Ken Follett - the Third Twin (1996)

“Difficult woman,” Maurice said.

Berrington leaned forward, clasping his hands together, and looked down, in an attitude of humility. “I feel at fault here, Maurice.” Maurice shook his head, but Berrington went on. “I hired Jeannie Ferrami. Of course, I had no idea that she would devise this method of work—but all the same it’s my responsibility, and I think I have to get you out of it.”

“What do you propose?”

“I can’t ask you not to release that press statement. I don’t have the right. You can’t put one research project above the welfare of the entire university, I realize that.” He looked up.

Maurice hesitated. For a split second Berrington wondered fearfully if he suspected he was being maneuvered into a corner. But if the thought crossed his mind it did not linger. “I appreciate your saying that, Berry. But what will you do about Jeannie?”

Berrington relaxed. It seemed he had done it. “I guess she’s my problem,” he said. “Leave her to me.”

22

STEVE DROPPED OFF TO SLEEP IN THE EARLY HOURS OF Wednesday morning.

The jail was quiet, Porky was snoring, and Steve had not slept for forty-two hours. He tried to stay awake, rehearsing his bail application speech to the judge for tomorrow, but he kept slipping into a waking dream in which the judge smiled benignly on him and said, “Bail is granted, let this man go free,” and he walked out of the court into the sunny street. Sitting on the floor of the cell in his usual position, with his back to the wall, he caught himself nodding off, and jerked awake several times, but finally nature conquered willpower.

He was in a profound sleep when he was shocked awake by a painful blow to his ribs. He gasped and opened his eyes. Porky had kicked him and was now bending over him, eyes wide with craziness, screaming: “You stole my dope, motherfucker! Where d’you stash it, where? Give it up right now or you’re a dead man!”

Steve reacted without thinking. He came up off the floor like a spring uncoiling, his right arm outstretched rigid, and poked two fingers into Porky’s eyes. Porky yelled in pain and stepped backward. Steve followed, trying to push his fingers right through Porky’s brain to the back of his head. Somewhere in the distance, he could hear a voice that sounded a lot like his own, screaming abuse.

Porky took another step back and sat down hard on the toilet, covering his eyes with his hands.

Steve put both hands behind Porky’s neck, pulled his head forward, and kneed him in the face. Blood spurted from Porky’s mouth. Steve grabbed him by the shirt, yanked him off the toilet seat, and dropped him on the floor. He was about to kick him, when sanity began to return. He hesitated, staring down at Porky bleeding on the floor, and the red mist of rage cleared. “Oh, no,” he said. “What have I done?”

The gate of the cell flew open and two cops burst in, brandishing nightsticks.

Steve held up his hands in front of him.

“Just calm down,” said one of the cops.

“I’m calm, now,” Steve said.

The cops handcuffed him and took him out of the cell. One punched him in the stomach, hard. He doubled over, gasping. “That’s just in case you were thinking of starting any more trouble,” the cop said.

He heard the sound of the cell door crashing shut and the voice of Spike the turnkey in his habitual humorous mood. “You need medical attention, Porky?” Spike said. “ ’Cause there’s a veterinarian on East Baltimore Street.” He cackled at his own joke.

Steve straightened up, recovering from the punch. It still hurt but he could breathe. He looked through the bars at Porky. He was sitting upright, rubbing his eyes. Through bleeding lips he replied to Spike, “Fuck you, asshole.”

Steve was relieved: Porky was not badly hurt.

Spike said: “It was time to pull you out of there anyway, college boy. These gentlemen have come to take you to court.” He consulted a sheet of paper. “Let’s see, who else is for the Northern District Court? Mr. Robert Sandilands, known as Sniff.…” He got three other men out of cells and chained them all together with Steve. Then the two cops took them to the parking garage and put them on a bus.

Steve hoped he would never have to go back to that place.

It was still dark outside. Steve guessed it must be around six A.M. Courts did not start work until nine or ten o’clock in the morning, so he would have a long wait. They drove through the city for fifteen or twenty minutes then entered a garage door in a court building. They got off the bus and went down into the basement.

There were eight barred pens around a central open area. Each pen had a bench and a toilet, but they were larger than the cells at police headquarters, and all four prisoners were put in a pen that already had six men in it. Their chains were removed and dumped on a table in the middle of the room. There were several turnkeys, presided over by a tall black woman with a sergeant’s uniform and a mean expression.

Over the next hour another thirty or more prisoners arrived. They were accommodated twelve to a pen. There were shouts and whistles when a small group of women were brought in. They were put in a pen at the far end of the room.

After that nothing much happened for several hours. Breakfast was brought, but Steve once again refused food; he could not get used to the idea of eating in the toilet. Some prisoners talked noisily, most remained sullen and quiet. Many looked hung over. The banter between prisoners and guards was not quite as foul as it had been in the last place, and Steve wondered idly if that was because there was a woman in charge.

Jails were nothing like what they showed on TV, he reflected. Television shows and movies made prisons seem like low-grade hotels: they never showed the unscreened toilets, the verbal abuse, or the beatings given to those who misbehaved.

Today might be his last day in jail. If he had believed in God he would have prayed with all his heart.

He figured it was about midday when they began taking prisoners out of the cells.

Steve was in the second batch. They were handcuffed again and ten men were chained together. Then they went up to the court.

The courtroom was like a Methodist chapel. The walls were painted green up to a black line at waist level and then cream above that. There was a green carpet on the floor and nine rows of blond wood benches like pews.

In the back row sat Steve’s mother and father.

He gasped with shock.

Dad wore his colonel’s uniform, with his hat under his arm. He sat straight backed, as if standing at attention. He had Celtic coloring: blue eyes, dark hair, and the shadow of a heavy beard on his clean-shaven cheeks. His expression was rigidly blank, taut with suppressed emotion. Mom sat beside him, small and plump, her pretty round face puffy with crying.

Steve wished he could fall through the floor. He would have gone back to Porky’s cell willingly to escape this moment. He stopped walking, holding up the entire line of prisoners, and stared in dumb agony at his parents, until the turnkey gave him a shove and he stumbled forward to the front bench.

A woman clerk sat at the front of the court, facing the prisoners. A male turnkey guarded the door. The only other official present was a bespectacled black man of about forty wearing a suit coat, tie, and blue jeans. He asked the names of the prisoners and checked them against a list.

Steve looked back over his shoulder. There was no one on the public benches except for his parents. He was grateful he had family that cared enough to show up; none of the other prisoners did. All the same he would have preferred to go through this humiliation unwitnessed.

His father stood up and came forward. The man in blue jeans spoke officiously to him. “Yes, sir?”