“You’ll be quite safe,” she repeated.
Lovett opened his mouth to say something, and odds were good it would have been something stupid. Maybe something that started with “Mr Devlin said…” Stock jumped in first. “Do you want me to go with you? I can lock up here for a few minutes. I’m just afraid there might be an emergency while I’m out…”
Moulson raised a hand in surrender. “No. There’s no need. I’ll go.”
“Right then,” Lovett said briskly. “Let’s bounce.”
They went into the consulting area, all three of them. “Oh, hey,” Stock said to Moulson. “Can you sign a transfer form before you go?”
Moulson scribbled her name on the piece of paper Sylvie pushed across at her. She didn’t even look at it, which was just as well. She might have smelled a rat if she’d read how she’d insisted on checking out of the infirmary against the primary duty nurse’s strongly worded advice.
“Thanks,” Moulson said as she gave Sylvie back the paper and pen. “Thanks for helping me. I would have been in real trouble if you and Sally hadn’t taken me in here.”
“Well, it’s our job,” Stock mumbled. But she couldn’t meet Moulson’s eye.
After Moulson had gone, she sat down at Sally’s desk, folded her arms around her body and rocked herself back and forth as though she were a baby in a cradle and the baby’s mother, all in one. She did this for twenty minutes straight, feeling self-pity well up inside her like sap pouring out of a tapped tree. She’d never wanted this. Not any of it. She was the victim here more than anybody.
72
The evening wasn’t cool exactly, but it felt that way after the overheated air in the infirmary.
Jess stepped out ahead of Lovett into the silent yard. It looked immense. She’d only ever seen it thronged with women, the horizon never any further than the next little wedge of humanity. This late in the day, with lock-up pending, it was a desert, lit by thirty moons: even though the sun wasn’t all the way down yet, the big spotlights on the towers were already turned on.
“That way,” Lovett said. He tapped her arm as he pointed. Either he hadn’t seen how Jess had responded to Stock’s touch, or he’d seen it and didn’t care.
Jess tacked around the edge of the yard, staying out of the glare of the lights. She was still looking around in all directions, hoping Alex would appear from somewhere and fall in beside her. He didn’t.
She followed the guard down the narrow space between admin and the first prisoner block, into a hinterland of wheelie bins and wooden storage sheds. The light from the spots didn’t penetrate here at all. “No cameras,” Lovett muttered over his shoulder, as though Jess had asked him a question. She had a momentary presentiment all the same. In the outside world, she would never have come into a place like this with a man she didn’t know.
But Lovett was walking ahead of her really fast now, and he didn’t even look back to see if she was following.
He’s scared.
Jess looked down, expecting to see Alex walking next to her. He wasn’t there.
Alex?
Over here. But the words just popped up inside her mind, the way his words always did. There was no vector, no sense of bearing or distance. She turned her head slowly as she walked, trying to locate him.
“Come on,” Lovett said impatiently from up ahead of her. “Keep moving.”
Alex was standing beside a battered metal dumpster from whose half-open lid black plastic bin bags spilled like entrails. Jess was past him before she saw him, and he made no move to follow her.
Scared of what? she called out to him in her mind.
Of being seen, Alex said. He was up ahead of her now, in the angled shadow of the prison’s outer wall. He turned to keep her in view as she went by, but he didn’t join her. Well, of being seen with you.
That makes sense, Jess thought back at him. Devlin is his boss. He’s got to make sure nobody finds out he helped me.
It’s Devlin he’s thinking about. They were talking. Just a few minutes ago.
This time Alex was on her left side, peering through a stretch of fence that bore an electrical hazard sign. A squat bunker-like building behind him was presumably a generator or a switching station.
“What?” Jess asked, keeping her voice low. “That was in his mind? What did you see?”
“Don’t talk,” Lovett snapped. They had come to a steel door. It had no handle on the outside, but it had been propped halfway open with a fire extinguisher. Lovett gripped the edge of the door in one hand and opened it a little wider. He kicked the extinguisher on to its side and rolled it inside with the toe of his boot.
“Come on,” he said. “Quick now.”
Jess tried to look past him. A sudden stab of unease had made her slow to a halt. Inside the door it was completely dark: she couldn’t see a thing in there.
What’s he thinking now? she asked Alex.
“I don’t have time for this, love. Come on!”
He’s thinking… he doesn’t get paid enough for this. Not to risk his pension and everything. That Devlin takes the piss sometimes.
As Alex said this, Jess finally saw what her eyes had been telling her all along. The door that Lovett was holding open bore a sign she’d seen before on her first day out of the infirmary. THIS IS NOT AN EXIT EXCEPT IN CASE OF FIRE.
By day, the colour of the stonework would have told her, but in this fading light all colours were muted to anonymous grey. They were at the back of Goodall block. Not Franklin.
She turned to run. Lovett’s arm, skinny but surprisingly strong, whipped out and his hand caught her wrist. In a single movement he dragged her up against him, then his other hand closed on her shoulder. He turned on one heel and pushed her bodily through the doorway.
The door closed behind her, not with a loud boom but with a soft, irrevocable click.
Carol Loomis’s voice spoke out of the darkness right beside her.
“Told you, Lizzie,” she said. Her tone was cheerful but her voice had a dead echo to it. “She just lost her way, that’s all. She gets there in the end.”
73
There was no time to think. No time to scream, although Jess opened her mouth to give it a try.
The breath was knocked out of her as she was pushed jarringly against a wall. Hands at her waist hauled up her tracksuit top and groped underneath it. Jagged fingernails scraped her stomach.
“Nothing,” Loomis grunted. “Oh dear, oh dear.”
Something hard slammed into the side of Jess’s head, filling it with light and static. Another blow and she went sprawling. Her palms and her knees hit cold concrete.
“Where is it, Moulson?” Loomis asked. “If you can answer in ten words or less, Lizzie may leave you some of your teeth.”
Jess could barely see, even before they hit her. The darkness was almost total. A shadow loomed over her, just about visible against the slightly paler blur of a whitewashed wall. Something grazed her scalp, and a half-second later a metallic clang reverberated right by her ear. A kick that had missed her by a millimetre and hit something else. Something that rang like a bell. Earnshaw swore feelingly.
Hands fastened on Jess, started to drag her upright. She threw her weight backwards, broke the hold but lost her balance and fell down again with a jarring impact. That didn’t matter. Down here was where she needed to be. She’d just realised what that metallic sound meant.
Jess! Alex was right beside her in the dark. He was shrill with panic.
Run away, Alex. Run away.
Why did she say that? There was no danger to him here. But plenty of things a kid his age shouldn’t have to look at.