‘Russon?’
He was creosoting one of the fences along the five-a-side area. The bloke doing it with him hadn’t spoken a word since they had started, not in answer to questions or of his own volition. He was skanky, with moles on his head and an oddly sallow complexion. Whenever he encountered someone new, Lee Russon liked to chat to them. He couldn’t contain himself. Where do you live? Are you married? What was your job? Have you got kids? What telly do you watch? Play pool or billiards? Footy? Like gardening? Curry? What car did you drive? Anything that came into his head. Sometimes they stuck it out for a bit, nodding, grunting, but usually they answered and came back with their own questions and then they were on different terms altogether. Not friends. You didn’t make friends in here, not in the proper sense. Couldn’t happen. But you had to get along and this was the way. Only the odd one wasn’t having any of it and today, that was the bloke who hadn’t even offered his name.
‘Come on, I’ve got to call you something.’
No answer.
‘Can’t just say “Hey, you”.’
No answer. But then, ‘Don’t talk to me.’
The one thing you always, always needed to know – or he did – was, what did you do? What are you in here for? Once in a blue moon somebody would come in and you knew, because you’d seen their picture on the telly or in the paper, and then you knew everything. Mostly, though, you didn’t.
He didn’t recognise Skanky and his wasn’t a face you’d forget.
Men didn’t always want to say why they were here but it was surprising how many couldn’t wait to spill it all out, and when they did, there were two things. Whatever they’d done, it had never been their fault, and they’d been allocated the worst brief in the country. Diabolical.
After that was out of the way, they seemed to loosen up. Lee had a knack of listening, making them feel at ease with him, so they gave him all the detail. When they’d done that, they were his.
‘Russon? Governor wants to see you.’
Not what he was expecting. His illicit postbox via Officer Moon could not conceivably have been discovered. He knew it. Moon would never – more than his job, his future prospects, his
… no. Not that.
What else was there? He was very careful not to break petty stupid rules, because it was the petty stupid rules that got to everyone, made them so mad they broke them out of frustration, because they couldn’t help themselves and that way they lost privileges, their parole was set back – if they were ever entitled to parole. Russon was careful. Kept his head down. Kept his powder dry for the serious stuff.
‘What’s it about?’
The officer shrugged. He walked quickly. Inside the building, doors unlocked. Corridors. Upstairs. More corridors. Up more stairs. Windows up here. Barred of course, but still, windows you could see out of. Well, a bit.
Unlock. Lock. Stairs. Short corridor.
Stop outside a door.
PRISON GOVERNOR.
An outer office. Small. Green plastic-covered bench. Desk. Computer. Swivel chair.
Nobody sitting there.
Inner door.
The officer pointed Russon to the bench but stood himself.
There was total silence for ten minutes by the office clock.
*
The governor, Claire McAlister, was a woman in her fifties, with very short hair, and what Russon’s mother would have called a boot face. She wore a navy-blue suit and a pale blue blouse. The suit jacket hung over her chair back.
But she did not have the manner that went with the boot face. She was quietly spoken, she seemed calm, she looked him in the eye.
‘Good morning.’
‘Morning, ma’am.’
A laptop was open on the desk in front of her and she glanced at it, but just once.
‘In case you’re worried that you’ve been brought in here for a reprimand, you can relax. But I thought it best to see you because I have had a slightly unusual request. Mrs Marion Still.’
Her eyes did not leave his face and he found it difficult to meet them.
‘Do you know who that is?’
Russon nodded. ‘Have you ever met or spoken to Mrs Still?’
‘No, ma’am.’
‘Have you had any communication with her at any time since being in this prison?’
‘No, ma’am. There’s …’
‘Yes? Go on.’
‘There’d be no reason, would there?’
‘Nevertheless, Mrs Still has put in a visiting request.’
‘You … I beg your pardon?’
‘You do look surprised.’
‘Of course I’m bloody surprised. Sorry.’
‘Why do you think she is asking to see you?’
‘No idea. It’s … it’s just mad. What could …’
He did not often find himself confused or at a loss for words but he had been so thrown by what the governor had said that his head seemed to be subject to a great pressure which was making him hot, and unable to think straight or focus.
‘Just let me recap. I know you were charged with the murder of Kimberley Still but that the case –’
‘It was thrown out. The CPS threw it out.’
‘Which there wasn’t any of because I didn’t do it.’
Claire McAlister was silent for a few seconds, looking down at her desk.
Then she met his gaze again. ‘How do you feel about this, Lee?’
She was known as the governor who believed in giving prisoners the option of being called by their first or last names. Lee had ticked the ‘First name’ box when he had arrived. How did she remember this? Because she had looked it up before he came in, stupid. Still, she’d bothered to do that.
‘I can’t get my head round it.’
‘You don’t have to accept, you know. I can reply saying that you are refusing the request to visit and I do not have to give any reason. Nor do you. But if you do agree to see her, we need to talk for a bit longer.’
‘I just … Jesus. It’s … I said. It’s thrown me. I don’t know.’
‘I tell you what. I don’t have to answer straight away. We can leave it until tomorrow. Please think about it carefully. If you want to decline the request just tell the officer on duty at lunchtime tomorrow and he will get the message to me. But if you decide that you will see Mrs Still, then you ask him to find out a time when I can see you again. It will be in the afternoon, I have meetings out of the prison until two. Does that seem to you the right way of going about it?’
‘Yes. It …’ He shook his head. ‘It’s just mad. But OK, I’ll do that.’
‘Think it over carefully … reasons for and against. Then we’ll go from there.’
‘Yes, ma’am. Thanks.’
She nodded. ‘Thank you, Lee.’
He had another hour of creosoting the fence. Time to think. Skanky had gone. Russon picked up his brush and dipped it into the sticky brown liquid and started to stroke the wooden paling carefully, down and up, down and up. It was a blue-sky day. The creosote got into his nostrils and at first he had liked it, as he had always liked the smell of new glossy magazine paper or turps or size, though it began to cloy and then to sicken him, after a while.
But he was preoccupied not with what he could smell but with what he thought. Thought and felt. And the first thing he did was try and bring that newspaper piece to mind, in which the mother had talked to the reporter about ‘justice for my Kimberley’.
That had only been a week earlier. Why the thing suddenly seemed worth looking into again God knew. Nothing had happened. No one had found out anything. He hadn’t done it. By this time, he believed himself. He had convinced himself. He hadn’t done it. He had done the others. Not this one.
He jabbed the brush hard at the fence panel. What? Of course he’d done it. Nobody else knew but he knew. What was this? He could hide from everyone, everything, but not himself and why would he bother? He wasn’t talking.
She had asked for a prison visit. She wanted to come here, sit down opposite him, see him, look him in the eye and talk to him. What about? About Kimberley, what else was there? But what about Kimberley? ‘Did you kill her?’
‘No.’ End of.
He didn’t have to agree. He could say no, tomorrow, get the word to the governor, and that would be that. Nothing would be heard of it all again, and if the woman asked to see him a second time, then he would refuse her a second time, and a third and a hundredth.
But if he saw her?
He was not used to having problems bother him, mainly because, inside, any problems that arose were the straightforward sort that just got dealt with. He ate and said nothing, and the problem revolved like a Ferris wheel inside his head, and when he went to play pool, his moves were mechanical and that got noticed and he had to start lying about the dentist.
The Ferris wheel went round and round.
If he saw the woman.
If he didn’t.
If he …
If …
He tried to read, and a new Michael Connolly ought to have grabbed and held him, but the Ferris wheel got between him and the printed pages.
Lights out and he watched it go round until he thought he’d smash his own skull in to stop it.
But then he decided. It stopped. His head felt normal again. And then he didn’t understand why he hadn’t done it from the start, because he knew himself, he was all right, he didn’t have to say or do anything he didn’t want to, ever. Christ, he ought to know that by now.
He went to sleep, not gradually, in an anxious, drifting way, but off, bang, his mind settled.