Howard Linskey - The Dead

Baxter was scared; terrified in fact. I could see it in his podgy, sweaty face and piggy eyes, as he walked into the stifling room, uncombed hair sticking up in a Tintin quiff.

‘There’s no one else here,’ I assured him, ‘except him.’ Baxter glanced over at the tame prison guard who stayed a discreet distance from the table I had chosen. We were in the visitors’ area, but visiting hours were long over. I didn’t want my conversation with Baxter to be public.

We used Amrein to get me some private time with Baxter. Prison officers are pretty easy to buy. They earn fuck all, so they are particularly susceptible to a little extra bunce for a seemingly innocent bending of the rules. That’s how you start them out, by giving them a few hundred quid to turn a blind eye to some weed or a mobile phone being brought in. What they usually don’t realise is that, once they are on the pay roll, it’s impossible to come off it. If they’ve broken a rule, they are ours. When they try to duck the next favour we need, we remind them they’ve already broken the law by accepting our money and how easy it might be for someone to find that out.

Baxter sat down opposite me. I glanced at our tame warder and he backed away, ambling over to stand in a corner. Now we could talk freely. Baxter looked as if he expected me to start things off; ask about his well-being perhaps, make sure he was getting three squares a day and his copy of the Telegraph delivered each morning. I wasn’t about to do that.

‘You start,’ I told him, then I stayed silent, while he gathered his thoughts.

‘You’ve got to get me out of here,’ he told me, then he waited for my response.

I couldn’t help but laugh at that one. ‘Sure I will Baxter,’ and I nodded at the screw. ‘I’ll get him to have a word with the governor and he’ll let you out. You’ll be back in Newcastle in time for afternoon tea at the Copthorne.’

‘Stop pissing about,’ Baxter hissed, ‘this isn’t funny. You don’t know what it’s like in here. You don’t know the way I’m being treated. Like an animal.’

‘Oh sorry, I didn’t realise. That was insensitive of me.’ He looked a bit baffled by that answer. ‘Though maybe, just maybe, you should have thought of that before you raped and strangled a thirteen-year-old girl. I had you pegged as a lot of things, Baxter, but a nonce wasn’t one of them.’

He opened his mouth to reply and I braced myself for the denials. I wondered what tactic he would choose. It wasn’t me, it was someone else who looked like me, the DNA test was wrong, it’s a set-up, she was fine when I left her. Instead Baxter surprised me with a half-snort, half-laugh.

‘Rape?’ and he shook his head as if that was the funniest thing ever. ‘Ha, you’ve got to be joking,’ then he rolled his eyes, ‘not with that one.’

I was side-swiped by that answer, like I’d been hit with a sucker punch I didn’t see coming. It took a moment to recover my train of thought. Whatever morals I had left, and I didn’t have many, Baxter had managed to offend them.

‘You’re saying the girl was willing?’

‘I’m saying it wasn’t rape,’ he told me impatiently, through gritted teeth.

‘Well either it was rape or she was willing Baxter. There’s no in-between.’

‘Course there is,’ he told me firmly, ‘there just comes a point when all the cock teasing has to end, when all the treats and the attention has to lead to something in return. She understood that, at least that’s what I thought.’ He even managed to sound indignant.

‘Oh I get it Baxter. You gave her some sweeties, maybe a bit of pocket money and that entitled you to have sex with her, even though she was only thirteen?’

‘Yes, well,’ he looked a bit uncomfortable at that, ‘that one was thirteen going on…’

‘Fourteen?’ I offered. ‘Fifteen maybe? Or was she thirteen going on sixteen, so you got it into your head that she was fair game did you? How old were you at the time? Forty-five? Not exactly Romeo and Juliet , is it?’

‘I’m saying that age is no real indicator,’ and he jabbed his finger at the table-top, ‘and this one was older than her age. You know what they say,’ and he arched his eyebrows at me, ‘if they are old enough to…’

‘Complete that sentence and I swear I will smash your sick face into this table and I will keep on doing it.’

That shut him up. I glanced at the prison guard. ‘By the time he legs it over here to save you, you’ll be a fucking vegetable, eating pureed meals for the rest of your sad, child-raping life. You got that?’

He eyed me carefully like he was wondering whether I was just bluffing, but whatever he saw in my face made him back down. ‘There’s no need for threats,’ he told me quietly.

I had to take a deep breath to control my anger and remind myself where I was, before I continued, ‘Let’s just pretend for a moment that you haven’t committed rape or, at the very least, even using your version of events, statutory rape. Shall we do that, Baxter? Even then, there is one obvious flaw in your defence.’ He looked at me like he couldn’t quite see it. ‘You killed her,’ I reminded him quietly.

He looked like he was struggling to control his emotions then but I didn’t see guilt or shame in his eyes, only anger and spite.

‘She was going to tell. The silly, little bitch was crying and she wouldn’t stop and she kept saying “I’m going to tell” over and over again. She said it to me,’ he paused to let that sink in, ‘so what choice did I have?’

I looked at the man I’d had on my payroll for nearly three years and decided there and then to forget about everything I’d said to Palmer and Kinane. Baxter may have known a lot about my organisation but we would just have to live with that, because I’d made my decision.

‘You’re on your own, Baxter. From now on you can take your chances with the state-appointed, fresh-from-his-law-degree, apprentice lawyer they are going to give you, then you can stand there in the witness box and you can explain to those twelve jurors that the little girl you raped was just a cock tease. Then you can tell them how you had no choice but to kill her because she was going to tell on you and we’ll see what happens shall we? Good luck with that, you sick sack of shit.’

He didn’t like that, and his face took on the look of a spoilt child who’s just had his toys taken off him. I’d already reasoned that the police would be more interested in sending a child-killer down than giving him a deal in return for information about me and, no matter how much he hated me now, Baxter wasn’t about to trade that for nothing in return. He’d stay quiet out of spite.

‘If you were in our lock-up right now I’d let Kinane sort you out with his tool-box and he’d give you the full treatment. He’d keep you alive for days. You’d better hope they lock you up in solitary forever because if you ever get out I’ll make sure that happens, and do you know what, the police wouldn’t give a shit. The Chief Constable would probably shake me by the hand. They wouldn’t waste a minute trying to track down your killer. Not one. Jesus, you don’t even know how sick in the head you are, do you? That’s the really sad bit.’

It took a considerable effort, but I got to my feet. I was intending to lamp Baxter round the head for good measure before I walked away. I’d have to apologise to the screw and give him some extra wedge later, for the embarrassment I caused him, but I was pretty sure he could pass it off as an assault by another prisoner and I was relishing the fact that I was about to inflict some pain on this bastard.

‘Sit down!’ he barked at me, ‘you’re going nowhere,’ and the shock of his certainty deflected me from thumping him, at least for the time being. Then he said, ‘Not unless you want to kiss goodbye to your five million pounds.’