Pat waited for the officer to respond, as they came to a halt outside cell number 119. He placed a large key in the lock.
‘No, Pat, you haven’t,’ the night officer said as he pulled open the heavy door. ‘So what is the difference between a joist and a girder?’ he demanded.
Pat was about to reply, but when he looked into the cell was momentarily silenced.
‘Good evening, m’lord,’ said Pat, for the second time that day. The night officer didn’t wait for a reply. He slammed the door closed, and turned the key in the lock.
Pat spent the rest of the evening telling me, in graphic detail, all that had taken place since two o’clock that morning. When he had finally come to the end of his tale, I simply asked, ‘Why October?’
‘Once the clocks go back,’ said Pat, ‘I prefer to be inside, where I’m guaranteed three meals a day and a cell with central heating. Sleeping rough is all very well in the summer, but it’s not so clever during an English winter.’
‘But what would you have done if Mr Perkins had sentenced you to a year?’ I asked.
‘I’d have been on my best behaviour from day one,’ said Pat, ‘and they would have released me in six months. They have a real problem with overcrowding at the moment,’ he explained.
‘But if Mr Perkins had stuck to his original sentence of just three months, you would have been released in January, mid-winter.’
‘Not a hope,’ said Pat. ‘Just before I was due to be let out, I would have been found with a bottle of Guinness in my cell. A misdemeanour for which the governor is obliged to automatically add a further three months to your sentence, and that would have taken me comfortably through to April.’
I laughed. ‘And is that how you intend to spend the rest of your life?’ I asked.
‘I don’t think that far ahead,’ admitted Pat. ‘Six months is quite enough to be going on with,’ he added, as he climbed on to the top bunk and switched off the light.
‘Goodnight, Pat,’ I said, as I rested my head on the pillow.
‘Have I ever told you about the time I tried to get a job on a building site in Liverpool?’ asked Pat, just as I was falling asleep.
‘No, you haven’t,’ I replied.
‘Well, the foreman, a bloody Englishman, no offence intended—’ I smiled — ‘had the nerve to ask me if I knew the difference between a joist and a girder.’
‘And do you?’ I asked.
‘I most certainly do. Joyce wrote Ulysses, and Goethe wrote Faust.’
Patrick O’Flynn died of hypothermia on 23 November 2005, while sleeping under the arches on Victoria Embankment in central London.
His body was discovered by a young constable, just a hundred yards away from the Savoy Hotel.
The Red King
“They charged me with the wrong offence, and sentenced me for the wrong crime,’ Max said as he lay in the bunk below me, rolling another cigarette.
While I was in prison, I heard this claim voiced by inmates on several occasions, but in the case of Max Glover it turned out to be true.
Max was serving a three-year sentence for obtaining money by false pretences. Not his game. Max’s speciality was removing small items from large homes. He once told me, with considerable professional pride, that it could be years before an owner became aware that a family heirloom has gone missing, especially, Max added, if you take one small, but valuable, object from a cluttered room.
‘Mind you,’ continued Max, ‘I’m not complaining, because if they had charged me with the crime I did commit, I would have ended up with a much longer sentence—’ he paused — ‘and nothing to look forward to once I’m released.’
Max knew he had aroused my curiosity, and as I had nowhere to go for the next three hours before the cell door would be opened for Association — that glorious forty-five minutes when prisoners are allowed out of their cell for a stroll around the yard — I picked up my pen, and said, ‘OK, Max, I’m hooked. So tell me how you came to be sentenced for the wrong crime.’
Max struck a match, lit his hand-rolled cigarette and inhaled deeply before he began. In prison, every action is exaggerated, as no one is in a hurry. I lay on the bunk above and waited patiently.
‘Does the Kennington Set mean anything to you?’ Max began.
‘No,’ I replied, assuming he must be referring to a group of red-coated gentlemen on horseback, glass of port in one hand, whip in the other, surrounded by a pack of hounds with intent to spend their Saturday morning in pursuit of a furry animal with a bushy tail. I was wrong. The Kennington Set, as Max went on to explain, was in fact a chess set.
‘But no ordinary chess set,’ he assured me. I became more interested. The pieces were probably crafted by Lu Ping (1469–1540), a master craftsman of the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). All thirty-two ivory pieces were exquisitely carved and then delicately painted in red and white. The details have been faithfully recorded in several historic documents, though it has never been conclusively established exactly how many sets Lu Ping was responsible for producing in his lifetime.
‘Three complete sets were known to be in existence,’ continued Max as smoke spiralled up from the lower bunk. ‘The first is displayed in the throne room of the People’s Palace in Peking; the second in the Mellon Collection in Washington, and the third at the British Museum. Many collectors scoured the great continent of China in search of the fabled fourth set, and although such efforts always ended in failure, several individual pieces appeared on the market from time to time.’
Max stubbed out the smallest cigarette butt I have ever seen. ‘I was at the time,’ continued Max, ‘carrying out some research into the smaller objects of Kennington Hall in Yorkshire.’
‘How did you manage that?’ I asked.
‘Country Life commissioned Lord Kennington to write a coffee-table book for Christmas, in which he detailed the treasures of Kennington Hall,’ Max said, before rolling a second cigarette. ‘Most considerate of him,’ he added.
‘Among the peer’s ancestors was one James Kennington (1552–1618), a true adventurer, buccaneer, and loyal servant of Queen Elizabeth I. James rescued the first set in 1588, only moments before he sunk the Isabella. On returning to Plymouth, following a seventeen-four victory in the match against the Spanish, Captain Kennington lavished treasure plundered from the sinking ship on his monarch. Her Majesty always showed a great deal of interest in anything solid, especially if she could wear it — gold, silver, pearls or rare gems — and rewarded Captain Kennington with a knighthood. Elizabeth had no use for the chess set, so Sir James was stuck with it. Unlike Sir Francis or Sir Walter, Sir James continued to plunder the high seas. He was so successful that, a decade later, his monarch elevated him to the House of Lords, with the title the first Lord Kennington, for services rendered to the Crown.’ Max paused before adding, ‘The only difference between a pirate and a peer is who you divide the spoils with.’
The second Lord Kennington, like his monarch, showed no interest in chess, so the set was left to gather dust in one of the ninety-two rooms in Kennington Hall. As there were few historical incidents worthy of mention during the uneventful lives of the third, fourth, fifth or sixth Lords Kennington, we can only assume that the remarkable chess set remained in situ, its pieces never moved in anger. The seventh Lord Kennington served as a colonel in the 12th Light Dragoons at the time of Waterloo. The colonel played the occasional game of chess, so the set was dusted down and returned to the Long Gallery.