Situated on a bleak headland south of that vast tidal inlet called ‘the Wash’, it was far removed from any kind of civilisation, and battered constantly by furious elements. Even on England’s east coast, no place was lonelier, drearier, nor more intimidating in terms of its sheer isolation. Though ultimately this was a good thing, for Gull Rock Prison (aka HM Prison Brancaster) held the very worst of the worst. And this was no exaggeration, even by the standards of ‘Category A’. None of Gull Rock’s inmates was serving less than ten years, and they included in their number some of the most depraved murderers, most violent robbers and most relentless rapists in Britain, not to mention gangsters, terrorists and urban street-hoodlums for whom the word ‘deranged’ could have been invented.
When Detective Superintendent Gemma Piper drove onto its visitor car park that dull morning, her aquamarine Mercedes E-class was the only vehicle there, but this was no surprise. Visits to inmates at Gull Rock were strictly limited.
She climbed out and regarded the distant concrete edifice. It was early September, but this was an exposed location; a stiff breeze gusted in across the North Sea, driving uncountable whitecaps ahead of it, lofting hundreds of raucous seabirds skyward, and ruffling her tangle of ash-blonde hair. She buttoned up her raincoat and adjusted the bundle of plastic-wrapped folders under her arm.
Another vehicle now rumbled off the approach road, and pulled into a parking bay alongside her: a white Toyota GT.
She ignored it, staring at the outline of the prison. In keeping with its ‘special security’ status, it was noticeably lacking in windows. The grey walls of its various residential blocks were faceless and sheer, any connecting passages between them running underground. A towering outer wall, topped with barbed wire, encircled these soulless inner structures, the only gate in it a massive slab of reinforced steel, while outside it lay concentric rings of electrified fencing.
The occupant of the Toyota climbed out. His tall, athletic form was fitted snugly into a tailored Armani suit. A head of close-cropped white curls revealed his advancing years – he was close on fifty – but he had a lean, bronzed visage on which his semi-permanent frown was at once both dangerous and attractive. He was Commander Frank Tasker of Scotland Yard, and he too had a heap of paperwork with him, zipped into plastic folders.
‘I don’t mean to tell you how to do your job, Gemma,’ Tasker said, pulling on his waterproof. ‘But we’ve got to start making headway on this soon.’
Gemma nodded. ‘I understand that, sir. But everything’s on schedule.’
‘I wish I was as sure about that as you. We’ve interviewed him six times now. Is he going to crack, or isn’t he?’
‘Guys like Peter Rochester don’t crack, sir,’ she replied. ‘It’s a case of wearing them down, slowly but surely.’
‘The time factor …’
‘Has been taken into consideration. I promise you, sir … we’re getting there.’
Tasker sniffed. ‘I don’t know who he thinks he’s being loyal to. I mean, they didn’t give a shit about him … why should he give a shit about them?’
‘Probably a military thing,’ she said. ‘Rochester reached the rank of Adjudant-Chef. You don’t manage that in the Foreign Legion if you’re a non-French national … not without really impressing people. Plus they say he commanded total loyalty from his men. And that continued when he was a merc. You don’t carry that off either unless you give a bit back.’
‘You’re saying Rochester’s lot like each other?’
‘Yes, but that’s only one of several differences between them and the run-of-the-mill mobs we usually have to deal with.’
He shrugged. ‘I’m not going to argue with that. You’ve done most of the homework on this case. The original question stands, though … how long?’
‘Couple more sessions. I think we’re almost there.’
‘And you’ve borne in mind what I told you about DS Heckenburg?’
She half-smiled. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘We don’t want him anywhere near this, Gemma.’
‘He isn’t.’
‘He’s a loose cannon at the best of times, but he could really screw this up for us.’
‘It’s alright, sir.’
‘I’m surprised he hasn’t at least been asking questions.’
‘Well … he has.’
Tasker looked distracted by that. ‘And?’
‘I’m his guv’nor. When I tell him it’s off-limits, he accepts it.’
‘Does he know how many times you’ve interviewed Rochester?’
‘He’s been too busy recently. I’ve made sure of it.’
Tasker assessed their surroundings as he pondered this. Continents of storm clouds approached over the sea, drawing palls of misty gloom beneath them. Plumes of colourless sand blew up around the car park’s edges. The hard net fencing droned in the wind. In the midst of it all, the prison stood stark and silent, an eternal rock on this windswept point, nothing beyond it but rolling, breaking waves.
‘Hellhole, that place,’ Tasker said with a shudder. ‘I mean, it’s clean enough … even sterile. But you really feel you’ve reached the end of the line when you’re in there. Particularly that Special Supervision Unit. Talk about a box inside a box.’
He glanced uneasily over his shoulder.
‘Something wrong, sir?’ Gemma asked.
‘Call me paranoid, but I keep expecting Heckenburg to show up.’
‘I’ve told you, Heck’s busy.’
‘How busy?’
‘Up-to-his-eyebrows busy,’ she said. ‘In one of the nastiest cases I’ve seen for quite some time. Don’t worry … we’ve got Mad Mike Silver and whatever’s left of the Nice Guys Club all to ourselves.’
In a strange way, Greg Matthews looked the way his name seemed to imply he should. Detective Sergeant Mark Heckenburg, or ‘Heck’, as his colleagues knew him, couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but there was something forceful and energetic about that name – Greg Matthews. As if this was a guy who didn’t waste time dilly-dallying. There was also something ‘Middle England’ about it, something educated, something well-heeled. And these were definitely the combined impressions Heck had of the man himself, as he watched the video-feed from the interview room at Gillbridge Avenue police station in Sunderland.
Matthews was somewhere in his early thirties, stockily built, with ashen features and wiry, copper-coloured hair. When first arrested he’d been clad in designer ‘urban combat’ gear: a padded green flak-jacket and a grey hoodie, stonewashed jeans and bovver boots, as they’d once been known. All of that had now been taken away from him, of course, as he was clad for custody in clean white paper, though he’d been allowed to retain his round-lensed ‘John Lennon’ spectacles, as apparently he was blind as a mole without them.
None of this had dampened the prisoner’s passion.
Three hours into his interview, he was still as full of his own foul-mouthed righteousness as he had been on first getting his collar felt. ‘It’s not my problem if someone thinks they’ve had it up to here with these neo-Nazi pigs!’ he said in a cultured accent, far removed from the distinctive Mackem normally found in these parts. ‘The only thing that actually doesn’t surprise me about this is that another bunch of Nazi pigs, i.e. you people, are in a mad