Full house. Saturday afternoons usually were when it wasn’t raining. A lot of the buggers couldn’t be bothered in bad weather.
He’d got a table up against the wall, so that was a bonus. Only one next to you to listen in and this pair wouldn’t, they were too busy having their own set-to and the set-to had been clocked. Any minute, the nearest warder would be over and warning them. What was the point in visiting and then starting up a row the minute you sat down?
He looked across his own table. He didn’t have a missus. One less to worry about. This afternoon, Dave was here. Russon had four brothers. Alan never came near and Jim was on a container ship halfway to South America, so it was always either Lewis or Dave.
They said this and that for five minutes. ‘Have you seen Dad?’ ‘How’s the kid?’ ‘What are the Hammers messing about at?’ ‘I brought you some of your toffees.’
Then Dave said, ‘I got something else,’ and started fishing about in his pocket. He’d been searched, they’d opened the sheet of newspaper and shaken it, but papers and magazines were OK, not much you could hide in them unless you taped a packet inside somewhere, but Lee didn’t do drugs and he didn’t believe in having them for barter. A few things he thought were wrong, and drugs came top of his list. No one had ever got round to asking why murder was all right and coke wasn’t. No one asked him much about anything.
Now Dave took the folded page out and handed it over. Lee looked at him.
‘You can read it now if you want.’
‘What is it?’
‘Stuff about … you and that … Kimberley girl. Kimberley Still.’
Lee’s expression went absolutely blank. He pulled the folded sheet towards him, and folded it again, and then again. Flattened it and put it in his trouser pocket. The warder was looking over. Lee pulled the paper out again, spread it, waved it at him. Turned it over. Turned it back.
The man switched his attention back to the pair next door.
The room was warm and smelled of people’s bodies. There were kids, babies with dirty nappies and older ones with bags of cheese and onion crisps. Lee half closed his eyes. His brother leaned forward, elbows on the metal table.
‘Remember Ash Alamba?’
‘No.’
‘Yeah, you do.’
‘No.’
Dave sighed. ‘Right. Don’t matter.’
‘What?’
‘If you don’t know who he is –’
‘For Christ’s sake, you’ve got to talk about something, so talk about this Ash guy.’
‘Nicked a Jaguar and wrapped it round a tree and himself with it.’
Lee shrugged. ‘It happens.’
‘You want anything before the bell goes?’
‘No.’
‘You might. When you’ve read that paper.’
The couple next door suddenly kicked off so loudly that they stood up and the man turned the table over, shoving it towards the woman. Warders jerked to life, then the time bell went off.
Dave got up. ‘Look after yourself.’
Lee rolled his eyes.
It was only after lock-up that he could sit down at his small table to spread out the newspaper page. He pulled open the bag of assorted toffees Dave had brought as well and which had twice given him painful visits to the prison dentist. He could only chew on his right side until he got the latest filling done but he put two rum and butters into his mouth at once and turned to the paper. It was still noisy out on the landings. Not that prison was ever quiet, just as it was never dark. Things like that got to you more than you’d expect and Lee Russon expected quite a lot. He was a lifer, which in his view was the punishment. There shouldn’t be rubbish conditions and having to put up with crap like being locked in your cell three-quarters of the day because there weren’t enough staff and being fed pigswill. And having lights boring in your face and metal doors clanging and boots going up and down metal staircases when you were trying to sleep. You had a right to sleep.
One thing he didn’t mind was being on his own. For the first three years inside he’d shared with various other men, brain-dead, or druggies, or the sort that wanted to talk all day and half the night, the sort who wanted to get you involved in stupid schemes. He was happy with his own company – in the absence of the company of young women.
He liked reading. History. Napoleonic Wars. Third Reich. 1914–18. Early aeroplanes. World War II aircraft and missions. All of it. He could order up titles in the prison library and they’d try and get them. Mostly they did. He was studying as well – psychology and business. He’d more or less picked them with a pin out of a list and he didn’t think he’d last much longer with psychology. It wasn’t just difficult. It was a load of crap. Business studies weren’t crap, they were useful. When he got outside again …
He never ever let himself think that he might not. That life would mean LIFE. It wouldn’t. He was attending counselling sessions, he was able to prove that he no longer had fantasies about not only the company of young women but of raping and strangling them. The sessions were interesting. He began to get where the person who saw him was coming from and then he began to work out how he could give him what he wanted, and with understanding, and fathoming how it all worked, a plan was slowly forming. Slowly meant slowly. You couldn’t barge at these things without any thought. You thought and thought, slowly, carefully and in detail, and you made your plans accordingly.
He spread out the newspaper page Dave had left him. Local lad getting gold in the Invictus Games. Kebab van owner selling horsemeat. He thought that’s what they all did. A couple of fires in derelict buildings – arson suspected. Road closures. Bicycle accident. School given star ratings by Ofsted. Fucking hell, what was all this rubbish? Only the arson sounded fun. Made him wonder if one of his old cellmates was up to no good again. The way he used to describe how the flames went up in a big whoosh.
Then he turned over the page and saw it. Spread right across the middle.
‘I’LL NEVER REST UNTIL I GET JUSTICE FOR MY KIMBERLEY.’
Her picture. Her daughter’s picture. His bleedin’ picture. The steep bank behind the canal. The overhanging scrubby bushes.
He could feel his own rage move up inside his body, like bubbles being pumped faster and faster through a tube, pulsing harder, strengthening. The rage started in the pit of his stomach, went up through his chest and into his throat and neck and head, swelling out and heating. If he checked in the shaving mirror he would be red in the face. His eyes would be bloodshot. The doctor had told him he had to control his rage or it would control him.
‘Finish you off,’ he had said. ‘You will explode. Simple as that.’
He’d been given a sheet of breathing exercises, a list of twenty calming phrases. If he felt the rage so much as stir slightly in his toes he ought to reach for them.
He did the breathing stuff now and it made a bit of difference. He didn’t want to explode. He’d always had a way out before, of course. He had been able to lance the rage like a boil, by doing what he did.
No chance here.
He took the sheet of paper and tore it, across and across and across, tore it into bits the size of confetti. His stubby fingers were sore, he put so much force into the tearing.
He threw the bits into the bin.
He cursed Kimberley Still’s mother and the reporter and the paper, in the foulest words he knew, muttering them aloud so that they might be more effective. He would have yelled them at the top of his voice but that would have brought someone running.
But then, he reasoned, nobody would take any notice of her, not now, any more than they ever had. She could do what she liked, bleat, complain, write letters, get reporters round, even go on the bloody television. It would make no odds. They weren’t going to reopen the case. Why would they bother? They had him anyway.
He had told them he hadn’t done it plenty of times. Others. The two he was in for. Yes. But he’d said until he was blue in the face he was not confessing to Kimberley Still. No way. What difference would it make to him? He was banged up in here, he wasn’t going anywhere, life meant life and they couldn’t add to that, they’d no more idea than anyone else how long ‘life’ would be. He could ‘explode’ tomorrow, couldn’t he?
He calmed down. Calm and peace. He could feel the last of the rage blowing away out to sea.
And then the idea came to him. He knew what he could do.