Just Desserts

Crime Fiction by Steven James Foreman

Paul Ferry, an unmarried officer in Her Majesty’s Prison Service, often drove the two miles, from his bachelor lodgings, to the Prison Officer’s Social Club, there to while away a couple of hours at one of the social gatherings, often held there at weekends.

The clubhouse was a stand-alone building, located across the car park from HMP Ripley, Juvenile Detention Centre, where Paul worked.

It was a fairly small venue, where the club voluntary committee, all Prison Officers, put on some diversionary entertainment or activity on Saturday and Sunday evenings. The quiz nights, discos, darts or pool matches, and so on, were a welcome distraction from the usual staid routine.

Bill Mayberry, a fellow Prison Officer, and his wife Tracy occasionally attended these functions.

The Mayberry’s lived in one of the ten, semi-detached Married Quarters, whose row of back gardens abutted the high, climb-proof fence at the rear of the Centre. A coil of razor wire topped the entire fence; a further deterrent to any thoughts of escape by the teenage inmates.

On the few times when Paul and the Mayberry’s had been at the club on the same occasion, Paul had caught Tracy Mayberry surreptitiously looking in his direction across the top of her glass, or glancing at him with a quick, furtive smile, whenever her husband Bill’s attention was elsewhere. Paul didn’t particularly like Bill, and he never sat with the couple.

One Saturday evening—a disco night—Tracy was unaccompanied.

Her husband was on his rotation for night duty.

It was a small Detention Centre, with a maximum capacity of sixty-six teenage inmates. After evening lockdown, it required only one Prison Officer on duty at night. Night duty ran for one week, so each of the twenty officers based at the Centre pulled a night shift only once every couple of months.

The actual custody unit, known as ‘E’ block, comprised a secure wing, housing six individual induction or isolation cells, securely locked day and night, while the other two wings each comprised a thirty-bed dormitory. On the other side of the long corridor were the Control Room, the ablutions, and the kitchen and the dining hall.

At eight o’clock each evening, after the night shift officer had arrived for the handover, and before the late day shift went off duty, ‘E’ block was locked down. At nine-thirty pm, it was ‘lights out’.

***

On that Saturday evening at the disco, Paul caught Tracy looking at him, very coyly, from the group of other wives with whom she sat.

Paul was dark haired, well-built and ruggedly good looking. Like a lot of Prison Officers, he was ex-military, looking for a worthwhile career after finishing their service. He never made it known that he was former British Special Forces.

Tracy had the hots for him, but it was not until just before the disco was due to finish up, that she left the group and walked over to where Paul was sitting.

He watched her approach. Tall and slim, long dark hair. Red lipstick around a white smile.

“I don’t have a partner. Will you dance with me, Paul?” she said, leaning over with one hand on his table.

“Sure, why not?” Paul said, and stood up.

It was during this slow last-dance-of-the evening that she breathed into his ear and said, “Would you like to come back to my place, for coffee, Paul? Please?”

Paul, although attracted to the pretty young woman, knew it was the wrong thing to do, but there was something in her eyes, and the way she spoke, that told him she really needed the company.

Obviously, they could not just leave the club and walk across the road to her house with all the other Officers and wives looking on. As they danced, Paul whispered, “I’ll make a noisy and obvious farewell and walk out alone. You go home and wait for me. I will come, don’t worry.”

Once in the car park, Paul climbed into his Ford Granada and, with a final wave to those exiting the club, drove off in the direction of the nearby village, in which were his lodgings. Less than half a mile down the lane, Paul pulled his car into a secluded space, about twenty meters into the thick woodland that lined one side of the lane. He parked up and waited about fifteen minutes. Then made his way, slowly, on foot, along a narrow path through the trees, and back to the Centre. The club was now closed up and dark, and the small cul-de-sac, containing the row of Married Quarters, was quiet.

Her front door opened at his first light knock. Paul stepped quickly inside. Coffee was a mere pretence and took the place of foreplay. They were both naked by the time they got upstairs, and from the speedy conclusion of their initial coupling, it was obvious that Tracy was seriously sexually frustrated. The second round was less hectic and more romantic, and they fell into a slow and easy rhythm of lovemaking.

When they were both satisfied, Tracy leaned over and switched on the bedside lamp, reaching for a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.

It was then that Paul saw the large, livid yellow-purple bruise on her thigh. In the earlier darkness of the bedroom, he had not noticed it.

“What’s this?” He gently touched the bruised area. She flinched.

“Bill beats me,” she said, and shook her head slowly, her eyes closed. “He kicked me a few days ago for something trivial. I can’t remember what it was. He is always hitting me.”

“Jesus!” Paul said. “How long has this been going on?”

“Since we got married, about two years ago.” Her eyes were cast down in shame.

“What have you done about it? Have you reported it to anyone?”

“No, I daren’t. It would make things worse; I am sure.”

“Why don’t you leave him?”

“I threatened to, but he told me if I tried, he would really hurt me.”  Her voice was a croaked whisper.

Suddenly, Paul heard a faint noise from outside the house. He became immediately alert, raising his head from the bunched pillows.

“Did you hear something?” Paul whispered.

She sighed, and put a palm across her eyes. “No, nothing.”

“I’m sure I heard something. I’m going down to check!”

“No! Leave it; it was nothing!” Tracy said. She sat up, and tried to grab his arm.

Paul evaded her, pulled on his underwear, and went quickly but quietly downstairs, passing through the kitchen to the back door.

As he got there, he heard the distinctive, shimmering rattle of razor wire, followed by a dull thump.

“Jesus. It’s a bloody escape!” he hissed to himself.

Paul cracked open the back door, and peered into the half-gloom of a starlit night.

As his eyes adjusted, he stared down the back garden. He could make out the angular shape of a lawn mower, the uneven hump of a rock garden, and a tall rose arch. But he could also see, lying at the end of the silvery-grey lawn, at the foot of the fence, a small rounded shape, glimmering palely in the starlight.

Paul held his breath and watched intently, his line of sight slightly off-target, to allow his peripheral night-vision to discern the form and possible movement. There was none.

He crept out of the door in his bare feet, his head straining forward and ears on full alert. The object was inanimate, and too small to be a human.

He frowned, straightened up and walked quickly down the path towards the object. Closing up on it, he found it to be a bulging, white plastic carrier bag, tied closed by its handles. There was a small rip in the side. Paul looked up and, in the starlight, could see a small banner of corresponding white plastic, flapping from the coiled razor wire.

“What the fuck is this?” Paul whispered through clenched teeth.

He picked up the heavy bag and strode purposefully and angrily back to the house. The girl was in the kitchen, now dressed in a nightgown, leaning against the wall, head down and smoking a cigarette.

He dumped the bag on the counter and tore it open. It contained four lamb chops, two steaks, four packs of bacon and three packs of sausages. All were frozen.

“It’s Bill.” She sobbed. “We are really in financial trouble. We just don’t seem to ever get clear of debts, and we never seem to have enough money.”

“So, he’s nicking stuff from the prison kitchen when he’s on night duty, and chucking it over the fence?”

She nodded. “Yeah. He steals it from the big freezer, where they keep the bulk stocks. It’s been going on for some time now. I want him to stop. I’m so scared. But it is so easy for him, and it’s become a sort of habit. It’s not much, but it helps keep us going for a while.”

She stubbed out her cigarette. “He does it only once, each time he is on night duty, so there is not too much missing to be really noticed. The chef’s pretty sloppy at stocktaking, so Bill says.”

“Jeezus, Tracy!” Paul said.

“He warns me in advance which night it will happen, and I am supposed to go and collect the bag while it’s still dark, so the neighbours don’t see it lying on the lawn first thing in the morning. I had forgotten that tonight was the night, you know, what with all the other distractions… if you get my meaning.”

Tracy turned away. Paul followed her through to the sitting room, where she sat cross-legged on an armchair and began to cry softly. He went over and squatted down in front of her.

Paul lit two cigarettes and passed one to her. He patted her leg. She moved over. He squeezed in next to her and put an arm around her shoulders.

“C’mon. Stop crying, it is too late for that.”

“Now we have been caught red-handed,” she said.  “What will happen to us? Bill and I could both end up in prison ourselves.”

Paul grabbed her shoulders and twisted her to face him. He held her at arm’s length, getting her attention. “Just think about this for a minute, will you? How the hell am I going to tell anyone what I saw? I mean, how will I explain being in your house in the middle of the night, while Bill is on duty?” He raised his eyebrows to emphasise the question. “I would also be in deep shit, and probably lose my job.”

She looked at him wide-eyed for a moment, and then fell against his chest as she realised the implications of him being there.

Paul put his arms around her, and held her tight until her sobbing stopped. She then looked up at him with starry eyes and whispered, “Thank you.”

“Jesus, Tracy!” Paul shook his head. “Bill sounds like a fucking nightmare to live with. You have got to leave him.”

“I can’t… besides, where would I go? I have no family, and we are already in debt. I don’t have any money of my own.”

“Well, at least you have to try to stop Bill doing this straight away, just in case someone else finds out. You will just have to tell him that you are so scared and upset, that it is seriously affecting your happiness and sanity.”

“I can try, but I don’t think he would care about that. In any case, if I push it, he might beat me just for saying it.”

Paul shook his head. “Then I don’t know what else to tell you. It’s a mess for sure. I need some time to think more about this.”

***

A couple of months later, Bill Mayberry commenced a week of solitary night duty.

When he got home at eight-thirty on Wednesday morning, following his second night duty, he spoke to his wife, “It’ll be tonight, Tracy,” he told her. “Don’t fucking forget!”

At midnight that night, Bill unlocked the key safe in the Control Room. From the box of spare, low-security-risk keys – the school stationary cabinet; the vocational workshop paint store, and the wet-weather gear locker, and so on – he took the spare key for the walk-in freezer.

At midnight that night, Tracy sat on a chair in her darkened kitchen. She was fully dressed. The window was open, and she was listening intently. She lit her second cigarette, smoking to calm her nerves.

At midnight that night, Paul pulled his car into the secluded space in the thick woodland, about half a mile from the Centre. He killed the lights and the switched off the engine. The car had a full tank of petrol. In the glove box were two envelopes. Each contained a professionally made fake British passport and five hundred pounds.

***

At eight o’clock Thursday morning, Simon Healey, the Principal Officer, unlocked the pedestrian gate and entered the Centre. The eight officers attending for early day shift, filed in behind him.

One officer immediately entered the gatehouse; his duty station for the day, while the remainder went straight to the Control Room in ‘E’ Block, to collect their individual sets of keys, and make ready for the handover from Bill Mayberry.

Bill was not there.

Simon quickly walked along the corridor, and checked the dining hall and kitchen. Harry, the Senior Officer entered the ablutions, called out Bill’s name, and pushed open the doors to the stalls. No sign of Bill.

“Tom and Mick,” Simon said, returning to the Control Room. “You two get over to the school and workshop, check if he’s there.”

They grabbed their keys and rushed from E block, running across the yard towards the two buildings. Both were locked and secure. The officers’ entered, and found no sign of Bill inside.

Simon called them all back to the Control Room. “Okay. Keep the all the boys locked down. No movement. But I want an immediate head count.”

He then called the Warden at his home, to give him the bad news.

Within minutes, the head count was completed. “Simon,” Harry called, “We’ve two missing from ‘B’ Dorm!”

Simon picked up the red phone; the direct line to the local Police Station.

Very shortly afterwards, half-a-dozen uniformed police officers arrived, all blue lights and sirens, followed quickly by two Detectives.

The Warden turned up fifteen minutes later.

***

“Well, this is what we have, so far,” said DCI Weathers to the Warden. “Officer Bill Mayberry is missing. There are two escapees; both described as heavily-built – and violent, judging by the crimes for which they were banged up. We have already sent out an alert to all stations and patrols to be on the lookout for them.”

“They may have surprised Bill, and maybe overpowered him,” said DC Peters, “then forced him to use his keys to aid their escape. The fact that he’s missing could mean that they have likely taken him along as a hostage.”

“Yeah,” said DCI Weathers, “that’s a fair assumption. But how did the two missing inmates get out of the dormitory in the first place? The lock was not broken, and it was locked this morning. None of the other inmates can – or will – throw any light on their escape. They’re keeping stumm, as expected.”

“Yes. That’s the weirdest bit of all this,” said DC Peters. “Maybe Bill unlocked the dorm and went in, for some reason. Maybe they lured him in; possibly feigning illness?”

“That would be totally against protocol,” the Warden said. “The officer on nights is not allowed into the cells or dormitories. If there is a suspected serious illness, or, indeed any serious incident, they have to call me to assign the appropriate action, and call for assistance.”

It was not until the lock down was lifted, some time later on in the morning, when the chef unlocked the walk-in freezer to prepare a very delayed breakfast-cum-lunch for the remaining inmates, that the detective’s assumption of the escape, and Bill’s absence, was quashed.

The chef called to DC Peters, who was just outside the kitchen, in the corridor, talking to PO Healey.

“You’d better come here, and quick!”

The detective constable entered the kitchen, and walked quickly over to the freezer.

He immediately got in his radio to his boss. “Guv, you had better get over to the kitchen. You’ve gotta see this!”

Bill Mayberry’s corpse was curled up on the floor of the freezer, just inside the heavy insulated door. It was covered in sheen of frost, and a white plastic carrier bag was pulled over his head, tied tightly around his neck.

The detective knelt down and checked for a pulse, knowing already that he wouldn’t find one.

“Jesus! Suffocated and frozen to death!” he said, before getting on his radio and calling for a forensic team.

***

About a year after Bill Mayberry had been murdered, four people sat at a round table in a bistro, in Alicante, Spain. A tall dark-haired man, two burly youths in their late teens, and a pretty young woman. Each had a glass of beer in front of them.

The young woman reached under the table and lifted a large handbag. She pulled out three, brown paper packages. She slid one across the table to the man, and the other two she passed to the teenagers. The four looked at each other in silence for a moment, and then broke into smiles.

“Cheers!” said the man, raising his glass. The others followed suit; clinking their glasses together.

“We done it!” the woman said, shaking her head gently in feigned disbelief.

The two teenagers, both tough young criminals from the East End of London; and both on the run from the police, quickly finished their celebratory drinks, picked up their packages—each containing one hundred thousand pounds—and stood up from the table.

“With this money, we can buy Spanish passports, and ditch those fake British ones that you got for us!” one said to the man.

 “Here’s the duplicate dormitory key that you gave us,” said the other, sliding a key across the table toward the man. “Figured you might want it back.”

With a quick goodbye, the two of them left the pub and, once outside, split up and walked off in different directions.

The man placed his package—containing two hundred thousand pounds—into a briefcase that sat on the floor at his side.

The woman finished her beer and stood up.

“Goodbye, Paul, and thanks again,” she said.

“Goodbye, Tracy,” Paul said. “And good luck.”

Tracy didn’t need any more luck than she already had.

As she walked from the bistro into the warm Spanish sunshine, the balance of the nine hundred thousand pounds she had received, in total, from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority, for the criminal death of her husband Bill, and the one hundred thousand pounds Life Insurance payout, was comfortably deposited in her bank account.

---

Bio: Steve Foreman is British, an HM Forces Veteran (Army), a former Prison Officer, and a recently-retired security contractor/advisor, who lived and worked for over 30 years in Africa. He now lives back in the UK, with his teenage daughter. His fictional work has appeared in Twisted Dreams, Aphelion, Close to the Bone, Siren’s Call, and Hellfire Crossroads, and he’s been published in two “Amok” anthologies, and two “James Kirk Ward” anthologies. Gypsy Shadow Publishing published a collection of his short stories in “Greybark, and other Twisted Tales” (many of which were reprinted from the above magazines). As a freelance writer, his non-fiction articles have appeared in BBC Wildlife, Soldier magazine, Combat & Survival magazine, SCUBA magazine, Church of England Newspaper, African Travel Review, Land Rover World magazine, Your Dog magazine, Travel News and Lifestyle magazine (Kenya), The Dar Guide (Tanzania), and the Daily Mail newspaper (UK).

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