Timmy sat up in his bunk, his fat belly quivering with indignation.

‘Up yours, McAllister. Take your fucking bawling somewhere else.’

The man left the cell and Georgio slipped the piece of paper into his underpants.

‘Fucking mouthy git, coming in here like he owns the bloody place. Bleeding ponce, that’s what he is!’

Timmy broke wind loudly. Disgusted, Georgio picked up his chamber pot and hurried from the cell. He queued on the landing to empty his chamber, chatting amicably with Sadie.

‘He stinks! How do you stand it?’

Sadie lifted her shoulders in a Gallic gesture and said, ‘Why do you think I don’t bother too much about getting celled up with him? But he ain’t a bad bloke, Timmy. You’ve just got to know how to handle him.’

Georgio laughed. ‘I can handle him, it’s his go-karts I can’t stand.’

Timmy ambled out and joined them.

‘Something crawl up your arse and die then, Timmy?’ This from a young lag called Peter Barnes. He was in on an eighteen and had already earned the respect of the older men.

Timmy laughed good-naturedly. ‘Yeah, a nest of cockroaches. You’ve got the best part of the sentence to come. You wait till the summer, Peter, they crawl all over you in the night. Bastard things they are.’

Peter Barnes looked decidedly shocked at this revelation and all the men laughed at him.

‘This place is running alive with them, sonny boy. Big bastards some of them are and all. Remember last year, we had the races?’

Everyone laughed again, remembering.

‘I had one, a big bastard and all, called Trigger. It outrun every other roach on the Wing. I coined it in with him. We run them during recreation. I was sorry when he died, to be honest.’ Timmy’s voice was as sad as if the roach had been a personal friend.

‘What did it die of?’ Barnes sounded genuinely interested.

Sadie shouted out: ‘He farted when it was in his pocket and gassed the poor little bugger in its matchbox.’

Everyone laughed at this, even Timmy.

Georgio walked back to his cell with his chamber pot and shut the door, shoving the wedge back in once more.

Taking the paper out of his pants, he uncurled it.

Get a number 2.

Ripping the paper into tiny fragments, Georgio put them in his mouth and chewed them up, swallowing it all.

He removed the wedge, and taking off his underpants, picked up a towel and went back out on the Wing towards the showers. He was wolf-whistled three times and minced like Sadie to make people laugh.

Once in the showers he thought about the note, then dismissed it. The only person he could trust, really trust, was Donna. Plus, she had the added bonus of being completely above suspicion. By Lewis and the Old Bill.

He began washing himself.