Alphabet (28 page)

‘There are about a hundred and twenty problems walking around in here,' Annie says.

‘Our role is to solve problems,' Mackenzie says simply, ‘or admit it when we can't.'

‘What about with yourself, Dr Mackenzie?' David puts in, his voice a shade or two higher than usual. He flushes, fights the urge to play with his ear stud. ‘It must be hard to go into that sexual stuff in a group, especially with a woman there too, mustn't it? I mean, none of them do that very much, do they?
Has he talked it over, one to one, with you?'

‘I've given him every opportunity to do that,' Mackenzie says. ‘I have frequently suggested to him that the ability to establish a mutually satisfying heterosexual relationship is what he must work towards. He says that he thinks the opportunities here are poor, which, while momentarily amusing, shows how little he is prepared to engage with this, a crucial risk factor, or to engage with the opportunities there are. Recently he told me, ‘If I could get intimate enough with you to address this stuff, then I wouldn't have the problem, would I?' On the other hand, he'll spend an entire session arguing that there might be a limit to how much someone could change, and isn't it valid, therefore, to look at the best way for him to live, given the kind of person he is –'

‘You know, I do find all that very interesting,' Clarke says, rubbing his hands together and looking round to see if anyone agrees. ‘He's got a mind of his own, that's for sure.'

‘Max, all of them do this kind of thing!' Annie says. ‘All of them avoid things and see what they can get away with. I'd do the same, wouldn't you?' Everyone looks back at Mackenzie.

‘Granted,' he says. ‘But I think you are losing sight of our ultimate concern, something I certainly have to put first: the safety of the public. I hope I don't need to remind anyone here the consequences of us making bad judgements.' Everyone knows he is referring to the Somers case of some months back:
a man was released by another institution into the community because everyone thought the job was done. Three weeks later someone was dead.

‘Simon is highly intelligent,' Mackenzie points out. ‘All of them try to get away with things, but he often succeeds. For example, we know that he succeeded in convincing some lonely woman he somehow smuggled letters out to that he was a middle-aged man who looked after his mother until she died . . . and he succeeded in getting a vulnerable girl to fall for him –'

‘He invited me to intervene, there!' Alan cuts in. ‘It was successfully resolved.'

‘You resolved it for him.'

‘He could hardly do it for himself !'

‘He's certainly very bright,' Greg puts in, considering. ‘He'll argue the hind leg off a donkey, just for the sake of it . . .'

‘Can't we look at what he
has
done?' Annie says. ‘He's taken on responsibility for what he did, quite a lot of it. You've observed yourself how he has been in the role plays.' The room falls silent: surely Mackenzie is not going to say that this (and therefore the drama programme itself) counts for nothing, or else that Simon is faking it but has Annie fooled? If he does say either of those things, Annie will have to stop herself from walking out, or yelling at him. But actually, he doesn't:

‘Yes,' Mackenzie agrees, smiling at her. ‘Good work has been done there. But we have a multidisciplinary approach and that is not all that's required of him here. It's my role to take an overview.' Mackenzie sighs, gestures at the file.

‘Surely,' Annie suggests, ‘changes in other areas will have some impact on his sexuality? On his ability to surrender emotionally?' The room tries this on for size.

‘Yes,' Alan says, ‘with respect, Max, that's what I think too.'
Mackenzie looks slowly around at his colleagues. His cool grey eyes show, if anything, a trace of sadness as he gathers his thoughts together.

‘Simon,' he points out, after a moment or two, ‘is very good at getting people on his side. He has you driving over here every month, Alan, when you don't have to; he has Dr Clarke making a special case, abandoning his programme and losing valuable data; he has the entire wing giving him a second
chance when he technically speaking breaks the No Violence rule. He even has the Governor so charmed that he lets him into a garden that was previously deemed to be a possible escape route . . . In my judgement, what he is doing, time and time again, is very skilfully protecting the core of his offending behaviour: by paying lip service to the values of the institution and being open to other, lesser, changes, he – or shall I say that part of him that lies at the core of the offending behaviour – hopes to distract us from what he is
not
prepared to do.'

It's true, at least, that everyone can remember letting Simon get away with some little thing or another, or wanting to, and Mackenzie, seeing that they are listening now, picks up his cup and takes a few sips of tea, waits while what he has said sinks in.

‘It's quite possible that what we have here is a personality disorder that has slipped through our screening process . . .
The sooner we tackle it the better,' Mackenzie continues, ‘If we keep him on here, we're tacitly giving him a stamp of approval and we're denying a place to someone who might benefit.'

‘You want to ghost him?' Annie turns to face Mackenzie full on, her lips parted, her eyes huge. ‘Get him here, open him up, get him to admit he has problems with rejection, then fire him?'

‘I see you are very involved,' McKenzie says. ‘Presumably you'll discuss that in supervision.'

‘I can't believe it,' Annie says.

‘I've given this a great deal of thought and nothing I've heard here today makes me want to reconsider my clinical opinion. It will leave us with two rather small groups, and we can look at amalgamating them and starting a new intake. Of course, I'd like consensus on this, but if it can't be had, then I do have to do what I think is in the interests of the public and the community here.'

Afterwards, Annie and Greg go to the pub – a characterless place, smelling of fried food and smoke, but conveniently situated on a corner just before their separate ways home. He
buys the drinks, red wine and a pint, she goes to the machine for cigarettes. They sit opposite each other, light up.

‘How's Juliette and the sprogs, then?' she asks, as she raises her glass.

‘Pretty good,' he tells her. She nods, drinks again, shunts her coaster around. The silence grows.

‘We win some, we lose some,' he suggests. ‘He may have a point.'

‘He's wrong!' she snaps back at him. ‘I know he is making a mistake. Leaving Simon aside, this will cause trouble here for weeks,' she says. ‘Here we go!' she gasps, banging the flat of her hand on the table, then her face convulses. She rests her head on the table and weeps. When the worst is over, she dabs at her eyes with an old tissue from the bottom of her bag.

‘What a way to start the new year. How can you be so calm about it? What can we do?' she asks, calmer herself after another swallow of wine. ‘Resign? Why the hell isn't the decision-making democratic? We get the men to vote on every little thing?'

‘Responsibility. He who theoretically carries the can. And he's
objective
,' Greg says, deadpan. ‘We're not. Especially not you.'

‘That's fair to say,' she grins at him, pink-eyed, and he reaches over the table and takes her hand in his.

‘It's why you're good at what you do,' he says as he lets go.

‘Max and Simon are two of a kind,' she tells him. ‘They bring out the worst in each other.'

Later, in the windswept car park, they hug as usual, but instead of pulling away she reaches up and takes a kiss, her fingers spread wide to cup the back of her colleague's head, as if to keep him there.

‘Oh, no,' he says at the end of it, stepping back.

‘Time I got myself a life?' she suggests, opening the door of her car, slipping in. ‘A little private practice, an outdoorsy hobby or two, meet new people . . . Hmm. I know. Well, good night.'

It's a cold, crisp night, the sky studded with stars. The two vehicles nudge out onto the A road, leaving the place behind them as they accelerate oppositely towards their respective homes, hers a fixed-up terrace with white walls, wood floors, thick rugs, original artworks on the walls; his a far larger, less convenient property, full of children, the baby Chloe, all their mess.

In Wentham, boilers pour out heat, night and day. Even when someone turns a thermostat to nil, heat still seeps through from the other rooms and the corridors. Here and there, a window standing ajar admits in a blade of cold air, just for a moment sharp as ice, then melted, lost. The corridor is bright, shadowless. In the darkened rooms to either side, the men sleep. Simon's blue velour curtains are closed against the yellow lights that shine on outside, where the courtyard pond skins with ice, the reeds crisp with frost. He's lying on his side, one arm tucked under his head and Bryan, on the return leg of his inspection, pauses a moment to lift the observation panel and study him before turning back to the office and his computer magazine; he'll be glad to get off shift.

It's still dark outside at six, when they unlock his door. The main light goes on, flooding the small room. Two go in, three wait outside, just in case. Johnny Lyndon squats down beside the bed.

‘Simon, hey, Simon, lad, wakey, wakey.' He turns away from his visitors, and drills his head deep into the pillow.
Someone shakes him. ‘Come on, mate, it's morning.' Now he's sitting bolt upright, blinking at the light, trying to make sense of Johnny Lyndon standing there.

‘What the fuck!'

‘Time for a move. Your carriage is waiting . . . Best pack up quietly, now.'

‘Why? What's going on?' Simon takes in that there are three more uniformed men waiting outside.

‘No idea,' Johnny Lyndon says. ‘We've just got a job to do and let's do it quietly, eh? . . . Right, now –'

‘No,' he says. ‘Alan said he would get me a C cat from here.
This must be a mistake.'

‘We don't know the reasons,' Mike Barnes says, flatly, from his position at the door. ‘It's not in our hands. And life isn't always fair . . . Maybe it'll make sense later on. Are you going to pack up now, Simon? Want help with these curtains of yours?' Simon pushes his covers off and stands up. His jeans are over the back of the chair and he climbs into them.

‘That's it,' Johnny says softly, unrolling a couple of large transparent bags. Mick goes over to the window and begins to unhook the curtains. Simon puts on his sweatshirt, his shoes . . . It's impossible. It's real.

‘No!' he says. ‘I've been here nearly a year. If I'm going, I want to be told why.'

‘There's quite enough of us to pick you up and take you, son,' Johnny points out. ‘But we don't want to do it that way.'

‘And if I'm going, I want to fucking well say goodbye!'
Simon shouts, at which point Johnny Lyndon gestures to the rest. Mike Barnes drops the curtain he's folding and the others rush in. Once someone's got hold of his right leg, the rest follows easily. They grab a limb each. Simon's off the floor, twisting and shouting, but all he can do is make it more difficult.

‘I'm ghosted –' he yells. ‘Ray! Andy!' Then Johnny Lyndon jams the corner of a towel in his mouth, so all he can do is gag, sweat pouring off his face and they make for the door. So he can't say: What's going to happen to my stuff ? Those books?
My typewriter and the box of letters that was confiscated? The photo of Bernie and her twins? He can't turn round, to get a last look.

37

Once they're off the wing, he stops struggling. They sit him down in an office and take stock. If he stays quiet, he can go escorted in a minicab, otherwise it's the sweat box. Guess which they'd rather . . . Simon shrugs. He's blank, emptied out by his rage. Everything has been wiped out. Nothing matters. Nothing will ever matter again. There's a kind of safety in it, almost. But then Johnny Lyndon calls reception to request the cab and while he's waiting for a reply, Mike turns to Simon:

‘By the way,' he says. ‘We saw Dave as he went off shift, he said to tell you don't let this knock you back, and all the best, that's what he said.' Simon folds up in his chair and sobs like a baby.

‘You want to get that right out of your system before you get to where you're going,' Lyndon says.

When the cab comes, Lyndon sits next to the driver. In the back, Mike is on one side, cuffed and discreetly chained to Simon; Bill, likewise, on the other; both of them are large men and their legs and shoulders press into his. Apparently, it'll be a couple of hours. On the way back, the officers will stop for a pub lunch, so they're in a fine mood.

The sun's just up and the bare, chocolate-coloured fields are steaming slightly by the time the car sets off. Flocks of grey birds rise from the ground as they pass, settle again in a different field. You can see why they put on the chains: at a moment like this, if it were possible to just open the door and jump, roll, run, off into another life, even for a couple of hours, then you would.

I don't get to finish anything!
Simon thinks, looking out. I didn't do everything they told me; I didn't swallow it all, hook, line and sinker, but didn't I go quite a way? The roads widen.

They turn off into a service station just before the motorway and Johnny Lyndon brings everyone Styrofoam cups of coffee and microwaved bacon sandwiches.

‘Sorry, mate, forgot you were a vegetable . . . You really are best off out of it,' he tells Simon as he hands the stuff over.
‘Those nine-to-fiveing shrinks and social workers are all the same, mess you around and make life difficult for everyone. If I had my way, I'd sack the lot. Cut staffing by half and get the place running on proper lines. Save the tax-payer a bloody fortune.'