Also by D M Macdonald

  Hannah Tree

  Bent Not Broken (Coming Soon)

  Harry Nichols: Investigative Journalist

  When Yesterday Comes Calling

  A Matter of Honour

  Standalone

  No Place to Run

  Mission Murder

  BENT NOT BROKEN

  JUSTICE IS LIKE TRUTH - ALL OR NOTHING

  D M MACDONALD

  Copyright © 2022 by D M Macdonald

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is entirely a work of fiction. The characters and incidents are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  https://www.dmmacdonaldauthor.com

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Afterword

  About the Author

  Also by D M Macdonald

  1

  I like my sleep. It's hard enough to get any with screams, moans and clanging coming from outside my cell, without my cellmate sobbing and howling day and night inside it. They keep telling me it's not a cell, it's a room. I am sick of being surrounded by people who know the truth but tell you you're wrong when you say it. It's a cell.

  And this is one of the very few two person cells. Double rooms they call them. Not much bigger than the singles but with bunks. Two for the price of one. I'd been as comfortable as you could expect in my single cell, then two days ago, without any explanation, I was moved to this one and saddled with Miss Whinge and Howl. I reckon my saying, why me, was fair enough.

  I hate cellmates. I accepted that I had to stay in that hole of a place but torture is a crime and sharing with this dumb bitch was torture. To be fair the occasional yell or even scream because of bad dreams is okay. I woke myself up doing that sometimes, but two days and nights of this was a deal breaker.

  Obviously complaining to the screws wasn't an option. Anything more than a request for constipation relief was the limit. As far as I was concerned I was a prisoner of war. Name rank and serial number only was my code. That night after another hour of this stupid kid's whimpering escalating into downright howling I'd had enough. I swung down from my bunk and stood in front of her.

  `Okay, what's the fucking problem?'

  She got such a shock that she stopped immediately. Her eyes bugged and her jaw dropped onto her skinny chest. That's when I noticed for the first time that she was a mess. Her face was wet with tears and she had two black eyes. That was just the bruises. The whites of them were red. I stared at her. You don't get eyes that red just from crying. Even for two days. Around the edges maybe but not the whites. I'd been around long enough to know that someone must have given her a hiding. A bad one.

  She hiccupped and wiped her face with her arm. `You wouldn't understand,' she muttered, another sob escaping.

  She was right, but anything to stop the noise. `Try me and if you start that howling again I'll deck you.' The sobbing started again. `I told you. Stop that and tell me what's going on.' I didn't really want to know but I couldn't put up with the crap anymore. `Well?'

  `I think I'm going to die.'

  `What? Don't be stupid. How old are you anyway?'

  She was one of the younger girls, around thirteen at a guess.

  `Fifteen, why?' I shrugged. So a baby face and playing it. I'd keep that in mind because she wasn't that much younger than me.

  `I don't mean I'm sick or nothin', I mean they're goin' to kill me.'

  `Oh yeah, who's they?' She burst into even louder tears. `I can't help you if you keep doing that,' I snapped. `Stop now or you're on your own.'

  I was so surprised at what I'd said that I had to grab the side of the ladder to steady myself. Had I offered to help someone? I never did that. I didn't give a shit about other people's problems. I didn't ask for help with mine and I expected them to take care of theirs. It was the only way to survive in a world that's always out to get you.

  She looked up at me again. `I don't think you can. I don't think anyone can.'

  That did it. I didn't have to help her, I had to win against her enemy. Totally different.

  `Okay, what's your name again?' Maybe I should have known because it was two days since she was put in here, but I'd paid as little attention to her as I could, given her noise.

  `Shelby.'

  `Right, Shelby, who's after you?'

  She looked pointedly at the camera high on the wall and whispered, `I can't tell you that or I'll be dead before I—'

  `Jesus! We're the only ones in here, Shelby. Like just us.'

  She stared at me, wet faced, eyes wide and said nothing. That told me everything. She was shit scared of the screws. Whether they were threatening her and what about, we'd see.

  `Right. That's cool,' I said smiling at her. She wanted to play silly bugger games. Why not, it was keeping her quiet. I mimed, I get it. I picked up my notebook and a pencil then did something I never, ever did. I sat next to her. Then I wrote - don't nod or smile - just point - screws alone or someone else or both? -

  She pointed at the - both -. So she was terrified of the screws and some other prisoners. They hated me describing us as prisoners. In Juvenile Detention we were detainees. We were detained in this nice, safe and secure environment where we could be assisted to address our offending behaviour. Pity about the people whose offending behaviour was why we'd offended in the first place. They were walking free.

  I whispered to her that we sit on her bed with our backs to the door. In the bottom bunk the camera, there for our safety, couldn't catch what we were doing. I wrote - why? -

  She took the pencil - I seen something -

  I wrote - What? -

  She whispered, `I can't tell you? I told you that.'

  I sighed. This was one dumb kid. As if the screws wouldn't know someone was hiding something when they whispered that they couldn't tell a cell mate? Sheesh. I kept humouring her though. It was the red eyes.

  I thought of something. `Shelby, where were you before last Sunday?'

  `Here.'

  `No. I mean what cell were you in before this one? Were you sharing and with who?' I might get more sense out of her ex-roommate. She buried her face in a tissue, shook her head and mumbled something. I took a guess. `Solitary? What did you do?'

  `Nothin', I was in the infirmary for a day and then they stuck me in there for three days. They never said why.'

  I gave her a look. If you were put in solitary there was usually a good reason.

  `They didn't,' she wailed.

  Maybe it was because she was screaming and howling and drove everyone nuts so they put her away in a cell by herself. Made sense to me. They should have left her there until she shut up, then I wouldn't have to put up with her. What did I do that she was transferred to share with me?

  I wasn't known for being hostile to the screws or anyone else. I just didn't connect with anyone. Was someone in the establishment trying to protect this kid? That would mean that someone who decided where to put prisoners knew she was in danger. Did they think I'd defend her?

  Fat chance. I thought I'd made it quite clear to anyone who was listening that I didn't give a shit about any of them. Staff or prisoners. It was three years since I'd been in here when I was only twelve. I might have been ready to fight back then but now I didn't care enough to be bothered.

  Except I was ready to fight. Not for me or because I cared about that silly bitch but because…I was bored. People think being locked away from society is the punishment but it's really the boredom that gets you.

  So maybe they, whoever they were, were right. They'd spotted me getting restless and looking for diversion. My question was, if someone knew enough to worry about the kid, why didn't they protect her themselves? It must mean that the dangerous actor was a prisoner and they didn't know who it was.

  There were a few contenders for most dangerous. The usual pecking order of all institutions existed in spades here. The violent were on top with gangs around them. Snitches were on the bottom and everyone else just watched their backs.

  A loud-mouthed bitch called Ellie was top cocky then. She reckoned she'd killed someone in a fight and constantly showed everyone her scar. It wasn't bad either. A slash across her ribs. Probably about ten stitches. I reckoned she knew all about fighting before she came into the place when I saw her attack a girl who called her out. It was brutal.

  I'd learned a lot by watching prison fights. Like how to fight really dirty. It was nothing like what passed for prison fighting in movies. If you went around punching people's faces like they do all you'd get was cracked knuckles. And nobody goes down like they do in movies. They step back and come after you again twice as mad. Much better to hit soft bits and twist small bones you can break, like fingers.

  I hadn't been in any fights this time but I'd had a couple during the first time I was inside. I learned a lot from them too and reckoned I could probably hold my own one on one at least, if I had to. And if Shelby's fear was j ustified I just might. But not against a whole gang, so I had to find out what my, her, enemy was.

  Chatting in our cell wasn't going to cut it. If she was right, there might be at least one screw involved, so we needed a safe spot to talk. The only place like that that I knew of, was the art room. It had the usual camera and sound surveillance but the teacher was an enthusiastic idiot who played music to inspire us.

  With the silly cow ranting on about the therapeutic value of art in helping us wrestle with our demons as well, the screws must have been shitting themselves trying to hear anything we said. As for my demons it was art that got me into trouble in the first place.

  My grade three teacher was concerned about some of my drawings and reported it to the principal. She called my parents and it all went pear shaped from there. I was eight. One thing I'd gleaned from listening around here was that what most of the prisoners had in common was sexual abuse experiences similar to mine. Some were even younger.

  It was nothing special to many of them. But I wasn't having that. Being one of a crowd only meant a lot of people suffered unjustly. It helped me work out my revenge plan. When I got out of there I was going to get the man who'd done this to me. The others could accept it if they liked, I wouldn't. I was after justice.

  That was the moment I realised Shelby wasn't just about boredom and winning a fight. She'd said it couldn't be done which was a red rag to me but it was really about justice. She was being bullied and I could stop that.

  That was the other reason people got put in solitary. To protect them. It was usually snitches or girls who'd hurt kids. Both are likely to be seriously injured by the other girls. Shelby had been, so was that why?

  I told her I needed quiet to think up a plan to help her and that worked. She sniffled a bit but there was no more howling. I began to wonder if that was always just to get my attention. She really wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer. I had no idea what I was going to do. I wasn't even sure that I'd do anything. Or that I even could.

  2

  I didn't need Shelby's weeping and wailing to mess with my sleep that night. My own nightmares woke me just as first light appeared through the small, barred window high in the wall. I lay for a time wondering about little Shelby. She wasn't all that little though. About average, skinny with straight light-brown hair, small, baby features and so colourless you'd never notice her in a crowd.

  Mind you, most girls were little to me. At a hundred and eighty centimetres I was a lot taller than most of the girls here and my piled-up reddish-blonde dreadlocks added a couple of centimetres. If my size as well as my attitude intimidated people I could use that to…discourage…Shelby's attacker.

  So far I didn't know anything about Shelby. Was this her first offence? If so, what was it? If not, how many times had she been inside and what for? Did she have family outside and could we get help from them? Like information at least? She said she wasn't a snitch but was she? I had no idea how to find out any of that stuff without actually asking her about it. And that broke the code.

  It was an unspoken rule that you never asked anyone in Juvie why they were there. It was an invasion that could bring reprisals. Of course many told, boasted even and lots leaked but if you didn't want anyone to know they didn't. There was a risk in that though. If someone took a dislike to you the word might go around that you'd done something disgusting. Like abuse kids or old people. I took that risk and it looked like Shelby did too. I hadn't heard anything about her but even I would have heard if there were any black marks against her.

  Right now I had to find out what she saw? A drug handover? Highly possible. Drugs were here. How they got in was always the question. Visitors, screws and or other staff people. Like psychologists, social workers and teachers. Any or all, who knew? But nobody dobbed. Apart from accidents that was the only thing that might lead to a death.

  Teachers were plentiful and often transient so they were most likely to be suspected. Because we were a juvenile facility the powers that be had a duty to try and educate us. So school classes were available but only compulsory for the under sixteens. I was had already turned sixteen so I chose to go.

  I wanted to graduate from high school so I kept my head down and worked. One of the male teachers took a shine to me and gave me extra books and that got me some unwelcome attention from a couple of high ranked bullies. I ignored them. That wasn't a bridge to die on.

  It was my last foster family who gave me that drive for education. Their names were Avril and Tony. They were both teachers and I think they might even have loved me a little bit in spite of me not giving them anything back. I didn't really care. Love wasn't part of my world. They took me on after my first stay in juvenile detention. A labelled kid with a bad reputation.

  We'd been together for three years and on the whole it had been good. They'd introduced me to all the things I would have had from my real parents had they not thrown me away when I was ten. Things like books, art, and the theatre, ballet and opera. It was like a door had opened and a bright light had reached into my dark world. I grabbed it as if I'd been starving all my life and suddenly there was a banquet right in front of me. I was grateful for that, but in the end they too had failed me. They hadn't kept me safe.

  Shelby said the laundry was where this girl beat her up so I left her and got a screw to open it so I could do my washing. She was one of the good ones so I asked her if she knew about an assault down there last week. She said she didn't. I pushed it which surprised her. She gave me a sideways look.

  `A problem for you, Hannah?'

  `Yeah, my new roommate's whingeing about it non-stop. It's driving me nuts and I'm not even sure it's true. Except her eyes are red. So something happened to her. But then…she could have fallen over in the bath.'

  She grinned and I went for the wide-eyed innocent look, then grinned back. We both knew that was the usual excuse for injuries that were the result of a fight or a beating. To admit being a victim meant losing face and or getting another belting as a reprisal for snitching.

  `Sorry, Hannah. I was on leave last week,' she said, `and you know I couldn't discuss it even if I wasn't.'

  I shrugged. Of course she couldn't. `Do you know who was?'

  `I think it was Bev.' Her face tightened. We also both knew that Bev was a brutal warder who wielded her power ruthlessly over inmates who had almost none. They are at the mercy of people like Bev who get off on it with no consequences. I steered absolutely clear of her but I knew my turn would come.

  While I did my laundry I pondered what, apart from a drug handover, Shelby could have seen? Nobody had died lately. There'd been the usual fights and sometimes kids got hurt but as far as I knew there'd been nothing serious. Not bad enough to be afraid because of what you saw anyway. Smuggled weapons? A knife or more than one? Always around. Hardly worth killing for. Sex? There were a few liaisons but again who'd kill for that?

  I got no other opportunities to find out anything to do with Shelby. I'd have to wait until the next morning when the art therapy class was on.

  That night my sleep was punctuated with nightmares as usual but by the constant shaking of the bed and the noise she made, it was clear that Shelby was having a hard time too. We were on our way to the canteen for breakfast before I told her we were going to paint today. She looked at me as if I'd told her to masturbate in public.

  As we walked down the corridor to the art room we were confronted by the second ranked gang of bullies. The ones who'd had a go at me over studying. Its leader was a plump girl called Raina whose heavily gothic look featured long, dyed black hair and so many piercings she risked being clamped to any nearby magnet.

  `New slave, Hannah?'

  I nudged Shelby and we kept walking.

  Raina and her three top lieutenants stepped in front of us. `I'm talkin' to you,' she snarled, her hands on her hips.

 

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