Something Quite Beautiful (2 page)

‘Morning, Matthew.’ A tall, brisk-looking woman in a tan cashmere coat strode into the office.

‘Good Morning, Edwina. Bit nippy today.’ Matthew shivered involuntarily and rubbed his palms together.

‘Yes. Better double check on any frost warning tonight.’

‘Already done it. You’re worried about the fruit trees, right?’

‘And the bougainvillea. I’ve fashioned some rather nifty covers from old fleecy blankets that ought to do the trick. I’ve already double-mulched the roots, trouble is the main beds don’t get the morning sun and are more vulnerable to frost.’

‘Righto, I’m on it.’

Edwina smiled as she removed her coat and hung it on the wooden coat stand, placing it next to Matthew’s mackintosh. She knew he would be. They made a formidable gardening partnership. Edwina knew that she had met her green-fingered match when during a sudden, violent storm last spring, she had ventured outside in the early hours with her pyjama bottoms tucked into her wellington boots. Armed with a head-torch and a handful of twine she was intent on placing carrier bags over delicate flower heads and tying up any wandering stems. Matthew’s outside light had flicked on simultaneously and there he was, with a Drizabone over his nightshirt, a rather natty sou’wester and the same intention. Undeterred by the driving rain and cracks of thunder, they had toiled merrily, determined to preserve what they worked hard to achieve.

The two were colleagues and neighbours, living side by side in the grounds of Glenculloch in identical one-bedroom cottages, the only original buildings that pre-dated the facility. The houses sat with their back walls against the new structure, meaning their view was unobscured by their ugly workplace. Edwina loved the peace and quiet; the big, bruised sky; the rocky outcrops that sat in jagged contrast to the soft heathers sprouting at their base. To her it was the romantic landscape of adventure—though she knew that Matthew felt differently, and rather missed city life, with its constant hum of traffic, where you could buy fresh bread and good wine from the local deli, and see the latest flicks on a rainy afternoon with a bag of popcorn.

But then, their taste was certainly opposed. Matthew’s cottage was crammed with vintage chaise-longues, fussy gilt-framed prints and curios that reminded him of his grandmother, and echoed the classic ‘stately home’ interior he tried to emulate. Edwina was most particular about the objects that surrounded her. Her walls were painted in muted, neutral shades and she favoured pale over-sized sofas and pinewood furniture with clean, elegant lines. When choosing anything, from clothes to furniture, she asked the simple questions, is it practical and does it look attractive? There was no room in her life for ugly clutter. During her sixty years on the planet she had learnt the importance of beauty. The memory of her mother hovered; despite sharing many words of wisdom, she could only ever picture her in the kitchen, her hands immersed in either suds or dough,
Look, Edwina May, this is just an empty old jam jar ready for the bin, but watch what happens when I pop some bluebells in it—it becomes something quite beautiful...

‘You have a postcard.’ Matthew interrupted her reverie.

‘Oh, splendid!’

She reached out her hand and strode towards his desk like a child being offered sweets, afraid the offer might be withdrawn. She studied first the picture and then the text, scrawled by a biro on the other side. Turning it over twice more, she scrutinised the picture and then the words again.

‘Well well, Nicholas in New Zealand. How wonderful.’ She beamed at Matthew who smiled back; he loved to see her this happy.

‘Is he a friend of yours?’

‘Yes.’ she nodded.

Matthew swallowed the curious mixture of interest and jealousy that rose in his throat. He had hoped for a bit more.

Edwina walked into her small office adjacent to Matthew’s desk. It was a grey room with little in it to admire or lift the spirits; it was in fact similar to the inmate’s rooms, bland and impersonal. That was with the exception of the large cork board that held pride of place behind her work space. It hung like a fine work of art, a brightly painted and magnificent collage that brought all the corners of the world into this windy, damp corner of Perth and Kinross. The snowy peak of a Patagonian mountain was partly obscured by the outstretched arms of Christ the Redeemer as he watched over Rio. A pale, stone fort in Jordan overlapped a dense Finnish forest. She selected a fat headed pin from the small, square box and tacked the picture of Mount Dommet in between a spouting geyser in Yellowstone National Park and the Nynäshamn docks just south of Stockholm.

‘Coffee?’

‘Please.’ She nodded.

Matthew placed the stack of mail in the wire basket on the corner of her desk. He avoided touching the bulky green filing cabinet that sat against the wall. Once, he had placed the mail basket on top of it and Edwina had been so furious that he had thought he might get the sack. She was clearly a woman that liked things kept just so. She obviously had a system, and he was not about interfere with a woman and her system, especially a woman like the formidable Edwina Justice, who was rumoured to have left her last job as head warden at HMP Marlham because she refused to work within the guidelines for prisoner punishment.

He popped an espresso in a little china cup in front of her and folded his arms over his chest. As usual he took up only the minimum of space; he was, in every detail, neat.

‘We have three new inmates that arrived late afternoon yesterday. CCTV report shows that one of them, Warren Binns, spent a large part of the night pacing, but the other two seem to have slept straight through. The induction room is booked for nine-fifteen. I’ve emailed you their files and I’ve notified Angelo.’

‘Thank you, Matthew.’ She smiled at him for the second time that morning and gratefully sipped the strong coffee.

Edwina clicked open her desktop and entered today’s password. This daily rotation of letters and numbers, issued by Whitehall, was the only contact she had with the Ministry of Justice, other than her annual report. She rather liked the autonomy, though it had taken her a while to digest the reality of the job when it had first been offered four years ago, in a dimly lit basement beneath the Royal Courts of Justice. It had been a lot to absorb and she had been more than a little distracted by her future employer’s brash manner.

‘So let me get this straight, you are saying that I wouldn’t come under any jurisdiction?’ she asked quizzically.

The Minister for Penal Reform smiled and loosened his tie. ‘Exactly right, you’d be invisible. You’d be the boss, answerable to no-one. No-one. There’s an election looming and the PM wants to get tough and remove these little shits from the streets, so we are throwing the rule book out and giving you complete free reign to do as you see fit. Not that we’ll be phrasing it exactly like that you understand, heaven forbid we offend the PC brigade.’ He laughed and winked at the IT guy on the computer. Edwina felt excluded; did he think
she
was the PC brigade? He continued, ‘This place does not exist if you get my drift. What happens up there really will be up to you. Reform them, kill them, whichever. You’ll be God. Imagine that.’

The minister leant forward, placing his elbows on his thighs and forming a pyramid with his fingers, through which he spoke. ‘Now, I expect you’re wondering about finances. Well, this is one of those problems we believe can be solved by throwing money at it. We give you a handsome budget, a very handsome budget, and what you do with it is up to you. No questions asked. You could get yourself a hot-tub, a chocolate fountain and a lifelong subscription to your favourite magazine; let the little fuckers eat dust for all we care. We are running out of ideas and it’s time to get radical or sink.’

Edwina smiled at the simple clarity of the man’s suggestions. It was clear from his expression that he genuinely considered this to be the route to happiness for her—probably for all women—after all, what more could she possibly want other than a hot-tub, chocolate and a magazine full of pretty pictures? At least she was used to it; operating in a man’s world where she was at the top of her game was full of challenges like this. She chose, as ever, to ignore his asinine suggestions.

‘So I’m to be your guinea pig?’

‘We prefer the term “pilot project.”’

Her next question seemed naive in retrospect, ‘If this place doesn’t exist and there is no monitoring of data, no quotas, no KPIs or benchmarks for improvement, and no departmental visits, how will you know if it’s working?’

‘You will tell us.’

Edwina had hardened a great deal since then. Now, scanning the list of new inmates, she registered only the first line of each case note, no longer tutting at the horror of their crimes. Warren Binns, seventeen—Murder. Keegan Lomax, sixteen—Murder. Henry McFarlane-Hunter, seventeen—Multiple Murder. She didn’t even register surprise at their young ages, or sadness at the waste of their lives. It was all quite routine at Glenculloch, and she had learned in the four years that she had been running the site that it was not always advisable to be too forewarned. Too much information might mean she ignored that gut feeling, gave in to a preconceived idea based on the facts. There was a danger that the details of a case might skew her judgement and Edwina relied very heavily on her instinct, the feeling in her stomach, a little voice on her shoulder.

‘I wonder why were you up all night pacing Mr Binns, what have you got on your mind?’ She voiced her thoughts, and then shook them away. Better to get the induction over with first.

Turning away from the screen, she savoured her coffee and looked up at the cork board. It had been lovely to hear from Nicholas.

Angelo the Italian man-mountain collected the new inmates and marched them in single file to the induction room—although, thanks to the shackles of hand-cuffs and leg restraints, each attached to another inmate via a looped belt chain, it was more of a shuffle than a march. It was a chance for all three to take in further details about their environment, and Warren tried to drink it all in. To his left were what looked like the accommodation cells—identical seven-foot cabins consisting of a bed, sink, urinal and a small mirror, as well as a door-less cubby for storage under the sink. Warren thought longingly off all his stuff crowding the cupboard under the stairs at home, but personalising your room with posters and knickknacks was clearly forbidden. All the cell doors were open—obviously privacy was not a consideration here—and looked like they were on some sort of automatic timer system. He hoped the doors closed at night.

Grey was the interior design colour of choice, the walls were pale dove-coloured moulded panels and the whole structure was without windows. He craned his neck, and looked up into a high, angular ceiling, as tall as a cathedral, where three square panels cut into the roof let in some natural light. These were covered with a gauzy film meaning that sunlight was dappled, leaving marbled white pools reflected on the opposite walls. A shiny chrome walkway ran around the outside top of the main area, which reminded Warren of the fire escape in the tenement opposite his terrace. Along this walkway, behind darkened glass walls, were the administrative offices and meeting rooms, the clockwork heart of Glenculloch.

Warren gazed in all directions at his new home, overawed by the enormity of the proportions; it was part warehouse, part bunker. Unlike the house in Weavers Row, there was nothing soft, every object and surface was hard and angular, functional and monochrome. The floor, coated with a white rubber matting that curved in a lip up the first four inches of every wall and door, was clinical in its cleanliness. There was not a speck of dust nor twist of litter, nor a whiff of cigarette smoke nor odour of food; it was sterile, hygienic and soulless. With the exception of a few oversized potted palms that sat in huge steel containers which were bolted to the floor, there was not a splash of colour anywhere. In their regulation electric blue tracksuits, the inmates would find it very hard to hide.

Angelo stopped at a door on the ground floor beyond the recreation area and ushered them inside a small lecture theatre containing a whiteboard and twelve desks. Like the cells, the room was windowless with harsh strip lighting that was an inadequate substitute for sunshine. He released them from their belts, but left their handcuffs on, and the boys took their seats centrally, behind three of the desks.

Henry laughed loudly. ‘This is like prep school for baddies!’

‘I swear to God if you start with your bollocks again, I will not be responsible for my actions. Do you hear me, posh boy?’ Keegan feared what a loose cannon like Henry might mean for the group. He had heard some bad things about Glenculloch and didn’t want to blight his time so early on.

‘Are you always this grumpy?’ Henry looked genuinely offended.

‘Shut the fuck up!’ Keegan growled in Henry’s direction.

Angelo stood in front of the trio, his voice barely more than a whisper. ‘If I were you, I’d pipe down, all of you. The Principal is on her way and you don’t want to start off on the wrong side of her. Trust me.’

‘Yeah of course I’ll trust you, why wouldn’t I, Bro?’ Keegan raised his cuffed wrists in the guard’s direction. But when he turned to Warren he looked genuinely scared. ‘I’ve never seen the Governor before in any nick I’ve been in.’

‘Lordy do, how many have you been in?’ Henry smirked.

Keegan ignored him.

Angelo leant closer to Keegan. ‘This is unlike any other correctional facility. And whether you trust me or not,
Bro
, doesn’t really matter, so take it as a warning. Do not get on the wrong side of the Principal.’

‘This is like lesson 101, scaring the new kids!’ Henry smirked again.

Angelo walked over to the desk at which Henry sat. ‘If I wanted to scare you, I could, believe me. I’d give you some basic statistics that might make you very scared.’

‘Well I’m not so sure about that, I’ve heard that seventy-nine percent of all statistics are made up on the spot!’ It was as if Henry couldn’t help himself.