Like This, for Ever

26




‘FOUR PROPOSALS OF marriage, six death threats, two job offers and five churches claiming eternal salvation will be mine once I embrace Jesus and join their flock.’

Lacey nudged her chair further under the table, closer to the slim young woman on its opposite side. All around her in the visitors’ suite people were making the same effort to give their conversations an outside chance of privacy. Trouble was, given the noise levels in the room, at times they invariably had to shout to make themselves heard. ‘And is that this week?’ she asked.

The woman smiling at her across the table looked nothing like the photograph that had appeared, not quite a week earlier, in a Sunday supplement about female serial killers. The photograph had been taken several weeks after her arrest, when the strain of incarceration and the slow grinding of the legal system were taking their toll. This woman – face free of make-up, hair grown longer and its natural toffee brown – didn’t look much older than twenty. She was slim and strong and had great posture. Her skin glowed and her eyes shone. She looked as if she’d never had a sleepless night or a bad dream in her life.

She gave a half shrug, as though conceding a small defeat. ‘Since you were last here.’ Then she grinned. ‘I’m still in the lead though.’

Impossible for Lacey not to smile back. The woman serving a life sentence for murder was brimming over with life. You could almost look into her eyes and see her heart beating. And her conversation was so quick, so full of energy, ideas just poured out of her. This woman, more than anyone, made Lacey acutely conscious of how sluggish her own thinking had become, how dulled her reactions to what was going on around her. This place, more than anywhere, made her feel as though she were viewing life through a thick screen of opaque glass.

‘I’m very happy for you,’ said Lacey. ‘And at what stage is the winner determined?’

Hazel-blue eyes blinked. ‘It’s more of an ongoing challenge. We just update the board in the dayroom as and when. One of the warders rubbed it off the other week and there was nearly a riot.’

‘Volatile places, prisons.’

The woman tucked a strand of hair behind one ear. ‘You’re telling me,’ she said. ‘Then we had the allegations of cheating, so now we have to supply proof. One of the older women is in charge of the board. Only she can update it, and she wants to see the letters or the emails before she’ll change the scoring.’

‘Strict.’

‘Rachel Copping. You’ve probably heard of her. She put weedkiller into her husband’s tea when she found out he’d emptied their bank account. Took him three days to die and she kept him locked in the bedroom the whole time.’

‘I’m glad you’re making friends.’

A conspiratorial grin. Then a second of silence as both women momentarily ran out of conversation. Lacey’s eyes drifted up to the wall clock and saw that twenty minutes had gone by already.

Time behaved differently in here, she’d noticed. Or rather it misbehaved. It skidded, dragged its heels, sprinted forward and doubled back, catching itself on loose nails and grinding to sudden and unpredictable halts. It was as though the laws governing real time didn’t quite make it through prison security.

‘Are they treating you well?’ she asked, when the silence was nudging towards awkward and even a stupid question seemed better than nothing. As if anyone were treated well in prison. But this woman was probably one of the most notorious killers of modern times. She’d be bound to attract attention.

‘Not bad. I wonder if they’re a bit afraid of me, even the staff.’ As she spoke, she glanced at the middle-aged man in uniform standing just five yards away against the wall. He caught her eye and looked down. ‘If any of them get a bit lippy,’ she went on, ‘I just sort of stop and stare. And I can see them thinking about what I did and they just back down. Nobody really gives me any trouble.’

For a second, the warmth in her eyes flickered out and her pupils took on a darker cast. For a second, it was possible to see the woman who had killed, premeditatedly and brutally; who, despite what she might pretend to the prison authorities, psychiatrists and social workers, felt not a shred of remorse. It was good though, good that she was tough, good that she was feared. It would keep her safe.

‘Good,’ said Lacey.

A second more of silence. Lacey leaned back and took a deep breath, unconsciously pushing back her shoulders to give her lungs more room to move. She still hadn’t got used to how thin the air felt here, as though the place was part of some underhand experiment to find out if prisoners and their visitors might be a bit more manageable if the oxygen content of the room were reduced. Come to think of it, didn’t they do that on aeroplanes?

The prisoner was watching her thoughtfully. ‘Are you still getting headaches?’ she asked.

Lacey nodded. ‘Sometimes,’ she admitted, although headaches were something she was suffering from increasingly. Especially on visiting days. The thin air in the visiting suite, the noise and smell of people around her, then the exhaustion that several hours on public transport brought. And yet, she realized with a surge of warmth, it was all a small price to pay for the sheer joy of having this woman back in her life again.

‘You know what? Having an education is the most enormous advantage in prison,’ said the prisoner.

‘It’s generally considered an advantage out of it as well. But you left school at fifteen.’

‘Yeah, but I didn’t waste my time when I was there. I can read. I can string a sentence together. Loads of the women in here ask me to write letters home for them. Or read the ones they get. One girl even asked me to teach her to read. I said I’d have a go, but you wouldn’t believe how bad the library is. I’ve written to the minister.’

‘The minister?’

‘Secretary of State for Education. I mean, you’ve got all these women locked up – talk about a captive audience, makes sense to give them something useful to do. And people learn through books, don’t they? You taught me that.’

‘And you want the minister to …’

‘Provide some decent books, of course. Even if they’re only secondhand. I’ve only been here a couple of months and I’ve read everything in the library already. Ten years down the line I’ll be able to recite them. Imagine it, Lacey, ten years reading the same thirty-seven books. What? What’s the matter?’

Lacey had reached across the table, taken hold of the other woman’s hands. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry you’re in here. It’s all my—’

The prisoner was looking round, alarmed. If they made a scene, Lacey might be asked to leave early. Then she leaned forward. ‘No, listen to me,’ she said. ‘I’ve been in prison since I was fifteen years old. A worse prison than this, by a long shot. Here, it’s warm and clean. There’s food and company. I can plan for the future. By the way, are you involved in the vampire murders?’

Even here, there was no respite from the evil that was following her around. Even here? What was she thinking? Here was where the evil of humanity was concentrated. Even if it never felt that way.

‘They’re calling them that already?’ said Lacey.

The prisoner nodded. ‘Since that bloke was on the telly this morning. The twenty-four-hour news channels have been full of it. The girls here have been talking about it all day. Funny how uptight they get about kids being murdered. So is the Lewisham team dealing with it?’

‘They are. But I was never part of that team. I was just drafted in to help out with – well, you know, last autumn.’

‘But you told me you’d been asked to join them.’

Lacey nodded. A couple of months ago, Dana Tulloch had told her she had a place on the Lewisham Major Investigation Team if she wanted it. She’d been seriously considering the idea. Then she’d been sent to Cambridge.

‘I’m not sure it’s for me, after all,’ she said, thinking that most people would assume she was talking about a specific posting. On the other hand, the woman across the table wasn’t most people.

‘What? Lewisham specifically or the Met in general?’

Lacey’s eyes fell to the table-top.

‘What else will you do?’

Lacey looked up. ‘I’ll think of something. Private security, maybe.’

‘This isn’t you.’

‘We all have our tipping points.’

‘I could help.’

‘What with? Career advice?’

‘If you want, but I meant the case.’

‘Well, first up, I’m not part of the investigating team, and I know nothing more than what I’ve heard on the news. Second, how can you possibly help with the abduction and murder of four young boys?’

The woman shook her head. ‘Oh, typical police two-dimensional thinking. Do you have any idea of the criminal knowledge in this room alone?’

Lacey looked round. As usual, most of the visitors were men and children. Some older women, who looked like they might be prisoners’ mothers. The prisoners themselves all sat facing the same direction, the north wall, all dressed alike in royal-blue overalls. Women of varying ages, the oldest in her sixties, the youngest barely out of her teens. None appeared to be anything out of the ordinary. They were the sort of women you’d see on a bus, in the super market, waiting for their children outside school. Perfectly ordinary-looking women, who’d been convicted of some of the most serious crimes in British history.

‘I can get a focus group together,’ the ordinary woman across the table was saying. ‘Brainstorm a few ideas. Try and come up with the motivation. We could build you a profile of the killer. I’m sure we’d do a pretty good job. There are some very twisted people in here, you know.’

‘You don’t say.’

‘Seriously, we’ve been talking about little else all morning. What do you think about this clinical vampirism business?’

‘I haven’t really given it much thought,’ said Lacey.

‘Oh, come off it. I know you, you’ll be poring over every single detail you can get your hands on. The consensus here is we’re not sure. A lot of the women in here cut themselves, you know. My roommate does it. I asked her about it once. She said it’s like tension builds up inside you and it gets to the point when you just can’t keep it in any longer. Like a really nasty festering sore that you know you have to burst. You know it’s going to hurt like hell when you do, but afterwards it’ll feel so much better.’

It was actually a pretty good analogy. Like the inside of your body was festering.

‘Still with me?’

‘Of course,’ said Lacey, blinking herself back.

‘So we get the idea of blood-letting to release tension, but nobody had ever heard of doing it to someone else. And as for drinking blood, that’s just gross.’

The bell rang to signal the end of visiting time. The two women had established a pattern. They never lingered, that just made it harder. They stood up, kissed, held each other for a second, and then Lacey walked away without looking back. This time, though, the brief second didn’t feel nearly long enough. Lacey held on to the young woman’s slim, strong body, felt her soft cheek against her own.

‘You’re really OK, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘It’s not just a brave face you’re putting on.’

Fingers stroked the underside of her chin. ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘You’re the one we need to worry about.’

Lacey pulled away and made for the door. Noise levels in the room always picked up at this point. Chairs were scraped along the floor, people invariably raised their voices to say goodbye.

‘You have to go back to work, Lacey,’ called the voice across the room. ‘You can’t do anything else!’