Says the dead boy. She put on a playful tone, trying to reassure him. But there were things weighing on her. She found it hard to hold his gaze. She knew he hated to be pressed, and she was going to have to press him. Either that or back away, as Salazar had backed away two years ago, from a truth that had become too awkward to negotiate. It worked anyway, she told him. It got me out of Grace’s way for a while.
Really? Alex raised his eyes to hers, touched the back of her hand. It looked a lot more like a real hand now: she was starting to acclimatise.
Really, she promised him.
She told him a little about her adventures that day. Crossing the moors to Leeds, sitting in court while lawyers had a big argument about her future. It was displacement. She was putting off the moment when she confronted him with what she knew.
And if you win the argument, then you get to go away? he asked her.
Yes. Maybe. There are other things that could happen. Like they could say I was guilty of a smaller crime. Manslaughter instead of murder.
What does that mean?
It means I killed you, but I didn’t mean to. If they decide that’s what happened, then they might send me back but cut my sentence. Let me out in a year, or two years, or five.
Alex had been looking at her all this time, but now he looked away again and fixed his gaze on what passed for the ground. His face had a sort of trembling blankness to it. After you get out, will you come back and see me?
I’ll find a way to take you with me, Jess told him firmly. Alex, I will. I already promised. I don’t think we found each other by accident. I think it was meant to happen. And whatever happens, I’m going to do what I said I’d do.
Which was as good a segue as she could ask for. She brought up an image in her mind: something she’d never seen but could easily imagine. A red badge on a black blazer: the lamb-with-a-banner device that turns up in a lot of religious iconography because it’s meant to represent the Lamb of God, the sacrificial victim who turned out to be a Trojan horse for Man’s redemption. Alex had said a goat with a flag, but that was an easy mistake for a kid to make.
(And kid meant goat. And children had been sacrificed lots of times, in lots of places.)
You remember this? she asked him.
Yes, Alex said. Of course I do.
You said it was the badge of your school. And that the motto was dum spiro spero. “As long as I breathe, there’s still hope.”
Alex shook his head. Miss Loach told us: “While there’s life, there’s hope.”
Did she now? What else did she tell you?
That it was Cicero who said it. He was a lawyer in ancient Rome, and he said it in a murder trial.
Of course he did, Jess thought. Where else?
Did Miss Loach call you by your first name or your last name? she asked. She was trying for a casual tone, but of course he could read her thoughts. He saw past the question to the intent behind it.
A second later, she realised that he wasn’t beside her any more. She turned to find that he’d stopped and was staring at her hard.
I don’t remember, he said.
“Okay.” She held out her hand for him to come and join her, but he stayed where he was.
What were you trying to do, Jess? Trick me? Do you think I’m lying to you or hiding things from you?
“No. No, Alex. Not that.”
Then what?
She braced herself. It was going to be hard to explain something that she didn’t understand herself. But if there was any way of getting to the truth, then it lay on the far side of this conversation.
“The lamb and flag badge, and the motto. Alex, they belong to a girls’ school.”
So?
“So how could you have gone there? Did you have a past life where you were a girl?”
Maybe.
“What?” She laughed. It seemed to her that he had to be joking.
Maybe. Yes. I think I did. I think I was a girl until you came.
“But…” Jess protested. “That doesn’t make any… Why didn’t you ever say this?”
I was scared to. Alex’s tone was level, inflectionless. I kept remembering more, but I didn’t want you to stop liking me, and you only liked me because you thought I was him. I was always a girl. You made me into a boy when you looked at me.
There was no gainsaying that flat certainty, but Jess dug in her heels and tried anyway. “Alex, you said…”
No, I didn’t, Jess. You said. You told me you knew me. And I didn’t know who I was, so I believed you. But before you came, I looked different. I was… I wasn’t ever like this. You made me be like this!
Jess almost staggered. Only the fact that this wasn’t her real body, her physical body, kept her on her feet. Her mind reeled and raced at the same time. She’d heard his voice before she saw him – a high, clear voice, like a child’s, but all children’s voices have the same pitch. You can’t tell a boy from a girl with your eyes closed until they hit puberty. And then when she did finally catch a glimpse of him, he was a silhouette, backlit by the ever-changing colours of the dream world. The detail resolved gradually. His face had been indistinct at first, then had come clearer and clearer as she…
As she shaped him with her mind, the same way she’d shaped this ramshackle body she now wore. The same way she’d given Tish wings and a magic necklace.
It was insane. But what was the alternative? Mr and Mrs Beech falsifying the birth records for their daughter? Dressing him as a boy? Raising him as a boy? Telling him and the whole world every day that he was a boy? And then sending him to a girls’ school?
“Oh my God,” Jess whispered. “Alex—”
But Alex was scanning the fractal landscape, suddenly alert.
“What is it?”
Someone’s coming.
Abruptly, impossibly, the night world shook and lurched. No, it was Moulson herself who was shaking, her upper body riven by shudders of involuntary movement that made her stagger and lose her footing.
She tried to back away, feeling herself gripped by a force she didn’t understand and couldn’t fight. But it refused to let go of her.
“Alex!” she cried. But she’d been twisted round somehow. She had to turn her head as far as she could to get a glimpse of him, and when she did, she could only see a blur, an outline with all the detail left out. Its rudimentary shape wavered from one second to the next. She couldn’t tell if it was male or female. If it was human, even.
“Moulson,” a voice said. “Come on. Time to go.”
Something took her by the arm. Pulled hard.
Lifted her like a fish caught on a hook.
71
After that little conversation with Devlin, Sylvie Stock headed back to the infirmary at a fast trot. She wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible. But along the way, she thought better of it and slowed right down.
Eight o’clock was when Sally was meant to be signing out, and regulations meant he couldn’t hang around past his shift, but it wouldn’t do for Stock to get there any earlier than five past eight. Better still, she should find a vantage point from which she could watch the duty desk and not go in until she’d seen him leave.
She chose the Goldstein room, also known as God Botherer HQ. While the prisoner blocks at Fellside were named after women who were scientists, the meeting rooms were named after novelists and poets and playwrights. Stock had no idea which of those three categories Goldstein fell into, and as far as she knew, nobody else on staff did either. The room had got its nickname because it was the biggest of the meeting rooms and nobody was allowed to call a meeting there except Save-Me Scratchwell, their beloved and devout leader.
What mattered to Sylvie right then, though, was that GBHQ had picture windows looking down into the open space (the equivalent of the commons in the prisoner blocks) where processing and registration took place, and where staff signed in and out at the start and end of their shifts.
Stock sat in the room with the lights out unti
l she saw Sally walk by below her. He took his time about signing out, talking for a good few minutes to the guard on the desk and wearing Sylvie’s nerves to shreds before he finally scribbled in the book and headed for the main gate. Even then he hesitated. He looked at his watch, then away down the corridor, back the way he’d come. Yeah, Sylvie thought, keep looking. I’ll come when I’m good and ready.
Technically the handover was supposed to be face to face, but the nurses didn’t usually stand on ceremony. The infirmary was in central admin, locked up tighter than a nun’s hope chest, and Fellside was a busy place. It wasn’t unusual for Sally to leave without ever seeing the nurse who was carrying the night shift. Tonight he seemed keen to hand over in person, which meant he wanted to brief Stock about Moulson and make absolutely sure she was on-message. That was definitely not going to happen. She waited Sally out with a slightly vindictive satisfaction and gave him a little wave behind his back when he finally gave up and walked out past the duty desk. The barred access gate clicked shut behind him.
Sylvie waited a few minutes longer in case he changed his mind again. Then she ventured down from her little sniper’s nest. She felt ridiculously nervous. Nothing she was going to do tonight was against regulations. That was the whole point of not meeting up with Sally and not having a formal handover. If she had, he would have given her a progress report which would have had Moulson in it. This way, she only officially knew what she saw with her own eyes.
But when she got to the bottom of the stairs, she heard her name called. Sally had pulled a flanker on her. He’d gone through the access gate but he’d waited on the other side of it. He shouted out again, and waved to her. “Sylvie! Over here!”
Stock thought about just walking away, but it was obvious that she’d seen him. Their eyes had met.
“I’ve got to go, Sally,” she called. “I’m on duty now.”
“Yes, but it’s handover!” he said. “I need to tell you something.”
Stock hesitated, but there wasn’t any getting away from it. If she turned and ran, Sally might come back on-block and chase her down. So she walked over to the gate and told him to make it quick.
“I signed Jess Moulson in overnight,” he said. “Suspected concussion. She needs to stay there. I don’t want her to go back on-block until morning, even if it looks like she’s improving.”
“I’ll see to it,” Stock said.
“Promise me, Sylvie. It’s really important.” Sally actually reached through the bars and touched her hand. Jesus!
“Fine,” she said again. “I promise. Philip.”
She offered up that unfamiliar name to make him stop asking. To make him go away and leave her alone. It did the job, but it left Sylvie in a seething rage. She hated Sally for making her swear to him – for forcing her into a false position. In her mind she cursed his retreating back, his fat arse and his waddling legs.
This changed nothing, she told herself. Nothing at all. Sally’s bleeding heart notwithstanding, all the big guns were on her side and so were the angels. So screw him.
“I just want to talk to her,” Devlin had told Stock. “It’s possible she picked up some drugs from a contact at the courthouse and brought them back into the prison. She could be in a lot of trouble. It’s better for her if I have this little chat with her off the record. That’s why I need your help, Sylvie.”
And all the while he talked, she was nodding. Telling herself it might be true, and at the same time knowing it wasn’t. Stock was nobody’s fool. Even before Devlin handed her the little wad of fifty-pound notes, she knew damn well what had to be going on here. This was off the record because it was dirty business. She wasn’t keeping Moulson out of trouble, she was delivering her into it.
And she was fine with that.
The infirmary was dead quiet when she went in. Patience had signed out at six. The medical staff from now until six the next morning was just her on her lonesome own.
Moulson was in the quarantine ward, lying on the same bed where she’d slept before. Old habits, Stock assumed. She’d taken her shoes off, but apart from that she was fully dressed. Her eyes were closed, one arm behind her head and the other resting on her stomach. She didn’t stir when Stock looked in.
On the table in the consulting area there was a folded note with Stock’s name written on it in Sally’s beautifully neat script. She tore it up into a lot of very small pieces and flushed it down the toilet. She didn’t need to read it because she already knew what it would say. And now nobody could prove it had ever been there.
She picked up the phone and called the main guard post in G block. Devlin picked up.
“It’s Sylvie,” she said. “We’re all set.”
“Moulson’s there?”
“Sleeping like a baby.”
“Great. I’ll send someone over.”
“How will I know him?”
There was a half-second pause which Stock imagined was filled with Devlin rolling his eyes. “He’ll be a guard, Stock, and he’ll tell you he’s there for Moulson. Do you want a secret password?”
“All right,” she said. “But give me a few minutes. I’ll need to get the paperwork done.”
“You do that.”
The paperwork was minimal in fact, but she wanted to make absolutely sure she had her story straight. I examined Moulson and I determined that her condition had improved significantly since…
No. She could do better than that. She took one more look around the door of the quarantine ward to make sure her only patient was still out of it, then sat down and began a brief but masterful work of fiction in which Moulson signed herself out on her own recognisance.
The knock on the door came about ten minutes later, when she was reading through the discharge forms for the third time to make sure they held together. She vaguely recognised the man who walked in. Lovell? No, Lovett. Keith Lovett. He was skinny and blond and had a look that reminded her of the vivid American phrase “trailer trash”.
“Moulson,” he said. “For Devlin.”
Good enough.
“All right,” Stock said. “Wait here.”
She went through to the quarantine ward. Moulson hadn’t moved a muscle as far as she could see. The expression on her face had changed though: now she was wearing the look of idiot consternation that goes with a nightmare.
Stock shook her shoulder. When she got no response, she did it again, harder.
Moulson mumbled something. A name, maybe. Oh my God, it was his name. The kid’s name. Alex. You bitch, she thought. You callous, callous bitch! You relive it in your fucking dreams?
“Moulson,” she snapped. “Come on. Time to go.”
She lifted Moulson off the bed with a two-handed grip – the woman was still lighter than her so it wasn’t hard – and shook her more vigorously. That finally did the trick.
“What?” Moulson mumbled, her eyes blinking open. “I’m awake. What’s happening?” She pulled free of Sylvie’s arms, her hands coming up to ward her off. Stock stepped away. She wanted Moulson calm, not panicked. But she also wanted her on her feet. Moulson was still looking confused, but she was fully conscious now, just breathing a little heavily from that rude awakening.
“We’re moving you,” Stock told her.
Moulson’s expression of puzzlement focused down to one of alarm and suspicion. “What? Why? Where to?”
Stock took the middle one of those three questions. “Dr Salazar thinks you might be at risk here. He said something about another prisoner having a grudge against you, or a quarrel with you? I don’t know – he didn’t name names. He was worried that the infirmary was too open. There’s only me on duty now, and if I get called away, you’ll be on your own.”
Her face as she said all this was studiously deadpan. Devlin had given her the script to work to, but she’d thought long and hard about the delivery, which was brisk and efficient rather than kindly or concerned. She was trying to play to her strengths.
Moulson ran a hand throu
gh her hair, which was lank and tangled. She looked exhausted. Whatever sleep she’d managed to grab hadn’t refreshed her much. “Where is he?” she asked. “Can I talk to him?”
“No, he’s gone off duty,” Stock said. “I just told you: there’s only me. It’s your call, Moulson, but I can’t protect you here. Someone might be coming over right now from Goodall. Do you want to be here when they arrive?”
That did the trick. Moulson flinched and shook her head.
“No,” Sylvie agreed. “You don’t. So we’re moving you to a safe room.”
“A safe room?”
“It’s another infirmary in…” – she covered the pause for thought by pointing – “… in Franklin block. Nobody will look for you there.”
She was pushing Moulson’s shoes into her hands as she spoke, trying to convey a sense of urgency. Moulson took the hint and put the shoes on. There was a weird kind of absence about her, as though part of her mind was somewhere else. She kept looking into the corners of the room, where as far as Stock could see there wasn’t anything to look at.
While she was still doing that, and Stock was still scolding her to get up, get dressed, get out, Lovett walked in. Moulson tensed all over again and scrambled up off the bed, looking like she was prepared to fight her way out of this if she had to. Stock’s money would have been on Lovett, but a fight in the infirmary wouldn’t do at all.
“He’s your escort,” she told Moulson quickly. “Don’t be stupid. You can’t walk across the yard at night on your own; you’ve got to have a guard with you. Lovett’s fine. He’s a good friend of Dr Salazar.”
“Yeah,” Lovett said flatly. “We’re like brothers. Can we get a move on?”
Stock could see that Moulson wasn’t convinced, and it didn’t surprise her. This knuckle-dragger was the very opposite of reassuring. She put a hand on Moulson’s arm to calm her, but once again Moulson didn’t seem to like that, so she took it away again.
“You’ll be quite safe,” she repeated.
Lovett opened his mouth to say something, and odds were good it would have been something stupid. Maybe something that started with “Mr Devlin said…” Stock jumped in first. “Do you want me to go with you? I can lock up here for a few minutes. I’m just afraid there might be an emergency while I’m out…”