Too Cold For Snow

all three decks and even into solitary, where Jimmy Bucket was learning to regret leaving a roach in the ashtray after what had turned out to be a rather stunning skunkweed joint. When the screws found the roach they gave him twenty one days in the brig, straight off. Jimmy was a bit slow at deciphering Morse – perhaps a delirious effect of all the dope – and when he spelled out the message in his head he had to go over it a couple of times to make sure he had got the gist of it.
    The men on every level of the ship considered the import of the messages. The tapping punctuated the night. Donations were invited: to hire a man, or to kidnap the cook’s wife. All they wanted Tony to do was learn to cook, read Mrs Beeton or something. Jimmy liked their thinking. Along with pretty much everyone else onboard he’d throw in a couple of sovs. He had five years left of the appalling food regime. It was breaking his spirit far more than his time in the airless black chamber.
    They got fifteen grand together in a night, mainly in the form of promissory notes, although some of the more powerful lags contributed actual fifty pound notes. Natcho kept the tally while Morris the Gimp, who had just got back after a couple of transfers – Wakefield, where they served curries on a Friday, and Albany, where they had a bleedin’ nutritionist for fark’s sake – took care of the practical arrangements, putting the job out to tender, sealed bids, the usual form.
    They had three applications but they had to discount one right away because everyone knew that David Hangood had died in a car crash and that his wife was trying to carry on the family business using his name, but everybody knew that she was a crap assassin, what with her short-sightedness and asthma and all. She was game, though, you had to give it to her. And skint, so they sent her a little something just for having a bash. The other two bids came from class acts – both anonymous but with impressive CVs. The inmates made their decision. They gave their instructions and let the act unfold.
    When Tony got the summons to come up to the governor’s quarters, his mind instantly fled to his recent scam. He’d found a new source of meat for Thursdays from a Romany turf accountant who worked down the dog track. His heart rate rose as he ran through the possible ways he’d have been rumbled. When he stepped through the white, steel-plate door the gravity of the man’s demeanour suggested something worse, much worse.
    ‘Sit down Tony. I’m afraid I have some bad news as we find ourselves in a very delicate situation…’
    ‘I can explain everything,’ blurted Tony, but there was something so serious about the governor’s eyes that he desisted there and then.
    ‘Your wife has been kidnapped and whoever’s taken her hostage is demanding better food on board.’
    Without a moment’s hesitation Tony volunteered his resignation, but while the governor said his alacrity was commendable he suggested that Tony should watch the video from the kidnappers first.
    The images were high definition, captured by a camera hand that was steady and sure. His wife, Florrie, seemed unfazed by the situation and Tony remembered the first time he had realised that he was in love with her. They were walking along the pebble shore in Brighton on a blustery day that seemed to throw seagulls around like confetti. She was wearing a fisherman’s yellow coat and a sou’wester and looked as if she usually worked way out in the North Sea. He was suggesting she was overdressed when a violent squall, coupled with a freak wave, threw an enormous cascade of water over them and he remembered them spluttering their laughter as she raised her hands to show how dry she was and he tried to shake water out of his drenched woollen coat like a terrier coming out of a drain.
    This was the image on the television screen – a brave, resourceful woman who enunciated very clearly what the kidnappers wanted and that she would be released only after the governor made an announcement during dinner hour that things would improve. She made it sound as if she was reading out a letter to him.
    ‘They say it’s nothing personal and they don’t want you to lose your job. But they do want you to learn to cook. And you can understand where they’re coming from can’t you, Tone? Anyway, they’re looking after me very well and there’s one of them who’s got a sense of humour just like yours. Do what you can to get