Читать книгу Cruel Acts - Jane Casey - Страница 9

It was a day like any other; it was a day like they all were inside. Time pulled that trick of dragging and passing too quickly and all that happened was that he was a day further into forever.

He sat on his own, in silence, because he’d been allocated a cell to himself. It was for his protection and because no one wanted to share with him. He wasn’t the only murderer on the wing – far from it – but he was notorious, all the same.

That wasn’t why no one wanted to share with him. His health wasn’t good, a cough rattling in his chest all night long. That was more of a problem than the killing, he thought. But he’d taken his share of abuse for the murders, all the same. No one liked his kind.

He shifted his weight in the cheap wooden-framed armchair, feeling it creak under him. He had never been a fat man but prison had pared away at his flesh, carving out the shadow of his bones on his face.

The room was fitted out like a cheap hostel – a rickety wardrobe, a small single bed, a desk against the wall. There were limp, yellow curtains at the window. At a glance you might not notice the bars across the same window, or the stainless steel sink, or the toilet that was behind a low partition. That was one good thing about being on his own. He’d shared cells before, when he was younger. You never got used to the smell of another man’s shit. Of all the smells in the prison – and there were many – that was the worst.

He picked up the envelope that he’d left lying on his desk. It was open. A screw would have read it before he ever saw it. That was standard. Small writing, black ink. He wasn’t used to seeing it: his name in that writing. He turned it over a couple of times. Nothing important in it or he’d never have seen it. But no one writes a letter without saying something, even if they don’t mean to say anything at all.

He ripped the envelope getting the letter out of it. The paper was flimsy, the words on the other side bleeding through. He wasn’t a great reader at the best of times. His eyes tracked down the centre of the page, the scrawl transforming itself into phrases here and there. Don’t forget we’re all trying … I know you can … easy for me to say … coming to see you … your appeal … lose heart … forget what happened … start again … have hope … your son.

‘Fuck you.’ It was a whisper, inaudible above the banging and shouting and echoing madness of a prison in the daytime. With a wince, he got to his feet and crossed to the toilet. He stood over it, tearing the letter in half and half again, ripping the paper until it was a handful of confetti. He dropped it into the bowl. He’d imagined the ink would run but it didn’t. The paper sat on the surface of the water, the black writing burning itself onto his retinas. He pissed on it in a stop-start trickling stream, annoyed by that as much as the way the paper stuck damply to the sides of the toilet. He flushed, and waited, and grimaced at the scattered, dancing fragments that remained in the water.

He had a whole life sentence stretching ahead of him but that wasn’t what made him bitter.

If by some miracle he got out, he would never be free.