There are clichés aplenty in the books to which my job allows me easy access—clichés about fear and about wanting. Especially fear. So what is my heart like? A drum? A thunderstorm? It’s beating so fast that I cannot hear anything else as I squint at the pillowcase. It’s marked with something dark but the light is too poor to be able to see for sure what it is. Turning on my lamp will illuminate a tiny light on the power board in the office and a screw will come along, wondering why I’m awake so early; all I can do is hold the pillowcase up to the slits, and then wondering how Dott has managed to smuggle a pen into the block, I rely on a different sense. I sniff the pillowcase. Blood. I will later find out that Dott has written his message to me with blood from the sole of his left foot, using a short sewing needle that he has secreted in the flesh behind his right shin. Drop by drop. Stitching bloodstain to bloodstain, for my benefit. The letter must have taken the better part of an evening: little wonder that he has been quiet. He has been working.
But I can’t read it! I have to wait until first light at 5:47 before I get any relief from the biting frustration I’m feeling. But I still can’t read it properly. My new next-door is a Czech lad named Jacob. I don’t know if that’s his first name or his family name, but he clearly believes he owns the Seg Block, the cunt. At 5.50—rise and shine!—he shouts for attention; it’s almost as though he knows something is going on that he wants to ruin, but he’s probably been sleeping. He rings the night bell. Footfalls on polished tiles, the screws come running. Jacob is on suicide watch and he’s attempted before, bare times. It will be a matter of seconds before they arrive. It’s in those seconds that I realise Jacob has given me my reason for turning on my light; other inmates will be doing the same, protesting against their sudden alarm call. If the screws are with Jacob, they can’t be with me. Thank you, cuz, I’m thinking as I light up the room.
Seven.
I’m faced with a series of worries and dilemmas. In no particular order. Before I face Number One Governor at the Adjudication I am sweating in my cell, fearful of losing my Redband and my Enhanced status. Lose those and it’s no Library job for me. In a few days’ time I will enter the small court of law at the end of the Seg corridor, limbs trembling, eye sockets twitching no doubt through lack of sleep.
Take a seat, Alfreth, the Governor will tell me without looking up from his paperwork. Hands on the desk. You know the routine.
Yes, sir. But no, sir, I will want to protest. I don’t.
The desk faces his; there’s a space of two metres between the two facades. In addition to me and the Governor, there are officers to my sides in case I make a sudden violent movement; there’s the officer who will read the charge, and the officer who will give the eye witness statement.
Second worry is Julie won’t get me my books.
Third worry is, if I lose Enhanced, my mail will get read in both directions—and I need to send a letter to some of the boys I roll with. I need my money back from this fucking Bailey waste—and I need to offer him a reminder, via the medium of non-verbal communication, that I am not to be fucked with. The money gets returned (this itself a sub-concern: how far can I trust my own boys not to spend the rewards?); and he stays away from my ting and my daughter. In return, once his bruises heal, he has given back to him the full use of his limbs and the only visible memories will be the shank scars on his torso, every one of them a tale to tell, a tale that was told.
My fourth worry is what Dott wrote in blood on the pillowcase.
And my fifth—and most pressing immediately—is how I’m going to get rid of the fucking thing. Flimsy prison-issue pillowcase it might be, but it’s still a pillowcase. I can’t dash it out the window—it’ll get found and I’ll get blamed. Not even the Dellacotte winds, up here in the hills, are going to move a pillowcase far once it’s snuggled up nicely to the tulips in the flowerbed. And I can’t eat it.
I’m tempted to wrap it inside my towel for when I’m allowed a shower, but then what? The single shower down block is checked before and after every rinse, just in case someone leaves something—a sewing needle, for example—for someone else to use. (I wonder if Dott has dashed the needle out the window. It’s the sort of thing he can easily hide in his mattress, after all. What’s he thinking?)
The answer to the pillowcase conundrum arrives, as so many solutions do in this place, when I am moving my bowels into the fire brigade red plastic bucket. I have heard from other lads that when you’re down block, it’s best to time your bowel movements for just after breakfast. You don’t want to eat your cereals with a container of shit in the corner of the cell. But I can’t wait. My body clock is out of sync from so little shut-eye. I must be quick. Clenching my batty cheeks, I knock-knee my way back to the mattress. The pillowcase is under it. I complete my defecation into its open maw, a sense of self- disgust rising within myself. As best I can, I flatten down the waste and replace the loaded linen beneath the mattress. I wipe myself clean and dry. What the screw will see in the bucket, if he’s one of the sick govs who look, is a small amount of prison-issue shit, battleship grey, bulked up with too much paper.
Slop out, I’m told in due course. When I empty the bucket into the chute there is no comment. And when I empty the bucket, eventually, containing the shit-soiled pillowcase—its whiteness stained darker—with my faeces and a load of bumwad, I hope there will no comment either.
I have been allowed one roll-on deodorant for my stay here in Hell’s Hotel. I apply a layer of it to the pillowcase, to ease any smell that might start wafting. It’s as close a procedure to feeding a pet as I’ve ever known. I don’t recall having a pet in the flat when I was a boy. Not allowed.
At the Adjudication I plead guilty. Hot on the heels of my belief that I have no choice but to do so is the thought that I am still innocent until.
Allow it.
It’s to your advantage, Alfreth, I’m told, that the assailant refuses to make any kind of statement at all. What did you pay her?
Eighty-five fucking grand, I want to say. Good old Julie. I nod my head; it’s a sympathetic, humble gesture.
So I have no choice, he adds, but to hold you here pending further psychiatric reports. I want to be sure, Alfreth, clean record or not.
My backside rises now from the plastic seat.
Sit down, Alfreth, I am told.
I deep-breathe to regain my composure.
Sir. I’ve never been in trouble before. I’m going legit.
I’d like to believe that, Alfreth, the Governor tells me.
It’s true, sir. I’m going to be an accountant.
Is that so?
Yes, sir, it’s so. It’s true, it’s actual. Everything is satisfactual.
Less of it, Alfreth.
Sorry, sir. I glance up at Kate Wollington. She’s there as my compadre. I don’t know why, but you learn to ride it. I can’t stand that smirk on her face though still. Or the thought that she’ll be reporting back to Kate Thistle. I wish her dead. At this moment. Swear down.