Snakes and Ladders

by Adam Croft

  ‘You’re not trying to make a move on her, are you Gary?’ Jack asked, his voice almost a whisper, the tone more a statement than a question.

  ‘Strictly business, like I already told you.’

  There wasn’t much more Jack could do. Just as he was about to turn and leave, he heard a clatter in the kitchen. He looked up at McCann.

  ‘Cat knocked something over,’ McCann said.

  ‘You haven’t got a cat.’

  ‘Must’ve been the giraffe then.’

  Jack ignored the comment and, before McCann realised what was happening, he’d barged past and into the house, heading straight for the kitchen. When he got there, he found Helen standing in the middle of the room, staring straight at him.

  Jack nodded slowly. ‘I see. Very good. Very good. And how long’s this been planned for, eh?’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, Jack,’ Helen said, the first words Jack had heard from her in years.

  ‘I know what I can fucking see. So he’s won you over by flashing the cash, has he? Some things never change. A bloke pulls out a wad of fifties and you turn into his little lapdog. You’ve landed right on your feet there, haven’t you?’

  Helen scowled at him. ‘Fuck off, Jack. Just fuck off. Look at you. You’re pathetic, running over here, snivelling like a little schoolboy. What did you think was going to happen? Did you think he was going to drive me out to the middle of nowhere and put a bullet through my head?’

  Jack turned to McCann. ‘You told her. You fucking told her. We had a deal. You said you were a man of your word.’

  ‘And you should know by now that I’m not on your side, Detective Inspector.’ McCann almost spat the last two words with venom. ‘Oh, and about that deal. Deals have to be two-sided, you know, or they’re not deals. Both sides need leverage. Just out of interest, what made you think you had leverage?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Ah come on, Jack. You’re a clever boy. What gave you the impression that anything anyone said would reach the right ears? I knew you were bullshitting from the moment you knocked on my door. You never had any leverage. What on earth ever made you think Frank was safe in that place?’

  Jack could hear McCann talking, but it was all noise. His mind was filled with rage and anger. It took a moment for the significance of McCann’s words to sink in.

  He looked McCann in the eyes, and in that moment he knew exactly what the man meant. If he was honest with himself, he’d known all along. He’d been arrogant. He’d been desperate. He’d been stupid. And he knew what came next, if it hadn’t already happened.

  Before he knew what he was doing, Jack was running through McCann’s hallway, back down the steps and towards his car.

  45

  After a few minutes, he realised he was driving aimlessly. He pulled his car over to the side of the road, switched off the engine and just sat.

  He didn’t know what to do. Through the fog of anger, resentment and betrayal, there was one thing Jack couldn’t ignore. McCann’s threat had been clear: Frank’s life was in danger. But it wasn’t as if Jack could just drop him a quick text in prison to let him know. In any case, what good would it do?

  Whatever happened, he needed Frank alive. McCann was right: he’d been bullshitting about a couple of his goons going rogue, and Frank was Jack’s best hope — his only hope — of ever nailing anything on McCann.

  His first instinct was to call the prison. He was pretty sure he’d be able to get through to the governor. But he had no way of knowing how far McCann’s tentacles stretched. He’d already been blindsided — many times — by the people he’d had on his side over the years, and it wouldn’t have surprised Jack in the slightest to find out McCann had the governor of the prison onside, too.

  There was only one person with any greater authority whom Jack felt — hoped — he could trust. He pulled out his phone and called Chief Constable Charles Hawes, hoping he’d answer his phone. After four rings, the call connected.

  ‘Jack, can I call you back in a bit? I’m about to go into a meeting.’

  ‘No, sir. Sorry. It’s urgent.’

  There was a moment of silence as Hawes registered the tension in Jack’s voice. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s Frank Vine. He’s in danger. We’ve just received a credible threat from Gary McCann.’

  ‘What sort of threat?’

  Jack struggled to remember the words. ‘I dunno. He said Frank wasn’t safe. He said… Sir, I was looking him in the eyes when he said it. He means it. Frank’s the only chance we’ve got of nailing McCann. We can’t risk anything happening to him.’

  ‘Well you’ve changed your tune.’

  ‘I know. And I… Look, you just have to trust me, sir. I can’t tell you why. Not now. But I met with Frank recently. I visited him. He wants to testify. He’s changed his mind. He wants to help us send McCann down. We need him alive.’

  ‘I’ll call the prison. I’ll let them know there’s been a threat. We’ll get them to keep an eye on him.’

  Jack sighed. ‘Can we trust them? He’s already been attacked at least once. We don’t know how far McCann’s influence reaches. I’m almost certain he’ll have people on the inside.’

  ‘What else can we do, Jack?’ Hawes said. ‘We can’t send our own armed guards in there. The prison system is secure. That’s kind of the whole point of it.’

  ‘Is it, though? Nothing’s ever secure, is it?’

  As Jack had moved on through life, it had become more and more apparent to him that absolutely any position could be corrupted. Money would always talk, and those on the wrong side of the law would always have more money than those on the correct side. It wasn’t outside the realms of reason to think a prison governor could be corrupted by money or outside influence. He’d seen it in the police. He was sure he’d seen it in the courts. The whole world had seen it in politics. So what of a fairly indistinct regional British prison?

  ‘Jack, it’s all we’ve got,’ Hawes said. ‘We can get a message to the governor, or to Frank himself, but if you suspect the management’s involved, what’s either of them going to be able — or willing — to do about it?’

  ‘I know, but—’

  ‘Do you want me to call them or not?’

  Jack thought for a moment. He didn’t see he had much choice. ‘Alright. Yeah,’ he said. ‘Call them.’

  46

  Jack and Wendy sat down opposite Clive Blake in the interview room. Something didn’t quite sit right with Wendy. Clive looked so out of place, this relatively meek and mild-mannered man, a parent, arrested on suspicion of having paid Connor French to murder his daughter’s boyfriend.

  He certainly didn’t seem like the sort of man who’d effectively hire a hitman, but Wendy had to admit she’d seen it all over the years. The idea that one could spot a criminal on sight was laughable.

  She often thought back to one of her first shifts as a uniformed police constable, when she’d been out in a patrol car with a colleague, looking for a man who they suspected of beating a teenage boy to within an inch of his life, all for a Nokia mobile phone and twenty quid in cash. The only description they had to go on was that their suspect was wearing a red top. A few minutes later they’d spotted a twenty-something male swaggering down a dark road, shaved head and stubble, with a cigarette in his mouth. And, of course, a red top. His excuse of having ‘just gone out for a walk’ hadn’t washed with either of them, and he’d been arrested on the spot on suspicion of assault and robbery. By the time they’d got him into an interview suite, it turned out he was the first violinist with a major symphony orchestra, and had indeed ‘just gone out for a walk’. Their suspect appeared at the reception desk the next morning, a weedy, geeky looking kid who’d been dragged in by his mother after coming down for breakfast the next morning with a bloodied fist and a new Nokia.

  And now, as Clive Blake sat opposite her, inextricably linked by solid evidence to the death of Matthew
Hulford, even his solicitor looked more like a criminal mastermind than he did.

  Jack started the interview and got the formalities out of the way, before leading with his first question. She could tell something wasn’t quite right with him, but that was nothing new for Jack Culverhouse. He quite often turned up at work looking like a bulldog chewing a wasp.

  ‘First of all,’ he said, ‘can you tell me the nature of your relationship with Matthew Hulford?’

  ‘Yes, he was my daughter’s boyfriend.’

  ‘Your daughter being Jennifer Blake?’

  ‘Jenny, yes.’

  ‘And did you get on with him?’

  ‘He seemed like a nice enough lad. Quiet.’

  ‘Were you aware of his… extra-curricular activities?’

  ‘You mean the drugs?’

  ‘Yes, the drugs.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You didn’t know he was dealing drugs?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Okay. What do you do for a living, Clive?’

  ‘I’m a senior analyst for a data storage firm.’

  ‘Sounds exciting.’

  ‘It has its moments.’

  ‘Pay well?’

  ‘Pretty well.’

  ‘Life must be pretty comfortable, then? Nice little nest egg in the savings account?’

  Clive cocked his head slightly. ‘Not when you’ve got two kids and a wife who likes to spend money, no.’

  ‘You had a fair amount in your savings accounts up until recently, though, didn’t you?’

  Jack looked at Clive and left that question hanging. He wanted to make it clear they’d been able to gather quite a lot of information about his financial affairs in a relatively short space of time, without actually giving anything away just yet.

  ‘I’m not sure what you mean,’ Clive replied.

  ‘I mean you had quite a fair amount in savings up until recently. In fact, over the past couple of months, you withdrew more than twenty-thousand pounds in twelve separate cash withdrawals. That’s a lot of money to pull out of your savings. New kitchen, was it?’

  ‘Various things. It’s been an expensive year and quiet on the work front. These things fluctuate. It happens.’

  ‘Lots of bills?’

  ‘Some of it, yes.’

  ‘And they all needed paying in cash, did they?’

  Clive’s solicitor leaned forward. ‘It isn’t an offence to withdraw money from your savings accounts as and when you wish. My client’s perfectly entitled to do so.’

  ‘Absolutely. But if there’s suspicion that cash might have either been obtained illegally or used for nefarious purposes, then we have every right not only to investigate, but to ask questions. And if your client has nothing to hide, he should be perfectly comfortable answering them. So. Clive. Twenty grand in two months is a lot of expenditure, even if your missus does like her handbags. Who is she, Tallulah Bankhead?’

  ‘With the greatest of respect,’ the solicitor said, ‘unless you have any material evidence that my client’s money has been used for illegal purposes, I’d strongly recommend this line of questioning continues no further.’

  ‘Okay. Let’s try something a little different,’ Jack said, placing a photograph in front of them. ‘Do you recognise the item in the photograph, Clive?’

  ‘It looks like a carrier bag.’

  ‘It is.’ Jack put another photo on top of it. ‘This is what we found when we opened the carrier bag. Do you recognise it?’

  ‘It looks like cash.’

  ‘Correct. Twenty-five thousand pounds, in fact. Do you know where we found this?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It was in a storage locker in town. Nothing else in there. Just this. Lot of money. Do you know who the storage locker was registered to?’

  ‘No,’ Clive said softly.

  ‘It’s registered to Connor French. Do you recognise that name?’

  Clive didn’t say anything.

  ‘He’s Matthew Hulford’s best friend. Was. Do you know him?’

  ‘You don’t need to answer their questions, Clive,’ the solicitor said. ‘You can respond with “no comment” if you’d prefer.’

  ‘Okay, Clive,’ Jack said. ‘See, I’ve got a bit of a problem here. I’ve met Connor French. A few times, in fact. We’ve had him in custody. But then you probably already knew that. I imagine word’s got around. Now, I don’t know about you, but to me it seems like twenty-five grand is a lot of money for a kid of his age. Especially in cash. Don’t you think?’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘The thing is, a lot of that cash was withdrawn from banks as fresh notes. I’m not sure if you’ve ever noticed, but banknotes have serial numbers on them. That means it’s possible to trace where it was issued, which accounts it’s passed through and where it’s gone. Each time it comes back through a bank, it’s logged. Now, these banknotes here made our jobs a lot easier, because a lot of them were numbered sequentially. Twelve different sequences, in fact. And the banks were able to tell us when those notes were withdrawn, and who withdrew them. Do you want to say anything?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘The banknotes were withdrawn by you, weren’t they Clive?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Clive, the banks have confirmed it was you who withdrew the banknotes. They were withdrawn from your accounts. Does anyone else have access to your accounts?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Clive, did you pay Connor French twenty-five thousand pounds so he would murder Matthew Hulford and keep him away from your daughter?’

  The solicitor leaned forward again. ‘I think we’ll pause proceedings there, thank you. I’d like some time to speak with my client.’

  47

  If anyone had asked Terry Carter as a child what job he’d be doing at this age, prison officer wouldn’t’ve even been in his first twenty guesses. Hell, if someone asked him five years ago the result would’ve been the same. But redundancy from the theatre meant he’d been desperate for work — any work — and he’d been amazed to discover just how accessible this job had been. Then again, how many people fancied spending their days in prison, even if they were getting paid for it?

  But when all was said and done, Terry didn’t mind the job. At the end of the day, it was work, and it’d come at a time when he would’ve been grateful for just about any job. He’d always been under the impression that prison officers had to be big, beefy blokes who’d otherwise be working as bouncers or trainers in gyms, but it turns out that couldn’t have been further from the truth. He’d mentioned it at his interview, and been told that having a bunch of bruisers walking around the prison tended to attract more trouble than anything, as they became walking targets for prisoners who were keen to claim the most impressive scalp possible to increase their social standing inside.

  Did he see himself working here until he retired? If he was honest, he hoped not. He wasn’t sure he could hack it in his sixties. But then again, could he have seen himself setting up lighting rigs at the same age? At least he’d developed a passion for that.

  For Terry, evening lock-up signified — quite naturally — the end of the day. From that point on, all would be — or at least should be — quiet. With the prisoners back in their cells, and assuming none of them decided to start a riot or murder each other, it should be a case of simply seeing out the rest of his shift, before heading home to bed. Sandra would probably be asleep by then — she usually was when he was on this shift — but, after twenty-five years of marriage, that hardly concerned him.

  Now, all that was left to do was to take a quick peek into each cell, just to make sure it did indeed have the correct number of prisoners and that no-one was tunnelling out through the walls Shawshank-style, and then he’d be able to put his feet up.

  He wandered down the corridor to the next cell, pulled open the flap and looked in. The prisoner didn’t jump, didn’t pay him any attention and didn’t respond. It was all part of the daily ro
utine. He carried on down the corridor, carried on checking cells, until he got to the end of the row.

  He pulled open the last flap and peered inside. No. No no.

  He called for backup on his radio, then unlocked the door and went inside.

  The prisoner was sitting on the cold floor, slumped with his back against the cold wall, blood pooling around him.

  ‘Shit,’ John, his colleague, cursed as he came into the cell behind him. ‘Is he alive?’

  ‘I dunno. I don’t think so. Look at him.’

  ‘How the fuck’s he done that, the silly bastard? Who the fuck gave him razor blades?’

  ‘I don’t know. Jesus. Fucking hell, what a mess. He’s done his wrists. Fucking hell, it’s hit the ceiling! Is that normal?’

  ‘If you get it right, it is. Frank? Frank, can you hear me? There’s no pulse. When was he last checked on?’

  ‘Lock-up. I didn’t do the check, but there was nothing reported. How quickly do you bleed out from something like that?’

  ‘Pretty fucking quickly. He’s gone down the length of the artery, look. That’s the way to do it. Some silly bastards go across the wrist, but then it just clots and heals itself. He’s done it properly, at least.’

  Even at moments like this, dark humour tended to prevail in this job. It wasn’t the first time they’d found someone in this state, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

  Terry pulled the bedsheets off Frank’s bed and tried to tie them round the wounds on his wrists, but it all seemed futile. The blood, which had initially come out with enough force to hit the ceiling and walls, was now barely dribbling from his wrists.

  ‘Terry, mate, there’s no point. Look at him. He’s grey. There’s no pulse. He’s gone.’

  48

  Jack closed the Chief Constable’s office door behind him, and stood for a moment in the corridor.

  He knew it’d take him some time to process his emotions, which seemed to either come to him all at once or not at all. There were moments when he was deluged by anger, sadness, regret, fear, fury and the overwhelming urge to self-implode, but that was all interspersed with periods where he felt absolutely nothing.