Cages by David Mark (acx book reading TXT) 📕

of bigger, bolder oxygen. The other prisoners on the wing are doing much the same, solitary men or occasional twos and threes, leaning on the railings and enjoying the peace. The men on the nearest wing are at dinner, now. There are no threats coming up from the floors below. No threats bleeding through the bars.

‘Good evening, Travis. Are you well?’

‘Aye, grand, grand. I said, are you practising for the Olympics?’

‘Back pain,’ says Cox, stretching lightly. He can feel a tingling in his fingers. Can barely feel his toes at all. It’s beginning to concern him. He has never thought of himself as an imposing physical specimen, but he has always been wiry and quick. He does not feel old enough to be suffering from such unfair aches and pains. Not now. Not when things are moving in the right direction.

‘My dad suffered with that,’ says Cox, chattily. He stands close: nearer than Cox is accustomed to. ‘Not my real dad, like. Mam’s boyfriend. Was with us for years, off and on. Never called him Dad when he was alive. Seems wrong not to, now. But aye, he was a marmite to it. Had to lay flat on the floor at the foot of me mam’s bed, which was a pisser for the Alsatian as that was where he liked to have a kip …’

Cox licks his lips. Twitches a smile. ‘A marmite? Do you think you might perhaps mean “martyr”?’

He waves a hand, unembarrassed. ‘Yeah, whatever … that weren’t the point of the story. Anyways, he said acupuncture was the thing that worked for him. You heard of it? I can give it a go – finding the needles, like, if there’s somebody you’d let stick ’em in.’

Cox hears himself laughing. Realizes that he must be feeling rather good, despite the pain. Normally he suppresses his mirth. At school, the prefects found his laughter amusing. So too his cries. His pitiful pleading. His laugh has long been a source of embarrassment: an odd tittering noise; as if speaking the words ‘hee-hee-hee’ over and over again. Dolly shrugs, a bit unnerved by the sudden outburst.

‘Wasn’t easy,’ says Parton, suddenly, moving closer. Cox feels the item he has ordered being surreptitiously dropped into the pocket of his leisure trousers. Slips his hand in after it to mask the bulge. His palm touches the back of Parton’s hand. Rough, warm skin. A jolt surges through him; the electricity of connection, of skin on skin. Parton pulls his hand free as if it were in the mouth of a snake.

‘It’s appreciated,’ says Cox, recovering himself. ‘And you have more than repaid my faith in you. There may be other items to procure, in the coming days. I trust that you will be similarly proficient.’

‘Aye, most things, mate, most things,’ says Dolly, moving away from him. He gives a funny jerk with his head, almost butting the air, then turns on his heel and heads back down the landing. Cox watches him go. He understands the younger man’s sudden sense of disquiet. Cox’s skin is always damp and clammy. He does not so much perspire as simply ooze a kind of cold, briny unguent. He does not seep from his facial pores but the rest of his flesh feels as if it belongs to somebody long since drowned in dirty water.

Cox stretches his back again, then returns to his cell. He is keen to examine the item in his pocket, but there will be inspections in the coming hour. Interruptions. He will not have the blessing of the turn of the key in the lock until much later. Even so, he allows himself a moment: withdrawing the cool glassy object from his pocket and taking a glance at its firm yet fragile shell. He did not imagine it would cost him so dear to obtain the empty glass jar, nor the packet of sparkling dust within. Took time and resources to have hard money transferred to the young man’s bank account. Worth it though he thinks, slipping the bauble beneath the clothes at the foot of his bed. Worth every penny.

He lays back on the bunk, staring up at the ornate wooden cross: the light catching the different sections of inlaid wood, lighting and darkening the pieces in turn. He is not a religious man. The cross is there to remind him of the need for atonement and the eternal glory of resurrection. He has fallen, but Griffin Cox will rise again.

To entertain himself, Cox searches the reference library in his mind. Finds the necessary article – the feature on the website, glimpsed once and filed away. It fills him with an obscene pleasure, as if each cell in his body were remembering the sensation of young skin. He fills himself up with recollections of the boy’s young, taut skin. The hope in his eyes, and the way the light left them: pupils like ink vanishing down a plughole.

Reads every word in the pleasant darkness of his mind. Doesn’t even have to touch himself to experience a release that makes him shake.

SIXTEEN

The clocks went forward a week ago and there’s a definite trace of spring in the air. Annabeth enjoys the feeling of driving home in daylight. Paull is a couple of miles from the prison and the road drifts mostly through agricultural land: the topography paving-slab flat. She likes to buzz the window down and breathe in the smell of the turned earth; of low tide; of diesel and salt and the odd chemical tang of the refinery that looms over the landscape like a space station: twisted metal and flashing lights.

It’s a little before seven when she pulls in on the main street by the water’s edge. Rufus’s car is poorly parked – one rear alloy having scraped the pavement and the front wheel half on, half off the kerb. Annabeth parks behind him. Checks her reflection in the pull-down mirror. She’s been in the gym for the past hour and