Crossing The Line Page 8

  Craig decided to help him out. “Or maybe he’d marked something relevant happening in the world outside?”

  Liam’s eyes widened. “You think Smyth might still have been working the street?”

  Craig gave a shrug.“Not working it himself obviously, but perhaps with an outside partner. It’s a bit of a leap, but like a lot of things we can’t rule it out just yet. Smyth wouldn’t be the first criminal not to have let go of his business interests when he got banged up.”

  Suddenly he fell silent; in a way that his deputy knew meant there was something more on his mind.

  “You’ve got something else?”

  Craig made a face that said he might have but was still unconvinced, allowing Liam to demonstrate he wouldn’t have been a very patient teacher either.

  “Well, could you hurry up and spill it? I’m starving, and the governor’s bound to have tea and biccies laid out.”

  Craig laughed at his cheek and gestured at the calendar again. “OK, so the missing stickers could have been removed to conceal events that had happened and prevent us linking Smyth to them, but what if the stickers themselves were something as well?”

  The D.C.I. got it immediately. “LSD! You think Smyth was swallowing the stickers to get high!”

  Craig shrugged. “Dual purpose would make sense. And who would think to examine what look like kids’ stickers being brought in by his family?”

  Liam chuckled, impressed by the dead criminal’s ingenuity. “Well, it’ll be easy enough to check. Let’s get the chart to Des.”

  “Davy first, so he can photograph everything on it and start analysing, and then Des. If I’m right it means that more than just counterfeit meds are being smuggled in here, someone’s bringing in hard drugs like LSD. And there’s more.” He pointed towards the end of December. “Smyth drew an extra week on at the end of the year, taking him up to the seventh of January.”

  Liam shrugged. “So what? I do that too if I haven’t got next year’s diary yet. I sketch in a wee grid with the dates at the top. Maybe Smyth wasn’t sure he was getting a new calendar from Santa this year.”

  Craig leaned in to look more closely at the chart, noting the neatness of the week-long extension.

  “It’s very precise, Liam. As if it was important to have it.” He glanced back at his deputy. “I bet your extra week doesn’t look that neat.”

  Liam smirked. “You’re right there. But then it’s only added on the off-chance, isn’t it? It’s only in case anything important comes up for that week, or if you haven’t got your new diary by then.”

  Craig straightened up again. “Exactly my point. You do it just in case, so it’s only a rough grid, but Smyth’s is precise and he’s put stickers on it. That tells me he knew that something important was going to happen that week.” He gestured at the calendar. “It’s a good thing. Whatever it is, he’s given us warning of it.”

  He headed for the door, opening it and beckoning to the prison officer standing point outside.

  “We’ll need to take this calendar as evidence. Could you find us a large cardboard tube to put it in?”

  The uniformed man considered him for a moment in a way that said he wasn’t sure of Craig’s sanity then he gave a grudging nod. “I suppose I could find something.”

  It was on the tip of Liam’s tongue to say, “Don’t strain yourself, mate” but his boss got in a polite nod first.

  “Thank you. Please ensure it’s large enough to allow a loose roll. We don’t want to knock off any of the stickers.”

  He was pretty sure that they wouldn’t come off anyway; Liam’s efforts with the Christmas triangle had said that the decals were backed with strong glue. LSD and glue; it sounded like a guaranteed high.

  Five minutes later they’d sealed the calendar in a tube and marked it as evidence and Liam was twirling it like a cheerleader would a baton. Craig rolled his eyes and turned back to the guard.

  “Which way to the governor’s office, please?”

  A lengthy list of directions that started with, “Down there for five hundred feet then turn left in a dog-leg and then right and up three flights of stairs, then...” followed, which Liam really hoped that Craig would remember because he’d stopped listening after the first few words.

  Craig had listened, so a few minutes later, after they’d run a gauntlet of cells and recreation rooms heaving with men from twenty-five upwards oozing so much testosterone that it gave both of them a headache and hurling expletive-laden assessments of which farmyard animals had given them life, everyone having accurately sussed that they were cops, the detectives finally reached a door marked ‘Administrative Suite’.

  Liam grabbed gratefully for the handle.

  “We’re in here. And I bloody hope Royston has some cake going. I need sugar after walking past that lot.”

  As they entered a short corridor of offices, Craig grinned at his deputy’s unaccustomed sensitivity.

  “Aw, did it upset you being called a pig-faced giant then?”

  The question received the snort that it deserved.

  “No more than it annoyed you being called a slick bastard. The only thing that bothered me was not being able to thump the scrotes for it. They wouldn’t be half as brave if they met us on the street, I’ll tell you that.”

  Craig had been inspecting the name plate on each office door they’d walked past and now he stopped in front of a shiny black one bearing the words ‘Dr George Royston. Governor.’

  “Here, I wonder what he’s a doctor of. He could look at my elbow for me. It’s been giving me gip all morning.”

  “He won’t be that sort of doctor. It’s probably criminology, sociology or something like that.” As Craig knocked he responded to his D.C.I.’s earlier point.“That lot were put away by pigs like us, remember, so I suppose they bear a collective grudge.”

  Liam didn’t get a chance to reply as, “Come in” was shouted and they entered a large, plushly carpeted office that contrasted starkly with the tiny, vinyl-floored cell that they’d just left.

  George Royston was on his feet, smiling and with his hand extended to shake.

  “Chief Superintendent, Chief Inspector.”

  Two brisk “Governor”s completed the parade of titles and everyone took their seats. Thankfully Royston had read Liam’s mind, and in front of them sat a tray laid out with tea and cake. While the mollified D.C.I. tucked in enthusiastically Craig kicked the conversation off.

  “Governor, we’ve a number of questions to ask generally, and more specifically about Mister Smyth.”

  He could almost hear Royston gritting his teeth, but his only overt sign of tension was a slowly freezing smile.

  “I’ll answer whatever I can, Superintendent.”

  “Good. First, please tell us what you know of Derek Smyth.”

  Royston gazed at him questioningly. “Your squad has already requested his records.” Davy was quick on the draw. “They’re being couriered to Belfast as we speak.”

  Craig wasn’t diverted. “And thank you for that, but I meant more of your sense of the man. You’ve worked here for how long?”

  “Ten years, and before that I was in Lancashire.”

  “Good. So you were governor during the whole of Smyth’s sentence here. What sort of man was he?”

  As he went to reply Royston began to stroke back his thinning hair repeatedly, in what they would soon realise was a nervous tic.

  “I didn’t know him well, but much like any other prisoner I should say. A slightly sullen attitude to authority, and he kept himself very much to himself.”

  Liam swallowed his mouthful of cake to ask a question. “Did he socialise with the other inmates?”

  The governor nodded. “Yes. Yes, he did that. He was a member of the prison drama society and he did a lot of work in the Trade Hall, that’s where we do the metalwork, plumbing training and the rest. I believe he was also starting computing and taking a psychology class.”

  The details didn’t seem to f
it either with Royston’s assertion that he hadn’t known Smyth well or with the theme of the dead man keeping to himself, so Craig pulled him on it.

  “Your initial description conjured up an image of a more isolated man.”

  Royston’s hair stroking quickened and his gaze began to roam distractedly around the room.

  “Did it? Ah...that’s not what I mean to imply. I simply meant that Derek wasn’t one of the prisoners who caused trouble. He seemed almost placid to me.”

  Placid or stoned?

  Craig wasn’t persuaded. “You seem to know a lot about him, for a man you say that you didn’t know well.”

  The stroking stopped and the teeth gritting resumed.

  “I make it my business to know about every inmate.”

  Craig hit back quickly. “That must be a challenge when you’ve got five hundred men in a prison only designed to hold three.”

  “The whole justice system is encountering challenges at the moment and we’re just one small part. Everyone is having to make sacrifices.”

  It was the government party line, and the opening that Craig had been waiting for.

  “So why then did Derek Smyth have a cell to himself?”

  Royston’s eyes widened in alarm. They had him on the ropes and Liam decided to land the second blow.

  “When his last cellmate left on parole six months ago, who made the decision to give Smyth a cell to himself? You or your guards?”

  The detectives waited silently for an answer, using the vacuum instead of more questions to force Royston to speak. He finally did so, in a resigned voice.

  “Smyth shared a cell with a prisoner called Nelson Brook for three and a half years and it worked well. They seemed to have a lot in common.”

  Exactly what that commonality was, was something that they were going to explore.

  “When Brook left, Smyth only had eighteen months left to serve, and he requested no new cell mates-”

  Liam interrupted in an incredulous tone. “Requested? Since when did it become a choice?”

  Craig nodded in agreement. “And why did you accede to that request, when elsewhere you have how many men to a cell?”

  Royston lurched forward at his desk. “Numbers aren’t the issue! Each case is viewed on its own merits.”

  Craig shifted in his seat and met him halfway. “And what was the merit in this case, Governor? Did Derek Smyth need to be kept alone, and for his sake or others’? Or was it just a luxury that you were encouraged to provide? And if so by whom?”

  Royston rose in his seat, his round face reddening. “I don’t like your implication, Superintendent!”

  Craig’s tone intensified. “And I don’t like being lied to when a man has just been killed! You don’t have immunity from assisting with our enquiries just because of your position, Governor, remember that. So I’ll ask you again. What was the reason for Smyth being allowed his own cell?”

  Liam had been holding his breath during the back and forth, but rather than make his much needed exhalation obvious and ruin the standoff, he hid it behind another piece of cake and watched as Royston finally broke and fell back into his chair with a heavy sigh.

  “All right, all right ... Look... we tried a couple of men in the cell with Smyth after Nelson Brook was paroled.”

  “And?”

  The governor shook his head. “They both met with accidents. Nasty wounding episodes about a week after each moved into Smyth’s cell.”

  Liam signalled to cut in. “Where did they happen?”

  “One in the Trade Hall and one in the kitchens.”

  Liam frowned, thinking. “Did Smyth work in the kitchens?”

  “No.”

  “But he did the stabbing in the Trade Hall-”

  Royston cut him off. “We thought so, but we could never manage to prove it. Every prisoner in there at the time went mysteriously blind.”

  Intimidation could be very effective in a closed community like a jail.

  Craig signalled to cut in.

  “Who do you think did the kitchen one? Presuming that it wasn’t an accident.”

  “It wasn’t, they were both warnings. The guards on that landing had cautioned me not to put anyone in with Smyth, or at least not unless they were on a shortlist that he had provided, but I’m afraid that I thought they were overreacting. I was proved wrong and I learned my lesson. I was seriously considering putting one of the men on Smyth’s approved list in with him when he died.”

  Craig made a rewind motion. “Let’s go back a bit. We’ll need the names of all the guards who’d worked that wing since Smyth’s sentence started, and the names on Smyth’s approved list.”

  Royston nodded like a beaten man. “I’ll give you the names, but I can tell you now that all of my guards are above reproach. It was my error for being stubborn and not listening to their advice that caused the problems. They know the prisoners far better than I ever will.”

  Craig knew they weren’t getting the full story. “I’ll need a better reason than stubbornness to explain why you didn’t put someone from Smyth’s shortlist in with him from the start.”

  Royston’s slicked-back hair took another bashing that it could ill afford before he reluctantly replied.

  “The reason I didn’t put anyone from that list in with Derek Smyth was because they were men whom we had always endeavoured to keep apart. Men with histories of drug abuse who would simply have made each other worse-”

  Liam interjected again. He needed something to do; he’d run out of tea and cake without tea was too dry.

  “Was Nelson Brook a druggie like Smyth?”

  “No, but they had other things in common. Cultural similarities shall we say.”

  Craig made a note of the point as his deputy carried on.

  “OK, so what’s the drug problem like here generally?”

  It prompted another sigh from the governor and in that moment he looked every one of his fifty-three years.

  “Much the same as in all prisons at the moment, which isn’t good.”

  “Hard or soft drugs?”

  “Both. Heroin and cocaine are serious problems, but the psychoactive substances and medications side are substantial as well, and we’re having problems detecting both of those with the drug dogs.”

  Novel psychoactive substances (NPS) like Spice were substances that mimicked the effect of long-established hard drugs, but by a slight tweaking at a molecular level had been legal until the Psychoactive Substances Act had been introduced two years before.

  Craig joined the conversation again. “The medications. What sort are they mostly?”

  Royston opened his desk drawer and withdrew a sheet of paper.

  “In the past year alone the medications we’ve discovered have included the opiate Fentanyl, the benzodiazepine diazepam, and Xanax, which is a tranquilliser.”

  Liam’s next question surprised him. “Prescribed meds or counterfeits?”

  The governor’s eyes widened in horror. “Counterfeit?”

  That answered that.

  “I’m not aware of any counterfeits having been found.”

  Or else it didn’t.

  Rather than there not actually being counterfeit meds in the prison, Royston’s ignorance of them might just have been down to no-one taking a close enough look at the medications they had found to see if they were real.

  Craig decided to make the governor an offer.

  “The medications you’ve found, have you had them all examined?”

  The hair-stroking restarted and Craig realised that it was a sign of guilt as well as stress.

  “Not yet, I’m afraid. We’ve been overwhelmed with drug issues in the past six months and my budget... well, you understand... The priority has to be getting drugs away from the inmates for their own sakes; analysing their chemical composition comes very much in second place.”

  “Have you stored them?”

  “Yes. They’re stored and inventoried in the prison pharmacy. Why?”
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br />   “We’ll get them analysed for you. It can be justified as part of our murder case, given the meds that we found in Smyth’s cell.”

  Royston’s mouth opened to ask a question which Liam answered before he could.

  “Those are being analysed at the Path Labs now. The same people can do the rest of the meds you’ve found.”

  “Well, if you’re sure...”

  Craig’s nod said that they were.

  “Very well. Thank you. But you need to know that none of the other medications were found on Derek Smyth.”

  It was an interesting point.

  “We’ll need a list of who they were found on then, please.”

  “Right. I’ll get the pharmacy to label each sample with a name. It may take them a little while.”

  Craig saw the governor glance at his clock and knew that he was about to wind things up, so he got in first.

  “We have a few more questions, Governor. About the use of mobile phones in the prison, and the internet. Are mobiles an issue here?”

  Royston sighed despairingly.

  “We do regular cell checks and sweeps, of course, but it’s almost impossible to find them all. Relatives smuggle them in, and then of course there was that embarrassing situation with the attempted drone drop in May.”

  A drone or UAV, an unmanned aerial vehicle, is an aircraft without a human pilot aboard.

  Liam got in before Craig could. “Not the first of May by any chance?”

  “Why, yes. How did you know that?”

  While the D.C.I. smiled mysteriously in reply Craig asked, “What did it try to drop?”

  “Drugs. And actually it did drop them, but we got to them in time.”

  He urged Royston on. “Outline exactly what happened, please.”

  An embarrassed blush lit up the administrator’s face, as if the drone had somehow been his fault, which given the fact that similar drug drops had occurred in prisons all across the world with the drones’ operators miles away and never caught, Craig thought was carrying responsibility a bit far.

  “A drone carrying drugs and a mobile phone flew over the main prison courtyard and dropped them.”