comfort to the weariest soul, a sense of tried and tested purpose, a feeling of solidarity in a shifting world. Hither men had come to pay for their crimes, and paid, and hence returned to the society that had judged them, and thence more often than not returned again to this same spot in a cycle of crime and punishment, wrong and retribution, as endless and unremitting as all those other cycles of day and night, birth and death, Left and Right, Romantic and Classical, promotion and relegation, marriage and divorce, ingestion and defecation, permissiveness and puritanism, itching and scratching, whose centrifugal forces hold the timeless, limitless, meaningless universe together.
Some there were, of course, who had come to this place and never left it, but that was in other harsher days, though these too might yet return. Dalziel was no opponent of capital punishment, but he had little faith in those who administered justice. There was nowt wrong with hanging, he'd say, so long as judges too got hanged fur their mistakes. But in case this should be regarded as a sort of crypto-liberalism, he also advocated that those responsible for putting crooks back on the streets should personally indemnify society against all their future depredations.
Tucked away at the back of the prison grounds was an area, entered through a wicket gate, which might have been mistaken for an old walled garden, except that the walls were too high to admit any procreant sunlight and the earth too sour to nourish any but the hardiest weeds. Deep down here, dissolved in lime lest their rotting flesh should spread a moral corruption, the bodies of those executed in the good old days had been hidden away. Dalziel had been known to stroll at length within these walls, like a laird walking his policies, so deeply rapt that those glimpsing him got an impression that he was listening to some sage and serious conversation. And the truth was that he knew the names and histories of nearly every soul who rested here, and knew also that in his judgement a good proportion of them were almost certainly innocent of the crimes laid on them, hence his cynicism about the efficacy of the courts.
But this was not his destination this fine Monday morning. Nor was it his concern with the condemnation of innocence that brought him here
Whatever his reasons, the prison authorities at all levels clearly felt it odd that a man couldn't find something better to do on a fine Bank Holiday Monday.
'Thought you were in this procession, Mr Dalziel,' said the officer who conducted him to the interview room. 'Mysteries or something, isn't it?'
'Aye, lad, you're right,' said Dalziel amiably. 'But we don't kick off till midday, so I thought I'd just pay a few calls first.'
'If you like it so much here, you can do my shift and I'll take your part,' laughed the officer.
'You're better off here, son,' advised Dalziel. 'Kick him up, will you?'
'Only if he wants,' said the officer primly. 'He doesn't have to come.'
'Don't worry. When you mention my name, he'll not be able to stay away.'
A few minutes later the door opened and Philip Swain came into the room. His short time in custody had already faded the healthy glow he had brought back with him from California, but it hadn't yet touched his old easy manner.
'Hello, Superintendent,' he said. 'What's up? Stage fright?'
'Hello, Mr Swain. How are they treating you?'
'All right. But I won't hide that I'll be glad to be out and back at Moscow.'
Dalziel smiled. Mockery, bravado, or genuine confidence, it was all one to him.
'Looking for bail, are you?' he said.
'Once you've completed your inquiries, you'll hardly oppose it again, surely?'
'Why not? Don't want you doing a bunk, do we?'
Swain smiled and said, 'Come on! If I wouldn't go to live abroad on a handsome salary, I'm scarcely going to slum it as a penniless fugitive.'
'So you
'What the hell do you want, Dalziel? I only agreed to see you to break the boredom, but I begin to suspect it would be less tedious in my cell.'
'Liar,' said Dalziel amicably. 'You came to hear what I had to say 'cos despite what you think you think, and despite what you think your brief thinks, you won't really believe you're not going to be charged with murder till you hear it from me.'
Swain tried not quite successfully to look unconcerned.
'Look,' he said. 'I've confessed freely to what I've done wrong, and I'll take my punishment. But I'm not a murderer, and you know there's no evidence I'm a murderer, and I can't believe that British justice can make that sort of mistake.'
'Oh aye? There's a patch of ground not much more than a hundred yards from where we're sitting might make you change your tune,' said Dalziel. 'But let me put your mind at rest. That's why I'm here, you see. Bank Holiday Monday, sun shining, everyone out enjoying themselves, and I got to thinking about you, banged up in here, miserable, worried, not even able to ring your brief - he flew off yesterday to Barbados, I suppose you know that? Not short of a bob or two, them vultures. So here I am, errand of mercy, come to remove all doubt. Though that's a bit of a laugh really, isn't it? I mean doubt's what you want, isn't it? Doubt's your best friend.'
'What do you mean?' asked Swain long-sufferingly.
'Doubt, benefit of the, that's what I mean. To be given to accused prisoners by jaded juries. And you've got a lot to benefit from, Phil. Take your missus. You say it were an accident, and there's no evidence it wasn't. So, a doubt. Or Bev King. You say it were Waterson's idea and he carried it through after you changed your mind and tried to stop him.
