Alex Howard - Time to Die

She sat down cross-legged on the floor in front of the window. The room was virtually furniture free. Hanlon didn’t like furniture much. The only decoration was a signed, framed photograph of the artist Joseph Beuys, who stared impassively down from beneath his trademark hat at Hanlon’s muscular back. She looked out at the night. Southwark Bridge was brilliantly lit above the darkness of the Thames. She was in a perfect lotus pose, but her thoughts were hardly meditative.

Anderson would get her the answer she needed. The boy would be in one of Conquest’s properties and Bingham would know where. He would tell Anderson. Anderson would do whatever was necessary to make Bingham talk. Then Anderson would tell her.

Conquest was not going to stand trial.

She would see to that.

Like all the sexual offenders at HMP Wendover, Bingham had to be strictly segregated from the other prisoners. He was a Category C prisoner, which meant staff thought he wasn’t an escape risk (unlike Howe in B wing, who had nothing to lose) but was unsuitable for an open prison. As if by way of compensation, although nobody really felt sorry for him, Bingham had been given a coveted job. He got to clean the library for several hours a week when it was closed to other inmates. Bingham was one of Wendover’s most trusted prisoners. He had no choice but to adhere strictly to security measures; it was what kept him alive. The library job was suitable for Bingham because it didn’t need a team to do it, he was highly literate and, above all, a fanatic about cleanliness and order.

In fairness to Bingham, he did do a wonderful job. The small library had never been so polished, dusted or well organized. Bingham enjoyed this task immensely. It was a change of scenery from A wing, extremely welcome in itself, and for a brief period of time he felt normal, as if he were doing a normal job in a normal place, like a regular person does in the outside world. He could almost forget he was in prison. He also liked the company of books. In another life he’d have enjoyed being a librarian.

Books were non-judgemental, unlike people. Here he had the company of other paedophiles: William Burroughs, André Gide, Oscar Wilde, Lewis Carroll, Jean Genet. It was quite a distinguished list. He felt he belonged in that august company, not with these rough, unhygienic, uncultured criminals.

Today, however, he was surprised to find that Jardine, a prison officer who he didn’t know well, was taking him, not down the usual series of internal corridors and gates that led to the library but on an unfamiliar route. This ended in the two of them standing outside A wing in the open courtyard that stretched over to a rectangular building. Bingham knew this to be the education block. Jardine looked at him imperiously. The screw was huge, six foot six and extremely powerfully built. He was a committed bodybuilder. Age was taking its toll on his sharply defined physique, and steroid abuse had also taken its toll on his temper and his skin condition, both poor. Unbeknownst to the prisoners but not to himself or Mrs Jardine, the steroids had also affected his virility, which added to Jardine’s ill humour. Faded blue-green tattoos of a nautical style, anchors, mermaids, King Neptune, were inked into his skin. He was ex-Royal Navy. Rumour had it that Jardine was on the take but Bingham wouldn’t know. He had never tried to bribe a prison officer; he wouldn’t dare. Bingham was not a risk-taker; he knew himself deep down to be a coward, frightened of pain, frightened by threats. It was partly what had drawn him to Conquest. Bingham hero-worshipped Conquest’s easy competence with violence. He wished he was brave, but he knew he wasn’t. Jardine frightened him. He hadn’t dared ask where they were going.

Prison was quite the worse thing that Bingham could have imagined happening to him. It was a terrifying place and he lived in mortal fear of the other prisoners. He had never visualized jail, not in his most vivid nightmares. He had always been so very careful. The only reason he was here was because an ex-sexual partner (Bingham, who was a precise man verbally, would not have used the word ‘boyfriend’, and friendship had never been part of the equation) had shopped him to the police in a plea bargain attempt. What, after all, had he done? Looked at photos that he hadn’t even taken. The regular sex trips he’d made to Thailand and Vietnam hadn’t even come up in the trial. Besides, that was abroad anyway. The work he had done for Conquest had also remained secret. The organized sexual assaults, the recruitment of child prostitutes, the sex parties — none of this had come out.

Even if it had, he wouldn’t have implicated Conquest. He had kept quiet during his interrogation out of a fear of Conquest as well as his love for the man. The police were sure Bingham knew quite a lot about the provenance of the imagery. This was correct, more than correct, but Bingham knew that if he implicated him, Conquest would have him killed. But it wasn’t just that. He loved Conquest in his way. Love would have closed his lips as effectively as fear. So despite all the offers of reduced sentencing and lesser charges, his lips remained sealed.

‘We’ve done some roster changes,’ said Jardine to Bingham as they contemplated the empty yard in front of them. ‘We heard that one of the prisoners was planning an attack on you in the library, so we’re moving you to clean the education block instead.’ He pointed at it. ‘As you can see, it’s isolated so you’ll be safe there. Nobody will be able to get to you.’ He smiled unpleasantly at Bingham. ‘We wouldn’t want anything untoward happening to you now, would we?’

Bingham caught a smell of halitosis from the officer’s mouth and wrinkled his nose in distaste. Bingham, morbidly conscious of his own teeth, spent a great deal of time, which of course he had in abundance, flossing and cleaning and brushing. Plaque was his sworn enemy. His own teeth gleamed with almost surgical cleanliness. Jardine’s teeth were yellow with dark streaks of build-up between each tooth. Bingham shuddered inwardly. He found the smell of the decay disgusting.

‘Thank you,’ he said politely. A prison attack was what he feared most in life, with good reason. He sometimes had vivid nightmares about it. He could imagine with horrible three-dimensional clarity the shank, the home-made knife, ripping into his flesh, his blood spurting out. In his fevered imagination he had suffered this attack maybe hundreds of times. Shakespeare was right about cowards and their multiple deaths. There were three hundred and fifty men within the walls who would all be happy to do it.

The two of them walked across the tarmac to the building and Jardine let him in. His keys rattled in the metal door.

‘In you go,’ he said. ‘Cleaning stuff is in a cupboard by the toilet. It’s ten now, I’ll be back at twelve. I want a good job doing, understood, Paul?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Bingham.

He watched as the door closed. He frowned to himself. Jardine had departed with suspicious haste. The instructions were unusually vague. Normally everything in a prison was laboriously spelt out as if the assumption was that you were retarded. Things were ticked off on lists. Everything had to be accounted for. In the library the cleaning materials were checked off against columns detailing product type and quantity. They could, after all, be used to poison or blind someone. Due diligence was exercised to a tedious degree. Something did not feel right. The key turned again in the lock. He was alone in the building. Then he sensed movement behind him. He froze in fear. Not good. Not good at all. Bingham turned.

There, standing looking at him, was a tall, thin man he’d never seen before, dressed in prison denim. Long, unkempt hair obscured his face. The man’s eyes gleamed dangerously. ‘Hello, Rabbit,’ he said softly.