'Sorry I'm not there to help out,' said Carpenter.
'Yeah, you and me both,' said Bonnie. 'How much longer are you going to be in there, love?' She regretted the question as soon as she'd asked it. She knew that he was doing everything he could to get out of prison, and that there was nothing he could tell her, not with the authorities listening in to all his calls.
'I'll be back before you know it, honey,' said Carpenter.
'I'm sorry,' said Bonnie. 'I know how tough it is for you in there.'
'Piece of cake,' said Carpenter. 'Got to go, see you tomorrow.'
The line went dead and Bonnie put the receiver back on its cradle. She drained the rest of her wine and refilled the glass. 'It's not your dad's fault,' she said to Paul. 'He only has so many minutes to use the phone.' She ruffled Paul's hair. 'He'd talk to you all day if he could.'
'It's not fair,' he said. 'It's bad enough that he's in prison, what difference does it make how long he uses the phone for?'
'It's part of the punishment,' said Bonnie.
'But it's punishing me and I'm not the one who did anything wrong.'
'Dad didn't do anything wrong either, did he, Mum?' said Jacqueline.
Bonnie took a deep breath, then forced a smile. 'Of course he didn't. Go and tell Steph her food's on the table.'
Shepherd nodded at Carpenter as he replaced the receiver. 'How's it going?' he asked. He'd been waiting in the line for the two phones and had heard most of Carpenter's end of the conversation - 'I'll be back before you know it,' Carpenter had said, and he'd sounded confident.
'Okay,' said Carpenter. 'You're Macdonald, yeah?'
'Bob,' said Shepherd. 'I'm in with Jason Lee on the twos.'
'Gerry Carpenter. I'm on the threes.'
'You've got a single cell?'
Carpenter shrugged.
'How do I go about getting one?' Shepherd picked up the receiver.
'You fed up with Jason?'
'Wouldn't mind some privacy, that's all. Who do I speak to?'
'Put in a request to Stafford. He runs the block.'
'He'll just put my name on a list, won't he?'
'That's the way it works.'
'No short-cut?'
'Wouldn't know,' said Carpenter, and walked away.
Shepherd keyed in his four-digit pin number and got a dialling tone. He tapped in the north London number that Hargrove had given him on their first meeting. It was answered on the second ring.
'This is Bob Macdonald,' said Shepherd.
'Hello, Bob. This is Richard. What do you need?'
Shepherd recited the name and address of Digger's sister and explained that she had to be given five hundred pounds.
'Anything else?'
'That's all,' said Shepherd, and cut the connection.
As he walked away from the telephones, Lloyd-Davies waved him over. She was watching two prisoners play pool. 'Sorry you missed your gym yesterday, Bob.'
'No sweat, ma'am. Any chance of you getting me on the list again?'
She smiled. 'Still got excess energy?'
'I used to run a lot, on the out,' he said.
'From the cops?'
Shepherd laughed. 'You don't run from cops, these days, ma'am. They never get out of their cars. You've just got to be able to drive faster than them, that's all.'
'I'll see what I can do. Still got the watch, then?'
'No one's tried to take it off me.'
'That wasn't why you had the altercation with Needles, was it?'
Shepherd feigned innocence, but his mind raced. How did she know about Needles? There had been no officers in the vicinity when Shepherd had hit him. And there was no way that a man like Needles would go running to an officer. 'Altercation, ma'am?'
'Butter wouldn't melt, would it, Macdonald? You know what I'm talking about. I heard you kneed him in the balls, then kicked him to the floor.' She shook her head sadly. 'You're going to have to watch your back.'
'Not while I've got you looking after me, ma'am.'
'I'm serious,' she said. 'This is your first time inside. You don't know how it works in here. You make waves, sometimes you get thrown out of the boat.'
Shepherd walked down the spur to the exercise yard and joined the line of inmates waiting to go out. Two officers were doing the searches. One was Rathbone, the other a middle-aged West Indian woman whom Shepherd hadn't seen before. She had a pretty smile and seemed to know all the prisoners by name. It was clear that they preferred a pat-down from her to one from Rathbone, and several pushed their groins forward as she ran her hands down their legs. She took it all good-naturedly.
Shepherd stood in front of Rathbone with his legs apart and his arms outstretched. The officer rubbed his hands along the top of Shepherd's arms, then underneath, around his armpits down his waist to his legs, inside and out. Then he patted his back and chest and waved him through.
As soon as he was out in the open air Shepherd took several deep breaths. He found an empty corner and stood swinging his arms, his head back so that he was looking up at the sky.
'You okay, Bob?' said a voice.
Shepherd turned to find Ed Harris standing behind him. 'Why do you ask?'
'Heard you had a run-in with Needles.'
'Word gets around fast in here.'
'Not much else to do but gossip,' said Harris. He handed Shepherd a sandy-coloured booklet:
Shepherd raised his eyebrows. He flicked through the pages. There were self-assessment quizzes, exercises, and lots of flow-charts. 'You are taking the piss, right?'
'Anger is an understandable reaction to what you're going through,' said Harris. 'What you've got to learn is that it's yourself you're angry with. You lash out at others because you don't want to lash out at yourself.'
'Ed, I'm really not angry,' said Shepherd. That was true. He hadn't been angry when he'd hit Needles and he hadn't been angry when he'd crippled Jurczak. Anger hadn't come into it. He had done what he had to do. What he'd been trained to do. Even when he was with the Regiment and he'd been under fire, he hadn't been angry with the men shooting at him. And he hadn't been angry when he'd fired back and killed them.
'That's denial,' said Harris. 'I hear it all the time. If it's not controlled you lash out at others, or you hurt yourself.'
'I'm not suicidal,' said Shepherd.
'You were in a fight,' said Harris. 'You've only just arrived on the spur and you're lashing out.'
There was no way Shepherd could explain why he'd hit Needles. Or Jurczak. But explaining wasn't the issue. Shepherd knew it was vital that he reacted as Bob Macdonald, career criminal, and not as Dan Shepherd, undercover cop. That was one of the hardest parts of being undercover. He could memorise his legend and all the facts about his targets, but his emotions and reactions had to be faked. He had to filter everything he did so that he was consistent in whatever role he was playing. But it had to be done instantly because any hesitation would be spotted by someone who knew what they were looking for. That was why so many undercover agents ended up as alcoholics or basket cases. It wasn't the danger or the risks: it was the strain of maintaining a role when the penalty for failure was a beating at best or, at worst, a bullet in the back of the neck. 'He got what was coming to him,' he said.
'Do you want to tell me what happened?'
