Goatie 10

I was in bunk, rattling with not sleeping. Footsteps on the landing. I waited for them to pass. Jangling keys. Under observation. If it wasn’t the peephole, it was the wardens and their CCTV. The night shift was laughing outside the cell door. I sat up on my bed, back pressed against the wall. Wondering whose cell they were going to toss. Drugs or phones. They’ll be looking for drugs or phones, I reassured myself. The door banged open. Brighter outside than in, but there was three of them, including the governor. They huckled me away, with my arm up my back. They were playing rough and tough.

Their boss led the way. Big steps for such a small man. Door opened and clanged shut behind us. The guard let go of my arm and pushed me towards the open door of the governor’s office. I stumbled but regained my balance.

I did that thing of rubbing my arm from elbow to wrist as we started at each other. He’d an acned face that looked as if his skin had been dipped in something shiny. I hoped it hurt. ‘Thanks for that,’ I told him. ‘I’ll let Tonka know yev been treatin me shite.’

Acne face glanced at his partner, who wouldn’t meet his eyes. Tonka’s victims, the ones that lived, we called the zombies. We never heard their screams. They never left their cells. They locked themselves in. If they could have fitted in an even smaller space in their heads, they’d have jumped at the chance. The suicide squad.

I blinked a bit to give my eyes time to readjust to the governor’s office. It wasn’t much more that a cubby hole with desks and chairs and a computer, but it was tidy. It didn’t stink of sweat and body odour, but there was that hint of the secret smoker. Fag douts hidden away in hidden crevices and disposed of later.

He was playing at being too busy to acknowledge I existed, or was standing in front of his desk. I yawned, but he continued writing longhand in a very slow and measured way. The table light showed pale skin showing pink through the buzz cut, his blond eyebrows were almost none existent as if plucked to the bone, like a wee Barbie man gone AWOL to gaol. If I pulled his trouser down he probably wouldn’t have a cock, but the pink legs of a girl.  

He gave me time to go play my usual game of figuring the worst-case scenario. Tortured and murdered or becoming an honourable Tory, potential candidate MP, like the prison governor.

He glanced up at me with chocolate-brown eyes. ‘Sit,’ he motioned with his balding forehead to a plastic seat I could pull over from the wall.

‘I’ll jist stand.’ I smirked. ‘It’ll help me grow tall.’

‘Suit yourself. I’ve got a problem, I really don’t know how to deal with.’

His hands deskbound. Fingers in a cage clutching and holding. White knuckling, but with a gold wedding ring. A little wife at home to do his worrying for him. But then I thought she must be really wee, probably tiny, which was also a worry that she might fall down a hole.  I raised a wooly eyebrown. ‘Whit?’

‘You.’

‘Aye, I’ve always been a problem. Personally, I blame my mother.’ I craned my neck to get a better look at the books on his bookshelf. He’d a concise German dictionary with a yellow spine. ‘But my da was a cunt tae.’

‘Well, it must run in the family.’ Governors were politicians with different jackets on. They could read a room. ‘Did I ever tell you what makes a successful team?’

My legs were tiring. I dragged a chair over and sat down. ‘Nah, yeh didnae.’

‘Well, a successful team is full of cunts that do what they’re told.’

I knew he’s sworn to try and impress me and bolster his bad-boy image. Speak my lingo. And I was impressed. ‘Look, I was never part of a team. When my mates were playin side affs, I was in the bushes fingerin Wendy the Wanking Machine. An I’m in my cell about 23 out of 24 hours noo, yev went back tae lockdoon. How can I no dae whit I’m telt?’

The tip of his tongue probed the corner of his lips were it went scaly and yellow. ‘That’s not the point. You’ve got the whole prison in an uproar about goat men and nightcrawlers. The staff-sickness rate has went through the roof. We’ve got agency staff that couldn’t stop a trifle from shaking, but are good at hiding. And we’ve got a missing prisoner, presumed dead.’

He waited me out.

‘That’s got fuck aw tae dae wae me.’

‘Shame,’ he said with a cluck of his tongue. ‘That means segregation. Or the suicide cells.’

‘But I’m no suicidal.’

That amused him. I tried shrugging him off, but he upped the ante.

‘You will be with the banging every fifteen minutes. The light shining in your eyes. The question asked can you can confirm you’re not having suicidal thoughts at that moment. The few minutes it takes to write that down, before it starts again.’

‘I’m on remand here,’ I reminded him. ‘I’ve not been found guilty of any crime.’

‘Yes, that’s why we really need to take good care of you.’

‘That’s torture,’ I told him.

‘You get the wreck you don’t  pay for. We’re no longer part of the EEC. We signed off on human rights a long time ago. Our paymasters love torturers. It’s all part and package of our duty of care, but we don’t put it that way.’

The governor had a lot in common with Tonka.

‘So…?’ I waited for him to fill me in.

‘So,’ he flashed a smile. ‘How did you kill him and get his body out of prison?’

My shoulders drooped and I stared at my stockinged feet. ‘Don’t know anythin about that.’

He sighed and went through the motions of asking. ‘What about this goat man and night crawlers? You know anything about that?’

‘Aye,’ I admitted.  

‘Well, that’s something.’

‘I know whit yeh told me about them bein ridiculous. An yed know, because yer the big man.’

He stood up. ‘Segregation it is then. Then suicide watch.’

I chuckled. ‘It’ll be nice tae spend some time on my ownie-oh.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It will.’