Dead Wrong - [11]

I wandered into the kitchen to make a drink. I could hear the murmur of the radio from the cellar below where Ray has his carpentry workshop. He makes furniture with great love and skill and absolutely no commercial acumen. For money he works as a joiner for some local builders. They contact him when they get a big job on and he works like mad for a month or so, and then has to catch up on his computer course. But the carpentry is where his soul is.

The hob was filthy. I ran hot water and picked up the pan scrub and the cream cleaner.

An hour later the hob, oven, work surface and kettle were gleaming. The rest of the room was still cluttered but as I said I don’t do pristine. Besides, I’d unwound enough to go to bed.

Chapter Five

I’d come away from Victor Wallace’s with the names and addresses of Luke’s friends, including the Khan family, the lawyer’s details and a sketchy list of who had been visited and interviewed by the defence solicitor or people acting for him.

I’d also got the visiting details for Golborne, the place in East Lancashire where Luke was being held. It made sense to start by seeing him first and then the others who’d been interviewed. I’d rung and arranged a visit as soon as I’d got home on the Tuesday after seeing Mr Wallace. They’d booked me in for the Friday morning.

I duly reported to the visitor’s centre adjacent to the remand centre the following afternoon.

Golborne Remand Centre is newer than either Risley or Hindley and boasts a better safety record – fewer suicides. It was one of the first places to be run by Group 4 Security, and when it opened there was a blaze of publicity, mostly about the adjoining Young Offender’s Institution which was to be run like a boot camp along American lines. Never mind that all the statistics show such regimes fail to turn around most young offenders.

Just getting near the place made me want to abscond. The idea of being locked up terrified me, not only because of the loss of liberty but because of the enforced separation from Maddie. She’d be taken into care, devastated. I’d lose her.

I shook away the frightening fantasies. I was checked through an electronic door, a bit like the ones at airports. The visitors’ lounge was awash with children and thick with smoke. There was a drinks machine in the corner. I was shown to a table and waited for them to take me through to see Luke Wallace.

Ten minutes later, suffering seriously from the effects of passive smoking, I was collected by a guard. He carefully unlocked the door through from the lounge and locked it behind us before using his keys on the next one. We walked down a narrow windowless corridor and then passed through another secured lobby leading into a longer corridor with a row of enclosed booths along one wall. I was shown to one of the cubicles. It had a small table and two chairs placed opposite each other. One wall was clear from waist height so we could be observed by the guards.

‘I’ll bring him through now, miss.’ The guard went, leaving the door shut but not locked.

A sign in large black capitals instructed all visitors not to pass any materials to prisoners, and warned that all materials including gifts e.g. cigarettes and food must be checked through the main office.

Although the place was only a few years old it already bore the marks of interminable time. The floor and walls and even the furniture were pocked with cigarette burns. The place stank of stale nicotine. There were names and dates scratched on the paintwork, and the see-through partition was a mass of scratches. I shifted in my seat trying to get comfortable, tried to edge my chair forward. I couldn’t. It was bolted to the floor.

Luke Wallace had the same stocky frame as his father though he was much slimmer, and the same round face. His thick hair was cut with a wedge in the back and fell to his eyes at the front in a heavy fringe.

He sat down and folded his hands on the table in front of him.

‘Just give us a nod when you’re finished,’ the guard said. He left the room, locking it behind him.

I introduced myself and explained what his father wanted me to do. As I spoke he kept looking away, studying his hands or staring over at the notice on the wall then casting sideways glances at me.

At first I mistook it for teenage disaffection, a show of boredom or restlessness then, as he glanced my way once more, I saw that he was scared witless. He couldn’t meet my eyes because he’d become cowed, disturbed by the nightmare he was living. He’d lost all confidence; he no longer knew who he could trust. In an effort to reassure him I repeated that his father had employed me.

‘Luke, I want you to tell me about Ahktar – anything, everything.’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘No, not about New Year’s Eve, before that. You were friends,’ I prompted.

‘Yes.’

‘Did you go to the same primary school?’

‘No,’ he shook his head, ‘secondary. We were in the same class, did the same subjects. We both stayed on…’ He broke off. The world of A levels and the sixth-form common room a million miles away.