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FORTY-ONE
Battlemouth Prison looms up ahead, crouching against the skyline. Turrets and chimneys and Victorian red brick. The walls sixteen feet thick, impenetrable from inside or out.
Mind you, they said that about the other place too. HMP Huntersville. A Category-A prison in South London. Maximum security, supposedly. Didn’t stop the rooftop being breached though, and a certain serial killer getting loose.
The riot began a little after six months into Matty’s sentence and took nearly as many weeks to quell. An angry mob fed up with being locked in their cells for twenty-two hours a day, took control of the chapel before spreading out through the jail. It was a violent, bloody affair with officers being beaten by masked inmates wielding sticks and fire extinguishers.
I don’t know all the details, only that after order was restored, Matty broke out of his cell. The same cell he’d sat in quietly reading a James Patterson, while his fellow inmates ran amok. Now they were back in their cages, he was out. No one ever discovered how.
The prison counsellor found him propped against the wall of the canteen when she swung by at 6 a.m. for her morning coffee; his legs stretched out in front of him, crossed over at the ankle. He’d been there all night apparently; a half-eaten Pot Noodle by his side, a book in his lap. Having finished Patterson, he’d moved onto Frederick Forsyth. Edge of the seat stuff, he told themagazine journalist who later interviewed him.
He had the upper hand, the element of surprise. But he didn’t lash out at the counsellor. Simply smiled sweetly and wished her good morning. A slim, curly-haired brunette, same as his victims.
The news exploded on a Monday morning. I was on my way to school, saw the headlines on a billboard. My mother was doped up on the couch at home, same as she had been every day since his sentencing. I just want to die, Soph.
MELGREN BREAKS OUT
My hands shook as I handed over the change. I sat on the kerb, spread the paper out on my lap.
Convicted serial killer, Matty Melgren escaped from his cell at Huntersville prison in Balham, South London late on Saturday night, less than eight months after being handed down three consecutive life sentences.
Melgren, responsible for the so-called ‘Shadow Murders’, eluded guards at the Category-A facility for over twelve hours. A matter of weeks ago, the same facility was overcome by riots in which three correctional officers lost their lives, bludgeoned to death by an angry mob.
The Home Secretary is expected to face questions in the House of Commons today and to launch an urgent inquiry as to how the serial killer was able to break free.
Much has been made of the fact that Matty didn’t attack the counsellor who found him, or try to hurt anyone else. That he just sat there reading his book, waiting to be noticed. Proof, they say, that the authorities got the wrong guy– a point Matty was keen to play up in his interview with Men’s Magazine.
‘Why did you do it?’ the journalist asked him.
‘To show I could,’ Matty answered.
‘And once out, why didn’t you try to escape?’
‘Because I’m innocent. Only the guilty need to run.’
‘Matty Melgren is clearly a narcissist, keen to demonstrate his superiority. But would a murderer with a lust for blood really not kill again when he got the chance?’ Louisa Shaw from the popular podcast Crime Stories asked recently.
It’s a question I’ve asked myself too. Another notch of doubt on my bed post. Another reason to feel guilty about what I’d done.
I draw closer to the prison, the barbed wire coming into view, seemingly miles of it. A thorny monster snaking around the prison perimeter. Huge steel gates. A mostly empty car park.
Sweat drips between my shoulder blades, prickles over my scalp.
I’ve worn a blazer over a white shirt. Dark jeans, ankle boots. The bland outfit that speaks nothing to my personal taste is a shield. It doesn’t stop him getting inside my skin though, into my bones.
I pull out my mobile to phone Janice. I’m a child again needing to hear everything’s going to be all right.
But my mother’s there before I can dial.
I pull into a space a ways away from the gates, telling myself it’ll do me good to stretch my legs before I go in. Get some air.
It’s not the real reason though. I’m trying to put this off as long as I can, the same way I walked as slowly as possible into my new school the year we came to London.
‘You still have to go,’ my mother said. ‘No matter how slowly you walk.’
I hear her say something similar now.
‘You have to do this. It won’t be over until you do.’
I don’t get out yet though, just sit there in the deserted car park, gripping the steering wheel, trying not to cry.
‘Do you think we were the true target of his rage?’ my mother asks, terminology I’ve come across countless times in criminal profiling books. ‘Do you think his victims were stand-ins for us? That we were the ones he really wanted to kill?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe.’
‘Those poor women. If only I. . .’
‘It’s not your fault,’ I tell her. ‘He’s the one who did this. Not you.’
But did he? whispers the other voice in my head. How can you be sure?
