They were going to wait to have their Christmas dinner in the evening when John Dunn got home. He was going to call the boy’s mother in the evening, put him on to her. He hoped to hear the boy tell her how happy he was to have his father at last. He wondered what it was about him that made her decide he was no good for Mark. She’d only known him five minutes. He thought of her face again, as he drove off.
He kept his head down in the afternoon, did his time, did what was required. The other officers loafed around the mess with their feet up. Shandy brought out a successful Christmas cake. He offered each of them a small whiskey to go with a slice.
‘Six weeks I’ve been dripping booze into the cake with a needle. You know, first you make the hole, then you pour it in after, wasting a load of it and then this great Charlie here tells me he could have given me a syringe and made the job easier.’ He aimed a thumb at the medical officer who was smiling, eating.
Skids came in and waved a no at the cake, unbuttoned his jacket, his face flushed. He put his hands through his hair. He’d just come back from one of the bars.
‘You won’t fucking believe this. Lingard’s had the shit beaten out of him on the Loyalist block. He’s been taken off to the hospital.’
Shandy put down his cake and stopped chewing. The medical officer said something or other, no one cared. Campbell came up behind and put his hands on the back of Shandy’s chair.
‘You’re joking me,’ he said, his eyes glittering.
‘He goes round both the Loyalist and the Provie blocks to say his piece, you know how he is, well the Loyalists were having a wee Christmas do in the recreation room and Lingard goes in and the doors close behind him and all hell breaks loose. When they opened the doors again he was lying on the floor, at the back of the room.’
‘Is he bad?’ asked Dunn.
‘Aye. He was in there a good ten minutes the lads are saying. Broken ribs, and he got a good kicking in the head as well they said. Nearly took his eye out. He was unconscious when they took him off.’
‘Well, well, well,’ said Campbell. ‘It was bound to happen. He was asking for it.’
‘I wouldn’t have fancied his odds,’ said Skids. ‘In there with forty cons – and a vicar.’
Shandy was carefully wiping the crumbs off the table with his hand and helping them to drop on to his small white plate. He got up to arrange the cake back in the tin. ‘They could get themselves in trouble for shutting him in there like that.’
‘You think he was shut in? On purpose?’ asked Dunn.
‘Catch yourself on, John-boy,’ said Campbell. ‘We’re not going to bend over and take it up the arse.’
‘The man didn’t stand a chance. Bloody cowards.’
‘And what the fuck are they out there?’ said Campbell, pointing at the wing.
He was leaving the prison for the first time at five o’ clock. He’d left in the dark of the morning, driving as usual with his shoulders hunched, his head forward, foot to the floor. Christmas Day. Now he left in the dark of the night, wipers on. Gravel span as he exited the compound and pulled on to the by-road. He wondered what his son was like at Christmastime as a boy and who it was that took his first bike out into the street and set him on the saddle.