Picture You Dead

42

Wednesday, 23 October

Shortly after 5 p.m., Archie Goff was as usual eating his evening meal perched on the toilet. Chicken tagliatelle – well, some chewy lumps of protein that might once have had some brief and horrible existence in a battery farm, interred beneath slimy tendrils of pasta – with steamed jam sponge and fast-congealing custard for dessert. The television was on in the background, and his cellmate, the Home Secretary, was in a gloomy mood, prodding his plastic fork around the vegetarian moussaka in his foil tray.

‘You all right, mate?’ Archie asked. ‘You don’t look too happy.’

‘Not had the best of days. My wife’s filing for divorce, and I met my brief earlier who didn’t have good news. Reckons I’ll be lucky if I get only ten years.’

‘Shit. Bummer about the missus – you love her?’

He shrugged, raised a hand and wiggled it in the air. ‘It’s the kids. Hate the idea of being one of those dads that gets to see them once every four weeks or whatever shit it is.’

‘Can’t the Home Secretary pull any strings?’

He gave a wan smile. ‘Very funny.’

At that moment, one of the duty officers on their wing, a broad-shouldered woman with short, spiky hair, appeared in their doorway. She wore the same deadpan expression as always, and whenever she spoke to any of the prisoners, her voice was neither pleasant nor unpleasant, but faintly, nobody-home, robotic. ‘Mr Goff,’ she said. ‘You’re being released on bail. You will be free to leave after 7 a.m. tomorrow. The possessions you had with you at the time of your arrest will be handed to you then.’

Archie Goff looked at her in shocked surprise. ‘Beg pardon?’

‘You didn’t hear what I said?’

‘Well, yeah, but like – I dunno anyone who has fifty K. That was my bail.’

‘Must be a secret admirer then,’ she said, her expression easing into a faint smile before she turned and walked off.

‘You lucky bastard,’ his cellmate said.

Archie frowned.

‘Maybe your missus found the dough?’

Archie said nothing, thinking. He finished his food, then hurried out in search of a free phone to use. They were all occupied, but after a few minutes’ wait, one of his fellow prisoners hung up and walked away. Using up a credit, he dialled Isabella.

No, she said, she hadn’t come up with the money, but she was beyond delighted he would be home tomorrow.

He walked away from the booth, then leaned against a wall, thinking. Happy but worried. Most times in the past when he’d been arrested, he’d been released on police bail by the Magistrates’ Court. But this time the beaks had referred him to the Crown Court. He understood why: it was because the last time he’d been inside, at Ford open prison, he’d absconded.

Fifty grand. That was big money. Big money for someone to put up to have him released. And other than Isabella, who the hell cared enough about him to put up that kind of money?

He tried to think, going back in his mind through his list of contacts. Who was wealthy enough to stump up that kind of money to get an old lag freed? But equally, and more importantly, why?