The Mandel Files (83 page)

There was a shade too much emphasis on again for her mind. She glanced up at the mirror above the basin. And boy oh boy did she look melancholy. Her hair was a complete mess as well. Patrick did so enjoy seeing it tossed about. His husky voice in the dark, encouraging her, whispering how wild she was. It never seemed to matter in bed, excitement overriding everything.

Yah, she replied. So how come they never last?

I said good, I never said flawless.

Do you think he’s going to start asking me for shipping contracts?

No. Even if his family shipping line needed ‘em, he wouldn’t ask. And they don’t need ‘em, I’ve had our commercial intelligence division keeping an eye open.

My very own guardian angel. You’re wonderful, Grandpa.

You’ll find him one day, Juliet. I’ll be a great-grandfather.

Don’t hold your breath, not the way I’m going.

I watched that Coleman woman this morning.

I don’t want to talk about it! She reached for a comb and began to pull it through the knots. The face in the mirror was scowling petulantly.

I don’t like you being ridiculed like that, Juliet. Let me tell you, my girl, it would never have happened in my day. People should have more bloody respect. You ought to blacklist that channel, no adverts, and pass the word round everyone Event Horizon does business with. That frigid Coleman cow would soon get the message.

It was the second time temptation had been put in front of her that morning. She considered it, something like envy colouring every thought. No, Grandpa. If I started using my power like that, where would it end?

Use it or lose it girl. I’ve told you before.

That is misuse, as you well know. I get into enough trouble using it where it’s beneficial.

Ah, Juliet, a little bit of self-indulgence occasionally never hurt.

Don’t you worry about me, Grandpa. I’ll get that Jakki Coleman, you’ll see.

My girl.

She put the comb down, the worst of the knots out. It would be safe to ask her maid Adelia to wash and set it now. Adelia always got mighty prickly if she was faced with a big untangling job every morning.

I’ve been thinking about Karl Hlldebrandt, she said.

Oh, yeah? I don’t think he’d be a suitable replacement for Patrick.

Behave! I meant his wanting me to take Greg off the Kitchener case. There’s something very funny about that.

Well... it was a very high-profile appointment, Juliet. Bloody marvellous it is, girl, the first time in four years the company hasn’t had an ulterior motive in twisting Marchant’s arm, and everyone starts banging on about undue influence. We just can’t win.

Karl is a front for Diessenburg Mercantile, Grandpa, first, last, and always, even in these circumstances. He was too quick off the mark, and too insistent asking to see me just to be offering sociable advice. He was ordered to do it.

Conceded, it is a bit odd. Do you think it’s important?

Yes. Why would Diessenburg Mercantile have any interest in a ghoulish murder in the middle of the English countryside?

Beats me, girl.

Well, find out.

Oh, yes, bloody abracadabra. Here you are.

Don’t get stroppy, Grandpa. It’s simple. Run down a list of Diessenburg Mercantile’s other investments for me, and see if any of them comes into conflict with the work Kitchener was doing.

What, a stardrive!?

She went to the basin, and ran the cold tap, splashing some of the water on her face. It did sound pretty unlikely now she had spelt it out. Yes, I know it sounds totally wonky, Grandpa. But there has to be a reason.

I suppose so, girl. You’ve got to remember all this nonsense about actually building flying saucers sounds pretty bloody impossible to a relic like me. Listen, when I was a lad the Daleks were the wildest piece of imagination ever to hit England. I was terrified of them. One time when the Doctor was caught in some caves by...

Yah. If you could get that data correlated in time for the conference this afternoon I’d be grateful.

Bloody hell, Juliet, you’ve got a heart of Ice. Black ice.

I wonder who I inherited that from?

All right, I’ll get on to it.

Thanks, Grandpa. I really am jolly busy this morning. I’ve got a video bite opportunity with the national swimming squad; then there’s the Nottingham councillors’ delegation, and the meeting for the Home Counties region managerial report.

You should complain to the union steward, they’re working you too hard.

If I ever get the chance, I’ll tell him.

Cancel Channel To NN Core.

She called Adelia on the housephone and asked her to be ready in half an hour. There was just time for a quick bath, wash off last night’s tussle.

Hot water gushed out of the wide tap nozzle, kicking up clouds of steam. She stood in the middle of the bath as it twisted round her, reviewing what clothes to wear for meeting the swimming team. Event Horizon sponsored the England squad, so it was mainly a PR event, but she took a genuine interest in the team’s performance. Swimming had been her sport at school.

She sat down when the water reached her knees, and switched on the spa. Water jets and bubbles pummelled her skin, easing the tension out of her muscles.

It was no good, she couldn’t think what to wear.

Access Dictionary File. Define: Fallal.

Fallal, the memory node reported. Gaudy or vulgar, in reference to jewellely, or clothing, or ornament, etc.

Bitch!

CHAPTER 13

The original buildings of HMP Stocken Hall were still virtually intact, a regimented complex of stolid cell blocks squatting behind the five-metre perimeter fence topped with razor wire. Solar panels had been added to the south-facing walls, although they only came up to the bottom of the second-storey windows, leaving a band of ginger brickwork free. The tall concrete-segment chimney of the old utility building was swathed in dark ivy, abandoned now, the machinery it served rusted beyond repair. Solar water-heaters had been set up on the flat roofs, like giant silver flowers with long tubular midnight-black stamens.

Greg could see work parties tending the vegetable plots inside the fence, men in grey one-piece uniforms lethargically scratching at the waterlogged soil with rakes and hoes. Prisons were officially responsible for producing fifty per cent of their own foodstuff, though the actual figure was often much higher. Grow it, or go hungry. A concept which the PSP had introduced, and the New Conservatives saw no need to alter. Dismay at the idea of prisoners sitting unproductively in their cells for twenty-two hours a day was something both sides of the political divide shared, especially when Treasury funds were scarce.

He drove past the first set of large gates in the fence. The land around was rumpled with low rolling hillocks and gentle dells, meadows, and beanfields cluttered with the spindly grey sentries of dead trees which marked the line of old hedgerows. A couple of largish woods to the north had that verdant shine which betrayed the new vine species establishing themselves on the bones of the past.

Stocken Hall itself straddled a rise east of the A1 just north of Stretton village, a fifteen-minute drive from Hambleton.

He had taken the Jaguar; the car had been a present from Julia two Chriatmases ago. It was a powerful streamlined vehicle which looked as if it had been milled from a single block of olive-green metal. He always felt incredibly self-conscious driving it, and Eleanor was no better, which was why it stayed in the barn eleven months of the year. But he had to admit in this instance the image of professional respectability it fostered was probably going to be useful.

The second gate was the one he wanted; two red and white pole barriers, with metal one-way flaps in the concrete. There was a big steel-blue sign outside which read:

HMP Stocken Hall

Clinical Detention Centre

He stopped in front of the barrier, lowering the window to show his card to the white sensor pillar at the side of the road.

“Entry authorization confirmed, Mr Mandel,” the pillar’s construct voice said. “Please park in slot seven. Thank you.”

The barrier in front of him lifted.

If anything, Stocken’s new annexe was even drabber than its older counterparts. The building was a three-storey hexagon, fifty metres to a side, with a broad central well; a metal skeleton overlaid with gunmetal-grey composite panels, three rings of silvered glass spaced equidistantly up its frontage. Modular, factory-built, easy to assemble, cheap, and twice as strong as the traditional brick and cement structures.

He hadn’t been expecting such a sophisticated set-up; like most government ministries the Home Office, and therefore its subsidiary the prison service, was currently cash starved.

And even in pre-Warrning times, improving prison conditions had never rated highly in MPs’ priority lists. Constituents didn’t appreciate their tax money being spent on giving criminals a cushy number.

As he drove round to the car park outside the Centre’s main entrance he saw another prison party at work in the dead forest at the back of the perimeter fence. Trunks were being felled, then trimmed before they were hauled off to a sawmill set up under a green canvas awning. It was hard work, rain had turned the ground to a quagmire, but even so he was surprised the inmates were allowed chain saws. Stocken was a category A prison.

He hurried over the band of granite chips which encircled the building, discomfort trickling into his veins, as tangible as a gland secretion. Too many of his mates from the Trinities had wound up being sent to places like Stocken in the PSP years, and not all of them had survived transit.

There was another sensor pillar outside the big glass entrance doors. Greg showed his card again. The reception hall had a semicircular desk on one side and a row of plastic chairs lined up opposite. Walls and ceiling were all composite, powder-blue in colour; the linoleum was a marble swirl of grey and cream. Biolum panels were set along the walls, below tracks of boxy service conduits. The place had the same kind of utilitarian lay-out as a warship interior.

That military image was reinforced by the two guards sitting behind the desk; they both wore crisp blue uniforms with peaked caps. One of them took Greg’s proffered card and showed it to a terminal. An ID badge burped out of a slot.

“Please wear it on your lapel at all times, sir,” he said as he handed it over along with the card.

He was fixing the badge on when one of the doors at the far end of the reception hall opened. The woman who came through was in her late thirties, dark hair cut short without much attempt at styling. Her face had pale skin, slender winged eyebrows, a long nose, and strong lips. She wore a white coat of some shiny material, there was no hint of what clothes might be worn underneath. Her shoes were sensible black leather with a small buckle, flat heels. A cybofax was gripped in her left hand.

“Mr Mandel?” She stuck out her hand.

“Greg, please.”

“I’m Stephanie Rowe, Dr MacLennan’s assistant. I’ll take you to him.”

The corridors were windowless, running through the centre of the building. They passed several warders, all in the neat navy-blue uniforms, and always walking in pairs or larger groups. On two occasions they were escorting prisoners. The men had shaven heads, wearing loose-fining yellow overalls, white plastic neural-jammer collars clamped firmly around their necks.

Greg frowned at the retreating back of the second prisoner.

“Are all the prisoners fitted with neural janimers?”

“Yes, all the ones in the Centre. We house some of the country’s most ruthless criminals here. I don’t mean the gang lords or syntho barons. These are the violence and sex orientated offenders, killers, rapists, and child molesters.”

“Right. Do many of them try and escape?”

“No. There were only two attempts in the last twelve months. The collar’s incapacitation ability is demonstrated to each inmate as they arrive. Besides, most of them are resigned when they arrive here, depressed, withdrawn. The kind of crimes they commit mean even their families have rejected them. They were loners on the outside, there is nowhere they can go, no organization which will hide and take care of them. It’s our experience that a high percentage of them actually wanted to be caught.”

“And do you think you can cure them?”

“The term we use now is behavioural reorientation. And yes, we’ve had some success. There’s a lot of work still to be done, naturally.”

“What about public acceptance?”

She grimaced in defeat. “Yes, we anticipate a major problem in that area. It would be politically difficult releasing them back into the community after the treatment is complete.”

“Was Liam Bursken one of the two who tried to escape?” Greg asked.

“No.”

“Has he ever tried?”

“Again, no. He’s kept in solitary the whole time. Even by our standards, he’s considered extremely dangerous. We cannot allow him to mix with the other inmates. It would cause too much trouble. Most of them would want to attack him simply for the kudos it would bring them.”

“No honour amongst thieves any more, eh?”

“These aren’t thieves, Greg. They are very sick people.”

“Are you a doctor?”

“A psychiatrist, yes.”

They climbed a staircase to the second floor. Greg mulled over what she had said. A professional liberal, he decided, she had too much faith in people. Maybe too much faith in her profession as well if she believed therapy could effect complete cures. It couldn’t, papering over the cracks was the best anyone could ever hope for, he knew. But then the gland did give him an advantage, allowing him to glimpse the true workings of the mind.

“So why do you want to work here?” he asked as they started off down another corridor.

She gave him a brief grin. “I didn’t know I was the one you wanted to question.”

“You don’t have to answer.”

“I don’t mind. I’m here because this is the cutting edge of behavioural research, Greg. And the money is good.”

“I’ve never heard anyone say that about civil service pay before.”

“I don’t work for the government. The Centre was built by the Berkeley company, they run it under licence from the Home Office. And they also fund the behavioural reorientation research project, which is my field.”