The Picasso Scam by Stuart Pawson Page A

constructive in the treatment of the criminal classes. Now it was overcrowded, understaffed, and held regular degree ceremonies for those who passed through its courses in advanced criminality. They don’t open the Great Gate to let visitors in – there’s a normal-sized , but metal, door just to the side of it.
    I’d arranged my visit to see Lee Ziolkowski the previous afternoon. The visiting room is like a large canteen, with formica tables and tubular chairs; none of this talking through a screen that you see in the films. Down the side there are small cubicles for special visitors, such as solicitors or policemen. I was told which cubicle to use, and someone went to fetch Lee. I bought a couple of teas and chocolate biscuits from the lady at the WRVS counter and waited. It was normal visiting hours, and the place was noisy with young women with toddlers, come to see daddy doing his bird. At the table just outside my cubicle a tattooed hero was trying to swallow his leather-clad visitor. She wore a mini-skirt and thigh boots, and the gap between displayed enough fishnet to equip a small trawler. Just the thing to raise the morale when you measure the passing of time in Christmas dinners.
    Lee appeared a lot healthier than when I last saw him. He’d lost his pallor and gained a pound or twoin weight. He still looked at me nervously, though.
    ‘Hello, Lee. Remember me, Charlie Priest? I interviewed you in Heckley nick. I got you one with milk and two sugars; hope that’s how you like it.’ It’s how they always like it.
    He sat down opposite me. ‘Yeah, thanks,’ he said.
    ‘I have to tell you, Lee, that you’ve no need to talk to me if you don’t want to. You can get up and leave right now, or you can insist on your solicitor being present. I hope you won’t, though, because I think you should hear what I have to say.’
    Legally he was a man, but inside he was just a scared little boy, struggling to survive in a world he couldn’t comprehend. He would put up a tough show for my benefit, but was out of his depth, and now had to either grab the lifeline or go under, maybe for ever. He didn’t say anything, just stayed where he was and unwrapped his biscuit.
    ‘You and your pals have been used, Lee,’ I told him, ‘by evil people who don’t care if you live or die. They feed you shit drugs and shit friendship, but all they want is for you to get hooked. Then they start bleeding you. You don’t belong in here, this place is a dustbin, it’s full of garbage. A young kid died over the weekend from a heroin overdose. The stuff he was using was too strong, he was just guessing at the dose. He’s the latest in a long line. It could have been you if you hadn’t been in here. I know it’s not the done thing, Lee, but you could help me stamp it out. You could save lives,including your own. I want you to tell me who you got your works from.’ Longest speech I ever made, and he wasn’t impressed.
    ‘You mean grass? You want me to grass?’
    Sometimes I think they absorb the prison culture with the food. ‘The rubbish in here call it grassing, Lee, I call it curing a disease. A few years ago there was a disease called smallpox; killed millions. Then they found a cure for it and thought they’d stamped it out. A couple of years later somebody in Africa said: “Hey! There’s a feller in our village still got it.” So the doctors moved in and cured him. Now he can’t give it to anyone else. The man who spoke out wasn’t grassing – he did a public service. You could do the same.’
    ‘They’d kill me.’ He looked scared.
    ‘No they wouldn’t,’ I assured him, without conviction. ‘They wouldn’t know where the information came from. Besides, I thought the younger generation wanted some excitement in their lives. They’ve wanted to kill me for years, I can live with it.’
    He could have stood up and walked out. An old lag would have done, but he still had a residue of polite behaviour in him, and