Raising Lazarus Read online

  “An interview.”

  “OK. You got it,” he said and straightened up in his chair. “We can start now if you want?”

  “I mean,” she said, clearing her throat, “with one of the prisoners.”

  A hook caught the governor’s cheek and pulled his smile to one side. He freed it, but the smile was still tight.

  “That’s not too common, Molly. Not something that I can easily allow.”

  “I know, I know,” she said quickly. “I don’t need to speak to anyone in the hole, or even the dangerous ones.”

  Roy laughed gently and shook his head despite his concern.

  “It’s not like the movies. We don’t have a hole.”

  “OK,” she said, unflustered. “Just someone fairly tame.”

  The governor drained the last of his coffee and smacked his lips. He was looking beyond her now and around the walls. A calendar was there, highlighted with the year’s birthdays and milestones. A bookshelf, which might as well have been decorative, was tucked into the corner; many of the titles that filled its shelves were out of print and read years before. They were obscured by the computer monitor on his desk.

  “OK, but I choose who you speak with. No Hannibal Lecter’s. Deal?”

  “You don’t…” Molly started. She saw the smile break on her grandfather’s face. “OK. Deal.”

  “And another thing,” he said, turning from the monitor. He looked at her with a flat expression, trying to find the words, chewing on the inside of his cheek.

  “You don’t have to worry,” Molly pre-empted. “I’m not going to publish a bad review or anything incriminating. Any witness and source will remain nameless. This prison will only frame part of the overall project.”

  Satisfied with her answer, Roy smiled and pulled the edge of the screen an inch toward him.

  “Is there any specific type you’re looking for?”

  “Well,” she said and took a deep sigh, sending a current of waves across her forehead. “Someone that is a serial offender. Not someone that got unlucky once.”

  “OK…”

  Roy typed on the keyboard, narrowed his eyes and moved closer to the screen. After a minute he shook his head, pulled a pair of spectacles from his top pocket, and propped them on his face. Molly watched the bars of light from the monitor reflect off the panes.

  “Any specific age?”

  “My age if you can. I think I’ll be able to relate better to them. Don’t you think?”

  A few more buttons were clicked, and the governor began rubbing an invisible goatee beard around his mouth between forefinger and thumb. Molly took a moment while he was distracted in the task to look at the desk. There were a few notebooks upside down, papers inserted inside. She looked up from them and, for the first time, noticed a photograph pinned to a corkboard. She leaned forward, elbow on the desk and stared at it, seeing her grandad dressed as he was now, in navy slacks and blue shirt and tie. Roy was standing in the centre, with various men and women on either side, smiling at the camera. The bars of the prison were behind them.

  “Just some friends down the years,” Roy said, noticing the focus of her attention.

  He turned, untacked a pin from it and handed it to her. It was in black and white and the familiar smile greeted her from two generations ago. There was a young black man by his side in a half hug, half shaking hand embrace and they were both laughing; the photographer capturing a spontaneous moment. Behind them was a white wall, an open door to their right.

  “Leroy Jones,” he said.

  “Who’s he?”

  “He,” Roy said, taking the photo from her and tacking it back to the wall, “is no longer with us.”

  “What happened?”

  “It was the sixties. He came in for a petty crime. Turns out he was just trying to get away from gang life in London. The kindest, gentlest soul. But he had nowhere else to turn.”

  Roy’s face was sad now and when the photo found its place in the centre of the wall he stroked its face with his long thin fingers and nodded.

  “So, what did he do?”

  “The gang reeled him back in. Made threats to his family. His pregnant wife. Said he hadn’t pulled his weight and still owed them for one last gig. Got him involved in some nasty stuff. He ended up being killed in a hit and run.”

  “Jeez. Did they know who did it?”

  Roy shook his head, the smile on his face a distance memory. He seemed to age in front of her, slumped shoulders and bowed head like a little boy in penance.

  “Impossible to pin it to someone specific when it’s gang related. Or so they told me.”

  There was a heavy silence in the air and the governor was still stoking the memory when they heard a beep from the computer, like a GPS tracker springing to life from the hidden depths of the ocean. They both turned to its source and Roy pulled his chair away from the wall to investigate.

  “Well,” he said and switched the monitor off and faced her. “Just as I expected. I could have told you that myself. Don’t need this fancy technology for that.”

  “What is it?”

  “There are two that spring to mind. Both your age.”

  “OK, sounds promising,” Molly said.

  “The first has been in half a dozen times in the past eighteen months. Male. White. Twenty-three. Drug offences. Public intoxication. Had a tough life. Doesn’t make it easy on himself it has to be said. Married twice over. Self-abuser.”

  Molly had crossed her jeaned leg and held it in both hands at the knee, nodding at the description and imagining the man in her mind’s eye, using the jigsaw pieces her grandad gave to complete the picture.

  “And the other?”

  She watched something animate the governor’s face and found herself perk up automatically when he cleared his throat and started.

  “A young man. Around twenty. Eastern European descent, we think. Papers were falsified so he looks like a refugee.”

  “OK. What’s he in for?”

  “Solicitation. Prostitution. We’ve lifted him from the streets three times in the last six months. Can’t hold him for that for more than a day or two at a time. Give him a slap on wrists, but we can’t afford to keep people like that banged up. We don’t have the space for it.”

  “So, you have to let him go?”

  Roy nodded his head and sighed.

  “I try to speak some sense into him, but it falls on deaf ears. God only knows what would make a person turn to that.”

  “Does he have any relatives?”

  “No. Don’t think so. Just the clique that he would work with. We’ve tried to break that down but none of them talk. They don’t tell us who their pimp is, so we’re left sucking our thumbs.”

  Molly was listening and found the second picture incomplete in her mind. Roy noticed her silence and was trying to read her puzzled expression.

  “Listen, maybe it’s best you go with the first one. If anything, he could do with a bit of common sense, which you might be able to give him. He’s a real saunter too. He’ll talk your ear off if you let him. You’ll hit that word count in no time with his interview. What do you think?”

  When she reached for the coffee cup on the table, she found the drink cold on her lips, wetting them in a grease which she wiped off with her palm.

  “I’d rather see the second one, Granda. If it’s OK?”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah, I think it might make a more interesting story.”

  Roy let out a long breath, leaned back in his chair again and shrugged his shoulders before nodding.

  “OK. It’s your thesis. Mind you, I was going to release him tomorrow, but if he agrees to speak with you later I could let him out this evening. How does that suit?”

  “If you can that would be great! Thanks!”

  “No problem.”

  “What’s his name?”

  There was a smile on the man’s face now as he rose from the chair and she found herself soon standing too.


  “God only knows what his real name his, but he has a street name which he insists we call him.”

  “Which is?”

  “Lazarus.”

  THREE

  The priest returned the two chalices to their resting place and closed the doors of the tabernacle. Its bronzed waxed handles were spotless and the light from over his head shone his reflection on their gleaming surface. He patted the side of the wooden box and inspected his fingers, satisfied that they hadn’t collected any dust.

  “Anything else, Father?”

  “No. Thanks for today, Marrouf. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  The man smiled and nodded before walking to the back door where it closed behind him. The small vestry was quiet and now he was alone the priest stood for a few seconds, breath held in his chest. He closed his eyes and smiled. He couldn’t hold the breath for long, and exhaled in a short slow and controlled ventilation. His lungs couldn’t match the pace and he began coughing. His pale hand was balled and the other groped for a chair in the corner, which it found. He fell into it, doubled over. With a fist, he began punching his thin chest for a response, gasping with his mouth fishing for a hook of air until finally the breathing settled into a groove. He took a large lungful of it and his head soon cleared of the mist which had darkened the edges of his vision.

  He took a final large swallow of it through his nose and let it out at its natural speed, before rising again and moving to the polished wooden closet opposite. Opening the doors, he looked at the coloured robes that were hanging there. Flowing vestments that trailed to the floor, deep reds like a burning sunset, the smooth and spotless creams of cotton, lush greens of summer lawns of childhood memories. His fingers passed over the fine garments like he was tinkling the ivories and slid them along their hangers. One of the hangers jangled on the metal pole and he removed it, setting it on the seat. Using his hands, the priest inched the robe up over his neck. He bent over and reversed his head out of the opening and surfaced from the sea of white. The hanger took it and it was returned carefully with the others, spreading the weight out along the little pole. He heard the scrape of the metal loop on it as all the robes were drawn together like an organ.

  Closing the doors again until there was a click, he was surprised to hear the scraping continue. It was coming from outside the closet. His ear tuned to the sound, eyes closed, trying to place it within the building. It seemed distant, weak. If there hadn’t been a silence in the church he wouldn’t have noticed it, but there it was. Slow and steady.

  He walked through the vestibule and into the main chamber. The lights were already switched off and he kept it that way. The room was dark, save for the outside night sky that shone through the rainbow coloured glass on his side, marking the wooden floor in a kaleidoscope. Straining his ears, he detected no sound and returned to the vestry, beginning to question his own mind. The noises perked up again and catching the scent, the priest moved to the back door. He could hear them grow stronger.

  When he opened the door, a hand flopped forward and fell onto his feet. Scratches were carved into the wooden door.

  “My God!” he said and struggled down to one knee.

  The body was slumped on the doorstep, a broken heap with thin arms and legs, olive skin and a shock of black short hair, shiny like a beetle’s shell. The head was on the floor, arrowed away from the body which was stiff as a corpse. The only sign of life, the outstretched hand, continued to paw weakly ahead, fingers fixed in a claw.

  There was a trickle of blood, which crept from the head of the body onto the grey step. It was illuminated by the light from the doorway, as the crouching priest struggled to pull the sloped figure up by their armpits. Groans of desperation came from the body. A growing awareness that someone was near. When the priest turned the figure, he could see it was a young man, a deep gash on his forehead where a bloodied cut had crusted with little stones. Dirty rags cloaked his small body, and the chest was spotted with blood from the cut. The face was smeared with dirt, spit and blood; an artist’s palette that painted a desperate past and even bleaker future for the man. Bulging eyes on a hollow cheeked face swam in the skull, trying to surface from the depths within that threatened to take him.

  “Come on, son. Stay with me.”

  The priest struggled with the small man, half carrying, half dragging the injured body over the threshold into the church until they were safely tucked inside, breathing heavily and slumped on the ground. The man’s head was on the priest’s chest, smearing blood on his front. He could feel its heat despite the cold shivers of the bundle of bones in his arms. Soon the only sound in the room was a wail of despair. It came from the injured man, and it didn’t stop for a long time.

  FOUR

  The visitors’ room was the size of a small hall. Tables and chairs had been screwed into the floor, bolted tight as an insurance policy, doubled down by the presence of a guard stationed at the door where she had entered minutes earlier.

  Molly Walker looked around the room, watching the warm embraces between parents and children, husbands and wives. Others were less jovial occasions, handshakes or progress updates between suited lawyers and their customers. The inmates wore drawn, frustrated expressions, emotions bubbling beneath the surface, finding an outlet on the hard seat edges which bent under their force.

  The guard who stood sentinel sometimes intervened, barking from the corner which brought everyone’s sudden attention. Cameras in the upper corners were arrowed down into the room, craning this way and that. All of them at that moment were turned away from her, as she fidgeted nervously with the tape recorder on the table. A pen was in her lap and she stopped clicking down on its top when she saw the guard’s reaction, fearing the noise would prompt a rebuke. Her hands were sweaty and she wiped them on her jean leg, trying to control her breathing, realising with a wave of fresh fear that she was surrounded by criminals. Many of the desks were now occupied.

  On reflection, she considered that very few of the prisoners were like the sort she had seen on TV shows. There were no pumped-up muscle men. Most looked like normal citizens that wouldn’t appear out of place walking down the street. She didn’t know if that was a comfort or not. There were no tattooed heads, although she did notice some inking on their arms when they rolled the sleeves of their blue uniforms up to the elbow. There were no evil glares although some of the prisoner men did notice her sitting alone and chanced a glance away from their wife in her direction. She avoided their stares, instead focussing on the door they had come through and was soon pleased to see her grandad emerge.

  In lock step behind Roy Walker was a similarly small man. He stepped out from underneath the governor’s shadow. Dressed in blue with a white shirt peeping out from the collar, he walked slowly, eyes levelled on the scene around, taking it in but unaffected by the emotion. His face was unremarkable, flat stubby nose on a tanned face, a rock in a mud pool. Thick black eyebrows sloped around eyes that were focussed and unblinking. They swept the sea of heads before deciding to follow the outstretched hand of the governor who was pointing to the back-corner table and the empty chair, closest to the guard.

  The man walked forward, tight mouth sucked in like he didn’t use it for breath, and threaded through the congregating group, followed by Roy. As he approached the table, he looked at Molly who seemed to struggle with finding the right expression, pulling her eyes away from his until he had reached the chair. She stood and faced them.

  “Lazarus, this is Molly.”

  “Nice to meet you,” she said and smiled.

  He didn’t return one but continued staring at her in silence, which made her feel more nervous until she caught the governor’s smile by his side.

  “I’ve told Lazarus about your project and he said he’d be happy to help. I’ve promised him that he can go after your meeting. I hope an hour is enough time?”

  “Absolutely,” she said and nodded in the prisoner’s direction. “If that’s OK with you?”

 
He unhooked the cold stare from her, looked to one side and let the breath slip from his mouth before nodding.

  “Good. That’s settled then,” Roy said and turned to look at the clock high up on the wall above the door. “I’ll be back at 5.45 then, OK?”

  Molly nodded and mouthed a thank you to her grandad, who gently pressed her shoulder before leaving. She sat down. Lazarus remained standing for a few beats longer, glancing around like a dog searching for a comfortable spot before he also sat down. His eyes fell from her face to the box on the table. She noticed it and spoke.

  “I hope you don’t mind if I record our conversation? It just means I won’t miss anything.”

  “Fine,” he said, eyes climbing the walls and letting out another heavy sigh.

  “Thank you. I really appreciate it.”

  There was no expression on his face. She pulled a stubby spiral notebook from her pocket, crossed a leg that propped up her writing table and popped the pen before hitting the record button.

  “Date is September 6th, 2017. This is Molly walker. I’m in Lockworth Prison with prisoner name ‘Lazarus’. We’re about to begin an interview which- “

  Lazarus reached across and hit the stop button.

  “What did you do that for?”

  “We’re not doing a police interview here. You can fill in the detail later. Just get to the point.”

  She faltered under his stare, before nodding. “OK. Sorry. Let’s try again. Umm. Can you start by telling us where you’re from?”

  “The Middle East”.

  “What country?”

  “Not important. Next question.”

  “What are you in here for?”

  “For the accommodation and free food.”

  The tape recording stopped, and Molly looked up. A flicker of a smile tugged at Lazarus’ lips and he leaned back in his seat and held up a hand in apology. She started the recording again.

  “What are you in here for?”

  “Prostitution.”

  “Are you a prostitute?”

  “I can be anything you want me to be.”