The Prison Read online

  “But this is extreme, isn't it?” he asked, stepping closer and peering down at the pulpy, bloody mess of Chris's face. “I've been in charge of prisons where heroin addicts have been a problem, but nothing like this has ever happened. They usually just whimper in a corner and maybe bang their heads on the wall, that sort of thing. Nothing terribly alarming.”

  “I blame myself,” Doctor Bell told him. “Partly, at least. I thought that putting her down here and forcing her to go through full withdrawal was the best option. It was the best option, I'm sure of it, but maybe I should have come down personally and made sure that she was properly restrained. It never crossed my mind that she might be able to get her hands free. She's more like an animal than a human being.”

  “What could motivate someone to do this to themselves?” he asked.

  “Well,” she replied, “put yourself in her position. What could make you start tearing off your own face?”

  “I...” He paused for a moment. “Maybe I'm just being unimaginative, but I honestly don't think there's anything in the world.”

  “Fear. Paranoia. She probably hallucinated something that drove her insane. We can ask her if she wakes up.”

  “And it's not possible that anything else got into the cell?”

  “Such as?” She turned to him, waiting for him to reply. “The door was properly secured. What, precisely, do you think could have got in here?”

  He stared at Chris for a moment.

  “Nothing,” he said finally. “Like you said, the girl's nothing more than a junkie, she's a piece of human trash and none of us should shed a tear that she -”

  Before he could finish, Chris let out a faint gasp and opened her mouth, turning her head to one side so that blood began to dribble out of her hollowed-out eye sockets and down the side of her face.

  “It's okay,” Doctor Bell said quickly, putting a hand on her arm. “We're here to help you.”

  Opening her mouth, Chris seemed to be on the verge of saying something, but no words came out.

  “She's drugged up to the eyeballs,” the doctor said as she prepared another injection. “Excuse the phrasing, but you know what I mean. I doubt she's capable of sensible thought.”

  “Can she hear hear us?”

  “Her ears are undamaged.”

  The governor watched as Doctor Bell administered another injection into the girl's neck.

  “Will she survive the night?” he asked finally.

  “It's fifty-fifty,” she replied, using her plastic-gloved fingers to gently move hair away from over Chris's ears. “If she makes it until morning, we'll see what we can do for her. I'm going to have her moved up to my examination room so that I can get started as soon as possible, and to watch for any signs of an infection. Obviously we have to handle this in-house, though. There's no way I want anyone coming in from the outside to get involved with this case. That would... complicate things.”

  “Of course. Do you happen to know if the girl has any family?”

  “Not according to her admission forms. She seems to have lost contact with them a long time ago. No siblings or contact names were listed.”

  “So if she died...”

  He paused.

  “Yes,” she said after a moment. “No-one would come looking for her, so... It would be possible to dispose of her body relatively quietly.”

  “Good,” he replied. “I know it's harsh, but we can't have the entire Hardstone project ruined just because the press gets hold of a story like this. You know what the papers are like. They'd haul us over the coals, especially the liberal media. The whole thing would be a disaster.”

  “I think we've already established our common view on that matter,” Doctor Bell said, getting to her feet. “We'll continue to deal with all such situations in the same manner that has worked so well in the past. We're lucky that most of the inmates are cut loose from their families, it makes the disposal process so much easier. I just...” She paused. “I really do blame myself for this. I could have handled things so much better.”

  “Nonsense,” he told her. “You're a fine doctor and you did what you thought was best. No-one can possibly hold that against you.” He put a hand on her arm, as if to lend her some extra comfort. “Deborah, you're the finest doctor I've ever met and I know that you'll do everything in your power to help this poor girl. She doesn't deserve the wonderful level of care that you provide.

  “You're very kind,” she replied. “Thank you for your words of confidence.I'm sure you're right.”

  “Keep me informed,” the governor replied, turning and heading to the door. “I'll be at home tonight with my wife, but for God's sake let me know if anything happens here. I want to keep on top of events.”

  “Of course,” said with a polite smile, as she looked down at what remained of Chris's face. “I blame myself,” she whispered after a moment, before allowing herself a brief smile. “As if.”

  ***

  “It's one of those nights,” Doctor Bell said calmly a short while later, as she stood next to Chris in the examination room. “They happen from time to time. Difficult, dark nights where one has to focus a little more carefully in order to stay true to one's path in life. The kind of night when demons enter one's mind and threaten to sway one's resolve. Don't you agree?”

  She looked down at the mass of blood and torn flesh that covered the upper half of Chris's face.

  “I suppose you don't,” she added. “You don't know what it's like to have a path in life, do you? People like you, you just drift along scoring hits wherever you can. You probably laugh at people like me, people who have a calling, people who are willing to sacrifice so much in order to get to where they're going. People who actually matter in this world and make a difference.”

  After a moment, Chris turned her head slightly and let out a faint groan.

  “What's that? You're in pain?”

  Chris's mouth moved slightly, but no words came out.

  “I know you could hear every word earlier,” Doctor Bell continued. “That can't have been very pleasant for you, but I'm afraid this is just the way things have to be. I admit, I lied to the governor when I told him I was giving you something for the pain, but he's a fussy man and sometimes he accidentally starts worrying about these things. How is the pain, by the way? Those injections I kept giving you were designed to paralyze your vocal chords and prevent you from screaming.” She leaned closer and looked down at Chris's lips. “You would be screaming now if you could, wouldn't you? That's what those little groans are. They're the closest you can come.”

  Again, Chris let out the faintest of moans, almost like a brief sigh.

  “The pain must be horrific,” Doctor Bell replied, using a pair of tweezers to carefully lift what remained of her patient's upper-left eyelid, to reveal the blood that had pooled in her eye socket. “Something's leaking in there,” she muttered. “Nasty. I'll try to take a look tomorrow, although that'll involve draining this section, which in turn would take quite a long time if it was done correctly, since there's obviously a need to avoid infection. Then again, it would be good to scoop out what's left of your eyeballs and perhaps some of the optic nerve as well.” She paused for a moment, before letting go of the eyelid and taking a step back. “It's not a priority. We have other work to do.”

  Heading over to the nearby work-bench, she carefully took out a small plastic pouch from a box, before starting the job of peeling off her plastic gloves.

  “God forbid that I might actually get some usable results this time,” she muttered to herself, wincing as she removed the first glove to reveal her badly-scarred left hand. After flexing her fingers a few times, to test the mobility of the joints, she began the slow and painful process of slipping the hand into a new glove. Once the job was done, she did the same with her other hand.

  Behind her, on the examination room's only table, Chris let out another gasp.

  “I know the feeling,” the doctor whispered. “We all have to learn to de
al with the pain in our lives. Stop complaining.”

  Pausing for a moment, she stared down at her damaged right hand, which was even more badly damaged than the left. Thick, torturous scars twisted across the palm and along her fingers, and the tips were mostly missing their nail matter, instead tapering to wrinkled stumps. The sight never failed to make a shiver pass through her body, and she had to force herself to focus on the present, rather than thinking about the past.

  “Now here's the thing,” she said finally, once she was done with changing her gloves. “We have a lot of work to do and the only solution is to get started as soon as possible. Let's not start getting nostalgic for the days before the pain arrived.”

  Heading back to the table, she began to prepare another syringe, and moments later she slipped the needle into Chris's neck and delivered another dose direct to the vocal chords.

  “I can't be dealing with your screams, and I can't knock you out because then the results would be compromised. You're just going to have to accept the pain, and try to console yourself with the knowledge that you are truly contributing toward my understanding of the situation. Doesn't that make you feel at least slightly good? Your suffering will help others.”

  She pulled the needle out and watched as Chris's mouth continued to twitch.

  “Okay,” the doctor continued finally, with a faint smile on her lips, turning to look at the nearby door that led into her other examination room. “Let's get to work, shall we? Trust me, Christine Bradford, you're not the only person in this prison who can't get her screams out.”

  As she opened her equipment case, she seemed completely unaware of the little girl who was watching her intently from the shadows in the far corner.

  One year ago

  “No,” Andrew said as he closed Sabrina's file, “I actually think I want to continue working with her.”

  “I thought you said last week that she's a lost cause?” Turning to him, Anne-Marie smiled. “What changed your mind?”

  “I just think we've been making progress. I'd hate to hand her off to another department just when I feel as if something positive is happening. She's a good kid, and I feel like she's starting to trust me.”

  “You're the fifth specialist who's seen her in the past six months, and none of them have even managed to get her to say a word. How come suddenly she's showing signs of improvement?”

  “What can I tell you?” Andrew said with a shrug. “I guess I just got her attention somehow.”

  Today

  After switching off the engine, Governor Alistair Windsor remained in his car for a moment. He could see the front door to his house, but he wasn't ready to go inside, not just yet.

  He waited for several minutes, imagining the conversation he was about to have, going over the possibilities in his mind. This happened every night: it was almost as if he felt the need to rehearse everything, to go over and over every possible permutation. Why did it have to be like this, he wondered. Other people had normal, simple lives, so why did he have to deal with such heartache? Then again, he also felt that perhaps tonight was the night when everything would stop. After all, at some point, the madness had to come to an end.

  Finally, the alarm on his phone went off, and he knew he could no longer delay the inevitable. With a sigh, he opened the car door.

  ***

  “Nothing much,” he muttered a few minutes later, as he closed the front door and slid the first bolt across at the top. “Just your average day as the man in charge of a recently-reopened and rapidly-growing prison. Lots of little problems and, thankfully, no major ones. Well, not so far, anyway.”

  “You do so much good,” his wife Ruth said as she hurried toward him and helped him off with his coat. “I really can't see how they can fail to notice you this time, you deserve at least an OBE if not an outright knighthood. When you see some of the riff-raff who get honored each year, while men who keep this country strong are ignored. I mean, without you, that place would fall apart.”

  “It just might,” he replied, turning the key in the main lock before sliding another three bolts across. Once the initial security system was in place, he turned to the keypad on the wall and typed in his personal code, activating seven more titanium rods that slid out from the door-frame and into the door itself. Seconds later, a red LED screen on the panel displayed the single word that he waited for every night:

  LOCKED.

  “Dinner's ready,” Ruth told him. “I made your favorite.”

  He allowed a brief flicker of a smile to cross his lips as he turned to see a steaming plate of vegetables and rice on the table. Every night for the past eight years, the same meal... It wasn't that he particularly disliked vegetables and rice, and he'd always been the kind of man who liked to keep things regular and organized, but lately he'd been starting to think that perhaps a little variation would be nice. Watching Ruth as she headed back into the kitchen, however, he knew that his hopes would go unanswered. Some things were just beyond change.

  He figured he'd just have to get used to such things.

  “I keep thinking about those poor girls,” she continued as she brought her own plate over, “and how much they have to thank you for. I doubt they thank you very often, but that doesn't make it any less true. Without you, Alistair, they'd all be such poor lost souls.”

  “Absolutely,” he replied, heading to the table and taking a seat. “I'm glad you're not exposed to the foulness of most of them, but trust me, it's shocking to see how low the human animal can fall. By the way, were there any calls for me while I was on the way home?”

  “No, dear.” She took her place on the other side of the table. “A busy man such as yourself must be in constant demand, but I do hope they leave you alone tonight. It's not good to go without a little rest now and again. If you don't get some time off to relax and get your mind off these things, you're going to end up with another ulcer.”

  “You're right,” he said. “Whatever would I do without you around to remind me of these things? There's -”

  Glancing over at the wall, he saw that one of the windows had been left open just slightly: not enough to allow anyone through but still perhaps sufficient to attract unwanted attention. The sight immediately shocked him.

  “Is there a problem?” he asked.

  “Oh...” She turned to look at the window. “No, I just thought we could let a little air in. The house was feeling rather stuffy this afternoon.”

  “I told you to keep them closed,” he replied, getting up and hurrying over to pull the window shut. There were metal bars outside, of course, but he felt they couldn't be too careful. “What's the point of all these security systems if we never use them? I must have spent thirty thousand pounds on these alarms over the past year, not to mention the new locking mechanisms on the door, but they only make us safer if we use them properly.”

  “I...” Ruth paused for a moment.

  “Promise me you'll be more careful,” he added.

  “I promise, Alistair, it's just... I mean, I...”

  “What?” he asked. “What's wrong?”

  “I heard a noise in the night last night,” she told him cautiously, with a look of fear in her eyes. “I think so, anyway. It almost sounded like someone was downstairs.”

  “It was probably me,” he replied. “I got up for some water.”

  “No, you were sleeping right next to -”

  “It was probably me,” he said more firmly.

  “Of course, dear,” she replied, clearly a little taken aback. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to -”

  Before she could finish, they both heard his phone ringing in his coat pocket. Heading over to the stand, he pulled the phone out and squinted at the screen for a moment, before sighing and answering.

  “Doctor Bell,” he said, “what -”

  “It's the patient from tonight,” she said, not waiting for him to ask. “Christine Bradford, the one who scratched her face off in isolation. I'm just calling to let you know that
she died a few minutes ago.”

  “I see. And the cause?”

  “Trauma. There was just too much damage, and too much blood was lost. Her heart was also weak, so I think that would have failed sooner rather than later. Maybe I was too optimistic earlier, but I had to at least try to save her life.”

  “I see. Well, that's a terrible shame.”

  “I know. She was only in her early twenties, she had her whole life ahead of her but unfortunately this is often what happens when kids get into drugs. It's just a horrific spiral that leads them further and further down until there's nothing we can do to help them. I've seen it so many times before, but that doesn't make it any easier.” She paused for a moment. “Anyway... Should I go ahead with the disposal plan as we discussed?”

  “Of course.”

  “I blame myself, you know. Maybe I was too quick to dismiss her fears. If I'd treated her in a different way, if I'd made sure someone was monitoring her -”

  “You mustn't do that,” he told her. “You're a wonderful doctor, Deborah, and we're very lucky to have you at Hardstone. We'll have a little chat about the situation in the morning, just to go over a few formalities, but as far as I'm concerned this can be dealt with entirely in-house. After all, she has no family, and the paperwork hasn't even gone through yet following her arrival. Everything will be fine. These kids, these junkies without families... It's a sad fact of life that no-one really comes looking for them.”

  “Thank you,” she replied, “I really appreciate all your help, Alistair. Now if you'll excuse me, I should get back to work.”

  Once the call was over, Governor Windsor turned and looked back at the table, where his wife was waiting patiently.

  “Trouble?” she asked. “I've seen that look in your eyes before. You're worried about something. Remember, Alistair, a problem shared is a problem halved.”