He fielded a number of further questions, then brought the conference to a close. ‘I would like to again thank you all for attending, and to remind you that how you report this could, ultimately, be the make or break in bringing these vile people to justice. Someone will know something or have seen something. Anyone with basic human decency must be repulsed by this attack. I would request that you publicize the number of the Incident Room from the sheets you have been given and stress that alternatively they can call Crimestoppers, in complete anonymity, the number of which is also on the sheet. Thank you again.’

Along with the others, Grace hurried out of the room, then followed Souders along to her office for a quick debrief. He was, as usual after press conferences, sodden with perspiration, knowing he had done his best, but aware, as always, he could probably have done better.

38

Friday 10 May

For some inmates, spartan though it was, prison was home, a way of life. They had their friends, three meals a day, television and their board and lodging all found – and jobs within the prison where they earned pin money. Many of those persistent reoffenders considered the times when they were released on licence to be their holiday. Freedom to do drugs, sell drugs and shag. Then back inside again until the next time.

A smaller minority – much smaller – used their time to learn a trade or craft, or even to read and write – with the intention of going straight once they were released. And an even smaller – depressingly small – percentage would succeed in doing just that.

But many lived in morose silence, relieving the boredom by working out, body-building, doing drugs, or just drifting around, sometimes in the library, sometimes anywhere. Thinking. Sometimes daydreaming.

The common factor for most of them was the numbing tedium. Doing time was the right expression. Waiting for time to pass. Welcoming any distraction, however small – a phone call, a visit, a work-out, when they weren’t confined to their cell for days on end because of a shortage of prison officers.

Mickey Starr, in Lewes Prison, was in his third consecutive day of being locked in his cell this week, due to staff shortages, and was literally going up the wall with frustration, most of all because this prevented him from making his daily phone call to Stuie. And neither he nor his cellmate had been able to have a shower or a change of clothes for three days.

The previous occasion he had been in prison was eighteen years ago, after being arrested and convicted for possession and dealing cannabis on Brighton’s seafront, down under the Arches. His then solicitor had turned up one day and told him about an associate, Terence Gready, whom he had never met, who ‘knew people inside the police’.