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proportion, of scale. He could accept the exploitation of a generation whilst he could not accept its murder.
    Of course, for Kingsley all such considerations had become entirely academic. He was lost to the world where his thoughts and opinions mattered and from this point on the only issue that would occupy his mind was survival.

NINE
    Old acquaintances
    After his lonely supper Kingsley was taken to a cell. A cell he was to share with three other men.
    The men had been hand-picked by a senior warder, a man named Jenkins whom Kingsley had met before.
    ‘Remember me, Mr Kingsley?’
    Kingsley peered at him through the gathering gloom.
    ‘Ah,’ he said with sinking heart, ‘Sergeant Jenkins.’
    ‘Not sergeant any more, Mr Kingsley. It’s Warder Jenkins now, Senior Warder Jenkins.’
    ‘Congratulations, Senior Warder Jenkins. You have clearly thrived in your new profession.’
    ‘Yes. It seems that not everybody thinks themselves too good to work with me.’
    ‘I did not think myself too good to work with you. I merely thought that your skills were not best suited to the work of criminal investigation.’
    ‘Oh, is that so? Well, we’re not so bloody high and mighty and damn yer eyes now, are we, Inspector? ’
    Kingsley did not recall being high and mighty with the man or indeed damn yer eyes, he could only remember being…logical. He had found himself burdened with a detective sergeant whom he considered a slow, dim-witted brute. He had therefore had the man removed from his department and recommended that he be found work of a more menial nature. It did not surprise him to learn that the man had ended up in the Prison Service.
    ‘I was finished in the police after you wrote me up, Kingsley. They recommended that I lose my stripes.’
    ‘I am sorry to hear it.’
    ‘You weren’t then, Inspector, but I’ll bet you are now. Oh yes, I’ll bet you are now. And you’re going to get a lot sorrier, mark my words. Strike off the prisoner’s chains,’ Jenkins ordered. ‘Unlock the cell.’
    The chains were removed from Kingsley but he took little relief from it as the cell door opened.
    The three men with whom Kingsley was expected to co-exist grinned with evil intent as he entered the tiny room. What teeth they had between them shone and the five good eyes sparkled in the smoky light of the warder’s paraffin lamp. Electricity had yet to come to this particularly dark corner of Wormwood Scrubs.
    ‘Hello, Inspector. Remember me?’ said the first shadowy figure. Remember me? It was a question which Kingsley had suddenly come to dread.
    ‘Yes, I remember you. I remember all of you,’ Kingsley answered.
    It was only now that the full horror of his situation truly dawned upon Kingsley. Up until this point there had been so much else to think about. The loss of his family, his job, his world. The endless efforts to explain himself. The white feathers in the streets, on his pillow. Up until this point his life and the protest with which he had ruined it had mattered. His existence had had some purpose.
    Not any more.
    Now, he had no life. The man he had been only the day before had effectively ceased to exist. What existed in its place was a cornered human animal. Bare-toothed prey caught in the steel jaws of the most vicious of traps. Kingsley had been cast, alone and utterly defenceless, amongst his most bitter enemies. He had come to live with the men whose lives he had destroyed. Surely the devil himself could not have designed a worse predicament, and yet Kingsley knew that he had designed it for himself.
    ‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ Kingsley said, inwardly computing what, if any, defence he might put up against these men as the first one stepped forward. ‘Good evening, Mr Cartwright.’
    Cartwright had murdered his wife and Kingsley had nearly got him hanged for it. He would have done so had Cartwright not contrived also to murder his daughter, who had been the only witness to the crime.
    ‘You owe me