Susie laid her head on her arms and had to let it all come out, promise or no promise.
Twenty-seven. Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine. Thirty. Thirty-one. Thirty-two. Thirty-three…
Sweat dripping off his nose, Dillon pushed himself up from the cell floor. Susie had brought in some of his gear, and he wore a singlet, track-suit bottoms, and his faithful old Pumas. If he shut his mind to everything, it was like doing Basic again. He was back at The Depot.
Forty-three. Forty-four. Forty-five. Forty-six…
Do eighty of the bastards and he'd be ready for a pint with the lads in the NAAFI. Have a sing-song, good old Taff booming out in his big Welsh voice, the prat. Get Steve up on a table, doing his Tom Jones with a baton down his inside leg. Jimmy fiddling the one-armed bandit. Harry remembering that long day's tab up to Wireless Ridge, when Wally's frostbitten toes dropped off.
A bell rang out and the caged wall light went out, plunging the cell into darkness.
Fifty-eight. Fifty-nine. Sixty. Sixty-one. Sixty-two…
Susie moved silently into the boys' room, careful not to disturb them. She left the door slightly ajar so that she could see by the landing light. There were one or two gaps on the walls where Dillon had taken down the photographs. And what Dillon had started, Susie now finished, dropping them one by one in the cardboard box. His face looked out from nearly all of them. Sometimes clean and shiny, sometimes streaked with brown camouflage cream and dirt. Mostly unsmiling, but in a couple there was that rare Frank Dillon grin. It was there, broader than usual, in a photograph of him and his lads, grouped round a table in a bar, brimming pints of Guinness and Murphy's in front of them. Six young Toms, just kids, sitting at the table, with Dillon standing behind, flanked by Jimmy Hammond, Taffy Davies, Steve Harris, Harry Travers. They looked to be having a great time, and probably were. The very best of times.
Susie took it down and looked at it. Then she dropped it in the box with all the rest and shut the lid. She went to the door and paused, gazing round. The little room seemed empty and desolate, the walls naked. Just pale rectangles and pin-holes to indicate where the gallery of memories had once been. The boys would miss them, no doubt, but it was time to move on, to grow up. You couldn't live in the past for ever. Susie went out, closed the door on it.
CHAPTER 42
It was called the Visitors' Room but it was more like a public meeting hall or a large works canteen. Not dissimilar to a canteen, with tables spaced equidistant on the squeaky composition floor, except the tables were quite small, with plain grey plastic tops, room enough for just one remand prisoner, one visitor. The kids had to stand or play on the floor. Four uniformed wardens patrolled the perimeter, constantly on the move, eyes alert for any communication between prisoners – strictly forbidden. Two senior wardens sat like tennis umpires on high chairs, keeping a general watch on the proceedings. The prisoners were rotated in batches of twenty, over a hundred in the hall at any one time. Once seated, their visitors were allowed in, while the previous batch of visitors streamed out, so there was continuous noise and bustle and movement, the scampering and crying of children, the muffled weeping of women, the rumbling hum of a hundred conversations.
Shirley was in the first batch. She came in with other wives, girlfriends and mothers, heads craning for their loved ones. There were a number of black prisoners, but she spotted Cliff at once, his hand slightly raised, a shy, almost painful smile on his face. Like all the others he was dressed in a blue shirt, dark trousers without a belt, black slip-on shoes with soft soles.
'How you keeping?' asked Cliff, eyes very large and suspiciously bright, fixed on her as she sat down.
Shirley placed a paper bag on the table. She slipped off her shoulder bag and put down the styrofoam cup of coffee she'd only taken a couple of sips of before the name Morgan came up over the PA.
'There's chocolate, crisps and cigarettes.' She pushed the bag towards him.
'I don't smoke,' Cliff said.
'Susie said to bring them in, you can trade with them. She takes in some for…' Shirley glanced around the crowded room. 'Have you seen him yet?'
Cliff shook his head. 'They keep us segregated. I got a message to Harry, but he…' Cliff gulped, and the tears that were there, waiting to be shed, suddenly filled his eyes. '… he sent it back. I just had to tell them what went down, Shirley, this is all a mistake, we didn't do it.' Out it poured in a frantic gabble: 'You see I saw the van, the furniture van that was used in the robbery, and I saw the guy drivin' it, it was me that told Frank, that Newman's put us all in the frame. I had to tell them, but they twist it, they twist it around. I know they found the gear at our place, but we'd come from Newman's, we were gonna hand it in. I think Frank's scared that Newman'll do somethin', he reckoned we'd get bail you see, an' -'
'Cliff – Cliff, you've told me all this, you tell it to me every time, but why won't they give you bail?' Shirley searched his face. 'None of this makes sense to me. Why are they askin' about other robberies unless…' She leaned over until their faces were nearly touching. 'Cliff, don't protect them, will you?'
Cliff's mouth was quivering. Tears had made wet pathways down either side of his nose. He was looking at Shirley but he wasn't seeing her. The inside of his head was spinning like a merry-go-round, the same endless, obsessional whirl of facts, events, places, names blurring in front of his eyes. She tried to stop him, to stem the flow, but he was unstoppable.
'… I said to Frank we should go straight to the cops, but we had to clean ourselves up an' then there was the car, windscreen was wrecked… now the gun, Harry took it off the blokes, I mean I nearly got myself killed. I explained all this. I told them all this. I recognised one of the guys, I said to Harry, I said…' He blinked, tears splashing down. 'I dunno why he kept it, we should have handed that gun back. It'll be sorted. It'll all be sorted, we'll be out of here…' Cliff wept openly. 'Shit, why didn't we hand over that bloody shooter…?'
Shirley could hardly hear him for all the racket going on around them. Not that it mattered. She'd heard it ten times before. She simply sat and gazed at him, at the merry-go-round spinning madly out of control.
A bell rang, signalling a changeover of batches. Twenty in, twenty out. There was a clicking and crackling from the PA, and a voice announced in a monotonous drone: 'Allen, Alcott, Allerton, Anthony, Daneman, Dillon, Dupres, Hoyle, Knight, Morris, Mayfield, Mayell, Netherton, Normans, Orchard, O'Rourke, O'Neill…'
Dillon was brought in and directed to a table on the far side of the room from Cliff. He sat down and looked expectantly towards the door as the visitors filed in, eager for his first glimpse of Susie. The clamour was tremendous, women moving along the aisles, many with toddlers in tow, some carrying babies. Around the human arena the wardens kept up their steady pacing and relentless steely-eyed scrutiny. At last he saw her, moving through the tables, and something strange happened. He thought he was strong, that he could face anything, had built up his resolve to get him through each minute of every day as a prisoner on remand. But the moment he saw her his strength and resolve just crumbled away. His insides seemed to shrink, and he had to turn away because his face was too naked and vulnerable. Tough guy Dillon who could throw himself out of a Here at 800 feet, and yet this particular ordeal nearly did for him. He understood now how a man's reason could snap, as easily and suddenly and fatally as a brittle pencil point.