Books of Blood (11 page)

of them. They can’t control themselves, and consequently they suffer.’

      He didn’t argue, but she looked at him severely, as though he had.

      ‘Oh yes, they suffer. That’s why we’re at such pains to show some appreciation of their situation; to teach them that there are alternatives.’

      She walked across to the window. From the second storey there was an adequate view of the grounds. Tetherdowne had been some kind of estate, and there was a good deal of land attached to the main house. A playing-field, its grass sere in the midsummer drought. Beyond it a cluster of out-houses, some exhausted trees, shrubbery, and then rough wasteland off to the wall. He’d seen the wall from the other side. Alcatraz would have been proud of it.

      ‘We try to give them a little freedom, a little education and a little sympathy. There’s a popular notion, isn’t there, that delinquents enjoy their criminal activities? This isn’t my experience at all. They come to me guilty, broken. .

      One broken victim flicked a vee at Leverthal’s back as he sauntered along the corridor. Hair slicked down and parted in three places. A couple of home-grown tattoos on his fore-arm, unfinished.

      ‘They have committed criminal acts, however,’ Redman pointed out.

      ‘Yes, but —, ‘And must, presumably, be reminded of the fact.’

      ‘I don’t think they need any reminding, Mr Redman. I think they burn with guilt.’

      She was hot on guilt, which didn’t surprise him. They’d taken over the pulpit, these analysts. They were up where the Bible-thumpers used to stand, with the threadbare sermons on the fires below, but with a slightly less colourful vocabulary. It was fundamentally the same story though, complete with the promises of healing, if

the rituals were observed. And behold, the righteous shall inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.

      There was a pursuit on the playing field, he noticed. Pursuit, and now a capture. One victim was laying into another smaller victim with his boot; it was a fairly merciless display.

      Leverthal caught the scene at the same time as Redman.

      ‘Excuse me. I must —‘

      She started down the stairs.

      ‘Your workshop is third door on the left if you want to take a look,’ she called over her shoulder, ‘I’ll be right back.’

      Like hell she would. Judging by the way the scene on the field was progressing, it would be a three crowbar job to prize them apart.

      Redman wandered along to his workshop. The door was locked, but through the wired glass he could see the benches, the vices, the tools. Not bad at all. He might even teach them some wood-work, if he was left alone long enough to do it.

      A bit frustrated not to be able to get in, he doubled back along the corridor, and followed Leverthal downstairs, finding his way out easily on to the sun-lit playing field. A little knot of spectators had grown around the fight, or the massacre, which had now ceased. Leverthal was standing, staring down at the boy on the ground. One of the warders was kneeling at the boy’s head; the injuries looked bad.

      A number of the spectators looked up and stared at the new face as Redman approached. There were whispers amongst them, some smiles.

      Redman looked at the boy. Perhaps sixteen, he lay with his cheek to the ground, as if listening for something in the earth.

      ‘Lacey’, Leverthal named the boy for Redman.

      ‘Is he badly hurt?’

     
The man kneeling beside Lacey shook his head.

      ‘Not too bad. Bit of a fall. Nothing broken.’

      There was blood on the boy’s face from his mashed nose. His eyes were closed. Peaceful. He could have been dead.

      ‘Where’s the bloody stretcher?’ said the warder. He was clearly uncomfortable on the drought-hardened ground.

      ‘They’re coming, Sir,’ said someone. Redman thought it was the aggressor. A thin lad: about nineteen. The sort of eyes that could sour milk at twenty paces.

      Indeed a small posse of boys was emerging from the main building, carrying a stretcher and a red blanket. They were all grinning from ear to ear.

      The band of spectators had begun to disperse, now that the best of it was over. Not much fun picking up the pieces.

      ‘Wait, wait,’ said Redman, ‘don’t we need some witnesses here? Who did this?’

      There were a few casual shrugs, but most of them played deaf. They sauntered away as if nothing had been said.

      Redman said: ‘We saw it. From the window.’

Leverthal was offering no support.

      ‘Didn’t we?’ he demanded of her.

      ‘It was too far to lay any blame, I think. But I don’t want to see any more of this kind of bullying, do you all understand me?’

      She’d seen Lacey, and recognized him easily from that distance. Why not the attacker too? Redman kicked himself for not concentrating; without names and personalities to go with the faces, it was difficult to distinguish between them. The risk of making a misplaced accusation was high, even though he was almost sure of the curdling eyed boy. This was no time to make mistakes, he decided; this time he’d have to let the issue drop.

      Leverthal seemed unmoved by the whole thing.

      ‘Lacey,’ she said quietly, ‘it’s always Lacey.’

     
‘He asks for it,’ said one of the boys with the stretcher, brushing a sheaf of blond-white hair from his eyes, ‘he doesn’t know no better.’

      Ignoring the observation, Leverthal supervised Lacey’s transfer to the stretcher, and started to walk back to the main building, with Redman in tow. It was all so casual.

      ‘Not exactly wholesome, Lacey,’ she said cryptically, almost by way of explanation; and that was all. So much for compassion.

      Redman glanced back as they tucked the red blanket around Lacey’s still form. Two things happened, almost simultaneously.

      The first: Somebody in the group said, ‘That’s the pig’. The second: Lacey’s eyes opened and looked straight into Redman’s, wide, clear and true.

      Redman spent a good deal of the next day putting his workshop in order. Many of the tools had been broken or rendered useless by untrained handling: saws without teeth, chisels that were chipped and edgeless, broken vices. He’d need money to re-supply the shop with the basics of the trade, but now wasn’t the time to start asking. Wiser to wait, and be seen to do a decent job. He was quite used to the politics of institutions; the force was full of it.

      About four-thirty a bell started to ring, a good way from the workshop. He ignored it, but after a time his instincts got the better of him. Bells were alarms, and alarms were sounded to alert people. He left his tidying, locked the workshop door behind him, and followed his ears.

      The bell was ringing in what was laughingly called the Hospital Unit, two or three rooms closed off from the main block and prettied up with a few pictures and curtains at the windows. There was no sign of smoke in the air, so it clearly wasn’t a fire. There was shouting though. More than shouting. A howl.

     
He quickened his pace along the interminable corridors, and as he turned a corner towards the Unit a small figure ran straight into him. The impact winded both of them, but Redman grabbed the lad by the arm before he could make off again. The captive was quick to respond, lashing out with his shoeless feet against Redman’s shin. But he had him fast.

      ‘Let me go you fucking —‘‘Calm down! Calm down!’

      His pursuers were almost there. ‘Hold him!’

      ‘Fucker! Fucker! Fucker! Fucker!’

      ‘Hold him!’

      It was like wrestling a crocodile: the kid had all the strength of fear. But the best of his fury was spent.

      Tears were springing into his bruised eyes as he spat in Redman’s face. It was Lacey in his arms, unwholesome Lacey.

      ‘OK. We got him.’

      Redman stepped back as the warder took over, putting Lacey in a hold that looked fit to break the boy’s arm. Two or three others were appearing round the corner. Two boys, and a nurse, a very unlovely creature.

      ‘Let me go . . . Let me go . . .‘ Lacey was yelling, but any stomach for the fight had gone out of him. A pout came to his face in defeat, and still the cow-like eyes turned up accusingly at Redman, big and brown. He looked younger than his sixteen years, almost prepubescent. There was a whisper of bum-fluff on his cheek and a few spots amongst the bruises and a badly-applied dressing across his nose. But quite a girlish face, a virgin’s face, from an age when there were still virgins. And still the eyes.

      Leverthal had appeared, too late to be of use.

      ‘What’s going on?’

     
The warder piped up. The chase had taken his breath, and his temper.

      ‘He locked himself in the lavatories. Tried to get out through the window.’

      ‘Why?’

      The question was addressed to the warder, not to the child. A telling confusion. The warder, confounded, shrugged.

      ‘Why?’ Redman repeated the question to Lacey. The boy just stared, as though he’d never been asked a question before.

      ‘You the pig?’ he said suddenly, snot running from his nose.

      ‘Pig?’

      ‘He means policeman,’ said one of the boys. The noun was spoken with a mocking precision, as though he was addressing an imbecile.

      ‘I know what he means, lad,’ said Redman, still determined to out-stare Lacey, ‘I know very well what he means.’

      ‘Are you?’

      ‘Be quiet, Lacey,’ said Leverthal, ‘you’re in enough trouble as it is.’

      ‘Yes, son. I’m the pig.’

      The war of looks went on, a private battle between boy and man.

      ‘You don’t know nothing,’ said Lacey. It wasn’t a snide remark, the boy was simply telling his version of the truth; his gaze didn’t flicker.

      ‘All right, Lacey, that’s enough.’ The warder was trying to haul him away; his belly stuck out between pyjama top and bottom, a smooth dome of milk skin.

      ‘Let him speak,’ said Redman. ‘What don’t I know?’

      ‘He can give his side of the story to the Governor,’ said Leverthal before Lacey could reply. ‘It’s not your concern.’

     
But it was very much his concern. The stare made it his concern; so cutting, so damned. The stare demanded that it become his concern.

      ‘Let him speak,’ said Redman, the authority in his voice overriding Leverthal. The warder loosened his hold just a little.

      ‘Why did you try and escape, Lacey?’

      “Cause he came back.’

      ‘Who came back? A name, Lacey. Who are you talking about?’

      For several seconds Redman sensed the boy fighting a pact with silence; then Lacey shook his head, breaking the electric exchange between them. He seemed to lose his way somewhere; a kind of puzzlement gagged him.

      ‘No harm’s going to come to you.’

      Lacey stared at his feet, frowning. ‘I want to go back to bed now,’ he said. A virgin’s request.

      ‘No harm, Lacey. I promise.’

      The promise seemed to have precious little effect; Lacey was struck dumb. But it was a promise nevertheless, and he hoped Lacey realised that. The kid looked exhausted by the effort of his failed escape, of the pursuit, of staring. His face was ashen. He let the warder turn him and take him back. Before he rounded the corner again, he seemed to change his mind; he struggled to loose himself, failed, but managed to twist himself round to face his interrogator.

      ‘Henessey,’ he said, meeting Redman’s eyes once more. That was all. He was shunted out of sight before he could say anything more.

      ‘Henessey?’ said Redman, feeling like a stranger suddenly.

      ‘Who’s Henessey?’

      Leverthal was lighting a cigarette. Her hands were shaking ever so slightly as she did it. He hadn’t noticed that yesterday, but he wasn’t surprised. He’d yet to meet a head shrinker who didn’t have problems of their own.

     
‘The boy’s lying,’ she said, ‘Henessey’s no longer with us.’

      A little pause. Redman didn’t prompt, it would only make her jumpy.

      ‘Lacey’s clever,’ she went on, putting the cigarette to her colourless lips. ‘He knows just the spot.’

      ‘Eh?’

      ‘You’re new here, and he wants to give you the impression that he’s got a mystery all of his own.’

      ‘It isn’t a mystery then?’

      ‘Henessey?’ she snorted. ‘Good God no. He escaped custody in early May. He and Lacey . . .‘ She hesitated, without wanting to. ‘He and Lacey had something between them. Drugs perhaps, we never found out. Glue-sniffing, mutual masturbation, God knows what.’

      She really did find the whole subject unpleasant. Distaste was written over her face in a dozen tight places.

      ‘How did Henessey escape?’

‘We still don’t know,’ she said. ‘He just didn’t turn up for roll-call one morning. The place was searched from top to bottom. But he’d gone.’

      ‘Is it possible he’d come back?’

      A genuine laugh.

‘Jesus no. He hated the place. Besides, how could he get in?’

      ‘He got out.’

      Leverthal conceded the point with a murmur. ‘He wasn’t especially bright, but he was cunning. I wasn’t altogether surprised when he went missing. The few weeks before his escape he’d really sunk into himself. I couldn’t get anything out of him, and up until then he’d been quite talkative.’

      ‘And Lacey?’

      ‘Under his thumb. It often happens. Younger boy idolizes an older, more experienced individual. Lacey had a very unsettled family background.’

     
Neat, thought Redman. So neat he didn’t believe a word of it. Minds weren’t pictures at an exhibition, all numbered, and hung in order of influence, one marked ‘Cunning’, the next, ‘Impressionable’. They were scrawls; they were sprawling splashes of graffiti, unpredictable, unconfinable.

And little boy Lacey? He was written on water.

      Classes began the next day, in a heat so oppressive it turned the workshop into an oven by eleven. But the boys responded quickly to Redman’s straight dealing. They recognized in him a man they could respect without liking. They expected no favours, and received none. It was a stable arrangement.

      Redman found the staff on the whole less communicative than the boys. An odd-ball bunch, all in all. Not a strong heart amongst them he decided. The routine of Tetherdowne, its rituals of classification, of humiliation, seemed to grind them into a common gravel. Increasingly he found himself avoiding conversation with his peers. The workshop became a sanctuary, a home from home, smelling of newly cut wood and bodies.

      It was not until the following Monday that one of the boys mentioned the farm.

      Nobody had told him there was a farm in the grounds of the Centre, and the idea struck Redman as absurd.

      ‘Nobody much goes down there,’ said Creeley, one of the worst woodworkers on God’s earth. ‘It stinks.’

      General laughter.

      ‘All right, lads, settle down.’

      The laughter subsided, laced with a few whispered jibes.

      ‘Where is this farm, Creeley?’

      ‘It’s not even a farm really, sir,’ said Creeley, chewing his tongue (an incessant routine). ‘It’s just a few huts. Stink, they do sir. Especially now.’