Read Online Lawless by Alexander McGregor - Free Book Online Page A

around to prove there was nothing there but spit.
    Like Bryan Gilzean, McBride sat back but not to think about liberty – nobody does until it’s removed. Just as he had done each time he visited the institutions where you automatically stop at every door because you know it’s locked, he reflected on how wretched the existence was for those who entered the Gate Complex.
    Apart from two neatly dressed males who he knew would be solicitors, the rest of those on the benches in the waiting room were women, most of whom had spent the previous half hour trying – but failing – to look glamorous. Those who had forgotten the visiting routine could have saved themselves the trouble of tying their hair up. It would just be shaken out under the scrutiny of an officer who knew a ponytail could conceal a wrap.
    The ladies who had come to visit evidently shared the same brand of hair dye and bought their ubiquitous denims and flimsy crop-tops in identical budget shops. Poor diets and drug habits ensured that those waiting to greet them would not have much to cling to in their urgent embrace.
    As always, McBride experienced a surge of sympathy. He knew that, without exception, these miserable souls would have been forced to use public transport to travel to the prison. Even for those who lived closest, an hour with their man meant an entire day of waiting on railway station platforms and at bus stops. No wonder they looked defeated. They were as much prisoners as their menfolk and the only crime they’d committed was hitching up with the wrong guy.
    McBride was among the first to pass through the search tables and, at the last door into the visiting hall, he found his progress halted once more. ‘Hold out your left hand, please, palm down.’ An officer, who might just as easily have been sitting behind a post-office counter, stamped an invisible mark on the back of his proffered hand. It was a new one on McBride. He raised an eyebrow.
    ‘This way we know who we should be keeping in or letting out,’ the officer, who had said the words a thousand times before, explained.
    McBride nodded but silently he thought it would have made better sense if you’d been able to see the stamp mark.
    He took his place at the numbered table he’d been allocated and, as he waited for all the other visitors to be branded, he ran an eye round the long room. Times were changing. Nothing was ever going to make a prison visiting hall look like anything else but someone with imagination had tried. At one end, there was the usual raised dais with its table and chairs for some of the supervising officers while, incongruously, at the other end, a wall blazed with colour. Its bright Disney characters marked a play-area for children where there was a blackboard and more toys than most of the kids who would use it had ever seen.
    Trying hard and nearly succeeding to disguise the heavy steel bars of the only outside wall were a dozen paintings completed by inmates. The most impressive – and depressing – of the bunch was a large canvas depicting a group of prisoners who gazed unsmiling and flat-eyed back at McBride.
    After the last visitor was seated, the door at the far end opened and the occupants of The Tank filed in, every one of them eagerly scanning the row of faces seated at the tables.
    When Bryan Gilzean walked uncertainly across the room, McBride did not recognise him at first. The photographs filling Adam Gilzean’s house showed a young man with a round face, eyes that danced and more rich, dark hair than any male deserved. Taking the seat opposite and extending a hesitant hand was a figure who might have been Adam Gilzean himself. His cheeks had the hollowness of a marathon runner and the close-cropped hair showed spikes of steel that mirrored the pallor of his skin.
    For five minutes they spoke pointlessly about the miserable weather as McBride tried to put his companion at ease.
    ‘All I could think of on the way up here was the warm