‘I get to pick the rest of the team,’ Thorne said, standing up. ‘Not you and not the chief superintendent. And the moment me or anybody else starts to think that there’s no body to be found and that he’s just getting off on taking us all for mugs, I’ll have him and his boyfriend banged up again before his feet have touched the ground. Fair enough?’ Brigstocke opened his mouth, but Thorne hadn’t finished. He was already on his way to the door. ‘And I don’t want to hear about how much grief the chief constable’s getting from the Sun or the Daily Mail. I don’t care about MPs, I don’t even care about grieving mothers and I really couldn’t give a toss about that sodding barrel…’

‘Jesus, it’s cold,’ Holland said, now. He slapped his gloved hands together as he trudged around to the front of the car. He hunched his shoulders and nodded towards the prison entrance. ‘I hope somebody’s got the kettle on in there.’

Thorne hummed agreement. He might even have said something about hoping so too, but in truth he could think of little beyond the reason he had risen so early after a sleepless night and watched the sun come up driving a hundred miles to Long Lartin prison. Little beyond the man who had brought him here.

They walked towards the first of many gates, footsteps ringing against the tarmac and breath pluming from mouths and noses.

The man who would be patiently waiting on the other side of that wall.

They reached for warrant cards simultaneously.

The man who put that twist in Thorne’s gut.

‘Here we go then,’ Holland said.

Stuart Nicklin was the bad news.

TWO

There was tea and there were also biscuits in a fancy tin, which were gratefully accepted despite being offered without too much in the way of goodwill. Holland tried smiling, then felt rather stupid and grimaced at Thorne as he turned away. He carried his tea across to the small sofa at one end of the long, thin office, leaving Thorne at the desk to deal with the red tape and the woman dispensing it.

Thorne looked no happier about the situation than she did.

The demeanour and attitude of Long Lartin’s deputy governor could most generously be described as businesslike, but Thorne felt sure that both prisoners and prison officers had a different word for it. On top of the fact that she was not what anyone would call ‘touchy-feely’, it quickly became apparent that Theresa Colquhoun was in no hurry. She had been tasked by the governor with completing the formalities necessary for a prisoner handover. This meant a good many forms to fill in. It meant risk assessment statements to be completed and ‘handover protocol’ guidance notes to be distributed and carefully read through. She had reservations about what had been agreed on this occasion between the Met and Her Majesty’s Prison Service and had told Thorne exactly what she thought while she’d poured the tea. Nonetheless, she was determined to carry out the job with a rigour which, to Thorne’s eye, bordered on compulsion.

‘This business is iffy enough as it is,’ she said. She tapped a manicured fingernail against the photograph of Stuart Nicklin clipped to the top of a file. ‘We don’t want to make a mistake before we’ve even started, do we?’

Colquhoun was somewhere at the fag-end of her fifties. She was tall and angular and had seemingly done her best to avoid anything that might have softened her appearance. Her greying hair was fastened tightly back and her make-up was severe. Only her voice was at odds with the impression she wanted – or thought she ought – to create. There was almost no colour in it, and she spoke so quietly Thorne had twice needed to ask her to repeat herself.

Not that the conversation was exactly sparkling.

The completion of each set of forms – one for each of the prisoners – was celebrated with a short break for chit-chat. Specifically, one inane enquiry after another about the journey Thorne and Holland had made from London that morning. The route, the weight of traffic, the weather conditions at various stages.

Then back to the task in hand.

She said, ‘Even when these prisoners have been handed into your care and are off the grounds of Long Lartin, they will still be prisoners and as such will remain my legal responsibility. I don’t need to tell you I’d rather they were returned here at the end of each day, but as the geography would seem to make that impossible, they will need to be escorted to a designated facility.’

‘You don’t need to tell me, but you did,’ Thorne said.

‘As I said, best to get things clear at the outset.’

‘We’ll look after them.’

Colquhoun had just begun talking about procedures in the event of a prisoner being taken ill, when the message alert sounded on Holland’s phone. She stared at him, like an irritated librarian.

Holland checked his message. Said, ‘Back-up car’s here.’

‘Tell them we shouldn’t be long,’ Thorne said, eyes on the deputy governor.

Though he was hardly making it difficult for her, Colquhoun could sense Thorne’s growing impatience, his desire to get on his way. ‘My officers are busy getting the prisoners prepared,’ she said. She smiled, showing no teeth, and began straightening papers. ‘For obvious reasons, we only informed them that the handover was taking place today at the very last minute.’

‘Right,’ Thorne said.

‘Obviously, it would be lovely if they were all prepped and ready for you in advance, but that would rather compromise security, don’t you think?’

‘Obviously…’

What Thorne had actually been thinking for several weeks now was that security protocols such as this one were little more than a challenge for the likes of Stuart Nicklin. It made sense of course that prisoners should not be given the chance to pass on details of the time they would be spending outside prison to anyone else. But it was not a fool-proof system at the best of times and Nicklin was no ordinary prisoner. Over the years he had spent inside, he had demonstrated an alarming ability to gather information. To foster any number of sources on whom he could call when the moment was right.

The last time Thorne had seen him, five years before, Nicklin had gleefully advised him to shop around for his utilities and to keep an eye on his overdraft. He’d told him that he might want to think about cutting down on takeaways.

‘I think I know you pretty well now,’ he had said.

Getting some low-life to go through a rubbish bin was hardly rocket science, but Nicklin had also shown himself able to procure phone numbers, addresses, personal details; to monitor the movements of anyone he chose to take an interest in.

With all that in mind, it was hard to have too much confidence in the advance security as far as this operation went. There would be plenty of people in the prison administration who had been aware of the details for days already and who would have known exactly when Thorne was turning up to collect Stuart Nicklin. Officers in every force whose jurisdiction they would be passing through had already been informed and issued with descriptions and up-to-date photographs of the prisoners.

There were plenty of… sources.

Thankfully, it only took a few minutes more to complete the paperwork and when it was done, Colquhoun called down and spoke to one of her senior officers. She told Thorne that the prisoners would be brought out to the vehicles shortly, then stood up, walked slowly round the desk and shook his hand. It felt a little odd, as though she were wishing him luck. As though she thought he would need it.

Holland was walking back towards the desk. He thanked Colquhoun for the tea, and for the ‘special biscuits’.

She turned and reached for the tin, proffered it. ‘Take them with you for the car,’ she said.

Holland hesitated for a second or two, as surprised by the unexpected act of generosity as anything else, then took the tin. ‘Cheers.’