Cages by David Mark (reading fiction TXT) 📗

understanding, and sees that the rest of the group are nodding in agreement. ‘They ask if you have any mitigation,’ says a tall man with a flat nose and home-made tattoos on the backs of his hands. ‘Every time, you get your chance to explain. But the explanation doesn’t mean anything if they take it as an excuse. You still get done for stuff, no matter what.’

‘My pad-mate in Frankland was there for knee-capping his best mate,’ says a broad-shouldered black man who hasn’t previously spoken. ‘Best mate had shagged his wife, got her pregnant, sent her to some doctor he knew to get rid of it, and the doctor bodged the job so badly she couldn’t have kids. So my pad-mate done him. Took his kneecaps off with a golf club. His mate took it as well. Accepted he had it coming. Police still ended up involved and my pad-mate got eight years. Eight fucking years! Like, he was the bad guy! I mean, whose rules are these?’

Rufus stretches, glancing at the clock. It’s been a good session. He wants to wind them down a little before lunch, but the discussion is becoming a little animated as the group share similar stories of injustice. He glances at Annabeth. She’s glaring at Griffin Cox, who still has his hand up. To distract the class from their private conversations, he gives a theatrical sigh.

‘You were after my attention, I believe,’ he says, brightly. ‘If you’re after a lavatory break, we’re almost ready to stop for lunch …’

‘This Jasmine,’ says Cox, drawing out each syllable, almost tasting each letter in the name. ‘I think perhaps it is demeaning to suggest she would be imperiled into the situation by her love for another. Perhaps it is simply her choice – an opportunity to use skills otherwise dormant. If we are to imply that she is not a willing participant in the debt collection, I fancy it would be more potent if she had been forced into it for reasons of her own – perhaps for mistakes in her past …’

‘Fuck off, Cox,’ says Suggs, sourly, shaking his head as he remembers that he is sharing airspace with a specimen he finds repellent.

Cox turns to Suggs. Angles his head as if watching something fall from a great height.

‘Perhaps,’ says Cox, sucking on the thought, ‘or perhaps she has a secret. Something she did that she can never escape, no matter how far she runs. Maybe, she is at John’s door, doing this unsavoury thing, so as to safeguard her precious: to shore up the walls as they begin to crumble.’

‘Whatever, Cox,’ spits Suggs, pushing back from the table and scratching out the two sentences he has been jotting down on his pad in a spidery hand. ‘You write your own story, you dirty bastard. Something about a nonce stuck between the people who want to kill him inside, and those who want to see him released so they can saw his fucking head off …’

Rufus holds up his hands. Glances to Annabeth for reassurance. She’s not even looking his way – just staring off through the small, dirty window, into a sky that looks as though its colour has been slurped away with a straw.

‘Shall we pause there?’ asks Rufus, hopefully.

When Annabeth fails to reply, it falls to Callan, his big fists on the table in front of him: silverback to his core.

‘Aye, prof. We’ll leave it there.’

Before he turns away, Rufus locks eyes with Cox. Looks at the little lesion on his arm. Watches, mystified, as Cox takes his pencil, and pushes it, ever so slowly, into the wound. A look of ecstasy passes over his face, and then it is gone, and he is raising his arm to his mouth, sucking at the droplet of blood as if trying to remove venom from a snakebite.

‘Jesus,’ mutters Rufus, turning away.

And behind him, soft as rain: ‘Sanguin Christi. Amen.’

Blood of Christ.

TWELVE

‘Thanks for this, Annabeth. Honestly. It’s a privilege.’

She examines him critically, alert for any sign he’s taking the piss. Sees none. He’s tucking into macaroni cheese and a slice of fatty gammon, stopping every now and again to take a slurp from his can of Sprite. He seems very much at ease, suddenly. He’s got the morning session out of the way and has the look of somebody who has already faced the wolf, and won. He has the air of somebody who knows he’s equal to the coming tasks. Despite the swearing and the steam and the jangle of keys not ten feet behind him, he could easily be sat at The Langham tucking into afternoon tea.

‘A privilege, Rufus? You can’t mean the food, surely.’

He smiles at that. ‘It’s perfectly edible. Nice, even, though if you were one of my students I’d be appalled at such a vapid, vacuous word. No, I mean the whole thing. Being here. Getting a chance to connect with people that perhaps I would never have spent time with if not for opportunities like these. It feels wrong to be paid for it, somehow, though that is, of course, no instruction to cancel the transfer …’

She smiles at that. It had been a surprise to learn that an author she considers a contemporary legend might be struggling financially. She had presumed that the royalties from his books would pay for at least two holidays a year, and that the advance on his next manuscript would have paid off whatever remained on his mortgage. The truth had struck her as deeply unfair. ‘We’re all skint,’ he’d said early on in their friendship. ‘Don’t give creative people money. Ever. Asking your creativity to make money is a sure-fire way to rob it of its joy. Focus on the work, on the craft, on the delight of creating. Say “bugger it” to money as much as you can. Honestly, if you give a writer too much money, they spend it. Creatives don’t live in the real world. Even when you