So the prison governors move them. They allow the hard men to become established and then transfer them to the other end of the country, with maximum inconvenience. It’s called ghosting. He eats his breakfast in Brixton, full of the joys of life, and at lunchtime finds himself hobbling out of the van in Armley, squinting up at the coils of razor wire above the walls, wondering who the top cat is. On any Monday morning prison vans, usually accompanied by the local police, are criss-crossing the country like worker bees seeking out new feeding grounds.
There is a down-side, of course. The constant exchange of prisoners creates an unofficial inter-jail communications network that cannot be improved upon. When the inmates of Hull decide to have a dirty protest, or to hurl tiles down from the roof, it’s no coincidence that the prisoners in Strangeways, Bentley and Parkhurst choose exactly the same time to do exactly the same thing. The great revolution of the late twentieth century has been in communications, and the prison population is leading the field.
Some of it is high-tech, some of it lower than you’d believe people could go. Phone cards, not snout, are the new currency, but the big porcelain phone in the corner is available to everyone with a strong stomach. The days of slopping out are over because most cells now have a toilet. The prisoners are not as overjoyed about this as you might expect. Once they had a room, now they have a shithole in the corner of the cell, behind an aluminium sink unit to give a modicum of privacy when you’re sitting there. What no one envisaged was the communications opportunities this created. What no one realised was the ingenuity of caged men.
All the toilets lead down to a common drain. Take a small receptacle — your cellmate’s drinking cup will do fine — and drain all the water out of the toilet u-bend. Pour it down the sink. You are now connected to the drain. If somebody else does the same thing elsewhere in the prison, even in another wing, you can now have a conversation without raising your voice above a whisper. There may be interruptions of a nature that BT users never experience, but you’ll never be left hanging on through three movements of the Four Seasons. To break the line, terminate the call, you simply flush the toilet.
I didn’t feel hungry. I’d had no lunch but the thought of having a long and meaningful conversation with your head down the pan, listening to all the extraneous noises, savouring the odours, is a wonderful appetite suppressant. Perhaps I could sell the concept to Weight Watchers and never have to work again. I won twenty-five thousand pounds in a quiz programme on television, then had a long hot soak in the bath. Freshly scrubbed, I managed a tin of chicken soup, with some decent bread, followed by a few custard creams. In deference to all the people who think I looked tired I went to bed early and, unusual for me, slept like a little dormouse.
“Where were you, yesterday?” Gilbert asked at the morning prayer meeting.
“Bentley prison,” I replied, sliding a chair across and placing my mug of tea on a beer mat on his desk. “I left word.” There were only the two of us, because Gareth Aidey had a court appointment and was polishing the buttons on his best tunic.
“So you really went to Bentley?”
“Of course I did. Where did you think I was — having a round of golf?”
“I don’t know what you get up to. I’m only the super. Regional Crime Squad were after you, said that Special Branch had tipped them off that you were on to something.”
“Christ, that was quick.”
“Nobody had a clue what it was all about. I felt a right wally.”
“Sorry, Gilbert, but I didn’t know myself until after five o’clock. I was at Bentley until nearly seven.”
“So what was it about?”
I found the transcripts in my briefcase and laid them on his desk. “It looks as if someone in Bentley prison is trying to organise a hitman to do a job, and the hitman is a certain Kevin Chilcott. Remember him?”
“Kevin Chilcott? He killed a police officer, didn’t he, ten or twelve years ago?”
“As good as. I consulted the PNC about him and SB must have picked it up.”
“Humph!” he snorted. “Makes you wonder what else they pick up. So what have you got?” Gilbert read the excerpts, running his finger along the lines like a schoolchild. He mumbled to himself and turned the page over.
“That’s just the usual stuff,” I told him.
“What do you call the usual stuff?”
“Oh, you know…” — I adopted a whining voice — “That you Sharron? Yeah. I love you. I love you. How’s your mum. She’s all right. Tell her I love her. She sez she love’s you. How’s your Tracy? She’s all right. Tell her I love her. She’s pregnant. Is she? Yeah. Whose is it? Dunno. When’s it due? January. It can’t be mine, then.”
Gilbert said: “OK, OK, I get the message. So this stuff stands out, then.”
“Like a first-timer at a nudist colony.”
“You’d better let RCS know.”
“I’ll do it now.”
Gilbert stood up and retrieved his jacket from behind the door. “I’m off to headquarters,” he told me. “Monthly meeting. You’re in charge. What can I report about the Margaret Silkstone case?”
“Solved,” I replied.
“Good. And the Peter Latham job?”
“Solved.”
“Good. As long as you remember you said it. Do you want me to tell them about this?” He waved a hand towards the papers on his desk.
“Might as well,” I replied. “Give you something to talk about.”
Special Branch are not a band of super-cops, based in London. Every Force has an SB department, quietly beavering away at god-knows what. They have offices at all the airports and other points of entry, and keep an eye on who comes in and goes out of the country. Anti-terrorism is their speciality, but they keep a weather-eye open for big-league criminals on the move. If you don’t mind unsociable hours and have a high boredom threshold it could be the career for you. Special Branch don’t feel collars, they gather information. The Regional Crime Squads specialise in heavy stuff like organised crime, the syndicates and major criminals. They are experts at covert surveillance, tailing people and using informers. They move about, keep a low profile, infiltrate gangs. Dangerous stuff.
“So where is he?” I asked an RCS DI in London when I finally found myself talking to someone with an interest in the case.
“Wish we knew,” he confessed. “Over the last five years we’ve had sightings in Spain, Amsterdam and Puerto Rico. He moves around. What we do know, though, is that the money must have run out by now, even if he’s living very modestly. Half a million sounds a lot, but when someone charges you thirty per cent for converting it to used notes or a foreign currency, and someone else charges you for their silence, and so on, it soon depletes.”
“In the transcripts he says make it quick,” I told him.
“Sounds like he’s getting desperate, then. We’ll dig out a new description of him and circulate it to all points of entry. After that, we can only hope that someone spots him. Which district are you?”
“Number three.”
“So that will be our Leeds office?”
“That’s right.”
“Any chance of you getting the transcripts over there? If the conversations took place a month ago we might be too late already.”
“’Fraid not. I’ll address them to you and leave them behind the front desk.” It was their baby, so they could do the running around.
“OK. I’ll arrange for them to be collected, and thanks for the information.”
“My pleasure.” I asked him to keep us informed and replaced the receiver. Another satisfied customer, I thought, as I delved into Gilbert’s filing cabinet where he keeps his chocolate digestives.