‘No. I told you, I had to give it all back.’

‘If I’d been in your situation, I would have invested in property.’

‘They would have confiscated it.’

‘Not if you’d bought it in Northern Cyprus. That’s the place to buy property with illegal cash. And there’s no extradition treaty either.’

‘Thanks for the tip.’

‘Remember it for next time, eh?’

Chapter 23

Amber gazed idly at the three multiplexer monitors which filled the entire span of one wall of the CCTV control room. Each monitor was subdivided into twelve mini-screens, each of those in turn connected to a camera somewhere in the prison complex. There were no windows in the control room, and this gave it a vaguely claustrophobic feel, but with so many things to pay attention to on the screens, they would have presented an unnecessary distraction anyhow.

All of the prison officers were required to work shifts in the control room. Some of them enjoyed it, seeing it as a cushy job, the opportunity to watch television for several hours. Amber had initially found it quite intriguing from a voyeuristic perspective, however the novelty had soon dulled. When you watched normal television, there was usually a story of some sort to maintain your interest. In here, however, much of the activity displayed on the screens was incredibly mundane and repetitive. And it got boring pretty quickly.

From her vantage point in her swivel chair, she could see what was happening all over the prison at that exact moment in time. A group of inmates loitering around on one of the landings, laughing and joking amongst themselves. Two of her colleagues leading a nervous new inmate from the back of a prison van. A brood of crying children being scolded by their incarcerated mother in the crowded visit hall. A chaotic and argumentative game of football in the prison yard. And so on. And so forth.

Directly in front of her was a spot monitor where she could view the feed from a specific camera in larger detail. Using the keyboard on the desk, she could switch between cameras and different locations within the prison, and she could also operate the cameras, tilting, panning and zooming them as necessary. That was perhaps the only fun bit – being able to zoom in on people without them knowing that you were doing so.

During her induction a few weeks previously, Maggie had brought her in here and explained how it all worked.

‘The cameras give real-time coverage of what’s going on in the prison, and all of it is recorded onto this hard drive.’ She’d gestured at the computer terminal on the desk. ‘We archive the footage for twenty-eight days, then it’s overwritten automatically. It’s time-stamped and it’s admissible as evidence in court, so it’s good if you want to check back on a particular incident, and it’s also handy if an inmate accuses you of something you didn’t do.

‘Obviously, we can’t hope to monitor every square inch of the place. That would be impossible in a huge old Victorian building like this with all its millions of nooks and crannies. Anyhow, it would be counterproductive to try and see everywhere as there are a limited number of screens in here and there’s only ever one person manning them at any particular time. So we stick the cameras in places where we think incidents are most likely to occur, and also in places where overall security is particularly important.’