The Blind Run (3 page)

Hargrave didn’t sit with him any more. Charlie didn’t blame the man. Their only contact was in the library and even then surreptitious because there was a screw on duty.

‘Seen it happen before,’ said Hargrave. They were shelf stocking and Hargrave was in the line beyond, blocked from view by the intervening books so Charlie could only hear his whispered voice.

‘How long does it last?’

‘No telling.’

‘I’m pissed off with it.’

‘You’re supposed to be.’

‘What can I do?’

‘Nothing.’

‘I’m going to get hurt.’

There was a pause from the unseen man. ‘It might stop, if you were.’

‘You mean I’ve got to let it happen! Don’t be bloody stupid!’

When the silence stretched out, Charlie said, ‘I’m sorry.’

At last Hargrave said, ‘I’t’s your attitude, Charlie – fuck everyone. You treat the officers like idiots and you haven’t aligned yourself with any group, here in prison. No one likes that: you’re supposed to conform.’

‘I don’t conform.’

‘You’re going to get hurt,’ confirmed Hargrave. ‘You’ve been inside long enough to know that. So far you’ve been lucky. Or clever. Or whatever. But it can’t last. You can be smart-assed outside, because at the end of the day you can always go home, safe by yourself. But there’s nowhere to go in jail. You’re here. Always.’

Completely concealed against any observation, Charlie grimaced. Why hadn’t the bastards kept their promise! Where was the sodding deal! He looked along the rack, to the carefully regimented set of books hiding his precious booze. There wasn’t much left: less than a third. He needed more.

‘Take a beating, Charlie.’

‘Bollocks.’

‘Until you’ve been taught a lesson that all the landings in this block recognise, then Hickley’s a cunt. You can’t make prison officers look cunts, Charlie: not even if they are.’

That night Charlie took the bottle back to his cell. He was careful, confident that he was unobserved, removing it from its concealment under the pretext of replacing some returned books and easing it down the waistline of his trousers, against the skin at the back, so the elastic of his under-pants kept it in place; the trousers were sufficiently ill fitting to prevent any bulge and his tunic jacket was low, as well.

There was sticky tape in the library, for basic repairs to torn books and Charlie took some of that with him to the cell. The bottom of the lavatory pot was recessed, creating a small cavity and into it he wedged the bottle, securing it with the tape.

Charlie sat alone, ostracised, during the evening meal and at recreation didn’t bother to go to the television room where he would have been an object of more amusement than whatever was showing on the screen. Instead he stayed in the cell, waiting for lock-up. He squatted on his bunk, back against the wall, feet on the bed edge, so that his knees were tight against his chest. The pot was the object of his concentration. He was trapped, just like Hargrave had said he was: there wasn’t any comparison to anything he’d known outside, no matter how expert he had been. Tough spots, certainly: apparently disastrous on several occasions. But there’d always been room to move, to manoeuvre: somewhere, if winning was impossible, where he could run. He’d never cared that the odds were against him, because always he’d been able to think himself out. Which was an apt word. He wasn’t out, not any more. And wouldn’t be, not for another twelve years and eight months and one week and one day. He was in, caged and trapped like an animal in a circus and like an animal in a circus confronted by men in uniforms, goading him with prods and sticks to snarl and fight. Except that in circuses the goads weren’t supposed to hurt.

How much longer for Christ’s sake before the doors were closed and he could get to the bottle! The landings and balconies outside murmured with activity, an ant-hill of humans. Or should it be sub-humans?

Charlie was conscious of people passing outside his cell and of their gazing in. He didn’t respond. It came at first, like it always did, by sound and not the sound of the final bell; a metal against metal noise, impossible initially to identify as doors being closed and secured and then more recognisable, the solid clang and then the scrape of ratchets engaging cogs as the keys were turned. Charlie stayed gazing at the concealment pot. He swallowed, dry-throated and ran his tongue tentatively over his lips. Not long now. Not sufficient to get pissed on: to forget even. Just the only direction in which to run. The sound was very near now, solid and positive, like corks being driven tightly into bottles. Charlie moved at last, putting his feet against the floor and sitting upright, looking expectantly towards the door.

Hickley filled the entrance, with Butterworth behind. And then Charlie saw two more warders as well and knew it wasn’t lock-up time.

‘Cell search,’ announced Hickley.

Set-up, thought Charlie. Fuck!

He got to his feet. ‘Nowhere else?’ he said.

‘Not interested in anywhere else, just here,’ said Butterworth. As if fearing Charlie hadn’t heard, he said again. ‘Cell search.’ He jerked his head. ‘Outside.’

Obediently Charlie moved out on to the landing, putting himself between the two waiting warders. He stood with his back against the rail, gazing back in. Hickley and Butterworth were very good, working as a team, jabbing at brickwork for loose or disguised mortar, expertly stripping the bed and pressuring the mattress and pillow for anything concealed, then upending the actual wooden furniture, probing the undersides of drawers and frames, knowing every hiding place. They left the pot until last purposely Charlie was sure. Hickley turned it over, the confident conjuror knowing the rabbit would be in place.

‘What’s this then?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Never seen it before?’

‘No.’

‘Perhaps it’s a sample,’ said Butterworth.

‘He’s not on the hospital list,’ said Hickley, moving ponderously through their prepared joke.

Hickley withdrew the stopper and made the pretence of smelling the contents. ‘Whisky!’ he said, the voice that of someone making an important discovery. He came to the door, looking out at Charlie. ‘What you doing with alcohol in your cell?’

‘Not mine,’ said Charlie stubbornly.

‘Bullshit.’

‘Don’t know anything about it.’

‘You’re up before the governor,’ announced Hickley. ‘You’re in trouble. Big trouble.’

Asshole, thought Charlie.

The governor’s name was Armitrage. He had a pink face, a lot of white hair, disordered clothes and the distracted, absent-minded demeanour of an academic. It was an impression heightened by his attitude towards the prisoners. He regarded them as a hopeful schoolmaster regarded unruly pupils, slightly bewildered and vaguely disappointed at their rejection of the trust he placed in them but always refusing to abandon the expectation that they would one day reform and make the world a perfect place.

‘You’ve heard what Chief Officer Hickley and Mr Butterworth have said?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And you insist you know nothing whatsoever about it?’

‘Yes, sir.’

The governor looked expectantly towards the two warders.

‘Nothing there during the cell search a week ago, sir,’ insisted Hickley, stiffly to attention. ‘He’s sole occupation, on your instructions.’

Armitrage came back to Charlie. ‘It’s a serious matter.’

Charlie said nothing.

‘I ask you again, what was a partially filled bottle of whisky doing in your cell?’

‘Don’t know, sir. I’d never seen it before.’ Charlie was conscious of the tightness with which Hickley and Butterworth were holding themselves. Armitrage was a man who would never thoroughly convict without proof and by maintaining his ignorance, Charlie was denying that absolute proof. He was making it worse for himself on the landing, but he didn’t give a fuck: things couldn’t be much worse than they already were. Twelve years, eight months, one week and one day. Dear God!

‘I’m not convinced,’ announced Armitrage.

One way or the other, guessed Charlie. ‘Don’t know anything about it, sir,’ he repeated.

Armitrage sighed, looking aimlessly around his desk. The office was in the highest block of the prison and the windows weren’t barred. Charlie could see the barbed wire topped walls and then the White City beyond. There were some high buildings which he guessed were the television centre and beyond that tufts of trees. Shepherds Bush straight in front, Charlie calculated: Notting Hill to the left. There were people out there, ordinary people, worried about mortgages and debts and girlfriends being pregnant and bosses not liking them and imagining that nothing could be worse, whatever happened to them. Lucky sods.

‘What about fingerprints, Mr Hickley?’

The chief officer went even more rigid. ‘There were none, sir,’ he said.

Because you were too bloody anxious, thought Charlie. If they’d waited, just five minutes after lock up, they’d have caught him bang to rights. It had been instinctive to wipe the bottle, after securing it in its hiding place. Some things still were.

‘Then there’s no definite proof, is there?’ said the governor mildly.

‘Concealing it, sir,’ said Hickley desperately. ‘It’s an offence to conceal liquor.’

‘True,’ agreed Armitrage. He turned back to Charlie. ‘You lose all privileges for a fortnight,’ he declared. ‘No recreation period, no tobacco, fined your work allowance and confined to cell immediately after evening meal.’ The governor paused. Then he said, ‘Your employment in the prison library is a favoured one. I won’t take it away from you on this occasion. If there are any further infringements of the regulations, I will.’ The man appeared embarrassed at his own forcefulness.

He’d won, Charlie decided. Apart from the tobacco and the wages, he wasn’t losing anything he hadn’t lost already. He was still in the library which was the important thing. Charlie knew they were trying to get him into one of the prison workshops, among too much noise and too many people. They’d try again.

‘Remember what I said,’ warned the governor.

‘Yes, sir.’

Charlie marched militarily between Hickley and Butterworth from the governor’s office, through the outer area and then back into the corridors leading into the jail. He didn’t think they’d attempt anything openly against him but he still walked tensed against the smallest movement from either side. No one spoke. He reached his cell without incident, thrusting suddenly into it before they could trap him in the doorway. Hickley smirked at the fear.

‘You should be frightened,’ said Hickley. ‘I’m going to get you. Really get you. Don’t like smart buggers on my landing. Don’t like them at all.’

Charlie knew he meant it.

The restrictions were supposed to be a penalty but Charlie actually found them a relief. He didn’t smoke, so the tobacco represented only a currency and the deprivation of that and of his official wages was bearable. He’d already abandoned the recreation period and his feet, which ached constantly within the incarceration of the prison-issue boots, had always made exercise more of an ordeal than a benefit to his health: he far preferred walking back and forth along the length of his cell in his stockinged feet. In his cell he was safe: protected. He recognised it as an institutionalised attitude; of fear, of Hickley and Butterworth and Prudell and God knows who else. So what? He was institutionalised. And he was scared. Shit scared. Worse than ever before. What made it worse was knowing he only had two weeks of safety.

The governor’s decision meant he was escorted every day from his cell to the library and back again and that the warder in charge had to have him constantly in sight; obediently Charlie obeyed every rule, so there was no opportunity for any conversation between him and Hargrave. Despite the difficulties, the old man thanked him on the first day for not grassing and identifying him as the purchaser of the booze. It was during shelf stocking, the best time.

‘You’re a good guy, Charlie.’

‘It’s a minority opinion.’

‘There’s a joke, going around.’

‘About what?’

‘The booze. Prudell diluted it, you know.’

‘I know.’

‘Do you want to know how?’

‘No,’ insisted Charlie, swallowing with difficulty.

‘He’s a bastard.’

‘Right bastard,’ agreed Charlie. He felt sick.

‘I wanted to be your friend, Charlie.’

‘I understand.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s all right,’ said Charlie. ‘Stay safe.’

‘And you.’

‘I’ll try.’

‘Try hard,’ murmured Hargrave. ‘I’ve seen this happen to people before in the nick. They end up mad.’

It was on the fifth day of restrictions when he heard them coming along the landing, an hour after he’d been confined to the cell: it wasn’t quite dark, the grey time of night. The cell light was on but it didn’t seem to help much. Charlie pulled away from the door, hunched on the bunk, knowing intuitively where the footsteps would stop. They did.

It was neither Hickley nor Butterworth: Charlie thought he recognised one of the screws from reception but he wasn’t sure. Between them was a comparatively young man, younger than Charlie anyway, still upright and looking about him demandingly. He had an outside haircut and the discomfited look of a new prison entrant, suddenly deprived of clothes that fitted him and put instead into the bluish grey uniform that came only in stock sizes.

His nose wrinkled at the very entrance to the cell. ‘Dear God!’ he said. ‘What on earth is this!’ It was an exaggerated voice, stretching vowels and consonants, a voice that had responded to tutors and prep school teachers and university dons and got respect from head waiters and hotel doormen.

‘Home,’ said Charlie. ‘There’s no place like it.’

The British embassy to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics borders the Moskva river, almost opposite the Kremlin: the view from one to the other is uninterrupted and the story is that during his manic, despotic reign Stalin used to become apoplectic looking from his window to see the Union Jack rippling so close and so defiantly in the wind.

The communications centre for the British embassy is a peculiar room, deep in the basement and far below ground level: before workmen were flown in from London to tank the chamber, dampness from the adjoining river seeped through the walls and stained them. Appropriately, the discoloration was an iron red, not the green of mould.