Cages, p.15
Cages, page 15
‘You back, are you, dickhead.’
‘Thought you’d been moved on, nonce …’
‘Mr Windsor, he can’t be here … he missed yesterday, just take him back …’
‘Where’s Miss Harris, sir?’
Cox sits silently, enduring it all. He keeps the same unreadable expression on his face. Despite being the centre of attention, he finds that nobody ever really looks at him. Only Callan, the big armed robber with blood on his hands, takes the time and trouble to meet his eye and gives him a look that says, ‘I know what you are, and if opportunity arises, we both know what will happen’.
Karen bustles in behind the assorted inmates, reading out names. They drop into Cox’s memory bank like coins. He wants to know everything about the people he surrounds himself with. Not because he has any interest in them, but because when he escapes, they will each face unpleasantness: endless grillings conducted in the furnace glare of suspicion that they were somehow complicit. He will enjoy that thought, when what’s done is done. Will allow himself to picture their discomfort as he begins whatever life waits for him beyond these walls.
‘Sorry, sorry …’
The writer appears in the doorway, damp and breathless. Behind him, a tall officer, saddled with the unfortunate name of Crippen, throws him a thumbs-up and peers into the classroom through the door.
‘All right, sir!’
‘Crippen looking after you, sir?’
‘Where’s Miss Harris?’
‘Shut up, Mings, Karen just fucking told you …’
Cox stays silent. Knows what’s coming. Keeps himself completely inscrutable as Orton slips out of his rain-speckled jacket and scans the room. His eyes fall on Cox. Something ripples across his features: a cat momentarily showing teeth. Cox feels the deep, warm swell of excitement. Feels his body loosen, his insides become liquid. She knows, he thinks. She saw it. Read it. Devoured it. And it’s made her so fucking sick at herself that she can’t even bring herself to face him. Cox knows from experience that people are at their most vulnerable when they feel helpless. He is the kind of man willing to offer help to those in need, for the right price.
Orton drags his attention back to the rest of the class. ‘Sorry I’m running a bit behind. Nothing to worry about. Engrossed in your writing, that was the problem. Let time run away with me …’
Cox watches, delighted, as Orton tries to find the energy to sparkle the way he had yesterday. He tries to decipher the cause of the air of sullen greyness that seems to linger about him like mist. Could Miss Harris have confided in him? Perhaps Orton had read the whole batch of offerings and congratulated her on having the courage to hand in something so personal. Cox likes the idea. If so, it will have played out exactly as he hoped. He wants Miss Harris to feel as though her whole world is shifting on its axis: as if the bones from her past are going to climb from the earth and crawl towards her; skeletal hands clutching at the legs of her dark trousers; yellowed teeth in defleshed craniums leering, obscenely; dirt and worms and dried blood spilling down ivory jawbones.
‘Mr Mings,’ says Orton, finding him at the second table from the front. ‘A superb piece of writing. Not precisely a work of fiction but I’m just pleased to see words on a page. Fascinating reading. Lots of trivia about prison life; the relationships between inmates; that sense of fear; the way the smallest thing from outside can linger in your mind – turn to anger … it’s a good read.’
Behind him, Suggs jerks his head up. ‘What fucking relationships between inmates? Is he calling me a bender? I’m not having that, no fucking way …’
‘Settle down, Suggs,’ says Windsor, from the back of the room. He’s found himself a seat and is reading a newspaper, crinkled and folded so it’s the same size as a paperback. Cox presumes he’s doing the crossword. Fancies that the Daily Star’s tea-break quickie will occupy him for the day.
‘All interactions between human beings are a relationship of one sort or another,’ says Orton, quickly. He glances at Cox. Gives the tiniest shake of his head. Looks around at the others. There’s something harsh and accusatory in his eyes. He doesn’t seem like the posh, befuddled man who addressed them yesterday. He looks, again, like the man who leaned over Griffin Cox’s table, and twisted the skin on his forearm with such unforgiving force that it had taken an effort of will to keep the benign look on his face. Cox has enjoyed seeing the welt on his arm slowly darken. It is a yellow-tinged smudge of purple today: the indentations left by finger and thumb looking like the wings of a butterfly. Cox had not anticipated that the writer would respond to his rudeness with physicality. It disquiets him a little. He knows what the coming sessions will bring. Knows every step on his path to liberty. Orton may prove a nuisance, but he needs the sessions to continue in order to give him access to Miss Harris. He fancies the right course of action will present itself before long. In his pocket, he can feel the glassy smoothness of his gift for Miss Harris. He will find the right moment to present it, he’s quite sure of that. He has always thought himself somewhat charmed; his present predicament notwithstanding. All of the setbacks and abuses he has endured have been learning experiences when considered through the span of his life. Were it not for the unfairness, for the inequitable distribution of merit, he would have not been a target for those stronger than he. And had they not pummelled him so mercilessly, the part of him that now controls his every thought and deed may have lain dormant forever. And had he not allowed that ferocious beast out to feed upon that which it craved, he would never have discovered just what pleasures were there to be consumed. He is grateful for his beatings. They have made him the man he is.
‘Away with the fairies, Cox?’
He looks up at the sound of his name. Orton is addressing him. He’s smiling, but it falls well short of sincerity.
‘Sorry, sir. As you say. Thinking upon other things.’
‘I was congratulating you on your own piece of writing. An impressive feat – to transport yourself into the mind of another character – to look out through their eyes, to feel their pain as your own. I must congratulate you.’
Cox purses his lips, endeavouring to look bemused. ‘You’ll forgive me, but I believe you have me at a disadvantage. My own work? I haven’t yet had opportunity to deliver you anything. I was called away to a legal appointment yesterday, and …’
‘Bollocks you were,’ spits Suggs. ‘Don’t be giving it that shit. We all know where you were, you nonce. My mate Rich was on his way back from an adjudication when he saw Laurel and fucking Hardy with the wing governor heading to the interview rooms and you’d just been dropped there, so fuck off if you think it isn’t all over the wing about what they’ve got on you. They’re looking for that poor lass’s body! How many you got on you, eh? How many you put in the ground?’
The escalation is volcanic. One moment Suggs is at his desk, arms crossed, spitting phlegm-tinged invective into the grey air of the classroom, and then he is lunging across the table, hands outstretched, trying to get his fingers around Cox’s throat.
Orton reacts before the prison officer. Lurches forward as Suggs pushes the tables out of his way, scattering other inmates, and leaps towards Cox like a basketball player aiming to slam-dunk. Orton grabs him around the waist, taking the momentum out of the dive, and the pair of them clatter into the nearest table in a tangle of arms and legs, paper and pens. Windsor pushes past the men in front of him, baton extended, but the explosion of violence has turned the classroom into a cage full of animals and suddenly men are taking the opportunity to settle grudges, to release their tensions, and in a moment Mr Windsor is on his back, boots thudding into his ribs.
Cox slips from his chair, boots already hammering down the corridor, shouts of ‘code red, code red’ bouncing off the walls. He glances at Orton, trying to hold Suggs flat to the floor as he squirms beneath him. Sees Callan step forward and press a big firm hand into Suggs’s face, picking a side, making it plain to the screws who barrel through the door that he has had no part of the melee …
Cox slips, unnoticed, behind the desk at the front of the classroom. Slips the object from his pocket and tucks it deep into the folds of Orton’s satchel. His fingers touch something long and sharp. Tests the tip with his finger and could almost laugh with delight at the sheer ecstasy of the discovery.
He stands. Sees the officers grappling with Suggs; sees the two spiced-up drug dealers who have been booting Mr Windsor in the guts. Sees Orton, anger on his face, pulling himself upright; two inmates checking on his welfare and saying they had nothing to do with this. Nothing. Nothing …
Nobody is looking at Cox. Nobody sees him take the pencil, turn the tip towards himself, and delicately probe at the soft flesh beside his armpit for the space where he is guaranteed to cause himself no real harm. He steels himself. Grits his teeth. Pushes the point through his skin as if sliding pieces of uncooked chicken onto a skewer.
It takes a huge effort not to cry out. He feels light-headed at once. It is as if he can feel himself turning grey.
It only takes a moment for one of the officers to notice.
‘Cox. Cox is bleeding. He’s bleeding!’
And Cox, theatrically, gratefully, slips to the floor.
‘He’s been stabbed! Code Red. Code Fucking Red!’
TWENTY-ONE
Neilsen didn’t sleep much last night. After he left Bob Roberts, he walked around for a while, meandering aimlessly around the half dozen streets that led off from the marketplace like fingers from a palm. He sat for a while on the wall by the churchyard, staring at the gates of the grammar school where Bronwen had been a pupil. Sat there until it was too cold and dark to tolerate. Then he drove home; the static in his head louder than the music on the radio. He did an extra workout when he got home: pushing himself so hard that he’d ended up in a foetal position on the floor, every muscle cramping, every pore oozing sweat. Freshly showered, newly shaved, he’d sat up most of the night, his bare skin sticking to the leather of his designer sofa, flicking through TV channels in search of something, anything, to divert his attention. In the end he’d texted an old flame, engaging in a steamy half hour of suggestive repartee, before finally dropping off into a sleep filled with visions of sinkholes and headless birds.
It’s a little after lunch, and he’s parked his VW Golf in the car park of the pub by the Humber Bridge. It’s one of his favourite places to be alone. There are always a few vehicles spread out along the pitted tarmac: each containing a solitary individual clothed in their own existential misery. It’s a place where people in search of answers can go and stare at the choppy brown water and wonder if they have the strength to climb up through the woods and take a swan-dive into the water, or whether they should just suck it up, hope for the best and continue buying lottery tickets.
Neilsen has been coming here more and more since his father died. Things that hadn’t troubled him before are weighing on his mind. He’s beginning to question his decisions. What was it Roberts had said? That he could do more good – do something more useful – if he wasn’t a police officer? That had stung. It stings more the more he thinks upon it. He knows where such thoughts can lead and has always done his best to fight them, but he suddenly finds himself wondering whether he may have held himself to the wrong set of principles all of his life. Would he not be a better man, he asks himself? Would he not be of more use, more benefit, if he just grabbed Griffin Cox and shook him until the answers fell out? He knows that he will not allow himself to do such a thing, but it does feel unspeakably silly not to. He and countless other detectives are running around chasing hair fibres and skin cells and trying to trace thirty-year-old phone calls, and the man who could tell them everything is in a prison cell, smiling benignly at his occasional visitors and enjoying himself on a creative writing course! He can’t help but think it would all be so much easier if he could just be allowed to bend Cox’s fingers in the wrong direction and see who has the greater resolve.
He looks down at the sheaf of documents in his lap. They’re print-outs of items held in the evidence store, and they’re no bloody use whatsoever. He lifts the top sheet and angles it. It’s exactly as Bob had said: a Victorian, wrought-iron birdcage with fancy filigree and a glossy wooden handle. The only fingerprints are those of Bronwen and her mum and dad. It’s been independently assessed by an auctioneer, who identified it as a relatively mass-market product from the 1930s, selling for upwards of £300 as of 1998. Neilsen can understand why Cox is a beguiling suspect. He’s wealthy. He’s a collector of fine objets d’art. Even in prison he takes pleasure in the merest whiff of the sophisticated; the sublime. He is the kind of man who could woo a young, naïve girl with poetry and antique books. He’s the sort of man who might send a nightingale in a cage: a sweet-sounding emblem, urging her to set herself free.
He scowls. Glances at the book on the passenger seat. RedGreen by Rufus Orton. He’s read the first few pages and reckons that Orton is a good writer, who could probably do with thinking up a more exciting story with which to employ his formidable vocabulary. It’s well written, and he likes the feeling of splashing about in a well-drawn world, but by Christ it’s boring. He feels a momentary pang of jealousy as he flicks to the back of the book and looks at the black-and-white mugshot: staring into the eyes of a rumpled, once-handsome man, with dark eyes and the sort of floppy hair that he associates with cricket and Last Night of the Proms. He wonders, idly, whether Orton might be worth a little chat. Indulges himself in a daydream in which Cox, adrift in a warm sea of creative impulse, admits to his crimes through the medium of a short story. Considers having a chat with him and telling him about the kind of man he’s teaching how to better realize his fantasies, albeit within the relative safety of a notebook. Could he perhaps steer the class in a certain direction? What was the name of the woman who’d organized the course? Annabeth, wasn’t it? Maybe he could get her on board. He’d have to get his thoughts in order – couldn’t risk letting himself getting muddled. He realizes, with a sudden dizzying thump, that he has lost sight of himself. Doesn’t know how to be a police officer when nobody knows what’s right and what’s wrong, and every crime comes with a sackful of explanations and excuses.
Neilsen switches on the radio, pissed off with himself. He doesn’t know if he sees something of significance, or is making one up. He didn’t like Cox, he knows that much. As he told Bob Roberts, there was something about him that made him feel unsettled: as if the air pressure had dropped and the atmosphere was crackling with impending rain.
Agitated, Neilsen flicks through the sheaf of papers, hoping to spot something that matters. He comes to a halt on a print-out of a photograph. Makes a mental note to enquire why the NCA can afford to use coloured printer ink when he and the rest of the CID team at Humberside Police can’t request a new pencil without proving evidence that the last one has been worn down to less than an inch.
He looks at the grand frontage of Caldwell Hall – the image taken some time in the early 1970s, judging from the style and haircuts of the people in the foreground. It’s an imposing red-brick structure, built in the early 1800s for a rich family from Leicestershire and set in some fifteen acres of grounds. Neilsen skims the details, printed off from a website run by the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings and Monuments. It details 150 years of the house’s history, but Neilsen will admit to not giving a damn about any of that. He starts to read from the section headlined June, 1963.
… at which point the Hall passed to Arbuthnot Cox’s only surviving daughter, Procne Henshaw-Cox. She had been living in Italy at the time of her father’s death, but returned home to begin the lavish restoration of the house, which had fallen into some disrepair. True to her vision, Caldwell Hall was developed in keeping with her fascination for Italian Romanticism and Renaissance, when Classic art and literature was elevated to the status of the sublime. Chief among her achievements was the complete transformation of the overgrown gardens and lake. Over the course of the next ten years, the overgrown gardens at the rear of the property were radically reshaped in the image of Verona’s Giardino Giusti. As with the original, visitors can still see many items that were in vogue in sixteenth-century gardens: pots with citrus plants, statues of mythological figures, fountains, lemon houses, grottoes, grotesque masks. The lower garden is divided according to the giardino all’italiana style, into nine square sections, each symmetrical green room formed of box hedges and dominated by statues of Diana, Venus, Atalanta, Apollo and Adonis. The garden’s main axis is formed of the cypress alley leading to the grotto and the mask, with the labyrinth on the right, while on the left is a French-style parterre, the citrus garden and the so-called vaseria where plants in their pots are overwintered. This part of the garden, with its rigidly geometric design and straight lines speaks to us of man’s intervention, of order and symmetry. In contrast, the wooded part of the garden is deliberately conceived in order to astonish the visitor as he climbs its steep and shady paths. The rocky precipice, the grotto, the play of light and shade and perspectives are all created artificially to elicit feelings of admiration, awe and wonder in the viewer. A secret staircase concealed in the little turret dug into the rock face leads up to the highest point of the garden …
Neilsen stops reading. He knows he’s out of his depth. He wonders who he might know who would be able to translate it all into something relevant. His sergeant, the cleverest man he knows, is up in his native Scotland with his family, and he can’t think of anybody else who reads for pleasure.
