Cat O'Nine Tales and Other Stories - Jeffrey Archer [72]
No one can be sure when Pete got back that night, but he reported into the office as usual at seven the next morning. Mr. Chambers ticked off his name. When Pete glanced down at the screws clipboard, all four of his roll-call columns—nine, one, four and seven—had a tick in every box. Pete had breakfast in the canteen before reporting to the stores for work.
“So he got away with it?”
“Not quite,” said Mick. “Later that morning the cops turn up in numbers and begin crawling all over the place, but they’re only looking for one man. They end up in the stores, arrest Pete and haul him off to Woodbridge nick for questioning. They interrogate him for hours about the deaths of Brian Powell and Karen Slater, both found strangled in their bed. Rumor has it that they were having it off at the time. Pete stuck to the same line: ‘Can’t have been me, guv. I was banged up in prison at the time. You only have to ask Mr. Chambers and Mr. Davis, the officers who were on duty that night.’ The copper in charge of the case visited the enhancement block and checked the roll-call sheet. Brian and the tart were strangled some time between three and five, according to the police doctor, so if Chambers saw Pete asleep in bed at four, he couldn’t have been in Woodbridge at the same time, could he? Logic, isn’t it?
“An independent inquiry was set up by the Home Office. Chambers and Davis both confirmed that they’d checked every prisoner at one o’clock and then again at four, and on both occasions Pete had been asleep in his room. Several of the other cons were only too happy to appear in front of the inquiry and confirm they’d been woken by the flashlight, when Chambers and Davis did their rounds. This only strengthened Pete’s defense. So the inquiry concluded that Pete must have been in his bed at one o’clock and four o’clock on the night in question, so he couldn’t have committed the murders.”
“So he got away with it,” I repeated.
“Depends on how you describe got away with it,” said Mick, “because although the police never charged Pete, the copper in charge of the case later made a statement saying that they’d closed their inquiries, as there was no one else they wanted to interview—hint, hint. That wasn’t what you call a good career move for Chambers and Davis, so they set about stitching Pete up.”
“But Pete only had six weeks to serve before he was due to be released,” I reminded Mick, “and he was always as good as gold.”
“True, but another screw, a mate of Davis’s, reported Pete for stealing a pair of jeans from the stores just a few days before he was due for release. Pete was carted off to segregation and the governor had him transported back to Lincoln nick even before they’d served up tea that night, with another three months added to his sentence.”
“So he ended up having to serve another three months?”
“That was six years ago,” said Mick. “And Pete’s still banged up in Lincoln.”
“So how do they manage that?”
“The screws just come up with a new charge every few weeks, so that whenever Pete comes up on report the governor adds another three months to his sentence. My bet is Pete’s stuck in Lincoln for the rest of his life. What a liberty.”
“But how do they get away with it?” I asked.
“Haven’t you been listening to anything I’ve been saying, Jeff?
If two screws say that’s what happened,