Elizabeth pulls the trigger.
37
The truth is, you simply don’t get enough vitamin D in prison, and, in Connie Johnson’s view, that contravenes her human rights.
She doesn’t like the story her mirror is telling her one bit. She’s too pale. When she gets out of here she is going to the Maldives. Life can’t just be about work, and perhaps it’s time to spend a bit of that money she’s made? Perhaps St Lucia? Or France? Where do civilians go on holiday?
Connie has been abroad only twice in her life. Once on a school trip to Dieppe, where she had been sick on the ferry and a Geography teacher had tried to kiss her behind a hypermarket, and once locked in the boot of a BMW and driven to Amsterdam by two Liverpudlian brothers with whom she had had a difference of opinion. The Liverpudlian brothers and the Geography teacher had all soon regretted their actions.
Slap on the fake tan all you like, have your Botox and your fillers, but the three things the skin can’t survive without are vitamin D, vegetables and plenty of water, preferably sparkling. They don’t serve fresh vegetables in prison, but, through the contact of a contact, Connie has an Abel & Cole box delivered once a week, and another of her contacts, in the kitchens, can work wonders with a parsnip and an aubergine. She takes her vitamin D tablets, but there’s no real substitute for sunshine when you’re supposed to be locked up for twenty-three hours a day. She has a machine for sparkling water.
Connie is thinking prison would be very, very difficult without a bit of money and some VIP status. It’s still not great, but, much like travelling first class on the train, she’s going to be stuck there for a while and the toilets aren’t ideal, but at least someone brings her a cup of tea every now and again.
Either way, she’s going to have to get out of here sooner or later. Sunshine on her face, a gun in her waistband and a gym where you can do Reformer Pilates. She doesn’t need much.
Through the security gates and on to D-Wing now, Connie thinks about Ibrahim, that wise old owl. On the whole, Connie has not had good experiences with authority figures telling her what she should and shouldn’t do. But Ibrahim? With his nice suits and his kind eyes? For once in her life she doesn’t feel like she is being told off.
Connie passes a cell that is being hosed down with a pressure-washer. She gives the spray a wide berth, as she is wearing suede, and there is only so much the prison laundry can do, however much cannabis you smuggle in for them.
Connie has never really spoken to anyone the way she is speaking with Ibrahim. What is it? Honesty, perhaps? Connie can be a number of very different people, when the mood takes her. She puts on different faces if she wants to scare you, if she wants to sleep with you, or if she wants a prison warder to bring her a Nando’s. But doesn’t everyone? Isn’t everyone doing that all the time? Presenting a certain side of themselves to other people?
So what side is she presenting to Ibrahim, and why does it feel so different? Connie climbs the metal staircase to Heather Garbutt’s landing. Someone is shouting in their cell further down the corridor, something incoherent about asylum seekers. If you took everyone with mental-health issues out of this place they’d have to shut it down. Most people in here were, one way or another, just taking another step in a life of chaos, pulled by the tides of a world which neither wanted them nor needed them. Very few people in here were like Connie. Just plain bad.
Connie reaches the door of Heather’s cell. It is still empty because of the internal investigation into Heather’s death. The man in the admin block, the one with the Volvo from Tinder, has assured her that it has been left open. Connie walks into the cell, cold and empty in Heather’s absence.
‘ONLY CONNIE JOHNSON CAN HELP ME NOW.’ Well, let’s see what we can do, Heather. Let’s see if we can find what you were writing.
There are very few places to hide anything in a cell. Connie starts knocking on the walls, trying to hear a hollow sound. But the walls are too thick. No way through.