Cross Kill

Fifteen

On Wednesday evening a woman from Corrective Services came around and told Eileen and Ross that their son had been remanded for trial in the Bolte Remand Centre. She snapped open the gold catches on a new tan briefcase. ‘For about six weeks,’ she said.

The briefcase didn’t go with the rest of the get-up. Eileen took in the woman’s skirt. It was made from some crumpled-look summery fabric that had been washed and worn too often. There was a white T-shirt with a rainforest message on it, and a faded denim jacket over that. No jewellery. Espadrilles showed horny, hooked toes. Forty thousand a year, probably, dealing with the public every day, it wouldn’t have hurt the woman to have made a bit of an effort. Eileen folded her arms on her vast and comfortable chest. ‘Bolte?’

The woman slid a pamphlet across the kitchen table. ‘Private prison. Only been open three months.’

Eileen looked to Ross for a clue. Her husband had one arm hooked over the back of the kitchen chair, the other outstretched to an ashtray on the table. He tapped off a centimetre of ash, raised the cigarette, drew on it, blew a ring to the ceiling. He wasn’t going to help her. He’d listen while the woman talked, but she was government, meaning that was all he’d do. Plus which, he’d been black and brooding since the arrest, ready to wash his hands of their son.

‘It’s privately owned and managed,’ the woman said. ‘Like the ones in Queensland.’

Eileen skimmed the pamphlet. There were artist’s impressions of long, narrow buildings laid out in the form of a hexagon, the open ground in the middle crisscrossed with sheltered walkways. There were smudges that were trees and several lines of cheery text about the philosophy of the place. American and Australian money was behind it. ‘You learn something new every day,’ Eileen said. ‘What are the screws like in a place like this?’

The woman put her little hands together in her lap and tightened her little mouth. ‘We don’t call them screws, we call them-’

‘A screw’s a screw,’ Rossiter said, then stopped, irritated with himself for getting involved. Eileen cut in: ‘When can we visit him?’

‘Tomorrow morning, if you like.’

Ross said no, so on Thursday morning Eileen drove herself in the VW. The Bolte Remand Centre was on a grassy plain west of the city, close to Melton, close to muddied tracts of land where unsold houses reproduced themselves among billboards, snakes of bitumen and ribbons of new kerbing. But there were also established estates with Hills Hoists in the backyards, cars in the carports, tricycles on the pockets of lawn, and Eileen guessed that those people had things to say, living right next door to a prison.

She saw the razor wire first, coiled around the perimeter fence, viciously reflecting the sun. There were several inner fences, heavy gates, then the low buildings with their corrugated roofs and barred windows, everything new looking, all metal, no wood anywhere and no grass to speak of. What she really hated, what she could feel winding and slicing around her body, was the razor wire. It was slung across fences and at ground level around the buildings as if someone had opened a lid on a box of evil objects.

It took her forty-eight minutes to pass through to the visiting room. Inside the Bolte it was one door after another and all of them heavy, locked. There were screws for escorting, screws for buzzing the doors open, screws for poking around in your handbag, patting you down, running a metal detector over you. The screws seemed more dead than alive, but sullen and dangerous with it. They were overweight, and if they spoke the accents were Pommie. One man ran his metal detector idly over the brass end of a fire hose, and the squawl set Eileen’s nerves on end. He did it again, he did it ten times while Eileen waited to be buzzed through. There were plenty of people milling around, Eileen didn’t know who they were, and for some reason none of them minded that hellish sound.

She waited at a plastic table, plastic so you couldn’t brain anyone with it. There were wives, sweethearts, a couple of whole families in the visiting room. Niall swaggered, curling his lip, as he came in from the cells, but when he saw her he dropped the act and she could see the anxiety under it. There were others like him in the Bolte, a brotherhood of skinheads, so she hoped there were people to protect him in the showers, but still, under it all he was only twenty-one. Like half the men in the place he wore shorts, blue stubbies, work boots and an institution-brown windcheater. She leaned over and kissed him. ‘Hello, son.’

‘Good on you, Mum. The old man wouldn’t stir himself?’

‘He’ll get over it.’

‘He must have a short memory. He’s done more time than I’ll ever do.’

‘You can see his point, though, son. What possessed you to wave that crossbow around?’

‘Fuckin’ wog had it coming.’

Eileen let it go. ‘They should’ve given you bail.’

Then Niall’s face crumpled. ‘I can’t stick it, Mum. Not again.’ He grabbed her forearm and dropped his voice. ‘Can’t we give them Wyatt? You know, don’t let on to the old man we’ve done it? Christ, Wyatt should be worth every bloke in here and half the blokes in Pentridge.’

Eileen put her hand over his. She’d been playing with this idea herself.

‘He’s got to be putting a job together,’ Niall went on. ‘He didn’t come around just to apologise and chat about old times.’

Eileen knew exactly what Wyatt had in mind. Ross had let it slip. Late at night, in the comfort and darkness, his bony flank cushioned against her, Ross liked to murmur to her, end-of-the-day murmuring, after love and before sleep, expressing hopes and doubts. It was something they’d done together since the first night. Pushing down her guilt, Eileen said, ‘I think you could be right.’

Niall said in a rush, ‘Look, have a word with Napper. Tell him I want out of remand straight away and I want a suspended sentence.’

‘Wouldn’t it be better if you talked to him yourself?’

‘Christ, no.’ Niall leaned back, folded his arms. ‘My reputation would be shot if I did that. If the others knew he’d been here they’d think I’m dogging them and I’d wake up with a shank in my guts. Has to be you, Mum.’

Eileen closed her eyes, picturing a biro with a razor melted into the end of it, a canteen fork with a sharpened handle. Just then a loudspeaker crackled into life. It was unintelligible but prisoners were standing and screws were coming into the room, so Eileen knew her time was up. ‘Not a word of this to Dad.’

‘Mum,’ Niall said, ‘you have to get Napper onto this straight away.’

She left the prison. The heartache in her son’s face and voice had Eileen chafing in frustration at every one of the doors and gates, every one of the dozy screws that passed for human beings in that place.