Alex Gray - The Swedish Girl

‘Okay, let’s try again,’ DI Grant said, folding her hands upon the table between them and staring at him intently. ‘Let’s begin at the beginning when you first met Eva Magnusson.’

Colin opened his eyes, hoping that he was wakening from the nightmare that had engulfed him. But what he saw as he looked around the place reminded him that it was all too real. Although the sky was dark, the white-painted walls glowed from the street lights outside and the metal toilet gleamed in the corner of his cell. Something smelled stale and sour and Colin realised with a sense of shame that it was coming from his own unwashed body.

He had slept fitfully on top of the blue mattress, trying hard not to let his emotions get the better of him, hearing voices calling in the nearby cells, often accompanied by banging against the blue metal doors. Once he could have sworn he had woken himself by crying out, for an officer had opened the door and asked if he was okay. Someone seemed to stop by that door at regular intervals, always disturbing his sleep. Tomorrow he would be taken from this place to the court where his defence — Mrs Fellowes? — would try to get him released on bail.

‘Don’t bank on it,’ the solicitor had told him quietly. ‘This is a grave charge and you might be refused bail, even though you have no previous record.’

He had stared at her, wide-eyed from all the hours that he had spent being quizzed by that detective inspector. His head had been aching afterwards and the cold calmness of being alone in this cell had come almost as a relief. What would happen next? Would he be taken from the courts and allowed to go home to his father? Colin Young squeezed his eyes tightly shut, forcing himself to discount any other possibility.

‘I can’t believe it!’ Kirsty Wilson slumped into the armchair, looking at her father’s face as though he were making some sort of sick joke. ‘It can’t be true! Colin wouldn’t hurt a fly!’ she protested, the tears suddenly springing back into eyes that she thought had wept themselves dry.

‘Sorry, love,’ Alistair Wilson murmured, coming to sit on the arm of the chair and pat his daughter’s shoulder.

‘Well, what does he say? He hasn’t confessed, has he?’

‘No.’ Alistair shook his head and frowned. For the umpteenth time he wished that his professional life had not impinged on his family, especially Kirsty. It was bad enough that work had made him miss so many special occasions in the past, but now to have his wee girl involved in a murder case that was being investigated on his own patch, well that was just too much.

‘I don’t believe he did it. Something must be wrong,’ Kirsty protested. ‘Anyway, where is he now? At home again with his dad?’ she asked hopefully.

‘No,’ Alistair replied with a sigh. ‘He was refused bail.’

‘Oh, no!’ Kirsty’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘Where is he?’

‘Barlinnie,’ her father answered. ‘On remand.’

Kirsty shook her head. ‘That’s awful, Dad,’ she said, looking up at him as his hand grasped hers in a consoling squeeze.

‘I know, pet. I’m sorry,’ Alistair said.

‘But isn’t there anything we can do?’

Kirsty saw her father turn his face away then and at that moment the girl experienced a sense of loss greater than she had ever known in her life. They were divided, father and daughter. Detective Sergeant Wilson would always take the part of his professional colleagues over the feelings and sensitivities of his daughter, wouldn’t he? She slipped her hands out of his grasp and stared straight ahead.

‘You’ve always said I’m a good judge of character, haven’t you? Listen, I know what Colin’s like, Dad,’ she said quietly. ‘And I know that he’s not a killer.’

The horse was the first thing he saw as the transporter trundled through the gates of HMP Barlinnie Prison. For a split second Colin thought he must have been hallucinating: a horse? Here inside a prison? But as he had craned his neck to look more closely he recognised the sculpture as something similar to the heavy horse made out of barbed wire that looked down over the M8 motorway. This one had horse brasses around its neck, tufts of plaited mane sticking up and a plough trailing behind it. Colin remembered the tiny seed of hope that had been planted in him as the horse left his view, the transporter turning on the grey tarmac beside the prison gardens: maybe it wouldn’t be too bad here after all, if there was something creative going on?

The rest of his admission was now a painful blur; blubbering like a child in front of the nice nurses who had insisted he had to be strip-searched, hanging his head in shame as one of them patted his back, telling him that it was okay, everyone felt like this at first. Then that awful clang as the door of the cell closed behind him.

Colin Young fingered the lapels of the faded blue shirt folded neatly on his narrow bunk. His clothes had been taken away and, although one of the prison officers had mentioned that someone would be allowed to bring his own stuff from home, Colin was not sure when or if that would actually happen. On arrival he had been handed a pair of red tracksuit trousers and an orange fleece; hideous but probably necessary to identify him as a new entrant to this penal system. Now they lay in a garish bundle at the foot of his bunk.

The chubby-faced prison officer had told him that he was to be taken to the prison block that would be his home until the time came for his trial. One hundred and forty days, someone had said, but Colin had doubted this, hoping it wasn’t true. How many different men had worn this particular garment, he wondered. The shivering was as much from that thought as from the fact that he was standing in only a T-shirt and underpants. These, at least, had been in a plastic packet and looked brand new. He pulled his arms through the sleeves and buttoned up the shirt, looking at the dark blue jeans that still lay on the bed. They too were faded with many washes yet still stiff from the dryer. There would be no putting out of a wash here, he suddenly realised, no billowing lines of laundry like the ones in the back greens at home. It would be all done by machinery somewhere in the bowels of this enormous place.

For a moment Colin remembered the black and white engravings he had seen in the People’s Palace, old Glasgow, where women came from all parts to spread their linen out to dry on the famous Glasgow Green. When would he ever be able to walk across that swathe of grass again?

Before he realised it, Colin was dressed and ready for whatever this new day was to bring. He had spent the night alone in this cell, a much smaller one than the large sparse cell back at Stewart Street, sleeping in fits, disturbed by the prison officers on their rounds, sliding the square viewing panel up to check that he was all right. This was a special block — one that was reserved for men coming into prison to enable the prison officers to orientate them into the ways of the system. Or so he had been told. Colin had tried hard to listen to everything, taking in what he could, but his mind had been numb with the fear of it all and the reality that he was actually inside a prison, accused of a capital crime.

‘I didn’t do it,’ Colin had whispered, confiding to the prison officer who looked older even than his own father, hoping that the kindly eyes that swept over his quivering body would understand. ‘I didn’t do what they said I did,’ he had insisted quietly.

‘Aye, they all say that, lad,’ the man had said with a tired smile. And at that moment Colin knew that his very presence here in this prison had given him a different status. He was a suspect, a male on remand, a killer in the eyes of each and every one of these officials. That he lived in a country where one was supposed to be innocent until proved guilty didn’t seem to matter now. The very idea of voicing that thought had made Colin suddenly weary. From the moment he had left his home two mornings ago it was as if all the energy had been leached from his body and soul. Now he felt a dull ache all the time, as though he were battered and bruised, though nobody had laid a finger upon him.