Daisy in Chains (16 page)

Wolfe sits on his bunk, folding and refolding a small, thin rectangle of paper.

‘Like Santa’s frigging grotto in ’ere.’ Sedge, a Scot in his early twenties, has been dragged into the cell by Phil because if you spend too long on the corridor during a lockdown, you’re likely to find yourself swept up with the reprisals. Participant or bystander, it makes little difference when the batons start swinging. He looks over at Wolfe. ‘Fuck’s he doing?’

‘Ornithology.’ Phil can never remember the term origami, and Wolfe has given up reminding him. Ornithology isn’t way off beam. Often he makes bird shapes. Not today, though. Nor is he making yet another Christmas bauble. There are more than enough of those hanging from the ceiling.

‘He makes things out of coloured paper. Look.’ Like a proud parent, Phil is directing their visitor’s attention towards the narrow, metal window ledge. ‘It’s like having a window box.’

Most often, Wolfe makes flowers. Their simple, regular form makes them amongst the easiest of shapes to create and he is a relative newcomer to origami. Using the coloured paper his mother sends he’s fashioned roses, tulips, chrysanthemums and lilies, that to his mind seem to emphasize the drab squalor of the room, but which nevertheless delight Phil. Other inmates on the block have started to copy their Christmas decorations, fashioning their own chains, which are relatively simple, begging lessons in how to make the baubles, which are not. There have
been rumours that the Governor is getting concerned about the fire hazard, is threatening to have the home-made decorations taken down. This worries Wolfe. His chains and baubles are important to him and Phil.

‘What are these about?’ Sedge can’t keep still. He stands below Wolfe’s bookshelf, looking up at the row of paperbacks, seven of them by the same author. ‘
Throw the Key Far
.’ Sedge spells out the words slowly. ‘
A true-life tale of harsh justice
, by Maggie Rose.’ He pulls the book from the shelf, oblivious to Wolfe’s glare of annoyance, and opens it at a page marked with a yellow Post-it note. ‘Part . . ., part . . .’ he tries.

‘Participle.’ The tone of Wolfe’s voice makes Phil frown, nervously. ‘She uses the participle
sunk
, when she really needs the past tense,
sank.
It’s a common mistake.’

Sedge flicks through the other Post-it notes peering out of the top of the book. ‘So you’ve, like, gone through the whole book, looking for mistakes?’

‘It passes the time,’ says Wolfe.

In the corridor someone is hurting, although not so badly that he doesn’t have the strength to swear and threaten the officers who are trying to contain him. Then he falls silent, and maybe he is hurting that badly now.

‘Can’t get my fuckin’ ’ead round it.’ Sedge has grown bored with the books and has found Wolfe’s pile of mail on the narrow desk. He’s flicking through the latest batch of coloured, even scented, paper and photographs. ‘Are these bints mental, or what?’

Wolfe is fairly certain that Sedge’s reading ability is limited to the more basic of the graphic novels. Not that he’d care. He feels no need to protect the confidentiality of women he will never meet. ‘You could describe it as a mental disorder,’ he says. ‘But it’s pretty much common to every woman in the world.’

‘You what?’ Sedge says.

‘All women are drawn to the alpha male.’ Wolfe goes back to his folding and twisting. ‘They can’t help themselves. The cleverer ones, the feminists, will deny it, but the evidence is against them.’ He glances up at Sedge, sees no sign of light dawning. ‘It’s instinctive,’ he tries again. ‘The bigger, stronger, smarter men are going to be better at protecting the women and their children. They’ll bring home more food. A man who is capable of killing is the ultimate protector.’

‘Aye, but, like . . .’ Sedge has an idea in his head, is struggling to get it out. ‘You can’t protect any of ’em. You can’t even bring ’em home a takeaway pizza, you’re banged up in here, so how does that work?’

‘It works even better. It makes me a fantasy figure. They can dream about how dark and dangerous I am, with no chance of real life getting in the way. They’ll never find out that, like most blokes, I can be a bit of a twat.’

Phil looks up. This is something he and Wolfe have discussed before. Phil is yet to be convinced. ‘Yeah, but like, my missus, she won’t take shit from no one, especially not me. I just don’t get what you say about birds secretly wanting to be bossed about. It’s the other way round at our gaff.’

‘Jezz, this one is well fit!’ Sedge has pulled a photograph from the pile. Wolfe glances over. It is a selfie, taken in a bedroom. The girl is naked from the waist up.

‘She looks fifteen.’ Wolfe takes it and drops it in the bin. ‘If I could be bothered, I’d send it home to her parents. And we’re talking fantasy here, mate. Just about every erotic film or book going is about a young, innocent woman being dominated by a dangerous man. All women secretly long to be dominated.’ He grins to himself. ‘Especially by a bloke who’s fit and handsome. That’s why I get the letters, you Scotch pillock, and you don’t.’

‘Frigging Nora, look at the tits on this one!’ Sedge probably isn’t listening. He hands another photograph over to Phil who nods, appreciatively. ‘Hamish, mate, why don’t you get some of ’em to visit?’

‘That’s what I keep saying,’ Phil pipes up. ‘He should find one he likes the look of, write to her a few times and get a relationship going. Has to be better than just getting visits from his mum.’

‘Yeah, why not, mate? Don’t you want a woman?’

Hamish smiles to himself and glances up at the calendar on the wall. ‘Maybe I’m waiting for the right woman.’

The flower is finished. Wolfe twirls it between forefinger and thumb.

‘Nice one.’ Phil has given up watching the action on the corridor and comes back to admire the flower. ‘Want me to put it on the ledge?’

‘No thanks, mate. I’m keeping hold of this one.’

‘What is it?’

Wolfe looks down at a dozen, slim white petals, the yellow centre, and raises it to his lips. ‘It’s a daisy.’

‘
WHY IS YOUR
hair blue?’

The child before Maggie is a girl of about six years old.

‘It’s my favourite colour,’ Maggie tells her.

‘Mine’s pink.’

‘Kelsey, don’t bovver the lady.’

Kelsey doesn’t even glance at her mother.

‘I like pink too,’ says Maggie. ‘I nearly wore my pink coat today.’

‘Why didn’t you?’

‘I don’t know, it just felt like a white coat sort of day. Do you ever have days when only one coat or one dress will do?’

Kelsey stares.

‘It won’t stay white for long in this place.’ The woman, several seats away, is in her mid thirties. Her blonde hair looks freshly dyed and her make-up better suited to a nightclub than a prison. On her lap is a baby of about eighteen months old. ‘Not seen you ’ere before. First time?’

Maggie nods. If she accepts Hamish Wolfe as a client, she’ll be entitled to legal visits, which will be more flexible, and conducted in private. Until then, she is a visitor like any other.

‘We come every fortnight. Costs a frigging fortune: B and B in Southampton, three of us on the ferry. Not so bad in summer, the kids get to go to the beach, but this weather it’s a bloody pain.’

‘Are you visiting your husband?’

The woman wrinkles her nose. ‘Well, not my husband, exactly. We’re not married yet. We will, when he gets out. Kids are his, both of them. We’re a proper family.’

‘Is he due home soon?’

‘Five years. If he behaves.’

‘That sounds like a long time to me. It must be difficult.’

The woman pulls up the hem of her skirt and scratches the inside of her knee. ‘Well, it’s not what you sign up for, is it? I miss the money,
obviously, although it were never that regular, and I never really knew where it were coming from. Mainly, though, it’s the sex I miss. Having someone there at night. It’s hard for him, too, if you know what I mean.’

Maggie glances uneasily at the six-year-old girl. Her pale blue eyes are flicking from one woman to the other.

‘I’d move closer but I stink.’

The room smells of cleaning fluids and stale smoke. Maggie can smell perfume, instant coffee, cheap white bread. She can’t smell the woman sitting a few seats away.

‘I don’t wash when I come here. Not for four days. Five if I can stand it. My Jason likes to smell me. The real me, he says, not perfumed me.’

There is no answer to this that Maggie can think of.

‘Who you here to see, anyway?’

‘Hamish Wolfe,’ Maggie says.

Is she imagining it, or has the buzz of conversation noticeably dropped? Are more heads turning her way?

‘You ’is girlfriend?’

‘Lawyer.’

Kelsey’s mother opens her mouth, but a grating sound catches their attention. The door into the main body of the prison has opened and an officer is in the doorway, beckoning them forward. It is time.

The prisoners are seated at tables in a large hall that smells of sweat and the stale oil of an antiquated heating system. Maggie is one of the last to enter. The others have rushed forward, have found the man they are visiting. Some children are in their fathers’ arms, whimpering at the unfamiliar contact, others hang back, warily. Most people are already seated, deep in conversation. More than one couple appear to be quarrelling.

Maggie stands, just inside the doorway, taking stock, trying to find the man she has come to visit.

Someone is watching her. This is not so very unusual in itself, a woman can’t look the way she does and not expect to be stared at, but this is different. This feels intense, even slightly predatory. She scans the room, the prickle of scrutiny stirring up the tiny hairs on her neck, knowing that somewhere in this mass of people, Wolfe has got her in his sights.

There he is. Directly beneath a window, its dust-clouded light softening the darkness of his hair. As their eyes meet, he remains as still as the walls that imprison him, and yet she has a sense of tremendous movement going on inside his head. He is processing her, absorbing information, preparing himself. She has to do the same, but it is as though a barrier has come down. All her usual powers of perception have deserted her. All she can see is the obvious.

She already knows that he’s tall, but he sits so upright, so straight in his chair as to give the impression of being even taller. She knows he is handsome, but she hadn’t expected the reaction just seeing him has provoked. He is brighter somehow, more colourful, the lines of his body sharper, than his surroundings.

Holding eye contact across the body-filled, stale-smelling room is like standing on the edge of a great lake, catching a glimpse of the far shore and being overcome with an urge to reach it. Swim, sail, float, whatever it takes. Or, like standing on a clifftop, looking down into the most perfect valley – lush and green, and wanting more than anything to get to it, but knowing the only way is to leap.

Maggie starts making her way towards him, weaving around tables, avoiding small children. She can see the detail of his eyes. The irises are green, maybe hazel. She sees his eyebrows lift, one corner of his mouth stretch out in a cautious smile. He is on his feet now, is smiling properly, his teeth white and perfect. His skin is so pale, has barely seen sunshine in two years. Physical contact is allowed, she remembers, at the start and end of these sessions. If he stretches out his hand, she’ll have to take it.

He doesn’t. He waits until she’s at the table and then his eyes dart across her face, her hair, her body. On the tabletop is an origami shape.

‘Hi.’

His voice is deeper than she expects, as though prison life has roughened and toughened it. He is wearing blue jeans and an oversized blue sweatshirt.

‘Hello, Hamish. How are you?’

How cool, how calm her voice is. It doesn’t sound as though her hands, were she to lift them from her sides, would be shaking.

‘Please.’ He’s indicating the chair. She sits. He does too, and now
they seem only inches apart. The origami shape is made from silvery-white paper but she doesn’t want to look at it. His shoulders are wide beneath the sweatshirt. He is a powerfully built man.

‘Can I get you something?’ she says. ‘Tea? Coffee? Something to eat?’ Even here, in this dreadful place, social norms prove strong.

‘No, thank you.’ He isn’t cuffed, although she’d half expected that he would be. There is a graze on his right hand.

‘Did you have a good journey?’ he asks her.

She’d driven through snow in the pre-dawn darkness, the Solent had been rough, the ferry cold and uncomfortable. ‘Yes, thank you,’ she says, and thinks how polite they are being, the murderer and the – what, exactly?

He smiles again, suddenly, as though overcome by a moment of joy and she sees that his incisors are longer than his other teeth. They spoil the perfect symmetry of his mouth. ‘Why is your hair that colour?’ he asks her.

The question she never answers truthfully has an oddly relaxing effect. And she has her answer prepared. ‘When I was thirteen, my school went to see a performance of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
at Stratford on Avon. Titania had blue hair. I thought it was just beautiful, but of course there was no way my mother would agree to my dyeing my hair blue, so I had to wait.’

He says nothing, but holds eye contact and a faint smile plays on his face. He is interested in the blue hair story.

‘It didn’t seem quite the form with the legal profession when I was starting out. Goodness me, those people take themselves seriously, so I had to wait a bit longer. And then I had a stroke of luck.’

‘You became a maverick celebrity and they’re allowed to be quirky?’

‘I went prematurely grey. Not a lovely, snowy-white, sadly, but a rather coarse, iron grey. I had to change it. The blue moment had come.’

‘I can’t call you Titania.’

‘Maggie will do.’

‘Can I get straight to the point, Maggie?’

‘Please do.’

‘Do you believe me guilty?’

‘Yes.’

She sees a twitch around the eyes that might be annoyance. ‘Then why are you here?’ he asks her.