Authors: Lindsay Ashford
Dom Wilde didn’t smile when he was escorted into the room. When they were left alone he sat staring at the floor, avoiding eye contact.
‘Hi Dom,’ Megan ventured. ‘How are you?’
‘Okay.’ Still he didn’t look up. They sat in silence for a few seconds before the penny dropped. He must have seen the report on the television. He had put two and two together: guessed that she was the source of the story. A wave of panic swept through her.
‘Dom,’ she began, ‘what you saw on the news…’
‘
Heard
, actually,’ he interrupted her, eyes still fixed on the floor. ‘Radio in my cell.’ It sounded like an accusation, as if he had expected to hear it from her first. All the warmth in him had gone. Clearly he felt she had betrayed his trust. This she couldn’t bear.
‘You think I was wrong to go to the grave, then?’ She tried to keep her voice steady.
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘But you don’t like the fact that everyone knows what Carl did?’
She heard him draw in his breath. ‘I don’t know. I suppose it doesn’t matter now he’s dead.’ There was a pause. Finally he looked at her. ‘You could have told me. Warned me.’
She was mesmerised by his eyes. Liquid grey, like the deepest wells; full of emotions she couldn’t fathom. And looking into them her guilt and fear were shot through with elation, excitement. ‘I’m sorry, Dom: really I am. I don’t
know what made me go looking for Moses Smith’s grave. But I never expected to find…’ She bit her lip, knowing it sounded lame.
To her surprise he put out his hand and grasped hers. ‘It must have been a shock, finding…what you found.
I’m
sorry – I shouldn’t have come in here accusing you like that.’
Her eyes stung. She felt inexplicably close to tears. He thought this show of emotion was about finding the baby. He had no idea just how upset that had made her. But it wasn’t that now: it was the fact that he was disappointed with her; that she’d taken advantage of him.
‘No, you’re right,’ she said, ‘I should have warned you.’ She could feel the warmth of his fingers squeezing hers. She knew she should pull her hand away. ‘I saw the ground had been disturbed but it was getting dark, so I went back next morning, very early.’ She told him about meeting Delva; about swearing her to secrecy about Carl’s death. And all the time he kept hold of her hand.
‘But when you found the baby there was no way of keeping quiet about Carl,’ he nodded. ‘I see that now.’ For a long moment he gazed into her eyes. He had lost that accusing look. She gazed back like someone paralysed. The longer it went on, the more compromised she would be. Never had she overstepped the mark like this. In all the prisons, all the one-to-one sessions with inmates she had held over the years, she had always behaved with absolute propriety. What was it about this man that was making her so reckless?
‘Dom,’ she said, smiling as she unwound his fingers from hers, ‘you’re going to get me into trouble.’ She patted his hand before crossing her arms and leaning back in her seat. He smiled and shrugged, his movements mirroring hers. To her relief he seemed untroubled by her pulling away. But she felt as if she’d touched a live, bare wire.
‘What did you think when you heard about the baby?’
Her voice sounded high and unnatural. She coughed and tried again. ‘Had Carl ever mentioned a child?’
He shook his head. ‘All he ever told me was his victim’s name and the fact that he was buried in St Mary’s. I got the impression he didn’t really know him from Adam. He was just some guy who pushed his luck too far and had to be sorted.’
‘Did he mention if there were others involved in the murder?’ She watched his expression for tell-tale signs. An awful thought had crossed her mind. Something quite at odds with the way she felt about him. Dom Wilde was in jail because he’d killed a man. So what if it was him? He had, by his own admission, been the last person to see Carl alive. What if he was feeding her this stuff to divert attention from himself? And the hand-holding – had that been part of some plan to soften her up?
He gave her a blank look. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Were there?’
She nodded, her eyes fixed on his face. ‘According to the newspaper report there were three of them. There was also a partner in the flat when they broke in. Apparently they left her alone.’ She paused. His expression hadn’t changed from that look of blank puzzlement. The voices in her head were subsiding. She wanted to believe he was being straight with her, wanted it with a ferocity that scared her. ‘They had a child too,’ she said.
‘Not the baby…’ he tailed off, his eyes wide with alarm.
‘Who knows?’ she replied. ‘The newspaper article didn’t say how old the child was and I’ve drawn a complete blank with tracing the partner. But who ever the baby belonged to, why was he put on top of Moses Smith’s grave?’
‘And was he put there before or after Carl died?’
Megan told him what the pathologist had said about having the box analysed. ‘If you hadn’t told me about Moses Smith I doubt the baby would ever have been discovered. If
someone wanted to draw attention to the link between Carl and Moses they could have made it a lot more obvious.’
Dom frowned as he weighed this up. ‘It doesn’t make any sense at all, does it?’
‘No, it doesn’t.’
‘The newspaper article you found – what was the date on it?’
‘The sixteenth of March 1991. Why?’
‘That explains why I never got to hear about it. Carl never told me exactly when it happened. And I thought I’d remember a name like Moses Smith – if I’d read about it in the paper at the time. But I wasn’t living in Brum in ’91’
She searched his eyes, wondering how he was going to react to what she was about to ask. ‘I need to find out where that dodgy heroin came from, Dom.’ Silence. But he didn’t look away. ‘I want to talk to Carl’s girlfriend,’ she persisted. ‘There’s just a chance he might have said something to her; told her more than he told you.’
There was a small sigh before he responded. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you know I can’t help you with the first thing, but I have got this.’ He reached into the pocket of his denim shirt: ‘It’s one of his girlfriend’s letters: it’s got her address on it.’ He leaned forward, his head inches from hers. She thought he was going to touch her again and her insides went into meltdown. But whatever he intended was interrupted by the rattle of keys. Megan stuffed the letter into her pocket as the face of Fergus appeared round the door.
‘You’ve got another visitor,’ he winked at Dom. ‘Popular today, aren’t we?’
Megan thought she saw a flicker of confusion in Dom’s eyes as he rose to leave. She wondered who this visitor was. He hadn’t talked about anyone on the outside; no one who mattered, other than his daughter.
* * *
Megan didn’t leave Balsall Gate straight away. She asked to see the governor, Malcolm Meredith, who was dunking a digestive biscuit into a pint-sized mug of tea when she was shown into his office. As she sat down he carried on without a hint of embarrassment. Nor did he attempt to conceal the newspaper that was spread on the desk in front of him, open at the crossword, which he had half-finished.
‘I’ve come about Carl Kelly.’ She said it baldly, with no preamble. She was damned if she was going to be polite when he didn’t even have the manners to offer her a cup of tea. Before he could gulp down his soggy biscuit she went on: ‘Someone gave him those drugs and I think you should start searching the staff. They should all be checked when they arrive for work. Bags, wallets – even their lunchboxes.’
Meredith eyed her over his rimless bifocals, which were steamed up from the tea. She knew he didn’t like her; that he resented her being foisted on him by the Ministry. He’d made his views about psychologists quite clear at their initial meeting. As far as he was concerned she was a namby-pamby academic looking to boost her own reputation by
brown-nosing
the likes of Dom Wilde.
‘Dr Rhys, am I labouring under some kind of
misapprehension
?’ She glared back at him. What did he mean by that? She kept silent. ‘I was under the impression that you were here to research the Listener service,’ he went on, his lips barely moving as he enunciated the words. ‘Is this some new brief from the Ministry? Something I haven’t been informed of? Because unless I’m very much mistaken, you’ve come marching in here trying to tell me how to run my own prison.’ She held his gaze, refusing to be fazed by this accusation. But she remained silent, a trick she had learned long ago when interviewing prisoners. It confused them. Gave you the psychological advantage. Meredith’s eyebrows knotted as he waited for a reply. ‘Well?’ His
voice was shriller and his face was going red. ‘I don’t think searching the staff would do a great deal for the atmosphere in here, do you?’
‘I don’t expect it to.’ Her own voice was deadpan. ‘But if Carl Kelly died because one of your staff is bent I think we need to know, don’t you?’
He gave her a look that reminded her of the iguanas in the window of a pet shop she passed on her way to work; a narrowing of the eyes that could pass for a smile but was actually a prelude to gulping down some unsuspecting locust. ‘But what about the visitors?’ he said. ‘They’re a much likelier source of illicit drugs.’
‘Equally likely, I’d say.’ She stared back at him, unblinking. ‘I think it’s something you should seriously consider.’
‘Well, I’ll
consider
it, yes.’ Meredith was a lazy bastard; that much was obvious. He wasn’t going to institute staff searches – it was far too much hassle. So she tried another tack, something that would cost him no effort whatsoever; something he’d be tempted to say yes to in a bid to get her off his back: ‘I’d like to look at Carl Kelly’s records,’ she said. ‘He was using the Listener service. Using it fairly regularly, as it turns out. So I think my interest in him is quite legitimate from a research perspective.’ She paused as he took this in. The silence was broken by a soft ‘plop’ as the end of his biscuit fell into his mug. ‘I’d like to establish whether he had any visitors other than the girlfriend Dominic Wilde told me about. And I have an address for her that I’d like to check out.’
He nodded slowly as he fished around his mug with his spoon, trying to locate the lost lump of biscuit. ‘Shouldn’t the police be doing that?’
‘Of course they should, but as you know, they’ve shown very little interest in the case.’ She pulled the plate of biscuits towards her and took the last one, crunching it loudly before
she swallowed. ‘I think inmates – even dead ones – deserve some respect, don’t you?’
Without looking at her he reached across the desk for a slip of headed paper. Scribbling on it he said: ‘Well, thanks for the Thought For The Day – I’ll bear it in mind for my retirement speech.’ He shoved the paper towards her. ‘Now perhaps you’ll allow me to get on?’
Balsall Gate’s office manager proved to be a lot more helpful than the governor. Once Megan had handed over Meredith’s hastily-written consent, it took only a couple of minutes for the records to arrive. She looked at the photograph in the top right hand corner of the file. So this was what Carl Kelly had looked like in life. Dom was right. He was a striking man who looked younger than his thirty-six years. The photo had been taken when he first entered the jail, but even so, he could have passed for someone in his mid-twenties.
She took out the letter Dominic had given her. The signature at the bottom was Jodie. Her surname was Shepherd. She was listed as visiting the prison the day before Carl Kelly died. A quick search revealed that she had made two other visits during the previous two months. Megan asked the office manager if there had been any calls from the girlfriend since the news of Carl’s death broke. Apparently there hadn’t, which Megan found odd. All the more reason to find her and talk to her, she thought.
The only other visitor Kelly had received during that time was an Anthony Greaves. Apparently he was one of the duty solicitors and a frequent visitor to the jail. Megan made a note of his office telephone number. It was not unknown for solicitors to smuggle drugs in for their clients.
When she left the main office she had to pass through the visiting room. To her surprise Dom Wilde was sitting
opposite a petite, pretty girl with long, white-blonde hair. She was smiling at him and he was laughing. Megan felt a stab of jealousy. Who was she? She looked about twenty-five. Too old to be his long lost daughter. Was she a girlfriend? She certainly didn’t look like a lawyer or a probation officer. With a frown Megan checked herself. She was stereotyping the girl on the basis of physical appearance – something that irritated her intensely when it was done to her. Megan’s nose stud and her dark skin had led to all kinds of misunderstandings. She simply didn’t conform to most people’s preconceptions of what an academic looked like. Now, it seemed, she was operating the same prejudices as they were. Why should blonde locks and a pretty face equal no brain?
With a click of her tongue she told herself that it didn’t matter who Dom Wilde’s visitor was; that it was none of her business. But the bile of jealousy refused to subside.
As she reached the door a loud bell signalled the end of visiting time. She was suddenly at the centre of a throng of people, all pushing their way towards the gate. The smell of prison was swept away on a tide of perfume. The visitors were mostly women; mothers, wives and girlfriends. And they had obviously made a huge effort for their men. Some had small children with them. A toddler in a pushchair was screaming at the top of its voice; hungry, tired, bored or simply confused at being taken to see a father who was little more than a stranger. It must be difficult for Dom, she thought, seeing these children. They must be a painful reminder of his own daughter. He hadn’t said whether he had anything to remember her by. Probably not, if he hadn’t seen her since the day she was born. Megan wondered what he had done to cause the mother to cut him out of her life so completely.
She was shaken out of this speculation by the sight of the
blonde-haired girl. She was a few feet from Megan and about to pass through the gate; somehow she had managed to worm her way to the front of the queue. Soon she disappeared from view. Where was she going? And what had been the purpose of her visit? For God’s sake, Megan whispered to herself, you don’t
own
him!