the packet on the table and lit it from the one he already had. Clayton noticed how his hands were shaking.
‘You knew,’ said Trave. ‘You’ve already told us how Swain kept you up at night going on and on about Katya Osman and how much he hated her…’
‘That don’t make me no accomplice,’ said Eddie, interrupting.
‘It does if you helped him. And if you want to help yourself now, you’ll tell me who put you up to this.’
‘Nobody did. I got out because I wanted to get out. I’ve done it before, you know.’
‘Not when you’re coming to the end of your sentence you haven’t, and not with help from outside. What made this time different, Eddie?’
‘Nothing made it different. I don’t like prisons. That’s all.’
‘All right, I’ll tell you what made it different. David Swain — that’s who. You didn’t need to take him along — in fact it doubled your chances of getting caught.’
‘I needed someone to be a lookout; to hold on to the ropes…’
‘No, you didn’t. You’ve already told us all about your heroics, remember — the planning, the split-second timing. And you know what — Swain didn’t get a mention. He was the invisible man. Except he was the reason you got the outside help — the rope ladders and the car and the money. Where did you get all this money, Eddie?’ asked Trave, producing a large see-through plastic evidence bag stuffed full of banknotes. ‘There’s over a thousand pounds here.’
‘Gambling. You can ask that girl. That’s why she went home with me. Because she could see how much I’d won.’
‘Home. Yes, I wondered about that. What were you doing in someone’s house, I wonder? A friend of a friend, was it?’
‘It was a bedsit. They’re safer than a hotel. People don’t ask questions.’
‘I’m sure they don’t, but whose bedsit? That’s what I’m asking.’
‘And I’m not saying. I’m not ratting on my friends. I told you that already,’ said Eddie defiantly.
‘He doesn’t need to,’ said Clayton, speaking for the first time. ‘It’s in the report from the London police. The whole house is divided up into bedsits, and they talked to a couple of the tenants. Landlord’s a John Birch. Usually collects the rent in person on the first day of the month. Doesn’t have a forwarding address…’
‘Birch or Bircher?’ asked Trave, interrupting. Clayton picked up on the sudden expectancy in his boss’s voice — he’d seen how Trave had gripped the edge of the table with his hand when he heard the name.
‘I don’t know. It could be either. Here, you can look yourself,’ said Clayton, handing Trave the document that he’d been reading from. ‘The report’s obviously been written up in a hurry.’
Trave glanced down at the page and then fixed Eddie with a hard stare. Clayton noticed how the cigarette had started to shake again in Eddie’s hand and how the colour had gone out of his cheeks.
‘Who’s Bircher?’ asked Trave.
‘I don’t know. Never heard of him.’
‘How did you find that house?’
‘A friend told me about it.’
‘A friend. What friend?’
‘I’m not saying. Like I told you: I’m no rat.’
‘Tell that to the old ladies you’ve conned out of their life savings,’ said Trave angrily. ‘Tell that to the poor girl you hit with that bottle last night.’
‘She had it coming,’ said Eddie with a sneer.
‘What? Because she has to earn her living going home with people like you? You didn’t think she’d go to the police because of who she was. That was your big mistake, wasn’t it?’
‘I don’t have to listen to this,’ said Eddie. ‘I’ve changed my mind. I want a lawyer, and until I get one I’m saying nothing.’
‘Interview suspended at twelve thirty-one,’ said Trave smoothly, looking at his watch. ‘You can have your solicitor, Eddie, but we’re not finished. I can tell you that much.’
‘Come on,’ said Trave, looking back at Clayton over his shoulder as he picked up his coat and went out the door of their office. ‘We’ve got work to do.’
‘Where are we going?’ asked Clayton, half-running down the corridor to keep up with Trave.
‘Where do you think? Archives first — to get Bircher’s picture — and then down to see your friend at the prison. I hope he’s not gone off duty by the time we get there.’
They were in luck. Bircher was on parole and so his file was live. He’d been released on licence the previous year after doing three years of a five-year stretch for running the rent-boy ring that Claes had got caught up with. He’d kept girls in another house too apparently — quite an operation. He’d stayed out of trouble since getting out, which seemed to be something of an achievement, given that he had a string of previous convictions going back to when he was eighteen a quarter of a century earlier — most for pimping, a few for low-level fraud. He was living at an address in Oxford according to the parole record — there was no mention of the tenement house in London. And pinned to the front of the file were his arrest photographs — front on and in profile. Average height, average build, average-looking except for a thick black beard.
‘Gotcha,’ said Trave under his breath as he signed for the file.
It didn’t take long for the visits officer to identify Bircher as the man who’d visited Eddie Earle on four different occasions in the month before Earle escaped, but Trave wasn’t satisfied. He insisted on seeing the prison governor and wouldn’t take no for an answer, until, half an hour later, the two policemen found themselves seated on uncomfortable hard-backed chairs in the governor’s second-floor office. Opposite them the governor, an unfriendly, balding little man, sat bolt upright with his hands palm down and immobile on the desk in front of him, looking like he was about to have his photograph taken. Behind his head, a picture of the young Queen in a pearl- white dress adorned with a blue regal sash gazed down at them, while to her right a large laminated sign ordered inmates not to smoke and to stand in the presence of the governor. Above the door a wall clock ticked loudly, measuring out the time with thick black hands.
The one window in the office looked directly down onto the concrete exercise yard in the centre of the prison, bleak and deserted in the gathering gloom of the autumn afternoon, and beyond that, above a long brick building lined with tiny barred windows, Clayton glimpsed the top of the high perimeter wall. He wondered if that was the way Earle and Swain had gone when they escaped, and was struck with admiration for a moment at their audacity in finding a way out of this hellish place.
‘What is it you want to ask me about, Inspector?’ asked the governor, looking up at the clock behind his visitors’ heads. ‘I do my rounds at two o’clock and I’m a punctual man, so please be brief.’
There was a nasal, clipped quality to the governor’s voice that stopped just short of outright rudeness. Clayton put it down to the governor’s wanting to avoid having to answer any more questions about the escape — it wasn’t hard to imagine that he’d already taken a lot of flak over what had happened, and he didn’t look like someone who’d welcome being in the line of fire. But Trave wasn’t in the least deterred — Clayton couldn’t remember ever seeing his boss this fired up before.
‘I want to ask you about David Swain and Edward Earle, the two prisoners who escaped last weekend,’ said Trave. ‘I want to know who put them in a cell together. Whose decision was it?’
‘It was nobody’s decision,’ the governor shot back without hesitating. ‘It was standard administration. Swain’s cellmate was sent to the punishment block because he was caught fighting, and so Earle replaced him. It’s not our practice to keep cells in single occupation, Inspector. Space is at a premium here.’
‘But why Earle? Why put a known escaper in with a maximum-security prisoner?’
‘There are a lot of high-security prisoners here. Earle had to go somewhere.’
‘Why? Why couldn’t he stay where he was? Why not put a new arrival with Swain?’
‘Because we didn’t. That’s why. We move prisoners around. It’s our policy. I don’t know what you’re implying, Inspector, but…’
‘I’m not implying anything,’ said Trave interrupting. ‘Two men have escaped from your prison. One of them is a convicted murderer who’s still on the run, and I need to know how they came to be put together. That’s all.’
‘And I’ve told you how,’ said the governor, rising from his chair. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me…’
But Trave stayed anchored to his seat, ignoring the governor’s attempt to terminate the interview.
‘How many visits are convicted prisoners allowed each month?’ he asked.
‘Two,’ said the governor, reluctantly resuming his seat. ‘Two every four weeks.’
