Ann Cleeves - The Sleeping and the Dead

He smiled. The rain hammered on the flat roof, streamed down the windows so it was impossible to see outside. The perimeter wall had vanished. They could have been in a rain-soaked library anywhere.

‘Do you mind if I ask what you’re in for?’ she asked. Suddenly she felt she had the right to know. Perhaps it was that being the subject of a police investigation gave her some fellow feeling. It made her position in the prison more ambiguous.

‘Don’t you know?’

‘I suppose it was in your file. If I ever did know I’ve forgotten. Look, it doesn’t matter. It’s none of my business.’

‘Manslaughter.’

She thought that was all he was going to say. She didn’t blame him for not wanting to go into any detail. She shouldn’t have asked. He’d been kind to her and she’d been rude. But he continued.

‘It was a fight in a pub. Stupid. I was pissed and I can hardly remember now what started it off. The court accepted it was self-defence. To be honest I think I was bloody lucky. I had a good brief.’ He drank the tea. Hannah didn’t know what to say. ‘The lad I killed had a wife and a baby. Sometimes I think, well he shouldn’t have been in the pub then should he? Getting tanked up and gobby, spoiling for a fight. He had responsibilities. He should have been at home. But that’s bollocks, isn’t it? I can’t blame him. You can’t blame the victim.’

Hannah thought of Michael Grey. ‘No, I suppose not.’

‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘I sound as if I’ve been on one of those courses. Victim awareness.’

‘And have you?’

‘Not here. But I’ve been through it all. I can talk the jargon standing on my head.’

‘Where then?’

He didn’t answer directly. ‘I’ve done supervision, care, probation, community service. Spent more time in prison than I’ve been out. Long enough to know the right thing to say when you’re after parole.’

But he’d meant it, she thought. That thing about not blaming the victim. He’d meant that.

‘Have you got a release date?’

He shook his head. ‘First board comes up next month.’

‘Then what?’

‘Then I’m going to stay out of trouble. Of course.’ He gave a twisted grin. ‘That’s what all the cons say, isn’t it? I bet you’ve heard it before. “I’m serious, miss. You won’t see me in here again.” Then a couple of months later, there they are at your reception talk.’

‘And you?’ she asked. ‘Will you be back?’

‘No. Not this time.’

‘What’s different this time?’

‘I’ve grown up, I suppose. About time.’

‘And?’

He smiled. ‘You’re in the wrong business. You should be a cop. You’ve got a better interview technique than most of them. And there’s a girl.’ He corrected himself. ‘A woman. She’s an actress. Younger than me but not that much. Dunno what she sees in me. Crazy.’ He shook his head in wonder. ‘She said she’d wait. This time. No second chances. We got together when I was on bail. My solicitor wangled me a hostel place. She was running a literacy course. A volunteer.’

‘Does she visit?’

‘Yeah. Regular as clockwork. With a list of books I should be reading.’

‘So. A happy ending.’

‘For me, yeah. One last chance. Up to me not to blow it. Not so lucky for the guy in the pub.’

Or for Michael Grey, she thought.

‘You said you’d been in trouble when you were a kid…’

‘Oh yes.’ Now he’d started talking about himself it seemed he couldn’t stop. ‘We were the classic dysfunctional family.’ She could hear the quotation marks in the self-mockery. ‘My dad beat up my mum. My mum left him and took me with her. She couldn’t cope so I was in and out of care. Where I met real little thugs. I was brighter than them so I didn’t get caught so often. But often enough to go right through the system. I never did drugs but I drank too much, even when I was a kid. It clouds your judgement. If I hadn’t been a boozer I’d probably have been a brilliant criminal. But I needed the drink.’

‘Did you ever do youth custody in West Yorkshire?’ This is ridiculous, she thought. A waste of time. Leave it to the police. But she held her breath while she waited for an answer.

‘Why?’

‘I’m just after some information.’ She wasn’t quite daft enough to trust him with the truth. He might keep it to himself, but if it got round the prison that she was involved in a murder inquiry her position would be impossible. ‘A long shot. Something came up at the school reunion. Someone we’re trying to trace. There’s a place at Holmedale isn’t there?’

‘Yeah. I was there for a few months. It was all right. There was a farm. Pigs. Some of the instructors were OK.’

‘When would that have been?’

‘Early seventies.’ He was older than he looked. ‘I’d have been fourteen.’

‘The timing would be about right. Like I say, it’s a long shot but do you remember a lad called Michael Grey? Very blond hair. He’d be a few years older than you.’

He paused and she thought for a minute he’d remembered the name from the news reports. But he must have sorted the daily papers without reading them. Certainly he hadn’t seemed to have made the connection.

He shook his head. ‘It’s a long time ago. And I knocked around with so many lads over the years.’

‘He might have been using a different name. You’d have noticed him. Posh voice, well educated, bright.’

He used almost the same phrase Stout had done. ‘You didn’t get many like that in borstal. Nice boys in trouble got probation or were sent off to see a shrink. I think I’d have remembered a lad like that.’

She could tell there was no point pushing it. ‘Thanks anyway.’

There was a jangling of keys. Dave the prison officer came in, snug in his uniform waterproof. He raised an eyebrow at them drinking tea and the papers not sorted. Hannah could tell he would have liked a cup himself but was too idle to make it. He took off the coat, shook the water all over the floor and went into the office for his kip.

When Hannah went to find Arthur at lunchtime he was still running a class. He’d got them to pull the tables together and they sat round as if they were at a board meeting. The prisoner who’d pushed over the library shelf was standing at the front, writing on a flip chart with a fat felt-tip pen. This must be the prerelease course. Hannah knew it was feeble but she didn’t want to meet him again so she waited in Arthur’s office until they all streamed out. There was a list of the men attending the course on his desk, with their dates of birth and release dates. By a process of elimination she identified her troublemaker as Hunter. The next day he’d be gone.

Despite the rain Arthur took her out of the prison for lunch. It was her choice. The food in the officers’ mess was cheap but she hated the noise in there, the banter, the unspoken implication that anyone not in uniform was an outsider. They went to a pub in the nearest village. Often that was full of prison staff too, but today it was empty. They sat in the bay window but low cloud hid the view. Arthur went to the bar for drinks and to order food. As soon as he returned he said, ‘I’m sitting comfortably. Let’s hear the story.’

She didn’t know where to start. She would have liked to go back to the beginning, to her first meeting with Michael and the bonfire on the beach. She would have liked Arthur’s opinion. He was an expert. But the friendship hadn’t developed to the stage of discussing ex-lovers. And besides, they only had three quarters of an hour for lunch.

‘Did you meet up with your friends?’

‘Yes, and I’ll go back. It’s broken the ice.’

‘But something happened?’