Free Slipknot by Priscilla Masters

seemed fine. They say that Callum was sleeping, Smith too. They left and locked up. The next thing they knew it was six-thirty in the morning and they found him slumped on the floor, a ligature round his neck, which had been looped round the bed. He was quite cold. The assumption was that he’d been faking his sleep and had hanged himself soon after the second visit of the officers.’
    ‘Why? I don’t understand what you’re saying. Are you suggesting that Smith had a hand in his death?’
    ‘No – but, he was the wrong cell mate. Tyrone Smith is fifteen years old. He’s six feet tall. Half Afro-Caribbean and half Liverpudlian. His mother was a prostitute. His father is a complete unknown. Almost certainly one of the drug dealers she consorted with. I tell you, Martha, that guy has lived in places we wouldn’t even visit in our nastiest nightmares. He was in for a long stretch for a brutal, armed burglary. He blinded the occupant of the house by sticking a knife throughhis eye. The guy was lucky to live but he lost his eye and will never sleep easy again. It was a terrible crime. Tyrone Smith always worked alone. He was a loner, a dangerous loner with no friends. Barred from school at six years old, in and out of institutions. The man was seventy-six years old, elderly and harmless. Smith could simply have robbed him and left. There was no need for that level of violence. He simply enjoyed it. Tyrone Smith is one of those characters born to offend.’
    Martha was picking up on the reason behind this interview. ‘And Hughes – who was arguably defending himself against another such type – was locked in a cell for eight and a half hours with this guy?’
    Randall nodded.
    ‘You can almost understand his thought processes,’ Martha said. ‘He would have got sent down for how long?’
    ‘He’d have got a couple of years. The defence would have gathered up a couple of character witnesses. They may even have hit lucky with some corroboration of the bullying story but with the evidence of the sharpened knife deliberately placed in his schoolbag you can’t duck out of the premeditation charge. He would definitely have got a custodial sentence and he knew it. Look at it this way, Martha,’ Alex appealed. ‘We can’t have youths armed like that roaming the streets. Quite apart from the issue of public safety there is the issue of sending out messages to other would-be offenders. Give a good enough reason and you get away with murder. We
have
to protect the public. It’s what we’re here for. Callum Hughes
had
to be locked away. Anything else would have made a mockery of our justice system.’
    ‘So what did he use?’
    Alex Randall looked uncomfortable. ‘Tyrone Smith, being in for a long stretch, was allowed certain privileges.’
    Martha raised her eyebrows.
    ‘He had a computer. Not linked to the Internet. Just to play games on. While Tyrone Smith was
apparently
sleeping the sleep of the innocent Callum unloosed a length of computer cable, looped it around the bed end and hanged himself. When the warders unlocked the door in the morning Callum was well – dead and Smith was still asleep. Delyth Fontaine said Hughes was quite cold when she attended at a quarter to seven and Mark agreed that he’d been dead for a good few hours. Resuscitation was out of the question.’
    ‘Wasn’t he on an hourly watch?’
    Alex Randall shook his head.
    ‘Did no one go in his cell to check later?’
    Again Alex looked uneasy. ‘We’ve already interviewed the two warders at some length. They say they didn’t go in after midnight. They looked in through the spyhole but all seemed quiet and they thought it better not to disturb him.’
    ‘So what’s bothering you, Alex?’
    ‘Your antennae,’ he said, ‘awesome.’
    She waited.
    ‘It’s nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing really.’
    ‘Except?’
    ‘It really is nothing. It’s just
opportune
. There’s a victim. And Callum Hughes
was
a victim. He had it written