The Death of the Elver Man (6 page)

‘Got a fag?’

She passed him a cigarette from the packet and lit it for him, leaning back slightly to avoid the cloud of smoke. Kevin puffed away for a moment, then pinched out the glowing end and tucked the butt behind his ear where it was hidden by his hair. He glanced at Alex hopefully and she handed him another, lit it and pointedly pulled the packet back to her side of the table.

‘Don’t make a fuss now,’ he muttered to his mother. ‘This ain’t like Young Offenders. There’s real hard’ns in here. Can’t have no woman crying over us like I’m a kid.’

Alex glanced around, casually thinking he wasn’t much more than a kid, especially compared to most of the men sitting at the other tables. Some, like Kevin, wore their own clothes but most were dressed in the prison uniform of blue shirts, dark trousers and grey jumpers. Her eye was caught by one young man resplendent in yellow and blue harlequin trousers and she stared for a moment before Kevin’s voice said, ‘Escaper, he is. Won’t get far in them now will he?’

She turned back to the young man in front of her.

‘This isn’t an official probation visit Kevin, so we can talk properly next time. Still, if there’s anything you need let me know and I’ll do what I can to get it sent.’

Kevin took a final puff of his cigarette and placed the filter in the ashtray.

‘Could use some more clothes. These is damp in the
morning
from washing ’um. Any chance of some cash for the
commissary
?’ he asked his mother. She began to rummage in her bag before realizing her purse was back at the gatehouse. Alex laid a hand on her shoulder in an attempt to reassure her.

‘We’ll sort that out,’ she said. ‘Now, you’ve got a solicitor haven’t you?’

Kevin shook his head, ‘Not yet I’ve not. I’m makin’ do with the duty muppet. You was going to sort that out Mum!’

Ada shook her head, her mouth working, though she seemed unable to say anything. Alex pushed her chair back from the table and stood up.

‘I’ll go out now,’ she said. ‘You can have a chat in
private
’. As she walked to the back of the room, she decided that this was probably the least private place in the whole City of Bristol.

On the way home, Ada was uncharacteristically silent. After a few attempts at conversation Alex abandoned all pretence of sociability and they drove through the gloom of the
overcast
afternoon, both occupied with their own thoughts. Alex was concerned about Kevin. He had seemed so young, almost fragile seen next to so many muscular older men. She had long been of the opinion that the much celebrated ‘short sharp shock’ programme did nothing except take weedy, wheezy lads and turn them into strong, fit hooligans who could fight back and run away. Her encounter with the inmates of Bristol Prison had done nothing to change her mind. The silence was finally broken as they turned off the main road and began to bump along the track towards the Mallory place.

‘I don’t reckon he’s safe in that place,’ said Ada fiercely.

Alex’s job was to uphold the orders of the court but
privately
she agreed with her. She didn’t think Kevin was safe there either. Despite his tough talk he had looked lonely and scared.

‘You try an’ get him moved.’

Alex almost swerved into the ditch running next to the track.

‘I can’t do that. It’s down to the court and the police. They just allocate them after the hearing.’

‘I don’t care. He’s not safe there. I’ll not rest.’

Alex waited for a moment before saying, ‘Maybe if you get him a solicitor …’

Ada rounded on her, ‘I’m trying! Think I don’t know he needs one? But how do I choose one, eh? And how can I pay for one. Real solicitors, they cost a sight more than legal aid, and Smythe – he’s got my boy’s papers anyway. So what’m I supposed to do?’

Her anger swirled around the car, heavy and rank like the stale tobacco smoke seeping out of Alex’s clothes.

‘Anyway, I went looking last week but I’m not sure some of them as I talked to was solicitors. A couple, they looked so young I think they was just grammar school boys, as made up a certificate for their walls.’ Ada nodded her head as she stared out of the windscreen leaving Alex at a loss for words. Just when she began to feel some empathy with the
Mallorys
she ran up hard against their own special view of the world …

It was just gone four o’clock when she dropped Ada Mallory at her house and set off to find the road back to town. She felt she really ought to go into the office, just in case anything had come up. Be honest, she told herself, she should go in and see Lauren. Despite the stresses of the day she was still
squirming
at the memory of her behaviour the night before. She had been rude, arrogant and childish and the sooner she put it right the better she would feel. At the turning onto the town
road she hesitated – town or home, she wondered. She could no longer stand the smell of herself, the odour of the prison that rose from her clothes and hair. Feeling guilty, but also slightly relieved, she turned right and headed for the calm of her clean, tidy home.

The next morning there was a note on her desk from Garry demanding her immediate attendance. It was dated the day before and she read it with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. She flipped through her diary and realized she’d not entered the Bristol visit – she’d not been sure whether it was ‘official’ and she doubted whether driving prisoner’s relatives around the country counted as part of her duties. She
hesitated
before picking up the phone. Lauren would know, she thought, only Lauren was not in the office – she had rung in the day before and taken a few days off, Pauline informed her rather briskly. Alex replaced the phone, picked up the note and headed upstairs feeling utterly alone.

Garry was reading a file and waved her to a chair
without
looking up. She sat for a few minutes as he continued to ignore her, the silence broken by the rustling of turned pages and the frantic buzzing of a fly trapped behind the
half-drawn
blinds. The windows were tightly closed against the warm spring air and the room was stuffy. Garry was wearing a particularly strong aftershave lotion and the pungent smell began to make her feel quite dizzy. Finally he laid the report down on his desk and looked at her.

‘So, you’ve not made contact with Mr Hinton yet?’

She felt a rush of relief – this wasn’t about her absence yesterday after all.

‘I went out the same evening,’ she said, ‘but there was
no-one
home. I thought I might try again today.’ She heard her ingratiating tones and despised herself for this show of
weakness
. Garry, on the other hand, looked rather pleased. He nodded approvingly and tapped the file in front of him.

‘We’ve got a few more details come through,’ he said, and then lowered his voice forcing her to lean forwards. The
aftershave
became almost overwhelming as he continued.

‘Mr Hinton is a special case. The police will be looking after him for a while, whilst he’s with us. You should not mention him to anyone. Do you understand?’

Her confusion must have shown on her face and Garry gave a deep sigh sending a wave of peppermint mouthwash in her direction.

‘He is a special case, an early release for –
co-operation
shall we say. He’ll only be in the area for a short while and then he’ll move on somewhere where he’s not going to be recognized. Now do you understand?’

‘What do I do about his case then?’ Alex asked.

Garry waved a hand at her. ‘Oh, go and see him, make sure he doesn’t need anything and make it look like a
normal
release order in your notes,’ he said. ‘Obviously there are some issues of confidentiality here and I expect you to be
discreet
. The fewer people know about him the better really.’

Alex nodded and rose from the chair. ‘Of course.’

‘Let me know when he’s moving on,’ said Garry, as she walked to the door. ‘Oh and by the way, where were you for the whole of yesterday?’ he added.

She didn’t think the day could get much worse but she was wrong. Hurrying down the stairs to the office, her head
humming
in white-hot fury at Garry’s latest scathing estimate of her worth as a probation officer, she bounced off Paul
Malcolm
labouring up to her office.

‘Oh, gosh, sorry Alex,’ he said, leaning back against the wall. ‘Ah, let me catch my breath.’

Alex stepped back, stumbling as her foot caught the riser behind her but managed to grab the rail in time.

‘No Paul, really, it was my fault,’ she said, trying to slip past him around the corner but Paul was not to be deterred.

‘Well, now I’ve got you I wonder if I might have a quick word about Brian.’

It was late by the time she escaped Paul’s well-intentioned attempts to assist Brian, and Alex still had to finish her work for the court later in the week. She sat at her desk struggling
to make sense of her notes, desperately trying to force them into something the magistrates (and more importantly
Lauren
) might recognize as a competent social enquiry report. Finally she abandoned the whole mess as the light faded from the sky outside her window. The car park was empty and she climbed into her car, cursing the parking restrictions on her road that forced her to drive in each day just to avoid a ticket. The memory of her interview with Garry and her grovelling assurance she was on her way to see the mysterious client mocked her as, teeth grinding in frustration, she turned the ignition key. Flinging the Citroën into reverse she swooped round the empty space, turning towards the exit when she spotted a movement in the rear-view mirror. She slammed on her brakes and tried to swerve, an impossible manoeuvre when going backwards. The heavy car slid sideways,
skidding
180 degrees and came to rest in the midst of the
dustbins
. Shaken but unhurt she scrambled out and hurried round the vehicle. A skinny figure in ragged jeans and a floppy
T-shirt
was sprawled amidst the scattered rubbish. His feet, she noticed, were bare and filthy. No matter how hard they tried no-one could get Simon the Lorry Boy to wear shoes.

‘Bloody hell! Are you hurt?’ She reached out a hand but Simon shook himself, scattering bits of shredded paper and the contents of ashtrays around him.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘The warning sensor doesn’t work on my truck. I’ve been meaning to get it fixed but I can’t afford it. You wouldn’t have heard me coming.’ He mimed turning the ignition, looked over his shoulder and began to drive his imaginary lorry out of the bin store making soft engine noises as he went.

‘Don’t tell my Boss, will you? I could be fired for that,’ he said anxiously as he shunted what appeared to be a fantasy trailer back and forth before lining himself up with the gate. Then with a wave of his hand he was gone, out onto the road to ‘drive’ the three miles home. Alex opened her mouth to call after him but it was too late, and, anyway, Simon couldn’t hear her above the noise of his engine. She hoped he
would stick to the pavements on the way out to Petherton. Simon was a familiar figure to the locals, who tended to look out for him, but there were already a lot of tourists around, strangers who hooted and swore as they swerved around the barefoot boy. Clambering back into her car she turned the key and knew at once something was wrong. The
suspension
on the driver’s side was fine but the other side remained firmly enmeshed in the bins. Several expensive looking
warning
lights came on and stayed on until she removed the key. She clambered out and rested her head wearily on the roof of the car, closing her eyes as she wondered how she’d ended up here, in this strange place amongst these strange people.

She managed to get the car back into her parking space with the help of Bert, the janitor, and together they tidied up the worst of the rubbish. Bert flipped the most damaged bins around to hide the dents and nodded in approval at their handiwork.

‘You just get off now,’ he said. ‘You look just worn out. Mebbe you’m due a bit of a holiday?’

Alex felt a lump rise in her throat at his kindness. ‘I’m fine Bert, really. We’re so short staffed at the moment I can’t just go off and leave everyone else in the lurch.’

Bert raised his eyebrows. ‘Well, you look after yerself. You’m here late too much. Won’t do you no good, getting so tired and, well ….’ Here he lowered his voice and glanced up at the windows behind him. ‘’Tis not like it’s appreciated much, now is it?’

Alex followed his gaze up to her Senior’s window. Things must be bad, she thought, if even Bert knew how Garry felt about her.

The next day she arrived on foot, before anyone else and spent several hours catching up with her case notes. She had a number of social enquiry reports to prepare for the court but was at a loss without a car. She needed to visit two of the households before she could finish the background sections
but they were both out in the countryside and the only buses ran to factory hours, collecting workers for the giant plastics complex in town and delivering them home again after their shifts. She gazed out of the window, chewing a pencil and punching the keys to her calculator. She could either pay for the taxis to go and do her work visits or pay to get the car fixed. Her budget was not big enough for both.

‘Shit!’ she exclaimed, throwing the pencil across the room just as the door opened and an unfamiliar face peered round.

‘Whoa, bloody hell!’ said a woman’s voice, the owner ducking back out of harm’s way.

Alex leaned to one side and peered at the doorway, ‘Can I help you?’ The woman looked in, poised for flight.

‘Yes?’ asked Alex. She knew she was being less than
gracious
but she didn’t feel very welcoming. The woman entered and held out her hand.

‘Hi, I’m Susan but everyone calls me Sue,’ she said with a smile.

Alex blinked at her, her tired brain running through the possibilities – client, client’s girlfriend, probably not old enough to be client’s mother ….