Kicking Off Read online

  ‘Mr Petter. Mr Taylor. Come and look at this. Should we call the MO do you think? Do the regs cover a millionaire having a heart attack? Or is he having kittens?’

  The prisoners on the other side were shuffling in for their visits. At the end of the corridor, a door banged open. A principal officer called loudly: ‘Let’s be having you! Shift yourselves! Mr Abbey? What’s the hold-up?’

  Masters managed to speak. His lips were drawn back from his teeth and his pulse was throbbing. He said to Abbey: ‘I’m going to kill you. I’m going to have you killed.’

  Abbey’s smile of satisfaction grew less. Masters’ face was white, his pupils dilated to enormous size. His breath was shallow and uneven.

  ‘Was that a threat?’ asked Abbey. ‘Would you care to repeat that?’

  Masters, with an extraordinary effort, prepared to do so. He had controlled his desire to physically attack, and it had drained him. But he had faculties enough left to know he had got through.

  ‘Yes, I’ll repeat it.’

  But Abbey, suddenly, pushed him along the corridor by his shoulder. Other officers pushed or led the rest. Three times they tripped him on the journey to his cell, four or five times he was cuffed or hit. But thinking about it on his bed, Masters was confident. He had frightened Abbey.

  ‘I’m going to have him killed,’ he breathed. He slept.

  *

  Chicago. Sinclair, Judith Parker.

  Although their visit to the States was on official business, Sinclair had told his assistant to keep it simple. Judith Parker, ever efficient, ever understated, had consequently dispensed with many of the trappings, and the delegation had been cut to the bone. The minister himself, Miss Parker, and two clerical civil servants to collate, to note, to photocopy. It was a fact-finding mission only, they had told their hosts, and should rate low on pomp.

  They had been met at O’Hare and driven straight to a small reception at the State Department in Chicago, where local politicians had assessed what benefit, if any, they could extract from associating with this tall, suave Briton. They loved his accent and his style, but Sinclair made it very plain that he was moving on. It was a whistle-stop, in which at least twenty prisons would be visited, and he hoped there would be no TV or press. The politicians ate their pretzels, drank their drinks and faded. Not much more than an hour later, the Britons were in the Federal Bureau of Prisons offices, and down to work.

  Sinclair’s guide was a woman named Myra Fischer, who was some years younger than himself, and black. She had only a hazy idea of Britain’s prison problems and little interest, but she was fiercely brusque about outlining those of America. As of this moment, she declared, some two and a half million citizens were behind bars, which was a higher figure than the populations of many States. Upwards of one thousand were admitted every week, and each cell cost above a million dollars, with a fluctuating percentage destroyed each year by riots. Prison, she added, did not work on any terms, but according to the public it was the only answer, short of lethal injections or electrocution. Most prisoners, of course, were black.

  Ms Fischer stopped.

  ‘That’s just the tip of it,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow I’ve worked out an itinerary that will show the nuts and bolts. Your cars will be outside the hotel at 6 a.m. Any queries? I must get back to work.’

  In their hotel, cool and air-conditioned, the four of them sat in a small private lounge studying the itinerary. The only facts that meant anything at this stage were the enormous distances to be covered, and the times of start and finish. The two assistants, a man of fifty and a slightly younger woman, were pale with tiredness. Sinclair finished his coffee with decision.

  ‘You two look all in,’ he said. ‘It’s been a long day and a hard one, and I thank you both very much indeed. I suggest we all dine in our rooms tonight, at our own pace. That way nobody will feel any pressure to be sociable, will they? Miss Parker, though, I must ask for one last effort. Could you come to my room in forty minutes, say? It won’t take very long.’

  Miss Parker tiredly agreed, and the party, with wan goodnights and more marvelling at the terrifying energy of the Americans, split up. Donald Sinclair was sitting at his desk when she tapped on his door. He called that it was open, and she came in.

  Sinclair was in a swivel chair, and as she approached him, still in her severe grey suit, he turned himself away from the kneehole desk and stretched his legs in front of him. Without a word, Miss Parker knelt between his thighs and unzipped his fly. She must just have cleaned her teeth because her mouth, as it closed gently over his erection, was cool. The contrast was delicious. Sinclair rolled his head back, his eyes closed.

  ‘Ah, Christ,’ he sighed. ‘That’s lovely.’

  TEN

  Bowscar. Invitation to a bloodbath.

  If Abbey had backed off a little, Masters might have dropped his plan to get his own back. When the emotional turmoil of the visit had died down, he recognised it would be easier, and probably more sensible, to revert to his old technique of acceptance and contempt. But Abbey, locked in his own confusion of greed and envy, kept the pressure on. The following day, on goon squad, Masters got particularly soiled from a bursting parcel of faeces he picked up. He was not allowed a shower, and as he washed, Abbey harassed him, verbally and physically, while his friends looked on.

  It was after lunch that Masters raised the subject of revenge with Hughes and Jerrold. That amused him, because it was a conscious parody of the way he might have entered into business before the world of Bowscar. They had dined substantially, off thin tomato soup, spaghetti and chips, and a steamed pudding that had been injected with watered blackberry essence. Singularly – a city gent might have considered – it had all been consumed in-cell from a plastic compartment tray that one held out at the hot-plate for the portions to be flopped on. The only thing missing was a glass of crusted port.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘That was excellent. I think I’ll just wander back to the boardroom and have Miss Fairfax on the filing cabinet before I curl up for a kip. Before I do, though, I want to have somebody killed. Hughes – when you’ve finished your Stilton, of course – how does one go about that sort of thing?’

  Hughes was rolling a cigarette for later when he got out on exercise. His packet of Golden Virginia was almost empty, and he was laying the tobacco strands along the inside of the paper.

  ‘Hang about, old chap,’ he said, joining in the game. ‘I’m just nipping the end of the old Corona. Are we serious, or is this some sort of joke?’

  Jerrold was already back on his bed. He was less jovial.

  ‘You forgetting the lesson, man. Ignore that twat. Abbey just fancy your arsehole, it soon pass. Ignore, guy.’

  ‘Fancies! Jesus, Matt!’

  ‘It’s possible,’ said Hughes. ‘Doubtful, but possible. But the first part’s right, though. Do as we tell you. Listen to the experts. Ignore the twat.’

  ‘You start going for revenge,’ said Jerrold, ‘and you end up crazy. Look at me. One wholly innocent man banged up for life. Do I complain?’

  He laughed, rich and deeply. Of what he was charged, Masters believed, he was innocent, quite probably. On the night of the riots he had been on the Buckingham Estate but he’d killed no policeman, and the evidence that had convicted him would certainly not have withstood the scrutiny of unbiassed courts. Jerrold’s philosophy was that he was stuck with it, and if he ever got the chance he’d kill one next time, because of what they’d done to him. And was he crazy? The prison officers thought he was, and outside the cell he was a surly, dangerous presence whom few dared speak to or approach. Masters was not sure.

  He said to Alan Hughes: ‘You don’t let things ride, you’re always causing trouble. No remission left, you can’t watch television, you can’t associate. Jesus, Alan, you’ve seen the Board of Visitors so often it’s a wonder they haven’t co-opted you.’

  Hughes was fingering his cigarette. He nodded.

  ‘I do that for amusement,’ he s
aid. ‘I’ve been in prison for six years and I don’t suppose I’ll ever get out, do you? I don’t know that I want to, any more. Being here’s like being in a mental home for the sane. It’s the system that’s cracked, the system and the doctors. I like to play with it.’

  ‘He’s a liar,’ Matthew Jerrold said. ‘He cause trouble because he likes to show the fascists up. He always get in trouble protecting people, standing up for them. Screws call him the nigger-lover, but he’ll stand up for anyone – no taste! Last one was a black boy lose his cool when he discover all the best ganja come from the screws, when he just got six months for possession! They rough him up for being cheeky and Batman here step in. One bust tooth, one black eye, one good kicking. What he do? He complain the boy’s been racially abused! Insane.’

  Hughes said to Masters, ‘That’s exactly what I mean. The complaints procedure’s the best game of the lot. You can end up petitioning the Home Secretary himself – I used to know him, incidentally – but only when you’ve been through all the channels. First channel – complain to a prison officer that’s he’s been violating rules. I ask you!’

  He let out a rumble of a laugh, and at the same moment farted. Dead on time, thought Michael Masters. Pass the After Eights.

  ‘If you do get past the screws,’ Hughes went on, ‘the farce gets funnier. Because Rule 47, Section 12 says if you can’t prove your claim it’s “false and malicious”, which means you get punished not the screw, although it’s not a punishment it’s an award, which if you’ve got any sense you’ll thank them for. Believe me, just don’t do it, let it go right now.’

  After a few moments, Masters said: ‘Alan. I don’t know you well enough to be certain if you’re joking, that’s my problem. But just hypothetically, if I wanted to get Chris Abbey killed, or let’s say smashed about a bit, could I do it? Without taking the blame, naturally.’

  Hughes hunched himself forward.

  ‘Look Mike,’ he said. ‘You can do anything in here when you know the ropes. You can shoot heroin, smoke dope, sniff cocaine. You can buy a gobble from a con any time you like and a prison officer if you pick your man and moment. You can fuck, you can drink, you can watch porn movies till your eyes pop out. There are networks, there are undercurrents, there are businesses. Everything works in fractions and a fraction of the cons are powerful, and you could muscle in on that quite easily, you’re a fucking archetype. I can see you now, you and Brian Rogers, kings of the Scar. You could get Chris Abbey’s best friends to beat him up within a fortnight, no problem. But what’s the use? That sort of power’s got nothing that you’d ever want.’

  He reached out for his makings, his fingers shaking slightly. He needed a smoke but it was not yet time. He sighed.

  ‘Your power’s outside this nightmare, friend,’ he said, ‘it’s in the real world. The only thing you can’t get in this place is out. And that is where you want to be. Don’t do it.’

  There was a creak, as Jerrold rolled heavily onto his side. His face was serious.

  ‘Tell him about the escape plan, man,’ he said. ‘Let’s enrol him on the old committee.’

  A look of irritation crossed Hughes’ face. He shook his head, and spoke to Masters.

  ‘Matthew’s being childish, there’s no escape committee, it’s a game we play. An intellectual exercise.’

  Jerrold grinned, and rolled back out of sight.

  ‘And I the intellectual!’ he said. ‘You got to believe it, Mike.’

  But Masters was not interested, anyway. Between them, he could not imagine a pair less likely to be the brains behind a break-out. He had more concrete leads to follow up.

  ‘Who’s Brian Rogers?’ he asked. ‘Should I have heard of him?’

  Hughes seemed to be considering.

  ‘You don’t smoke, you don’t shoot up, you’re not an alcoholic, you keep your nose clean. No, I suppose it’s possible. He’s one of the big boys. He runs the place. The unofficial governor.’ He chuckled. ‘He might be able to get you to a phone, though. Mm. I thought that that would interest you. Mm.’

  Masters played a tangent.

  ‘Did you really know the Home Secretary?’ he said. ‘Or is that another...drollery?’

  ‘Oh no, I knew him. He wasn’t Home Secretary then, of course. He wasn’t even “Sir”. Yes, old Gerald Turner. I used to live just down the road. Me and my wife. My second wife.’

  Hughes had killed his wife, so Masters understood. The subject, so far, had not been broached. Hughes’ gaze was steady.

  ‘I often think it would be interesting to have a little talk to him,’ he said. ‘About the prisons, life inside, morality, crime, retribution. I imagine you wouldn’t mind a little tête a tête yourself.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, we have the radio,’ said Hughes. ‘And every now and then I get to see a proper newspaper. I got the impression that Sir Gerald got you into here. Had a word beneath their lordships’ wigs or somesuch. But it could be just a nasty rumour.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Michael Masters. ‘Yes. Maybe I will have a chat about it some day. My wife can ask him out to dinner. How do I get in touch with Brian Rogers? Mister Big.’

  Alan Hughes sighed.

  ‘Revenge or telephone? And don’t ever call him that, by the way, he doesn’t like it. So? Mob or mobile?’

  Masters considered.

  ‘I want the telephone,’ he said. ‘The rest depends. It’s Abbey’s smile that interests me. I’d quite like somebody to take it off his face. And tread on it.’

  ‘I think I ought to warn you,’ said Alan Hughes. ‘About currency. The basic units in this place are sex, drugs, tobacco, money, information, promises. You’re a millionaire. If we showed you the ropes you’d have no trouble getting currency. But pretty faces interest Rogers quite a lot as well. And bodies. He’s not precisely short of cash.’

  Indeed, as they were talking, Brian Rogers had just taken delivery of a present. His door had been opened, and it had been pushed inside. The door had been locked, the spyhole closed.

  It was Cherry Orchard.

  *

  The Mile High Club. Judith Parker.

  Fucking on a short-haul jet plane, like the problems of running a high-risk love affair, had never given Judith much pause for thought. At twenty-six, she was very pleased at the way her career was shaping up, and saw Donald Sinclair as a useful stepping stone. She had taken the not abnormal route to rightish orthodoxy by a basic grounding in left-wing student activism, which had given her both a taste for power and an awareness of the debilitating effects of believing in things too much.

  She had graduated brilliantly – to the amazement of friends who thought she’d been much too busy with the important things to do any work – then shocked them even more by walking into a House of Commons job, at the heart of the system she despised. Judith argued she was acting as a sleeper, but did not keep up that pretence for long. She decided early on the Palace of Westminster was a gigantic rest-home for several hundred men with massive egos and tiny intellects, or perhaps a kind of whorehouse where drunken oafs debauched ambitious interns while their wives and children suffered back at home.

  Judith still believed in politics, however – and loved the sex thing. It seemed wholly fitting to her that she should be able to locate and target some suitable male, and hitch her star to him. She did it only once, because she knew the fate of beautiful and brilliant young hopefuls who thought that they could play the field at leisure, and she chose extremely carefully. It was a bonus that Sinclair’s lust for power gave her a lust for him.

  As they sucked and licked and fingered in the first class lavatory on the Boeing – happy in the knowledge that the bung they’d slipped the hostess guaranteed respectability – they indulged as usual in the dirty talk that was their ultimate stimulation. The dirty talk was politics, and the absurd constraints of the tiny space a metaphor for their iron determination to achieve the pinnacle. They had visited many jails with the formidable Ms Fische
r, and had found the US scale of operations bizarre, unreal, absurdist – and appallingly exciting.

  ‘It’s the money I can’t get over,’ said Sinclair. ‘The cash they’re pouring in. Imagine a system where the prisoners can sue you if you put them in an overcrowded jail! We’d be bankrupt in two months! Oh Christ, yes, put your teeth on there. Harder. Oh yes, oh wonderful!’

  ‘And the cells,’ said Judith, when she had slipped on to another spot. ‘Sorry to talk with my mouth full, but you’ve got to admit it, some of them aren’t half as bad as hotels we’ve been in.’

  Donald removed a nipple from his mouth to laugh.

  ‘I thought the individual stainless steel lavatories were rather chic, but having one wall made of iron bars did spoil the effect, rather. Too louche for the average dirty weekend!’

  Judith was squirming. She was getting close to coming.

  ‘Just there. Just there. Christ, Don.’

  ‘It’s a good example of the lunacy, isn’t it?’ he said.

  ‘They’ve poured cash in, they’ve built hundreds of new jails, and the crime rate’s rocketing. What’s more, they admit it! Myra works for the government, and she says quite freely it’s a disaster. Rum.’

  ‘We can’t say that though. We can’t admit it. I mean, Bowscar could go off at any minute. A bit like me. Now. Donald, it must be very hard!’

  Indeed it was. He manoeuvred himself round until he could slip into her outer vulva. Their whole bodies were throbbing. She tried to pull him in, he tried to make her wait, to torture her.

  ‘Bad jokes as well, eh?’ he teased. ‘Yeah, Bowscar’s hard, and I’ll be harder. I’ve learned a trick or two from Gerald Turner, but I’m going to go much further, I’m going to knock off civil liberties like other men kill lice. The trick is to lay the blame on other people, talk liberal and come down like a ton of bricks. Keep the people destitute, then jail them for five years for using Facebook to complain. Bowscar’s going to be orgasmic. And we’ll see how much they like it afterwards.’