Henry lay on a bench and pushed weights. The gym was quiet, as it always was on a Saturday lunchtime. Sitting up and catching his breath, his eye wandered to the giant TV on the wall. He recognised the young teenager in the report and he sat up, putting down his dumbbells. He’d been at George Paget School only last week.
Two conditions of his probation were that he volunteer for a charitable cause, and that he attend professional counselling sessions, paid for by the state. For his volunteer work, he chose to visit schools and youth clubs, speaking to kids about the perils of addiction. He showed any of them willing to listen that prison wasn’t a walk in the park, like it said on social media. Inmates didn’t spend their days watching massive flat-screen TVs in huge lounges, and they didn’t work out in state-of-the-art gyms, just like they didn’t eat and drink like lords.
His stories scared them, and that was the point. He stopped short of the rapes in the shower block, where there was no CCTV. He didn’t tell them about the blood running along the water gulley, and the screams of those who were held down by men twice their age, and subjected to humiliating torture. But he did share the stories of broken arms over bad debt, and he enlightened them on the horrific conditions at Her Majesty’s pleasure.
The purging soothed his guilt.
A typical lesson might start with wise guys making jokes about getting high and streaming it live on Twitter, looking cool and in charge, owning time like a boss. Videos like it were widely available on the internet. Typically, the girls in class fawned over the tough boys saying they could cope inside. But after a while, when they shut up and listened about the twenty-three hours a day in a shared eight-foot cell, the suicides, the violence and, worse of all, the time spent inside one’s own head, they quietened down a bit. By the time Henry was halfway through a session, he had thirty kids gazing at him, in silence. Even the brawny bully Brandon Stand shut up.
The knife edge between good and bad was flimsy and it only took one stupid mistake. Now, as he watched the TV, he figured that he hadn’t hit home enough.
He buried his head in his towel. It had been a shit week and it was getting worse. The call from the police had left him going over the events from when he’d last seen Monika. He wiped his face and peered around the gym. He spotted Grace training a client and wondered if she’d heard anything. He’d changed gyms from one across town a year ago. He’d sought her out. But not for personal training. He saw himself as her guardian angel. She had no idea that he watched her drive home, especially in the winter when the sky was dark and hid terrible secrets. He knew that, despite the poise her name suggested, she was fighting a monumental battle. From the protection of her ivory tower, where she recorded her videos on mental health and espoused wellness, he knew that she faced the dark alone, and terrified, as if connecting with millions of strangers online would make the ghosts go away. All the money in the world couldn’t do that. It had been the same with Monika.
He also watched Ignacio.
Part of keeping Grace safe was knowing where she was going and who she was seeing. But he trod carefully, as she was easily startled. Any sign of unwanted attention was batted away by her, like a dangerous bug. She guarded herself with exhaustive vigilance. She had no boyfriend to keep her home fires burning inside her million-pound flat bought by her parents, who couldn’t protect her. He watched her YouTube channel and observed as she punished her body mercilessly. Henry saw what other people missed; his incarceration had made sure of that. He’d been annoyed at himself that he failed to notice her leave last night. She’d slipped out as he squabbled with Ignacio, and he was left deflated, and feeling that he’d let her down.
He lay back and settled under the bar, arching his back and grounding his buttocks and shoulder blades, and positioned his hands to lift a new personal best. Exhausting himself physically took away some of the monsters chasing him. He finished the set and sat up, and something caught his eye on the massive TV.
Other gym-goers gathered around the screen and he saw that Grace was watching too. But the piece wasn’t about Brandon Stand. It was about Monika.
‘Next of kin have been informed… the body was found by the river Cam near a jetty… murder…’
Henry felt sick. The exertion of lifting and his elevated heart rate, compounded by the shock, made him gag and he held his hand over his mouth. Then sense took hold and he realised that everything he’d worked for since leaving the nick was about to come crashing down around him. His phone vibrated at his feet, where he’d left it out of the way.
It was Carrie.