Mad Cows (3 page)

Maddy nearly laughed out loud. The only bars she'd ever been behind were to pull schooners. The most dishonest things she'd ever done were to break a wholemeal recipe chain letter; not to leave a note under the windscreen wiper of a car she'd bumped; serving up M & S gourmet as her own. She was pathologically honest, well, except for the time she'd used the paraplegic cubicle to have sex with Alex. But they'd needed the elbow room. Maddy was the type to feel guilty if she wore a back-to-front baseball cap emblazoned with the name of an American city she hadn't visited. Even when playing Monopoly, she never picked up the ‘Go to jail' card.

Things had gone far enough.

‘My name is Madeline Wolfe, okay?'

‘How do we know that's not a load of old pony.'

‘For Christ's sake . . . okay, okay. There is someone you can call to confirm my identity. The baby's father . . .' Gosh, was she looking forward to
that
call. It was second on her list of fun things to do – after a clitorodectomy. Until now Alex had been about as useful as a . . . well, as a father in a delivery room. She didn't want to be the first to get in touch, but shit a brick. At least he could get her the hell out of here. Humiliation, she lectured herself, is character building. But she had enough character already. Too
much
, according to Alex's well-connected friends amongst London's chattering classes.

‘Ah . . .' Slynne gave an impatient snarl. ‘So there is a man in this equation?'

Maddy pondered. ‘Yes, I think he can be scientifically classified as a vertebrate.'

‘Am I to take it you are not on good terms with the father of your child?' It was the Sarcasm Olympics and both Maddy and Slynne were going for Gold.

‘I'd like to tweeze out every single one of his pubic hairs and then transplant them back with a blunt needle . . . but otherwise we get on
fine
,' she said, cutely.

‘Oh, let me guess.' Officer Slynne leaned back, balancing on the legs of his chair, and regarded her with listless mockery. ‘It was “
rape
” . . .'

When he'd first entered the room, Maddy had mistaken the close-set eyes and hang-dog expression as taciturnity. She now knew that he'd just been studying his prey. She shook her head.

‘If he's such a pillock,' he pried, derisively, ‘then why'd ya shag him?'

‘I dunno . . .
somebody
had to do it.' Maddy didn't think the police would appreciate a description of her attraction to Alex's highbrows. He was the first man she'd ever met who could listen to ‘Nessun Dorma' and not think of the World Cup. Not only did he know all the Mozart K numbers and hold six degrees in biology, but he actually
read
the books short-listed each year for the Booker Prize. To Maddy, who'd left school at fifteen, this was pretty impressive stuff. The only examination
she'd
ever passed was her smear test.

Yes, it had been love at first sight. But then she'd taken a second look. It was as if she'd been wearing a sign on her heart which read ‘In case of Emergency, Break'. The emergency being that no sooner had she ricocheted half-way across the world to be with him than she found out that he was married with twins and, as soon as she'd broken up with him, that she was pregnant.

An entire squadron of John Player cigarette air-ships were dispatched ceiling-wards before the detective spoke again. ‘Well?'

‘The fact that he has a sequoia-sized penis helped . . .' Maddy teased, dangerously. ‘Amazing. A sequoia tree takes two hundred years to attain the same girth it took him 2.6 seconds to achieve at the merest glimpse of a fishnet stocking.'

Slynne's face contorted into a gargoyle grimace.
‘Cut the bollocks. I want his name and his fucking number. If you don't co-operate I'll have you on remand faster than you can say “legal aid”.'

Maddy breastfed while she waited. The frozen peas she'd stuffed down her bra had cooked from the heat. She took out the packet, tore it open with her teeth and ate them with a plastic coffee spoon. The policewoman guarding her dutifully added a packet of peas to Maddy's charge sheet.

At the thought of Alex's imminent arrival, a wave of relief washed over her – the sort of relief you feel when you think you're up the duff and it turns out to be a twenty-four-hour flu bug. The truth was, Maddy had said ‘No' to love . . . but it hadn't listened. In the past month, she'd shown more self-restraint than Pavarotti's panty girdle . . . while all the time secretly hoping to see more of him . . . and even perhaps his perfectly symmetrical tool. Alex's trouble was that he suffered from F.O.C. (Fear of Commitment). When it came to committing to anyone, he was as cautious as a naked bloke climbing a barbed-wire fence. But Maddy had since discovered a sure-fire cure for F.O.C. – the tiny token of their affection nestled beside her. Her spirits rose irrationally.

The Detective Sergeant returned shortly afterwards wearing an ersatz smile. ‘The renowned Alexander Drake, British naturalist, host of own BBC nature series, denies any knowledge of you or your bastard.'

It was a simple sentence, said perfunctorily, and it immediately changed everything. Reality slapped Maddy in the face like a car-salesman's cologne. The selfish mongrel! But – she reasoned – calling Alex selfish was like calling a dwarf short. Somehow she'd overlooked her ex-lover's ego. We're not just talking
BIG
, she fumed to herself. We're talking Visible From Outer Space. She bet it was sodding well there on the satellite photos, along with the Great Wall of China and the Barrier-bloody-Reef.

She filed her hurt away under ‘Revenge' – cross-referenced in ‘You'll Keep, You Bastard.'

‘That's the other thing I forgot to tell you,' Maddy said, camouflaging her shock. ‘He's also a founding member of Assholes Anonymous.'

In that nanosecond, Maddy plumbed the depths of the crapola. ‘I want a lawyer,' she announced, with all the confidence of a beehive hair-do in the rain.

Ostentatiously reaching for the list of duty solicitors, the Detective Sergeant suggested a firm. Maddy was escorted to the ‘rape suite'. It was just like a normal cell, only painted pink to enable the vermin to stand out more. A woman lay on a bunk, weeping.

‘We're letting you wait in here 'cause of baba,' the policewoman announced, as though doing Maddy a great favour.

‘Oh! A dream come true!' Maddy was having trouble disguising her trepidation. After the waterlogged woman was led away, the three of them lay on
the
bed – Jack, Maddy . . . and Maddy's stomach. She looked at her baby, his arms and legs flexed like a dead beetle. Unperturbed by light or noise, his eyelids moved in his sleep, as though experiencing the happiest Technicolor dreams.

Maddy tried to sleep but couldn't. She counted flocks of woolly sheep, shorn sheep, lamb cutlets . . . She tried counting other boring and inane creatures – Liberal Democrats, New Men, Gary Barlow without Take That, the Martini man in the wet shirt in that cinema advert, the ex-love of her life, televisual spunk rat, Alexander Drake . . . and awaited her saviour – legal eagle R. M. Peregrine.

The abdomen entered the room first. It looked like the third trimester of pregnancy – not a good look on a man. The face which followed would qualify for National Disaster relief. Above the fruit-fly larvae complexion was a clump of dyed-brown hair resembling a yak which had been dead a decade or two. Maddy, visibly repulsed, drew back from the sauerkraut body odour. Rupert Montgomery Peregrine grasped her hand before she could stop him.

‘Ms . . .' he consulted his file, faltering.

‘Wolfe.'

‘Peregrine. Expert in criminal law. Which is actually an oxymoron, when you analyse it. As is “even odds”, “minor miracle” and “bad sex” . . . So, what can we do for you?'

Maddy wiped her damp hand on her dress. ‘A few laps in a swimming pool of disinfectant would be nice. A jacuzzi dip in penicillin . . .'

‘Grotty, I know.' He misunderstood her. ‘But better than the cells.'

Her heart sank. It was obvious by the cheap stained suit that Peregrine was the sort of lawyer whose office is located by the neon sign outside it. He was all stubble and Old Spice.

‘Just get us out of this hell-hole.'

‘Ah . . . that all depends on the magistrate . . .'

‘I've got a one-month-old-baby, for Christ's sake.'

‘The only thing which moves a London stipendiary, my dear, are his bowels.'

‘But I'm innocent.' Even her own ears cringed at the cliché. Her day was rapidly turning into a bad country-and-western ballad.

Of course you are, dear.' Peregrine, ignoring the chair, lowered his bulky frame on to the bunk. The bed springs moaned in protest. ‘All incarceratees are innocent. The reasons they are innocent range from' – he counted them off on his pudgy fingers – ‘One, incompetent lawyer. Two, incompetent judge. Three, incompetent jury. Four, incompetent lawyer, judge
and
jury. Five, an over-dressed defendant, Six, an
under
-dressed defendant. Seven, too cold in the court room. Eight, too hot. Nine, racist jury, anti-
black
. Ten, racist jury, anti-
white
. . .'

Peregrine, Maddy adjudicated, was the sort of guy
who
should come stamped with a warning – ‘May Cause Drowsiness'.

‘The fact of the matter is that the Bill have got their nuts in a knot over LA-style “girlz'n'hood” gangs. That all-woman attack on Liz Hurley really excited them. Statistically, the number of young women in jail is steadily increasing. This has convinced the Plod that they have an inner-city crime phenomenon on their hands.'

Maddy slumped. If she'd been operating a machine, she'd have been on the brink of an industrial accident.

‘Which is why the judiciary want to make an example of uppity girls like you . . .'

What jolted her from her coma was the sight of the aubergine-coloured slug poking its head out of her solicitor's trousers. It lay in his palm. He stroked it absentmindedly as he spoke, as though it were a family pet. This could
not
be happening. If her life of late was a used car, nobody would bloody well buy it.

Now that he had her attention, Peregrine got to his unsavoury point. ‘No magistrate will grant you bail unless you have surety. Now, I can find a respectable person who'll swear he's known you all his life, guaranteeing ten thousand pounds. In exchange for this service, a woman would obviously want to show her gratitude . . .'

He had a coldsore in the crease of his lip. Maddy stared at it in stupefaction. Hey – it was a better view than anything else on offer. Maybe she was
dreaming
. . .? (If so, then where was Brad Pit and why was she still clothed?) Or having some kind of out-of-body experience? Yeah,
right
. Answers on a self-addressed plasma beam.

Her solicitor crossed to the door and made sure it was locked. Turning, his eyes travelled the six foot length of Maddy's muscular body with slow appreciation before snaring at 36D level. ‘Now, isn't it time we got to know each other better?'

‘Oh, I've got a pretty good idea who
you
are.
You're
the kind of guy Ricki Lake builds an entire show around.'

Peregrine chortled, enjoying her obstinacy. ‘So, shall we play Mr Wobbly Hides His Helmet?'

‘What do you use for contraception?' Maddy stalled, ‘Your personality?'

Peregrine's tone darkened. ‘You don't seem to be taking your situation very seriously. Forget
Porridge
. Not all inmates have their own TV sitcom. Some of them are psychotic lesbian axe murderesses.' He slouched back on the bed, resurrecting his manhood from the folds of his underpants.

‘OK. Enough kidding around,' Maddy rebuked. ‘Now show me your
real
penis.' Two strides and she was at the door, ready to shout through the grille for help. ‘I mean, what kind of an idiot do you think I am?'

‘The kind of idiot who allows the Regional Crime Squad to select her solicitor for her,' he gloated. ‘Oh,
forgive
me. That observation was intended to be parenthetic. And don't even think about trying to report this. A single mother, suspected fraudster and illegal foreigner? You have about as much muscle as, well, Christopher Reeve.'

Maddy was sick with disbelief at the Kafka-esque turn to her day. These kind of things didn't happen to people like her. She listened to
Desert Island Discs
. She cleansed with Clarins. Moisturizing before toner was a
major
misdemeanour. She worried about whether her twenty-four hour deodorant would run out after twenty-three hours. She looked up words she didn't know in the dictionary. Recycling was a daily ritual. As was gum massage . . . Maddy glanced across at her tiny baby. His hands fluttered in his sleep, as though conducting an invisible orchestra . . . with no idea that the score had suddenly switched to Berlioz's ‘March to the Gallows'.

‘Well, Ms Wolfe, what's it to be?'

3

The Hood, The
Mother
Hood

AS THE POLICE
car drove through the dark arched gates of Holloway Prison, the sense of certainty that Maddy had taken for granted all her life was obliterated for ever. The magistrate had not granted bail, which was why she and Jack were being herded, with the other incarceratees (Maddy had seen their shrunken abstracted look before – on sheep) into what was laughingly called the ‘reception area'. Her nose, mouth and ears were inspected by a jailer with a black, Beatle-wig haircut, blue eye-shadow, beige support knee-highs and a chest which started at the neck and ended at her naval.

‘Get yer gear off and give us a twirl.'

‘Hey,' Maddy said, with strained joviality, as she stepped out of her underpants, ‘aren't you even going
to
buy me dinner first?' She rotated obediently, a knot of anxiety mangling her innards. ‘What's the Mother and Baby Unit like? I mean, it's not as bad as the
real
gaol . . . is it?' She was about to learn that Her Majesty's prisons are home to the world's record number of Mensa-rejection slip holders. They're called prison officers.