Cages, p.5
Cages, page 5
She sits back, feeling good. Looks at her hands and realizes they are sweating. She feels giddy and nervous. She wants things to go well, but more importantly, she wants Rufus to feel he made the right decision when he said ‘yes’ to teaching a six-week course in creative writing to the inmates at HMP Holderness.
She thinks about calling him. Imagines his voice, loquacious with drink. Realizes, at once, that she is still too shy to speak to him in person. Better to send a message. Better to keep things professional.
Hi Rufus. Got your message. Course I did – that’s why I’m writing! Anyway, nine signed up. Not bad at all, considering. The poet who came last year only got two, and that was because one of them had misread the poster and thought iambic pentameter was an Olympic sport that would allow him access to javelins. So, looking good. We actually got a request in from one of the prisoners on the Vulnerable wing, but I turned it down. Too many possibilities for things to go wrong. Really not a very popular chap, so best off saying ‘no’. So yes, all systems go. Do just ask for me on reception and I’ll be there quick as a flash. I’ve told you, haven’t I? Bring a passport, and be careful what you bring in your satchel. Really looking forward to it. Very best, A.H.
She doesn’t put a kiss on the end of the message. Doesn’t notice she’s used the word ‘satchel’ until after it’s been sent. Cringes a little. He’ll know at once that she’s been stalking his social media profile. He has a battered leather satchel with him in a lot of his photographs. Has a professorial look about him, though there’s enough rumbled bad boy about him to suggest he likes his port and stilton with a cocaine chaser.
She heads to the kitchen. Decants her food, heats it up, and sits down at the little round table. Eats it with a fork because nobody’s watching. Tells her voice-activated virtual assistant to play some Irish folk, feeling like somebody from the future. The kitchen fills with plinky-plonky strings and heartfelt vocals that make her feel as though she should be supping Guinness and sitting on a sack of potatoes.
She plays with her phone. Slurps up bean sprouts and water chestnuts. Gets up and drinks milk from the bottle, knowing she would tell Ethan off at once for doing any such thing.
Checks her phone. No reply yet.
Agitated, she turns her thoughts to today’s shift. She’d been a bit surprised to receive the request from the Vulnerable Prisoner wing. Normally they would do anything in their power to avoid mixing with the general population. Holderness is a category B prison, and there are some very bad men within its walls. But it’s the nonces – the sex offenders, the paedos and the grasses – that are considered lower than low. Only convicted coppers and former screws are given a harsher time inside. For Griffin Cox to request a place on the creative writing course, he must really be either a fan of Rufus Orton, or be up to something.
She wrinkles her nose. She knows his name, of course. When he transferred over from Wakefield in the summer, she was alerted during the Monday morning briefing that they had something of a celebrity joining them, and to be alert for any and all attendant problems. She’s had nothing to do with him yet. Spotted a small man with a dark widow’s peak wheeling a trolley of books in the library, but that has been the sum total of their interaction. She’s tempted to allow him to participate in the course if only to see what sort of stories his mind will conjure up.
She shudders. Decides, on balance, that his mind needs no help in expressing itself.
Googles him, just for the hell of it.
Reads, as she eats her noodles.
Considers his image. Watches her own reflection swim in the colours and patterns on the screen.
Looks into the face of a killer.
And for the briefest moment, allows herself to remember.
The warm blood. The feeling of glass skewering flesh. The hot fear in her belly and the desperate fight to survive.
She looks up, through the ceiling, to where her son plays video games with his friends.
Closes her eyes.
Makes peace with it. Makes peace, as she has every night for fifteen fucking years.
Former Pupil at Elite School Jailed for Sick Abduction
By Jonathan Feasby
A FORMER classmate of two Cabinet ministers has been jailed for an indefinite period following the attempted abduction of a teenage girl.
His victim yesterday told this reporter that she believed he was ‘truly evil’ and did not believe herself to be his first victim.
Griffin Cox, 44, was sentenced by Judge Michael Marwood at York Crown Court yesterday. Earlier, a court had heard that Cox, a buyer for a boutique furniture company, had grabbed a 15-year-old girl from a quiet street, having previously posed online as a twenty-something music student in order to gain her trust.
Having made arrangements to take her to a performance at York Opera House, he then claimed to be the tutor of the young man she was due to meet, and talked her into getting into his car. At which point, his victim told the court that he ‘turned into something from a horror film’.
Police who pulled Cox over for a minor motor vehicle infraction found the terrified student hog-tied and masked in the back of a rental car he hired for the sole purpose of abduction. At his lavish home, filled with expensive furniture, police later discovered a ‘white room’, adjacent to his well-stocked wine cellar. Painted perfectly white, it was entirely soundproofed and contained run-off channels transferring any spilled liquids into the drainage system.
Police last night refused to rule out the possibility that Cox may have been responsible for more abductions, and he was described by a senior detective as ‘a truly evil man’.
Cox, raised in a 60-room stately home in rural Cambridgeshire, spends much of his time abroad. He is single and childless but is an esteemed patron of the arts and a globally renowned expert in stringed instruments. His defence team yesterday urged Judge Marwood to consider their client’s previous good character, and provided dozens of character witnesses, including a letter from a retired Home Secretary who said that Cox was ‘a decent man’ who could have accomplished extraordinary things if not for his mental health problems and a traumatic childhood. His mother, Procne Henshaw-Cox, was an eccentric figure who transformed the grounds of the stately home into a replica of a Classical Italian palazzo and garden, before her death in 1974.
Speaking after the sentencing, Cox’s victim, who cannot be named, told reporters: ‘He was so charming. So believable. He made me feel that I was the centre of his universe and that I was safer with him than anybody else. But when he showed me the truth of himself, I glimpsed something that can only be described as “evil”. I’ve started going to church again since this happened. There must be a god, because I know I’ve met the devil …’
FOUR
The hardest part of prison is the loss of silence.
Of all the privations and punishments thrust upon Griffin Cox these last years, it is the intrusion of other people’s noise that he finds hardest to endure. He can stomach the smells: the lingering miasma of bleach and piss, of sweat and spice. He can convince himself there are fleeting elegances in the architecture and décor; ways to locate beauty in the damp green walls; to admire the workmanship in the cream-painted iron railings and staircases that wind up through the floors. He has even learned to value the nearness of violence: sharpening his senses to something lupine – his primal antennae neatly attuned to the petty hatreds and unspent frustrations that make the air of HMP Holderness sizzle like burning oil.
No, it is the intrusion of unsolicited noise that Griffin Cox cannot yet abide. Even after all these years of incarceration, it is the aural infringements that he considers his true punishment: his act of penance for a solitary mistake.
Outside, Cox took great steps to ensure a life filled with glorious spells of pure, perfect soundlessness. Here, now, he can conjure the acoustic memories. The tiny, private sounds.
His breath.
The sinewy rustle of shed garments.
The muffled screeching of the wriggling, terrified specimens who fought so hard against the gag.
The quiet acceptance: the giving up hope – the commencement of his glorious transformation from living and corruptible thing, to a truly immortal beauty.
Cox has always felt most comfortable in environments where the only sounds are those for which he is responsible: a conductor in a mute orchestra. Feels sanguine only when he is master of the song. Prison offers him no such peace. No such blessed isolation. His days and nights are filled with the raucous cacophony of countless men cat-calling and wailing, crying and pleading; hooted laughter and the crash of metal on metal; metal on brick, skin and metal and brick upon skin.
That is why Griffin Cox has decided that he has served sufficient time. Griffin Cox is going to release himself from incarceration. He does not like the word ‘escape’. It implies some frantic, desperate flight: all chaos and baying dogs, searchlights and shots. He has simply decided to remove himself from this place. He’s been here long enough. And of late, he has more pressing matters to attend to than marking time.
‘… fucking nonce, Cox! Gonna cut it off! Mail it to the mum of that lass!’
‘… do it, Suggs. I’ll hold him down for ya!’
‘Don’t deserve to live, Cox! Don’t deserve to breathe the same air as us!’
‘That’ll do, Suggs. Off the landing. Back to your floor.’
Cox pays no attention to the sudden eruption of noise. Does not allow any glimpse of dissatisfaction to show. He is well used to such threats. People have tried and failed to dish out their own punishments for his so-called crimes. All have learned the error of their ways. He would prefer them to come for him and try some brute physicality, rather than continuing to fill the still air of his cell with their crashing consonants and guttural threats. He has already spent seven years inside. Moved between jails four times: on each occasion bringing with him the wisdom hard won at the last. He knows now that to ask for something is to guarantee its opposite. Knows that those whose manner seems kindest are the ones to be distrusted. Knows that to tell a secret is to place oneself in another person’s debt. Knows that boiling water and sugar form a syrup which can cause the skin to hiss and bubble: that peeling it off takes with it so much epidermis that a handsome face can be reduced to gristle, blood and bone.
He closes his eyes. Allows himself to see.
Cox’s recall is uncanny. His memory is more than photographic. Cox can spot details in his recollections that he did not know he was a party to. He can remember a landscape and return to it later, picking out individual birds; the movements of trees; the shape and passage of the clouds. He can open a book, glance at it as if taking a mental picture, and read it later in the comfort of his own solitude. He has never consented to an IQ test and has deliberately refused to answer honestly when questioned by police, prison officers and countless psychiatrists. He does not want anybody to feel they know him. He prefers to be constantly underestimated. It has served him well. Behind his veiled eyes, his pupils contract, eyes twitching left and right as he scans the text of the newspaper article that has led to his recent change in circumstances. Led him here, to HMP Holderness.
MURDER SQUAD VISIT CAT-A PRISON TO QUIZ CONVICTED KIDNAPPER
By Weardale Times Senior Reporter, Val Aitchison
September 23, 2019
DETECTIVES probing the 2005 disappearance of Melanie Grazia have travelled to a maximum security prison to question a convicted sex offender.
Melanie, 14, disappeared from an elite boarding school in the middle of the afternoon. A mystery man left a voicemail telling staff at the boarding house she was going home with parents. She has not been seen since.
Serious Crime officers within Durham Constabulary have conducted a Cold Case review and believe there are sufficient similarities between Melanie’s disappearance, and the abduction of a teenage girl from a busy street in York in 2013.
Although the identity of the inmate has not been revealed by police, this newspaper understands that police questioned Griffin Cox, 51, who was pulled over by police for a motoring offence and discovered to have a terrified schoolgirl in the boot of his hire car.
Cox was given an indefinite sentence following his trial at York Crown Court, when detectives described him as an ‘evil man’ whom they feared may well have struck before.
Police yesterday refused to comment on the outcome of the interview, but it is understood that the new developments are a direct result of work carried out by charity organization Missing People. Staff at the respected charity have been posing on internet forums and conspiracy sites to try and make contact with any one of the 300,000 teenagers who disappear from home each year. They found evidence that connected Cox to several missing persons cases.
A spokeswoman for the charity said: ‘It’s difficult to go into too much detail without adding to the pain of the families involved, but we’ve discovered several cases with similar circumstances and feel it is only right that the police take this seriously and ask Cox to account for himself.’
Cox’s arrest stunned establishment friends who believed the ‘gifted, intelligent’ man innocent of the abduction and offered up character references to spare him jail. A former Cabinet member said Cox had been ‘a victim of bullying’ in his formative years but was a kind, gentle person who would never have intended to cause harm.
The unmarried childless Cox lived a life of luxury having inherited his mother’s property upon her death, and spent much of his time in Italy purchasing antique furniture. It is understood that authorities in Italy are also looking into Cox’s activities while staying in luxurious accommodation on the Amalfi coast.
Cox knows that he is not many steps ahead of those who would ensure he is never released. He has a few black marks on his prison record but release is still within his grasp – provided no more crimes are pinned to his name. And Cox has reason to believe that if he does not secure a very swift release and an opportunity to tidy up loose ends, that evidence will soon be dragged into the light.
Cox considers himself, and more, as he lies on the floor of his cell, still as death. He has his arms outstretched – Da Vinci’s Vitruvian man. The tips of the fingers on his left hand stretch under his bunk to touch the wall. His right hand falls three inches short of the opposing brickwork. He spends twenty minutes in this position every morning and again before lights out. He suffers with a painful back, and despite repeated requests to see a physiotherapist or masseuse, he has so far been denied this most basic of human rights. Instead, he allows gravity to work on the knotted muscles and creaking vertebrae. Presses himself flat to the cold floor and waits for the series of flicks and cracks that inform him his bones are being inexorably pulled downwards: through three floors of institutional brickwork, and deftly rearranged by the magnetic pull of the earth. He enjoys such moments of communion. In his mind he is able to see the different layers of strata beneath the foundations of the old prison building. Can see bones and pottery shards, masonry; scattered remnants of the villagers that once made home on this flat, windswept land. Can see the multicoloured bands of rock and earth; make out minerals and sparkling seams of unmined rock. Can see all the way down to the earth’s core.
It would be a meditation, of sorts, were Griffin Cox not reaching out with the eye of his mind to grasp the remains of the children he has left beneath the ground. Would be an act of mindfulness, of therapy, were he not remembering the sensation of their skin beneath him, and listening again to the memory of their screams.
FIVE
Annabeth dreams.
She sees her father: a five-penny piece atop a tuppence: pudgy arms, short fingers, fell-pony legs. Bald, with bottle-black strands teased backwards from what used to be a widow’s peak. He’s reading the big broadsheet newspaper, licking his thumb to turn the page. There’s butter and a smear of marmalade on the bottom corner of the front page. And he’s talking to her. Talking in that low, rumbly way of his, that means he’s embarrassed and irritated and wishes somebody else could do this for him but that there’s nobody he trusts to do the job properly.
‘… even if it did happen, what do you expect? Making all those moony eyes at him, sitting on his lap at the staff party, and that little top you wore, with your belly button out for everybody to see – we didn’t know where to look. If it’s there on a plate, people are going to eat, Annabeth. We never had this with your sisters. You’re going to get yourself into all sorts of trouble and it’s the poor chap who falls for it who gets in trouble. Your mother can’t even stand to think about it. We want no more talk about this. No more. You’ll be keeping your legs closed from now on, and I suggest we do the same with that bloody mouth of yours before it gets you into trouble …’
The image flickers; distorts. She’s eighteen. She’s standing at a bus stop in a little tourist town in Cumbria. She’s been kicked off the bus for having used a day-old ticket, scavenged from a bin and carelessly flashed at the driver ninety miles back. She’d hoped to make it as far as Dumfries, just over the border, where a girl she met in a hostel has told her she’s secured a bedsit and that she’ll be welcome on her sofa for a few days. The driver had demanded a second inspection of the ticket when he saw her scratching at her arms, shaking and wriggling, feverishly, way down the back of the coach. He’d kicked her off at the next stop, telling her he wasn’t having some junkie slag puke up on the upholstery. And now she’s sitting on her rucksack, wrapped up in her own arms, hoping that some late-night dog-walker will spot her and ask if she’s OK – maybe direct her to a refuge or invite her home for the night. She’ll adapt to the situation as it develops. If it’s a man she’ll play pitiful: let them be her knight in shining armour. She’ll feign pride and self-sufficiency if it’s a woman – repeatedly refuse offers of help until she hears the magic words ‘I insist’. Something will turn up. She just needs to score, that’s all. Needs to take something to shave the edge off …
