Cold Dawn

1.

After a month in Strangeways, Calix Coniston changed cells. Flanked by guards, he stood on the metal catwalk, holding his cardboard crate. The three men waited, Calix staring at the crate. There were air-holes in the sides, and in a former life it had held apples for a supermarket. Pink Lady. He’d never heard of them.

The cell door jerked into life and rattled from right to left.

Third time lucky?

The first had been a drink-driver who’d killed an old man on a pedestrian crossing. A prison epiphany meant Kerry was constantly praying and quoting the bible. To be woken every day to Psalm 118-24: ‘This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice’ had driven Calix nuts. Two weeks of that and then for a reason never explained, Calix had been moved to a different cell. Havel was a Slovakian lorry driver who’d been stopped at Dover with 38 kilos of heroin hidden behind a false compartment. Didn’t speak a word of English. Hummed to himself at night and always on the bog.

The door juddered to a halt and Calix walked in with the crate. The cell smelt of pot noodle and cigarettes.

As the door rattled shut a man stared down from the top bunk. He was mid-twenties, ginger-haired and freckly. His torso was bare and the tattoo of a lion’s head bulged on his tricep. Thick red headphones angled back on his head. He held a comic. Calix nodded a greeting, then glanced around. A cabbage-green plastic table and two matching chairs. On the table sat a small TV with the sound down low. Above it was a shelf and the bog was in the corner. There wasn’t a mirror because it could be smashed and the shards used to wound – or kill.