Dark Side of the Street - Simon Vaughn 01 (v5) by Jack Higgins Read Free Book Online

the room quickly and stood on the rubber mat that was positioned exactly three feet away from the governor's desk.
    "83278 Drummond, sir," Paul Chavasse said and waited at attention.
    The light from the desk threw his face into relief. It had fined down in the past three months and the hair, close-cropped to the skull, gave him a strangely medieval appearance. He looked a thoroughly dangerous man and the governor frowned down at his records in some perplexity. This was not what he had expected--not at all what he had expected.
    But then, the governor's paradox was that he knew nothing of prison life at all--what he saw each day was only the surface of a pond which Chavasse, in three short months, had plumbed to its depths in undergoing what was known in the legal profession as the due process of the law.
    In the three months he had made seven separate court appearances and had already experienced the life of three different gaols. He had spent a month on remand in a place so primitive that the only sanitary arrangements in the cell consisted of an enamel pot. Each morning, he had formed one of the queue of men who shuffled along the landing to empty the nights slops into the single lavatory bowl at the end.
    Prison Officers were now screws, men who like the rest of the humanity were good, bad and indifferent in about the usual proportions. There had been some who had treated him with decency and humanity, others who punctuated each command with the end of a staff jabbed painfully into the kidneys.
    He had learned that there was little romance in crime--that most of his fellow prisoners were persistent offenders who could have made a better living if they had spent their lives in drawing the unemployment benefit. He had learned that murderers and rapists looked just like anyone else and that often the most masculine prisoners in appearance were sexual deviants.
    Most important of all, like any jungle animal intent only on survival he had quickly acquired the customs and habits of his new surroundings so that he might fade into the background with the rest. And he had survived. He would never be quite the same man again, but he had survived.
    "Six years." The governor looked up from the record card. "That means four if you keep out of trouble and earn full remission."
    "Yes, sir."
    The governor leaned back in his chair. "It's really quite distressing to see a man like you end up in this sort of a mess but I think we can help you. But you've got to help yourself as well, you know. Are you willing to try?"
    Chavasse resisted a strong temptation to lean across the desk and smash his fist into the centre of that florid well-fed face and wondered whether the governor could possibly be putting on an act. On the other hand that was hardly likely--which must mean that he had accepted the introduction of an undercover agent into his establishment with the greatest reluctance.
    "Anyway, you can best help yourself by helping me," the governor said. "I'm going to put you in with a man called Harry Youngblood. He's a longterm prisoner who suffered a stroke some time ago. Now the odds are that he might have another and it could be at night. If that happens I want you to ring for the Duty Officer at once. Speed is vital in these cases so I'm told. Do you understand?"
    "Perfectly, sir."
    "Youngblood works in the machine shop, doesn't he, Mr. Atkinson?"
    "That's right, sir. Car number plates."
    "Fine." The governor looked up at Chavasse again. "We'll put you in there for training and see how you like it. I'll follow your progress with interest."
    He got to his feet as a sign that the interview was over and for the briefest of moments there was something in his eyes. It was as if he wanted to say something more, but couldn't think of the right words. In the end he nodded brusquely to the Principal Officer who led Chavasse out into the corridor.
    The other gaols Chavasse had been in had been constructed during the reform era in the middle of the