“I see,” he said. “Well, in that case, Herre Nielsen, I am pleased that you have only wasted a few minutes of your time here. Collecting languages is an enjoyable little hobby, but I have no intention of giving up my current line of work, whatever the offered salary may be. You must realise that I could easily make far more than I do now in a number of less interesting or challenging professions.”
“Indeed.” Nielsen didn’t look at all comfortable by then, although he was doing his best. “Well, I was duty-bound to approach you. I am expected to look out for exceptional talent wherever I go. May I ask, to satisfy my curiosity, how many languages you have learned?”
“Fluently? Only seventeen so far, Herre Nielsen.” Another nod, even more regretful this time.
“Somehow, I find that I am not surprised.” He stood, eager to extract himself from an increasingly awkward situation. “Thank you for your time Mr Keane, Inspector.” He let himself out, and Shay bounced up again and went to sit at the desk.
“Bloody cheek of him, snooping around like that!” He wouldn’t have found anything. Any pictures of Shay’s face that appeared online, any mention of his name, all disappeared again very quickly. No wonder Nielsen had become curious. “I’d better just let the Ids know it was harmless before they start anything.”
I finished my beer and got my jacket on. The takeaway was only a couple of minutes’ walk away.
“At least it was your mind he was after. Well, until just now anyway,” I told him cheerfully.
“With his endless, gourmet smorgasbord to pick from?” Shay snorted. “I think I’m safe enough. Are you fetching the grub, or do I need to get my shoes on before I starve to death?”
“On my way,” I told him. “Order me another cold beer, will you?” With that, I got going.
Our takeaway was really good, and we demolished it thoroughly after opening up the little top windows to let some air through. I bagged up the packaging, and the loo roll we’d used for napkins, and took it all straight out to the bins once we were done. The smell in the room would soon clear.
Shay was at his laptop when I walked back in, looking rather subdued as he cradled his steaming cup. Having polished off his work night wine allowance with dinner, he’d set the bottle aside and made us some peppermint tea. Both our rooms were provided with kettles and cups, and of course, he’d brought a little selection with him.
“Come and look at this, Con,” he said, and I went over to see what he’d put up on the screen for me.
“Okay, what am I looking at?”
“This,” he pointed to the photo on the left, “is Mr Angelo Barclay, aged 41, a respectable restaurateur from Perth. And on the right, we have Mr Cory Phelps, aged 39, who kindly left his fingerprints all over the rental van for us.”
I cross-checked the two photos. Similar features and hair but not a very close match. They both had similar brown eyes, curling dark hair, and rounded faces, but the noses were not quite the same lengths, and Barclay had a slightly longer face than Phelps did. His eyes were a bit smaller too.
“And Cory Phelps? Who’s he?” I asked.
“Get your laptop. You’ll want to read the file for yourself, and I need to keep digging.”
I went to fetch it and settled on the bed. I opened up his email and saw that he’d attached a copy of the case report he’d found in the PND, given me a brief history of Phelps’ time in custody and a few added notes on the Category B prison where he’d been held on remand before his trial.
Cory Phelps, like Brian Jordan, had also been a merchant seaman, up until twelve years ago when he’d been arrested as a minor player in a big smuggling operation that had been busted open by an NCA taskforce down in Felixstowe. Unfortunately for him, the items he’d been bribed to assist with on that trip were not just another shipment of the usual Moroccan hash, as he’d sworn he believed, but had also contained firearms.
The sentencing judge had taken both Phelps’ minor role in the organisation and his alleged ignorance into consideration before handing down a six-year sentence, instead of hitting him with the maximum penalty for firearms smuggling. It still seemed a bit harsh to me. By then, Phelps had already been held on remand at HMP Pentonville, in north London, for over a year. Shay’s notes on that place were no news to me. It had a reputation for being an absolute disgrace to the Prison Service, although not the only one by a long shot. ‘The Ville’ was understaffed and underfunded, which was true of nearly all British prisons. Access to showers, clean clothing and even bedding was insufficient; rats and cockroaches had infested the place, and prisoners had even been temporarily removed to Wandsworth before official inspections occurred, in order to fudge the population figures. Apart from the totally unacceptable overcrowding and substandard facilities at Pentonville, stabbings and other attacks between inmates were far too frequent, and the suicide rate was high.
There had even been a quickly forgotten scandal back in 2006, when fourteen officers were suspended after allegations of trafficking had been made. Drug use among inmates was another major problem. The corruption had been all-pervasive, and I gathered that conditions had become even worse since then. I doubted that most of the British population either knew or cared about any of that. Most people liked to believe that none of our prisons had been that bad for decades.
Somehow, I didn’t think that his time in Pentonville had done anything at all
