She’d seen Lacey, and recognized him easily from that distance. Why not the attacker too? Redman kicked himself for not concentrating; without names and person-alities to go with the faces, it was difficult to distinguish between them. The risk of making a misplaced accusation was high, even though he was almost sure of the curdling -eyed boy. This was no time to make mistakes, he decided; this time he’d have to let the issue drop.
Leverthal seemed unmoved by the whole thing.
‘Lacey,’ she said quietly, ‘it’s always Lacey.’ ‘He asks for it,’ said one of the boys with the stretcher, brushing a sheaf of blond-white hair from his eyes, ‘he doesn’t know no better.’
Ignoring the observation, Leverthal supervised Lacey’s transfer to the stretcher, and started to walk back to the main building, with Redman in tow. It was all so casual.
‘Not exactly wholesome, Lacey,’ she said cryptically, almost by way of explanation; and that was all. So much for compassion.
Redman glanced back as they tucked the red blanket around Lacey’s still form. Two things happened, almost simultaneously.
The first: Somebody in the group said, ‘That’s the pig’. The second: Lacey’s eyes opened and looked straight into Redman’s, wide, clear and true.
Redman spent a good deal of the next day putting his workshop in order. Many of the tools had been broken or rendered useless by untrained handling: saws without teeth, chisels that were chipped and edgeless, broken vices. He’d need money to re-supply the shop with the basics of the trade, but now wasn’t the time to start asking. Wiser to wait, and be seen to do a decent job. He was quite used to the politics of institutions; the force was full of it.
About four-thirty a bell started to ring, a good way from the workshop. He ignored it, but after a time his instincts got the better of him. Bells were alarms, and alarms were sounded to alert people. He left his tidying, locked the workshop door behind him, and followed his ears.
The bell was ringing in what was laughingly called the Hospital Unit, two or three rooms closed off from the main block and prettied up with a few pictures and curtains at the windows. There was no sign of smoke in the air, so it clearly wasn’t a fire. There was shouting though. More than shouting. A howl. He quickened his pace along the interminable corridors, and as he turned a corner towards the Unit a small figure ran straight into him. The impact winded both of them, but Redman grabbed the lad by the arm before he could make off again. The captive was quick to respond, lashing out with his shoeless feet against Redman’s shin. But he had him fast.
‘Let me go you fucking —‘‘Calm down! Calm down!’
His pursuers were almost there. ‘Hold him!’
‘Fucker! Fucker! Fucker! Fucker!’
‘Hold him!’
It was like wrestling a crocodile: the kid had all the strength of fear. But the best of his fury was spent.
Tears were springing into his bruised eyes as he spat in Redman’s face. It was Lacey in his arms, unwholesome Lacey.
‘OK. We got him.’
Redman stepped back as the warder took over, putting Lacey in a hold that looked fit to break the boy’s arm. Two or three others were appearing round the corner. Two boys, and a nurse, a very unlovely creature.
‘Let me go ... Let me go ...‘ Lacey was yelling, but any stomach for the fight had gone out of him. A pout came to his face in defeat, and still the cow-like eyes turned up accusingly at Redman, big and brown. He looked younger than his sixteen years, almost prepubescent. There was a whisper of bum-fluff on his cheek and a few spots amongst the bruises and a badly-applied dressing across his nose. But quite a girlish face, a virgin’s face, from an age when there were still virgins. And still the eyes.
Leverthal had appeared, too late to be of use.
‘What’s going on?’ The warder piped up. The chase had taken his breath, and his temper.
‘He locked himself in the lavatories. Tried to get out through the window.’
‘Why?’
The question was addressed to the warder, not to the child. A telling confusion. The warder, confounded, shrugged.
‘Why?’ Redman repeated the question to Lacey. The boy just stared, as though he’d never been asked a question before.
‘You the pig?’ he said suddenly, snot running from his nose.
‘Pig?’
‘He means policeman,’ said one of the boys. The noun was spoken with a mocking precision, as though he was addressing an imbecile.
‘I know what he means, lad,’ said Redman, still deter-mined to out-stare Lacey, ‘I know very well what he means.’
‘Are you?’
‘Be quiet, Lacey,’ said Leverthal, ‘you’re in enough trouble as it is.’
‘Yes, son. I’m the pig.’
The war of looks went on, a private battle between boy and man.
‘You don’t know nothing,’ said Lacey. It wasn’t a snide remark, the boy was simply telling his version of the truth; his gaze didn’t flicker.
‘All right, Lacey, that’s enough.’ The warder was trying to haul him away; his belly stuck out between pyjama top and bottom, a smooth dome of milk skin.
‘Let him speak,’ said Redman. ‘What don’t I know?’
‘He can give his side of the story to the Governor,’ said Leverthal before Lacey could reply. ‘It’s not your concern.’ But it was very much his concern. The stare made it his concern; so cutting, so damned. The stare demanded that it become his concern.
‘Let him speak,’ said Redman, the authority in his voice overriding Leverthal. The warder loosened his hold just a little.
‘Why did you try and escape, Lacey?’
“Cause he came back.’
‘Who came back? A name, Lacey. Who are you talking about?’
For several seconds Redman sensed the boy fighting a pact with silence; then Lacey shook his head, breaking the electric exchange between them. He seemed to lose his way somewhere; a kind of puzzlement gagged him.
‘No harm’s going to come to you.’
Lacey stared at his feet, frowning. ‘I want to go back to bed now,’ he said. A virgin’s request.
‘No harm, Lacey. I promise.’
The promise seemed to have precious little effect; Lacey was struck dumb. But it was a promise nevertheless, and he hoped Lacey realised that. The kid looked exhausted by the effort of his failed escape, of the pursuit, of staring. His face was ashen. He let the warder turn him and take him back. Before he rounded the corner again, he seemed to change his mind; he struggled to loose himself, failed, but managed to twist himself round to face his interrogator.
‘Henessey,’ he said, meeting Redman’s eyes once more. That was all. He was shunted out of sight before he could say anything more.
‘Henessey?’ said Redman, feeling like a stranger sud-denly.
‘Who’s Henessey?’
Leverthal was lighting a cigarette. Her hands were shaking ever so slightly as she did it. He hadn’t noticed that yesterday, but he wasn’t surprised. He’d yet to meet a head shrinker who didn’t have problems of their own. ‘The boy’s lying,’ she said, ‘Henessey’s no longer with us.’
A little pause. Redman didn’t prompt, it would only make her jumpy.
‘Lacey’s clever,’ she went on, putting the cigarette to her colourless lips. ‘He knows just the spot.’
‘Eh?’
‘You’re new here, and he wants to give you the impres-sion that he’s got a mystery all of his own.’
‘It isn’t a mystery then?’
‘Henessey?’ she snorted. ‘Good God no. He escaped custody in early May. He and Lacey ...‘ She hesitated, without wanting to. ‘He and Lacey had something between them. Drugs perhaps, we never found out. Glue-sniffing, mutual masturbation, God knows what.’
She really did find the whole subject unpleasant. Distaste was written over her face in a dozen tight places.
‘How did Henessey escape?’ ‘We still don’t know,’ she said. ‘He just didn’t turn up for roll-call one morning. The place was searched from top to bottom. But he’d gone.’
‘Is it possible he’d come back?’
A genuine laugh. ‘Jesus no. He hated the place. Besides, how could he get in?’
‘He got out.’
Leverthal conceded the point with a murmur. ‘He wasn’t especially bright, but he was cunning. I wasn’t altogether surprised when he went missing. The few weeks before his escape he’d really sunk into himself. I couldn’t get anything out of him, and up until then he’d been quite talkative.’