A Taste for Malice by Michael J. Malone Page A

simply no other option.
    The lie was pristine in white and had to remain.

Chapter 10
    Those held in Barlinnie Prison are allowed one thirty minute visit between Monday and Friday. The man I’m sitting in front of has had no-one in to visit him since he was locked up several months ago. Bar-L as it is known locally, was built in the late eighteen hundreds to cure the chronic overcrowding problem in Scotland’s jails. Ironic that it is now part of the problem.
    It is famous for the odd rooftop protest, a certain Libyan diplomat who was found guilty of involvement in the Lockerbie disaster and, until only fairly recently, for forcing the inmates to deposit their overnight excrement into a bucket and then “slopping out” in the morning.
    Joseph McCall is looking younger than when I first met him. He looks as if he has lost more than a couple of the twenty-two years he has lived so far. His prison garb is too big for his slight frame and his hair is longer and in need of a wash. His facial hair sums him up, thin and patchy.
    ‘Hi, Joseph,’ I say.
    He looks at an indeterminate space between us, his eyes dull and unfocused. He does nothing to show that he knows I am sitting in front of him or that I have actually spoken.
    ‘Just thought I’d come and say hi,’ I say. And wrestle with a few demons.
    He doesn’t move.
    I look around me. The Visits Hall is pretty busy. Wives and children sit before husbands and fathers, separated by the width of a table. Might as well be a thousand miles. They are a poor bunch. Cheap shoes and overcoats. Plastic bags from supermarket chains at their feet. It strikes me when I look at the people dotted around at the tables that more than a few of the inmates look better fed than their visitors. From exaggerated looks I judge that a few of the convicts “make” me. I must have cop engraved on my forehead.
    I consider for a moment that visiting Joseph in the general visiting area might cause him some problems. Then I look at him and change my mind. He looks like he wouldn’t care if the whole Scottish legal establishment was sat in front of him.
    ‘They looking after you in here?’
    Nothing.
    Not for the first time I think about the life this boy has had until now. He is born to a poor, unmarried mother with substance abuse problems. To get her next fix she regularly trades him off to men whose tastes run to the pre-teenage boy. His mother dies and her best friend takes over. He finally manages to make some form of life for himself and gets an education only to find out that his father was a career paedophile. He is then befriended by a serial killer who trains him up as an assistant. To escape this serial killer he takes the blame for several vicious murders and is given life imprisonment. If you watched that story line in a movie it would be titled “Unbelievable”.
    All this and he’s only in his early twenties.
    In some ways I feel responsible for him. We are linked in suffering. His mother and I were both victims of the same man. And now he is in jail for the rest of his life because I was unable to convince the powers that be they had locked up the wrong man.
    ‘Can I do anything to help you?’ I ask.
    ‘Is there anything you need?’ I ask.
    It’s like I’m speaking to a tailor’s dummy for all the reaction I get. I study his face for a clue that there is a shred of something resembling human intelligence within. His eyes are brown, each pupil a small black spot. His eyes look as if they have been dried of life, sandblasted to nothing but stone.
    Concern is clearly not the tactic to reach this man. I try something else.
    ‘Leonard been in to see you yet?’
    His nostrils flare slightly as he takes air in to his lungs.
    ‘Didn’t think so. How do you think he would thank you for being his bitch?’
    A muscle twitches in his jaw line.
    ‘He’s probably pissed off, ’cos that means he’s got one less target. One less slab of meat to slice open.’ I take a deep breath