Colin Dexter - Morse’s Greatest Mystery and other stories

There is a chuckle at the Winchester end of the line before the voice continues, in a more serious vein, to explain these strange rejoinders.

Daniel Smithson had joined the army at the age of sixteen, as a boy-soldier; become a mercenary in Africa at the age of twenty-two; served in the SAS for six years after that; and then... and then served somewhere else — in prison, for virtually the whole of the past twelve years, his offences ranging from petty theft to hefty larceny. And (and this was the real point) the magistrates and the judges and the prison authorities were all becoming increasingly undecided about how to deal with the fellow. What he’d do was this. He’d keep his nose immaculately clean, cause no trouble to anybody, and end up by getting a “trusty” job. Then, well, he’d bugger off a day or two before he was due for release. Huh! Once outside, he’d pinch as much as his pockets could accommodate, nick a car, live it up for a few days; then (inevitably) get rearrested, and return to his old haunts and his old mates, with the Prison Governor treating him like the Prodigal Son. The simple truth was that Smithson just couldn’t settle down outside the prison walls: he needed — enjoyed! — the stable routine of a familiar nick. Though not a big fellow, he was a strong and wiry one, and his SAS history had reached the prison well ahead of him. No one buggered about (if that was the right word) with Mr. Danny Smithson.

“Oh no, Sergeant. No one.”

One thing has been troubling Russell during the recital of the Winchester prisoner’s CV: the fact that his man hardly looks the part of some ex-SAS paratrooper, or whatever; and Russell puts his thoughts into words.

“You sure we’ve got the right fellow — the fellow you’re talking about?”

“Put him on the line, if you like. I’ll soon tell you.”

“No, I don’t think I can allow that.”

“Easy enough to tell, anyway. He’s got some letters tattooed on the back of one of his hands — left hand, I think it is. They mentioned it in the papers. Hold on! Shan’t be a tick.”

In fact four minutes drag by before the Prison Officer reads from a folder; and Russell listens carefully.

“I’ll go and check straightaway. Shan’t be a tick.”

Danny is not asleep. He sits on the side of the bed, staring at the floor — and looking up with no apparent interest as Russell unlocks the door.

“Just lift up your hands, will you, Danny Boy.”

The prisoner lifts up his hands as if, once again, he is surrendering to the foe.

“Good. Now turn your hands round, please.”

So Danny turns his hands round; and on the lower joints of the fingers on his left hand Russell reads the letters I–L-Y-K.

This time it is the Winchester end which has waited through four long minutes.

“Well?”

“Yep — it’s him, all right. When’ll you be coming to fetch him?”

“Not before breakfast, I’ll tell you that! We’ll let you know.”

“OK.”

“By the way, what exactly are you holding him on?”

“Theft of vehicle; theft of goods in transit; driving without a licence; driving without—”

“Same old stuff.”

“Same old sentence, like as not.”

“Unless some judge suddenly decides to show a bit o’ sense and refuses to lock the silly sod away again.”

Russell is not prepared to enter any penological discussion, and prepares to sign off.

“Thanks anyway. Will you be coming yourself?”

“Me? God, no. I’ll be seeing him soon enough.”

“And no handcuffs, you say.”

“That’s it. No need. Let him have a stroll round Bicester after breakfast by all means — no problem. No cuffs, though. He’s one of those who can’t stand any physical contact with people. Know what I mean?”

“Doesn’t sound as if he’ll give us any trouble, anyway.”

“I wouldn’t go quite so far as that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing really. Just don’t be surprised if he — well, if he strings you along a bit. Know what I mean? He’s a bit of a joker is our Danny. Always was. Probably ask you for a bottle of champers for breakfast — say it’s doctor’s orders.”

“We do a nice little line in tea-bags down here in Bicester.”

“Cheers then.”

“Cheers.”

PC Watson has finished his report, and now looks in for the last time at his prisoner.

“Anything you want?”

Danny shakes his head. “Unless you’d like to gimme me Biro back.”

Returning to the Custody Suite, Watson passes on the request; and Sergeant Russell looks down, first at the cash envelope, then at the property bag — from the latter finally taking out the cheap blue pen with which Danny had written on the tacho-disc.

“No harm, I suppose. He probably wants to write a poem on the loo-paper.”

At 8:20 A.M. the minibus from Winchester arrived in the front yard of Bicester Police Station, where one of the two prison personnel immediately alighted and reported to the Information Desk.

Everything was ready.

Driven now into the yard behind the main building (“Police Vehicles Only”), the minibus was backed up alongside the wall, its rear window coming to a halt only a few feet from the single external door of the Custody Suite.

The prisoner had not after all ordered champers for breakfast; instead he had done splendid justice to the sausages and beans brought to him an hour earlier. Yet he did make one request when the cell door was again unlocked for his departure, just after 8:30 A.M. Two spare blankets were folded beside the bed, and he’d asked if he could have one to put round him on the journey. He had no overcoat; it was a cold morning.

Not very much to ask at all really, was it?

It had all happened so very suddenly that no one afterwards had any particularly clear picture of the events. But it went something like this...

As he was walking through the exit door from the Custody Suite, the blanket which the prisoner was holding about his head and shoulders was dramatically whisked away and equally dramatically whipped over the head and shoulders of the tall, bearded officer who was about to unlock the near-side door of the minibus. Then, dodging lightly past him, the prisoner sprinted the thirty or so yards to the tall beech-hedge which enclosed the rear yard. The hedge was strengthened by a six-foot meshed-wire fence — the fence, in turn, supported every six or seven yards by concrete posts. These posts were some five feet in height, finishing a foot or so below the top of the hedge. One of the posts — and only one — was itself strengthened by a concrete strut which formed an angle of 45 degrees to the ground and which joined the post roughly halfway up, looking rather like a lambda in the Greek alphabet.

At full speed the prisoner leapt at this structure, his left foot landing firm on the top of the strut, his right foot equally firm on the top of the post; and then, propelled by such twin leverage, he had cleared the beech-hedge by several inches, landing neatly on the grass of a school playing-field beyond. Someone later said it was a bit like watching a Russian gymnast clearing a vaulting-horse at the Olympics.

The prisoner was gone.

Neither of the heavy Winchester men could hope to match such a nimble-footed feat of levitation; and it was ten minutes before a wailing police car, forced to take the long way round the front of the station, was crisscrossing the maze of streets in the King’s End estate behind, where (it was believed) the prisoner was last sighted.

But not sighted again.

The loo-paper in the cells at Bicester may by no means be described as “Savoy Soft,” stiffly reluctant as it is to accommodate itself to the contours of the average human backside. Yet (as Sergeant Russell had earlier intimated) it makes unexpectedly fine writing-paper; and it was two sheets of this paper which one of the cleaners found just before lunchtime that same day — between the folds of the remaining blanket in the cell which had housed the escaped prisoner.