Death Message

EPILOGUE

The Vulnerable Prisoners Wing didn’t house too many prisoners, with no more than sixty heading down to the servery come meal-time. It was certainly a more orderly process than that taking place elsewhere in the prison. But whatever the size of the queue at the hot-plate, Nicklin always wanted to be first.

He hated waiting, watching while others were served before him. He imagined that they were getting more than their fair share, that he would get second best when his turn came. He’d always been the same way when it came to food. With any of his appetites, come to that.

Dinner was dished out between six and seven, but Nicklin had been there since a quarter to. Clutching his tray and listening to the kitchen staff making banal conversation behind the metal shutter.

He banged on the shutter at one minute past. There were a dozen more in the queue behind him by now.

‘Stop pissing in the soup and open up, will you?’

Laughter from the kitchen, and from behind him. ‘It’s the meatballs you should be worried about,’ someone said.

The shutter was raised and Nicklin moved forward, taking his dinner in silence. Lasagne and chips. A pudding, as usual – apple crumble on a Tuesday – and two slices of bread. Orange juice and bottled water.

‘Nice today,’ said the fat rapist in chef’s whites.

Nicklin moved away from the hot-plate while the ex-magistrate behind him said something sarcastic about Michelin stars, and the chef told him where he could stick them.

He carried the tray up the two flights of metal stairs to his cell, nudged open the door and sat down at his desk to eat. He opened the orange juice, took off the plastic lid that barely kept the food lukewarm.

Fucking lasagne…

He wasn’t in the best of moods anyway; hadn’t been since he’d heard that Marcus Brooks had been caught. Since he’d heard that Tom Thorne’s queer friend had not been among those Brooks had been charged with killing.

It had taken the excitement, such as there was, out of his day. Left him with nothing to root for when the cell door clicked open first thing; to smile about come lights-out. There were only basic pleasures left now. Of the flesh and of the belly; limited as they both were.

He poked his fork through the crust of hardened pasta and fished around, then caught movement from the corner of his eye and looked up. A prisoner stood in the doorway, staring.

‘What?’

The man shrugged. Askins: a druggie who’d touched up a fifteen-year-old girl. Not someone Nicklin made a habit of passing time with.

‘Why don’t you just fuck off?’ Nicklin said. He took a mouthful of the mince. ‘Freak somebody else out-’ He stopped suddenly and cried out, spitting a string of blood down on to his plate and reaching into his mouth for the piece of glass.

‘It’s a message,’ Askins said.

Nicklin swore and spat, lifting up the stiff sheet of pasta and pushing his fork through the watery mince. The tines clicked gently against each sauce-coated sliver. He looked up, pale and open-mouthed, at the man in the doorway.

Askins was smiling as he turned away. ‘From someone with very long arms…’