Law & Order
Page 42
Lynn smiled too and tears rolled down his cheeks. He knew he had made it.
#
Having learned how to behave and think the way the prison authorities wanted him to think, progress for Lynn was swift now. He soon got his clothes back in the cell with him at night, and got to sleep with the light out, and in almost no time at all he even got onto the coveted working parties that moved around the prison, doing odd jobs and being supervised by only a single warder.
The current working party he was on was landscaping a small patch of ground outside the governor’s office. Lynn and a prisoner from another wing were working together, digging holes to plant some trees.
‘Dig fast enough, Jack,’ his co-worker said, ‘we could tunnel out before silly bollocks even notices.’
‘Be handy,’ Lynn said, not taking him seriously.
The other prisoner checked around to make sure the supervising warder wasn’t within earshot, then said, ‘You fancy making one, Jack? I mean, you seen that ladder in the maintenance shed? How hard would it be to do that padlock and have the ladder against the wall?’
Anxiety spread through Lynn, leaving him slightly breathless as he wondered what he might be getting involved in here. He didn’t know this lad who he was working with, or enough about him to try to plot one out with him, even if he had the inclination. Suddenly, he knew what this was, and became more anxious. It was a get-up, someone having set this up to test him. He thought back, trying to remember what he had said, whether he had said anything that could be construed as conspiring to make a break.
‘Old Bill who nicked me once said to me, “If you can’t do your time, don’t do the crime”. I mean, that’s fair enough. If you’re at it, you expect to be nicked sooner or later. It stands to reason. The only chance you really got is doing your bird, doing it their way, know what I mean?’
The younger prisoner shrugged. ‘S’up to you. I thought you was a million.’
‘Me?’ Lynn said. ‘They’re letting me do an Open University course. Education’s the thing what makes the dif’.’
‘Hold up.’ He turned as the white-coated warder approached. ‘S’that deep enough, Mr Evans?’
‘That’ll do nicely,’ the warder said, inspecting the hole. ‘Just knock the stake in first, good and firm. Make sure you spread the roots out when you put the tree in.’
Lynn did as he was told, then held the sapling as his partner shovelled earth over the roots.
‘Jiggle it up and down, Jack,’ the warder said, ‘settle the roots in. It’s going to be there for a long time.’
‘What sort of tree is it, Mr Evans?’ Lynn asked, with a compelling need to make conversation, as though that was the only way to eradicate the doubts he was afraid they might erroneously identify in him.
‘Copper beech, can’t you read the label? Ten or fifteen years you’ll have a nice-sized tree there, Jack.’
The words didn’t go lightly past Lynn, but reminded him of all those years yet to do. This warder would have retired long before, but he would still be around to watch that sapling grow into a nice-sized tree.
Epilogue
THE FEELING OF ANGER AND hostility was palpable among detectives on the Squad. They were being singled out for the failings of the police, the failings of the whole institution of law and order, and the failings of the government to get on top of crime. It was bollocks, Pyle decided. It was grossly unfair, and what was happening to him personally was worse than unfair. The result of the extensive and prolonged corruption investigation, which had been started by an outside force and was now being continued by CIB, was that seven villains, who had ended up in the dock at the Old Bailey and been found guilty, were now being released because detectives on the Squad had fabricated evidence against them. That wasn’t the sole cause of the general ill-feeling, which started when policemen, some of them senior officers – some retired, others under suspension – were arrested in highly publicised raids on their homes, and charged variously with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, accepting bribes, conspiring to sell bail and weaken evidence. Included among those was Detective Inspector Maurice Head. Pyle, having been interviewed five times under caution, had so far managed to avoid suspension. He knew it was only a matter of time now before he was nicked. Two villains he had put away were going up to the Appeal Court for a second go, only this time round they had evidence from Esda tests showing statements having been rewritten sometime after their interrogation – Chief Superintendent Jeymer had authenticated the notes, deliberately confirming the wrong dates. Further they had evidence of detectives lying in court by stating on oath that the notes of the interview were contemporaneous.
‘Probably ninety-five per cent of the cid do it,’ Pyle said angrily to his governor. ‘I mean, most of us have bent one at some time or other. How else d’you put these fuckers away when courts bend over backwards to free them?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, Fred,’ dci Simmons said. He was less angry, for although what was happening reflected badly on him, he wasn’t facing a nicking.
They were at the bar of The Feathers. There weren’t many other policemen drinking there at that time of night.
‘I mean, why single out the Squad, Tony? What they were doing is what has to be done.’
As he watched the dci concede the point in his undemonstrative fashion, Pyle wondered if he wasn’t saying too much here. For all he knew this colleague could be talking to CIB.
‘There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the men who do the job,’ Pyle said. ‘If we aren’t let do the job any way we can, and if the courts don’t back us up by keeping those bastards behind bars, there’s going to be a serious breakdown in law and order. Especially now with all these out of work people who can’t meet their mortgage payments. Crime is the only growth industry.’
Most of the time he knew who it was who was doing the villainy, who needed to be put away. That simple. The problem was that villains weren’t governed by any code when they went out to make one, they weren’t subject to rules like the police, and Pyle saw no valid reason why he should be when he sought to make society a better, safer place. Most detectives had their own borders, their own sense of what was right in such matters. Detectives were honourable men after all, especially those on the Squad.
‘That’s what’s gonna happen, Tony,’ he said, ‘it’s all gonna break down. We’ll only take so much stick, then that’ll be it. The men in the job won’t have any incentive to go out and feel collars. Not if they’re going to get nicked themselves for doing it.’
The chief inspector nodded. ‘You’ll get a result all right, Fred. Then I expect you might even be seconded to the Bureau?’
‘The danger is, Tony,’ Pyle said, ignoring his feeble joke, ‘once they start looking at one or two you put away, where do they stop? The Appeal Court could end up turning over every result I ever had. Especially those that were a bit swift. Fucking depressing, isn’t it?’
He finished the scotch in his glass and motioned to the barman. There was time for one more before he went off to his meet.
Copyright
This revised edition first published in 2018
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© GF Newman 1983
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