All poetry.
No true crime or serial killer shite.
I know my game and, better, I know my act.
My early days in the asylum, one of those interviewing me had read all the relevant books.
Me too.
He asked:
“As a child, did you ever torture or kill small animals?”
Gimme a fucking break, the most basic question.
I said:
“I love animals, why would I hurt them?”
Then the freaking classic.
“Did you ever set fires and receive sexual gratification as a result?”
God almighty.
I said:
“But we had central heating.”
He’d caught on to my mind-fucking and didn’t like it.
Not one bit.
Asked in icy tone:
“Does killing give you sexual release?”
I stared at him, said:
“You’re a wee bit obsessed with sex and violence. Have you spoken to anyone about that?”
He lost it then.
“I know what you are.”
“Pray tell?”
He took a deep sigh, said:
“You are a narcissistic psychopath, and highly dangerous.”
I looked at his name tag. Now he had my attention. I said:
“Dr Williams, I don’t understand those big words.”
4 A.M., WHEN THE WALLS ARE THINNER by Alison Littlewood
STUMPY ELLIS TOLD a lot of stories about how he lost his thumb, and they always seemed to involve violence, and grinding, and eyes. I was the only one who heard the real story, and I never would have told. Stumpy had a temper, and a man with a temper in prison is like a powder keg in a room full of lit matches.
He had a shine in his eyes, Stumpy Ellis: a cold, dangerous kind of shine. It was like seeing a flat, wide sky in there, a grey sky, although the sun was shining in the yard when he stuck out his hand – the one with only half a thumb – and asked if I had a smoke. I looked at those eyes and took a cigarette from my pocket, without seeing what he had to trade. If I’d learned one thing inside, it was when to resist and when to bend.
He muttered around the cig in his mouth, to my back.
“Payment.”
I turned and waved his words away: no problem.
“I always pay,” he said. “I always pay and I always expect to be paid. Sit down.”
I felt stiffness working up my back and into my knuckles, but he sat down himself, so I sat next to him and smelled the burning in his lungs.
“I’ll tell you a story,” he said. “As payment.”
I waited.
He thrust out his hand in front of me, palm down, but I didn’t jump. Another thing I learned in prison: it doesn’t pay to be jumpy.
“See that?” he said, and I grunted. His left thumb was missing from the first knuckle to the tip, leaving a thick, blunt, flexible mound.
“Want to know how I did that?”
I grunted again.
“There was a guy thought he could cross me,” said Stumpy. “We worked together for a while. Building jobs, mainly. I’d get the business in, he’d mobilize the troops. Whoever was hiring us, they paid me, and I paid him. Only this one time, he came to me, he said, ‘Ellis – help me out. I need something extra.’”
He glanced at me, so I nodded.
“He took the money and the next time I see him, he’s coming out of the jeweller’s, and he sees me and he turns red-faced. And I knew, you know? You don’t fool Stumpy Ellis. Not when it comes to his missus.
“A picture, my missus.” He breathed out a long, jagged breath of smoke as he laughed. “Blonde. Tits out here. Legs up here.” He stared off into the distance, pulling hard on the cigarette.
“I didn’t follow him, didn’t need to. Told him I was off to see about a job, something out of town. And then I doubled round and went home. Knew as soon as I got there. Window was open, and this laughing floating out.”
I nodded, wondering why he would tell this story, why it didn’t bother him what his wife had done.
“She had him on his back when I got there. Her arse stuck up in the air.” He sucked noisily on the cigarette. “Know what I mean?”
I nodded.
“Got the shock of her life when I shoved her off the bed. Took half of it with her, and her looking all wide-eyed and surprised, trying to tell me she didn’t do nothing, with his blood running down her chin.”
He laughed, but I didn’t.
“So he was there, practically begging, so I start punching, and she’s digging in the cabinet and comes at me with the gun.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“My gun. My own gun. Keep it for – special occasions, you know? And she’s holding it with her hands, shaking everywhere, and screaming, and then she points it in the air, only she’s still shaking, and then she squeezes too hard and she fires it. And the only person more surprised than her is me, cause half my thumb’s gone, and there’s blood everywhere. All over the sheets, all over me, and all over the little prick who started it all. And I figure, she’s my missus, and what sort of a man hits his missus? So I turns round to him, my old mate, and he’s laughing at me. ‘See that?’ he says, and his voice is high as a girl’s. ‘See that?’ And he keeps looking at me and laughing.”
He stubbed out the cigarette, then spread his hand and stared at his thumb. “Put his eye out,” he said.
“What?”
“I said, I put his eye out.” He hooked his thumb and mimed gouging. “Didn’t even feel it. My thumb all covered in blood, and half missing, and I didn’t even feel it. Seems it wanted it, you see. My thumb knew what it wanted and it took it.”
He looked up. “Fucker never looked at my wife again.” He spluttered laughter and nudged me in the ribs.
I laughed. It wasn’t funny, but I laughed anyway.
He nudged me again. “See him?” He indicated an older man, thin, with white hair. He walked in a wide circle around the yard, his eyes fixed on the ground. “Librarian,” Stumpy said, and chuckled. “If you want to know anything, ask a librarian. He’s the one’ll get you out of here.”
“What?” I said.
“What?” he says. “Escape, that’s what. That’s the man’ll show you how. Just climb right out.” He gave a dry laugh. “Climb right out.”
I waited for him to say something else, but he shook himself.
“Another story,” he said, and stood. “You’ll have to pay me for that one. You’ll have to pay me good.” And he walked off without saying anything else, swaggering his way across the yard just as the guard called time.
I knew Stumpy hadn’t told me the real story about his thumb, and I didn’t care. What he’d said about escape, though; it stuck in my mind, and that was dangerous. Curiosity could get you killed in prison as well as anywhere else.
I didn’t approach Stumpy again, but when I got my lunch I saw an empty seat by the librarian, and I took it. If Stumpy knew something, he was a middleman. I didn’t deal with middlemen.
I nodded to the white-haired man next to me. “Si Jameson,” I said to him in a low voice. “Short for Simon.” He glanced at me, looked away, and said nothing.
“Hear you’re the librarian,” I said, but he went on grinding something over and over in his teeth.
“If you want to know anything, ask a…” I began again, but he stood, pushing his chair back so hard it rocked on two legs before slamming down behind him. He picked up his tray and was gone.
It took a moment for the sound of eating to resume, the scrape of cutlery, the low buzz of conversation. I didn’t realize Stumpy had sat down on the other side of me until I heard his voice.
“He won’t give it up, that one,” he said. “You can’t just introduce yourself to the librarian.”
I almost laughed, then remembered the flat metal shine in Stumpy’s eyes, and swallowed it down.
“You have to earn it,” he said. “It don’t come cheap.”
“What does he want?”
“Ah,” Stumpy said, smiling around a mouthful of sausage and mash. “Not like that. Smokes and money – they won’t cut it. You have to do something for him.”