A tap on the door. ‘Johnno?’
A split-split second. ‘Hi. Come in.’
‘Thought I’d give you the nod – we eat in ten minutes. Canteen is down two flights and along the corridor, but you don’t need to know that, just follow the stampede.’
‘Great, thanks.’
‘I’m Chris, by the way.’
Simon went over and shook hands with the warder. Stocky, hair gelled. Big nose. Dark blue uniform trousers, light blue shirt. No tie. No shoulder tabs.
‘Takes a bit of getting used to, this. Can’t remember the last time anyone wanted to shake my hand before today.’
‘It’s all about respect. It’s about a totally different feel – technically, this is a prison, right, but first and foremost it’s a community, a therapeutic community.’
‘Nice.’
‘And it’s not just about being friendly, but it helps if things get difficult, anything blows up – good basis.’
‘So do things blow up?’
‘Not often, and if they do, generally they’re well contained. Surprising really … there’s a lot of hurt feelings, a lot of pent-up anger and frustration … It’s not an easy ride in here, Johnno.’
‘I know.’
‘I doubt if you do. Anyway, if things get a bit heated, the background – that this is a community, people respect each other, look out for one another – that all counts. Meanwhile, enjoy the caviar and champagne.’
Which was watery chicken casserole, mashed potatoes, carrots and bread pudding.
So far as food was concerned at least, Stitchford was a prison.
A warder stood up and gave out a couple of notices, then consulted a list. ‘Darren Watson, Brian Field, Johnno Miles – you’re on pod duty next week, breakfasts.’
A man sidled up to Simon. ‘Bad luck.’
Will Fernley. The pleasant face. The relaxed self-confidence. The voice. He hadn’t bothered to try an Estuary accent.
‘Too right.’
‘You new on B?’
Simon nodded but curtly, then looked down at his plate. He caught a glance between a couple of the others.
‘There’s a knock-up game later. You any good?’
Man on his left. Weasly. Acne. Looked about fifteen, was probably twenty-five. He was familiar with the type. No. He stopped his train of thought dead. He wasn’t familiar. He wasn’t a copper. He had to guard against pigeonholing this one and that one. It wasn’t his business.
‘Ping-pong,’ someone else said. ‘What did you think?’
‘Could have been pool.’
‘You any good at pool?’
‘No. Ping-pong’s OK.’
‘Footie?’
‘So-so. Played basketball a lot.’
He left out cricket.
There was a sudden racket as people all scraped back chairs, dropped cutlery into metal bins.
‘Johnno Miles?’
‘Yup.’
‘You’re wanted.’
Simon followed the warder up a floor into the central area. Doors right, doors left, all painted different colours. Bright blue. Grass green. Orange. Yellow. Pale brown. Purple. No red. No black.
‘Wait in here please.’
The warder came back and led him down the corridor. Footsteps on the landing above. A roar of laughter. Another door.
‘Johnno Miles, Governor.’
The blind was drawn. A low-voltage desk lamp, facing downwards.
He was a very large man, almost bald. Navy suit, with the jacket on his chair back. White shirt. Navy and dark red tie.
He came round the desk, hand outstretched. ‘Ray Norman.’
Simon hesitated. ‘Johnno Miles aka Simon Serrailler.’
‘Take a seat. If asked, some of your signatures weren’t on the right line or within the box or perfectly legible. Probably no one will ask … not this time anyway.’
He sat heavily in his chair and put one knee over the other, fingertips of his hands together. Looked calmly and steadily at Simon.
‘I’m going to say this first if you don’t mind. I was absolutely and totally against your coming in here but I was overruled. I don’t like infiltrators, I don’t like secrets, I don’t like being party to covert actions. Having given way I’ve set one or two of my own rules. You’re here for a good reason, I grant you, but that is the only reason, and you do nothing unrelated to that reason. You are not here to gather any information about any other inmate, to pass on anything you hear, no matter what it is, other than what’s within your remit and concerning Will Fernley. Understood?’
‘Perfectly. I’ve no reason or wish to do otherwise. What I find out from or about anyone else goes no further. I understand your concerns, Governor.’
‘Ray.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Do you want to be Simon in this room?’
‘Better not.’
‘Wise.’
‘If there were any other way at all of finding out who Fernley’s co-offenders were, believe me, it would be taken. It’s all been tried. Dead end after dead end. Nothing. These guys are out there and they’re still offending and you don’t need me to tell you the nature of the offences.’
The governor was still looking at him, but it was not a challenging look.
‘Have you met him yet?’
‘Just now, at supper. We exchanged a couple of words.’
‘So, no time to get any sense of the man?’
‘Not really.’
‘Want my take on things?’
‘I want whatever I can get.’
‘Right. We get a fairly broad cross section of sex offenders coming into Stitchford and remember, they’re here by choice. They ask to come. Every single man is here because he wants to be and he’s waited a long time to get a place, during which time he has been fully assessed. We don’t want places taken up by those who think it might be a soft option – it’s not of course, but word gets out that you have a nice room of your own with adjacent lav serving only half a dozen others, and you can even buy your own cushions and curtains from a catalogue. We have young men, though we never admit juvenile offenders, we have middle-aged men and older men, though no one over seventy. We have lifers and those on a five-year term – no one comes here who is serving less than that. We have men who have a good IQ and quite a few with decent educational qualifications – we had a couple who had degrees. Men need to be of average intelligence and above to go through all the assessment questionnaires and be able to gain insight into themselves and have empathy with others, and above all to learn. It’s about a different form of learning. Self-learning. We have the strictest “no drugs, no alcohol” policy. One hit and you’re out, that day, no excuses are heard and there are no second chances. The men in here have seen it happen – and it works. By and large this place has always been clean.
‘There’s zero tolerance of offensive behaviour towards one another, so any arguments are defused and any violence. Same applies as to drugs and drink – no second chance. We teach respect and mutual cooperation – and that works. So the men – we don’t call them inmates, by the way, and we try not to use the word “prisoner” – the men help one another. There are good relationships with staff and my staff pride themselves on openness and fairness, and they believe in respect too, which cuts both ways, but they don’t give an inch if there’s rule breaking and offensive behaviour. They’re still prison officers, all of them except the psychs and the therapists.’
He leaned back in his chair and swivelled it slightly from side to side.
‘You are going to join in the therapy, you’ll be everywhere Fernley is. You’ve got your own story. Are you confident about it?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re Johnno Miles. Your crimes are horrendous. In any general prison you’d be beaten up on a regular basis. You’re scum. You’re a nonce. What you’ve done doesn’t bear thinking about. But you’ll have to describe it, and how you feel about it, many times over. Act it out. Paint it out – we have drama and art therapy and they’re important parts of the treatment. You don’t have children, I take it?’
‘No. I’m not married. Nor gay.’
‘Right. I’m not keeping you any longer or it will look odd, but you can ask to see me – the warders make appointments. I don’t have an open-door policy, I can’t, but I’m about the place a lot and I always see anyone who asks, by said appointment, and I try not to keep them waiting. Your contact has my emergency number as well as the general one. I’ll ensure any messages from him reach you but unless there’s something urgent there will be radio silence.’
So he hadn’t been told about the Snoopy. Jed would have a good reason for that.
‘One question. I know you can’t talk about cure rates but how successful is this therapeutic community regime?’
‘How long have you got? It can work, unquestionably. I have experience of that. In terms of rates of reoffending, in terms of rehabilitation safely into the community … in terms of the individual’s own mental state … it can work, and it works with those men who are desperate for it to work and who can’t any longer live inside themselves as they are and who dread their own future if they’re unable to change. But for most paedophile offenders in prison, and a lot of them in here, there is no cure. It can’t work. There’s only damage limitation. Can you find your way back?’
‘Probably but if I don’t it will just add authenticity. Thanks for your cooperation, Ray.’
He meant it. The buck stopped with the governor, and if things went badly wrong, it was his judgement that would come under scrutiny and his job that would be on the line.
He found his way back. From a games room he heard the pock-pock of table tennis, the click of a pool ball. He hesitated. His instinct was to ignore both and head upstairs to his room to read and think, digest the onslaught of new impressions. But what would Johnno Miles do? Get together with the others for some company? Forget himself in a game?
He edged up to the door and looked in. A dozen or more men, two games of table tennis ongoing, others watching, cheering or groaning, waiting their turn to play. A couple of them looked up but he recognised no one.
‘You in?’ one of them called out.
He joined them. A few names. Outstretched hands. Offers of a chair. He had to quell his inevitable instinct to ask questions, speculate on what these men had done, set a distance between them and himself.
‘Johnno Miles … Johnno Miles … Johnno …’
‘Cheers, Johnno.’
‘How you doing?’
‘You any good at this?’
He waited for twenty minutes until a space came at the table. He had played a lot and he knew he could thrash an average player but too often threw his game away. Sam usually beat him.
Sam.
A flash of memory – Sam racing into the sea carrying Felix, who was squealing with pleasure, on a family weekend in Devon last summer. He and Cat sitting on a rock drinking bottles of lemonade through straws. Hannah making an elaborate seaweed-and-shell collage in the flat sand.
And in this room, cheerfully playing ping-pong, men who could never be trusted near one of them, never be trusted on that beach full of laughing children.
He smashed a serve across the table.
Three fast games later, the man called Malc shook his hand. ‘Sorry, mate.’
Simon’s serve had taken him ahead for a couple of games, after which he had played wildly, and Malc had knocked him all over the table.
‘I’ll get you at basketball.’
‘I don’t play basketball – not against guys who are ten foot tall.’
Two other players were taking over the table. Simon watched their game for a moment, then left. The place was quiet. Music came from a few rooms along his corridor. As he passed one, Will Fernley came out, carrying a towel. Nodded. Smiled.
‘Finding your feet?’
‘Pretty much. Shan’t know until it starts in earnest, I suppose.’
Fernley smiled again. ‘It’s not a walk in the park but you’ll be fine.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Hunch.’
‘Hope it’s right. I’m Johnno, by the way.’
‘Will Fernley. Off for a shower. You need a shower as often as you can get one in here.’
‘Seems clean enough to me.’
‘I wasn’t referring to the housekeeping.’