Chapter 39
THIRTY-NINE
LIAM
The atmosphere in the visitors’ room at HMP Cosgrove tells me that I definitely never, ever want to end up here. People sit across from inmates, cold tables separating them. Voices are mostly hushed. Cameras and officers are everywhere, and I know it’s a risk coming here.
I sit there for nearly an hour before Ashworth trundles in, looking half the man he did that day I came face to face with him in the pub. Withered. Dark circles around the eyes.
It pleases me to see him suffering. But he’s not suffering enough yet. Those eyes are still filled with beady hate that makes my inner child cower. He sits across from me, resting his arms on the table and taking me in with chilly assessment.
‘I didn’t expect to see you here,’ he says after a minute.
‘Can’t imagine you’re inundated with visitors.’
‘Right, you are there, William. How thoughtful of you to come. Have you missed me?’ The way he says it makes my skin crawl. I hate him.
I don’t dignify his taunt with a response, taking my time to assess him until he shifts uncomfortably in his seat.
This moment has filled my imagination so many times, but I can’t paint the walls with his blood in reality the way I do there.
Not if I want to get back to Kat in time for supper. Which I do.
‘How’s prison life treating you?’ I ask.
‘As well as can be expected. But why, William, are you here? You must know it’s a risk giv—’
I cut him off. ‘I needed to tell you something.’
‘Go on.’
Composing myself takes a minute, tampering down the rising rage at being across from Richard Ashworth without being able to drive my fist into his flesh.
‘I can’t get back what you and the others took from me.
Nothing will ever heal that, in truth. Not your arrest, nor you rotting away in here for the rest of your life. ’
Ashworth gives me a smirk. ‘How tragic for you. My heart bleeds.’
‘It will,’ I say. ‘Soon.’
He laughs, drawing glances from the more morose faces around us. Thinking of Kat and our home keeps my temper in check.
‘And how do you intend to do that? I’m well protected in here.’
Leaning forward with my elbows mirroring his on the table, I tip my head just a little and smile at him. For the first time, I see doubt seed in his eyes.
‘You are. For now. But you know how prisons work as well as I do. You’re the bottom rung in here. Below the serial killers. Below the rapists. Even they draw the line at children. And for a double whammy, you’re a former police officer.’
His throat bobs as he swallows hard, glancing at the other prisoners and guards.
‘There are men in here with nothing to lose. Men who are already facing life anyway. No parole. No exit. They have nothing to gain in here but notoriety. And you, Richard, can make them popular.’
His jaw tightens.
‘You think you can arrange something from out there. That’s a threat, boy.’ He spits the sentence at me.
‘Funny the way life pans out. The way you, my father, and others treated me growing up led me to participate in some rather unsavoury extracurriculars. The other men who participate tend to overlap extensively with the prison population. Prison isn’t a fortress, Richard.
It’s a pit. And you’ve found yourself a cat in a den full of fucking jackals. ’
‘Empty threats from a boy who couldn’t finish the task himself. Who knew you’d keep me in your torrid little fantasies for so long…’
My body turns rigid as I fight the urge to beat the every-loving daylights out of the pompous fucker.
‘God, I wanted to. So badly. More than I’ve wanted almost anything in my life.
But I’ve learned that the death I would have given you is much too quick.
Better than someone like you deserves.’ I lower my voice to barely a whisper as I speak, enjoying the way Ashworth grows greyer with every single word.
‘Bullshit,’ he mutters.
‘Is it? You’re going to die at my word rather than my blade, and the men in here will be much more comfortable exacting revenge than I ever would be able to.
’ Those words hit right where they need to, and Ashworth’s fingers tremble against the table.
‘And they’ll do it for less than it costs me to Uber here.
Not because you mean anything, but because you mean so little they won’t even barter. ’
There’s a flicker of dread in his face as he realises the extent of my threat.
‘You wouldn’t.’
‘I won’t. I’ll be tucked up in bed with my beautiful fiancé while they find out whether new holes fuck as good as natural ones.
’ I stand, unhurried. ‘Every day you’ll wonder if it’ll be that day.
Who it’s going to be. How many of them will torture you.
What they’ll use. How long they’ll make you suffer. ’
I go to push in my chair before remembering it’s bolted to the floor.
‘Willia—’
‘It’s Liam,’ I say. ‘William died in that cottage long ago. And now it’s your turn to live in fear of bigger men than you. Of the things they’ll do just to make you cry. You’ll remember me, and Sam, and all the others, and know you did this to yourself. And that you deserve every fucking cut.’
‘Wait,’ he pleads, his voice becoming shrill.
I don’t.
No one will ever make me fear them as he did. Never again.
By the time I make it outside, I’m a little shaky, stopping to inhale the cold, fresh air. Relishing that I’m out here and not stuck in there, facing the rest of my life behind those miserable walls.
Maybe Freddie had a point.
I’ll need to buy him a pint when they get back from their travels in the spring…