‘Who is it, guv?’ He says this to be annoying. He knows perfectly well who has come to see him.
‘I’m not your frigging secretary, Wolfe. Get out here now.’
‘Have I got time for a bit of a wash, guv? Maybe a change of clothes?’ This too, is a wind-up. They both know he will go as he is, red-faced and sweat-stained.
‘State of you.’ His guard shakes his head as Wolfe meets him in the doorway. ‘Cuffs.’ Wolfe holds out his hands. They walk the length of the floor and descend the first flight of steps. Then the second.
‘Good news for you, Wolfe. You’re being transferred to the library.’
This is not good news as far as Wolfe is concerned. He has been working in the metal fabrication workshop every day for six months. It suits him. He has no wish to transfer to the library.
‘Why’s that, guv?’
They reach the bottom of the steps and head towards the private meeting rooms.
‘Governor thinks it’s better if staff in the library can read.’ There is no suggestion of humour in the guard’s face, but it’s hard to tell for sure. ‘And it’s against prison policy for convicted murderers to work in metal fabrication. Access to all those potential weapons, you see?’
‘Hadn’t occurred to me, guv. When is this going to happen?’
‘Couple of weeks. Start of next year. Suit you, sir?’
Wolfe smiles to himself. ‘Suits me just fine, thanks.’
‘Weston! How you doing, mate?’
Pete Weston is waiting for him in one of the visitors’ rooms. He is intent on his mobile phone as Wolfe is led in and doesn’t look up, doesn’t acknowledge Wolfe’s presence in any way. The accompanying officer, a dark-skinned, slightly portly young man, is not one whom Wolfe knows.
Wolfe sits and waits. The detective constable looks uncomfortable, his eyes flicking from Wolfe to Weston and back again. After a few seconds Wolfe glances back at the guard and makes a wanking gesture with his right hand. The guard pretends not to have seen.
Weston remains motionless, apart from the flick, flick, flick of his index finger. Wolfe whistles the first line of a tune, ‘I Shot The Sheriff’, and waits for the reaction that doesn’t come.
‘Take your time, mate. My schedule’s pretty light today.’
Weston looks up, lets his eyes roam up and down Wolfe’s body, in the way some of the cons checked him out when he first arrived. His nostrils twitch and he pushes his chair back an inch. ‘Hamish.’ He nods his head, as though solving some internal puzzle. ‘You OK?’ His eyes drift left. ‘This is Detective Constable Sunday Sadik.’
Weston has aged. His hair is thinner on the temples, there’s more grey than last time and his skin has a dryness and a pallor that probably isn’t just the reaction to a cold winter. Wolfe sees the same thing happening to his mother, even though she visits fortnightly. In the outside world, people are ageing, time is passing in the normal fashion. In here, it stands still. Wolfe has a sudden vision of himself, being released in forty years’ time, still a young man, going out to find everyone and everything he once knew has crumbled and gone.
The pain takes him by surprise and he grins, suddenly, stupidly, to hide it. ‘Never better, mate. I see the quit-smoking resolution didn’t last?’
Pure guesswork on his part, but the frown of annoyance on Weston’s face tells him he’s hit home. Weston has smoked for years. Every year he tries, and fails, to give up. He looks now at the guard. ‘We’ll be OK, thanks. I’ll yell if I need you.’
The guard nods in response and turns to leave the room.
‘Right then,’ Weston says, as the door clangs shut and is locked from the outside. ‘Let’s talk.’
Chapter 52
IN HER OVER-HEATED, softly lit kitchen, at just after seven in the evening, Maggie sits and waits. The food is ready, wine and lager are in the fridge. She has a list of notes so that she will forget nothing. Two lists of notes. One for each visitor.
One of whom is twenty-four minutes late; the other due in six.
She almost, but not quite, checks her phone line. A telephone call booking system can’t work to time. Not in prison.
Twenty-seven minutes and forty-two seconds later than the time arranged, the phone rings. She picks it up and walks to the window.
‘Maggie Rose.’
‘I hear you have dinner plans.’
She can’t help glancing round at the ceramic pot on top of the Aga, at the loaf of bread she’d taken from the bread maker just ten minutes earlier, at the table, set for two people. Wolfe will have eaten two hours ago, the tasteless, formless slop that is so much of prison food.
‘I went to that restaurant today and had a brief chat with the owner,’ she says. ‘I asked whether he’d be prepared to contact his customer base, asking anyone who can remember dining there on the night Zoe disappeared to come forward.’