The Blind Run (2 page)

The challenge came, from Hickley, an arm thrust out across his chest, halting him and the line beyond.

‘Got another one of you bastards,’ said the prison officer.

Charlie knew he’d have to say something. ‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Know what we did with spies in the war?’ Hickley was ex-Guards.

‘No.’

‘No what?’

‘No, Mr Hickley.’

‘We used to shoot them.’

Bollocks, thought Charlie. Hickley had never seen a spy in his life; probably hadn’t even seen combat. Hickley was a base camp type, a coal whitewasher and latrine scrubber.

‘I think we still should,’ said Hickley.

Providing his didn’t have to be the guilty finger on the trigger. Christ, how he’d like to have kicked the bullying bugger right in the crotch, thought Charlie.

‘What’s wrong with your boots?’ demanded the officer.

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing what?’

‘Nothing, Mr Hickley.’

‘They’re unlaced.’

‘There isn’t a regulation,’ said Charlie, who’d checked.

‘I like a tidy landing.’ Hickley was shaven-headed and hard- bodied from exercise and had a sergeant’s voice that echoed, so that everyone along the corridor could hear. ‘Undone boots aren’t tidy.’

Charlie said nothing.

‘So lace them up.’

Charlie allowed the look, too brief for him to be accused of insolence but sufficient for the man who’d faced hostility on a hundred parade grounds to know he meant it. Then he knelt, cautious against upsetting either his pot or that of the man directly behind him, and secured his boots. He did it carefully, tugging each loop through its socket and taking his time over the knots; the murmuring and shuffling grew behind him and at last he was aware of Hickley’s shift of impatience. Charlie went slowly on, adjusting and tightening the laces.

‘Get up!’

‘I haven’t tied them yet.’

‘I said get up.’

Charlie stood, as slowly as he had descended, to confront the officer. Hickley’s face burned red, except for the white patches of anger on his cheeks.

‘Be careful,’ said the man.

Charlie didn’t respond.

‘Very, very careful,’ insisted Hickley. He stood back, to let Charlie pass.

There had been an audience inside the sluices, as well as out, grouped around the centre runway to see what was happening. Two, both long timers, smiled just briefly in appreciation. Butterworth, controlling the main gangway, recognised his colleague’s defeat.

‘Move on!’ he said. ‘Everyone move on!’

There was jostling and further delay, while the slowly moving line became organised again. Instinctively Charlie stopped by the main sluice, where it was widest and where there were most people, rather than go into one of the side drains where he would have been in a cul de sac.

‘Move on,’ insisted Butterworth.

Doggedly Charlie remained where he was, letting other prisoners swirl and spill about him. He’d been backed into more blank alleys than this poxy lot put together and he didn’t intend the last day of the third month of his second year to start with some officially inspired thumping because he’d made some prison officer look a bloody fool. He was aware of Butterworth’s apologetic look to his friend beyond the doorway.

He realised that Prudell, who occupied the adjoining cell, had kept dutifully close to him. A Hickley man, Charlie knew; had to be because Hickley sanctioned the cell changes when Prudell got fed up with whatever prisoner he was screwing and felt like a change. And Prudell had sufficient muscle to keep the landing running smoothly.

‘Shaken but not stirred, is it?’ said Prudell, indicating the pot. He was a squat compact man serving eight years for grievous bodily harm: he’d nailed to his own desk the hand of a man who refused to pay protection money for a bingo hall in Haringay. The victim was sixty-eight years old.

‘Something like that,’ said Charlie. He was ready for the push when it came, not just from Prudell but from someone passing behind so he was able to avoid most of the urine from his pot and that of Prudell’s. Some still splashed on his trousers.

‘Told you to move along, stop causing a jam,’ said Butterworth.

Charlie put his pot under the rinse, scouring it out.

‘Sorry about that,’ said Prudell.

‘Why not lend me some perfume?’ said Charlie.

‘Any time, if you’re interested.’

Charlie picked up the line, going out past Hickley and back along the corridor. Inside his cell he looked down, disgustedly, at his stained trousers. Maybe it wouldn’t last long, he thought hopefully. Then again, it might. Hickley had lost face and in a place as miniscule and insular as a prison that was something that grew out of all proportion.

Knowing he would have to avoid any infraction of the regulations, Charlie was ready at the first sound of the washroom bell but inside the ablutions he hung back, waiting for the shaving area he wanted, abutting the wall so that he only had to worry about one side and that in constant reflection. He maintained the caution in the food line, because there were urns with scalding water. The porridge was slopped half in and half out of his bowl. Charlie didn’t protest.

He was as lucky with the seat in the mess hall as he had been in the washing area, with his back against the wall. He saw Prudell smirking two tables away: the companion was new, someone Charlie hadn’t seen before. Dark and very pretty: Greek or Italian, maybe.

Charlie had started eating by the time Eddie Hargrave eased in beside him.

‘Saw what happened at slop-out,’ said Hargrave, his voice hardly above a whisper, talking prison fashion, lips practically unmoving. He was a greying, wisp-haired man who had been a schoolteacher outside. Charlie still found it difficult to believe that after murdering his wife Hargrave had tried to dissolve her body in a mixture of lime and acid, even though Hargrave had talked at length about it and why he’d done it, because he found her in bed with his brother. The brother had been the headmaster, responsible for the school curriculum roster: he’d given the man two free periods by mistake, instead of a history lesson which would have kept him at school. Hargrave had killed him, too. Hargrave was in charge of the prison library in which Charlie worked, as his assistant.

‘The bastard picked on me.’

‘You asked for it, Charlie, scuffing about like that.’

‘Got bad feet.’

‘You cheeked him: shouldn’t cheek someone like Hickley. He’s authority and you can’t beat authority.’

That was something he’d never been able to learn, thought Charlie. ‘Careful it doesn’t involve you,’ he said sincerely.

Hargrave shook his head. ‘No one bothers about me, Charlie. I’m not one of the hard ones but there’s a kind of respect for a lifer.’

‘It’ll pass,’ said Charlie.

‘Be careful, till it does. You’ve got a long time to go.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Charlie, distantly. ‘Bloody long time.’

‘Papers have already been delivered to the library,’ said Hargrave.

Charlie mopped the last of his porridge from the bowl with a piece of bread. He supposed it was natural that Hargrave would want to talk about it.

‘Did you know him?’ asked the convicted murderer.

The name given throughout the trial, which he’d followed from the library papers, was Edwin Sampson, although if the man was the KGB agent the prosecution made him out to be then it would obviously have been part of the legend, the cover story to cover his time in England as an illegal.

‘No,’ said Charlie.

‘Papers say he worked in security: thought you did that, too.’

‘It was a long time ago for me,’ said Charlie. ‘And there’s a lot of different departments.’

‘They say he did a lot of damage.’

‘They always do.’

‘Word is that he’ll come here, after sentencing.’

For the first time Charlie started to concentrate. ‘Here?’

‘That’s the word from those who work in the governor’s office; guilty as buggery, so they say.’

‘Hickley said something, at the sluices,’ remembered Charlie.

‘That he was coming here?’

Charlie shook his head. ‘Just something about having got another of us bastards. Makes sense of the remark though, if he were coming here.’

The bell sounded, ending breakfast. The departure from the canteen was slow, as usual.

‘I want a drink,’ said Charlie. Like Hargrave, Charlie kept his head bowed, so no one would see even the words his lips formed.

‘What?’

‘A drink.’

‘That means Prudell: he’s the supplier.’

‘I know.’

‘He’d shop you, Charlie.’

‘I know that, too.’

Hargrave remained silent.

‘I’d understand if you said you wouldn’t get it for me,’ assured Charlie.

Hargrave sighed. ‘Money or tobacco?’

‘Tobacco.’

‘How much do you want?’

‘As much as I can get: I’ve saved up half a pound.’

‘It won’t be easy,’ said Hargrave.

‘I appreciate it, Eddie.’

‘Sure.’

‘I mean it. We could share it; the booze, I mean.’

‘Don’t drink, not any more,’ said Hargrave. ‘Pissed when I killed the missus, so I don’t drink any more. If I’d been sober I wouldn’t have hit her so hard. Wouldn’t be here.’

‘It’ll be there, if you want it.’

‘What do you want?’

‘Whatever there is.’

‘I’ve heard there’s whisky. And gin,’ said the older man.

‘Whisky, if there’s a choice.’

The mess hall was almost empty now. Charlie and Hargrave stood at last and joined the line to file out.

‘Thanks Eddie,’ said Charlie.

Hargrave didn’t reply.

The morning was spent re-indexing and replacing on the shelves the books that had been returned overnight but Charlie was ready long before the first borrowing period, the half an hour before the midday break. The dark-haired boy he’d seen at breakfast that morning with Prudell was the first one to enter the library.

‘I want a good spy book,’ said the boy. He lisped.

‘There isn’t one,’ said Charlie.

Sir Alistair Wilson had been disappointed with the Chelsea Flower Show. Or, to be more strictly accurate, with the roses. Because growing them was his hobby they were all he’d bothered to see. He thought the attempt to hybridise the Provence Duc de Fitzjames was a disaster, like sticking the stem into colouring instead of preserving water, which made a mockery of the bloom. And the hybrids themselves were pleasing but not outstanding: only the Mullard Jubilee was worth anything more than a second glance. He left early and considered going to his club but then decided against it. If he entered the Travellers without an obvious luncheon companion he risked being ambushed by bores and he didn’t want to relive an expedition up the Nile when the fallaheen knew their place and were damned glad of it or debate the superiority of mule over husky for an Arctic crossing. Instead he went immediately to the office. Although it was lunchtime and Sir Alistair wasn’t scheduled back until mid-afternoon his deputy, Richard Harkness, was in the office. Sometimes the Director wondered if Harkness slept on the premises.

‘Disappointing show,’ said Wilson.

‘I’ve never been,’ said Harkness.

‘Wouldn’t bother this year, if I were you.’

‘I won’t.’

‘How’s it look?’ demanded Wilson. Instead of going to his desk he went to the window with its view of the Thames and the Houses of Parliament beyond. His right leg was permanently stiff from being crushed under a falling polo pony and it was sometimes more comfortable to stand than to sit. Today was one of those days.

‘Good, I think,’ said Harkness. ‘Five obvious messages, four doubtful.’

‘Imagine the Russians will have intercepted?’

‘Maybe not all,’ said Harkness, who was given to caution. ‘But some; I’m sure they will have monitored some. Be astonishing if they hadn’t.’

‘Dangerous then?’

Harkness frowned at the question. He was a neat, proper man, pink-faced and tightly barbered: the suits were always dark and waistcoated and unobtrusive, the shirts hard-collared, the ties bland. People never remembered Richard Harkness: he didn’t want them to. ‘It was dangerous, from the beginning,’ he said.

Still looking out over London, Wilson said, ‘Sometimes I think how safe and protected we are here. Not like the poor buggers out there in the streets.’

Harkness, who was accustomed to his superior’s occasional philosophising, said nothing.

Wilson bent, massaging his rigidly stiff knee. ‘We’re going to need a lot of luck,’ he said. ‘A hell of a lot of luck.’

‘Somebody is,’ said Harkness.

Chapter Two

It took three days for the purchase to be made and Charlie was cheated. It wasn’t Hargrave, he knew: the poor old sod was as much a victim as he was, bullied by Prudell into taking or leaving what he was offered. For half a pound of tobacco Charlie got a flat medicine bottle of whisky, less than half what it should have been. As soon as he tasted it, Charlie knew it had been watered, too: he hoped it really had been water. Weakened or not, it was still marvellous. Bloody marvellous, in fact, the warmth of the booze feeling out through his chest and then deep into his gut, the welcome return of an old friend. Charlie knew it would be weeks before he could save up another sufficient quantity of tobacco and so he rationed himself, one sip in the morning, another in the afternoon, holding it in his mouth until it began to burn and then slowly releasing it, savouring its journey. Marvellous.

The library racks were metal, pre-drilled along the edge for any sort of adjustment or construction, to fit the room in which they were erected. They had a lip, about half an inch deep and by selecting small sized books he was able to create a secure hiding place for his bottle beneath them while at the same time maintaining the height to match that of the volumes on either side.

The rumour that the Russian spy currently on trial would be committed to Wormwood Scrubs spread throughout the prison, increasing the pressure on Charlie. On the way back from the sluices one morning he was nudged – he never discovered by whom – at the landing stairway and if he hadn’t been tensed against something happening and grabbed a guard rail he would have plunged down at least one set of metal stairs, towards the level below. There was never a seat for him in the recreation room, where there were fixed times to watch television and if he stood other prisoners grouped in a mob in such a way that he couldn’t see the set. Once, sufficiently alert again, he just managed to get his hand out of the way of the release of scalding steam from the tea urn and on two occasions he found a fly and a spider in his food.