Part 14 (1/2)

I emptied out my pockets: a driving licence, a book containing up-to-date accounts of the Colombian scam, and a key to the falconry in Pytchley that gave me access to the several tons of dope there.

'This driving licence is in the name John Hayes. Is that your name?'

'Yes.'

'Is this your address?'

'No comment.'

'What do you do for a living, Mr Hayes?'

'I'm training to be a Customs Officer.'

He didn't even smile. A couple of other Customs Officers came up to our table.

'This has been found in Room 52, your room. It is clearly has.h.i.+sh. Is it yours?'

'No, of course not.'

'This has.h.i.+sh was in your jacket pocket. Are you suggesting we put it there?'

'I don't know, do I?'

'Does it belong to your girl-friend in your room?'

'No, it's mine. Could I see Judy and our daughter?'

'Of course. You must regard us as your friends. I'm Nick Baker, and this is my colleague Terry Byrne. We can go up to your room before we all go to our London office in New Fetter Lane.'

I hugged and kissed Judy and Amber. I knew they wouldn't mess with Judy, just question her a bit and let her go. I also knew, more certainly than I have ever known anything in my life, that no matter how much she was questioned she wouldn't tell them a thing.

'Be strong, love,' we both said.

At London the questioning continued.

'What do you do for a living, Mr Hayes?'

'My work is of a secret nature. Look, what's all this about?'

'Have you got a pa.s.sport?'

'No.'

'You've never been abroad at all?'

'No.'

'What do you do for a living?'

'I can't answer these questions. My work is secret.'

'What time did you arrive at Lavenham?'

'No comment.'

'Do you know Martin Langford?'

'No comment.'

'Do you know Stuart Prentiss?'

'No comment.'

'Do you know James Goldsack?'

This went on for ages. I asked after a while if I could merely raise my finger rather than having to say 'no comment' all the time. Baker wouldn't oblige.

'Mr Hayes, I am making a contemporaneous note of this interview. I won't see your finger being raised. Would you make an audible reply, please? Do you understand?'

'Bleep.'

'Is John Hayes your real name?'

'Bleep.'

'Would you object to giving us your fingerprints?'

'Bleep, bleep.'

'Is that because your real name is Howard Marks?'

A wave of relief came over me. I was me again for the first time in six and a half years.

'So, Howard, how have you been earning a living these last few years?'

'No comment.'

And so it went on through the night until Baker and Byrne took me to Snowhill Police Station. Judy came to see me the next morning and asked me to marry her. I said yes.

After thirty-six hours in the cells, I was hauled in front of Judge Miskin at the Old Bailey. Represented again by Bernard Simons, I was being remanded back into custody at Brixton Prison for the 1973 speaker scam. The next morning, the Guildhall magistrates also remanded me into custody for conspiring to import several tons of Colombian weed and having a bunch of false pa.s.sports. Also with me were Marty Langford and Bob Kenningale, who had both been arrested at Whitehead's falconry; James Goldsack and his worker, Nick Cole, both of whom had been arrested in London; Californian yachtsman Stuart Prentiss and his worker, Alan Grey; and Patrick Lane's a.s.sistant, Hedley Morgan. Patrick Lane somehow escaped the net and fled to the security of Ernie in California. Customs Officer Baker told the magistrates that the Customs had just busted us with more dope, 15 million worth, than the grand total of dope they'd ever busted up to that point. I felt proud, completely forgetting the consequences of being accused of such severe illegality. Newspaper headlines proclaimed that I had just been severely grilled by the British Secret Service, that I had joined the IRA, and that I had been protected by the Mafia.

Back at Brixton, these bulletins, coupled with radio news reports, had a.s.sured that I would be accorded a notorious criminal's welcome. I was separated from my co-defendants and put in a two-man, toilet-less, water-less cell in A Wing. My cellmate was a s.h.i.+fty young Jewish fraudster named Jonathan Kern. A Wing comprised a ground floor and three upper floors of cells and accommodated about 200 prisoners. There were some notable legends from London's gangland: Ronnie Knight, husband of actress Barbara Windsor; Duke and Dennis of the feared and respected Arif family, Turkish Cypriots who became London's most heavily investigated crime family since the Krays; Tommy Wisbey, the Great Train Robber; and Mickey Williams, a half-Irish and half-Jamaican Londoner whose behaviour even Her Majesty's Prison, Durham's infamous control units could not inhibit. One morning, Mickey was next to me and Jonathan Kern as we were 'slopping out' plastic buckets of our night's excrement.

'Watch him, H. He's a wrong 'un, a real wrong 'un. He'd gra.s.s up 'is own muvver.'

Kern heard him and walked away.

'Thanks, Mick.'

'It ain't nuffink, H. He ain't in your business, is he?'