All good cops carry a flashlight with a five-hundred-foot beam. By some chance I happened to have one with me. I didn't find the bulb, but I did discover a white package tucked in the recess where the window-washer bottle was situated. It weighed about half a pound and was neatly done-up with polythene and Sellotape. It could have been special flour for Mrs. Watt's Yorkshire puddings, or it could have been something else.
Watching in the rear-view mirror for the blue light to come on was like waiting for the sun to rise: dazzling and inevitable. I pulled over, they got out. It was a textbook exercise in courtesy and Proper Police Procedure. Nobody had been slipping double tequilas into my orange juice, and vitamin C is non-intoxicating, so I passed the breath test as easily as a Charolais heifer passes wind.
"Do you mind if we look in your boot, sir?"
"Yes."
"It'll be easier all round if you co-operate, sir."
"One of you can look; I want the other to stand well back."
The lock operated more easily this time. He flashed his light round inside, then asked to look in the car. I watched him like a weasel watches a rabbit, or was it like a rabbit watches a weasel?
"Everything seems to be in order, sir. You will get that light fixed, won't you? Which station would you like to present your documents at?"
"St. Pancras. You're on the wrong side of the hill, Sergeant. Who sent you over here?" It was my turn to ask questions.
"We had a tip-off, sir. Can't say any more than that."
"Stop calling me sir. An anonymous tip-off?"
"Er… I understand it was."
"Then make sure it was logged, 'cos I'll be checking."
The gate to Bentley Prison could have been the prototype for the Great Gate at Kiev. The whole edifice was constructed during Queen Victoria's reign, in a burst of enlightenment and compassion, and an earnest desire to be constructive in the treatment of the criminal classes. Now it was overcrowded, understaffed, and held regular degree ceremonies for those who passed through its courses in advanced criminality. They don't open the Great Gate to let visitors in there's a normal-sized, but metal, door just to the side of it.
I'd arranged my visit to see Lee Ziolkowski the previous afternoon. The visiting room is like a large canteen, with formica tables and tubular chairs; none of this talking through a screen that you see in the films. Down the side there are small cubicles for special visitors, such as solicitors or policemen. I was told which cubicle to use, and someone went to fetch Lee. I bought a couple of teas and chocolate biscuits from the lady at the WRVS counter and waited. It was normal visiting hours, and the place was noisy with young women with toddlers, come to see daddy doing his bird. At the table just outside my cubicle a tattooed hero was trying to swallow his leather-clad visitor. She wore a mini-skirt and thigh boots, and the gap between displayed enough fishnet to equip a small trawler. Just the thing to raise the morale when you measure the passing of time in Christmas dinners.
Lee appeared a lot healthier than when I last saw him. He'd lost his pallor and gained a pound or two in weight. He still looked at me nervously, though.
"Hello, Lee. Remember me, Charlie Priest? I interviewed you in Heckley nick. I got you one with milk and two sugars; hope that's how you like it." It's how they always like it.
He sat down opposite me. "Yeah, thanks," he said.
"I have to tell you, Lee, that you've no need to talk to me if you don't want to. You can get up and leave right now, or you can insist on your solicitor being present. I hope you won't, though, because I think you should hear what I have to say."
Legally he was a man, but inside he was just a scared little boy, struggling to survive in a world he couldn't comprehend.
He would put up a tough show for my benefit, but was out of his depth, and now had to either grab the lifeline or go under, maybe for ever. He didn't say anything, just stayed where he was and unwrapped his biscuit.
"You and your pals have been used, Lee," I told him, 'by evil people who don't care if you live or die. They feed you shit drugs and shit friendship, but all they want is for you to get hooked. Then they start bleeding you. You don't belong in here, this place is a dustbin, it's full of garbage. A young kid died over the weekend from a heroin overdose. The stuff he was using was too strong, he was just guessing at the dose. He's the latest in a long line. It could have been you if you hadn't been in here. I know it's not the done thing, Lee, but you could help me stamp it out. You could save lives, including your own. I want you to tell me who you got your works from." Longest speech I ever made, and he wasn't impressed.
"You mean grass? You want me to grass?"
Sometimes I think they absorb the prison culture with the food. "The rubbish in here call it gras sing Lee, I call it curing a disease. A few years ago there was a disease called smallpox; killed millions.
Then they found a cure for it and thought they'd stamped it out. A couple of years later somebody in Africa said: "Hey! There's a feller in our village still got it." So the doctors moved in and cured him.
Now he can't give it to anyone else. The man who spoke out wasn't gras sing he did a public service. You could do the same."
"They'd kill me." He looked scared.
"No they wouldn't," I assured him, without conviction. "They wouldn't know where the information came from. Besides, I thought the younger generation wanted some excitement in their lives.
They've wanted to kill me for years, I can live with it."
He could have stood up and walked out. An old lag would have done, but he still had a residue of polite behaviour in him, and I hadn't said he could go.
"What's the grub like?" I asked.
He almost smiled; either with relief at the change of subject or at the thought of the next culinary extravaganza. "Rubbish," he answered.
I small-talked with him for twenty minutes, asking him about how he was finding it inside, his family, how he'd done at school, anything I could think of. He opened up a little about playing football, but most of the time it was a questions-and-answers session. It usually is with teenagers. After a while I took a long look at my watch.
"Well, I'll have to go, Lee. It's been nice talking to you. I have to ask you once again, though, do you want to become a crime-fighter, or would you rather play all your football against a twenty-foot wall?"
He stared at me across the table with something like contempt in his gaze. "You don't understand, do you?" he declared.
"Understand what?" I replied, quizzically.
"Drugs," he answered. "Drugs are all right. As soon as I get out I'll start taking them again. What else is there?"
"I'm sorry you feel that way, Lee. Drugs are a one-way ride to an early grave or the mental hospital, and it's all downhill."
I stood up to leave, but as I reached the door of our little cubicle I turned back to him. "Oh, I forgot to give you these; you have to have a copy." I reached into my inside pocket for the two sheets of foolscap and laid them on the table in front of him.
He gazed at them for a few seconds, then up at me. "What are they?" he demanded.
"Your new deps," I told him.
"I've got my deps."
"You're not listening, Lee. I said your new deps."
He looked bewildered, so I spelled it out for him: "We've got you down as a nonce now, Lee, with a special liking for small boys. Should make a good-looking lad like you very popular in here. I'll organise you some new room-mates on my way out."
The newly acquired colour drained from his face and he swayed in his chair. I re-took my seat opposite him.
"You couldn't do it," he said defiantly.
I pointed at the papers. "Read 'em. Do you want to risk it?" I placed my ball-pen across the sheets in front of him. "All I'm asking you to do, Lee," I said softly, 'is turn the sheet over and write a name on the back. I guarantee that nobody will ever know where it came from." A white-knuckled fist moved a couple of inches towards the pen, hesitated, and then withdrew. His eyes were glistening with tears. He sniffed and shook his head. "No. I can't," he mumbled.