Billy slipped out from his bunk and stood in the middle of the cell, barely visible in the gloom. 'I suppose you want something in return,' he said.

Cleve turned on his pillow and looked at the uncertain silhouette standing a yard from him. 'What have you got that I'd want, Billy-Boy?' he said.

'What Lowell wanted.'

'Is that what you think that bluster was all about? Me staking my claim?'

'Yeah.'

'Like you said: no thank you.' Cleve rolled over again to face the wall.

'I didn't mean -'

'I don't care what you meant. I just don't want to hear about it, all right? You stay out of Lowell's way, and don't give me shit.'

'Hey,' Billy murmured, 'don't get like that, please. Please. You're the only friend I've got.'

'I'm nobody's friend,' Cleve said to the wall. 'I just don't want any inconvenience. Understand me?'

'No inconvenience,' the boy repeated, dull-tongued.

'Right. Now ... I need my beauty sleep.'

Tait said no more, but returned to the bottom bunk, and lay down, the springs creaking as he did so. Cleve lay in silence, turning the exchange over in his head. He had no wish to lay hands on the boy; but perhaps he had made his point too harshly. Well, it was done.

From below he could hear Billy murmuring to himself, almost inaudibly. He strained to eavesdrop on what the boy was saying. It took several seconds of ear-pricking attention before Cleve realized that Billy-Boy was saying his prayers.

Cleve dreamt that night. What of, he couldn't remember in the morning, though as he showered and shaved tantalizing grains of the dream sifted through his head. Scarcely ten minutes went by that morning without something - salt overturned on the breakfast table, or the sound of shouts in the exercise yard - promising to break his dream: but the revelation did not come. It left him uncharacteristically edgy and short-tempered. When Wesley, a small-time forger whom he knew from his previous vacation here, approached him in the library and started to talk as though they were bosom pals, Cleve told the runt to shut up. But Wesley insisted on speaking.

'You got trouble. '

'Oh. How so?'

'That boy of yours. Billy. '

'What about him?'

'He's asking questions. He's getting pushy. People don't like it. They're saying you should take him in hand.'

'I'm not his keeper.'

Wesley pulled a face. 'I'm telling you; as a friend.'

'Spare me.'

'Don't be stupid, Cleveland. You're making enemies.'

'Oh?' said Cleve. 'Name one.'

'Lowell,' Wesley said, quick as a flash. 'Nayler for another. All kinds of people. They don't like the way Tait is.'

'And how is he?' Cleve snapped back.

Wesley made a small grunt of protest. 'I'm just trying to tell you,' he said. 'He's sly. Like a fucking rat. There'll be trouble.'

'Spare me the prophecies.'

The law of averages demands the worst prophet be right some of the time: this was Wesley's moment it seemed. The day after, coming back from the Workshop where he'd exercised his intellect putting wheels on plastic cars, Cleve found Mayflower waiting for him on the landing.

'I asked you to look after William Tait, Smith,' the officer said. 'Don't you give a damn?'

'What's happened?'

'No, I suppose you don't.'

'I asked what happened. Sir.'

'Nothing much. Not this time. He's banged about, that's all. Seems Lowell has a hankering after him. Am I right?' Mayflower peered at Cleve, and when he got no response went on: 'I made an error with you, Smith. I thought there was something worth appealing to under the hard man. My mistake.'

Billy was lying on the bunk, his face bruised, his eyes closed. He didn't open them when Cleve came in. 'You OK?'

'Sure,' the boy said softly.

'No bones broken?'

'I'll survive.'

'You've got to understand -'

'Listen.' Billy opened his eyes. The pupils had darkened somehow, or that was the trick the light performed with them. 'I'm alive, OK? I'm not an idiot you know. I knew what I was letting myself in for, coming here.' He spoke as if he'd had a choice in the matter. 'I can take Lowell,' he went on, 'so don't fret.' He paused, then said: 'You were right.'

'About what?'

'About not having friends. I'm on my own, you're on your own. Right? I'm just a slow learner; but I'm getting the hang of it.' He smiled to himself.

'You've been asking questions,' Cleve said.

'Oh, yeah?' Billy replied off-handedly. 'Who says?'

'If you've got questions, ask me. People don't like snoopers. They get suspicious. And then they turn their backs when Lowell and his like get heavy.'

Naming the man brought a painful frown to Billy's face. He touched his bruised cheek. 'He's dead,' the boy murmured, almost to himself.

'Some chance,' Cleve commented.

The look that Tait returned could have sliced steel. 'I mean it,' he said, without a trace of doubt in his voice. 'Lowell won't get out alive.'

Cleve didn't comment; the boy needed this show of bravado, laughable as it was.

'What do you want to know, that you go snooping around?'

'Nothing much,' Billy replied. He was no longer looking at Cleve, but staring at the bunk above. Quietly, he said: 'I just wanted to know where the graves were, that was all.'

The graves?'

'Where they buried the men they'd hanged. Somebody told me there's a rose-bush where Crippen's buried. You ever hear that?'

Cleve shook his head. Only now did he remember the boy asking about the hanging shed; and now the graves. Billy looked up at him. The bruise was ripening by the minute.

'You know where they are, Cleve?' he asked. Again, that feigned nonchalance.

'I could find out, if you do me the courtesy of telling me why you want to know.'

Billy looked out from the shelter of the bunk. The afternoon sun was describing its short arc on the painted brick of the cell wall. It was weak today. The boy slid his legs off the bunk and sat on the edge of the mattress, staring at the light as he had on that first day.

'My grandfather - that is, my mother's father - was hanged here,' he said, his voice raw. 'In 1937. Edgar Tait. Edgar St Clair Tait.'

'I thought you said your mother's father?'

'I took his name. I didn't want my father's name. I never belonged to him.'

'Nobody belongs to anybody.' Cleve replied. 'You're your own man.'

'But that's not true,' Billy said with a tiny shrug, still staring at the light on the wall. His certainty was immovable; the gentility with which he spoke did not undercut the authority of the statement. 'I belong to my grandfather. I always have.'

'You weren't even born when he -'

'That doesn't matter. Coming and going; that's nothing.'

Coming and going, Cleve puzzled; did Tait mean life and death? He had no chance to ask. Billy was talking again, the same subdued but insistent flow.

'He was guilty of course. Not the way they thought he was, but guilty. He knew what he was and what he was capable of; that's guilt, isn't it? He killed four people. Or at least that's what they hanged him for.'

'You mean he killed more?'

Billy made another small shrug: numbers didn't matter apparently. 'But nobody came to see where they'd laid him to rest. That's not right, is it? They didn't care, I suppose. All the family were glad he was gone, probably. Thought he was wrong in the head from the beginning. But he wasn't. I know he wasn't. I've got his hands, and his eyes. So Mam said. She told me all about him, you see, just before she died. Told me things she'd never told anybody, and only told me because of my eyes ...' he faltered, and put his hand to his lip, as if the fluctuating light on the brick had already mesmerised him into saying too much.

'What did your mother tell you?' Cleve pressed him.

Billy seemed to weigh up alternative responses before offering one. 'Just that he and I were alike in some ways,' he said.