As the gruff thug of a police officer un-cuffed my accomplice, I was hauled to my feet by a police surgeon who wrapped bandages around the deep gashes made by the handcuffs. The surgeon looked like someone who should be watching doors at a shady nightclub in East London, not taking care of injured criminals; he was at least 6 foot 5″, with a chest that forced his shirt to buckle around the arms. The surgeon poured anti-septic around the barb-wire cut on my face, and as I recoiled from the sting I saw my accomplice, my best friend, being taken away for interrogation. Thoughts of how we had been caught were running through my mind even though I knew I should have been thinking about how to get out of this mess. It was obvious we had been grassed up; the police were practically waiting for us. The pigs even let us jump fences and cut wire before they took us in. “He’ll be fine just as long as those cuts heel before the trial, he could easily do us in for those,” the surgeon said in a heavy Northern accent.
“Good, the superintendent is coming down now, pull his sleeves down over the bandages we don’t want to get in any more trouble, especially after the last time,” said the thuggish police officer who must have violated at least fifteen police brutality rules when he was handling my friend.
I heard loud clapping footsteps walking down stairs behind the door opposite me. I was expecting the classic stereotype of a superintendent, a man who looked like a pencil-pusher not a police officer, but I was quite surprised by what pushed the large blue security door open: a woman. 
 She was tall, around 5 foot 10″, with dark blonde hair hanging loosely all the way down to her shoulders. She was wearing a slender suit which fit her slender body perfectly; the skirt came to her knees, not too revealing but not too mundane. She wore a very stern expression, it was easy to see that the stresses of supervising a police station with one of the most violent histories in London was getting to her, in the form of lines and the odd grey hair. 
“Why does he look so rough, Sergeant?” enquired the superintendent, looking at the cut on my face and the bandages that were just showing out of my shirt.
“Oh Ma’am you know what these petite criminals are like,” said the thuggish police officer sheepishly.
“No, Sergeant, he is most definitely not a ‘petite criminal’,” she said pointing at me, “If I find out that you have been violent again I will have no other choice but to discipline you.”
The Sergeant put on a face of disbelief, “Yes Ma’am, I understand.”
 She looked at me closely, and then whispered something to the sergeant who nodded in reply.
“Right, time for your cell,” the Sergeant grasped my arm and lifted me to my feet. The superintendent walked off back up the stairs as sternly as she had come down. As soon as the clapping of her high-heels had disappeared the sergeant immediately grabbed my neck with his other hand and then twisted my arm around my back. The pain was unbearable; he kept me in this hold until we got to my cell which was at the bottom of the long, monotonous corridor.
 The sergeant took me out of the painful hold to find the keys to unlock the heavy cell door. As he let go of my arm I felt relief slowly seep its way down my almost dislocated limb. “You move and I’ll finish you,” he said with his teeth viciously clamped together. He unclipped a large bunch of keys from his belt. I was un-cuffed and free, I thought about head butting him and legging it, but my sensible side immediately dismissed the idea as fool-hardy stupidity. The sergeant found the key and it neatly slid in the keyhole covered by a small brass flap. The cell-door was large and painted in a flecked and chipped sky blue colour. He unlocked it with a heavy clank and pushed down on large iron handle. 
 My placement cell was surprisingly large; the last one I was in was much smaller than this, but that was for a mere shoplifting charge a couple of years ago; that was nowhere near as high profile as why I was in here now. There was a thin stained mattress on one side, marked with what I dared not think about, and a small metal toilet in the top right corner. The walls were once painted white but were now dank, grey and covered in scratch-graffiti. To my relief there was a small barred window in the back wall. I had to have a window; I needed some kind of relation with the outside. 
“Enjoy yourself, someone will be here to pick you up in a couple of hours,” said the sergeant slyly. 
 As he shut the door I felt as if my life was closing with it. That was it I thought. I’m going to be put on trial and found guilty. I’ll be fifty before I get out, I continued to think. I tried to look on the bright side.
“At least I have no family,” I said out loud in the cell. 
This, unfortunately, was not the case for my accomplice. The prospect of never struggling for money again and sending his daughter to a decent school had proved too much for him. At least the judge would look lightly on him with the sentence. I laid down on my bed with my eyes wide open; I felt like sobbing and weeping but I knew no good could ever come from doing that. 
 Time seems to stand still when everything is motionless and silent. It felt like ten hours had past when there was finally a knock on my cell door. 
“You are entitled to a phone call, do you want to use it?” said a woman from behind the door.
“Urm, yes okay,” I replied. 
She heaved the door open and wheeled in what looked like a payphone on a trolley. The short blonde police officer pointed to the phone. I picked it up and began to dial for my lawyer. I then realised I did not remember the number. 
“Sorry, I forget the number,” I said solemnly
She sighed and said, “Who were you calling?”
“My lawyer”
“Oh, you’ll be supplied with one later.”
“But I want my own.”
She sighed again, “Is the number stored on your mobile?”
“Yes”
She then pulled out a see through zip-lock bag from the trolley. Inside it was my mobile. The police woman gestured for me to take the bag. I did, and I called my lawyer.
“Adam, I’ve been arrested”
“Station?”
“Bow Street” 
“I’ll be there in ten, until then keep schtum.”
I hanged up and put my phone back in the zip-lock bag. The police woman then left the cell, and locked the door up again.
Ten minutes later there was a bang on the door. The sergeant shouted, “Your lawyer is here, get up”. He opened the door and led me down the corridor towards the interview rooms, this time without the painful, and illegal, hold. The corridor was lined with the same cell doors; the floor was covered in a nasty brown vinyl and it smelt like toilet disinfectant. 
 As we were walking down I saw my lawyer, Adam, standing outside one of the interview rooms. As we got nearer his expression became grimmer.
“I’ll take it from here inspector,” said Adam, using the classic trick of calling a mediocre police officer by a much higher rank. The sergeant silently handed me over to Adam who opened the interview room and led me in. Fully aware that the sergeant was standing outside listening, Adam sat me down and with a very low voice began to ask me questions.
“Did you do it?”
“Yes.”
“When the police caught you, did you have any weapons on you?”
“Apart from some crowbars, no.”
“Thank the Lord.”
His questions seemed to go on for hours, without every reaching a reassuring conclusion. However, I knew they were vital for Adam to construct a case in my defence. When he was done, he knocked on the door and a different police officer was dutifully waiting to take me back to my cell. As the officer shut the door of the cell I felt that horrible grinding feeling in my chest, that my life had a door being shut on it. 
 I had managed to nod off on the flimsy, stained mattress when I was awoken by a sharp knock on the door succeeded by the clanging of keys and the push of the handle. The superintendent stepped in with a burly police officer flanking her. She wore a stern expression when she said to me, “I need to talk with you, follow me.”
I was escorted to yet another interview room. However, it did not feel very formal as Adam was not present, it was just the superintendent and she had not even pressed the record button on the tape recorder.
“You are in a very serious predicament Mr Vysotsky,” she said.
All I could muster was a feeble nod in agreement.
“However, there is a way out for you.”
My brows rose slightly and my eyes widened.
“All you need to do is tell us everything about your employers.”
 Before she had even finished the sentence I knew what she wanted from me. For me to get out she required me to snitch on my bosses, the conviction of them was worth by far more than the conviction of me. The colour was drained from my face, she could see it.
“You will also get your accomplice out by doing this, plus the rules have changed, you don’t even have to appear in court; you just give is a written and signed statement.”
My lips and mouth were dry and my hands were shaking, I tried to think rationally about her proposal but I simply could not focus. 
“You need time, I can understand that.”
 She called in the burly officer, but instead of taking me back to my cell he took me to a comfy family waiting room, with teas and doughnuts. However, I could not eat or drink; my palms were sweaty and my hands were shaking. The police assumed I was the leader over my friend so they left me to make the decision on behalf of him as well. I began to think about the consequences of agreeing to the superintendent’s proposition. My friend and I would escape prison, however we would have to adopt new names, and may even have to take drastic steps to alter our appearances, it would be obvious that we had grassed up our bosses so they would send out a call for us – which would mean a painful death. However if I refused her proposal we would spend a minimum of fifteen years in prison. I could probably handle it though I doubted my friend could, he had a severe attention deficit and always needed to be moving around, I was sure that he would commit suicide if he was locked up. But then I began to think a little further. How had we been caught? I asked myself, it was definitely a possibility that our bosses had snitched on us, but I could not think why. My mind then began to wonder why they had sent us the two finest criminals in London to do such a job that did not fit our expertise. It was then that I slowly became convinced that it was because of our bosses that my friend and I were in this “predicament”. And I started to sway towards going to the superintendent and saying that I would write up a statement detailing every illegal activity I knew that my bosses had done. But first I had to be sure I was doing the right thing. So, I went over to the door of the family waiting room and knocked on it, the burly police officer opened it and I asked to see the superintendent. 
 She entered wearing a near grin as if she knew what I was going to ask. She said, “You asked for me, Mr Vysotsky.”
“Yes, I would like to ask a question.”
“Ask, and I will see if I can answer,” she smiled.
“Who grassed us?”
She remained silent as she produced a single page document from her suit jacket and handed it to me. She then left the room. I unfolded the document and written on it was the names of my bosses and their signatures. I knew what I had to do. I knocked again on the door and asked the burly police officer to get the superintendent.
 As she walked in I said, “Paper and pen, if you please.”