please,” I said, when the switchboard at Bentley Prison answered.
“Who wants her, please?”
“Detective Inspector Priest, Heckley CID.”
“One moment.”
I waited for the music, wondering what might be appropriate — Unchained Melody? Please release me, let me go? — but none came. “Hello, Charlie. Thanks for ringing,” Gwen’s plummy voice boomed in my ear.
“My pleasure, Gwen. Long time no see. Shouldn’t we be having a meeting soon, or did you ring to tell me I’d missed it?”
“Between you and me, Charlie, I think that committee has probably quietly faded away. We didn’t achieve much, did we?”
“Lip service, Gwen, that’s what it’s all about. Make it look as if you are doing something. So what can I do for you? I’m available, Saturday morning, if you need a goalie.”
“Oh, those were the days. I may have some information for you, Charlie, but first of all, an apology.”
“Go on.”
“You know that we monitor inmates’ calls, tape-record them for transcription at a later date.”
“Mmm.”
“Well, we’ve rather fallen behind lately, so this weekend I put one of my officers on to them, and he’s come up with something that might be of interest to you.”
“I’m all ears, Gwen.”
“Does the name Chiller mean anything?”
“Chiller?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“You disappoint me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“He’s supposed to be the most wanted man in Britain, according to the tabloids.”
“Chiller?”
“That’s his nickname, a contraction.”
I repeated the name softly, to myself: “Chiller- Chiller — Chiller,” until it hit me. “Chilcott!” I pronounced. “Kevin Chilcott!”
“That’s the man.”
“He’s a cop killer,” I said, suddenly alert. “What can you tell me?”
“Just that one of our inmates, a hard case called Paul Mann, telephoned a London number, four weeks ago, asking for a message to be sent to someone called Chiller about ‘a job’. Since then there has been a quantity of rather enigmatic traffic, but the name was never mentioned again. Sums were quoted. There’s lots of other stuff which may or may not be related.”
“Chilcott’s a hitman,” I said. “Maybe someone’s putting some work his way.”
“That’s what my man thought. He’s ex-Pentonville, and was there at the same time as Kevin Chilcott. He said everybody called him Chiller, and he rejoiced in the name.”
“When can I come over and see this stuff?”
“I should be free about four-thirty,” she replied.
“Right, put the kettle on. Will you make it right for me at the gate, please?” Getting into prisons is harder than getting out of them.
“It’s a long time since you were here” she observed. “I’m over the road, now. Just ask and they’ll point you in the right direction.”
I did some thinking before I went down to Control to find someone authorised to interrogate the computer systems. The CRO would tell us Chilcott’s record, the PNC would have other stuff about him. Confidential stuff. Trouble was, his name would be tagged in some way, and any enquiry we made would be relayed straight to Special Branch and NCIS. They were on our side, I decided, so I did it anyway.
The print-outs didn’t make pleasant reading. Chilcott started young, served the usual apprenticeship. He had a full house of cautions, followed by probation and youth custody. As an adult he’d served two years for robbery and eight for armed robbery. After that, it was all hearsay. A series of building society raids were put down to him, as was a bank heist that netted over half a million and left a security guard shot dead. I was wrong about one thing — he wasn’t a cop killer. A uniformed PC, under-experienced and over- diligent, walked into a stake-out that nobody had told him about and was shot for his troubles. He didn’t die, but in his shoes I’d have preferred it. The bullet fractured his spine, high up, and left him a quadriplegic. Chilcott escaped and fled the country. Nothing had been heard of him since 1992, but rumour linked him with a string of gangland killings. Maybe the money was running out, I thought.
Her Majesty’s Prison Bentley sits four-square on a hill just outside Halifax. It’s a Victorian-Gothic pile, complete with battlements, crenellated turrets and fake arrow-slits, but with the proportions of a warthog. The architect was probably warned about the gales that howl down from the north, so he built it squat and solid. It strikes terror in my heart every time I visit the place. I swung into the car-park, mercifully empty because we were outside visiting hours, and gazed up at the gaunt stone walls, wondering if Mad King Ludwig ever had a skinhead brother.
Gwen had told the gatehouse to expect me, but they put a show on before accompanying me to her office. Double-check my ID, a quick frisk and then through the metal detector. She runs a tight ship. She has to; Bentley houses some of the most dangerous men in the country, as well as remand prisoners.
I’d forgotten how handsome she is, in a Bloomsbury-ish sort of way. Strong features, hair pinned back, long elegant fingers. No faded delicacy with Gwen, though. At a shade under six feet tall she’d be a formidable opponent, tearing towards you brandishing a hockey stick. We shook hands and pretended to kiss cheeks, and I flopped into the leather chair she indicated.
I told her she looked well and she said I looked tired. That made it twice, recently. One of her officers, male, approaching retirement age, knocked and poked his head round the door to ask if I preferred tea or coffee. Gwen thanked him, calling him Thomas. He called her ma’am.
“These are the transcripts,” she said, reaching across the polished top of her desk to pull a sheaf of loose sheets towards us. She’d joined me at the wrong side of it, where you stood to receive her wrath; or words of encouragement; or the news that your wife and the bloke you didn’t grass on had run away to Spain with all the money. “I’ve highlighted the relevant bits,” she added, pulling her chair closer to mine, so we could both read them. I detected the merest hint of her perfume, which was heavy and musky and put me off balance for a moment or two.
I studied the lists, then said: “I never realised just how much work was entailed with these, Gwen.” Someone had to obtain a printout of all the calls, with times and numbers, and then transfer that information to a transcript of all the tape-recorded conversations that somebody else had prepared.
“It’s a bind, Charlie. And all for so little return.”
“Now and again you come up with gold,” I said. “Maybe this is one of those times. How do you know who made the calls?”
“The hard way. An inmate has to ask to use the phone, and we keep a book.”
“Which wing is whatsisname on?”
“Paul Mann? A-wing.”
Maximum security, for long term prisoners in the early years of their sentences, and the nutcases. “What’d he do?”
“Poured paraffin over his girlfriend and ignited it. It burns deeper than petrol, apparently.”
“She died?”
“Eventually.”
“Mr Nice Guy.” I read the scraps of conversation from the sheet, next to the London number he’d dialled:
V1: Billy?
V2: Yeah.
