Did you book it? I ask.
Booked it and done it.
Pardon?
I’ve been in already. Yesterday, Julie tells me. I didn’t have to wait long for a visit appointment because no one’s been to see him yet.
You travelled all the way up yesterday? I ask.
Yeah. It’s what you wanted me to!
Well, yeah I did. Didn’t think it get done so fast.
You sound disappointed, she says in a disappointed tone of her own; and I know that she is trying to please me—to make amends. She must have driven through the very early hours. Visits start at ten.
It’s stupid, I admit. I wish I’d known you were coming.
You weren’t answering your phone, she tells me with sarcasm.
Okay. Do you ask the question?
Yes. How do you spend your time? I have to say, Billy, if it wasn’t you I might have thought you were going a bit stir crazy in there.
I am.
But then again, if it wasn’t you I wouldn’t have agreed in the first place. That’s a compliment, by the way.
Thank you.
Oh, and Patrice is fully recovered, thanks for asking.
Not now, Julie. What does he have to say?
Not coming to see us then? she taunts.
Julie, please, I have about two minutes of credit on this fucking thing. The phone just eats it up. If you really want a row, wait till next time, eh?
She waits for a second or two. The second piece of telephone etiquette that Julie religiously observes is this: she will never put the phone down in anger or disgust. Quite correctly, she sees this as a vilely rude thing to do.
Okay, she says. I had to make some notes. How long have you got?
I told you! A couple of minutes!
Keep your hair on, Billy! Fucking hell—I’m doing this for you!
I apologise. Please tell me, Julie, what he said. I can’t speak to him and I would really, really like to know what he said.
He talked about energy. She leaves a huge pause.
Still maintaining the status quo, temper-wise, I urge her to continue.
First of all he congratulated you on a good question. At this point I’m like lost? What’s good about it? But anyway, I don’t really wanna know. So he says: I’m saving my time—and other people’s time—what does that mean?’
Slang, I lie. It’s new code, Julie. Carry on.
Oh Billy, you’re not planning something for when you hit road, are you? she asks with a definite moan of worry running through her words.
Don’t be concerned, I try to reassure her. Nothing illegal.
Then why’s it in code?
Please.
All right, all right, don’t throw your rattle out of the pram, Billy. He’s saving his time and yours and other people’s, like Prometheus did with fire. I won’t ask. Then he laughed—he found the whole bloody thing hilarious, to be honest—he’s quite a happy-go-lucky bloke, really, innee? What’s he in for?
Rape, is what I want to say—the truth. Death by dangerous driving.
Someone die? Julie asks.
Yeah, someone he had beef with. No one innocent. What else does he have to say? Saving time, Prometheus fire, what else?
He’s had it with stealing water. Whatever that means. So he’s going to steal as much time as he can, till he’s full like a tick full of blood. He’s going to—wait a minute, let me turn over the paper—he’s going to save it then kill it. Does that make any sense to you, Billy?
Not much, I admit.
I kept asking him if you’d know what he was talking about but he just smiled, says Julie. Said—he couldn’t keep going on the way he was, smaller and smaller—whatever that means—because it’s a circle he starts again.
Didn’t think of that.
Think of what?
Why he might be frightened of getting younger as we see it, older as he sees it, Julie. Because it doesn’t stop for him, you see? A million years of bee-stings. Prometheus on the rock. Eternal punishment, Julie! That’s why he wants to go back to being young. Well, old; but young for him. Well, he’s still old—but his years on the planet are less, at that end.
Billy, what end?
I’m right—what I say to Kate. If he does enough damage, he’ll get older and older to the point where there must be a start! The only way to kill himself, Julie, is if he takes himself past the point where he started!
You’re not making any sense!
It’s not Julie putting the phone down that kills the call. I’ve run out of credit. But it doesn’t really matter as I think I know what needs to be done.
Four.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd bears on its inside back cover no adhesive ticket on which to stamp a return date, but it has been sheathed in protective plastic: Kate’s own work, I reckon. This is a book she’s brought into the jail. This is a message to me, but nothing subtextual. I mean, I happen to know that the narrator done it—whodunit? The narrator done it—and if there is anything to go on by her choice of book, it’s beyond me. We all know I done it. Although I pleaded not guilty in court, I know damn well I stabbed the very man who has since got my Julie pregnant. And grudgingly I sigh through it, this televised memory, thinking with candour two things, namely one: why do I always remember being attacked by three men on that night, and two: well, if you can’t call that a good example of tit for tat then what can you? Billy Cardman banging up my bird, I mean; not the three guys setting on me, although for all I can recall, so coked-up was I in those days, this might be true as well. As I’ve said, I don’t know where the memory comes from.
There is a letter inside the book. The paper is as thin as toilet tissue—presumably so it’s easier to conceal. It is headed: The Heartbreak Diaries. Then it is written: Chapter 1: Nightmare Music. I get it. If the thing is discovered, it’s more creative writing from my sister. She is writing her first novel, I’ll say. So be it:
Noor showed early talents for pain—for inflicting pain. They were few and far between—and usually against animals. Given the ability to walk, he walked into conflict. Given the mindset that encompassed choice, he chose to hurt. He would stub out cigarettes on the hides of oxen. Punch camels in the face. Throw stones at the feral cats and dogs. And only slowly, over a period of years and years, would he graduate upwards—to human beings. Very often the damage was limited, paltry—and very often as the result of imbibed fermented products. Fights in the bars were commonplace, occasionally legendary. He had a knack for goading people, for egging them on. He started fights, sometimes, in which he didn’t even take part. He was happy to watch. Why wasn’t he exiled from Umma? This was something I was desperate to learn; but the answer—if there is one—had been long since lost in the dust by the time I came to ask questions. Possibly? Possibly because he recanted his earlier ways. After a while—a long while—a period of decades—Noor was calm. Like a prizefighter settling into retirement. He got along well, the word goes, with the citizens of Hospital; but if he’d stayed that way of course there would be no story for him. No clothes to wear. And figuratively speaking, during that time, he had no clothes to wear. He was poor. Days and weeks he spent, like many others, trying to scratch a living by working for a filling meal. There wasn’t enough work. Noor started stealing. Years earlier, when Noor was older, he had gained daily sustenance from a wetnurse named Saira el Door. The image might seem disgusting, even frightening, but this old man as we would see him was no more capable of his own self- managed salvation than a baby would be, and