The Dead Ex(63)

It’s an offer that’s too good to refuse.





31



Vicki

5 April 2018


The key turns, disturbing my thoughts. My heart jumps.

Then I take in the woman standing at the door and am swamped with relief.

It’s my solicitor. A visit so soon might mean that something important has happened. When I was a governor, a woman was released before she’d even spent a night inside. New evidence had emerged which showed she was innocent.

‘Sit down,’ says Penny. Her face is serious. ‘I’m afraid a second witness has come forward after hearing about the case on the news.’

Her eyes are on mine as if X-raying my insides, just as the machine had done during part of the frisking process to make sure I hadn’t secreted drugs on my person. ‘She was walking her dog in the cul-de-sac where David and Tanya’s house is. You ran past her, apparently, carrying something in your hand. She thought it might have been a chain.’

Shit! I don’t remember seeing anyone. ‘It wasn’t.’

‘Then what was it?’

My mouth is dry. I suddenly feel very foolish.

‘If you want to know, it was a Welsh love spoon that my father had given my mother. David must have taken it in the split. It didn’t belong to him. So I took it.’

Her face expresses disbelief. ‘Weren’t you rather preoccupied to think of that?’

‘Why should they have it?’

‘So where is it now?’

‘The police took it from me when I was arrested. It should be with my possessions.’

Penny sighs. ‘The thing is that, even if we can prove that, there’s been another development. Apparently, when you left the prison service, there had been a series of thefts. Equipment had been stolen. Whistles, regulation jackets, ligature knives … that sort of thing.’

‘Yes. It was one of the reasons I’d been unpopular with some of the staff. I came down heavy on them about the thefts.’

‘Your key chain also went missing.’

‘So it did. I reported it myself.’

‘And you didn’t think of this earlier when we discussed it?’

‘It had slipped my mind.’

‘Really?’ She doesn’t actually say that but I sense it.

‘You’d signed in for it that very day, I believe.’

‘But I put it in my locker when I went for a shower and when I came back, it had gone. The keys weren’t on it. I’d handed those in. It was just the belt and chain.’

‘OK …,’ says my solicitor slowly. ‘But the trouble is that the police searched your apartment again. They went through it with a fine-tooth comb. And now they’ve found a prison belt. With a long dog-tooth metal chain.’

‘What?’ I go cold.

‘It was wrapped up in your old prison uniform in a packing crate in the cellar with other bits and pieces from your previous job, including a mobile phone which should have been handed in. The same cellar which you neglected to mention when they first took a look around.’

To be honest, I’m surprised they hadn’t found it before. The trapdoor lies beneath a loose piece of carpet in my studio. Sometimes I forget to close it. This can be a hazard. Once I tripped over it.

‘I didn’t know there was a chain there. Or a phone. Honestly.’

My solicitor gives me a doubtful look.

‘Unless,’ I say uncertainly, ‘it got caught up with my uniform by mistake when I left. I was in quite a state mentally at the time. And I haven’t been through that box since.’ I shiver. ‘I haven’t had the strength to do so after what happened there.’

My solicitor sighs. ‘Even if the jury does accept this, they’re not going to take too kindly to your admission that you attacked Tanya.’

‘I told you. She attacked me first. I was just defending myself.’

‘So you say.’

How can I, a former pillar of the justice system, be in such a hole? I hang my head in shame as Penny leaves the room. I can see Tanya’s face all too clearly in my head. Of course I’d fought her back. That was one of the first things I’d been trained to do …

I was still a raw recruit. ‘You’re on the landing today.’ The prison officer spoke as if inviting a challenge. ‘Know what that means?’

Sure. The landing was where the men slept. Sometimes there was a second community lounge up there too. Visitors weren’t allowed in this area. But it was my first day on the job and I wasn’t meant to be doing high-risk work yet.

‘You’ve got to make sure they stay in their pads. Don’t take any shit about how they need to see the nurse.’

‘Who’s my partner?’

‘Off sick. Just you today.’

He was grinning. Testing me. Just like Dad had said they would.

There was nothing for it but to go up the stairs. They were broad and modern with open struts just wide enough to see through to the floor beneath. Along the walls on the landing itself were rows of doors like a cheap hotel. Men were banging them. ‘I need my meds, for fuck’s sake,’ one was shouting.

This was inhuman.

‘Thank God I’m out of here,’ said an officer, walking past me on the stairs. ‘I’ve been on all night and they haven’t let up. Still that’s what you get with perverts.’