Cages, p.16
Cages, page 16
He glances again at the book on the seat. Thinks again of Rufus Orton. Glowers through the windscreen before letting his eyes fall back upon the folder. He turns to the next page, and looks upon Procne Henshaw-Cox. She’s dark-haired and dark-eyed, and there is an energy about her that comes off the page in waves. She has the most mesmerizing eyes he has ever looked into, even when pixilated and printed on plain paper. She’s wrapped in a length of shimmering golden silk: a crown of berries, flowers and thorns twisted into her hair. At her breast, a fat pink child, glorious white angel wings upon his back, held in place by lengths of twine. He has one pudgy fist gripping the strings of a small wooden harp. Behind her, sitting on the bonnet of a yellow sports car, a tall man with red hair and an Easy Rider moustache. He doesn’t seem to notice that he’s in the photograph: stares off into the distance – coloured lenses flipped up atop the frame of his spectacles.
Neilsen shakes his head. He will make no allowances for Cox based upon the peculiarities of his upbringing, but he cannot help but feel a surge of compassion for the boy. Everything he has read or viewed about Cox’s childhood suggests his mother saw him as a prop in whatever fantasy she was acting out.
Remembering something of note, Neilsen flicks back to a transcript of one of the first interviews with Cox, conducted shortly after he was locked up for the abduction of the teenager in York, and around the time he started coming to the attention of various other investigative teams looking into historic disappearances. Neilsen finds the section he’s looking for. Most of the time, Cox answered the detectives with a polite obstinacy. He’d love to help, but couldn’t. Didn’t know why they thought he was guilty of such terrible acts; wished he could help but had no recollection of ever meeting the individual whose tragic disappearance pains him.
When they asked him about his childhood, he became more animated. Spoke, fulsomely, about the joy of his earliest recollections.
‘… we make them well, the English. Eccentrics, I mean. And yes, that would be a fine description of Mother, although I was encouraged not to call her by such an outdated title. She was Procne. Are you familiar with the story? Forgive me if I suppose you aren’t scholars. Daughter of King Pandion of Athens, as I’m sure you will know. A woman of rigid principle. Served her husband his own son for dinner when she learned of his misdeeds against her sister. Quite a name with which to saddle a child, but her own father was a trifle touched by the old family curse. Always a little trace of madness in the family line, I’m sure you’ll have identified that. Procne was treated in several sanatoriums in her childhood but only found the peace she craved when she came home and inherited the Hall. I like to think that motherhood also assisted in her finding some form of equilibrium. She took such pleasure in the sublime, detectives. Such true ecstasy in the radiance of the Classical era. She would weep – truly gush with tears – upon reading a solitary passage of Petronius or Sulpicia. She surrounded herself by beautiful things. She wanted to be graced by angels. It was a Paradise: a portal – a doorway to a different age, a better age. I was raised like a noblewoman’s child; the progeny of an emperor or a Caesar. I believed there was the blood of the ancient gods in my veins and the passers-by and pilgrims who took up residence with us did nothing to tell me of the well-intentioned lie that had been woven around me. Reality hit hard when it came. But Procne, for all her eccentricities, created a better world for me to grow up in. I was nurtured in a time of wisdom, philosophy and elevated thinking, detectives. Whereas you were raised in Scunthorpe. Tell me, whose mother was negligent?’
Neilsen closes the folder. He has to admit, he has a point.
On the radio, Amanda from the BBC is telling her listeners that police are continuing to dig at an abandoned farm near Humberside Airport. A spokesman for the press office can neither confirm nor deny that the dig is in connection with missing schoolgirl Bronwen Roberts, last seen more than twenty years ago …
He’s saved from giving it any more consideration by the sudden trilling of his phone. Answers with a forced jolliness, so that DC Andy Daniells doesn’t feel mistreated.
‘Andy, how’s it going? I was wondering, do you think—’
‘HMP Holderness,’ says Daniells, breathlessly. ‘There’s been a stabbing.’
Neilsen glares out at the water. ‘Cox?’
Daniells huffs a dry laugh down the line. ‘There’s blood on the ceiling, Ben. And some author’s got himself caught right in the middle of it all.’
Neilsen looks at the book in his lap. Locks eyes with the photograph. Chews his cheek, and wonders. ‘I’ll meet you there.’
TWENTY-TWO
Annabeth is curled up on the sofa. Her phone is going crazy. Ringing. Pinging. Bleeping and dingly-fucking-bingling and generally doing all it can to get itself smashed to bits with a brick. One message. Two. Now a call. Another. Vibration after vibration …
She pulls the blankets over her head. She feels weak. Giddy. Sick. She can’t face it. Whatever has happened since she phoned in this morning to say she wouldn’t be coming in, and made her weak protestations to Rufus that he should just go, just leave her there, behind the bathroom door … whatever has happened since, she doesn’t care.
She can only fool herself so long. She wriggles, hotly, damply, out from under the folds of the quilt. Locates her phone.
Urgent messages from Mark, her supervising officer. He doesn’t care if she’s bleeding from her eyes, she needs to get to work pronto. Her ‘writing course’ has turned to shit. Griffin Cox has been stabbed. Her writer friend has got caught up in a fistfight with an inmate. Mr Windsor has three cracked ribs and is missing two teeth. He needs her to come in, to get her story straight …
Beads of cold sweat stand out on her exposed skin. Icy water trickles down her back. She half chokes on a sob, and then she hears the bang-bang-bang on her door. Suddenly a child again, she wants to hide beneath the bedclothes. Wants things to go back to how they once were. Wishes it so badly it becomes a prayer.
‘Annabeth. It’s me. You have to let me in …’
Gasping for breath, half drunk on fear, she makes her way to the door and cautiously pulls it open.
Rufus is standing on her doorstep. There’s a bruise on his cheek. His hair is sticking up wildly. And he’s holding out his hand. Holding it up, like a waiter with a tray.
On his palm, cool and glassy and unmistakable, the object thrust into the folds of Rufus’s satchel.
A little strangled gasp in Annabeth’s throat as she realizes what she is seeing.
A snow globe.
At its centre, amid the glitter and snow, two figures. They are hand-carved. Beautiful, in their way. One is a fat man, on his knees. The other, a woman; perhaps still a girl. She is reaching up, something sharp in her tiny pink hand.
Rufus closes his fist around the glass. Shakes the bauble with a faint hiss of apology.
Opens his palm.
The snow inside the glass falls red.
TWENTY-THREE
She leans over him, her blue, latex-clad fingers probing the yellowing edge of the wound. Makes a little clucking noise. Pushes, firmly, against the puckered skin, held together by a lattice of stitches and gauze. Her hair, dark and wiry, tickles his bare chest. He gets a faint whiff of her. She smells old. Doughy. Near her mouth there’s a lingering trace of last night’s wine and the spicy red-pepper and hummus wrap that she had for lunch.
It takes Griffin Cox all of his considerable willpower not to retch.
‘Hmm, not bad … some minor signs of infection … odd bruising pattern … unusual to see just one injury here – I believe the modern criminal favours a “typewriter” approach, multiple penetrations, not the one, deliberate … hmmm …’
Cox ignores her. Makes a great demonstration of biting his lip and holding back his whimpers. He can take the pain of the inspection, but it is his proximity to somebody whose very DNA seems past its sell-by date that creeps beneath his skin. He feels as though his personal space is being penetrated by somebody with the potential to drag him closer to the grave. He feels the same way about mature adult women as most people do about newborn children – albeit in reverse. Some sniff the crown of a baby and feel enervated, regenerated: suffused with the fountain of youth. Cox sees mature skin as corrupt: decrepit; putrid. Each breath in robs him of his virility. He lets out a low moan: pitiful, weak. Is gratified to see her take a gentler approach to his precious flesh. He doesn’t want this monstrosity, this old, wrinkled thing, poking at him as if he were a body on a slab. Doesn’t want to look into her brown eyes, or see the places upon her chin and upper lip where she has failed to pluck errant hairs; or to see the pores across her nose. He finds her repulsive. Finds them all repulsive, truth be told; fears being infected by their ugly, wrinkled decrepitude. She is the same age as Griffin Cox, but around thirty-five years past her sell-by date as a figure of desire.
‘You were lucky,’ says Dr Lechmere, straightening up. ‘A couple of inches to the right, and you’re looking at a broken heart.’
Cox makes an effort. Smiles, thinly, as if it is sapping the last of his strength. He makes a show of reaching down to find his pyjama top, fumbling feebly around in the blue-and-white bedsheets to locate the hem of his cotton shirt.
Dr Lechmere turns and addresses the two men behind her. Wing Governor Laiquet Hussain is a decent, quietly efficient chap from the Midlands whose broad Birmingham accent disarms those inmates who expect his skin tone to directly impact on his personality. Dark hair, dark eyes, thick black beard, he would be a Home Office pin-up for diversity if he could stand the incumbent government and if he hadn’t made a name for himself publicly criticizing the underfunding that has left his prison dangerously underfunded and understaffed. Behind him hovers Inmate Wellness Liaison Simone Greaves. She’s all affectation. Perm, headband, glasses, anorak, trainers, stripy jumper and leggings that look as if they have been lined with moussaka. She is a representative of the outside oversight agency tasked with making sure no prisoner slips in the shower or tumbles down the stairs more than once per sentence. Cox finds it faintly absurd that the phrase ‘do-gooder’ has any kind of negative connotation, but he cannot think of Ms Greaves as anything other than a ‘bleeding heart’: arse-clenchingly saccharine and systemically pious. She has a way of putting her head on one side and asking questions in a soft, understanding voice that makes him want to slice her open and pull out whatever he sees first. He saw a picture of her once, front page of the Hull Mail, trying to block plans for a new incinerator. She had waged war on those who planned to damage the next generation’s precious lungs. To Cox, she’d have emphasized her points more emphatically if the image hadn’t shown her three quarters of her way down a Marlboro Red.
‘They did a decent job,’ says Dr Lechmere, referring to the emergency team who had looked after Cox as he lay on the classroom floor, and then sped him to A&E at Hull Royal Infirmary, where his wound was cleaned, stitched, and where he suffered the indignity of antibiotic shots to his rump. He was there under five hours. He’s back at the prison now, looking feeble and weak on the slightly comfier mattress he has been furnished with for his brief stay on the medical wing. He’s rather enjoying it. He has his own room, which is not a particular novelty, but it’s cool, and quiet, and he’s allowed to feel briefly like a victim, which is a rarity.
‘Hear that, Griffin?’ asks Mr Hussain, jovially. ‘Survived, eh? Not quite fit as a fiddle but certainly not far off. I told you we’d see you well looked after …’
Beside him, Ms Greaves bristles. Her nostrils take on a double-barrelled-shotgun appearance. ‘I think it’s somewhat too early to make those kind of assessments, Mr Hussain,’ she says, primly.
‘Of course, Ms Greaves,’ says Mr Hussain, with Herculean forbearance. Cox knows he’s had a difficult day. Aims to wring the juice out of it in his own inimitable fashion.
‘You’ll be able to tell us what happened soon enough, no doubt,’ says Hussain, with forced joviality. ‘Of course, we’re rather struggling to pin down precisely how the injury occurred, but once you’re well enough …’
Cox makes sure his voice sounds sufficiently gruff and weedy: feels like somebody securing themselves a sick-day with a dose of feigned flu. ‘Miss Harris,’ he says, dry-mouthed and pained.
‘Sorry, Griffin, that was just beyond me,’ says Ms Greaves, who adopts the general air of somebody telling a dying loved one they are in their prayers. ‘Miss Harris, you say …’
‘Only one I trust,’ he says, feebly. ‘I don’t feel safe talking to anybody. They all want to hurt me, I know that, but all I wanted to do was use my time properly … just try to write, to learn a new skill …’
‘Steady now, Mr Cox,’ says the governor, looking down at him and making every effort to seem concerned about his well-being. Cox has to fight the urge to throw him a wink and a cheeky smile. For now, Cox is a victim of attempted murder. It happened in the education suite, under the eye of one of his junior members of staff: himself currently in intensive care. There are rumours spreading through the prison like mist. Already three different officers have told him stories being spread among the inmates. Suggs claimed responsibility, at first, but backtracked when he learned how many years it would add to his sentence. Mings claimed to have seen Mr Windsor stab some form of sharpened screwdriver right into Cox’s chest. Another, high on spice, claimed that Mr Orton had lost his patience with him and attacked him in front of everybody. HMP Holderness already has a reputation as an institution from another age. For now, Mr Hussain needs Cox to think of him as an ally, and that means swallowing his bile and pretending they are something akin to equals.
‘Miss Harris,’ croaks Cox, again. ‘I’ll talk to her. Please. She understands. I’ll talk to her. My solicitor, if not. Has word reached him? Has he called …?’
‘Don’t you be worrying about things like that, Griffin,’ says Simone. She manoeuvres herself past the silent bulk of Dr Lechmere and makes a show of filling up Cox’s plastic beaker and placing it near the bed. ‘If you decide to take this further, we will be on hand to make sure you are treated equitably …’
‘You pronounce it in the French style,’ says Cox, doxy and sore. ‘There aren’t many here who even understand what it means—’
‘Miss Harris,’ says Mr Hussain, cutting him off. ‘Of course, Griffin – I shall arrange for her to come and visit you as soon as her next shift begins.’ He turns to Simone. ‘One of our brightest and best,’ he confides, all smiles. ‘Lucky to get her. Bringing lots of new ideas to Holderness. Rising star. A very understanding, fair officer. I have no doubt that had she been in this morning this whole unpleasantness could have been avoided …’
Simone Greaves gives a ‘hurrumph’ at that. Pulls a notebook from the pocket of her anorak. Makes a note, and jots down the time. Gives her attention back to Cox. ‘We will be monitoring this situation. Anything you need, you have every right to contact my organization. Do not believe yourself to be anything other than a victim.’
‘Thank you,’ he growls, meekly. Starts to cough, and holds it back, out of politeness.
‘Get your rest,’ says Mr Hussain, and hustles the unwelcome visitors out of the small, cool room.
Alone again, Cox grins. Everything hinges on getting some alone time with Miss Harris. He had not known that Suggs would go for him, or that the writer would come to his aid. But he’s known for weeks that he would have to endure an injury – a bad one – if he were to move his plan to the next significant step. He wonders how she reacted when she saw the snow globe. Wonders what she is feeling, here and now. Whether the bosses are pampering her, protecting her, hitching their wagon to a rising star. Or will they scapegoat her? Will they weave a mandala of interlinking lies and find a way to paint her as the rookie who vacated her post and allowed an infamous, suspected serial killer, suffer a near-fatal stab wound to the heart? He presumes the latter. He has been in prison long enough to have identified how things work.
He lays back on the cool pillow, ignoring the trifling throb in his chest. For the first time in forever, he can feel the cool, salt-flecked air of the Adriatic upon his face. Can summon up the taste of full-bodied wine and fillet steak: seared lightly on both sides and bloodily pink within. Can allow himself to imagine the sensation of warm, taut flesh against his own. He has fought the impulse to daydream; to fantasize, for fear of causing himself unnecessary agony should any of his steps towards freedom trip at an unforeseen hurdle. Now, he indulges. Permits himself a brief erotic projection. He has many miles to go before he rests, but he knows himself to possess the stamina for the journey.
Griffin Cox slips one hand behind his head. Slips the other down his pyjama trousers.
Pictures the deeds in which he will revel once the indignity of prison is behind him.
Closes his eyes, and thinks upon Miss Harris.
Thinks upon her son. Ethan.
Bites down so hard on his tongue that his mouth fills with blood.
God how he hopes it is a taste of things to come.
TWENTY-FOUR
‘Keeping busy,’ grunts Annabeth, lifting a vase from the mantelpiece and rubbing the varnished wood beneath with a yellow cloth. ‘Getting stuff done …’ she mutters, banging the thick crystal back down again like a gavel. ‘Not thinking, that’s the thing of it …’
On the arm of the sofa, Rufus Orton: a nobleman on a wooden horse, sitting for a portrait. Still as a statue, immortalized with a silly sad smile on his face. He looks as though he is waiting permission to leave.
‘I mean, what does it look like … not going in … Ethan’s home late, just getting on with the chores … daft bloody question for a man of letters …’
‘But, is that what you need to be doing right at this moment?’ he asks, tentatively, his words a pair of metal pincers tracing the line of a live wire.
‘I don’t know, Rufus,’ says Annabeth, picking up a pile of magazines from beside the chair and shuffling them. True Crime; Real Crime; Crime Monthly: a blur of lurid colours. ‘I don’t have all the answers. I don’t know what to tell you. And you’re not taking any notice of what I say. So, I’m getting on with stuff. I’ve the car insurance to renew. I need to get the deposit together for Ethan’s France trip. I’ve got to do a mixed wash. You’re welcome to sit there and watch me do all these things, but I can’t imagine it’s much of a show …’
Neilsen shakes his head. He will make no allowances for Cox based upon the peculiarities of his upbringing, but he cannot help but feel a surge of compassion for the boy. Everything he has read or viewed about Cox’s childhood suggests his mother saw him as a prop in whatever fantasy she was acting out.
Remembering something of note, Neilsen flicks back to a transcript of one of the first interviews with Cox, conducted shortly after he was locked up for the abduction of the teenager in York, and around the time he started coming to the attention of various other investigative teams looking into historic disappearances. Neilsen finds the section he’s looking for. Most of the time, Cox answered the detectives with a polite obstinacy. He’d love to help, but couldn’t. Didn’t know why they thought he was guilty of such terrible acts; wished he could help but had no recollection of ever meeting the individual whose tragic disappearance pains him.
When they asked him about his childhood, he became more animated. Spoke, fulsomely, about the joy of his earliest recollections.
‘… we make them well, the English. Eccentrics, I mean. And yes, that would be a fine description of Mother, although I was encouraged not to call her by such an outdated title. She was Procne. Are you familiar with the story? Forgive me if I suppose you aren’t scholars. Daughter of King Pandion of Athens, as I’m sure you will know. A woman of rigid principle. Served her husband his own son for dinner when she learned of his misdeeds against her sister. Quite a name with which to saddle a child, but her own father was a trifle touched by the old family curse. Always a little trace of madness in the family line, I’m sure you’ll have identified that. Procne was treated in several sanatoriums in her childhood but only found the peace she craved when she came home and inherited the Hall. I like to think that motherhood also assisted in her finding some form of equilibrium. She took such pleasure in the sublime, detectives. Such true ecstasy in the radiance of the Classical era. She would weep – truly gush with tears – upon reading a solitary passage of Petronius or Sulpicia. She surrounded herself by beautiful things. She wanted to be graced by angels. It was a Paradise: a portal – a doorway to a different age, a better age. I was raised like a noblewoman’s child; the progeny of an emperor or a Caesar. I believed there was the blood of the ancient gods in my veins and the passers-by and pilgrims who took up residence with us did nothing to tell me of the well-intentioned lie that had been woven around me. Reality hit hard when it came. But Procne, for all her eccentricities, created a better world for me to grow up in. I was nurtured in a time of wisdom, philosophy and elevated thinking, detectives. Whereas you were raised in Scunthorpe. Tell me, whose mother was negligent?’
Neilsen closes the folder. He has to admit, he has a point.
On the radio, Amanda from the BBC is telling her listeners that police are continuing to dig at an abandoned farm near Humberside Airport. A spokesman for the press office can neither confirm nor deny that the dig is in connection with missing schoolgirl Bronwen Roberts, last seen more than twenty years ago …
He’s saved from giving it any more consideration by the sudden trilling of his phone. Answers with a forced jolliness, so that DC Andy Daniells doesn’t feel mistreated.
‘Andy, how’s it going? I was wondering, do you think—’
‘HMP Holderness,’ says Daniells, breathlessly. ‘There’s been a stabbing.’
Neilsen glares out at the water. ‘Cox?’
Daniells huffs a dry laugh down the line. ‘There’s blood on the ceiling, Ben. And some author’s got himself caught right in the middle of it all.’
Neilsen looks at the book in his lap. Locks eyes with the photograph. Chews his cheek, and wonders. ‘I’ll meet you there.’
TWENTY-TWO
Annabeth is curled up on the sofa. Her phone is going crazy. Ringing. Pinging. Bleeping and dingly-fucking-bingling and generally doing all it can to get itself smashed to bits with a brick. One message. Two. Now a call. Another. Vibration after vibration …
She pulls the blankets over her head. She feels weak. Giddy. Sick. She can’t face it. Whatever has happened since she phoned in this morning to say she wouldn’t be coming in, and made her weak protestations to Rufus that he should just go, just leave her there, behind the bathroom door … whatever has happened since, she doesn’t care.
She can only fool herself so long. She wriggles, hotly, damply, out from under the folds of the quilt. Locates her phone.
Urgent messages from Mark, her supervising officer. He doesn’t care if she’s bleeding from her eyes, she needs to get to work pronto. Her ‘writing course’ has turned to shit. Griffin Cox has been stabbed. Her writer friend has got caught up in a fistfight with an inmate. Mr Windsor has three cracked ribs and is missing two teeth. He needs her to come in, to get her story straight …
Beads of cold sweat stand out on her exposed skin. Icy water trickles down her back. She half chokes on a sob, and then she hears the bang-bang-bang on her door. Suddenly a child again, she wants to hide beneath the bedclothes. Wants things to go back to how they once were. Wishes it so badly it becomes a prayer.
‘Annabeth. It’s me. You have to let me in …’
Gasping for breath, half drunk on fear, she makes her way to the door and cautiously pulls it open.
Rufus is standing on her doorstep. There’s a bruise on his cheek. His hair is sticking up wildly. And he’s holding out his hand. Holding it up, like a waiter with a tray.
On his palm, cool and glassy and unmistakable, the object thrust into the folds of Rufus’s satchel.
A little strangled gasp in Annabeth’s throat as she realizes what she is seeing.
A snow globe.
At its centre, amid the glitter and snow, two figures. They are hand-carved. Beautiful, in their way. One is a fat man, on his knees. The other, a woman; perhaps still a girl. She is reaching up, something sharp in her tiny pink hand.
Rufus closes his fist around the glass. Shakes the bauble with a faint hiss of apology.
Opens his palm.
The snow inside the glass falls red.
TWENTY-THREE
She leans over him, her blue, latex-clad fingers probing the yellowing edge of the wound. Makes a little clucking noise. Pushes, firmly, against the puckered skin, held together by a lattice of stitches and gauze. Her hair, dark and wiry, tickles his bare chest. He gets a faint whiff of her. She smells old. Doughy. Near her mouth there’s a lingering trace of last night’s wine and the spicy red-pepper and hummus wrap that she had for lunch.
It takes Griffin Cox all of his considerable willpower not to retch.
‘Hmm, not bad … some minor signs of infection … odd bruising pattern … unusual to see just one injury here – I believe the modern criminal favours a “typewriter” approach, multiple penetrations, not the one, deliberate … hmmm …’
Cox ignores her. Makes a great demonstration of biting his lip and holding back his whimpers. He can take the pain of the inspection, but it is his proximity to somebody whose very DNA seems past its sell-by date that creeps beneath his skin. He feels as though his personal space is being penetrated by somebody with the potential to drag him closer to the grave. He feels the same way about mature adult women as most people do about newborn children – albeit in reverse. Some sniff the crown of a baby and feel enervated, regenerated: suffused with the fountain of youth. Cox sees mature skin as corrupt: decrepit; putrid. Each breath in robs him of his virility. He lets out a low moan: pitiful, weak. Is gratified to see her take a gentler approach to his precious flesh. He doesn’t want this monstrosity, this old, wrinkled thing, poking at him as if he were a body on a slab. Doesn’t want to look into her brown eyes, or see the places upon her chin and upper lip where she has failed to pluck errant hairs; or to see the pores across her nose. He finds her repulsive. Finds them all repulsive, truth be told; fears being infected by their ugly, wrinkled decrepitude. She is the same age as Griffin Cox, but around thirty-five years past her sell-by date as a figure of desire.
‘You were lucky,’ says Dr Lechmere, straightening up. ‘A couple of inches to the right, and you’re looking at a broken heart.’
Cox makes an effort. Smiles, thinly, as if it is sapping the last of his strength. He makes a show of reaching down to find his pyjama top, fumbling feebly around in the blue-and-white bedsheets to locate the hem of his cotton shirt.
Dr Lechmere turns and addresses the two men behind her. Wing Governor Laiquet Hussain is a decent, quietly efficient chap from the Midlands whose broad Birmingham accent disarms those inmates who expect his skin tone to directly impact on his personality. Dark hair, dark eyes, thick black beard, he would be a Home Office pin-up for diversity if he could stand the incumbent government and if he hadn’t made a name for himself publicly criticizing the underfunding that has left his prison dangerously underfunded and understaffed. Behind him hovers Inmate Wellness Liaison Simone Greaves. She’s all affectation. Perm, headband, glasses, anorak, trainers, stripy jumper and leggings that look as if they have been lined with moussaka. She is a representative of the outside oversight agency tasked with making sure no prisoner slips in the shower or tumbles down the stairs more than once per sentence. Cox finds it faintly absurd that the phrase ‘do-gooder’ has any kind of negative connotation, but he cannot think of Ms Greaves as anything other than a ‘bleeding heart’: arse-clenchingly saccharine and systemically pious. She has a way of putting her head on one side and asking questions in a soft, understanding voice that makes him want to slice her open and pull out whatever he sees first. He saw a picture of her once, front page of the Hull Mail, trying to block plans for a new incinerator. She had waged war on those who planned to damage the next generation’s precious lungs. To Cox, she’d have emphasized her points more emphatically if the image hadn’t shown her three quarters of her way down a Marlboro Red.
‘They did a decent job,’ says Dr Lechmere, referring to the emergency team who had looked after Cox as he lay on the classroom floor, and then sped him to A&E at Hull Royal Infirmary, where his wound was cleaned, stitched, and where he suffered the indignity of antibiotic shots to his rump. He was there under five hours. He’s back at the prison now, looking feeble and weak on the slightly comfier mattress he has been furnished with for his brief stay on the medical wing. He’s rather enjoying it. He has his own room, which is not a particular novelty, but it’s cool, and quiet, and he’s allowed to feel briefly like a victim, which is a rarity.
‘Hear that, Griffin?’ asks Mr Hussain, jovially. ‘Survived, eh? Not quite fit as a fiddle but certainly not far off. I told you we’d see you well looked after …’
Beside him, Ms Greaves bristles. Her nostrils take on a double-barrelled-shotgun appearance. ‘I think it’s somewhat too early to make those kind of assessments, Mr Hussain,’ she says, primly.
‘Of course, Ms Greaves,’ says Mr Hussain, with Herculean forbearance. Cox knows he’s had a difficult day. Aims to wring the juice out of it in his own inimitable fashion.
‘You’ll be able to tell us what happened soon enough, no doubt,’ says Hussain, with forced joviality. ‘Of course, we’re rather struggling to pin down precisely how the injury occurred, but once you’re well enough …’
Cox makes sure his voice sounds sufficiently gruff and weedy: feels like somebody securing themselves a sick-day with a dose of feigned flu. ‘Miss Harris,’ he says, dry-mouthed and pained.
‘Sorry, Griffin, that was just beyond me,’ says Ms Greaves, who adopts the general air of somebody telling a dying loved one they are in their prayers. ‘Miss Harris, you say …’
‘Only one I trust,’ he says, feebly. ‘I don’t feel safe talking to anybody. They all want to hurt me, I know that, but all I wanted to do was use my time properly … just try to write, to learn a new skill …’
‘Steady now, Mr Cox,’ says the governor, looking down at him and making every effort to seem concerned about his well-being. Cox has to fight the urge to throw him a wink and a cheeky smile. For now, Cox is a victim of attempted murder. It happened in the education suite, under the eye of one of his junior members of staff: himself currently in intensive care. There are rumours spreading through the prison like mist. Already three different officers have told him stories being spread among the inmates. Suggs claimed responsibility, at first, but backtracked when he learned how many years it would add to his sentence. Mings claimed to have seen Mr Windsor stab some form of sharpened screwdriver right into Cox’s chest. Another, high on spice, claimed that Mr Orton had lost his patience with him and attacked him in front of everybody. HMP Holderness already has a reputation as an institution from another age. For now, Mr Hussain needs Cox to think of him as an ally, and that means swallowing his bile and pretending they are something akin to equals.
‘Miss Harris,’ croaks Cox, again. ‘I’ll talk to her. Please. She understands. I’ll talk to her. My solicitor, if not. Has word reached him? Has he called …?’
‘Don’t you be worrying about things like that, Griffin,’ says Simone. She manoeuvres herself past the silent bulk of Dr Lechmere and makes a show of filling up Cox’s plastic beaker and placing it near the bed. ‘If you decide to take this further, we will be on hand to make sure you are treated equitably …’
‘You pronounce it in the French style,’ says Cox, doxy and sore. ‘There aren’t many here who even understand what it means—’
‘Miss Harris,’ says Mr Hussain, cutting him off. ‘Of course, Griffin – I shall arrange for her to come and visit you as soon as her next shift begins.’ He turns to Simone. ‘One of our brightest and best,’ he confides, all smiles. ‘Lucky to get her. Bringing lots of new ideas to Holderness. Rising star. A very understanding, fair officer. I have no doubt that had she been in this morning this whole unpleasantness could have been avoided …’
Simone Greaves gives a ‘hurrumph’ at that. Pulls a notebook from the pocket of her anorak. Makes a note, and jots down the time. Gives her attention back to Cox. ‘We will be monitoring this situation. Anything you need, you have every right to contact my organization. Do not believe yourself to be anything other than a victim.’
‘Thank you,’ he growls, meekly. Starts to cough, and holds it back, out of politeness.
‘Get your rest,’ says Mr Hussain, and hustles the unwelcome visitors out of the small, cool room.
Alone again, Cox grins. Everything hinges on getting some alone time with Miss Harris. He had not known that Suggs would go for him, or that the writer would come to his aid. But he’s known for weeks that he would have to endure an injury – a bad one – if he were to move his plan to the next significant step. He wonders how she reacted when she saw the snow globe. Wonders what she is feeling, here and now. Whether the bosses are pampering her, protecting her, hitching their wagon to a rising star. Or will they scapegoat her? Will they weave a mandala of interlinking lies and find a way to paint her as the rookie who vacated her post and allowed an infamous, suspected serial killer, suffer a near-fatal stab wound to the heart? He presumes the latter. He has been in prison long enough to have identified how things work.
He lays back on the cool pillow, ignoring the trifling throb in his chest. For the first time in forever, he can feel the cool, salt-flecked air of the Adriatic upon his face. Can summon up the taste of full-bodied wine and fillet steak: seared lightly on both sides and bloodily pink within. Can allow himself to imagine the sensation of warm, taut flesh against his own. He has fought the impulse to daydream; to fantasize, for fear of causing himself unnecessary agony should any of his steps towards freedom trip at an unforeseen hurdle. Now, he indulges. Permits himself a brief erotic projection. He has many miles to go before he rests, but he knows himself to possess the stamina for the journey.
Griffin Cox slips one hand behind his head. Slips the other down his pyjama trousers.
Pictures the deeds in which he will revel once the indignity of prison is behind him.
Closes his eyes, and thinks upon Miss Harris.
Thinks upon her son. Ethan.
Bites down so hard on his tongue that his mouth fills with blood.
God how he hopes it is a taste of things to come.
TWENTY-FOUR
‘Keeping busy,’ grunts Annabeth, lifting a vase from the mantelpiece and rubbing the varnished wood beneath with a yellow cloth. ‘Getting stuff done …’ she mutters, banging the thick crystal back down again like a gavel. ‘Not thinking, that’s the thing of it …’
On the arm of the sofa, Rufus Orton: a nobleman on a wooden horse, sitting for a portrait. Still as a statue, immortalized with a silly sad smile on his face. He looks as though he is waiting permission to leave.
‘I mean, what does it look like … not going in … Ethan’s home late, just getting on with the chores … daft bloody question for a man of letters …’
‘But, is that what you need to be doing right at this moment?’ he asks, tentatively, his words a pair of metal pincers tracing the line of a live wire.
‘I don’t know, Rufus,’ says Annabeth, picking up a pile of magazines from beside the chair and shuffling them. True Crime; Real Crime; Crime Monthly: a blur of lurid colours. ‘I don’t have all the answers. I don’t know what to tell you. And you’re not taking any notice of what I say. So, I’m getting on with stuff. I’ve the car insurance to renew. I need to get the deposit together for Ethan’s France trip. I’ve got to do a mixed wash. You’re welcome to sit there and watch me do all these things, but I can’t imagine it’s much of a show …’
