Marion had not been sure if she could drive safely when she first got into the car. She was shaky, her palms were damp, and she seemed unable to focus properly, the edges of buildings seemed blurred.
But it was better once she started and the first few miles, out of town onto the bypass and then towards Bevham, were fine, because they were so familiar and she could drive without thinking about where she was actually heading. But then it was all new to her. Satnav took her left and right, round roundabouts to this or that exit, over crossroads, then ‘continue on for four miles’, and she gripped the steering wheel, as if she thought it might come away from its fixing. She was usually a perfectly relaxed driver, and competent, but she did not feel so now, she felt as if she was a danger to everyone, and also, as if somehow people could look at her through the car windows and know who she was and why she was on this road.
The signs began, several miles from the prison. They could have read Recycling Centre or Hospital or Crematorium but they didn’t. And when she took the last turning down a short road, they were white on black. HM PRISON LEVERWORTH.
She stopped at the side of the road and got out. She was going to be sick. She took gulps of the cold air. Her chest tightened and she felt dizzy again. Several other cars passed. She leaned on the car door.
After all this, she would have to give up and turn back. She couldn’t face it. Face him. It wasn’t the prison itself that worried her. The prison was nothing. She wasn’t going to be attacked or challenged. Ordinary people were on their way, other women. Children.
Him.
Lee Russon. The last person on God’s earth to see Kimberley alive, she knew, and the only one to see her dead. She knew that too.
She heaved and spat out phlegm onto the grass.
Why had she insisted on doing this? What had possessed her?
The letter had told her she would be searched and she had thought that it wouldn’t bother her – it was necessary and she had nothing to hide. But it did bother her, it made her feel she had a number not a name, that she was unclean and exposed. Zap, up her and down her, went the sensor in the prison warder’s hand, front and back, and then hands, and turn round this way, now to the right, thank you. You can go through.
She had brought nothing. There had been a list of what could and could not be taken into the prison but it had never crossed her mind. Now, she saw women with magazines and sweets and bars of chocolate and felt guilty. Mean. Which was ridiculous.
There was a lot of noise, metal chairs being scraped back on the bare floor, screeching, children’s voices, and then their footsteps as they filed in through a door at the back. She stared down at her hands in her lap, at the Formica tabletop, and the floor, at her feet. She could not look at any one of them, not try and see him, watch him walking towards her.
There was a smell, floor cleaner and something else she could not identify. Sweat? Fear?
The chair opposite her was pulled out and she saw a body blocking the light from the window behind. Hands on the table. Hands.
‘Good afternoon,’ he said. ‘Marion.’
She noticed the hands. Squared-off nails. Clean. Fat stubby fingers. Hairs down the backs like furred creatures. The hands. How had he killed her? With his hands?
‘It’s all right.’ He spoke quietly. ‘I’m not going to bite. I’m very glad to see you, actually. Marion.’
She drew a sharp breath and glanced up quickly and he was looking straight into her face, her eyes; she could not have avoided his stare.
The face was flabby. There was a shadow on the jaw and chin. The hair was greying and short. There was nothing interesting or surprising or unusual or remarkable about the face. You could have seen the face anywhere. The eyes were pale. Grey-green, with streaks, like the streaks in marbles. Pale. Small piggy eyes but staring, staring. Not blinking, not leaving her face. He smiled. He had poor teeth. She looked away.
‘Thank you for visiting, Marion. I appreciate it. Can’t have been easy.’
Smile.
‘Listen, I know why you have. You don’t bother me, I’m glad you’re here because I can tell you to your face. Look at me, Marion.’
She looked.
‘Thank you. I’m not a monster, Marion but I know I did what I did and I’m being punished for it and that’s only right. Not good but right.’
He did a tattoo with his fingers on the tabletop, drumming them and drumming them, faster and faster, but he did not take his eyes off her face. Then he stopped abruptly.
‘I want you to listen to me, Marion, because we won’t get this chance again, you won’t come here again, I know that, and why would you? I have to take my chance. Listen.’
Russon leaned forward so suddenly that in pulling back she almost tipped her chair over. She could see the guard out of the corner of her eye, looking in their direction.
‘I did not kill your daughter. I did not kill Kimberley.’ He was almost whispering, his words hissing out between almost-closed teeth on a stream of bad breath. ‘As you are my witness, Marion. I have done bad things, though I am not a bad person. Never mind how I came to do them, but I did. Only you hear this because it’s the plain truth. I know what you think and I know what you believe, and do you know what, I don’t blame you for that, because in your shoes I’d probably believe the same. Only I am telling you now and I am telling you straight. I did not kill your daughter. And you have to believe me, Marion. You’ll get no rest until you do.’
And then Lee Russon smiled.
A few miles from the prison she saw a roadside diner. It smelled of cold fried food and there were a couple of van drivers sitting on the red plastic benches. They did not glance in her direction. She got a mug of tea and a slice of coffee cake. The tea was strong and hot and fresh, the cake dusty with fondant on the top.
Traffic swished past through the steady rain that must have begun when she was in the prison.
She could not get Russon’s eyes or his face or his voice or his hands or his clothing, anything about him, out of her mind. It was like a poster pinned up, and no matter what she looked at, it came in front of her eyes.
She had gone to confront him. She had gone to demand he tell her the truth, confess to Kimberly’s murder. Say where he had dumped her body.
Instead, he had taken the lead. He had not seemed troubled. He had said he had not killed Kimberly, almost as if he was saying he had not watched the TV news the previous night, and by looking at her out of those pale eyes, had insisted that she believe him.
Did she? She sipped the tea, which was so very hot it scalded her tongue but revived her. Did she?
Yes. Somehow or other, he had convinced her. He had more or less admitted to other terrible crimes, but wanted her to know, from his own mouth, that he was innocent of the murder of Kimberly, and had no idea what had happened to her, and certainly not whether she was dead.
She pulled herself up. No. He had not said he had no idea what had happened to her or that he knew or did not know if she was really dead. He had said he had not killed her. But in that case, surely he would have told her he knew nothing about her disappearance at all?
He had not said that.
Her brain spun round.
She sat for nearly an hour, finishing the mug of tea and ordering a second, even eating the sawdust cake, going over everything Lee Russon had said to her, but when she eventually left she was no clearer in her mind, no further forward.
Nothing had been gained and, oddly, she had somehow been made to feel as if she were the one guilty of something. She had come away from the prison with this vague sense of guilt, but other than that, she had come away empty-handed.