Donald Lewis was fifty-two years old. He wasn’t a big man in stature, but what he lacked in size he made up for in reputation, and his reputation was one of the hardest. It had taken the Sweeney, the Flying Squad and the Serious Crime Squad eleven years of intensive work before they had brought him in. He was involved in every racket known to man, and a few that were as yet unknown to the police and public in general. He was an international villain, having seen the action over the Pond as a viable proposition before most of his contemporaries. He dealt in anything and everything, from women, to drugs, to boys, to guns. He was noted for his almost surgical cleanliness, and also his dry sense of humour. He liked young men, handsome young men, and his stint in Parkhurst had been likened to a busman’s holiday by the screws.

Lewis’s sheer force of personality gave him the edge over bigger, more violent men; that and his sadistic mind. He was dapper, almost feminine in his dress. He was also shrewd. Donald Lewis had been unable to write his own name before going into Hollandsy Bay Borstal at fifteen; there he had had the three Rs beaten into him, and had never looked back since. He had a natural hatred of any kind of authority, a hatred of women, and also a hatred of most of his contemporaries. Diagnosed as a psychotic, he had spent a lot of money to make sure he wasn’t transferred to Broadmoor. Though the regime was much more relaxed there, you had next to no chance of either escape or, more importantly, parole.

He was a Double A Category prisoner, Maximum Security, which only left four prisons in England which could hold him. He had decided that he would have a stint in Durham in a few years, for a change of scene. Other than that he had no plans for the future except to keep himself alive, run his nefarious businesses, and stay on top of everything going on around him. Lewis was the Baron of Parkhurst, controlling the trade in drugs and tobacco. He also controlled his wing.

He was sitting at his small table now, waiting for his breakfast which was always cooked to perfection in the wing kitchen by a prisoner called Roberts. He was doing a ten stretch and had taken up cookery as a pastime. Being Double A Grade, Lewis could order in food, and the screws bought it for him in Sainsbury’s. It was a joke among them but they accepted it as part of their job. If it kept the lifers happy, they were happy, and the world was an easier place.

As Lewis sipped his tea he smiled.