chapter10

Helen pushed through the crowds, searching for a place of sanctuary. She had never seen the canteen so busy—the unsettled inmates gathering together for moral support—and there was not a seat to be had anywhere. Helen was seldom invited to join anyone's table, but usually there was an out-of-the-way spot she could claim as her own. This morning, however, the prison gangs and cliques were out in force, seeking safety in numbers. Those who did catch her eye radiated hostility, even suspicion, as if Helen herself might have been responsible for her neighbor's death.

Clutching her breakfast tray, Helen made another circuit of the room. She was buffeted every step of the way, stray elbows finding their way to her ribs, but finally she got a break. Jordi, a cheerful former prostitute, caught her eye and shuffled up to allow her some room. Helen had helped the illiterate sex worker write her recent parole application—Jordi had teenage daughters whom she missed desperately—and they were now on friendly terms. Hence her act of mercy.

Helen seated herself quickly and cast an eye around the table. Babs, a seventy-year-old lifer with a dodgy hip but a good heart, nodded at Helen, giving her tacit support to Jordi's generosity of spirit. Noelle, a boisterous drug dealer who'd always been fair to Helen, did likewise, flashing her gold teeth quickly before returning to her cornflakes. The others at the table Helen didn't know well, and she expected them to object to her sudden arrival, but their mood was subdued today. Hostilities had been suspended following the night's shocking events—Helen noted that no one was even bothering to bait Lucy this morning.

“You not eating?” Babs asked as Helen toyed with her breakfast.

“Maybe later,” Helen replied, though in truth she couldn't face anything.

“Have something. You won't get another chance until lunchtime.”

Relenting, Helen picked up her burned toast, but before she could take a bite, Jordi dived in.

“You hear anything last night?”

“For God's sake, Jordi,” Noelle interrupted. “Let the woman have her chow in peace.”

“Just asking...”

“Nothing... ,” Helen answered, to Jordi's evident disappointment. “I was up half the night, but even so...”

“Did you see anything, then? When Bradshaw went in?”

Helen shook her head once more. At roll call, you stand by your cell and don't move unless you're told to. It's part of the deadening routine of prison life, which you flout at your peril, but Helen now regretted her obedience. It was clear from the moment Sarah Bradshaw entered Leah's cell that something bad had happened. Helen had heard Bradshaw's half scream, the fast, muttered expletives and then the shrill shriek of the bell as the panicking officer punched the emergency alarm. Campbell, Robins and the rest had scrambled to assist as lockdown kicked in. The hungry inmates were kept inside until Leah's cell had been properly sealed off, leaving Helen in the dark about what had happened.

Code black. That had been everyone's first thought, but rumors spread fast in prison, and speculation had now taken a more sinister turn. People were saying that Leah Smith had been murdered.

Helen was no great friend of Leah's—her neighbor was suspicious, hostile and prone to violence—but the troubled young woman had been the first person Helen met in Holloway and she'd made an effort to show Helen the ropes. Such generosity toward a jailed police officer had surprised Helen, though she later wondered whether Leah's deep unpopularity had prompted her actions. She'd never fully got to the bottom of why Leah was so reviled. She knew a special kind of hatred was reserved for inmates who'd harmed children or babies, but Leah's unpopularity was so ingrained that Helen wondered if there was something else at play. Her lack of knowledge—both of Leah's history and of her fate—gnawed at her. Outside, she could have demanded answers. Inside, she was as clueless as the rest.

“If she was done in, there are plenty of suspects,” Noelle said darkly, casting an eye around the canteen.

“Easy, Noelle. Don't go throwing stones... ,” Babs warned gently.

“True though, innit? A lot of people with guilty consciences in here this morning.”

Helen listened as Noelle continued her dissection of prison politics. Jordi seemed less interested, excusing herself to hunt for more food, but Helen was keen to hear what Noelle had to say—even if most of her “facts” were unsubstantiated rumor and speculation. Leah was a marked woman and would have been a feather in the cap for any inmate. Though she'd recently tried to get clean, she was also a habitual drug user and alcoholic, which often brought her into conflict with the authorities and the prison gangs. To top it off, her temper was legendary—she'd recently threatened to gouge one of the kitchen staff for shortchanging her on baked beans. Such is the stuff of life and death in prison.

Noelle continued to talk, but solid information was hard to come by this morning. Babs had tapped up the “Golden Girls”—the small coterie of pensioners seeing out their days in Holloway—but had come back empty-handed, and to everyone's surprise it was Jordi, returning breathless and upset from the serving hatch, who finally broke the news to them.

“Sandra knows a girl who works in the governor's office,” Jordi said, nodding to the burly cook at the serving hatch. “She says an outside unit has already been called in.”

This was not a common or garden suicide, then. Helen didn't say anything, but she knew that the Prisons and Probation Service would be summoned only if there was something unusual or suspicious about Leah's death.

“They're saying that she was murdered in her bed and that... they'd done a job on her. They sewed up her mouth. Her eyes too.”

Helen stared at Jordi, barely taking in the words.

“They sewed her eyelids to her bloody cheeks. That's how they found her—eyes shut, grinning from ear to ear...”

Noelle remained silent as Jordi now wept. Even Babs looked shaken, and she had seen more than most. Helen kept her counsel, but her mind was already turning on this macabre development. She had heard unpleasant tales of prison justice before, but this was something else. It made her feel sick to the stomach, and by the looks of it she wasn't the only one—Sandra's news was doing the rounds and the atmosphere in the canteen had suddenly changed. Normally the inmates were raucous and excitable at mealtimes. But not today.

Today everybody looked terrified.