Jack took a sip of tepid coffee and grimaced.
Pushing the mug aside, he stifled a yawn and tried to force himself to concentrate on the task at hand. He was halfway through reading a lengthy forensic report that was so incredibly dull it was literally sapping his will to live.
With a laboured sigh, he started reading a new paragraph that was just as full of technical gobbledygook as the preceding one. Only half understanding some of the scientific phraseology, he found himself struggling to pronounce a particularly tongue-twisting word that seemed to contain almost every letter of the alphabet.
What possible justification could there be for having a word that long? he asked himself huffily.
Conscious that he had a telephone conference booked with the scientist who had written it straight after lunch, Tyler decided to skim over that section and return to it later if necessary.
The telephone suddenly rang, startling him. He scooped it up halfway through the second ring, grateful for the distraction. “DCI Tyler,” he said, massaging his eyes.
It was DCI Andy Quinlan.
“Morning, Jack,” Andy said, sounding as though he bore the weight of the world on his slender shoulders. “This is just a courtesy call, really, but I thought you’d want to know. I’ve just discovered that the drug squad’s producing our old friend, Claude Winston, from The Ville today. Apparently, they’ve got him for a three-day-laydown.”
The Ville, or HMP Pentonville to give it its full name, was the North London prison in which Claude Winston, a Bethnal Green-based pimp and drug smuggler with a nasty habit of shooting police officers, was being held on remand while awaiting trial for two counts of attempted murder, possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life and possession of two kilos of cocaine with intent to supply. He was there because Jack and his partner, DI Tony Dillon, had arrested him while investigating the Whitechapel murders late last year.
At the time, Jack had been so snowed under hunting down the serial killer the media had tackily dubbed The New Ripper that his boss, DCS George Holland, had insisted he hand Winston’s case over to Andy Quinlan’s team.
Tyler sat bolt upright in his chair, unsettled by the news. “Now why would they do that?” he asked in a voice thick with suspicion. “And how the fuck have the jammy buggers managed to get him for three whole days?”
When Her Majesties Prison Service granted the police permission to produce a prisoner for interview purposes, it was under the strict proviso that the inmate was returned later that same day. When investigations were protracted, and the interviews were likely to span several days, the prisoner had to be collected each morning and returned every evening without fail. It was a complete ball ache, but that was the way that the archaic system worked.
A nasty thought occurred to Tyler.
“You don’t think they’re looking to do a deal with him behind our backs, do you?” he asked. The words tasted even worse than his cold coffee had.
At the time of his arrest, Tyler knew that the drug squad had only considered Winston to be a fringe player. However, since his incarceration, intelligence reports generated by both NCIS – the National Crime Intelligence Service – and the guys at MIB – the Met Intelligence Bureau –suggested that Winston had forged links to the Turkish and Albanian organised crime cartels that dominated London’s prosperous opium trade.
Knowing how these things worked, Tyler wouldn’t be surprised if it transpired that some conniving bastard at the drug squad was trying to persuade Winston to trade information about the cartels in exchange for a more lenient sentence.
“I’ve been asking myself that same question since I found out,” Quinlan said gloomily. “But Winston would have to have some pretty spectacular information to sell if he wanted a text worth the paper it’s written on, bearing in mind what he’s been charged with.”
When a prisoner became a Confidential Human Intelligence Source – a CHIS – and provided information that assisted the police in preventing or solving serious offences, they were automatically entitled to receive a letter – commonly referred to in the trade as a text – from the Crown. This was traditionally served on the presiding judge in the privacy of their chambers by a CHIS handler at the start of the trial.
Apart from the judge, the handler, the ACPO – Association of Chief Police Officers – level officer approving the deal, and a high-ranking lawyer from the Crown Prosecution Service, no one else would ever know it had happened.
Jack sighed miserably. “Well, you’ve just brightened up my day no end,” he said, running a hand through his short brown hair. “Do you know where they’re taking him?”
“He’s going to KF, or so I’m told.” KF was the phonetic code for Forest Gate police station in Romford Road, East London.
“Have you spoken to George Holland yet?”
“Not yet,” Quinlan said. “I thought you’d want to be the first to know.”
“Bloody marvellous. Dillon’s not going to be a happy bunny when I tell him.”
◆◆◆
Claude Winston sat in the back of the grubby people carrier, quietly watching the world pass by through tinted windows that were streaked with rain. He was being driven along Romford Road towards the Stratford one-way system, and they were moving at what felt like a snail’s pace. Traffic had been so bad this morning that the eight-mile journey from Islington had already taken them well over an hour. Still, he wasn’t complaining; it was better than sitting in a cell and staring at four walls.
The people carrier slowed to a stop as it tagged onto the end of a long line of vehicles being held at a red traffic signal. The driver cursed the
