Day One
January 28, 1977
Friday
The Offensive
Station Sergeant Carter came into the CID office, nodded to Detective Constable Fowles, and handed a file to the Detective Sergeant.
Carter: “Bad news.”
DS: “Don’t tell me.”
Carter: “You’ve been arrested.”
DS picks up the file and opens it. “You’re taking the piss.” He automatically pulls a cigarette from the packet on the desk and sticks it in his mouth.
Carter: “Try not to interview yourself, Detective.”
Fowles keeps his head down over his paperwork. But as soon as Carter clears off, he immediately looks up.
“What?” DS takes the cigarette out of his mouth. “Yes, Smith—the detainee. Jeremy sodding Smith. And it’s not funny at all.”
“I’m not laughing, Detective…” Fowles pretends to stumble over the surname. “Interview conducted by Detective Sergeant Jeremy Smith. Interviewee: Jeremy Smith. A nightmare for the Paper Shop. Every bloody form will need clarifying.”
Only now does DS Smith light up a cigarette. “Indecent assault. The victim is his own sister. And she’s five. Still think it’s funny, Fowles?”
There is no answer to give him.
“The scum is seventeen.” DS Smith slowly closes the file.
“All the better, Skipper. That means we’ll crack him in a couple of hours and go for a pint.”
Fowles is right. Still, it’s a lousy case. The evidence is circumstantial. One way or another, he’d get him talking.
DS Smith opens the prisoner’s property bag: some loose change and a Dunhill sodding Rollagas. Unless it’s a snide, of course. DS weighs the lighter in his hand and flicks it open. That crisp metallic click happens—By Royal Appointment. It’s no cheap fake—a proper Rollagas with a thick gold plating. “Fucking hell.” DS Smith snaps the lighter shut. “How long are we letting him stew for?”
DC Fowles: “Fifteen minutes.”
DS Smith grunts and takes a drag.
Half an hour later, he picks up his cigarettes, the file, and the prisoner’s property bag from the desk. “Let’s go.”
The Sweat Box is dirty, dank, and poorly lit. The suspect sits with his back to the door, just as he was placed there. He is hunched over, elbows resting on the table, and doesn’t jump up when the detectives come in.
DS Smith walks around the table.
The detainee takes his elbows from its surface.
No.
For Christ’s sake.
Anything but that.
DS Smith drops into the chair opposite the detainee, tossing a file and the prisoner’s property bag onto the middle of the table.
Fowles pointedly rolls his eyes, sits down to the side, and prepares to take notes.
“Well, what have we got here? A skinny little nancy,” DS Smith pronounces it like a medical diagnosis. He needs to size up the suspect and find an opening. He expects tears. This one is bound to start sobbing. Give him an hour.
The suspect remains silent, head bowed; he neither protests nor offers excuses.
The DS takes his cigarettes out of his pocket.
At the sound of the pack being tossed carelessly onto the table, the suspect tenses up. The DS pulls out a cigarette and lights it, blowing the smoke into the detainee’s face. He lifts his head—just slightly, but enough to betray his craving for tobacco, inhales the smoke, and coughs.
“Eyes on me,” the DS orders, yet finds himself averting his gaze. Don’t you dare look like a victim! “Don’t fool me.”
He reminds himself: the sister of the scum is just like him—a lovely child whose life he ruined.
DS starts firing off questions.
He is forced to ask nasty questions—and then repeat them over and over. He smokes one cigarette after another. The hour he’d expected to spend in the pub has long gone. DS raises his voice. He leans forward. He moves around behind the detainee.
The suspect flinches occasionally. He isn’t deaf. He understands everything. Yet he keeps silent. Until suddenly—though it is unclear in response to which question—he blurts out, “I didn’t do what I am accused of.”
If he hadn’t started coughing, the detective might well have thought he’d misheard.
Fowles enters it into the record.
That’s it. Then, silence again.
DS says things he isn’t supposed to say—and wouldn’t want to, either. He threatens the detainee with being sent down to Brixton and with a sorting out. He even stoops so low as to describe in vivid detail what they would do to him there.
It’s no use.
DS doesn’t know what to hold onto. Then he reaches for the Hiatts, grabs the detainee’s hands and snaps the steel cuffs around them.
The moment DS lets go, the suspect’s hands drop onto the table under the weight of the metal.
DS doesn’t tighten the cuffs; he simply lets the suspect feel them there—if he wanted to, he could slip his bony hands out, though naturally, he doesn’t. He sits in the same position, only now his hands are resting on the surface. From time to time, they begin to tremble. The detainee slouches even more. He coughs more frequently and shifts in his chair. He is tired, too.
Both detectives step out for a bite to eat. Then, return.
Nothing has changed.
The detainee asks for neither food nor cigarettes, nor even a drink of water.
DS remembers the lighter.
“Whose is this?” He shakes the Dunhill out of the bag, leans over the detainee, and repeats right at the crown of his head, “I’m asking: whose is this?”
“Fuck you,” the suspect says, continuing to stare at the table.
At last. A reaction. There was a story behind that lighter. But what does that matter? There is no one in the next room accusing the detainee of theft. And something tells DS that no such person exists. He tightens the cuffs until they bite.
The detainee tenses his arms and frantically tries to inhale the stale, tobacco-laden air.
Now, his fingers are cramping.
He remains silent.
Fowles asks to stop. “We can’t just sit with him until morning.”
DS agrees grudgingly. Maybe a night in the cooler will finally bring the stubborn bastard to his senses. The forecast calls for a drop in temperature. The holding cells are in the basement. There’s no heating there. They’ll take his jacket away. DS makes sure the gaoler “forgets” to give him a blanket. If he cracks, he’ll ask for one.
Day two
January 29, 1977
Saturday
The Stalemate
As long as there are two Jeremy Smiths in the Factory, people won’t stop making fun of it. When DS Smith orders Smith to be brought upstairs, the officers on duty joke among themselves:
“Which Jeremy Smith?”
“Pretty Jeremy Smith.”
They do it so he can hear, and at least they acknowledge that DS Smith is anything but ‘pretty’.
He enters the Sweat Box next morning fully aware that the piece of scum facing him isn’t just stubborn, but someone playing his own game—someone who understands that if he confesses, he’s finished.
“Well then,” the detective tells himself. “If a frontal attack didn’t work, we’ll wear him down.” The cuffs go on from the start. Only this time, he fastens them behind the suspect’s back rather than in front and skips a double-lock.
Fowles shrugs.
The detainee shifts on the chair, unsure how to sit.
“Uncomfortable, you little bastard?”
DS braces himself for a battle to the death.
Overnight, the detainee seems to have grown even paler and thinner; his eyes are sunken, his lips blue. Yesterday he huddled on his chair; today, with his hands twisted behind his back, he is listing to one side, looking as if he might topple onto the floor. Without his jacket, he looks utterly wretched.
DS goes over everything from the very beginning. The NSPCC inspector’s questions. Why did he talk to the inspector in the first place—spinning him a whole lecture—yet now won’t say a word?
The detectives step out to stretch their legs.
They return.
It all repeats.
The detectives go to lunch.
They return again.
Same bloody routine.
DS Smith can’t help himself; he shoves the table so hard that the edge slams into the detainee’s ribs. The only response is a fit of uncontrollable coughing. The un-double-locked handcuffs are clearly digging into his wrists, and tears spill down the detainee’s face. So you do cry.
“Princess, shall I write out a confession for you? After all, you certainly won’t be writing it yourself,” DS asks, his voice dripping with mock concern.
The detainee’s lips seem stuck together.
DS grabs him by the hair, forcing his head back and making him gasp like a fish out of water. The detainee lets out a sound like a sob.
“Easy, Detective,” Fowles speaks up flatly. “You’re going to break him.”
DS has no other choice. There is no changing tack now. If he were to offer the detainee a cigarette, the scum would take it and still say nothing. This bastard is fighting for his own survival in the only way he can—by feigning helplessness.
All right, then. Whatever game you’re playing, I’m not letting you win.
By evening, DS stops asking questions. He simply keeps at the detainee, his gaze boring into this piece of scum who sits—or rather, half-reclines—on the chair, staring into space with inflamed eyes; the tears on his face have long since dried.
DS decides to wrap up the interrogation early.
He asks about the weather: They’re saying it’ll be two below tonight.
The suspect won’t just ask for a blanket; he will beg for one.
Day three
January 30, 1977
Sunday
The Capitulation
“Well, Princess. Had enough yet?”
The little bastard is breathing heavily, wheezing. He doesn’t even have the strength to cough. The skin on his face is pulled taut. His complexion has turned gray. His lips are cracked and bleeding. The handcuffs—securing his hands behind the back of the chair—are necessary if only to keep him in an upright, seated position.
The moment he moves, the steel Hiatts automatically tighten with a dry, sharp click. He’s trying not to shift his hands. But he isn’t asking for anything or complaining.
An obstinate little bastard like that will stay just as silent in court, and the jury will acquit him.
The detective’s report is still blank.
Two sentences in three days—that’s an Olympic record.
It can’t be. Things like this just don’t happen.
On Monday, he will have to be taken to the magistrates’ court without a confession.
If he were innocent, he would try to explain. Instead, he says nothing. He is stalling.
What is he after?
“Harry, sonny,” DS Smith says gently to Fowles. “Go get some tea. Bring me a cup. And one for yourself.”
Before Fowles closes the door behind him, DS Smith adds, “Take your time.”
Left alone with the suspect, he slowly circles him, grabs him under the arms, and yanks him off the chair. It isn’t difficult, since the chair is bolted to the floor; even though the detainee’s elbows catch on the backrest, DS needs little effort to haul him to his feet.
Click-click.
Then DS hurls him to the floor—or rather, “hurls” is too strong a word; he sweeps him onto the floor like a dry leaf.
The clatter of the handcuffs makes much more noise than the impact of the detainee’s body.
Silently, DS pins him to the floor with a knee.
Click-click.
DS Smith is powerless against this silence.
The fucking scumbag knows full well that, ultimately, there is nothing the detective can do to him.
DS hauls him up by the collar, sets him back down on the chair, and locks his arms around the back of the chair again.
Click-click-click.
Upon returning, Fowles chooses not to notice the bloody fluid oozing from the detainee’s left cheekbone, where hundreds of tiny red dots are appearing. DC Fowles simply walks up to DS Smith and holds out his open palm. DS hands him the Hiatts’ key. Fowles unlocks the cuffs on the suspect.
The sodding Princess loses consciousness.
Fowles lowers him to the floor, places him on his side, takes a vial of smelling salts from his pocket, and holds it under the detainee’s nose.
DS Smith watches the entire procedure, standing against the opposite wall with his arms crossed over his chest.
As soon as the Princess comes to, Fowles settles him back onto the chair, as if to say, “He’s all yours, Skipper.”
DS Smith takes out another cigarette and lights it, then points to the detainee: “Write down that he fell during the interrogation due to his own clumsiness.”
Temperatures are forecast to drop to minus three tonight.
“Don’t forget about a blanket for Pretty Smith,” DS Smith tells the gaoler. “Tomorrow he must be at the magistrates’ court—alive.”
From Jeremy to Smith
“The Defense counsel’s closing argument was impressive, especially its conclusion...
