by John Macken
‘Fuck.’
‘Exactly.’
‘So it’s safe to assume that whoever broke in wanted rid of DNA samples that were unique and irreplaceable.’
Judith was quiet for a second, her dark eyebrows knotted. Sometimes Moray still found it hard to believe that she was actually a scientist. She was light and easy-going, a pleasure to be with. But he saw it now. Her concentration, when circumstances demanded it, was absolute, her working through of a problem logical, careful and methodical.
‘Nope,’ she answered, ‘we can’t conclude that. Why tip all the solutions out? Why not trash the computers? Why not wipe the records off the equipment? And who really knows exactly what Reuben should and shouldn’t have? I can barely remember at times. If you really wanted to erase the past, you’d have burned the lab down.’
‘OK, Madame Curie, what’s your theory?’
‘That they were after something specific.’
‘Which was?’
Judith pictured the box of fishfingers lying in her freezer at home.
‘I’ve got a fair idea,’ she answered.
21
From his vantage point, a shallow kink in the corridor, Prison Guard Tony Paulers was able to monitor most of the telephones. As luck would have it, the phones were unusually empty, and he had an unobstructed line of sight to his target.
This time he wasn’t talking in code. Tony couldn’t make out the exact words, but there was a distinct lack of repetition about his few short utterances. The last occasion, a few days ago, Tony had called a friend in the Met, someone he could trust, someone he had been on a training course with over a decade back. Tony had told him all he knew: that a prisoner in Pentonville called Michael Brawn, a tall, sinewy psychopath with a propensity for sadistic cruelty, was passing coded messages out of the prison. His friend had been sympathetic and understanding, but said he needed more. Tangible evidence, specific information. He’d also asked why Tony hadn’t informed the governor, and Tony had hesitated, and finally answered, because I want to do this my way.
Things had changed since then, however. The governor was recuperating at home, a heavy stroke having strangled his words and staggered his gait, and a new man, Robert Arnott, had been assigned to take his place. Tony had met Arnott twice, and was not impressed with what he had seen. Too young, too inexperienced, too eager. But with the sole advantage that, compared with the former governor, he was less likely to collapse into early infirmity. So, for now, Tony had resolved to keep an eye on Michael Brawn, and see what he was up to. And here, in the telephone corridor, Brawn was talking quietly, considering his words, and almost certainly doing something he shouldn’t.
Tony strained his ears, flattening himself back out of view. He turned his head and monitored the corridor, eager not to be witnessed eavesdropping. It was lunchtime, and the vast majority of inmates were either eating or waiting to eat. Then a figure approached from the far end, taking his time through the gated double doors. Tony held his radio to his ear, pretending to be in conversation. The man came closer, and Tony recognized him. This is going to be interesting, he thought to himself.
The prisoner was a shade under six feet tall, relatively slender but with wide shoulders which were slightly hunched forward as he walked. Features that otherwise might have been considered fine were blunted by the swell of early bruising. The nose and chin, in particular, had taken a pounding. Despite his injuries, there was something undefeated about him. He had heard from guards and prisoners alike that Reuben Maitland was a former copper who had worked in forensics. Tony wondered how he had come to fall so low, on remand in Pentonville, accused of attempting to kill his wife. He tried and failed to picture the man in front of him in police uniform or in a laboratory coat. That was the problem with prison, Tony believed. Dress all the men in the same casual baggy clothes and you erased the subtle signs that existed on the outside which told you about a man’s likely character and background. It was like a deliberate wiping of the slate to enable a whole new set of rules to be established from scratch.
As Tony watched Reuben Maitland walk past, Michael Brawn stood upright, the phone’s metal lead dangling at his side, his head rotating almost robotically to follow his progress. Something in his demeanour spoke of unfinished business. Maitland glanced across at Brawn a couple of times, emotionless and unperturbed. Tony was prepared to bet that his heart was beating fast though. What he must have seen in Brawn’s eyes wouldn’t be difficult to interpret.
Tony knew he should have confiscated the weapon the previous day. But without back-up, there was no way he was going to risk it. Brawn had been on fire with a psychopathic zeal, and Tony, if he was entirely honest with himself, had felt a crippling tremble of fear. It had been as much as he could do to order him out of the cell. Besides, Tony suspected that a small penknife was neither here nor there. If Michael Brawn really wanted to hurt someone, the lack of a blade would be only a minor inconvenience.
Tony watched Brawn return to his call, his eyes still burning into Maitland’s back as he turned at the end of the corridor. Tony pressed himself back in the alcove, listening hard. Brawn still hadn’t spotted him. He was drumming his fingers on the rounded metal hood and had resumed his conversation. After a few seconds, Tony heard the sound of the receiver being replaced. Still holding his radio, he waited, praying that Brawn wouldn’t walk past him. When he knew he was safe, Tony stepped out. Brawn was near the far end of the passageway, heading in the same direction as Maitland. He wondered for a moment whether he should follow him, but decided against it. He had saved Maitland once already. He would have to fight his own battles from now on.
Tony counted the telephones until he arrived at the one Brawn had been using. The receiver was still warm, and it smelled of aftershave and coffee, a sweet and sour combination that Tony found unsettling. He dialled 0 for an operator, and waited impatiently until it was answered.
‘This is Prison Guard Tony Paulers,’ he began. ‘Who’s that?’ The operator gave her name, and Tony said, ‘Hey, Sandra, how’s things? Look, can you do me a small favour? Could you get me the last number dialled on this phone?’ Tony took out his small prison notebook, with its matching pencil. ‘No, it’s nothing official. Just double-checking something.’ After a slight delay, the operator gave him the information, and he scribbled it down. ‘Got it. And, the last thing, Sandra, remind me what number the prison uses for dialling out?’ Tony entered a second number below the first. He thanked her and hung up.
When Tony dialled the first number, it was answered almost immediately.
‘Bargain Pages.’
This wasn’t what Tony had been expecting. ‘Oh, hello,’ he said. ‘I wonder if you could help me?’
‘What section are you after?’ The voice was on the hard side of female. Tony pictured a middle-aged smoker.
‘I’m not sure,’ he answered honestly.
‘Well, are you buying, selling or meeting people?’
‘None. Look, my name is Tony Paulers, and I’m a police officer,’ he lied. ‘I’m chasing up a call that was made from this phone just a few minutes ago.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘I could give you the number.’
There was a barely detectable sigh, a slight hesitation, and Tony knew his luck was in. ‘What’s the number?’ she asked flatly. Tony read the second set of digits to her, a Pentonville line reserved for external prisoner calls, a number he knew to be occasionally and sporadically tapped. He heard the sounds of keyboard activity, and a couple of barely suppressed expletives. ‘Just checking the calls-received folder. Yeah, hang on. That’s the one. Eleven fifty-eight. Does that sound about right?’
Tony checked his watch. ‘Bang on,’ he said.
‘So, what do you want to know?’
Good question. All he knew was that Brawn had made a call to Bargain Pages at a time when the phones were empty.
‘What section did the call get put through to?’
‘Looks like it went throug
h to Personals.’
‘Was an advert placed?’
‘And you’re from the police, right?’
‘Oh yes. Yes I am.’
Another pause, another sigh. ‘Well, makes no odds to me. Advert in the Men Seeking Women section. Let’s see.’ A smoker’s cough, a smoker’s laugh. ‘“The time is ripe. Must act now. Share your feelings with me.” Can’t see him getting a lot of replies out of that one, can you?’
Tony wrote down the words quickly, before he forgot them.
‘And that was all?’
‘You want more?’
‘It’s just . . . When does the advert go out?’
‘First thing tomorrow. He made the noon deadline by a couple of minutes. So, what station are you from, so I can log this?’
Tony hung up, his mind racing. A distinctly impersonal message in the Personals. Michael Brawn was putting a communication out there for someone. He read the words again. Must act now. Share your feelings. What the hell was he up to? he wondered. And what did the message really mean? He tried to figure out how the response would come, whether or not Bargain Pages had a phone line to pick up replies. He vowed to call back later and find out.
In the meantime, he picked up the receiver again, once more catching the lingering coffee and after-shave scent of Michael Brawn, almost as though he was still standing there. He checked the corridor was empty, and then he dialled his contact in the Met.
This time, he had something substantial to impart.
22
Reuben stuck to the edge of the corridor. It was safer that way. At least one side of him was protected. Things were going downhill fast, and he needed to be out of prison. Narc’s verdict had stayed with him, his jarring Scouse accent lending menace to the prophecy. You are so in the wrong place. They’re going to fucking eat you alive.
So far, he had been attacked only once by Michael Brawn, but more bloodshed was likely. Other inmates, ones he didn’t even recognize, had whistled and jeered at him, or offered specific and gratuitous threats. The prisoner serving his breakfast had made a show of hawking and spitting into his scrambled egg. Reuben had walked over to an empty table and sat alone, and a plastic mug had been thrown across the room at him. Except for exercise periods, Reuben had stayed in his cell, lying on his bed and staring at the wall, wondering and waiting.
But nearly two days had now passed, and it had got too much. He had to have answers from Sarah before Brawn came after him a second time, or some other psycho caught him in the semen-stinking showers, or his food was contaminated with something more dangerous than phlegm. And the question came to him again: what was Brawn waiting for? The right opportunity? A suitable weapon? The help of another prisoner? The way he had looked at him earlier in the telephone corridor told Reuben that something was imminent. Brawn would not be delaying for long.
As he scraped along the wide hallway, Reuben appreciated that the first three days of his incarceration had been fine. With a mission, and the support of Damian and Cormack, time had passed reasonably quickly. He had rediscovered the routines of his first sentence fifteen years ago, and had eaten, slept and watched TV in synch with the other twelve hundred inmates. Now, however, he was out of step, keeping himself hidden away, the minutes dragging by, cuts and bruises healing with slow reluctance, on guard and unprotected. He could see that his fight training with Stevo had been woefully inadequate. When a lunatic really wanted to hurt you, there wasn’t that much you could actually do.
And thoughts of Joshua, pale and in hospital, cannulas in his veins, his blood being scrutinized, white cells being counted, diagnoses being discussed, treatments being debated . . . all of this attacked him with more ferocity than even Michael Brawn had mustered. He was alone and isolated, his son with suspected leukaemia, growing weak as his bodily defences were dismantled from within. Reuben shook his head as he walked. He needed to shout at Sarah down the phone. Hopefully this time Brawn would be nowhere in sight. He had to get Sarah to forget about protocol and procedure and going through the correct channels and just drag him the fuck out of Pentonville. There was no other option. The place was secure as hell. The bars to his window, the lock on his door, the height of the walls, the gates within gates, the cages within cages. Escape was a fantasy perpetuated by films. There was only one way out, and that was through high-level CID intervention.
The corridor widened and Reuben stayed to the right. Ahead and in the middle lay two pool tables, end to end. Reuben passed a guard and nodded. The guard was, he thought, called Tony, the man Cormack and Damian had alerted when they observed Michael Brawn entering his cell. He was early to mid-fifties, Reuben guessed, and looked to have spent most of his life incarcerated. He wondered whether Tony was as institutionalized as the lifers who surrounded him. Tony nodded back, a barely perceptible dip of the head which managed to be polite but not friendly. Reuben thought he detected a small hint of disappointment in Tony’s face, but couldn’t be sure.
He approached the first table, which was not being used. Seven or eight men were milling about. Reuben sensed that Tony might have been keeping a casual eye on them. He glanced over at the second table. John Ruddock, thick-necked and shaven-headed, was hunched down, ready to play his shot. Damian had told him that Ruddock, the only inmate to shout abuse at Michael Brawn during the Arsenal–United match, was serving time for the murder of two nightclub doormen, and ran a ruthless extortion ring in D Wing. His sidekick and opponent, he had also learned, was Clem Davies, similarly best avoided. Reuben looked away, eager not to catch their eye.
The phone corridor ran through two gated intersections, and into the newer section of the wing. Reuben fingered the phone card in the pocket of his jeans, composing his words to Sarah. As he drew close to the table, Davies, who was standing upright and staring past Reuben, said the barely audible word ‘clear’. Reuben tensed. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw John Ruddock straighten, a pool ball in his hand. A dark, fast-moving object whizzed past his face, cracking into the wall and ricocheting off it at speed. Reuben kept walking. Ignore it, he urged himself. A flash of Ruddock’s arm and a second ball hurtled at him. Reuben flinched, dropping his left shoulder. The pool ball grazed the surface of his shirt. There was a thump and a cry behind. Collateral damage.
Reuben turned and marched over to Ruddock. Without breaking stride, he picked up a pool cue and swung it, catching him across the head with its thick end. Davies rushed at Reuben and Reuben pulled him on to a punch. A quick-moving form darted round the back. A turbaned prisoner holding a pool ball. Throw this would you, you cunt? He stamped on the prone form of John Ruddock. Two other inmates rushed over to help him, kicking Ruddock in the head. Davies straightened and aimed another blow. The body shape. Watch the body shape. Stevo’s words belatedly tracked him down. Reuben stepped into the punch, stifling it, and delivered a sharp uppercut.
Around him, the entire area sparked into uproar. Reuben punched Davies again, the last two days boiling over. The humiliation, the threats, the taunts. He saw the prison guard approach, then back away. Two or three more inmates rushed into the mêlée. Clem Davies caught him on the side of the head. Reuben’s ear rang. He shook himself and reached again for the pool cue. Ruddock was struggling to his feet, aiming wild punches at whoever was closest.
The guard blew his whistle repeatedly and urgently as chairs and tables began to fly through the air. An inmate stepped up and punched the guard in the face, knocking his whistle out. Reuben knew things were getting very close to a full-scale riot as he swung at Davies with the cue. Scores being settled in the heat of the battle. Long-held tensions bursting out into the open. Blood pouring from Ruddock’s shaven head. Inmates grappling and kicking, using whatever came to hand. Somewhere a bell ringing. Prison guards doubtless struggling into riot gear, their features hidden behind masks, revelling in the heavy poise of metal truncheons, holding them in both hands like baseball bats, ready to swing as they swarmed into the corridor. Reuben caught up in the fight, unable and unwill
ing to leave, a point needing to be proved to the scumbags who’d tried to damage him. Being punched in the back. Turning round and swiping at a prisoner he didn’t recognize. Another plastic chair hurtling through the air, catching someone full-on. Wanting to walk away, but knowing that wasn’t possible. That things had gone too far. That any second the hoses would come out and anonymous guards would burst through the corridor swinging their batons at whoever came to hand.
23
Seated opposite the governor, Reuben ran his tongue around the inside of his lip, which was bleeding again. The day’s activities had burst the scab, the sweet metallic taste reminding him of Brawn’s initial attack. The governor was taking his time, scanning a sheet of paper, letting the silence build. Classic intimidation tactic. Control the quiet and you own the conversation. Reuben let him play at junior psychology. He had been in enough police interviews to know the deal.
The governor opened his packet of cigarettes, and slid one out. He slowly put it to his lips and lit it, blowing smoke through his fingers. Reuben had a sudden urge to snatch the cigarette and stamp on it. But sudden urges, like swinging pool cues, was what had brought him to the governor’s office in the first place.
Finally, the governor laid the piece of paper flat and looked up at Reuben. ‘When you came to see me, you claimed to be, what was it, an ex-police officer on a covert mission.’ His voice was high and pinched, a Home Counties accent.
‘Yeah,’ Reuben answered.
‘Interesting. Because what I’ve seen of you so far hardly smacks of discipline.’ He slanted the piece of paper up again and scanned it. ‘A knife confrontation with a fellow prisoner. And then another incident with the same prisoner, in your cell—’
