‘And I am today? I’d take that as a compliment if I knew less about the way your mind works. Why am I on your mind?’

There was no specific reason why being on the receiving end of a call from Piers Lambert should have unsettled Tony. But in his experience, when senior mandarins made their own phone calls, it was never the harbinger of joy. ‘You first,’ he said. ‘It’s your phone bill.’

‘I’m afraid I have some rather troubling news,’ Lambert said.

Uh-oh. When men like Lambert used words like ‘rather troubling’, most people would reach straight for ‘nightmarish’, ‘devastating’, or ‘hellish’. ‘What’s that, then?’

‘It’s to do with Jacko Vance.’

Tony hadn’t heard the name for years, but still it held the power to make him feel ill. Jacko Vance was a psychopathic charmer without a trace of conscience. That made him far from unique in Tony’s experience of the dark side of human behaviour. But Vance’s destructiveness had ripped through promise that Tony had known at first hand. Vance had shattered trust in ways that few people could have imagined before his terrible damage became known. Compassion and empathy were the principles Tony had always tried to apply to his professional life. But among the many predators whose activities had threatened to strip those qualities from him, Jacko Vance had come closest. As far as Vance was concerned, the only news Tony wanted to hear was an obituary. ‘What’s happened?’ he said, his voice rough with anxiety.

‘It appears he’s escaped from custody.’ Piers sounded apologetic. Tony could picture his pained smile, his apprehensive eyes and the way he would touch the knot of his tie for reassurance. In that instant, he wanted to grab that tie and pull it very hard.

‘Escaped? How the fuck could that happen?’ Anger overtook him, nought to ninety in seconds.

‘He took the place of another prisoner who had qualified for Release on Temporary Licence. He was due to spend the day at a local factory. The social worker who should have accompanied him wasn’t at work and it appears Vance attacked the driver of the taxi taking him to the factory assignment, then made off in the taxi.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ Tony shouted. ‘What in the name of God was he doing anywhere near the category of prisoner who could qualify for Release on Temporary Licence? How could that happen?’

Lambert cleared his throat. ‘He’s been on the Therapeutic Community Wing at Oakworth for a couple of months now. A model prisoner, by all accounts. Has been for years.’

Tony opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, reaching for the right words and failing to find them.

‘There was no indication that Vance had anything planned,’ Lambert continued, his voice smooth and unruffled.

Tony found his voice. ‘Piers, can you explain what the hell Vance was doing on a Therapeutic Community Wing? He’s on a whole-life tariff, for crying out loud. Why’s he occupying a space in a rehab programme designed for people who have come to terms with their crimes? People who are working towards release? People who have a future that isn’t behind bars? Answer me, damn it! Who put him in a place he could exploit? A place he could manipulate for his own ends? The perfect bloody place for someone like him to take advantage of?’

Lambert sighed heavily. ‘There will, of course, be an inquiry. The psychologist who was assigned to him made the case for him to move to the Therapeutic Community Wing. He’s been Category C for a couple of years now, you know.’

‘Cat C?’ Tony exploded. ‘After what he’s done? God knows how many teenage girls mutilated and murdered, and he’s downgraded from Cat A to Cat C?’

‘Technically, he’s serving a single life sentence for a single murder—’

‘Not to mention the murder of a police officer,’ Tony continued, ignoring Lambert’s response. ‘A police officer who was trying to make sure no more girls died.’

‘Nevertheless, we can only punish what we can prove. And the Court of Appeal found the conviction in respect of Detective Constable Bowman to be unsafe. As I said, Vance was a model prisoner. The governor of his previous prison held out as long as he could, but there were no grounds on which the authorities could refuse to reduce his threat category.’ Tony picked up a note of frustration in Lambert’s voice. It was good to feel that he wasn’t alone in his outrage at what he was hearing. ‘His lawyer threatened us with the Human Rights Act, and we both know how that would have gone. So Vance was reduced to Cat C and transferred to Oakworth.’

‘This psychologist – was it a woman?’

‘Yes, as it happens.’ Lambert sounded startled. ‘But entirely competent.’

‘And entirely susceptible to Jacko Vance’s charisma,’ Tony said sadly. ‘If anyone had asked me, I would have insisted that no female staff come into direct contact with Vance. He’s clever, he’s charming and he’s got the knack of making men and women, but women in particular, feel like they’re the only person in the world. He’ll have made all the right noises about remorse and the need to atone, and what harm could it do to move him to a prison community where he could deal with his issues from the past? Even if he was never going to be returned to society, the system owed him that small kindness.’ Tony made a sharp noise of disgust. ‘I could write the script, Piers.’

‘I’m sure you could, Tony. Unfortunately, there’s no mechanism for allowing those involved in tracking down a criminal to have input into what happens to them once they fall within the remit of the prison system.’

Tony jumped out of his chair and began pacing the room. ‘And he managed to impersonate another prisoner well enough to get out of Oakworth? How the hell did he manage that? I mean, Vance is the original one-armed man. He’s got a bloody prosthetic arm. Not to mention the fact that he used to be on prime-time TV. Millions of people could pick him out of a line-up. How come the duty officers didn’t recognise Jacko bloody Vance?’

‘You are out of the loop, aren’t you? Don’t you remember, Vance brought a case under the Human Rights Act against the Home Office—’

‘Yes, he said he was being discriminated against because he wasn’t being fitted with the latest prosthetics. And the court upheld his position. But it’s still a prosthesis, Piers. It’s not an arm like you and I have got.’

‘You don’t know much about state-of-the-art prosthetics, do you, Tony? We’re not talking about some bog- standard NHS artificial limb here. What Vance has got now is almost indistinguishable from what you and I have got. According to the brief I’ve got, he had surgery to reroute nerves, which in turn send messages to the electronics in the arm and the hand. He can move the fingers and thumb independent of each other. Over the top of it, he’s got a bespoke cosmesis, which apparently is fake skin, complete with freckles, veins, tendons, the lot. The

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