You know, it's almost impossible to believe. Only thirteen days since my post, and I'm already back with something else. [throws party] Well, what can I say? I've been busy, and just this once, my labours have produced something relevant.
This is, praise be, a brand-new piece: finished only last week, actually. It's going to be the main assessment piece for my Writing Fiction module, and whilst the deadline is over a month away, it's better to get it done now rather than on the last week (like I usually do). I want y'all to read it with an open mind, so I'll just say this: if it doesn't make complete sense, then that's because it isn't supposed to. ;-)
Well, that's all. Go forth and enjoy, if you please...
It didn’t make any sense.
He’d done everything they asked. Everything. They’d asked for a lot, and it had hurt him a lot. But he’d worked through it, he’d complied. They still hadn’t told him what this was all about, they still hadn’t given a point to it all, but he’d complied anyway. Even if he didn’t know where this was going, he’d still get to the end eventually. They’d still have to let him go someday, like they said they would. They’d still have to give Laura back. Just because they were keeping him prisoner, it didn’t mean they couldn’t keep their word.
But so far…nothing. He’d done everything they’d asked, and he was still here. What had happened next was a big fat nothing.
It didn’t make any sense.
Why were they doing this to him?
Rule Of Law
Winchester, Hampshire. 20th April 2007.
Today was the 84th day that Laura had to go to school, and today was the 76th day that Ben had to walk her there alone. It was only three streets, not even ten minutes, but that was still a long way for her little legs. The first few times, he and Jessie had taken a hand each, a guard on either side, but now that she was- No, he couldn’t think about that. Not now. Laura was perfectly safe even with just him.
On the plus side, Laura enjoyed school. Considering his own memories, he’d been surprised that most kids her age felt likewise. Now that she’d adjusted to the fact that it wasn’t just a one-day experience, and at this stage, Introductory Painting was like taking a Masters in Advanced Mathematics, she was really getting into it.
“When’s mummy coming back?” she’d ask. Even when she was still asking a fortnight later, he’d still say “next week, maybe”. She hadn’t asked at all this week.
Then again, how did you explain riding accidents to a five-year-old?
They were near the end of the second street, almost within sight of the school gates, when they heard the siren. Laura squeezed his hand a little tighter, hoping her dad could do something about the volume. Ben knew that he would just have to wait. The police car screamed past, on its way to The Case of the Day.
Well, not exactly. The car stopped abruptly a few hundred yards after the turning, spinning 180° in the road. The squealing tires were, if anything, even louder than the air-cracking sirens.
Ben stopped on the corner, the school just a few buildings down the road to the left. He could dimly hear the sounds of other children, Laura’s friends and enemies, playing around outside. But most of his attention, and Laura’s too, was focused on the car, now pointing almost directly at them.
Two police officers, a man and a woman, jumped out of the front doors. They ran down the road towards him, each with a nightstick in hand.
Huh?
“Can I help you?” he asked, not sure what else to say.
The officers reached him just as he finished the question.
“Are you Ben Collins?” the man asked. His tone was harsh, not so much a request as a demand.
“Yes, that’s me. Why?”
They didn’t answer. Instead, they grabbed his arms, roughly propelling him down the street. He felt Laura’s hand being torn from his, as she had to jump back or be pushed over.
Ben barely had enough time to realise what was happening to him, much less figure out a response. His body let the officers drag him towards the car, reaching it in only a few seconds. He was forced against the side, clouting his nose on the rear door frame.
The man pulled Ben’s arms out behind him, slapping on a pair of handcuffs. The clicking sound felt harsh, almost animalistic, and they were much too tight.
“You do not have to say anything,” the woman shouted at him, “but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”
Suddenly, Ben’s brain took over. “What are you arresting me for?” he half-asked, half-shouted.
“Shut up.” the man immediately snapped.
Ben became aware that Laura was calling to him from the street corner. “Daddy! Daddy!” she kept screaming.
He turned his head to the side, so that he could see her. “Stay there!” he yelled. “I’m coming right back!”
The woman brought the base of her nightstick down onto the side of his head. The shock of it knocked him forwards, smacking the other side into the car. He felt dizzy and a little sick.
He knew better than to do any more. The man pulled him back from the car door, the woman opening it just enough for him to be chucked onto the back seat. He moved his feet just before the door slammed on them. Laura was still standing on the pavement, wailing his name, tears of fear and confusion streaming down her face.
What the hell was going on?
* * * * *
“We’ll make this simple, Ben. You tell us what we want to know, or he’ll hit you again.”
His memories of those first days were a little strange. He remembered the actual events with absolute clarity, but the details, the images that the mind’s eye called up, were lost forever. He couldn’t explain why.
Ben was in the back of that police car for about fifteen minutes. They didn’t go anywhere near the local station: instead, they headed out of the city, onto an old B-road through some fields. They pulled into a lay-by, and just when he was at his most confused, the female officer reached over and slammed a needle into his arm. It was a general anaesthetic, a pretty powerful one.
He woke up here, in this cell. He didn’t have a clue where he was, or even when. No one would ever offer even so much as a clue about either. They’d changed his clothes whilst he was unconscious, a pair of grey painter-style overalls instead of his T-shirt and jeans, and had also shaved his head. He was a prisoner now, that much was undeniable.
But for what crime?
“So, I’ll ask again. Who else was with you?”
But all of the above was, right now, the least of his problems. About half an hour ago – at least, what he could measure as half an hour – two men had come into the cell. Both were detectives, with grey suits and badges. One was old and heavy-set, the other was young and scrawny. They sat him down on a metal chair, against the rear wall.
It was the older one who had asked the questions. Things like, who were you working for, where are they hiding, where’s the payload gone, what were you getting out of this, etc etc etc. Stuff that Ben couldn’t answer in a million years.
On the seventh “I don’t know!”, the younger one had hit him. A right-hander square on his diaphragm. It had hurt. A lot. In fact, Ben nearly threw up. Even compared to someone who wasn’t scrawny, the guy knew how to punch.
“I don’t know, alright!” Ben screamed. “How can I know? I don’t even know what I’ve been arrested for!”
The older guy just sighed. “You’re an idiot, Ben. You know full well why you’re here.”
“I don’t! I don’t know! I just got jumped by two officers. They smacked me in the head, bundled me into their car, then shot me with a needle. I passed out and woke up here. No one’s told me anything. When I’ve asked questions, they’ve just told me to shut up. That’s the truth! You have to believe me!”
The younger guy hit him again. The blow was to his face, just to the left of his nose. His head snapped round to the right, smacking hard into the wall. Ben felt dizzy, his vision darkening for a few seconds. His brain hurt on all sides, like someone had just put it in a wine press.
“Whatever.” the older guy said with a shrug. “If you want to play games, it’s not our look-out. We were just trying to make things easy for you. Others won’t be so forgiving as we are.”
* * * * *
Prison cells had too much baggage for the term “just a cell” to be valid, but all the same…this was just a cell. If what he saw on TV was any judge, then even the most basic of cells at least had a bed and a toilet, but this one didn’t even have that much. It was just a ceiling, a floor and four walls, all bare concrete, with a steel door at one end. The only amenities were a small window half-way up the door, and two tiny air vents in the ceiling.
That was it.
A guard came round twice a day, a different one each time, bringing food and a bucket. Though the guards had to open the door to do this, each one was at least twice Ben’s size, so there wasn’t going to be any bother. Same for the weekly shaving, of both his head and beard, and the daily change of overalls. And degrading as it all was, he never even considered refusing the services offered, especially the ever-disgusting food: starvation wasn’t a viable escape option.
Ben didn’t have a clue how long he’d been here. The window only faced out into a corridor, and so having no natural light, judging the passage of time was impossible. He’d always have a rough sense of whether it was day or night, but he didn’t place too much reliance on that. He couldn’t judge time by his meals either, because he didn’t really know if they were twice a day. How could he know?
Those detectives had been back three more times. Ben assumed that it was about a week between each. They always asked the same questions, always refusing to believe that he didn’t know the answers. The second time the returned, the younger guy brought a baseball bat. It made a bloody mess, but even then, there was nothing to achieve. Neither of them seemed to understand that, or if they did, then they had a big reason to not care.
Though he had learnt one thing. Good Cop, Bad Cop was only a cliché when the one getting beaten up wasn’t you.
* * * * *
Ben woke up fairly quickly, after what must have been only a few hours’ sleep. He didn’t feel especially refreshed. Then again, he knew full well that sleeping on cold concrete didn’t allow for a good night’s rest. Though, of course, there was no real way of knowing, something told him that it was daytime.
It was a few seconds after he’d woken up, once both his eyes and brain were in gear, that he noticed it. Noticed him, rather. A man in a brown suit, sat on a metal chair by the closed door. He was fairly old, maybe in his fifties, with thinning hair and small glasses. There was nothing about him that suggested anything at all.
The man, the newcomer, smiled. “Nice to see you awake, Ben.” he said, “I’m DCI William Carradine. There’s a few things I wish to say to you.”
Ben gently sat himself up, leaning against the wall behind him. This wasn’t what he wanted to be doing only ten seconds after waking up, but he was going it nonetheless, and he knew he’d have to pay attention to this conversation. There were only so many things it could be about, and all of them would be important. Getting some answers might be too much to hope for, but he’d still have a go if he could. He yawned, rubbed his eyes, yawned again.
“Tired, are we?” Carradine asked with a smile.
Ben knew it was a rhetorical question, so he ignored it. “What do you want?” he said instead.
“Like I said, I’m just here to relay a few messages.”
“About what?”
Carradine spread his arms out, indicating the whole of this room. “About this. About why you’re here. About what you can do next.”
Ben suddenly knew that he hated this man. Carradine would be just the same as the others. Nothing would come out of this conversation. All the same, something inside him knew he had to try. He had to know something.
“Why am I here?” he asked. “What was I arrested for?”
Carradine was still smiling. “All in good time, Ben.”
“This isn’t some Third World dictatorship. This is Britain. I have rights here. There’s laws and things. You can’t lock me up and not tell me why.”
“And that means what, exactly?”
Carradine’s reply was delivered in a completely level voice, free of any mocking or threatening tones, yet it made Ben feel like he’d just been slapped in the face. The tightening of his heart told him what was coming.
“Huh?”
“You obviously haven’t figured it out already,” said Carradine, with what was almost a sigh, “so I’ll just make it simple for you. The only reason you have Rights is because the government wrote a piece of paper saying you do. They weren’t sent down from on high. We created them, and we can destroy them if we want.”
The detective smiled again. “The beautiful thing is, of course, that we don’t have to. If no one knows you’re here, then there’s no one to make sure your Rights are protected. They will mean even less than they did before.”
Ben realised, with a sickening mental thud, that he’d already figured as much. After all, when that heavy had taken to him with a baseball bat, to pick an example, respecting his rights had not been the top priority.
“But can you at least tell me why I’m here?” he asked. “Isn’t that just common courtesy?”
Carradine just shrugged. “What difference would it make? You’d still be stuck in a prison cell. There still wouldn’t be anything you could do about it. Maybe if you could get to a phone, call a lawyer or something, you’d be okay, but we aren’t going to let you do that. The only people who can get you out of this, Ben, are us…and we don’t want to.”
There wasn’t any point in arguing.
“When can I see Laura?”
“When it suits us. And seeing as it’s taken this long for you to ask, it probably won’t be soon.”
Another slap. However, Ben’s thoughts weren’t of shock, but of anger: how dare Carradine say he didn’t care about his daughter! Ben loved her absolutely, no equivocations. There was a perfectly valid reason why he hadn’t asked.
“This isn’t funny, Carradine.” he said, as coldly as he could. “Why are you doing all this to me?”
This time, the detective actually laughed. A big, loud, mocking guffaw. Ben wanted nothing more than to murder him, but he didn’t move.
“You still aren’t getting it, are you?” Carradine said. “We are the state of Great Britain. You are nothing to us, and if we wish to destroy you, we will. We have done this since long before Ben Collins, and we will carry on doing it long after. Our motives are our own. It is not anyone’s place to know why.”
Suddenly, Carradine stood up. He brushed some imaginary dirt off the front of his jacket.
Ben wasn’t sure what he thought now.
“But I’ve already said too much.” Carradine said, perhaps rhetorically. “I’ll see you around sometime, Ben. Have a think about what I’ve said.
“And don’t worry, I’ll let myself out.”
* * * * *
It was a few hours later. Carradine had long since gone, though his ill wind had stayed behind. A guard had come by just now, delivering Ben’s dinner: beef stew of some kind. He’d taken it and put it down on the floor. It’d probably taste better cold.
Ben was still sitting against the wall, mulling over Carradine’s words. The obviousness of them, he had to admit, had long since been apparent to him: he was helpless here, and both sides knew it. The only weapon he had was asking questions, and as he’d already found out, that was easy enough to counter.
If his measurements were in any way reliable, the he’d been here four months. It felt like millennia, and for all he knew, it had been, but four months was his best realistic guess. The two detectives hadn’t come back since the fifth time. Those in charge round here – he had a hard time thinking of them as the police, but that’s probably what they were – had obviously decided that physical violence wasn’t going to work on him, and so, with Carradine, they were trying something more psychological.
To what end, though? What could they achieve by making him “crack”? He already knew that no one would tell him, but all the same, that wouldn’t stop him wondering. There was a growing doubt that, whatever it was they wanted, it probably didn’t involve crimes, court cases or any other part of the legal system. So what, then?
But what was he going to do? Give up? No way: he still had to get back to Laura. She needed her dad, and he needed his daughter. For now, there was nothing he could do, but maybe something would come up. Maybe.
* * * * *
The cell door opened. A guard was stood just beyond it, with another man behind him. This newcomer was young, maybe younger than Ben, wearing an expensive suit and carrying an even more expensive briefcase.
“Your lawyer’s here to see you.” the guard said.
Ben knew he hadn’t asked for a lawyer. Considering his other questions, he’d always felt it would have been a little fruitless. But if one was here anyway, then he wouldn’t complain.
No one waited for a response. The lawyer stepped inside the room, the guard closing the door behind him. The lawyer walked over the wall opposite Ben, and leaned against it. He slid his briefcase behind his feet.
“My name’s Simon Williamson. The state has appointed me to be your defence in court. I’m here to discuss your case with you.”
“So there is a case, then.”
Simon raised an eyebrow. “Why wouldn’t there be? You’ve been arrested. There’s always a trial once you’ve been arrested.”
Maybe. Just maybe…
“So what have I been arrested for?”
“You have to understand your situation, Mr Collins. This is not an easy case. There’s much legal wrangling that will need to be done here. We should both consider ourselves very lucky if there’s any kind of-”
Suddenly, Ben realised something.
“Bollocks, Simon.” he snapped, cutting off the lawyer completely. “You’re not my lawyer at all. I doubt I even have a lawyer. You’re just another part of the system, here to play some stupid trick on me.”
Simon almost looked lost for words. But he recovered after a few seconds. “That’s not true, Mr Collins. I am here to help.”
“No you’re not. You won’t even tell me what I’m doing here.”
A brief flicker of something crossed Simon’s face. Exasperation, perhaps.
“You’re going to need my help, Mr Collins, whether you want it or not. If you have any intention of getting through all this, then you’ll have to start co-operating with me. This won’t work if you carry on acting like a prat.”
“Okay, then.” Ben said after a second. “Prove to me you’re genuine. Let me see my daughter.”
Simon just shrugged. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible. The superiors feel that putting you and her in a room together would be…unsafe. I simply can’t bend the system that way.”
“Then I have nothing to say to you. Go away.”
Simon picked up his briefcase. It seemed to Ben as if he wasn’t overly upset.
“If that’s how you want it, then fine. I was just trying to make things easy for you.”
* * * * *
Ben had long since lost track of the time. It thought it might have been six months, but that was only a guess. It might have been more, it might have been less. All the same, six months was a long time, and time didn’t go quickly in a prison cell. The worst part was, people usually had sentences measured in years, so he knew that there was still a long way to go.
But, in a strange kind of way, he hadn’t lost hope. Laura was still out there, waiting for him. He’d find out why he was here, he’d challenge it, he’d get out. He’d get back to her. If he stopped believing this, he’d go mad. They wanted him to go mad, and he wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of that.
The particulars of it almost didn’t matter now.
The door opened. Ben had become used to that now. He was tempted to ignore it, but this occasion was different: it wasn’t a guard that stepped through, but Carradine and Simon. This was only the second time that he’d seen either of them.
He wasn’t surprised that they were together.
“Good day, Ben.” Carradine said, in a cheerful sort of voice.
“What do you two want?” It had been a long time since Ben was in the mood for games.
Simon, without his briefcase this time, closed the door. “There’s something we need you to do.” he said.
The lawyer, or “lawyer”, pulled a mobile phone out of his pocket. It was one of those with a flip-up lid, and it looked expensive.
“We want you to call your daughter.”
This had to be a joke.
“What?”
“The number has already been entered. You just have to press dial.”
Ben shrugged, trying his best to remain cool. “What’s the catch?”
“We want you to tell her about Jessie.” Carradine said. “We want her to know that her mother has died. We want her to know it from you.”
Something finally clicked in Ben’s mind. All this unpleasantness, all this stupidity, was just about Jessie? It was all just a primer for a phone call? He would’ve sold his soul to call Laura, but all the same…was this really all?
He laughed. It wasn’t a big laugh, just a chuckle, but all the same, the noise sounded a little alien to him. It was worth it just to see Carradine and Simon look confused.
“This isn’t funny, Ben.” Simon said after a few seconds. “We’re asking you to you to do something of the utmost seriousness.”
“Yeah, sure. I’ll make that call. At least it’ll give me something to do.”
Simon didn’t rise to it a second time. Instead, he walked over to Ben, phone out-stretched. Ben took it, and Simon walked back to the door.
Ben pressed the Call button, and held the phone up to his ear. It started dialling.
“Once I’ve done this,” he said, “can I go free?”
Carradine smiled. “We’ll see.”
Ben was happy enough with that. It was the closest the detective had ever come to a yes.
The call went through. “Hello?”
He took a second before answering. He wanted to savour that voice, his daughter’s voice.
“Hi, Laura. It’s your dad.” His voice almost wavered, but he managed to keep it together.
“Dad!” Laura practically squealed it.
“Hiya, kiddo. How are you?”
“I’m great, dad. Danny came over for tea last night. He gets on really well with Aunty Emma.”
Of course. Emma was his sister. Laura must be living with her now. Emma had met nearly all of Laura’s school friends (seven in three months: she was a popular child), and Danny was the only one she didn’t utterly despise. Which was lucky all round, really.
Carradine shot him a look. As much as he didn’t want to, he’d need to hurry this up.
“Listen, Laura…there’s something I need to tell you.”
“Are you coming back, dad?”
“Hopefully soon. But that’s not what I want to say.”
Ben got the impression that Laura was now all ears. But, suddenly, he couldn’t get the words out. The clouds parted in his mind, and he realised: he’d been more cut up about explaining Jessie’s death than the death itself.
“Laura, your mum…I told you she was going to be…coming back, but…I lied, Laura. She…isn’t coming back.”
“I know.”
Ben wasn’t sure if he was relieved or shocked. Maybe both.
“You do?”
“Yes. Aunty Emma told me last month. She said that I wasn’t to feel sad. We’ll see her again someday.”
God bless Aunty Emma. She always knew how to put things.
Much to his surprise, Ben felt tears forming behind his eyes. But he didn’t feel especially sad, and even if did, he wouldn’t cry in front of Carradine and Simon. He blinked a few times. It seemed to do the trick.
He heard a shout in the background, on the other side of the phone line.
“Emma says tea’s ready.” Laura said. “I’ve got to go. Can you call me later?”
He almost started crying again. But if she had to go, then she had to go.
“Of course. I love you, Laura.”
“Love you too, dad.”
Laura hung up. Ben flicked the phone shut, throwing it across to Simon. The “lawyer” caught it easily.
“I want out of here.”
* * * * *
The guard had just dropped off another meal. It was a cheeseburger, or at least that was the theory. Ben ate it anyway. The thought of having to use the bucket in a few hours didn’t bother him any more.
Things didn’t really make any sense. Of course, that was normal around here, but recently it was all extra weird. Carradine had said that, if Ben made that phone call, then he’d let him go. He hadn’t promised, not as such, but all the same…something should’ve happened by now. Ben had no idea how long it had been, even less so than usual, but it had definitely been long enough.
So why was he still here? Why was he even here in the first place?
Why were they doing this to him?
* * * * *
Ben had just woken up from a nightmare. Like all such things, he’d already forgotten what it was about: it involved oysters somewhere, and maybe bowling balls too, but that was all he could remember. What connected oysters and bowling balls, anyway? Jessie had been into dream analysis and all that kind of stuff, so maybe she could have explained it.
Something had struck him a few days ago, or at least what he judged to be that long. It was amazing how rarely he thought of his wife now, and the accident that killed her: both things were already consigned to history, a realm that his current situation had no time for. Even when he had to make that call, even when finally had to express what had happened, there was still a little part of him that felt detached from her memory. It wasn’t something he could entirely explain.
Besides, he had other priorities. This cell and Laura were his only thoughts now, that he might lose the former and reclaim the latter.
It was nighttime now. As always, there was no way to know, but he was fairly sure. In recent days, he’d regained his talent at gauging his body’s feelings on the time. Naturally, it was only his opinion that he’d done so, but again, what else did he have to rely on?
“Can we go see Melrose after this, Aunty Emma?”
The voice came out of nowhere. Ben yelped, despite himself.
His second thought was: how could he be hearing it? He was alone in the cell, as always, and seeing as these things were soundproofed, it couldn’t be coming from the corridor either.
But his first thought was: he knew that voice. He would be able to identify it anywhere, at any time, under any conditions. It couldn’t be anyone else.
It was Laura. She was here at last.
Ben felt like his heart had stopped. He started shaking, so that standing up meant consciously directing his limbs. He ran over to the window, squeezing his face close. Laura seemed to be off to the left, but no matter how hard he strained, he couldn’t see that far round.
The seconds dragged by. Where the hell were they?
“Yeah, sure. We’ll deal with that later, though.”
But…that didn’t sound like Emma.
Finally, Laura came into view. Ben’s heart stopped for a second time, though for an entirely different reason. She was unmistakably Laura, same beaming face, same black hair, same bony profile, even the same bright-coloured clothes. Except, she was older. Definitely older, at least nine, maybe ten, or even eleven. Nothing about her appearance had changed: she’d just become taller, less baby-ish.
Ben could only stare. How long had he been in here?
And the woman with her, she wasn’t Emma. Even with the passage of years, and maybe a decent diet too, that woman still wasn’t his sister. Emma didn’t have that kind of face, that almost rat-like thing, and he knew full well that she’d die before wearing a flowery dress.
More to the point, Laura didn’t have any other Aunty Emmas. That he was equally sure of.
“Dad!” Laura yelled.
But it didn’t matter. His daughter was back now, and everything would be okay.
Laura started running. Ben pushed himself even closer to the window, as if he could force himself through it.
It turned out that there was a guard nearby, just off to the right, out of his view. Ben jumped as the guard stepped forward, revealing himself. The guard grabbed Laura once she came close, lifting her up and spinning her in the air. It wasn’t a threatening thing: no, it was something fun, something loving. It was the action of a father.
The guard set Laura back down. “Hiya, kiddo.” he said. “How’s your day?”
“Oh, it’s good. We’ve started doing the Vikings this week. They’re really cool.”
“Aren’t they just?”
Suddenly, something else took over. Ben wasn’t sure what part of him it was, but it was sure making its voice heard.
He started hammering on the glass, and on the door around it.
“Laura!” he screamed, not entirely sure he could be heard. “Laura! It’s me! It’s Ben! It’s your dad! Laura! I’m in here! Laura!”
The guard and Emma, this “other” Emma, started walking away. Laura turned a second or so later. She saw Ben screaming, banging on the door. She stepped back a pace, as if afraid, then turned and ran after the other two.
That part of Ben, the one that made him start yelling, suddenly stopped. His universe closed in around him, blocking off any sensations outside of his cell. He barely even noticed his legs giving way, gently sinking to the ground until he was just lying against the door. He found himself curled up in a ball, a foetus almost.
Perhaps appropriately, he started to cry. He became a sobbing, howling mess, a small child lost and alone. He closed his eyes, so tightly that they hurt, but that only made the tears flow harder.
* * * * *
It was some time later. For once, Ben didn’t have a clue how long. It could’ve been years, Laura now a teenager, an adult even. He didn’t remember doing it, but he’d moved away from the door, back to his usual position on the side wall. He was still sat quietly, hugging his legs, and as far as he was aware, he hadn’t slept.
One thing he knew for sure was that he’d stopped crying. He’d ran out of tears long ago.
In a way, he was almost able to think rationally about it. Emma, whilst being a relative, could only have sheltered Laura for so long: it was inevitable that she’d be fostered at some stage. He knew what children were like: they needed a parent, for sure, but it didn’t necessarily matter who that parent was. Laura had always had an “all or nothing” approach to affection, so as much as it killed him to think about it…
…Yes. Maybe she had forgotten him.
And, at last, he understood.
The cell door opened. Ben wasn’t startled, though he did look up. Carradine was standing there, in his brown suit.
“You can go now, Ben Collins.” he said. “Your debt to society is paid.”
Ben just shrugged. “What would be the point?”
Carradine smiled. For perhaps the first time, it was a kindly smile.
“That’s the spirit.”
Rule Of Law
