“What do you mean, not here?” Skinner demanded, looking totally perplexed. In order to produce an inmate from prison, the station used to accommodate him had to be on an approved Home Office list, and one of the conditions of the production order was that he would be housed there, and nowhere else.
The custody sergeant smiled grimly. “He was rushed to hospital earlier with a suspected burst appendix. Luckily, Dr Mackintosh, the on-call FME, was already in the station when the gaoler found him unconscious in his cell and, after examining him, an ambulance was called straight away. The Duty Officer’s not best pleased, though. Three officers from early turn had to go with him as escorts.”
“Shit!” Skinner said, drawing the word out. He ran a calloused hand over the stubble on his dimpled chin as he considered the implications of this. He would have to notify his boss and the prison Security Governor, neither of whom would be any more pleased than the Duty Officer had been. “What hospital did they take him to?” he asked.
“The Royal London in Whitechapel,” the custody sergeant said.
Skinner swore. His plans for the day, and possibly the week, had just been blown right out of the water.
“Let’s get straight over there,” he gruffly told his colleague.
As they headed for the door, he pulled out his chunky Motorola mobile phone and pulled the small extendable aerial up; he wasn’t looking forward to the two calls he would now have to make, but there was no point in delaying them. Unfortunately, as there was no signal in the custody area, it looked like he would have to do just that. Cursing the stupid phone for having no signal, and Winston for having the temerity to fall ill on him, he slipped it back in his jacket pocket. He would try again when they were on their way to the hospital.
When they reached the car, a Vauxhall Vectra, Donoghue turned to Skinner. “There’s no rush, is there?” he asked, rubbing his oversized stomach. “Only I was thinking we could nip off and get a bite to eat before setting off for the hospital. Sounds to me like they’ll be taking Winston straight into surgery, so what’s the point in us tanking over there and then having nothing to do but twiddle our thumbs for the next hour or two?”
Skinner gave him a look that would have curdled milk. “Get in the car,” he ordered.
Donoghue’s face sagged as he pressed the button on the fob to release the central locking. With a sigh, he lowered his lumbering figure into the driver’s seat, which creaked under his weight. “Looks like breakfast will have to wait, then,” he said, unable to hide his disappointment.
◆◆◆
When Dillon arrived at the hospital at half-past-four that afternoon, he found a subdued looking Frank Skinner sitting alone outside a private room on the third floor. His potato-like head and square chin had about the same amount of dark stubble on them, and a fleshy hand that was festooned with gold rings was alternately rubbing one and then the other. The podgy fingers were stained yellow from nicotine, Dillon noticed, and the nails had been chewed down to the quick. Skinner projected an aura that was more akin to dodgy bookmaker than a cop, and Dillon felt confident that, beneath the shirt and tie, there would be a thick gold chain draped around his chavvy neck.
Opposite the bench on which the drug squad officer was sitting, two serious-faced uniform officers were standing guard outside the room’s entrance, one either side of the door.
“What are you doing here?” Skinner immediately asked, glaring at him suspiciously. His voice was deep and raspy, a legacy from all the cigarettes he had chain-smoked over the years.
Ignoring the hostility, Dillon sat down next to him, forcing him to bunch up to make room.
“I phoned KF’s custody suite to ask for you a little while ago, as you weren’t answering my calls,” Dillon said angrily, “and they told me I’d find you here. Imagine how surprised I was to find out from them that Winston had been rushed to hospital this morning, bearing in mind that you bloody well promised to give me an update if anything significant happened.”
When he’d called Skinner the previous day, the drug squad man had been disingenuous over Winston. He’d started off by spouting the usual ‘we’ve produced him as a matter of routine to see if he’ll give us any TICs,’ story, but Dillon had known that was complete bollocks and had told him so in no uncertain terms.
TIC is a police acronym for ‘taken into consideration.’ The process involves prisoners putting their hands up to the previously unsolved transgressions that they’ve committed over the years. In exchange for their full and frank confession, the police submit a report to the court requesting that these matters be taken into consideration when passing sentence for other offences, instead of also charging them with the additional crimes. The courts could still choose to impose consecutive – or back to back – custodial sentences for the offences being taken into consideration, but normally they were dealt with by means of a concurrent – served at the same time – sentence. In other words, a man charged with two burglaries but having a further ninety taken into consideration would only receive custodial sentences for the two charged burglaries; he wouldn’t incur any additional jail time for the TICs, although these would be shown as guilty findings against him on the Police National Computer.
“No, honestly, we just thought he might want to get a few things off his chest as he’s likely to be doing a fair bit of porridge,” Skinner had insisted. He wasn’t the brightest spark that Dillon had ever worked with.
“Yeah, right,” Dillon had replied, making
