Authors: Julie Shaw
Malvern sat and waited while the governor deliberated. It was a longish wait, and he wondered if he’d made any difference. He was a hard man, was Rawson; a bit of an unknown quantity as a governor, and Malvern couldn’t second guess what he’d decide. Probably to stick with his ‘two weeks, no let-offs’, he judged, which meant he was surprised when Rawson finally spoke.
‘You’re right, Robert. Yes, you’re right, of
course
. I suppose he
could
be forgiven for such an act given the circumstances.’ He took his glasses off. ‘Yes, okay then, we’ll do it. Bring him back out of solitary, though not back to B. No –’ he consulted some paperwork on his desk. ‘He can go onto D block. And, let me see … yes, have him banged him up with the new inmate up there. Name of Joseph Devanney.’
Devanney. It wasn’t a name Malvern recognised. But then if he was new there was no reason why he should. He stood up and nodded. ‘Right, sir. Devanney. Anything I should know about him?’
The governor, who had already picked up his pen by way of dismissal, perched his reading glasses back on his nose and looked at Malvern over them. ‘What? – Oh, no. No, Robert, nothing that I’m aware of. Now, if there’s nothing else, I really need to get on.’
Vinnie scrubbed his skin in the shower until it burned. He’d been on the verge of cracking up when the two screws had come to collect him – and with a new understanding of what solitary meant. It had been hell. Seven days of hell, no doubt about it, and he could see how the blinding, all-consuming monotony and silence could, given long enough, be enough to send even the hardest of men over the edge.
Locked in that tiny, cold cell for 23 hours a day had been a killer. Though righting the wrong that bastard Claude had done kept him going early on, Vinnie knew he couldn’t have hacked it for much longer. He couldn’t bear the lack of human contact, or the sensory deprivation, and vowed that from now on he would have to conduct his business in a more controlled manner and in less conspicuous places.
He was a little miffed that he was going to D wing, however. He’d just started to enjoy himself on B and had been making friends. Oh well, he thought. He’d at least see them in the library and during yard time. The good thing was that he was out of the fucking hell-hole, and perhaps the switch to D would only be temporary. And the one thing he wasn’t going to do was mention it. After all, it might be the result of some administrative fuck-up, and he was definitely not going to point that out to them.
Dressed in fresh clothes he was soon taken up to a corridor on D wing. ‘Here we are,’ said the screw, who had a particularly irritating smirk. The sort of smirk that needed wiping off, ideally.
There was already someone in there. He was an unremarkable-looking man, perhaps in his fifties, and as soon as he saw Vinnie, he stood up and extended a hand.
‘Alright, lad?’ he said pleasantly as Vinnie shook it. ‘You must be young Vincent. I’ve heard all about you.’
And you’ve grabbed the fucking bottom bunk, Vinnie thought. He turned to the screw. ‘This is where I’m staying, then?’
‘Not up to your standard, McKellan?’ the screw said mildly, having probably noticed that too. ‘Ah, diddums, but don’t worry, it’s probably only temporary. Now get your fucking arse in there and say hello to your new bum chum.’
Vinnie stepped inside. The cell was identical to the one he’d left the week before apart from the fact that there were no pictures or photos on the walls. He guessed his new cellmate had only recently arrived too. ‘The name’s Vinnie,’ he said as he let the hand go, ‘Not Vincent. And you are?’
‘Joe. The name’s Joseph, but I go by Joe. What you in for?’
Vinnie laughed. So he
was
new. ‘You don’t ask things like that, mate. This your first time inside?’
The man blushed. Actually blushed. ‘Yeah, first time, lad. Last as well, I hope. Can’t say as I like the fucking place much.’
‘You’ll get used to it,’ Vinnie answered, as he set about unpacking. He didn’t have the energy to bring up the bunk situation right now. He’d just get his stuff out and around him, make his space seem more homely. His gear had beaten him to it; a big bundle sat on top of his locker. Bar his own clothes, stored ready for when they spat him back out again, all he currently had in the world. His worldly goods, in fact – his photographs, his small sheaf of letters from his mam and sister, his posters and his precious dozen or so books.
Joe watched him unpack, yapping on inanely about nothing in particular, and right away Vinnie knew they were not going to be friends. It wasn’t his age – Gordon was the same sort of vintage – just that he knew they’d have nothing in common. The man was a lightweight, a divvy, a bit of a girl. Topping all that, however, was that he was trying much too hard, and, not wanting to have someone fawning all over him like some tragic cling-on, Vinnie knew he’d spend as little time with him as possible.
Starting now. ‘Listen, mate,’ he said, putting his pile of books on one of the empty lockers, ‘I’m not being funny or owt, but I’ve just come up from the block, and all this small talk is giving me a headache. Nothing personal, but I wouldn’t mind half an hour of privacy while I get my head back on, if that’s alright with you.’
Joe nodded with the irritating anxious-to-please demeanour of a class new boy who was still trying to find his place. ‘Of course. Suit yourself, lad, I was only trying to be friendly. I suppose I could go down to the rec area for a bit. If that’s what you want.’
Vinnie nodded. ‘I do, mate. Thanks for that.’ He climbed up to his own bunk with a paperback and lay down on it. ‘I’ll be sorted once I’ve got my bearings again.’
Joe left the cell and Vinnie sighed. This was going to be hard. He’d never shared a cell with someone he didn’t really like before, and if they didn’t move him, the next couple of years were going to be hard. And he felt restless, too, unable to relax and perhaps doze. Perhaps a smoke would help settle him down.
As soon as the thought hit him, his craving for tobacco intensified, and he climbed down again; perhaps he’d go for a wander and see if he could find someone he knew well enough to bum a roll-up from. Though there was a thought. It was odds on that this Joe character smoked, and while the cat was away – well, why the fuck not? He’d have his baccy stashed here somewhere, so it was only a case of looking, so he set about doing so right away.
A quick riffle through drawers and lockers revealed nothing, but that was perhaps to be expected. Green as he was, he’d know enough to know to hide the things he valued, and baccy was of value – it was currency, for fuck’s sake. It was just a question of where, so he carried on till he was rewarded, which didn’t take long. He found the baccy tin in the corner of the foot end of the bunk, under the mattress.
The tin had been painted black and had an engraving etched onto it. A childish attempt at a duck, by the looks of it. But it wasn’t just the baccy tin that was stashed under the mattress, there was a porn mag as well – so far, so par for the course – and, slipped inside it, a soiled and well-thumbed manila envelope.
Working on the basis that the more you knew the better off you generally were, Vinnie took the lack of a seal as an open invitation – it was probably a letter of no interest, but no harm in reading it even so. It was all potential ammunition, after all. But, what he pulled from it wasn’t a letter, it was three Polaroid photos.
He took them out and turned them over and felt the blood begin to pound in his temples. Three photographs, all of the same girl. A young girl – a very young girl. Four perhaps? No more. And in the most vile, disturbing, provocative, sick poses he had seen in his young life. In one she was in a party dress, staring blankly for the camera, lifting the dress up at the front to reveal she had no underwear on. One was of her sitting in a chair, legs splayed at either side, resting on the chair arms – again, without underwear – and the third … Vinnie gagged as he looked at the on the third picture: she was naked, full frontal, wearing nothing but scarlet lipstick, her tiny mouth circling a peeled banana.
Vinnie couldn’t breathe. He threw down the photos as though they had burned him. Then put them back where he had found them along with the baccy tin and porn mag. He couldn’t quite believe it but it was true even so. They’d put him in a cell with a fucking filthy nonce.
Keeping calm, that was the thing, Vinnie realised. Devanney would be back soon, and he needed to have his head straight. He needed space – that was the main thing. Space to gather his wits and think about what the fuck was happening here. Space to deal with the hammering that had started inside his chest, the rising nausea, the sheer disgust he was feeling, as the images kept flashing in his brain.
Why? Why had they put him in with this character?
They knew about the sicko. They must do, because they always, always did.
Think, Vinnie, think!
He kept telling himself. He needed to get out – put himself among friendly familiar faces – so he headed off down the corridor, to the melee of regular guys, even though he hardly registered the many welcome greetings that accompanied his progress through the wing. He’d head to the library, he decided – familiar, reassuring territory, where, among friends, he could cool down and decide what to do.
Rounding the final corner, he cannoned into Malvern. ‘Whoah, lad,’ said Malvern. ‘Where’s the bleeding fire?’
‘Oh, sorry, sir,’ he said automatically, realising who it was.
‘I’ll live,’ Malvern joshed. Then he looked at him more carefully. ‘You settling in your new cell alright?’
‘It’s alright, sir,’ Vinnie told him, lowering his eyes, wanting to keep schtum.
‘And your cellmate, McKellan – he alright as well?’
Vinnie shot his head up. He knew something. He fucking knew something. ‘Why d’you ask, sir? Is there something I should know?’
But Malvern’s face was telling him nothing. Actually, no – not nothing. It was telling Vinnie that he knew nothing. ‘Not that I know of, lad,’ he said, and Vinnie judged that he meant it. ‘Just asking if he’s alright, that’s all. To your liking.’ He smiled then. ‘We don’t want you getting yourself back into trouble, do we?’
Vinnie took a deep breath. He’d learned nothing of any use here. ‘Right, sir. Um, no we don’t. But I need to get to the library, if that’s okay. I just want to know my timetable now I’m back.’
Malvern stepped aside amiably and let him through.
Once at the library Vinnie was pleased to see his mate Eddie Ruddock manning the front desk. He was an old timer, in his sixties, and was apparently part of the furniture. He’d been heard to joke that he’d been living at Thorp Arch so long, that no one even remembered what he’d got sent down for. He had no desire to go back to the outside either. Prison was his life and he liked it that way. He grinned his toothless grin when he saw Vinnie.
‘Now then, young ginger,’ he said, ‘nice to see you back in circulation. You come to give me a hand, voluntary like?’
Vinnie flashed him a smile. He felt calmer now, seeing him. ‘Not today, Rudders,’ he said, ‘but I’ll be back, don’t you worry. Meantime, though, mate, I need a big favour.’
‘Name it, lad,’ Eddie said. ‘If there’s owt I can do, you know I’ll do it.’
Vinnie told the old man what he’d found and, as he did so, felt a plan start emerging in his mind. Well, not so much a plan as a compulsion. A juggernaut of a decision that – this being prison and nonces being nonces – his old friend would no more have tried to talk him out of than fly. In fact, he was keen to help. Nonces had it coming and it needed to come from somewhere, after all. ‘Leave it a bit,’ he said. ‘Wait till just before lock-up, then go and look behind the toilet in the shower block. You’ll find what you need waiting for you there, lad.’
The hours dragged, particularly when it got to evening. Dragged as only hours could drag when the first thing on your mind every time you left it to its own devices was a naked four-year-old girl posing for a Polaroid. If the heat in his mind could have been matched by a similar heat in his body, he would have burned through his mattress straight onto the animal currently lying in the bunk below.
He’d been and retrieved what Eddie Ruddock had arranged for him and since getting hold of it – a shank; a crude knife made in this case from a razor blade tightly tied to a length of wood – it was all he could do not to attack Devanney on the spot. It, too, burned, from its position under the pillow his head was resting on, but he must wait. He mustn’t move till they were well into the small hours and the nonce beneath him was in a suitably deep sleep.
Vinnie flexed and unflexed his knuckles in the darkness. Whose daughter was it? His? Or – another sickening thought – his granddaughter? There was no danger of him drifting off.
Devanney’s screams, when they came, could be heard all over the prison, because Vinnie had beaten him almost to a pulp.
It hadn’t taken long, either, because Vinnie had been in such a frenzy, tearing at his skin with his nails, gouging at his face, biting him repeatedly, and then, when he had finally knocked all remaining fight out of him, the pièce de résistance, the appropriate grand finale. He took his bloodied shank, used it to tear down Devanney’s pyjamas and then started hacking at his balls.
The blood was everywhere. Went everywhere. Fountained from the writhing man’s groin, covering Vinnie from head to toe with its squirting mess. He didn’t care. In fact, by now, he felt calm, almost detached. Detached enough to notice, out of the corner of his eye, the two screws who were just outside, doing nothing.
He even glanced at them and experienced a weird kind of satisfaction to see them quickly dodge back out of sight, into the shadows. He had been set up. And perhaps he’d always known that. Because as he slashed the knife repeatedly at the mush he’d made of Devanney’s testicles, it all made sense. The early release from the block, the screw telling him he wouldn’t be long in his new cell, even Mr Malvern acting all fucking CID about his cellmate. Even Mr Malvern. So perhaps he’d read that wrong.