He was satisfied with his reflection. As he brushed some imagined dust from his sleeve, he thought, I wonder what she wants with Anderson?
Hanlon waited in the interview room for Anderson to arrive. Prisons made her think of a strange mix of fortress and school. Even the way prisoners addressed the officers and visitors was archaically polite. It was like going back in time to a more mannered age.
HMP Wendover, one of England and Wales’ hundred and thirty-one prisons, was Victorian. Like most Victorian buildings, it was designed to impress. It had massive brick walls, twenty feet high, the top few feet covered in a decorative, plain stone cladding, so it looked as if it had been capped by a stonemason dentist. The front gate was huge, panelled and studded like something from a medieval fortress. For someone arriving on foot it was a peculiar sensation to walk through the small door within the huge wooden portal. It felt like visiting a giant’s castle.
Inside the enormous gate, in a side office off the vast, vaulted arch of the entrance, she was searched by an attractive blonde woman officer, signed a visitor’s form and was issued with a pass. The fairytale world of the prison, a fairytale from the Brothers Grimm, not Disney, was emphasized by the discrepancy between the noisy rush outside and the disturbing tranquillity within. The silence was almost oppressive.
A tough-looking, wiry, silver-haired prison guard, with the twin stars on his uniform denoting he was a principal prison officer, led her into the grounds of the prison.
From inside you could appreciate how big the place was. The black, tarmacked driveway through the prison that they walked down was very wide and everywhere was immaculately clean. The only signs of life were three prisoners silently tending a flower bed. It was as peaceful and relaxing as a sanatorium out here. She knew that inside the cell blocks there would be a great deal of noise, but it was contained within their walls. Hanlon reflected that prisons were such places of extremes: it was either tranquil or a riot. There was very little in between.
John, the guard who accompanied her, was a pleasant, laconic individual. Like most prison guards he seemed to have a good sense of humour. Hanlon guessed it was almost a prerequisite of the job; you had to be able to laugh or you’d never last.
Any prisoner that they encountered greeted them politely. Hanlon was reminded again that prison was a strange place. There was always an atmosphere of strained civility mixed with the constant threat of violence. The last time she’d interviewed someone in a prison, the alarms had suddenly sounded and they’d found themselves in the middle of a lockdown. She found out later one of the inmates had had his throat slashed, the news of which had sparked a riot. She’d sat in a secure room while a flash flood of enraged humanity had seethed down the narrow corridor. Even for Hanlon it had been an unsettling experience.
In one of the corridors today, she’d walked past a large, glass trophy cabinet mounted on the wall. In a school such a cabinet would contain trophies and cups. Here it contained a selection of home-made weapons, mainly shanks or knives, recently recovered. Razor blades set in handles, toothbrushes filed to needle-sharp points, ingenious arrangements of broken glass. There was even a wooden pistol fashioned by one of the inmates. It really didn’t do to underestimate anyone in a Category A prison.
They were walking past a low prison outbuilding. ‘A wing,’ said John with a jerk of his head. ‘Sexual offenders.’
Hanlon nodded. Hello, Rabbit, she thought. Enjoying life in your hutch? The sex offenders had to be rigidly separated from the other prisoners, even to a certain extent from each other. The other inmates would have attacked them on sight. They were despised and they acted like a conduit, a lightning rod for the other prisoners’ suppressed rage. There was a rigid social order in prison and the inmates took a kind of pride in their hatred of the sex offenders. It was their way of showing the world they too had morality, they too had standards. The sex offenders were good for the other prisoners’ self-esteem. Whatever they were, they weren’t nonces.
She thought of Rabbit Bingham, intelligent, witty, entrepreneurial, charming, self-deprecating, in many ways a catalogue of virtues, and a huge risk to any child he came within reach of. He, like virtually all child abusers, was totally without remorse. She doubted if Bingham even realized he was a monster. He’d told her in all seriousness that children often quite liked sex, it was a matter of how it was done. He’d dropped famous names of other well-known sex offenders into the conversation: Oscar Wilde, André Gide, Jimmy Savile, Roman Polanski, Gary Glitter, Stuart Hall. One day, he said, it’ll be legal, like homosexuality. He also pointed out that marriage in many countries was permitted at the age of puberty, or below, and not fixed at some arbitrary figure. He told Hanlon that in some cases he knew of men who’d been led on by eight-year-olds. He himself had been broken in — his term — by a neighbour when he was ten and he’d come to love it.
‘I’m talking from experience, Detective Inspector,’ he’d said seriously. ‘Children love sex.’ Bingham, she had been reliably informed, had raped a three-year-old.
They all knew that the moment Bingham was released, he’d re-offend. She remembered how when interviewing him, Bingham gave nothing away, betrayed no one. Well, at that time she’d been constrained by PACE regulations. I wonder how you’ll stand up to a more robust interrogation, Bingham, she thought. I know you’re a monster. You fooled the judge who gave you the lightest sentence he could, you may even have fooled yourself, but I know you’re evil and I will not regret what I’m about to do.
Anderson was waiting for her in the interview room. It was furnished with two chairs and a table. The table was secured to the floor. Anderson was as she remembered him, tall, thin, and hollow-cheeked. He had grown his hair and it hung in rat-tails over his face. He looked ascetic and slightly crazy, like a killer monk, a clean-shaved Rasputin. John, the prison officer, looked enquiringly at Hanlon. His eyes said, are you sure about this?
Hanlon curtly ordered, ‘You can leave us now.’
‘Just press the button when you want me to come and get you,’ John said.
The metal door closed behind him and there was an emphatic noise as the key turned with finality in the lock. They were alone together. Anderson sat down without being asked, on the opposite side of the table to Hanlon, and raised his eyebrows enquiringly.
‘And what do you want?’ he asked. He remembered Hanlon from the time before he’d been arrested. She hadn’t been able to make that charge stick. He’d found out who was testifying against him. The witness had children. Anderson made sure he knew where they were, where they went to school. The witness withdrew his testimony and Anderson walked. No chance of that happening in this case — five kilos of coke weren’t going to disappear.
‘I’d like your assistance, please,’ Hanlon said.
Anderson smiled, a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. Hanlon’s own eyes were cold but Anderson’s were dead. When he looked you up and down, it was as if he were measuring you for a coffin. There was no humanity in his bleak gaze. Both inmates and guards alike preferred the company of Andy Howe, the multiple murderer, to Anderson. At least Howe was human, even if badly flawed. Anderson would kill you or hurt you with as little compunction as a man might swat a fly, and with less compassion.