officers on the twos. Shepherd craned his neck. He couldn't see any on the threes either. He hurried up to the top floor and looked around. Still no officers. Three prisoners, all in T-shirts, Adidas tracksuit bottoms and Adidas trainers, rushed past him and clattered down the stairs.
Shepherd took another quick look down at the ones. Hamilton was at the hotplate. Rathbone was beside the pool table. Lloyd-Davies was still talking to Stafford. He walked quickly along the landing. There was a white card in a holder to the right of each cell door and he checked the names. He found Jurczak's cell and pushed open the door.
Jurczak was lying on his bunk, watching television. 'What the fuck are you doing in my cell?' he snarled.
Shepherd kicked the door shut behind him. 'I want your job on the cleaning crew,' he said.
'Fuck off,' said Jurczak, getting up from his bunk. 'This is my cell. You don't come into another man's cell.'
Shepherd rushed at Jurczak, grabbed him by the throat and banged him against the wall. Jurczak's tray clattered to the floor. Shepherd was a good three inches taller and at least ten years younger. He blocked all thoughts of Jurczak as a human being. He was no more than a problem that had to be solved. And it had to be done quickly because as soon as tea had been served the prisoners were checked before association. He had less than five minutes to do what had to be done. 'All I want is for you to get off the cleaning crew,' he said.
'Fuck you,' hissed Jurczak. 'I paid five hundred for that job. Why should I give it to you?'
Shepherd head-butted him, his forehead slamming on to Jurczak's nose. Blood streamed down the man's chin, and Shepherd let go of his neck. Jurczak slumped to the cell floor, unconscious. Shepherd knew that a broken nose wouldn't be a serious enough injury to get him taken off the cleaning crew so he pulled out Jurczak's left leg and jammed the foot against the horizontal truss of the chair. Then he took a deep breath and slammed his foot on Jurczak's knee. The joint cracked like a dry twig. Shepherd stared down at the injured man, breathing heavily. Jurczak was a drug-dealer and a murderer, so he felt no sympathy for him but he'd taken no pleasure in crippling him. It had had to be done, though: Jurczak wasn't the type to respond to threats.
Shepherd opened the cell door a few inches and squinted down the landing. It was clear. He walked quickly to the stairs. The man with the shaved head was walking up from the twos carrying Carpenter's tray. He frowned as Shepherd walked by but didn't say anything.
Tony Stafford was alone in the bubble but his head was down. Lloyd-Davies was nowhere to be seen. Shepherd padded down the stairs and joined the queue at the hotplate. The mixed grill was a burnt sausage, an equally burnt beefburger and a strip of underdone bacon. The vegetable man gave him a scoop of chips and a spoonful of baked beans. Shepherd put a bread roll and a tub of raspberry yoghurt on his tray, then headed back to the cell. As he went he looked up at the threes: no officers on the landing.
Lee was sitting at the desk in the cell. He'd gone for the mixed grill, too. 'New gear?' he asked, as Shepherd sat on his bunk.
'Yeah, my brief dropped them off.'
'Watch too?'
'Yeah. Forensics took it, but I guess there was nothing on it.'
'Nice.'
'Tells the time.'
Lee nodded at Shepherd's tray. 'You going to eat the roll?' Shepherd tossed it to him. 'And the yoghurt?' Shepherd gave him that too.
Lloyd-Davies pushed open the door. 'All right, gentlemen?'
Shepherd held out his tray. 'Want a chip, ma'am?'
'I forgot to tell you, Macdonald, I got you on the gym list for this evening,' she said.
'Thanks, ma'am,' said Shepherd.
She was about to say more when someone shouted from the threes: 'Stretcher! Get me a stretcher up here!'
Lloyd-Davies hurried away. Lee stood up and rushed to the cell door. Shepherd followed him. They'd found Jurczak.
An alarm sounded. Half a dozen officers hurried on to the spur and shouted for the prisoners to get into their cells.
Lee craned his neck to look up at the threes. 'Bet someone's topped themselves,' he said.
Healey came along the landing, checking cells. Doors were clanging shut all over the spur. Two prison officers dashed up the stairs with a stretcher. Healey appeared at the door. 'Inside, Lee,' he said. 'Nothing for you to see.'
'What happened, Mr Healey?'
'Prisoner hurt,' said Healey, and closed the door.
'Topped himself ?'
Healey didn't answer. Lee switched on the television and sat down on the chair. 'Shit,' he said. He stabbed his sausage with a plastic fork.
'What?' asked Shepherd.
'They'll keep us banged up until whatever it is gets sorted,' said Lee. 'No association, no exercise, no nothing. Just because some wanker decides to hurt himself.'
Shepherd put his tray down on the bunk. He'd lost his appetite.
Alice Roper frowned when she saw the two cars parked in the road outside her house. As a rule there was just one, with two men from the Church. It had always seemed strange to Alice that the men of HM Customs and Excise were called the Church. The Custom House headquarters by the Thames didn't look in the least like a house of worship and there was nothing religious about the men and women who worked there. The reason, Sandy had once told her, was because of the code used over the radio. Custom House became Charlie Hotel, CH, and then their colleagues at MI5 had begun to use Church instead. The Customs men quite enjoyed the religious overtones of the codename; the honest and true forces of good battling against the powers of evil. They were like children sometimes, thought Alice.
One of the cars, a big black saloon, was empty but she recognised the two men in the other vehicle. Sandy had introduced them, but Alice couldn't remember their names. Over the past weeks there had been more than a dozen taking it in turns to sit outside the house and Alice's only contact with them had been to take out occasional cups of tea. One of the men smiled and waved as she drove by and turned into the flagstoned driveway. She parked the Ford Fiesta by the garage door and lugged the shopping out of the boot. Sandy had refused to go with her to the supermarket: the office was insisting that he go out as little as possible. That didn't make any sense to Alice because Sandy had claimed from the start that no one knew who he was or that he was involved with the court case. If that was so, why was the office so worried that he might be recognised? She hadn't argued as she was fed up being cooped up in the house with him all day and she'd quite enjoyed the time alone, even if all she was doing was pushing a trolley round Sainsbury's.
She walked to the front door, let herself in and heaved the carrier-bags on to the kitchen table. 'Do you want tea, Sandy?' she called, as she switched on the kettle.
Ben and David were in the garden, kicking a football. Alice saw a man at the end of the garden, close to the small greenhouse. He was tall, gangly, in a raincoat with sleeves that were slightly too short for his spindly arms.
She heard footsteps and whirled round, but it was only her husband. 'Who's that in the garden?' she asked.
'Alice, we've got to talk,' said Roper.
Lee had been right: the cell doors remained locked all night. In the morning Lee was due to shower so he was up as soon as he heard doors being unlocked down the landing. He stood at the door with his towel and washbag humming. Shepherd climbed down from the top bunk in his prison-issue sweatpants and a T-shirt. He started to shave at the washbasin. The spyglass clicked open and the door was unlocked. Lee rushed off down the landing.
Hamilton had opened the cell door.
'What's the story, Mr Hamilton?' Shepherd asked.
'What do you mean?'
'The lockdown last night.'
