‘I can’t tell you, Viktor,’ says Elizabeth. ‘After this, I don’t want to hear from him or think about him again.’
‘We team up together? We kill him? That’s a better plan. Come on.’
‘It’s all too late,’ says Elizabeth. ‘I don’t know who he is, and you don’t seem to know who he is, and I just want this over with. I want peace at home with my husband. I’m so sorry. Let’s head to the bathroom. You lead the way.’
Viktor stands. Joyce stands too.
‘He’s going nowhere,’ says Joyce. ‘Not while I’m here.’
Viktor places a hand on Joyce’s shoulder. ‘Joyce Meadowcroft, you have my thanks. But this is business. Someone is going to shoot me one day, and at least Elizabeth is a friend. This Swedish guy wants me dead, and maybe this is the best way.’
Joyce looks at Elizabeth, and Elizabeth nods. ‘It can’t always be a game, Joyce. I’m sorry.’
‘I will never forgive you,’ says Joyce.
‘You have to trust me, Joyce,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Best friends.’
‘Not any more,’ says Joyce.
She turns away from Elizabeth. Elizabeth is surprised at how much this stings, but she understands.
Viktor walks towards the bathroom, Elizabeth following behind, gun raised.
‘No sudden movements, Viktor, let’s just get this over with.’
‘Last chance to stop this now. You know I loved you, Elizabeth?’ says Viktor.
‘Where does love ever get us?’ says Elizabeth, following Viktor from the room. ‘Tied up in the back of a van. Shot in a penthouse. I’m done with love.’
Viktor opens the door to the bathroom. His voice is now loud, imploring. ‘Please, let me turn around and we can –’
Elizabeth pulls the trigger.
37
The truth is, you simply don’t get enough vitamin D in prison, and, in Connie Johnson’s view, that contravenes her human rights.
She doesn’t like the story her mirror is telling her one bit. She’s too pale. When she gets out of here she is going to the Maldives. Life can’t just be about work, and perhaps it’s time to spend a bit of that money she’s made? Perhaps St Lucia? Or France? Where do civilians go on holiday?
Connie has been abroad only twice in her life. Once on a school trip to Dieppe, where she had been sick on the ferry and a Geography teacher had tried to kiss her behind a hypermarket, and once locked in the boot of a BMW and driven to Amsterdam by two Liverpudlian brothers with whom she had had a difference of opinion. The Liverpudlian brothers and the Geography teacher had all soon regretted their actions.
Slap on the fake tan all you like, have your Botox and your fillers, but the three things the skin can’t survive without are vitamin D, vegetables and plenty of water, preferably sparkling. They don’t serve fresh vegetables in prison, but, through the contact of a contact, Connie has an Abel & Cole box delivered once a week, and another of her contacts, in the kitchens, can work wonders with a parsnip and an aubergine. She takes her vitamin D tablets, but there’s no real substitute for sunshine when you’re supposed to be locked up for twenty-three hours a day. She has a machine for sparkling water.
Connie is thinking prison would be very, very difficult without a bit of money and some VIP status. It’s still not great, but, much like travelling first class on the train, she’s going to be stuck there for a while and the toilets aren’t ideal, but at least someone brings her a cup of tea every now and again.
Either way, she’s going to have to get out of here sooner or later. Sunshine on her face, a gun in her waistband and a gym where you can do Reformer Pilates. She doesn’t need much.
Through the security gates and on to D-Wing now, Connie thinks about Ibrahim, that wise old owl. On the whole, Connie has not had good experiences with authority figures telling her what she should and shouldn’t do. But Ibrahim? With his nice suits and his kind eyes? For once in her life she doesn’t feel like she is being told off.
Connie passes a cell that is being hosed down with a pressure-washer. She gives the spray a wide berth, as she is wearing suede, and there is only so much the prison laundry can do, however much cannabis you smuggle in for them.
Connie has never really spoken to anyone the way she is speaking with Ibrahim. What is it? Honesty, perhaps? Connie can be a number of very different people, when the mood takes her. She puts on different faces if she wants to scare you, if she wants to sleep with you, or if she wants a prison warder to bring her a Nando’s. But doesn’t everyone? Isn’t everyone doing that all the time? Presenting a certain side of themselves to other people?
So what side is she presenting to Ibrahim, and why does it feel so different? Connie climbs the metal staircase to Heather Garbutt’s landing. Someone is shouting in their cell further down the corridor, something incoherent about asylum seekers. If you took everyone with mental-health issues out of this place they’d have to shut it down. Most people in here were, one way or another, just taking another step in a life of chaos, pulled by the tides of a world which neither wanted them nor needed them. Very few people in here were like Connie. Just plain bad.
Connie reaches the door of Heather’s cell. It is still ` because of the internal investigation into Heather’s death. The man in the admin block, the one with the Volvo from Tinder, has assured her that it has been left open. Connie walks into the cell, cold and empty in Heather’s absence.
‘ONLY CONNIE JOHNSON CAN HELP ME NOW.’ Well, let’s see what we can do, Heather. Let’s see if we can find what you were writing.
There are very few places to hide anything in a cell. Connie starts knocking on the walls, trying to hear a hollow sound. But the walls are too thick. No way through.
Connie reaches her arm around the U-bend of Heather Garbutt’s toilet. Nothing.
Connie can fool anyone and everyone. She is very, very good at it, and it has served her well for many years. When her dad left, Connie kept smiling, just so someone in the house was. When her mum died, Connie ploughed on, building the business. No one was any the wiser about Connie’s pain.
The bed frame is made from tubes of cheap metal. Hollow tubes.
Of course, even while she’s thinking it through, Connie knows what Ibrahim is doing. The mirror he’s providing. He’s letting Connie speak to herself. To see herself. And he’s helping her understand that if you’re fooling everyone, you’re really only fooling one person, and that’s yourself. Ibrahim had said to her, ‘Our great strengths are also our great weaknesses,’ and Connie had rolled her eyes. But, for some reason, that thought is with her all the time now.
Connie upends the bunk beds and pulls a loose rubber stopper out from one of the metal legs. Nothing but an empty space. Keep looking.
What if she wasn’t just plain bad? What if that’s a lie she has told herself all these years? That would be too much to take. She could just stop seeing Ibrahim, but it feels like he has opened a door that can never be shut again.
She pulls the stopper from the second leg of the bed. Nothing.
Plenty of people have dealt with an awful lot worse than Connie Johnson, she knows that. What she does for a living is despicable: how she makes her money, how she treats people, how she shuts off her brain to the pain that she has caused. It has always felt inevitable to her, though. As if she were born this way, and as if different rules applied to her.
She pulls out the third stopper. Still nothing.
But what if none of that is true? Does she really want to be confronted with everything she has done?
Connie pulls the stopper from the final leg.
On balance, no, she doesn’t want to find that out – it is probably best to just keep on lying to herself. Best to remain the Connie Johnson that the little girl invented when her dad left her all those years ago. She will let Ibrahim know she doesn’t want any more sessions with him. Thank you, but no thank you.