Ignoring the banter from the three detective who were escorting him, Winston glanced out of the side window at the sodden pedestrians who were scurrying hither and thither along the crowded pavement like a bunch of drowning rats. Some were huddled over with their collars pulled up high; others were hiding underneath umbrellas that did little to shield them from the sideways driven rain. All of them were getting in each other’s way and most of them looked as miserable as sin.
He watched dispassionately as a limping vagrant of Eastern European appearance hobbled from doorway to doorway on a pair of crutches that were too short for him. The dishevelled man was soaked through, and as he came to a wobbly halt underneath a large canopy suspended above the entrance to an Ironmonger’s, the proprietor came rushing out and shooed him away.
Winston grinned mirthlessly. Another example of the milk of human kindness, he thought bitterly. And they have the nerve to call me ruthless!
As the lights started to change, an elderly Indian woman with a bright red Bindi on her forehead dashed across the road directly in front of their vehicle. He’d once asked an Indian punter what the dot signified, only to be told that it was a reset button for the husband to press if his wife ever displeased him. The drunken Indian had then teetered off, still chortling to himself over his joke, without giving Winston his answer.
The woman wore a thick green coat over her sari, but all she had on her feet was a pair of wafer-thin sandals. He shook his head in amazement – someone ought to tell the silly cow to put on some Wellingtons next time she goes out in the rain.
Holding her umbrella high, so as not to decapitate anyone coming the other way, the woman shimmied through a succession of puddles, trying to avoid the deepest ones with varying levels of success. As she reached the safety of the pavement, a fierce gust of wind caused her umbrella to collapse in on itself, and while she was trying to straighten it out, a lumbering HGV drove through a puddle the size of a small lake and drenched her from the waist down.
Winston chuckled to himself. Classic, he thought. Maybe she needs her reset button pressing.
It was a huge relief to be away from the claustrophobic confines of the prison, with its endless concrete corridors, all separated by locked metal doors or steel bars. Spending Christmas and New Year inside had been one of the most depressing experiences of his entire life, and he had no intention of repeating it.
Shifting in his seat to ease the numbness in his buttocks, Winston let out a restless sigh and stretched his one free arm above his head.
“Keeping you awake, are we?” the sombre looking detective he was handcuffed to asked in his deep baritone voice. It was the only time the man had bothered to address Winston all journey.
Winston responded with a surly grunt.
Winston’s escorts, all big lumps with broken noses and barrel chests, had obviously been handpicked for the job because of their formidable size as opposed to their social skills, but with his reputation for violence, that was only to be expected.
Detective Sergeant Declan Bale, the man in charge of relocating Winston from HMP Pentonville to Forest Gate police station, was sitting in the front talking to the driver about football. He glanced over his shoulder and noticed that Winston was getting a bit fidgety. “We’re nearly there now, pal,” he said placatingly.
Bale was a fair-haired Welshman with the flat nose and cauliflower ears of a former rugby player and the beer belly of a man who enjoyed a good drink. Straight after introducing himself, he had made a point of informing Winston that he and his colleagues were merely delivery men and that they wouldn’t be having anything more to do with him once they’d dropped him off at the police station. In fact, the burly detective from the Welsh valleys had only spoken to Winston on one other occasion, just after they drove out of the prison gates, and that had been to enquire whether he had been raised as a Rastafarian or had converted in later life, and if it was true that Rastas grew long dreadlocks to denote the covenant that they had made with their God.
Winston had considered these questions so unbelievably stupid that he hadn’t even bothered to reply. Yes, he was of Jamaican descent, and yes, he sported shoulder-length dreadlocks, but that didn’t automatically make him a Rasta. As it happened, the way he wore his hair had nothing to do with religion – he just liked having dreads; they were his pride and joy.
Winston had retreated within himself almost immediately after that, and he had spent the remainder of the tedious journey lost in melancholy. Two short months had passed since those arseholes from the murder squad had put him behind bars but, to him, it felt more like two years. Winston had made two bail applications since being locked up – the first at the Magistrate’s Court the day after he’d been charged, and the second at the Old Bailey, two weeks later.
Neither had been successful.
According to his wankstain solicitor, he couldn’t make another bail application unless a substantial change in the circumstances surrounding his case occurred – like that was going to happen. Depressingly, his trial wasn’t scheduled to be heard at the Bailey until late August, which seemed a lifetime away.
But there was still hope, and if everything went according to plan, he would be a free man by the end of the week.
Winston had ostensibly been produced in order to be further questioned about drug-related offences – at least that’s what the production order
