“One of my high-ups.” Barry put down his mug of tea and walked to the window. “Take a look down there.”
The office was high at the top of the North Block. Cribb glanced down the shaft formed by adjacent buildings and saw something very like a string of pearls arranged in a box, except that they were moving, rotating slowly clockwise: the cropped heads of sixty convicts at exercise.
“How many have you got in the Steel?”
“Twelve hundred, give or take a few,” said Barry. “That’s three times the number in Holloway, and they’ve got twice the ground. We arrange the exercise in shifts. Mr. Fernandez, the one you mentioned, worked it out. He’s a rare one for organizing. The treadmill’s turning from eight in the morning till nine at night. Crank. Shot drill. Everything’s on the go.”
“Including the warders, I expect,” said Cribb, sensing acrimony.
“Keeps us occupied. Come downstairs and we’ll find him. Likely as not, he’s in one of the yards. He likes to keep an eye on the exercise.”
“Is he disliked in the prison?” Cribb ventured, as they started down a flight of iron stairs.
“He devised the system,” Barry tersely answered. “What do you want with him?”
“I’m interested in his nephew. Oxford don. Has he ever mentioned him?”
“Never a word. He’s too occupied with his own family, I expect. Five sons and eight daughters. They all appear in the prison chapel every Sunday. The two eldest girls are married.” Barry selected a key from the ring chained to his belt and let them through a door to another landing. “They say that’s how he worked out the shift system-spacing out the baths on Saturday night.”
After two more flights of stairs they reached ground level. More doors, more locks, and they were in the exercise yard they had overlooked from the office. The prisoners, unsuggestive of pearls at this level, trudged mindlessly round the perimeter, their boots rasping on the stone flags. A stench of sweat hung in the air. Any thoughts Cribb might have entertained of a career in the prison service were dispersed in that yard. “It’s known as the sorry-go-round,” Barry told him. “I’m told Mr. Fernandez is in the next block.”
He led Cribb up more stairs and along a catwalk between lines of cell doors, descending again to enter a yard no different on the ground from the other, with its own shuffling circle of misery watched by yawning warders. But here an activity was taking place in a gallery above the heads of the footsloggers. In twelve narrow stalls convicts were at the treadmill, forcing their feet to keep pace with steps that sank endlessly away as an unseen wheel turned, its revolutions fixed at a rate that took no account of aching calves and skinned ankles.
“He’s over there,” said Barry. “You’d better introduce yourself.”
He was conspicuous by being in a plain suit, but otherwise Fernandez Senior was a disappointment in appearance, smaller and more mild-looking than Cribb had expected of a man who had fathered thirteen children and reorganized the largest prison in London. He had a winged collar and a spotted tie. He was hairless except for a thin, reddish moustache.
Cribb lifted his bowler. “Mr. Fernandez? The name’s Cribb, sir. Detective Sergeant. Scotland Yard. Might I have a word?”
“You are obstructing my view of the clock,” said Fernandez in a pained voice.
Cribb sidestepped. “I shan’t take up much time, sir.”
“I hope you don’t, or twelve prisoners will tread a forty-minute shift, instead of twenty, and they won’t thank you for that. I am supervising an innovation in the exercise. The present group is due to be replaced at twenty minutes to the hour, but the order has to come from me. You have two and a half minutes of my time, Sergeant. What is it you require-an interview with a prisoner?”
“With you, sir. It concerns your nephew, John Fernandez.” Cribb could not have been prepared for the reaction this provoked. “Does it indeed? What did you say your name was?”
“Cribb, sir.”
“The Metropolitan Commissioner shall hear of this, Cribb. Reasonable inquiries are one thing, but this amounts to persecution, and I won’t tolerate it. I was personally assured by Inspector Abberline that I should not be subjected to more questions about my nephew. It was conclusively established that he is unconnected with the matters under investigation. I will not have my family hounded by policemen. Have you spoken to Inspector Abberline?”
“No, sir, but-”
“I suggest you do. I have nothing more to say on the matter.” He turned his back on Cribb and pushed through the line of convicts to the center of the yard. “Odds!” he piped in a voice just strident enough to be heard above the mechanism of the treadmill. “On your feet! Sharp now, unless you want a turn on the crank.”
Twelve convicts stood up in the stalls, which Cribb now saw were numbered from one to twenty-four. The odd numbers were about to start their shift. “One, two, three, change!” called Fernandez.
The evens backed away from the mechanism and leaned on the sides of the stalls or crumpled to the floor. The odds took up the tread.
Cribb had eased his way through the chain and was speaking to the Deputy Governor at a rate that brooked no interference. “Someone nearly murdered your nephew, Mr. Fernandez. It happened yesterday morning in Oxford. A man was drowned. We think the murderers mistook him for John Fernandez. That’s why I’m here.”
“Kindly modulate your voice,” said Fernandez. “I would rather that the whole of Coldbath Fields did not hear about the misfortunes of my family. Somebody tried to murder him? Whatever for?”
“I hoped you might be able to tell me, sir. I’ve reason to believe that somebody travelled from London to Oxford with the intention of drowning him.”
“Why question me about it?” said Fernandez. “Naturally it causes me concern, but I know nothing about it.”
“Your nephew raised the possibility that released prisoners might seek revenge on you by attacking your family, sir.”
“Revenge?” said Fernandez, screwing his face into an expression of horror. “What an ill-informed idea! These men bear no malice towards me. They have their term to serve and I am here to see that it is served as the law dictates. They have much to thank me for, if you want to know. I inaugurated many of the procedures which contribute to the general efficiency of this house of correction and, in consequence, the well-being of its inmates. The fact that you see me supervising treadmill exercise does not mean that I am not concerned with the things of the spirit, Sergeant. The improving texts displayed throughout these buildings are here on my initiative.” In case it had escaped Cribb’s notice, he extended his hand towards a card above the treadmill bearing the legend Be Sure Your Sin Will Find You Out (Numbers, Ch. 32, v. 23). “As a matter of fact, they were chosen by my own dear wife and daughters. No, Sergeant, I have no fear of former prisoners, nor need my nephew be alarmed.”
“I’ll try to reassure him, sir,” said Cribb. “Perhaps he hasn’t had the advantage of visiting the prison.”
“This is a house of correction. A man of your vocation ought to know that prisons are for long-term convicts. No, my nephew has never been here. I have not set eyes on him for a year. The last occasion was his father’s funeral. That is why it so infuriates me that I am plagued with policemen asking questions about him. The man has a slight imperfection of character, I concede-‘the little rift within the lute,’ as Tennyson puts it-but to my knowledge it has never been more than that. They understand him at Oxford. I’m sorry, if what you say is true, that somebody tried to murder him. These are violent times, I am afraid. It could happen to any of us. The Queen herself, God bless her, has survived a number of attempts upon her life. Savage times. Now, if you will excuse me, I think I see a man shirking up there. An hour on the crank will do him good.”
CHAPTER 32