Late Shift, Wednesday evening late on, getting close to knock off time and I was just tidying up the endless paperwork when the phone rang. "Station Sergeant here Taffy, we've got a silent alarm from Belmont Jewellers in the High Street. I've got two of the uniforms on the way."

At the opening he carefully reversed himself and came through the gap backwards. I waited until he was half out and then put a boot on his back and forced him to the ground. "You're nicked, mate, slowly turn around and stand up."

Just then two Noddies came galloping around the corner, huffing and puffing, helmets on the back of their heads. "Aw, shit, you got him," one of them said. "That's a collar we should have felt. Its these bloody boots that slow you down." I sympathized, having been likewise hampered myself in my days on The Beat. "Tough luck sunshine, I'll put you two down for an assist in the report."

One of you get him back to the station and lodge him in the cells, but no questions, other than name and address. Get a CRO check on him to see if he has any form. I want him fresh before I caution him. The other stays until Belmont gets here to secure the premises. Tell him I'll contact him in the morning for a list of all the gear that is missing; and I'll want to see the paperwork on the items." Some jewelers were notorious for pumping up insurance claims when they got done over.

I crawled into the shop and looked around. One of the display cases had been smashed and the contents had mostly disappeared, no doubt into the bag that matey had been carrying. From what little remained, it looked as if it was a display of engagement rings. I knew that old Belmont carried a selection of high class jewelry and high end engagement rings were easy to dispose of.

Back at the station I grabbed a cuppa and spent ten minutes making notes and checking on whether matey had any form. His CRO check had come up positive and he had a bit of form, in fact, he was just out of the nick after doing a one-year stretch for burglary. He was going down for a lump on this one, no doubt about it.

I phoned down to the front office and asked that someone bring him up to the D.I.'s office, a better atmosphere for questioning than the cluttered general office. The D.I. was a bit of a prissy bugger and there wasn't a thing out of place - a bit unnerving actually. A pad of lined legal paper and a ballpoint sat on the interviewee's side of the desk and a packet of cigs and a lighter on my side. I settled in and soon after a knock came on the door. The uniform stuck his head around and I nodded to him. In walked the prisoner, looking pretty sullen and pissed off. He was about to get a bit more pissed off after I finished with him.

"Sit down mate," I told him, in a neutral tone. To the uniform, "Get us two teas will you?" The turning to the prisoner, "Milk and sugar, mate?" All I got was a grunted, "Milk, no sugar." The uniform backed out and I settled back in the chair and scanned his rap sheet.

"Hmmmm! Quite the record you've got here, John Frederick Davis: dishonourable discharge from the Army after a year in Colchester Military prison, a b & e that got you a year on the last go round. Doesn't look too good for you, eh?"

"Nothing to say," was the sullen reply. He still hadn't raised his head to look at me, so I pushed the packet of cigs and the lighter towards him.

"Get yourself a weed while we wait for the tea to come." It was my standard practice in this type of situation for a lapse of about ten minutes to allow things to settle down.

"Ta," was all I got from John. He took a ciggie out of the packet and lit up, his hands shaking a bit. Good, I thought, he's nervous enough to play along a bit.

The tea arrived and he clutched the mug in both hands as if trying to get some comfort from the warmth of the tea.

"Thanks, mate," I said to the uniform, giving him a discrete wink of thanks for the delay.

"OK, John, is John, isn't it?"

"No, I got by Fred, never did like John, it reminded me too much of my Old Man."

"Bit of a prick, then, was he?" I asked, looking for a connection that would get him talking directly to me.

Sure enough it struck a chord with him and he raised his head and said, with venom in his voice, "He was a piss-head and used to whale on me and Mum when he came home from the pub. As soon as was old enough I joined the Army and Mum left him and went to live with her sister. I'm buggered if I know what happened to him, and I don't bloody care."

"What about the Army, couldn't you keep it straight?"

"I did my basic training and got into trade training as a mechanic. I was doing alright until the workshop Sam'n Major took a dislike to me and was on my back every opportunity the bastard got. In the end I lost my wig and went after him with a wrench, just about caved his bloody head in. That was the end of my Army career and I spent a year in Colchester doing it the hard way."

I gave a shudder as I had heard that Colchester Military Prison was a hellhole. Prisoners were made to scrub floors with a toothbrush, paint lumps of coal white and as many demeaning tasks as the sadistic MP's could dream up. No wonder the poor bugger was hardened when he came out. The combination of his childhood and the Army had turned him anti-social.

"So, where did you go from there," I asked.

"I managed to get a job in Yeovil as a general labourer on a construction site and did OK for six months. I met a girl in a café and we hit it off and things were going great to the extent that I asked her to marry me. She was all alone, both her parents were dead and she gave me the word. That's where I buggered up. I wanted to buy her a ring but didn't have enough to get anything decent. I knew that the wages for the construction site were delivered last thing on Thursday and kept in the office safe until it was dished out to the lads on Friday lunchtime. I knew the layout of the office and the safe was an old unit that a good jemmy could tickle."

He was warming to his story and opening up nicely, I encouraged him by saying, "Yeah, those old peters were worth more as scrap metal than they were as a safe."

"I knew they didn't have a night watchman and the local bobbies don't take much notice of construction sites as they were pretty thin on the ground on Night Shift. I got over the fence without any problem, jemmied the door and was in the office in a flash. The safe was a doddle to crack. The door was ill-fitted and had a good gap in the frame and off she came in a couple of good tugs. There was two thousand quid in the cash box and I stuck it in my jeans and legged it over the fence and away."

Sensing the next bit of his narrative, I said, "OK. What was the catch?"

"I was over-confident and called in the pub on the way home and spent up large. What I didn't know was that one of the boys from the site was in the pub and saw me flashing the green stuff around. The following morning I reported for work and the place was in an uproar. The boss was beside himself and he had two uniforms there to take the crime report. Then they started questioning us separately. I gave them the tale that I'd been in the pub all evening and that seemed to satisfy them. I gave them the names of a couple of guys I'd been drinking with. They were too pissed to remember what time I'd arrived."

"What about the fella from the site who'd been in the pub," I queried.

One of the wooden-tops was talking to him and I saw them looking over at me but didn't think anything of it until the copper came over to me and started in on me about the money I'd been spending in the pub. I waffled on a bit but it soon became obvious that they were on to me and when he told me to turn my pockets out I knew I was fucked. I had fifty quid in my pants and for a labourer to have that amount before getting paid out was not on, so I got the formal shit about not saying anything etc., and they marched me off the site to boos and catcalls from the guys whose wages I'd nicked."

I knew from his sheet that he entered a plea of guilty and got a year inside for his trouble. I asked him, "What happened to the girl?"

"She stood by me and visited me in Horfield nick in Bristol and she'd moved to Keynsham and got a flat there and came to visit me every week. She still wanted to marry me and I couldn't believe my luck." A sad look came over his face and he said, "It was her bad luck though."

He went on to tell me that they'd got married in a Registrar's office and he'd found a job as a swabbie on a commercial cleaning firm, working the night shift in office buildings around Bristol. They'd found a little cottage outside Keynsham and settled down to a stable married life. His new wife had an office job and cycled the nine miles back and forth to work.

This had continued for a year and then she became pregnant. She had a difficult pregnancy and spent a great deal of time in bed. With only one wage coming in and living out of town his daytimes were taken up with shopping and general housework. Tiredness was a continual state for him and his difficulty was compounded when his wife gave birth to a baby girl who had deformed legs and would never be able to walk.

He had struggled on for another five years and the baby had developed into a pretty little angel who lived with her condition without complaint. There was no way his wife could go back to work and day care was out of the question. That brought him to the present predicament he was in.

"I was desperate, mate." A change in our relationship was beginning to take place. "I had to get a place in town and some kind of care for the baby, so there was nothing else for it. I had been to Bath a few times and mooched around the shops, but now I was on the lookout for somewhere that would give me the money I needed. While I had been inside I'd learned a thing or two in the Criminal's University and thought I could pull off a good heist with a chance of getting away with it."

I was well aware that short term sentences had no rehabilitation effect on the majority of offenders and that the older crimms passed on the "secret of their success" to the more impressionable first timers. Although Fred had done a year in a military prison there was no opportunity to converse with other inmates to any degree, so he was a relatively inexperienced offender when he went into Horfield. The prison, built in 1883, was one of the many prisons constructed on the same pattern throughout Britain and the Commonwealth. A grim edifice, it had a depressing atmosphere that caused a chill in the bones every time I went there to interview an inmate.

These prisons were a direct result of the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, brought to an end by the Battle of Waterloo. When the soldiers came home there was nothing for them. Britain was impoverished by the cost of waging the war and civil unrest and crime were rampant.

This threw up the development of great social change in Britain. A police force was formed, laws were enacted to curb villainy and deportation to "The Colonies" was instituted for even minor crimes such as stealing a loaf of bread. Australia owes its development to the three classes of people who settled there as a direct result of the deportations. The lowest strata were the criminals themselves, above them were the prison staff and officials and at the top level, the government representative who were to set up the structure of Australia's society.

However, this had nothing to do with Fred's predicament. He now had to find some place that would fit his plan to get his family out of the state they were in. His cussing of the shops in Bath had lead him to a quiet little cul-de-sac arcade off the High Street that had some boutique shops and Belmont's Jewellers. An old-established firm, it had only recently kept up with the times by installing an inconspicuous silent-alarm system that was directly linked to the police station just a block away. Fred had found that the modernisation didn't extend to hardening the perimeter and the main door had two glass panels that looked as though they could be cut out of the frame without too much difficulty.

Getting the equipment to do the job was a piece of cake; an industrial level glass cutter and a suction cup to lift the cut glass out of the frame were all he needed. Together with a small black holdall he was ready to roll. He knew that the Beat cops would be congregating two blocks away before shift change and that the new shift coming on would take about fifteen minutes to get out onto their beats. He had observed the shift change on a number of nights and knew that he had time to do the job. What he hadn't taken into account was the fact that the Late Shift Detectives didn't necessarily knock off on time, paperwork being their delaying factor.

He had arrived at the arcade early and observed that foot traffic was light as it was a quiet in-between period between the pubs closing and the cinemas and theatres turning out. All was set and it went off like clockwork, until my boot had descended on his back and the game was over.

All this came out in the pre-statement chat. Our conversation was all off the record and whatever he had told me before I administered the caution was inadmissible in court, but it gave me all the ammunition I needed to talk him into a confession. The pivotal feature in his story was the plight of his wife and child and that was the angle I would take.

"OK Fred." I leaned forward over the desk so that our talk became more intimate. "Here's what I see. You are going away for a good stretch, maybe a fiver, unless the judge sees that you made a ready confession under caution."

"No fuckin' way," he ground out, "You can't use anything I've told you and you know it." Obviously he had graduated from the Criminals' University with Honours. "You'll have to prove everything and that's going to bugger you around for weeks while you prepare the case. You've got no prints or forensic evidence. The jewelry in the bag was something I found when I decided to see what was going on in the store as I was walking past and saw the gap in the door panel."

He was right up to a point. I knew he would be convicted but it would be a pain in the arse getting everything together. "OK, here's the deal. I get your missus and daughter set up in the town in a council flat and arrange day care. If you nod your head when they ask you how you plead. I'll tell the Wigged One that you were totally cooperative and provided a full and frank confession, I'll give him the full story about a man driven to desperation in order to fend for his family. I'll even arrange for your missus and daughter to be in court in a prominent position for the judge to see that your daughter is in a wheelchair."

"How the hell can you do all that?" and incredulous Fred asked.

"Won't be easy, mate, but I've some favours to call in from the Social Welfare Department in Keynsham and I can promise you that it will happen. I know you've only got my word for it but your predicament can be over and you'll do your time locally. Your wife and nipper will be able to visit and you can get some trade training under your belt while you are inside. The anomaly was that short sentence offenders offered nothing in the way of trade training whereas those on a two-plus lagging got access to programs."

I pushed the packet of smokes across to him and said, "Have a smoke while I nip out and start making arrangements for an early appearance tomorrow morning and get the ball rolling."

I left the office and chatted with the uniform for about ten minutes and then went back in. Fred was leaning back in the chair and looking thoughtful. "How do I know you can keep your promise."

I felt genuinely sorry for him as he was facing a stretch that would keep him in for at least three years, confession or not. "Look, mate, I feel genuinely sad about your situation and I give you my word that I'll do everything I've promised." This was heartfelt as I really felt sorry for him. This must have come across to him as he gave a deep sigh and said, "OK, let's do it."

An hour later the statement was finished, a full confession of the circumstances which lead up to the crime and the details of how he actually committed it. When he had signed it he wearily slumped back in the chair and looked at me intently. "I hope you can keep your promise, my family's future is in your hands."

I lodged him in the cells, completed the paperwork and headed home for a few hours in the sack before I took Fred around to the courthouse and set the ball rolling.

The appearance before the magistrate was a mere formality. I outlined the details of the charge, applied for a remand in custody for one week and opposed any application for bail. Fred was asked if he had a lawyer and told that if he didn't, one would be appointed to him. He declined the offer and was lead down the stairs to the holding cells.

Back at the office I got on the phone to a contact I had in the Social Welfare Department of the Keynsham borough and told her the whole tale, emphasizing the fact that the wife and daughter needed assisted accommodation in town. My contact was the Deputy Head of the department and had helped her out when her son was caught shoplifting in our city. He was a first offender and I persuaded the store not to press charges. It was just a dare amongst a bunch of silly teenagers and he was let off with a caution and a good ear-bashing from me.

I hoped that the saying 'one good turn deserves another' would apply in this case. My contact told me that it would be a couple of days before she could get things set up but that she was hopeful that she'd be able to sort it out. I thanked her and got on with preparing the case file for a committal hearing the following week.

Two days later, when I booked on duty, one of the guys told me that a Mrs. Johnson had called for me and could I call her back as soon as possible. This was my contact in Keynsham and I grabbed the phone and nervously dialled the number. When I heard her voice I was almost reluctant to hear the news. Thank goodness it was all good.

"I've been able to find her a cottage near the town centre and I've been lucky enough to find her a job just down the road. The girl will be able to go to the daycare facility just a few streets away and it will be free for the first three months under a new program the borough has put in place." She sounded very pleased to have been able to help and promised that she would personally keep an eye on her new charge.

I heaved a sigh of relief, thanked her profusely and put down the phone lit a cigarette and thought about what had been accomplished. The case had been cleared up without a swag of hard labour, Fred was going to go down knowing that his family was going to be looked after and everybody had won.

At the next Quarter Sessions, after Fred had entered a plea of guilty he was asked if he had anything to say before sentence was passed. He replied, "I know I've been a fool and put a lot of people to a lot of trouble, but the help I've received since my arrest makes me determined to make a go of it this time."

The judge did the usual judgly thing of looking over the top of his specs and intoned in the sonorous voice that they all seem to use when they pass sentence, "You have entered a plea to a heinous crime and, given your record, it behoves me to ensure that the public is protected from people like you."

I broke into a sweat at those words, hoping that he was not going to give Fred the maximum for the offence, seven years.

After a heavy silence, he resumed. "However, the property was recovered, you gave the police all the assistance they needed to bring this to a swift conclusion, so I am going to take all that into consideration and commit you to Horfield Prison for three years. Take him down."