Free Death Delights by Gabrielle Lord

door and a narrow, barred window way up near the high ceiling with just the walls for company. I announced myself on the intercom, was identified and permitted to climb through the little padlocked door in the great fortress double doors. On the other side of the gates is a large caged-off area containing the scanning section, the receptacle for bags and other items and, above it, the grey security video screens, keeping every section under electronic surveillance. This steel cage needs to be unlocked by another officer with a different set of keys before anyone can get into the next stage of the prison, the sterile area, a wide ‘corridor’ which, as its name indicates, is completely empty apart from the digital cameras and microwave movement detectors running along each side of it.
    In an interview room, I talked to two of the Corrective Services officers who’d known the murdered men. They took me to see Ron Herring, the ex-army assistant superintendent with whom I spoke in detail.
    ‘Never a problem, either of them,’ said Ron. ‘Except to other people.’
    ‘That’s what I was wondering,’ I said, telling him about the conversation I’d had with Bob.
    Ron shook his head and his face furrowed into a tight smile at the idea of some sort of prison vendetta extending outside. ‘Crims are very self-righteous,’ he answered. ‘Neither of them would have lasted long in the main yard so they were kept apart and served out their sentences in a strict protection area, a cage within a cage. We let them mingle among others of their kind, the rock spiders, the paederasts and child-killers. We tell them if there’s any trouble, they’ll all be locked up in their separate cells again. They get along all right. Probably entertaining themselves swapping fantasies and the details of their conquests.’
    I thought about that for a moment and wondered if they also made up other fantasies, about how ‘rehabilitated’ they were, to seduce the parole board. We walked around the sterile area and sparrows chirped in the stone walls under a perfect blue afternoon sky. ‘Nesbitt spent a lot of his time drawing,’ Ron said. ‘He got quite good at it.’ I recalled the obscene drawings hidden in the Bible among the pages of Jeremiah. We waited while the officer in charge of the entrance area came with his keys to let us in. I asked him whether they might have incurred the wrath of some gaol heavy who wanted them dead. Ron Herring considered. ‘I know of several cases where there’ve been killings associated with gaol fights, but Nesbitt and Gumley just weren’t in that league,’ he said, ‘and the others were killed inside. It was because they were such model prisoners that Nesbitt and Gumley were both released in the minimum time.’
    From somewhere high above me came the sound of a muffled yell. I looked up and around. It was impossible to see into the banks of narrow, fortress-style window slits. ‘They’re always calling out,’ Ron said. ‘They’re carrying on because they know you’re here. They know everything that goes on. The minute something different happens or someone new comes in, they know. They’re all watching us now.’ The way he said it reminded me of the way a father might speak of the exploits of his seriously wayward children, proud despite everything.
    ‘But those two, Nesbitt and Gumley,’ said Ron, returning to his earlier conversation, ‘were both grey little crims. Hardly noticeable. They knew it was best to lie low.’ He was supervising my way through the padlocked door of the steel entry cage and I was feeling I’d wasted the trip and a tank of petrol when he suddenly answered my question. ‘If anyone in our system had wanted them dead, they’d never have walked out of here alive.’
    In the cage, I picked up my belongings, and stood waiting for the small door in the main gates to be opened by the supervising officer. ‘I heard from one of my mates out at the Bay,’ said