Adey had been to Strangeways hundreds of times, not just to see her brother, but also clients. It never got any easier. She hated the place. The sounds, the smells, everything about it, even the name. Renamed HMP Manchester for political reasons after the infamous riots of 1990, all Mancunians still knew it as Strangeways.
Sitting, waiting for Bahdoon, she thought of Anderson, of how he might be coping in Armley. If only he’d call or send a letter, just to say he was all right. It was different for Bahdoon; he’d spent his teenage years in and out of institutions. All his friends were in jail. Bahdoon’s problem had always been fitting in on the outside. Too scarred by all the violence he had witnessed in Mogadishu, with only a sporadic education and no job prospects, he drifted into crime and found the support for which he yearned in a local gang, The Rusholme Cripz. There was a certain irony in that his name, Bahdoon, meant ‘the one who looks for his clan’. At seventeen, he carried a firearm and played his part in the neighbourhood turf wars with rival gang, Dem Crazy Somalis.
As a result of the lengthy terms of imprisonment handed out to twelve members of the notorious Gooch Gang in 2009, the fight over the void which had opened up was bloodier than anything that had gone before. Bahdoon was caught on CCTV carrying out a drive-by shooting which left a young man dead. In 2011, he started a life sentence with a minimum term of eighteen years.
Adey blamed herself for her inability to keep Bahdoon on the straight and narrow. Truth was, once he’d discovered crack cocaine, all her efforts had been futile.
‘Hello, sis.’ Every inch of Bahdoon was rippling muscle. Not the scrawny young man of a few years ago. Working out passed the time.
‘Been in the gym, I see? How are you?’ she asked with a beaming smile. Adey always tried to appear happy on visits. No point turning up with the weight of the world on her shoulders. That wouldn’t help him. But it made the relationship with Bahdoon feel artificial; neither wanted to worry the other, so prickly small talk was inevitably the order of the day, leaving them both feeling cheated by the end of each painful visit.
‘Girl, you got yourself a man yet?’
Always the same opening line − Adey ignored it. Why did he have to tease her?
‘Then maybe you stop wasting your time coming?’
‘You know I’d always come. Why do you say these things?’
Bahdoon clicked his tongue and sat back, arms folded. Sometimes he acted like a child. He’d never had the chance to grow up, find himself. Thought he was man enough to shoot someone, in fact he’d been too immature to think through the consequences.
‘So how’ve you been?’ Adey wasn’t going to give up that easily. There was a tension in all their contact, a side effect of so much going unsaid.
‘Got moved to E wing. I’m in seg. Me likes da quiet. I’m chillin’.’
‘Segregation? Why?’
‘Screws heard some bruvas wanted to wet me up, so they moved me.’ Bahdoon chuckled, seemingly unperturbed by the danger.
‘At least they told you.’
‘They ’ad to. It’s da law. Got a duty, innit.’ Bahdoon clicked his tongue again. ‘Me thought you was da lawyer. You not know dat shit?’
Adey refused to rise to it, changing the subject. ‘I need a favour.’
Bahdoon was taken aback. Adey never asked for anything.
She took a piece of paper out of her pocket – Anderson’s list of the people he prosecuted that went to prison. ‘I need to know if these people are in Strangeways and on what wing.’
Bahdoon clicked his tongue. ‘A bruva can get in a lotta shit for asking them kind o’ questions.’
‘Do you think I’d ask if I wasn’t desperate?’ Adey was fired up too. ‘I’ve never asked you for anything. There are people in here you’d kill for and you can’t even do this for your own sister?’
Bahdoon glanced off, registering the irony. ‘Why d’ya want to know?’
Adey didn’t answer.
After a long silence: ‘All right, sista. Me see what I can do.’
‘Thank you.’ She hated putting Bahdoon in danger but with Connor unable to remember where he’d seen Heena Butt, the anonymous caller was their only lead. Adey slid the paper across the table.
Bahdoon shook his head. ‘You know I can’t just take that? There’s rules, girl.’
Having failed to notice in her desperation to help Anderson, Adey was suddenly aware of the prison officers monitoring everything.
Bahdoon gave an imperceptible nod to an inmate on the other side of the room, who moments later was on his feet gesticulating and swearing at his girlfriend. As the officers rushed over, Bahdoon put the paper in his pocket.
Seconds later all the visits were terminated.