The Evil Inside (23 page)

 

The Shawshank Redemption
is a lie.

There are no kindly Morgan Freeman types in here.

There are no free men at all.

No secret tunnels to paradise and certainly no hope of redemption.

As I sit writing these notes I look out my high barred window and try to remember more open skies.

Nine is my lucky number. At least it used to be.

I believe nine used to be John Lennon's lucky number, too. (October 9 was his birthday.) Except he was also gunned down on December 9 1980 (1+9+8+0 =18: 1+8 = 9) Australia-time, on W72 (7+2 = 9) by an assassin obsessed with Chapter 27 (2+7=9) of a famous book.

Anyway, nine years is how long I spent at the Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Centre on Wards Island, Manhattan.

Before they transferred me here six years ago.

To my new office.

A lot can happen in fifteen years:

The Crocodile Hunter is dead.

The Powerpuff Girls were cancelled after six seasons.

And Patrick Swayze is now dancing in the dirt.

In fact, although I don't have access to a television, and nobody ever visits, it's surprising just how much one can find out inside about the outside.

Detective Barino sometimes tells me things.

I still see him from time to time.

He's been here longer than I have.

It was Barino who killed that poor girl down in Davy Jones' Lockers that first night at the Hell or High Water club.

I'd even come across him that very same night: the captain with the bad skin I'd collided with as I staggered to the restroom.

A sharp-eyed doorman had recognized him when he paid an early evening visit to the club in August 2000, flashing his police badge and waving my photo around.

As Barino talked with the club's manager, the doorman had had a quiet word with Barino's partner – the same officer who'd accompanied him on his visit to the Olcott – about the ‘regular customer with the terrible skin.'

One Detective Angelo Barino.

You see, Barino hadn't realized there were secret cameras in the basement rooms until he started investigating his own case. Which is why he had been so desperate to get his hands on the tapes.

Barino's wife had left him. He'd started drinking heavily and shooting speed.

In fact, he'd become one of the ‘asshole albino's' best customers.

To this day he claims the devil made him do it.

*

I'm reading another one of Naomi Klein's books.

It's called
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
.

It's about how certain supposedly ‘democratic' governments use natural and sometimes even manufactured disasters to push through unpopular and unjust policies while their citizens are still in a state of shock:

The War on Terror gets outsourced to private companies with close political affiliations, conveniently affording them vast economic gain.

Hurricane Katrina destroys public schools in New Orleans that are then replaced by new, private ones.

Fishing villages swept away by the Southeast Asian tsunami are ‘remodelled' by wealthy international resort developers.

Our world gets carved up and monopolized by criminals masquerading as patricians and politicians.

They cash in on chaos.

Intervention via illusion: the most dangerous MacGuffin of all.

*

I try to keep busy during the day.

It's the nights that are hardest.

That's when Callum comes to see me.

He still looks all bruised and broken up.

Other nights, it's four faceless women with their bellies gaping red.

But they never say anything.

If only they'd let me sleep.

*

Esmeralda appears in my dreams, too, sometimes.

Truth be told, I'd never meant to hurt Esmeralda.

But when I'd subwayed back to the Olcott that morning to retrieve a pad on which I'd scrawled some important campaign ideas and saw her fiddling with that curtain cord again, for one short, sick moment I saw my mother instead.

I lashed out at her in a moment of madness.

She fell and hit her head hard on the windowsill and then even harder on the floor.

Just like Violet had all those years before.

I panicked.

Callum was asleep in the bedroom, and I was sure no one had seen me enter the building; the lobby had been empty – as it so often seemed to be – when I'd bolted in.

So I took the stairs back down and the fire exit out to the alley that ran along the side of the building.

Within forty minutes of leaving, I had been back in my office.

Once she eventually regained consciousness in late 2000, Esmeralda was able to recall the last moments prior to her fall, and made a statement to the police.

Shortly after that, Estella informed her of what had happened to Callum, Lucy and all the other women, and I hear Esmeralda almost lost her mind with grief.

*

Sometimes there's another voice in my cell.

A voice so vile that I sometimes can't stop it coming out of my own mouth.

That cunty, carping, wheedling, needling, emasculating, enervating, never-ending voice.

Make me a cuppa, ya lazy bastard.

Do I have to bloody do everything?

I miss your sister but I'd never miss you.

When the voice starts up, I have to press my palms into my ears, squeeze my eyes shut and sing ‘Olcott Races' really, really loudly.

From where I sit, if I crane my neck I can make out half a water tower on top of the next cell block.

It looks Zen-beautiful as the early evening sun disrobes behind it.

The blackbirds seem to like it, too.

But here's the thing: the tower's not operational anymore since the warden had it all sealed up.

A prisoner hid in there one time and they didn't find him until the smell gave him away.

I started writing this book back in the dim, dark days of late November 2003.

I could not have possibly stayed the course without the benefit of the kind hearts and/or sound minds of the people below:

To Shoba Purushothaman for financing what turned out to be an intensive twelve-month New York research trip in year 2000.

To my razor-sharp young editor at Quercus London, Richard Arcus, and his far-sighted boss, Jon Riley.

To my uber-agents in Los Angeles, Alan Nevins and Eddie Pietzak; and before that to Anthony Mattero who deserves a LOT of credit for this book.

To my friend and now well-known screenwriter, Terence Hammond, who demonstrated through actions – not just words – that ‘never giving up' is really the only viable option.

I'd also like to thank Mark Lucas, Nikki Christer, Cecily Maude, Isobel Dixon, Carson Reeves, Katherine Finemore, Mark Farrelly, Graham Smith, Simon Lord, Andrew Joy, Martine Shrives, Kim Burns, Mark & Emma Merton, Jacinta Di Mase, Adena Graham, Annie Condon, Paul Paxton-White, Tim O'Leary, Terry Comer, Andrew & Libby Hicks, Alan Baldwin, Josh Hunt, Flip Shelton, Dominique Hanlon, Stephen Gault, Brad Felstead, Liz Burgess, Kate Langbroek, Noble Smith, Michael Payne, Dan O'Brien, Christine Elmer, Mathew Hehir, Greg Foyster, Diana Thornley, John Fuhr, Serge Guala, Rudolf Buitendach, Gary Ravenscroft, David Rawlinson, Robert Stock, Chris Bilby, Peter Leckey, Linda Clark, Seb Rachele and Doc Johnson for their reading, counsel or encouragement.

To my real ‘old family' – Jo, Geoff, Louise and Danielle – thank you for always being there, even before I started writing this book.

And finally, I'd like to especially thank my long-suffering wife, Moira, who will tell you that the real nightmare is living with a writer.

(Seconded by my sons, Louis and Flynn, who have had to put up with an oft-distracted Dad …)

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