DS Jessica Daniel series: Locked In/Vigilante/The Woman in Black - Books 1-3 (48 page)

Jessica understood. People in pretty much any situation would be annoyed by someone else shuffling their possessions around. In prison, those items would be much more valued simply because the
inmates had so little.

The governor continued to speak as he walked them further on to the seemingly deserted wing. ‘If you do want to talk to anyone else, it can be arranged. I’m not sure everyone would
want to talk to the authorities but I doubt many would mind that much. Mr McKenna is in a cell next to the interview room and ready whenever you are.’

He was certainly going out of his way to accommodate them. The governor led them off to one side of the hall towards one of the cells. The rooms already had their doors all open. Rowlands asked
why. ‘Between eight in the morning and eight at night, doors have to be kept open. If someone is feeling ill or wants to sleep or something like that they can go to the medical area.
It’s for everyone’s safety really. Say an incident did happen, the guards wouldn’t be able to see anything or know something was wrong if the doors were closed.’

‘What about after eight?’ Jessica asked.

‘The main lights stay on for about an hour and then are off until around seven the next morning. They can have small lamps in their cells if they want to read and pretty much everyone has
a TV in the room. Ultimately we can’t watch them twenty-four hours a day. It’s extremely rare anything happens. Most of the rooms have two people in them and there’s a degree of
matching to try to ensure people get along. There’s a separate wing for vulnerable prisoners but genuinely most people just want to do their time.’

‘When I was here a few days ago, Donald McKenna said he had a cell to himself,’ Jessica said.

‘That’s true. A lot of it comes down to how crowded we are. Sometimes every cell has two people in it and we have to use places like the vulnerable wing just to get everyone in.
Either that or release inmates who don’t have much left on their sentence. At the moment, we’re not quite at capacity so there are some prisoners who get a cell to
themselves.’

‘How is that decided?’ Rowlands asked.

‘Each wing has a senior warden. There’s no way I can oversee everyone all the time but everyone reports back to me. I leave decisions like that up to them. It should come down to
behaviour and things like that. Sometimes it just falls to the more senior prisoners though. A lot of it works itself out.’

Given Farraday’s suggestion that someone on the wing might have some sort of involvement, that last part stuck out to Jessica. Ending up in a cell by himself could well indicate some sort
of preferential treatment. It was still a far cry from that to either helping McKenna get out of the prison or aiding him to carry out murders but it was something to bear in mind.

The governor pointed them to one of the open doors. ‘It’s that one there. Feel free to take your time. I’ll wait here if you have anything to ask.’

Jessica entered the cell as Rowlands waited by the door. There wasn’t an awful lot of space for the two of them to fit inside. There was a bunk bed immediately on her left and the room was
only a little longer than the bed itself. On the opposite wall from the bed was a desk that ran most of the length of the wall. On it was a small portable TV, a Bible and some battered paperbacks.
At the end was a small sink with a mirror and some toiletries above it. Opposite the sink, at the end of the bed and only just fitting into the space between the bed and the wall, was a metal
toilet. She figured it was certainly made for a man; there was no toilet seat, just four raised pieces of plastic.

At the end of the thin aisle that separated the bed from the table, there was a solid-looking window at the top of the facing wall. The glass was misty and impossible to see out of and there
were bars in front of it. It had only taken her a few seconds to look at the whole place. ‘Anything?’ asked Rowlands from the door.

‘You can pretty much see everything I can, Dave.’

She felt stupid for doing it but tried wobbling the four bars that blocked the window. They didn’t budge. She looked under the bed, where there was a pair of dark trainers but nothing
else. She pushed and tapped the walls, almost as if she was surveying the place. She didn’t know what she was looking for. It’s not as though she expected there to be a gaping hole in
the wall with ‘tunnel’ written over the top but she hadn’t expected something so cramped either.

Jessica tried moving the toilet and the sink, just to see if they were loose from the wall but, aside from a slightly wobbly pipe under the sink, the actual units didn’t shift at all.

Eventually after checking everything a second time, she went back to the doorway and Rowlands moved aside to let her out. ‘You wanna have a look?’ she asked.

‘Not much point really, is there? As you said, I could pretty much see it all anyway.’

‘Have you ever been here before?’

‘We had this training day thing but not in the cells, no.’

‘What do you reckon?’

‘I’d feel sorry for someone sharing with me. After I’ve been to the toilet, you would
definitely
need more space than that to air it out.’

Jessica pulled a face at him. ‘It’s times like this when I wonder why you’re single.’

‘Through choice.’

‘Yeah, theirs.’

The two of them walked back towards the governor. ‘Did you see everything you needed to?’ he asked.

‘Not much to see, was there?’ Jessica replied. ‘Let’s just say, for instance, that you
could
get out of that cell. Where would you end up?’

For just a moment, the governor grinned condescendingly at her and then quickly reverted back to his regular expression. Jessica knew he was about to talk down to her in the least patronising
way he could manage, while secretly revelling in the moment.

‘Well, let’s say you removed the bars over the window without a screwdriver, even though they are screwed into the solid stone wall and have been painted over. If you got those off
and got through the window, which is five times as thick as regular glass and completely shatter-proof, you would still only end up on a patch of land that sits between two of the wings. You would
actually be outside of the standard walkways, which would mean you would have to scale an eighteen-foot-high security fence with a roll of barbed wire at the top. Once you had managed that, you
would still only be back on the permitted paths.’

Jessica could feel Rowlands shuffling from foot to foot next to her as the governor continued. ‘Once you got to that path, assuming the patrols didn’t see you, or the security
cameras, either direction would simply lead you back to the main gates but only through two sets of double-locking doors whichever way you went. Because of that, you would have to scale another
eighteen-foot-high fence on the other side of the path which would get you into the rec yard. You could get across the yard easily enough, though there are spotlights, but on the other side are a
few more wire fences. The first one is hardened steel which encloses the area, then there is one outside that is eighteen feet high again and similar to the others. If you could get through all of
that, you would be at the wall. That’s twenty-four feet high and a yard thick, plus coated with an anti-vandal substance to prevent climbing. If you somehow got to the top of that and avoided
being seen by the rooftop security, you could drop down the other side but it actually works out at a drop of around twenty-five feet, eight yards or so. Assuming you landed okay, I guess
you’d be scot-free . . .’

He let the statement hang in the air and clearly didn’t need to add anything more.

‘Could you tunnel out?’ Rowlands asked. Jessica was glad he had said it instead of her. The question sounded ridiculous.

‘Well, I guess if you had something to dig with but even then it’s around seventy yards in the straightest line from here to the wall. I don’t know where you would get rid of
all the dirt or how you would get out on the other side though.’

He had certainly made his point. Jessica then asked the question she had been worrying about. The governor had been perfectly nice, despite the undertone to his words, but she couldn’t
judge how he would react next. ‘Can you trust all of your staff, Governor Gallagher?’

He was certainly taken aback by her directness. ‘Sorry?’

Jessica repeated her question word for word. The man’s eyes narrowed as he thought how he should respond. ‘I’m not sure I like your tone . . .’

‘I’m not sure I’ve liked yours either.’

For the first time that day both of them were being upfront with each other. Jessica wasn’t going to be the one who gave way first.

‘Your super left me his number, you know?’

‘I didn’t ask you about that.’

Governor Gallagher stared at her, his eyes thin as he struggled to control his anger. ‘I trust my staff.’

‘All of them?’

‘
All
of them.’

As quickly as the mood had deteriorated, Jessica raised it by chirpily changing the subject. ‘Right, that’s good then. I think it’s time to see Mr McKenna.’

Jessica didn’t really know why she had tried so hard to wind the governor up. She could have asked nicely or apologised but pointed out it was something she had to ask
about. She could even have just left it. Not only had she asked the question and pushed the issue, however, she’d really enjoyed it. Perhaps it was because of the delight he had taken in
pointing out how hard it would be to escape or maybe it was because she simply wanted to see what his reaction would be? You could learn a lot about people from how they responded to direct
accusations. Some people would shout and swear to try to show they were innocent. Others would evade the question. Some might start to sweat and stumble over their words. Governor Gallagher had not
done any of that; he had just seethed with rage. Was that because he was
that
protective over his staff, or because of something else? Jessica wasn’t sure but his reaction had been
interesting.

On the way back off the wing, he took them through to a security booth which contained a bank of monitors linked to the cameras that seemingly watched the whole prison. It was perhaps one final
way of showing them how ridiculous they were being. There were a few men and one woman in a small group towards the back of the room as they entered. They all had the same uniform on: dark shoes,
dark trousers and a white shirt. Jessica could see each one also had heavy-looking bunches of keys attached to their waist. The governor signalled for one of the men to come over. He looked like
the oldest of the group, somewhere in his fifties or so, Jessica would have guessed. He had wisps of hair around the tops of his ears and a few strands combed across his head but was mostly bald.
His face had a reddish tinge which, from experience, Jessica knew was most likely the sign of a heavy drinker.

‘Detectives, this is Senior Warden Lee Morgan. He is in charge of the wing you have just been on. I figured it was best if you spoke to him, if only for
completeness
.’ The
governor put special emphasis on that final word, as if to indicate they should finish whatever they were trying to because he would do his best to make life difficult for them if they wanted to
come back.

Jessica introduced herself and DC Rowlands and they all shook hands. The warden talked them through his role and made a point of saying how much experience he had. He spewed out a few statistics
to show how behaviour had improved on the wing since his promotion and then showed them the monitors for his area.

He talked a good game at least but Jessica felt she had already got into the governor’s bad books that morning so might as well go for the double. She nodded and made approving noises
throughout his talk but, as soon as he looked up to her for approval, she put the only question she thought worth asking. ‘Why does Donald McKenna have a cell to himself?’

The warden spluttered slightly and started to repeat something along the lines of what the governor had told them relating to capacities but Jessica cut him straight off. ‘I understand
that, Mr Morgan, but I’m talking specifically about Mr McKenna. Why does
he
have a cell to himself?’

‘Er, well, Mr McKenna has consistently been one of the best-behaved inmates. Some of the other prisoners look up to him because of his religious beliefs and clean living, while others just
respect his seniority.’

‘Are there other people who have been here longer?’ Jessica asked.

‘Well . . . yes.’

‘Are there other inmates who are religious?’

‘Yeah . . .’

‘Are most people well behaved?’

‘Yes, of course.’

Jessica nodded slowly and let out a long, deliberate ‘Hmm’. She let it hang and then, for the second time in a few minutes, drastically altered her tone.

In an upbeat, breezy voice she turned back to the governor who was hovering nearby. ‘So, let’s go see Mr McKenna.’

Governor Gallagher took the hint and started walking towards the door with the clear indication they should follow. Rowlands moved in behind him, with Jessica at the back. She was just about to
exit the viewing area when Lee Morgan called after her. ‘There’s, er, nothing improper, y’know . . .’

Jessica heard him perfectly well but didn’t even break stride.

The journey back through the prison to the interview room had been another silent affair. Jessica figured that if Farraday had been serious about her ‘putting the shits’ up the
prison staff, he would be pretty pleased. She also wondered if the governor would follow through with his mention of calling DSI Aylesbury. Ultimately, she hadn’t outright accused anyone of
doing anything untoward and if they chose to take her insinuations that way, it was up to them.

The governor led them up a flight of steps Jessica recognised and they were soon back by the interview room. He unlocked the door and let them in. ‘McKenna is next door,’ he said.
‘Assuming it’s okay with you, I’ll tell them to bring him through in five minutes. Everything you need should already be here.’