Alvin nodded. ‘When you stick your hand inside a plastic bag to get it to open up. I get you.’
‘I wouldn’t hold out too much hope, though. The action of the fluids inside those plastic bags . . . ’
‘There’s got to be something that nails this bastard,’ Alvin growled.
‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But it doesn’t always work out that way.’
39
The art of profiling depends on our ability to see beyond the obvious to the overlooked.
From Reading Crimes by DR TONY HILL
Even in the relatively short time that Carol had been out of the police force, the regulations about what was permissible for anyone visiting prison in an official capacity had become yet more draconian. When they’d met for Carol to pick up her letter of accreditation, Bronwen had explained. ‘Every prison is a bit of a law unto itself, but Strangeways is the worst of the lot. They change the rules from week to week, just to get under our skin.’
‘You can still take a bag in?’
‘You can, but it’s not worth it. The only things allowed in it are a pen, papers and glasses, if you need them. If there are any paperclips on your files, they have to be removed. Last time I went to Strangeways, they even made me take the elastic bands and the barrister’s ribbon off the brief because they were potential weapons.’
‘Death by elastic band?’ Carol was incredulous.
‘Could be a thing, apparently.’ Bronwen looked scornful. ‘But really, it’s all about power and control. So, the basics are: no train tickets or timetables, no food or drink, no smart watches or anything with the capability of accessing the big bad internet. Absolutely no phones. Strangeways won’t let you wear a watch or any kind of fitness tracker, which is a shame because sometimes you end up walking a long way to the interview room.’ She grinned. ‘Just take the minimum with you and leave everything in the locker except for your files, your legal pad and your pen. Make sure it’s a nice new pen because they’ll probably only let you take one in and if it runs out, tough.’ She handed over a letter identifying Carol as a paralegal investigator for her firm.
‘Go with the flow, Carol,’ she added. ‘I know it’ll kill you but be meek and accommodating. It’s tempting, but don’t pick a fight. The most important person in this is the client. Getting yourself kicked out before you’ve had your sit-down with him defeats the object.’
Carol raised her eyebrows. ‘I’m not a novice.’
Bronwen shrugged. ‘You are on this side of the fence. You’re used to being in the driving seat. The defence team don’t even get to sit in the car.’
So Carol had played the game, swallowing the contempt of the swaggering officers who had painstakingly inspected her passport and the letter from Bronwen, then reluctantly pointed her to the locker where she’d deposited everything except the essentials. She’d been patient and pleasant in the face of their arrogance and her reward was now to walk through the metal detector at HMP Manchester.
The prison had been renamed in an attempt to scrub it of its notoriety, but everyone on both sides of the law continued to refer to it by its old name – Strangeways, notorious for its tough regime and even tougher inmates. Carol followed a wide-hipped male officer down a hallway that smelled of aggressive cleaning chemicals, through a sally port and a series of locked gates. Eventually, she was led into a tiny interview room with barely enough space for two chairs and a table that was wide enough to make any hand contact difficult. The officer left her alone to stare at the wall for more than ten minutes before Saul Neilson was led in through a door in the wall opposite the one Carol had entered by.
Prison did nobody any favours and Saul was no exception. He’d lost weight and there was a dullness in his eyes that she suspected was recent. When Carol introduced herself, he barely stirred. ‘I’m here because we think your conviction is unsafe,’ she said.
He snorted. ‘Of course it’s “unsafe”. I was found guilty of something I didn’t do. It doesn’t get more unsafe than that. I’ve never been in trouble with the law. Not even stopped and searched which, you know, is kind of unusual for a black lad who drives a nice car. But the jury? They thought a gay black man had to be guilty of something and it might as well be murder.’
Carol nodded. ‘You’re probably right that racist attitudes played a part in your conviction. But there’s no way to prove it, and proof is what we need to change this story.’
‘How are you going to do that, then?’ His chin came up in a challenge.
‘I’m going to start with the genuine presumption that you’re innocent. Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I was a cop for the best part of twenty years. For most of that time, I was a detective. I ended up running a Major Incident Team.’
He scowled. ‘Like that’s going to make me trust you. Who do you think put me in here?’
‘You can trust that I know what I’m doing. And that I know how cops put cases together. For example, there’s usually a period of time between someone being arrested and actually being interviewed on tape. Sometimes police officers claim a suspect said things on the way to the police station and then refused to repeat them in the interview.’
He sighed. ‘Being verballed is what they call it in here. But that didn’t happen with me. No fabricated evidence claiming I’d said things I hadn’t.’
‘It cuts both ways,’ Carol said. ‘Sometimes a suspect says something in that unrecorded window that’s totally unhelpful
