‘Of course.’
‘This is my friend Liza,’ I said. ‘Liza, this is Detective Inspector Wallis.’
Liza gave a theatrical gasp. ‘Am I interrupting something important?’
‘It’s fine.’ I turned to Joy. ‘Liza was there when Danielle dragooned me into doing this. How was abroad, Liza?’
‘Completely mind-blowing,’ she said. ‘Life-changing. I’m going to invite you round and tell you about it in complete detail. And the flat looks great. The plants are in better shape than they were when I left.’
‘Good,’ I said.
Liza looked at Joy. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘You probably have important things to talk about.’ She hovered expectantly, but when I didn’t contradict her, said, ‘Right, I’m going to circulate.’ She started to move away, then stopped and turned around. ‘Oh, one thing, Bonnie. This is probably stupid, but do you have any idea what happened to my rug?’
Before
On the other side of the road, I saw Neal. He was walking swiftly towards the Underground station, his arms around some kind of bag. His face was strained and wretched and I felt a moment of tenderness and contrition, yet I shrank behind the tree so that he wouldn’t see me. I watched him as he dwindled into the distance before setting off again.
I turned down the little dogleg lane and the noise of the cars and lorries dropped away. It was dark and suddenly quiet. I went round the bend, past the small garage that was closed now, only the sign advertising MOTs and bodywork repairs flapping idly in the wind, and at last I was there. A light shone from the living-room window.
I was going to tell him. I really was going to tell him. Wasn’t I? Yet my flesh ached for his touch and my heart longed for his smile. Just to see him again, just to stand in his arms one more time and feel his breath on my hair, to hear him whisper my name. My love.
The door was open. I stepped inside.
An Excerpt from House of Correction
Read on for an excerpt from Nicci French’s next electrifying thriller
HOUSE OF CORRECTION
Chapter One
The screaming started at three in the morning. Tabitha had never heard a human being howl in that way before. It was like the screeching of an animal caught in a trap and it was answered by shouts, distant, echoing. Tabitha couldn’t tell whether they were cries of comfort or anger or mockery. The screams subsided into sobs but even these were amplified by the metal, the doors, the stairs and floors. Tabitha felt they were echoing inside her head.
She sensed a movement from the bunk above her.
The other woman must be awake.
‘Someone’s in trouble.’
There was silence. Tabitha wondered if the woman was ignoring her or really was asleep, but then a voice came out of the darkness. She was speaking slowly, as if she were talking to herself. Her voice was low and gravelly, a smoker’s morning voice.
‘Everyone’s in trouble,’ she said. ‘That’s why they’re here. That’s why they’re crying, when they think about their children or what they did. Or what they did to their children. When there’s real trouble, you don’t hear any screams. You just hear the screws running along the corridors. When it’s really bad you hear a helicopter landing out on the field. That’s happened three times, four times, since I’ve been here.’
‘What’s that for?’ asked Tabitha. ‘What do you think?’
Tabitha tried not to think about what a helicopter landing in the middle of the night meant. She tried not to think at all. But she failed. As she lay staring up at the bottom of the bunk above her, as she heard the sobs and the shouts and then another burst of crying from someone else, she had a sudden feeling of absolute clarity piercing the murk: this was real.
Up to now, it had all been so strange, so completely outside her experience, that it had felt like a lopsided fairy tale about someone else going to prison, someone she was reading about or watching in a film, even when she herself was experiencing it. When she was sitting in the tiny, windowless compartment in the van that brought her from the court; when she took her clothes off and squatted and was stared at and examined and heard a woman laugh about her small breasts and hairy armpits; when she stood in the shower afterwards. She had been issued with sheets and an itchy blue blanket and a thin towel and escorted through door after door. The doors really were made of heavy metal. They really did clang shut. The warders really did carry huge bunches of keys attached on chains to their belts. The prison was so prison-like.
Yesterday afternoon, as she was escorted through the central hall, lined with cells on both sides and on the floor above, she felt stared at by women standing in groups. She wanted to say: this isn’t real. I’m not one of you. I don’t belong here.
She lay there on her bunk trying not to think of that, trying not to replay it in her mind, over and over again. But even that was better than thinking of where she was, right now, this minute, in this space.
Tabitha had never liked lifts. What if they fell? What if they got stuck? She always took the stairs. When she went to London, she hated the Underground. Once she had been on a train in the rush hour, standing up, crammed among the hot bodies and the train had stopped between tunnels. There had been a muffled announcement, which she couldn’t understand. It had stopped for five minutes, ten minutes. It was in the summer and the heat was stifling. Gradually Tabitha had thought of the solid clay and brick between her and the surface. And then she had thought of how she was in the middle of a train that was stuffed with people in carriage after carriage in front of her and carriage
