‘Watch through the window,’ Emma instructs, passing Kristin her backpack. ‘I won’t be long.’
Kristin nods, bottom lip sucked between her teeth.
Emma walks into the cold air of the corridor, and Randy closes and locks the door behind her.
Deep in this basement area, where no natural light intrudes,it’s hard to remember it’s the middle of the day. It’s not as dark as the last time she was here, during sleeping hours. But her footsteps still sound unnervingly echoey, and the dingy white-painted cinder block collects gruesome shadows. The nightlights above the cells are still burning, and suspended above the yellow danger line, a long wire-covered bank of dull fluorescent tubes hums in the corridor ceiling.
Emma tries to avoid glancing into the cells on the left, but her attention is snagged at the second cell in the row, where an orderly is mopping the floor. He looks up, vacant-eyed, as Emma passes by. She wonders briefly where the cell’s inmate is: she’s aware that the residents of this wing of Byberry are only released by transfer to federal penitentiaries, or by death. The sloshing sound of the mop, the clang of the metal bucket, follows her up the corridor.
When she steps within view of Simon’s cell, she feels it like a magnification of the fluorescents’ hum.
The white cell is dimly lit. Simon seems to be asleep. He is lying on his side facing the wall, on a thin mattress that decorates a shelf of sheet metal jutting from the rear wall of the cell. While Simon has his back to her, Emma gets a good look at the furnishings of his current accommodation: to the left, another metal shelf for a desk, with a wooden stool; on the desk, a sheaf of paper and a small cardboard box with a collection of soft pastel chalks; above the desk, a metal ledge with three books of poetry. In the cell’s far-right corner, a stainless-steel toilet, no cistern.
Simon still has not turned to face her. She wonders if he is annoyed with her, or maybe he is really asleep. The long length of his back islike a skinny mountain range; his hips and ribs and spinal corrugations are clearly defined beneath the blue asylum scrubs. He is wearing white socks, his slippers lying abandoned by the stool.
She thinks it’s unlikely he’s asleep. He is simply waiting for her to make the first move in this strange game they play.
‘Good morning, Simon,’ she says.
‘Hello, Emma.’ He rolls over to face the ceiling, rests his laced fingers on his stomach. ‘Are you here to discover more information you could doubtless figure out on your own? Why don’t you go back to Quantico and have a discussion with … What was his name? Mr Bell? I notice you didn’t mention him the last time we met – has he been ground up in the FBI machine already?’
Emma is almost used to these conversational parries now. ‘You seem to be in a bad mood, Simon. Should I come some other time?’
He throws an arm across his closed eyes. ‘You must excuse me, I was rudely awakened only a few minutes ago.’
‘You always sleep late?’ she asks politely.
‘I rarely wake before noon. Evenings are the best time for living.’
‘So you’ve become nocturnal.’
‘What hath night to do with sleep?Oh, I beg your pardon, I’m assuming you’ve read Milton, and that’s probably not true.’ Simon removes his arm and rolls farther until he is looking at her, propped on one elbow. His face does seem drawn from sleep, his white hair sticking up like straw, his eyes narrowed. ‘But it appears you’ve brought something to rouse me.’
‘I have,’ Emma acknowledges, knowing he can smell it. She holds up the cigarette. ‘I’m going to toss it to you now.’
She tosses the white tube like a dart. The Marlboro sails over the yellow line, through the cell bars, to land on the floor and skid toward the bed. Simon leans over casually and picks it up.
‘Am I to eat the tobacco? How charming.’ He brings the cigarette to his nose for a brief moment.
Emma holds up the matchbook. ‘You get one match. If you use it to light anything but the cigarette, and if you don’t toss the match and the matchbook out straightaway, Grenier will be down here with the hose.’
‘Very fair,’ Simon notes.
She tosses the matchbook just inside the bars, fervently hoping this bribe makes him more amenable.
Simon slides his legs off the bed and sits up, slips his socked feet to the floor of the cell. He places the cigarette carefully beside him on the mattress and rubs his face, slides a hand through his white hair. He seems entirely composed of pale limbs, broad shoulders, sharp corners. Emma glances away.
By the time Simon collects the cigarette, comes closer to retrieve the matchbook, he appears entirely alert. Squatting on his haunches, he strikes the match and lights the cigarette, sucking hard. When it’s clear the cigarette is not going to go out, he tosses the matchbook out of the cell, shakes the cardboard match, and flicks it through the bars with his fingers.
He makes a happy sigh as he retreats back to the mattress, breathing smoke. ‘Excellent. Now we may have a proper conversation. What do you wish to ask me?’
The cardboard match, spent but still trailing hydrocarbons, lies in the no-man’s-land between the cell and the yellow line. Emma drags her eyes back to Simon. ‘I’ve been working through the similarities and differences between Huxton and the College Killer.’
‘That must have been cheery.’
Simon is now comfortable on the bed, his back against the wall, one knee up on which to rest his hand with the cigarette. Every dim point of light arrows to him, as though Simon is the vortex around which the visual composition of the cell revolves.
Emma tries to lead into her questions slowly. ‘Last time I visited, you gave me some clues about posing. Now I want to know more about motive – because so far as I can see, these men operate in similar ways, but their motivations seem very different.’
