Steer’s jaw dropped. ‘Pentridge?’
‘Yep.’
‘How come?’
‘Because you’re a piece of shit,’ the Correctional Services officer said.
They were waiting at a reception window in the new, privately operated remand centre in Sunshine. Steer had been remanded on a charge of aggravated burglary, bail denied, and as he understood it you got sent to one of the remand centres pending trial, so why was the system stuffing him around today, turning him away, sending him to Pentridge prison?
‘You’re joking, right?’
Someone came through from an inner room with a form on a clipboard. The Correctional Services officer signed it and turned to escort Steer out to the police van again. Steer said, ‘I mean, how come? Tell me you’re joking. I’m on remand, mate. I haven’t been to trial yet.’
The officer said wearily, ‘Can it, okay? The paperwork says Anthony Steer, remanded to Pentridge.’
‘But it’s a fucking gaol, mate. It’s full of blokes that’d slit your throat because they only got one egg for breakfast.’
‘You’ve done time before. You can handle it.’
Steer could handle it. The problem was, Denise and Chaffey were lining someone up to spring him out of remand. Escaping from Pentridge was a whole other ballgame. He’d have to get Chaffey to do some fancy footwork with Correctional Services, slip someone a few bucks to alter the paperwork.
They bundled Steer into the rear of the police van. Steel floor, walls and ceiling, tiny reinforced glass window, plenty of steel separating him from the driver and the driver’s offsider. He was the only prisoner. He heard the bolt slide home on the door of the van. He heard the Correctional Services officer tell the driver, ‘Remand’s full. They’ve got room for him in Pentridge.’
‘Doesn’t make sense,’ the driver said. ‘You’ve got remanded guys in Pentridge and sentenced guys in remand. Doesn’t make sense.’
‘Tell it to the Minister.’
The van braked and spurted fitfully through the western suburbs of the city. At Pentridge, in Coburg, the world seemed to darken, all light and goodness swallowed up by the bluestone walls. They were waved through. Steer’s escort parked the van against an inside wall and disappeared for an hour. Steer grew jumpy in his metal tomb. When the doors of the van were finally opened, he said, ‘Morning tea, right? Your boss know you boys bludge on the job?’
‘Shut it, arsehole.’
They took Steer in to be admitted. A prison officer said, ‘Name?’
The driver of the van checked a sheaf of papers in his fist. ‘Steer, first name Anthony.’
‘Anthony, wacky doo,’ the prison officer said, ticking something. ‘Right, he’s ours now.’
Steer watched his escort walk back across the industrial-grade carpet and out through the door to the van. He swung back to the prison officer. ‘Look, I shouldn’t be here. I should be in remand.’
‘Every remand centre in the city is full, pal. That’s why you’re being remanded here, in D Divison.’
‘That’s better than H Division, right?’
Steer had spent gaol time in Long Bay, Beechworth, Ararat and Yatala. But he knew all about Pentridge. H Division was high security. It held killers, gunmen, escapers, men with a history of violence toward the prison guards, let alone other prisoners. Some inmates were handcuffed whenever they left their cells, even to have a shower. Others were kept in separation for months at a time, with only two hours out of the cell each day.
‘Marginally,’ the prison officer said. He handed Steer a stack of clothing. ‘Put these on.’
The shirt was thin from repeated washing, the collar frayed. The trousers stopped at his ankles. Both knees had worn through at some stage and been mended with patches on the inside and a crosshatch of thick black cotton thread. The windcheater, once chocolate brown, barely came to his waist. The shoes needed reheeling.
Wearing these clothes would be like wearing the skin of every pathetic junkie and rock spider who had ever been incarcerated in Pentridge. ‘No fucking way, mate.’
The officer stiffened. ‘Come again?’
‘I mean, give us a set of new gear and I’ll make it worth your while.’
‘Yeah? How much?’
‘Fifty.’
‘Make it seventy-five and you’ve got yourself a deal.’
‘My lawyer will slip it to you tomorrow.’
‘If he doesn’t,’ the officer said, ‘then you go back to wearing cast-offs.’
‘For seventy-five,’ Steer countered, ‘you can chuck in a decent set of bedding.’
Finally an officer escorted Steer out of the administration wing. One inmate whistled on the long walk to his cell. Others stopped to stare as he passed among them. They approached a door. An inmate who had been leaning on the wall, smoking, sprang forward and opened the door, making a big show of it, doing Steer a favour.
Steer knew what it was about. It was a test. If he said thanks, he’d be marked out as a soft target. Steer wasn’t soft. He was hard and lithe and very fit. Tall, narrow through the hips but broad at the shoulder, with a flat stomach and big hands, the knuckles like pebbles under the skin. There was scar tissue on his face but it was a grinning, clever, likeable face with bright killer’s eyes and bad teeth. He stared at the man, cold and unnerving, and saw him drop his gaze and step back.
The guard watched it happen. ‘Piss off, Bence.’
‘Right you are, Mr Loney, sir.’
They were in a corridor of simple cells and Steer could see two bunks in each. The cells were poorly lit, about three cubic metres, the walls exuding bitter cold and dampness. Two men were hovering at the open door to the cell at the end of the corridor. ‘New bloke,’ they said.
Steer gave them the stare. Like Bence, they fell back. So far so good.
The guard said, ‘This is your cell, Steer. The charmer on the bottom bunk there is Monger. You’ll show Steer here the ropes, won’t you, Monger?’
‘Sure, Mr Loney,’ Monger said.
The guard left them to it. One of the men at the door wandered away. The other, leaning against the jamb, shook a cigarette from the packet in his top pocket. ‘Welcome to D Division, matey. Smoke?’
Steer said, ‘No thanks.’ It might have been a genuine offer, it might also have been a test.
‘Suit yourself,’ the man said, wandering off.
Steer turned to Monger. Monger was young, nervy looking. ‘Mate, you’re in my bed.’
Monger sat up in the bunk. ‘What?’
‘Yours is the top bunk.’
Monger opened and closed his mouth. Finally he nodded, stripped the bedding from his bunk, and climbed onto the top bunk, far from the floor and the crapper, up where the farts gathered—all of which told Steer that this was Monger’s first time.
Steer made himself comfortable. At lunchtime he saw Monger bend even further. He was at a scuffed table behind Monger, and watched as Bence and another man sat on either side of Monger and went to work.
First, Bence leaned forward. He fingered Monger’s watch strap. ‘Nice.’
Steer saw Monger jerk back his arm.
‘Steady on,’ Bence said. ‘Just looking.’
Monger nodded warily.
‘Wouldn’t have any smokes, would you?’ the other man said. ‘I’m fresh out.’
Monger had been given his prison issue. He got them out but before he could offer one Bence grabbed the entire packet and slipped it into his top pocket.
‘Hey, come on,’ Monger said.
‘Mate, you owe me.’
‘Owe you? How come?’
The other man was looking at Monger’s food. He reached across, helped himself to the pudding and started to spoon it into his mouth. ‘Hungry,’ he explained, catching Monger’s eye.
Monger said, ‘I suppose I owe you as well?’
Both men ignored him. Bence peered around him to the other man. ‘What duties they got you on this arvo?’
‘Cleaning the shithouse.’
‘Get Monger to help you.’
Monger protested. ‘I asked for the library.’
‘I bet you did, but that’s too good for a little shit like you. I’d hate for you to get bored in here. I mean,’ Bence went on, ‘do a bloke a favour, you expect one in return, right?’
‘Absolutely,’ the other man said.
Much later, back in the cell, Steer found Monger curled on the floor at the foot of the bunks, tired and dirty, his face streaked and miserable. ‘Come on, don’t chuck in the towel.’
Monger let himself be helped to his feet. Steer brushed him down, told him to change his clothes. ‘Mate,’ he said, ‘I could see it happening a mile off. ‘I watched it all’.
‘So why didn’t you give us a fucking hand?’ Monger said, fighting down his self-disgust, his jitters.
‘A few basic survival rules,’ Steer said, ‘all right? One, from now on, especially out in the yard, you’re a marked man. The heavy boys like Bence will give you a hard time, stand in your way, shove you around, stuff like that. If you try and avoid them, go around them, you might as well curl up in a ball and die. You’d be theirs for good. Bum buddy in the shower. What you have to do is take them on. If you make eye contact, don’t back down. Give them the old thousand yard stare. They’ll beat the crap out of you, but at least you’ll earn yourself some respect.’
He broke off to look Monger up and down. ‘Jesus, you got it wrong from the start, didn’t you?’ He flicked his fingers at Monger’s worn shirt, his patched trousers. ‘Look at this gear they gave you. You shouldn’t have accepted it. Same goes for smokes. In here you only accept the offer of something if it comes from a close mate, not some bloke you don’t know. Marks you out as weak, accept anything, unable to stand up for yourself. Plus, you’d then owe the guy something in return. That’s what that was all about with Bence this afternoon.’
‘So why are you helping me?’
Steer said, ‘Don’t like to see a young bloke stuffed around.’
‘I’m not a poofter. I tell you that right now.’
‘Didn’t say you were. I’m not either. But we got to pass the time away, right? Might as well give you a few pointers.’
In fact, Steer liked to lecture young crims. It was a side of him that could be irritating, but he couldn’t help himself. He liked to point out where they’d gone wrong. Partly he got a kick out of it, partly he was reminding himself of where he’d stuffed up in the past, and partly it earned him respect—if he didn’t push it.
The next day they called to say he had a visitor. He was escorted to a room that smelt of hopelessness. Denise was waiting for him. She gave him a watery smile, and a kind of sadness settled in Steer.
The visitors’ room was like a cheap cafe, a place of scraping chairs, shouted conversations, coughing smokers and general defeat. Poverty, that was the word, poverty. This was a world of poor men and their poor families. Their clothes were cheap, their haircuts and shoes, their ambitions. Every man in the room had showered and shaved that morning, but most had used soap in place of shampoo, and wore bad shaves from blunt electric razors, and generally looked unwashed and unkempt. It was no place to be meeting your bird.
Steer shook off the sadness. He became vigorous and sharp. ‘Great to see you, sweetheart.’
‘Great to see you, too.’
‘Chaffey’s got to get me into remand.’
Denise touched the back of his hand. ‘I saw him this morning. He’s working on it.’
Steer gave her a loaded look. ‘Any other news?’
‘He rang before I left. He’s confident.’
Steer snarled. ‘Confident? What does he think I pay him for? I want results.’