Reginald Hill: Death

All we need, it seems to me, is total openness, a return to that childlike honesty we all possess before the shades of the prison house begin to close, and perhaps then I can persuade you that during my time in Yorkshire's answer to the Bastille, Chapel Syke Prison, I never once fantasized about taking revenge on my dear old friends, Mr Dalziel and Mr Pascoe. Revenge I have studied, certainly, but only in literature under the tutelage of my wise mentor and beloved friend, Sam Johnson.

As you know, he's dead now, Sam, and so, God damn his soul, is the man who killed him. Unless of course you pay any heed to Charley Penn. Doubting Charley! Who trusts nobody and believes nothing.

But even Charley can't deny that Sam's dead. He's dead.

When thou know'st this, thou know'st how dry a cinder this world is.

I miss him every day, and all the more because his death has contributed so much to the dramatic upturn in my life. Strange, isn't it, how tragedy can be the progenitor of triumph? In this case, two tragedies. If that poor student of Sam's hadn't overdosed in Sheffield last summer, Sam would never have moved to Mid-Yorkshire. And if Sam hadn't moved to Mid-Yorkshire, then he wouldn't have become one of the monstrous Wordman's victims. And if that hadn't happened, I would not be basking in the glow of present luxury and promised success here in God's (which, I gather, is how the illuminati refer to St Godric's!)

But back to you and your fat friend.

I'm not saying that I felt any deep affection for the pair of you or gratitude for what you'd done to me. If I thought of you at all it was in conventional terms, good cop, bad cop; the knee in the balls, the shoulder to cry on, both of you monsters, of course, but the kind that no stable society can do without, for you are the beasts that guard our gates and let us sleep safe in our beds.

Except when we're in prison. Then you cannot protect us.

Mr Dalziel, the ball-crushing knee, would probably say that we have foregone your protection.

But not you, dear Mr Pascoe, the damp shoulder. What I've heard and seen of you over the years since our first encounter makes me think you are more than just a role-player.

I'd guess you've got doubts about the penal system as it stands. In fact I suspect you've got doubts about many aspects of this creaky old society of ours, but of course being a career policeman makes it difficult for you to speak out. Doesn't stop your good lady, though, dear Mrs Pascoe, Ms Soper as she was in those long lost days when I was a young and fancy-free student at Holm Coultram College. How delighted I was to hear that you'd got married! News like that brings a little warmth and colour seeping through even the damp grey walls of Chapel Syke. Some unions seem to be made in heaven, don't they? Like Marilyn and Arthur; Woody and Mia; Chas and Di…

All right, can't win 'em all, can we? But at the time each of those marriages had that things-are-looking-up feel-good quality and, in terms of survival, yours looks like it could be the exception that proves the rule. Well done!

But, as I was saying, within those walls not even the nice worrying cops like you can do much to protect the rights of young and vulnerable cons like me.

So even if I'd wanted to plan revenge, I wouldn't have had time to do it.

I was too busy looking for a route to survival.

I needed help, of course, for one thing I quickly worked out.

You can't survive alone in prison.

As you well know, I'm not defenceless. My tongue is my chief weapon, and given room to wield it in, I reckon I can nimble my way out of most predicaments.

But if one nasty con is twisting your arms up your back while another's sticking his cock in your mouth, wagging your tongue tends to be counter-productive.

This was the likely fate a guy I got banged up with on remand took some pleasure in mapping out for me if I got sent down to the Syke. Good-looking, blond, blue-eyed boy with a nice slim figure would be made very welcome there, he assured me, adding with a bitter laugh that he used to be a good-looking blond blue-eyed boy himself.

Looking at his scarred, hollow-cheeked, broken-nosed, ochre-toothed face, I found it hard to believe, but something in his voice carried conviction. Something in his judge's too, and next time we met was when we arrived at Chapel Syke together.

He was an old hand at this and though I soon sussed out that he was far too far down the pecking order to have any value as a protector, I squeezed every last detail I could get out of him about how the place worked as we went about our new-boy task of cleaning the bogs.

The main man was a ten-year con called Polchard, first name Matthew, known to his intimates as Mate, though not because of any innate amiability. He wasn't much to look at, being scrawny, bald, and so white faced it was like seeing the skull beneath the skin. But his standing was confirmed by the fact that during 'association' he always had a table to himself in the crowded 'parlour' which is what they called the association room. There he sat, scowling down at a chessboard (Mate: gerrit?) and studying a little book in which he occasionally made notes before moving a piece. From time to time someone would bring him a mug of tea. If anyone wanted to talk to him, they stood patiently by, a couple of feet from the table, till he deigned to notice them. And on rare occasions if what they said was of particular interest, they'd be invited to pull up a chair and sit down.

Polchard himself didn't do sex, my 'friend' informed me, but his lieutenants were always on the lookout for new talent and if he gave them the go-ahead, I might as well touch my toes and think of England.

But in the short term, he went on to say, I was most at risk from a freelancer like Brillo Bright. You may have encountered him and his twin brother, Dendo. God knows where their names came from, though I have heard it suggested that Brillo got his after spending some time in a padded cell (Brillo Pad, OK?) At some point Brillo had decided that having a spread eagle tattooed across his bald pate and beetling brow with its talons wrapped around his eye sockets was a good way of improving his facial beauty. He might have been right. What it certainly must have improved was the odds on his being recognized whenever he pursued his chosen profession of armed robbery, which possibly explained why he'd spent half of his thirty-odd years in jail. Brother Dendo was by comparison an intellectual, but only by comparison, being an unpredictably vicious thug. The Brights were the only cons to have an existence independent of Polchard. On the surface they were all chums together, but in fact they were far too unstable for Polchard to risk the hassle of a confrontation. So they existed like the Isle of Man, offshore, closely related to the mainland, but in many ways a law unto themselves.

And helping themselves to a tasty newcomer would be a way for Brillo and Dendo to affirm their independence without risking any real provocation of the main man.

To survive I had to find a way of getting myself under Polchard's protection which didn't involve getting under one of his boys. Not that I've got any serious objection to a close same sex relationship, but I knew from anecdote and observation that letting yourself become a centre-fold spread in prison means you're pinned down at the bottom of the heap just as surely as if you'd got a staple through your belly button.

First off, I had to show I wasn't to be messed with. So I laid my plans.

A couple of days later I waited till I saw Dendo and Brillo go into the shower room, and I followed them.

Brillo looked at me like a fox who's just seen a chicken come strolling into his earth.

I hung my towel up and stepped under the shower, plastic shampoo bottle in hand.