendly unless they want something… and I think I know what you want.’
His tanned face crinkled into a knowing smirk.
Realising what he was getting at, she felt herself relax a little, relieved that his intentions at this stage didn’t entail attacking her.
‘You’re getting the wrong end of the stick,’ she said.
‘Am I?’
He took a step towards her. She took a step backwards.
‘You’re an attractive woman,’ he said.
She studied his handsome face, trying to ascertain at what point the psychotic sub-personality might emerge and how she would know when it did.
‘What about Agata?’ she asked, in an attempt to deflect his advances.
‘You know about Agata?’
‘I know all about you.’
‘She doesn’t get me. Not like you do. You’re different from the others here. There’s something about you. I don’t know what it is.’
‘You’re breaking the law by sleeping with the inmates.’
‘It’s a stupid law.’
He took another step towards her. She tried to retreat but found herself backed up against a workbench.
‘Keep your distance,’ she said calmly.
‘I’m not going to hurt you.’ He reached up and brushed her hair aside to reveal the scar on her face.
She raised one eyebrow. ‘I’m warning you.’
‘I have to have you.’
The tanned skin crinkled around his eyes. Good-looking as he was, she certainly wasn’t going to surrender to him. But how would he take her rejection? Would it tip him over the edge? Better not to take that chance. Better to act pre-emptively and deal with the consequences afterwards.
He reached up with his other hand.
As he did so, she grabbed his forearm, simultaneously twisted to the side of him and pulled him across her outstretched leg. Tai otoshi – body drop. He crashed to the floor.
He lay there in stunned surprise.
‘What the—?!’
But she wasn’t done yet.
She squatted down behind him, slipped her thumbs into the collar of his shirt and yanked it hard so the top two buttons of his shirt popped off, along with his clip-on tie, then she pulled it tight across his throat so the stiff fabric was biting into the flesh of his neck. Okuri eri jime – sliding collar strangle.
He flailed and batted at her hands as he tried to twist out of her grip. She tightened her hold on his neck, torqueing the material of his shirt so it constricted his neck even further. He coughed and gasped, his eyes wide with shock.
‘If I apply just a bit more pressure here,’ she twisted his collar a fraction tighter, ‘I’ll be cutting off the flow of blood to your brain. In twenty seconds you’ll be unconscious, in under a minute you’ll have permanent brain damage, and not long after that you’ll be dead.’
He stiffened and then went slack, passive in her grasp.
‘Jesus…’ he stuttered in a choked gurgle, ‘I thought… I’d met… some… nutters… in the army… but you’re… one crazy bitch!’
She was stuck now. She’d passed the point of no return. She had no option now but to get him to admit it. And as for what she’d do after that, she’d cross that bridge…
Still keeping a firm grip, she slightly loosened her hold on his neck so he could speak without restriction. He let out a wheeze of relief.
‘I understand your problem,’ she said. ‘I know you’re not completely in control.’
‘Problem? My only problem right now is you.’
‘Post-traumatic stress disorder. Afghanistan. Flashbacks.’
He was silent for a few moments, his chest rising and falling.
‘What would you know about that?’ he said softly.
‘More than you think,’ she replied, trying to get him onside. ‘Trust me, I know where you’re coming from.’
‘Let go of me.’
‘Not until you admit it.’
‘Admit what?’
‘Killing them,’ she hissed in his ear.
‘They were Taliban. I had no choice.’
‘I’m not talking about the Taliban. I’m talking about Sharon. I’m talking about Alice. Poodle. Natalie.’
‘You what…?’ He sounded genuinely puzzled.
‘You killed them and you scalped them.’
‘No I didn’t. I didn’t do anything of the sort.’
‘Maybe you don’t think you did, but you did. During some kind of flashback.’
‘I wasn’t even here when Sharon was killed. I had the day off.’
‘You’re lying,’ she growled. ‘I don’t like liars.’
She squeezed his neck tighter again, causing him to cough and twitch. Then she eased off again to let him speak. He took a gulp of air.
‘I had to go to a veterans group meet-up. It’s normally on Sundays, but they switched it to Tuesday because of a transport strike. So I had to arrange a last-minute shift swap.’
‘Rubbish!’
‘You can look at my rota if you don’t believe me.’ He nodded downwards with his chin. ‘It’s in my top pocket.’
‘Get it out. Slowly.’
He reached up carefully and pulled a folded piece of A4 paper from his top pocket. He unfolded it and held it up for her to see.
It was a printout that listed the names of all the prison officers and the dates that they were scheduled to work.
She scanned the rota for the date that Sharon had been murdered: the twenty-third of June.
On Dylan’s printout, that particular date had been ringed in biro with an arrow pointing to the twenty-fifth of June next to the name of Brian Bunter.
‘You swapped shifts with Brian?’
‘That’s right. I worked the twenty-fifth for him. Ask him if you want.’
She didn’t need to. She remembered now that it had been Brian who had led the mad rush to the kitchen in the immediate wake of Sharon’s murder. He had definitely been working that day even though this rota stated that he was supposed to have had the day off. That meant therefore that Dylan was likely to be telling the truth about the shift swap. And if he was telling the truth about the shift swap, could he be telling the truth about the murders? He had an alibi for Sharon’s murder at least.
Had the murder investigation team been aware of this informal shift swap arrangement when they’d been interrogating the prison officers? If they had, then the information hadn’t filtered down to either her or Frank.
Shit!
She let go of him. He dropped the rota and wrenched himself away from her.
They both stood up. He massaged his neck and eyed her warily.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I was wrong about you.’
He gazed at her curiously and shook his head. ‘Just what kind of weird game are you playing?’
Suddenly the door to the workshop creaked open. They both spun around. Maggie was standing there in the doorway, eyeing them both suspiciously. Bailey could see her register Dylan’s open shirt collar.
‘What’s going on here?’ she said.
‘Er… nothing,’ said Dylan, trying to pull the top of his shirt closed.
Bailey noticed the rota lying on the floor just behind the workbench. She quickly bent down, picked it up and slipped it into the back pocket of her tracksuit trousers.
‘There’s no reason for either of you to be in here,’ said Maggie, her arms crossed, tapping her foot.
She jerked her head at the door for Bailey to leave. Bailey dutifully scurried past Dylan and made her way out of the workshop.
As she did so, she heard Maggie say to Dylan: ‘I think it’s time you and me had a little word.’
She guessed that Dylan had somewhat of a reputation and that his colleagues were well aware of it. She left him to be reprimanded by Maggie, feeling a tiny twinge of guilt at leaving him to take the blame, especially now that it looked likely that he wasn’t the murderer.