If it was a phoney talk, he didn’t have to pretend for too long. They had called to confirm they were visiting after putting off their trip the day before and the governor had been pretty quick to meet them in the reception area. After the usual security checks, he took them through into the main arrivals yard. He told them the large concreted area was where the security vans first arrived. Inmates were either taken back to their blocks if they were already prisoners, or moved into a separate processing office if they were new arrivals.
The governor was outwardly far friendlier on their second visit but his tone definitely seemed forced and a tad over-enthusiastic. He talked them through the areas that had been rebuilt and showed them where the old parts of the establishment had been before the riots. He led them off to an area where he said executions used to take place. Jessica knew the basics but was surprised when he told them the last hangings took place in the 1960s. She wouldn’t have guessed it was quite so recent.
He took them into the main prison area and pointed out the various wings. He mentioned a famous rock star and told them how he had spent six weeks in the prison a few years previously. He offered to show them the cell but Jessica decided that would be a step too far. The pleasantries were at least interesting but they were there on business. If the governor was annoyed at having his impromptu tour interrupted, then he didn’t react, instead walking them through to the wing McKenna was kept on.
It was essentially a wide and long hallway, with cells that went up three storeys high. There was a big gap between the two sides with a couple of pool tables interspersed with a few other chairs in the middle of the hard grey floor. Jessica had been into a few prisons but rarely into the area where prisoners were actually housed. In terms of the actual cells, there wasn’t much sign of the stereotypical vertical bars most people would picture. The main gates in and out of the wings themselves were barred across and needed to be unlocked but the actual cell doors were thick, heavy and made of metal. It wasn’t as grim as she might have guessed but certainly wasn’t as bright and new as the visiting areas always appeared.
‘Everyone gets to spend twelve hours out of their cell between eight and eight,’ the governor explained. ‘There’s a games area towards the bottom of the wing with more pool tables and so on. What we’ve done is move them all down there just for while you’re here. It was a bit cramped so some of them are outside in the rec area. It will give you free access to walk into the cells. You do have to understand that the property they have in their rooms is their own, though. Some get very, er, funny about things being moved.’
Jessica understood. People in pretty much any situation would be annoyed by someone else shuffling their possessions around. In prison, those items would be much more valued simply because the inmates had so little.
The governor continued to speak as he walked them further on to the seemingly deserted wing. ‘If you do want to talk to anyone else, it can be arranged. I’m not sure everyone would want to talk to the authorities but I doubt many would mind that much. Mr McKenna is in a cell next to the interview room and ready whenever you are.’
He was certainly going out of his way to accommodate them. The governor led them off to one side of the hall towards one of the cells. The rooms already had their doors all open. Rowlands asked why. ‘Between eight in the morning and eight at night, doors have to be kept open. If someone is feeling ill or wants to sleep or something like that they can go to the medical area. It’s for everyone’s safety really. Say an incident did happen, the guards wouldn’t be able to see anything or know something was wrong if the doors were closed.’
‘What about after eight?’ Jessica asked.
‘The main lights stay on for about an hour and then are off until around seven the next morning. They can have small lamps in their cells if they want to read and pretty much everyone has a TV in the room. Ultimately we can’t watch them twenty-four hours a day. It’s extremely rare anything happens. Most of the rooms have two people in them and there’s a degree of matching to try to ensure people get along. There’s a separate wing for vulnerable prisoners but genuinely most people just want to do their time.’
‘When I was here a few days ago, Donald McKenna said he had a cell to himself,’ Jessica said.
‘That’s true. A lot of it comes down to how crowded we are. Sometimes every cell has two people in it and we have to use places like the vulnerable wing just to get everyone in. Either that or release inmates who don’t have much left on their sentence. At the moment, we’re not quite at capacity so there are some prisoners who get a cell to themselves.’
‘How is that decided?’ Rowlands asked.
‘Each wing has a senior warden. There’s no way I can oversee everyone all the time but everyone reports back to me. I leave decisions like that up to them. It should come down to behaviour and things like that. Sometimes it just falls to the more senior prisoners though. A lot of it works itself out.’
Given Farraday’s suggestion that someone on the wing might have some sort of involvement, that last part stuck out to Jessica. Ending up in a cell by himself could well indicate some sort of preferential treatment. It was still a far cry from that to either helping McKenna get out of the prison or aiding him to carry out murders but it was something to bear in mind.
The governor pointed them to one of the open doors. ‘It’s that one there. Feel free to take your time. I’ll wait here if you have anything to ask.’
Jessica entered the cell as Rowlands waited by the door. There wasn’t an awful lot of space for the two of them to fit inside. There was a bunk bed immediately on her left and the room was only a little longer than the bed itself. On the opposite wall from the bed was a desk that ran most of the length of the wall. On it was a small portable TV, a Bible and some battered paperbacks. At the end was a small sink with a mirror and some toiletries above it. Opposite the sink, at the end of the bed and only just fitting into the space between the bed and the wall, was a metal toilet. She figured it was certainly made for a man; there was no toilet seat, just four raised pieces of plastic.
At the end of the thin aisle that separated the bed from the table, there was a solid-looking window at the top of the facing wall. The glass was misty and impossible to see out of and there were bars in front of it. It had only taken her a few seconds to look at the whole place. ‘Anything?’ asked Rowlands from the door.
‘You can pretty much see everything I can, Dave.’
She felt stupid for doing it but tried wobbling the four bars that blocked the window. They didn’t budge. She looked under the bed, where there was a pair of dark trainers but nothing else. She pushed and tapped the walls, almost as if she was surveying the place. She didn’t know what she was looking for. It’s not as though she expected there to be a gaping hole in the wall with ‘tunnel’ written over the top but she hadn’t expected something so cramped either.
Jessica tried moving the toilet and the sink, just to see if they were loose from the wall but, aside from a slightly wobbly pipe under the sink, the actual units didn’t shift at all.
Eventually after checking everything a second time, she went back to the doorway and Rowlands moved aside to let her out. ‘You wanna have a look?’ she asked.
‘Not much point really, is there? As you said, I could pretty much see it all anyway.’
‘Have you ever been here before?’
‘We had this training day thing but not in the cells, no.’
‘What do you reckon?’
‘I’d feel sorry for someone sharing with me. After I’ve been to the toilet, you would definitely need more space than that to air it out.’