"Is he…dead?" a tentative foot nudged Lister's side.
"No, apparently the drunken oaf tripped and hit his face on the bar counter after assaulting SPO Jenkins. You should've seen the state of him—his face looked like mince pie and he was missing half of his teeth."
"Wow, this little guy did that?"
"He may look harmless, but be careful—the SPO's who brought him in says he has the cold hard eyes of...well, the kind of bloke who gets drunk and trips SPO's."
The door closed with a heavy thud and clicked as it was locked. Lister, in his semi-conscious state, was trying to make sense of everything he'd just heard, and concluded that he must be having some sort of lucid dream. He dared himself to open just one eye to check, and when he did he was greeted by a familiar gray ceiling. He must be dreaming, just as he suspected. But his whole body felt like he'd been beaten with a stick, and usually he didn't remember the pain in his dreams being this realistic…
"Oi—did you just open your eye?"
Wait a second, Lister thought, his brain moving at a sluggishly slow pace. That wasn't Rimmer's voice...too deep. Not nearly weaselly enough…
Lister's eyes shot open, and he came to the realization that he was lying on his back on a cold stone floor. The room was mostly dark, save for a single light bulb hanging directly over his face. He closed his eyes again as light spots danced before his black vision. Where am I…?
A large, unfamiliar bearded face suddenly loomed over his own and blocked out the harsh light. "You are alive! I knew I saw you open your eyes a second ago!"
Lister stared blankly back at the face before him, finding it very confusing. He couldn't seem to keep his eyes in focus. "Where…where am…."
"You wanna know where you are? Just look to your left."
Lister turned his head and saw another gray wall. The man sighed. "Your other left."
Lister looked the other way, his head protesting every movement by jabbing his brain with a hot poker of pain. When his eyes re-focused he found that he was staring at a black metal cell door with a barred square for the window. His brow furrowed. This hurt as well. "...Jail?"
"Not exactly," said the man. "The SPO's are kind of like little kids that parents will give a plastic steering wheel to so they think that they're the ones driving the car. No, this is more like a time-out zone. They can never really press charges against you or anything. But those sticks they carry around are usually enough to make anyone behave."
Lister was still processing everything his cellmate had just said. His head felt foggy, "Did they say what I did to get here?"
"Apparently you assaulted an SPO. Good work on that, by the way. Those guys are pricks. They get handed a truncheon and suddenly they think they're all high and mighty. I'm in here for looking at one the wrong way, apparently. But to them, looking at them at all is the wrong way. Well, to be fair, it probably had more to do with the fact that I'd just pissed in their engine."
Lister struggled to sit up, "I don't remember assaulting anybody, but I feel like I might've been…"
"I'm not surprised you don't remember," said the man, shaking his head sadly. "You seldom do, when you've had as much to drink as you have. I can smell it on you. The last time I got that drunk I woke up in an evening gown that wasn't even my wife's."
"You're right, I don't remember," said Lister slowly. "But it just doesn't seem like my style to assault someone, even when I'm drunk..."
After his third unsuccessful attempt to lift himself off the floor, his cell mate reached out a hand and helped him up. "I'm Reg, by the way," he said, wringing Lister's whole arm.
"Dave," Lister said, pulling his hand away and massaging his arm socket. He looked past Reg's head and caught a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror above the sink. He rushed over to survey the damage from the fight. Heavy purple bruises were rising on his cheekbone and between his eyes, which both had shiners. It made it look like he was wearing a purple superhero -style mask. His upper lip and chin were both caked with blood from when MacWilliams had punched his nose. Lister turned on the tap and splashed water on his face to wash off the blood, using the hem of his t-shirt to dry his face.
The cold water cleared up Lister's mind considerably. Memories from the night began flooding back to him as he collapsed onto the cell bench. He remembered the conversation about MacWilliams and his sexual preferences, ordering drinks, going out back to the smoking shelter, and then getting into the fight with MacWilliams and his cronies. But why had the fight started…?
His mind played back a hazy clip of a lanky Second Technician with hair like a wire mesh scrubber scurrying out the Hacienda's front doors.
"Rimmer," Lister growled, his hands involuntarily clenching into fists. Rimmer insulted McWilliams, scarpered, and left me to face the music… "I am going to kill him!"
"Easy now," Reg advised, dropping his voice to a whisper. "They don't like that kind of talk around here. Who's Rimmer? A friend of yours?"
"I'd hardly call him a friend," Lister said. He had said this so many times in the last few days he was considering putting it on a t-shirt. "More like forced company. We work together on the JMC mining ship, Red Dwarf. We're on a planet leave. He's a world class coward. He started up a fight and ran, which is why me face looks like I just got ten rounds in with Joe Calzaghe. He's a total smeghead…"
"Sounds like one," Reg nodded. "I knew a guy like him once, my housemate at University. He was majoring in flag semaphore. I used to put those clear Lifesaver candies in his shower head. It was a shame, though—it worked wonders for his wig-wagging when the flag sticks stuck to his hands."
"Listen, Reg," said Lister, "how would I go about getting out of here so I can try out that Lifesaver thing on Rimmer?"
"Got any money on you?"
Lister felt around in his pockets for the charge card Hollister had given him, before he remembered that he had given it to Rimmer to get a round of drinks in. "Nope, 'fraid not."
"Neither have I," said Reg. "So it looks like neither of us will be getting out of here. The whole establishment here is a load of old pony. Miranda has won the award for Most Corrupted Law Enforcement in the Galaxy ten years running. All it takes is an ice lolly to bribe the Chief of Police to look the other way. They can keep you in here forever if you don't pay the £350 for bail. It doesn't matter what the offense, the bail price is the same. It's what the government uses to pay the SPO's wages, see."
"Do I still get to make a phone call?"
"Sure," said Reg, getting to his feet. "I tried calling my missus, but she told me it serves me right. Things em...aren't going too well with us at the moment. She's been mad me at me ever since I got drunk and sent for a mail-order bride bot from Tethys. I came home from work one day and all my stuff was sitting on the front doorstep. My wife had decided to kick me out when she signed for the delivery, but kept Natasha 38ZP-QR71 to do all the housework for her. She's only talked to me once since then, and half of it was expletives."
"I'm sorry to hear that," said Lister, not sure what else to say.
"Oi, Betty-Dave here wants his phone call!" Reg bellowed through the bars.
A few moments later a female SPO was at the cell door. "Very well," she said, taking a mobile phone on an elastic tether from her belt and slipping it through the door. Lister got up to receive it and dialed the number of their hotel, then asking to be connected to Rimmer in their room.
The phone rang several times before it picked up. "Hello?" Rimmer's voice came tentatively through the receiver.
"Rimmer, you had better-" Lister's threat was cut short, however, as Lister heard the phone slam down and then the sound of a dial tone.
"Listen, can I try someone else?" said Lister desperately.
"No. That was your one call," Betty said pleasantly. Lister snapped the phone shut and thrust it back at the Officer."Hopefully someone will be here to retrieve you in the morning." She marched off down the hallway, her stiletto-heeled boots clicking as she went.
"Smegging fantastic," Lister fumed, kicking the sink bad-temperately. "I'm going to be reported as AWOL if I don't report back tomorrow..."
Reg sat down on the bench next to Lister, clapping him on the back sympathetically. "Oi, you know what I've just realized?"
"What?" said Lister flatly.
"You look just like Gary Wilmot!"
Lister had a feeling that it was going to be a very, very long night.
...
The next morning, Lister was awakened from a highly unsatisfying night's sleep on a hard cold bench with Reg's shoulder acting as a bulky pillow by the sound of a truncheon beating on the holding cell door.
"Oy, you with the rat tails," the SPO shouted. "You've made bail."
Lister yawned and stretched. He took his jaw in both hands and twisted his head to the left, producing a series of stomach-churning cracking sounds. He did the same on his right side, though it did little to relieve the stiffness in his neck.
"See you, man," Lister said, clapping Reg's massive shoulder.
"Bye, Davy," Reg mumbled sleepily, and continued to drool onto the wall.
Lister stepped outside of his cell on legs that felt like stilts and promptly tripped over a pile of rumbled up bath tissue. Slightly bewildered, he followed the SPO and his shiny clicking boots down the lane of holding cells.
They stopped at a desk. "Here's your belongings," the Officer handed Lister his spare packet of cigarettes, which Lister had no memory whatsoever of having confiscated. This rather worried him, as the pockets of his trousers he'd been wearing had been too small for the packet so he'd kept them tucked in the waistband of his boxer shorts.
"Listen, are me mates I was with last night here?"
"No, they were released on bail this morning," said the Officer.
"What? Who bailed them out?"
"They bailed themselves out," said the Officer, taking a clipboard off a nail on the wall. "They spent the whole night in the tank, woke up this morning and remembered they had credit cards on them, the bunch of twonks. And when I let them out of the cell this morning, somehow they'd managed to get drunk again overnight. Can you believe that?"
Lister could believe it. Petersen was known to hollow out the heels of his boots and fill them with emergency whiskey. Petersen said he loved the taste of polycarbonate compound that it added.
"Very professional," said Lister snarkily as he looked over the SPO's shoulder at the clipboard, where all the names of the holdees were scrawled in nearly illegible handwriting along with their crime, personal items confiscated, and a check box for whether or not they'd paid bail. "Did me mates ask about me before they left?"
"Yeah, they did, as a matter of fact. They asked to see your body."
"You what?"
"Well, they thought you were dead, with the state you came in here last night. They came to pay their last respects. They even brought you some flowers. Or rather, flowers made out of bog rolls. Best they had to work with."
Lister remembered tripping over the white mound outside of his cell and shook his head, though he was impressed with their resourcefulness. "How do I get out of here?"
"Straight ahead and to the right, then through those double doors."
"Cheers," Lister said. He went down the hallway and to the doors and froze when he found Rimmer waiting for him, an antiques magazine in his lap and two packed suitcases at his side.
Rimmer looked up from his magazine and spotted Lister standing across the room, glaring at him with undisguised contempt. Rimmer dropped the magazine and rushed up to him. "Listy, there you are!"
"Don't talk to me," Lister said loudly, pushing past Rimmer and picking up his suitcase.
"I was the one who bailed you out," Rimmer said, as if to rectify any cause Lister had to feel angry at him. He was greeted by silence. "You could thank me, you know."
"Yeah, but who should I really be thanking?" said Lister, snatching the credit card from the breast pocket of Rimmer's uniform. "You? Or the JMC?"
"It's hardly important who paid for your bail," said Rimmer. "I could have left you here to rot."
"No you couldn't," Lister said. "Imagine what Hollister would've done to you when you came back to Red Dwarf without me. When he found out that I was in a holding cell all because of a fight you started, that you knew I'd been arrested and you'd left me behind?"
"I suppose it would be quite a relief to the other one-thousand, one-hundred and sixty-seven crew members," said Rimmer. "Besides, I didn't know you were in here, I only found out from watching the local news this morning."
"Rimmer, I used me one and only phone call to ring you at the hotel last night, and you hung up on me!" Lister shouted, his face mere inches from Rimmer's, his hand clenched on Rimmer's collar.
"Was that you?" Rimmer squeaked.
"Forget this," Lister said bad-temperately, releasing Rimmer and marching back up the corridor the way he came.
"Um, Lister—where are you going?" Rimmer said, hurrying to follow his enraged bunk mate. "We have to leave now—our shuttle back to Red Dwarf is boarding in twenty minutes!"
Lister found the Officer that he'd spoken to mere moments before. "I'd like to post bail for Reg, me cell mate from last night."
"What?" Rimmer cried. "You're going to post bail for some half-witted delinquent you hardly know?"
"He's a better friend than you, smeg-for-brains."
The SPO took the clipboard off the wall again. "Right—Reginald Thompson is in for defacing a Shore Patrol Officer's vehicle..."
Rimmer tapped his watch pointedly. "Can we hurry this up, please?" Lister asked.
"That will be half a hundred times seven more," said the Officer, swiping the JMC card. "Would you like a receipt?"
"Eh?" Lister said blankly.
"He means three hundred and fifty pounds," Rimmer whispered. "He did the same to me, only he tried to spell out the numbers using his body. He had to call in a second Officer to do help him do the five."
"Why don't you just say three hundred and fifty?" said Lister.
"Well, if you had to tell people the exact same dollar pound amount repeatedly every day, wouldn't you want some variation to make the job more exciting? I'm stuck in here dealing with bail, don't you think I'd rather be out there smashing some skulls in?"
"Look, we've really got to run," said Lister. "Just tell Reg that in return for me posting his bail, he's got to sort things out with his missus."
"Lister, we've got ten minutes," Rimmer said urgently.
"Then what are we standing around wagging jaws for?" Lister picked up his suitcase again. "Let's go, let's go!"
….
AN: The Gary Wilmot joke was a reference to an incident during the time when Mr. Charles was wrongly imprisoned when someone asked him if he was Gary Wilmot. Also, I was just going to have Lister and his mates get beat up and then I didn't know what, and it was my brother who suggested they get put in the tank. I agonized a bit—Lister never said this happened, but he didn't say it didn't, therefore, it could have. So there's my logic! Plus, it wasn't an arrest that went on his record, more a timeout zone.
One more chapter to go!