Slowly, he draws nearer. ‘Making sure you’re OK.’
She opens the door and turns. On the step, she is almost his height. ‘I’m OK. But you can’t just come round here. It’s a conflict of interest. You must see that.’
His eyes seem darker than she remembers them. ‘Did Latimer talk to you?’ he asks.
‘He did, actually, a few hours after Odi and Broon were killed, but it was hardly necessary. I’m working to get Hamish out of prison, you have a vested interest in keeping him where he is. If there’s ever another court case, our being friends could jeopardize it. We can’t be friends any more.’
‘Is that all we were, friends?’
She knows exactly what he’s asking her and also that she owes him something more than a curt dismissal.
‘I’ve enjoyed getting to know you, but the timing didn’t work. I’m sorry, Pete.’ She turns away before she can weaken.
You’ll regret that, says the voice that welcomes her home.
Chapter 68
‘ARE YOU GOING to be writing all night?’
Phil is pacing again. He has spent the day doing it, stopping every ten minutes or so to smoke a cigarette. The air in the cell is thick with fumes and Wolfe thinks, not for the first time, that there is a good chance that if he ever does leave this place alive, he will be riddled with lung cancer.
He looks up. ‘Nope, I’m nearly done.’ There is another half-hour until lights out. ‘Want to play cards?’
The two of them often play poker when they are locked up. Wolfe learned the game from his cellmate, but soon outstripped him. Roughly 60 per cent of the time, he lets Phil win.
Phil stops at the door and looks out. ‘It’s doing my head in,’ he complains.
Wolfe has been at Parkhurst long enough to know that, of the three hundred and sixty-five days that make up the prison year, Christmas Day is by far the hardest to get through.
On Christmas Day, everyone is thinking about what their families are doing without them. Christmas Day is when the missing and the loneliness tip the scales and come down hard on the unbearable side.
Visitors are not allowed on Christmas Day. Prisoners can neither send nor receive gifts from outside. The queue for the telephone is less good-natured than usual. Squabbles are more or less continual. The suicide rate in UK prisons peaks over Christmas.
‘Didn’t even get to talk to Sal,’ Phil moans. ‘Who you writing to, anyway? Your mum again?’
He comes close, as though he might be about to peer over Wolfe’s shoulder. Wolfe signs his name at the bottom and folds the single sheet of paper in two.
‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’ he says.
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
THIS MORNING, THREE days after Christmas, Wolfe looks tired. He is freshly shaved and the faint smell of soap he’s brought into the interview room suggests he’s washed, but his skin looks pale, the lines on his temples deeper, and there are purple smudges running diagonally from the corner of his eyes to the centre of his cheeks. He is yawning as he’s led into the interview room and tries, unsuccessfully, to stifle it.
‘Sorry. Bad night.’ He holds his hands out to be uncuffed. ‘Did you have a good Christmas?’
She hasn’t come to exchange social pleasantries. ‘Did you know Pete Weston before he arrested you?’
The door closes behind the guard and they are alone. Wolfe sinks into the other chair and unfolds his long, lazy grin. ‘I was wondering when you’d work that one out.’
Today, his self-possession is annoying. A man in his position has no business being smug. ‘I have quite enough exercising my brain, thank you, without your withholding information.’
The amusement leaves his mouth, not his eyes.
‘How?’ she asks. ‘How did you know him?’
‘First answer me this. Is he trying to get close to you? Personally, I mean.’
‘He’s asked me much the same thing about you.’
Wolfe looks around, at the small, square, dull room, empty apart from the table and chairs. ‘He has a little more room to manoeuvre than I do.’
‘Yes, I think he’s interested. But he’s not long gone through a bad break-up. I think he’s vulnerable to any half-decent woman who’ll talk to him right now.’
Somewhere, not too far away, is the sound of someone yelling. It has an authoritative ring about it, she thinks it’s probably a guard.
‘Are you pretending to like him to get information? Because if you are, I’m fine with it.’
‘Maybe I’m not pretending. Maybe I do like him.’
Wolfe laughs, and this line of conversation has gone far enough.
‘How do you know him?’
Now he looks almost bored. ‘Perfectly commonplace circumstances. We played football for Keynsham Athletic first team for three seasons. I played left midfield, he was centre back. Sports teams usually socialize after matches, so I got to know him.’