The Woman Before Me (4 page)

She looked around and nodded at the plastic trays on the long table. “What are those for?”

“When a girl – sorry – woman arrives we have to take away her possessions: jewellery, purse, belt, anything like that. They do get some of it back later but to start with they can’t have any item that would make them vulnerable.”

“Vulnerable to what?”

“Well, bullying, for one.” Wayne sneaked a sidelong glance at Callahan who had been distracted by the fly, and was swatting it with his beefy hand. “Any jewellery could make them a target. But suicide is the biggest worry so belts and shoelaces are always removed. You’d be surprised how crafty someone can be when they want to hurt themselves.”

“Wayne, you bloody bleeding heart,” said Callahan, “you should have been a probation officer.”

Wayne ducked his head, mumbled something about not getting good enough grades, and then looked back at Cate. “Most of the girls who arrive here are frightened. Even the ones who seem tough will cry when they’re alone. It can upset them. The searching, the medical. Not that I do any of that – it has to be a female officer.”

Cate smiled at Wayne.

Callahan scowled. “Fucking Care Bear.”

They left the induction unit and turned into a narrow dim corridor, which led up to the security office. Cate suddenly felt tight pressure around her wrist and, looking down, she saw that Callahan had attached a handcuff and was sniggering like a school boy. As she struggled to free her hand, the cuff tightened. She felt her legs quake and stumbled, only to be wrenched upright by Callahan. “Good job I had this on ya, missy!”

Callahan’s face was in hers, a wide smile, all teeth, red lips wet and eyes narrowed. He was getting off on her fear. “Nifty, aren’t they?” he crowed, a thrill sparkling in his reptilian eyes.

“Get this fucking cuff off me!” she spat. In a second he had released her, still finding it amusing. She rubbed her twisted shoulder, fighting back hot tears that threatened to betray her. Callahan laughed and gobbed his used gum onto the floor.

As her heart slowed, she wondered why she wasn’t marching to the Governor’s office to make a formal complaint. She was silent, shocked at how powerless she felt in this place.

Callahan said Senior Officer Deborah Holley practically ran the prison, since she was in charge of security. Officer Holley was an intense-looking woman, with her shirt buttoned high on her scrawny neck and creases in her trousers like knives. She peered out of a nipped face, looking like a clerk. She didn’t get up from her chair, but swivelled around to face Cate, shaking her hand once, a tight pull downwards. When Cate’s hand was released it throbbed. On the desk, laid out in precise order, were a pen, a pad, and a plastic lunchbox, on top of which was balanced a banana and a can of Red Bull. Callahan perched on the desk and immediately started to fiddle with the neat display. To Cate’s surprise Officer Holley’s look was indulgent, even when he picked up her telephone receiver and began tapping it with his finger. “Hey, Debs, did you know your phone’s not working?” Callahan asked.

“Fucking thing. I need a new one but supplies say the budget won’t stretch to it.” Holley snatched a tissue and wiped the mouthpiece before replacing it.

“Yeah, they’d find the money quick enough if it was for a con, though. There’s always money to spend on them.” Callahan and Holley exchanged a sardonic look.

“We just went to the hospital wing.”

“Did you see Thomas?”

“Yup. She still isn’t talking.”

Holley smirked, “Well, no-one likes a grass.”

Callahan remained swinging his leg as Holley talked Cate through the security procedures. It was delivered in a dull monotone, a lecture on how inmates could not be trusted, how Cate must never agree to take a parcel or letter for an inmate… and on, and on, until Cate had got the message that they were at war and the inmates were the enemy.

“You met Chatham yet?” Holley asked.

“Not yet.”

“He’s the kind of probation officer we like. Doesn’t get in anyone’s way, keeps his head down. Even the Governor rates him.”

“Yeah,” agreed Callahan, “Chatham’ll never work on the out again. Knows when he’s onto a good thing.”

“He understands that the bitches are banged up for a reason. They deserve to be here, especially the nonces. I hate kiddie killers. If it was up to me,” said Holley, “I’d bring back the noose.”

Cate’s office was through several locked doors – open, remove key, go through, replace key and lock the door. If such a small, dark room deserved to be called an office; really just a cupboard housing a desk and filing cabinet. Even the computer was just a word processor with no Internet access. Officer Holley told her that ‘civilians’ are always a liability, so it’s best if they have no external e-mails or mobile phones. The only communication Cate could have was within the custodial estate. From 9 to 5.30 this would be her world, and she was as cut off as the inmates.
Well, good, at least there will be no distractions. I can just do my job and go home.

Into the desk drawer went lunch: cheese sandwich, an apple and a can of Coke. She had a half-eaten bar of chocolate in her pocket that she might polish off as well. Even though the canteen – or ‘mess’ as Callahan called it – served hot food, she was still new and the idea of sitting alone while the prison staff gossiped around her was not a tempting prospect. Maybe she would brave it when she had got to know people, she told herself. After all, it was only her first day so she must be positive.

Onto her desk she propped a photo of Amelia, enjoying an ice cream in the park, and a picture she’d drawn at Julie’s last week. In it a girl was on a swing, being pushed by two people, one with a triangular skirt and the other with a tie. Presumably her mother and father.
To Mummy
, she’d written,
love Amelia
. Cate taped it to the wall.

There was a single knock at the door and then it opened. It was the Governor, whom she’d seen on TV every time a prisoner from the open side absconded.

Governor Wright was a large man, used to standing over people, and he stood over Cate as she sat at the desk, battling against feeling like a schoolgirl.

“Just wanted to see how you’re settling in.”

“Okay, thanks. Dave Callahan showed me round the prison this morning.”

“Callahan’s a good officer, keeps the landings in order. My days of pounding the landings are long gone,” he said. “Back then, inmates were treated like the low lives they are. It’s all gone too far the other way now, if you ask me. Prison’s more like Butlins.”

As he spoke he pulled a Twix wrapper from his pocket, removed the remaining chocolate bar and ate it in two quick bites. Despite being very fat, the Governor kept preening his copper-wire hair and his suit looked expensive, dark and well cut, with white pinstripes. At his wrists were glitzy cufflinks, and an inscription was sewn on the cuff: NKW.

“A word of advice. You civilian workers need to remember your place. It’s all very well being the dayshift, but the prison officers are here round the clock, and it’s them that’s in charge. I like to run a tight ship, and I won’t stand for any nonsense from you Care Bears.”

“By ‘Care Bears’ do you mean workers who are interested in issues beside discipline?”

“You’ll get used to the prison lingo,” he said dismissively.

“I’m looking forward to working here.” She thought it was the right thing to say even if it wasn’t true. “Preparing the women for release will be rewarding.”

“Yeah, well don’t let yourself be sucked into feeling sorry for ’em. I’ve no time for their hysterics. All that weeping and wailing, most of ’em are mental. At least with men you know where they’re coming from.”

He wasn’t fond of probation officers but she tested the water by asking about the other PO who worked on the men’s side of the prison. Surprisingly he answered with some warmth.

“Paul Chatham’s sound as a bell. He’s been on holiday for two weeks, but he’s back today. I told him to brief you on your first case. Now there’s someone who knows how to keep his head down and his mouth shut.”

“Is that what you expect from your probation staff, then?”

“It’s what I recommend. If you copy his example you’ll do okay, though I won’t pretend I like women working in prisons. After all, what good are they when there’s trouble kicking off? And some of these cons may look normal, but they’re fucking vicious. No offence, love, but I’d rather have a man around when the shit hits the fan.”

Paul Chatham had been working in the prison so long that Callahan said he was almost part of the furniture and, despite belonging to a low-status profession according to most prison officers, judging by what Cate had been told he’d evidently managed the shift from ‘outsider’ to ‘one of us’. While she was ‘sussing out the territory’, as Wright put it, he suggested she and Paul Chatham could meet regularly as part of her induction. Their first meeting was imminent, and she only just had time to grab a coffee.

The coffee machine was a locked door away, and the drink too weak, but she bought one for herself and one for Paul, reminding herself to buy a kettle for her room to avoid this regular trip for caffeine. She was still blowing the heat off the coffee when he arrived, handing her a packet of custard creams.

“Welcome gift! You don’t need to be mad to work here, but it helps.”

Paul Chatham was a handsome man, with thick white-grey hair and a face lined from years of good-natured smiling. His eyes were an unusually warm blue, and he looked easy in his tanned skin. He accepted the cooling coffee and, in the absence of a second chair, perched on the desk. In the cramped airless room she could smell the musky scent of him. It was the closest she had been to an attractive man for a long time but she sensed that Paul’s groomed looks were not intended to attract women.

“So, you’ve obviously fallen from grace with the powers that be,” he joked. “What was your crime?” It was a recognised fact that the probation service seconded undesirable staff to prison posts, the lowest rung on the ladder.

“What makes you think I didn’t ask to be transferred?” she answered warily, “it’s an opportunity to really make a difference.”

Paul laughed. “I didn’t think things were that bad in the field! I guess you’ll tell me when you’re ready.”

Paul was right. Cate hadn’t asked to work at the prison. Not that she had been exactly forced, but her manager had made it clear that things needed to change. Since Tim had left her she’d tried her best to juggle the various elements of her life, always keeping Amelia her priority. But her late arrivals and early departures from the office, time off for sickness – Amelia’s and her own – had worn the patience of her colleagues thin. And she had been off for six months with depression. During her sick leave she was often seen by colleagues in the park with Amelia in her buggy, so they called her a slacker and when she had returned she found her confidence had gone.

It was felt a move would ‘do her good’. She read the signs – she could be left to her own devices if she worked in a prison, demands were fewer and, if she missed the odd day, the consequences were less potentially dangerous. Here the clients were captive, so there was no immediate threat to the public. Prison was a retirement ground for probation officers and she, not yet thirty, had been sent out to pasture. But she would prove them wrong.

Paul downed his coffee in a long swig. “Christ, what a dismal office. You should have opted to work on the men’s side. At least I have a window.”

“I’ll get used to it.” Cate replied dismissively. “We went to the hospital wing this morning, and there was a woman – Susan Thomas. She’d been badly beaten.”

Paul shifted his position. “That’s prison, I’m afraid. Have you met Officer Holley yet?”

When Cate nodded he grinned. “Her security lecture’s a hoot, no? All that guff about nail files and mobile phones. As if we don’t keep them in our lockers, and the prisoners stuff them under their beds. Still, we have to go through the motions.”

Cate grimaced. “The highlight was when Deborah Holley showed me the cabinet of weapons prisoners had made.”

“Ah yes. Razor blades wedged into toothbrushes...”

“…The wire garrotte from stripped computer cable…”

“…When it’s the boiling water that does the most damage. And there’s an urn of that on every landing!” Paul laughed.

“I think she wanted to scare me.”

“Well of course, pretty missy. She’s more butch than me, not that that’s difficult. Officer Holley wouldn’t want you to think she’s not got a tough job. So, did she succeed?”

“Not at all.” Cate said, all too quickly. It was true that she hadn’t shown any fear on the outside, but the lecture had made her uneasy.

Paul added sagely, “Welcome to the madhouse. There’s some funny folk that work in prisons. Just remember which side of the bars you’re on and you’ll be fine. And don’t go thinking you can change the world – if you fight the system, you’ll lose. But you can still do your bit.”

“The Governor said you can brief me on my first case?”

“Don’t be too eager. It’s a parole report on a nonce.”

“Nonce?”

“Someone who’s hurt or abused a child. Your report’s on a child killer, Rose Wilks.”

Cate’s stomach tensed. “What’s she like?”

“I’ve only met her once, when she first got here. She’s been around the system a bit and it shows. Hardened, I’d say. She didn’t say much, face like a slapped arse. This is her fourth prison in as many years. She’s on the Rule.”

Cate frowned. “I don’t know what that means.”

“It means she’ll be on a special wing. Rule 42 is for vulnerable prisoners, and they’re all kept together on D wing. Some are there for protection from themselves, but child killers are usually being protected from other prisoners.”

“Have you got her case file?”

“Just her discipline record. Welcome to prison life: files arrive late, if ever. She got eight years for manslaughter, already served four.”

“So she could be out in just a few weeks, if she gets parole?”

“Parole board sits in five weeks, and she could be out in six. But she’ll only get out if she’s become a saint. She did murder a baby.”