Vigilante by Kerry Wilkinson Page B

bars most people would picture. The main gates in and out of the wings themselves were barred across and needed to be unlocked but the actual cell doors were thick, heavy and made of metal. It wasn’t as grim as she might have guessed but certainly wasn’t as bright and new as the visiting areas always appeared.
    ‘Everyone gets to spend twelve hours out of their cell between eight and eight,’ the governor explained. ‘There’s a games area towards the bottom of the wing with more pool tables and so on. What we’ve done is move them all down there just for while you’re here. It was a bit cramped so some of them are outside in the rec area. It will give you free access to walk into the cells. You do have to understand that the property they have in their rooms is their own, though. Some get very, er, funny about things being moved.’
    Jessica understood. People in pretty much any situation would be annoyed by someone else shuffling their possessions around. In prison, those items would be much more valued simply because the inmates had so little.
    The governor continued to speak as he walked them further on to the seemingly deserted wing. ‘If you do want to talk to anyone else, it can be arranged. I’m not sure everyone would want to talk to the authorities but I doubt many would mind that much. Mr McKenna is in a cell next to the interview room and ready whenever you are.’
    He was certainly going out of his way to accommodate them. The governor led them off to one side of the hall towards one of the cells. The rooms already had their doors all open. Rowlands asked why. ‘Between eight in the morning and eight at night, doors have to be kept open. If someone is feeling ill or wants to sleep or something like that they can go to the medical area. It’s for everyone’s safety really. Say an incident did happen, the guards wouldn’t be able to see anything or know something was wrong if the doors were closed.’
    ‘What about after eight?’ Jessica asked.
    ‘The main lights stay on for about an hour and then are off until around seven the next morning. They can have small lamps in their cells if they want to read and pretty much everyone has a TV in the room. Ultimately we can’t watch them twenty-four hours a day. It’s extremely rare anything happens. Most of the rooms have two people in them and there’s a degree of matching to try to ensure people get along. There’s a separate wing for vulnerable prisoners but genuinely most people just want to do their time.’
    ‘When I was here a few days ago, Donald McKenna said he had a cell to himself,’ Jessica said.
    ‘That’s true. A lot of it comes down to how crowded we are. Sometimes every cell has two people in it and we have to use places like the vulnerable wing just to get everyone in. Either that or release inmates who don’t have much left on their sentence. At the moment, we’re not quite at capacity so there are some prisoners who get a cell to themselves.’
    ‘How is that decided?’ Rowlands asked.
    ‘Each wing has a senior warden. There’s no way I can oversee everyone all the time but everyone reports back to me. I leave decisions like that up to them. It should come down to behaviour and things like that. Sometimes it just falls to the more senior prisoners though. A lot of it works itself out.’
    Given Farraday’s suggestion that someone on the wing might have some sort of involvement, that last part stuck out to Jessica. Ending up in a cell by himself could well indicate some sort of preferential treatment. It was still a far cry from that to either helping McKenna get out of the prison or aiding him to carry out murders but it was something to bear in mind.
    The governor pointed them to one of the open doors. ‘It’s that one there. Feel free to take your time. I’ll wait here if you have anything to ask.’
    Jessica entered the cell as Rowlands waited by the door. There wasn’t an awful lot of space for the two of them to