He was dying and there was no witness.
The footsteps dragged closer to his door. Measured, confident steps. No way to stop the pain, and his body could not outlast the hurt. They would find him dead. They would stand in the cell and talk in quiet, controlled whispers of his age, fifty-one years. They would speak of his weight, seven kilos over. Of his smoking, two packets minimum a day. Of his exercise, the least that he could escape with. Of his eating, all that was put before him, and wiping up with bread the slicks of fat left on his plate. Textbook abuse and textbook penalty.
To die alone, that was an obscenity. To die without a hand to hold.
The footsteps reached his door.
The man tried to move on his bed, he failed. He tried again to shout, and there was only the thin wheeze of his breath.
There was the scrape of a drawn bolt, the hiss of a turned key in an oiled lock, the tinkling of a light chain cascading loose. He saw the face, shadowed by the steep black peak of the cap. Ironed shirt, pressed uniform, polished boots, bright splash of a medal ribbon. The man saw all of that and could not speak. A voice was directed towards him, there was the command for an answer. Slowly he moved his head as if that were a gesture of respect in itself. The moving of his head brought new agony, and his cheeks twisted. The uniform spun into a blur as it stepped back into the brightness of the landing. The man heard the voice, registered the urgency.
'Mr Jones… It's Demyonov… grey as a bloody battle-ship. Reckon it's one for the medic…'
Another set of pounding feet.
Another shadowed face at the door. Another strident call, and the man could not respond.
'Come on, Demyonov, let's have you. What's the matter?
Lost your bloody voice for once?'
His lips fluttered. There was a kaleidoscope of thoughts in his mind, and none could slide to his tongue. He peered back at the men at the door, and his eyes bled for attention.
'Get the medical orderly, and I should say a bit of speed about it.' Mr Jones was senior duty officer. The 'cons' stood up when Mr Jones came into their cells. He liked to say that he ran a tidy landing. No messing, no back talk. But the man could not rise, could not speak, and the burden of pain overwhelmed him.
'Not feeling so good, Demyonov? Well, not to worry.
Medic's coming over to have a look at you. You're a bit grey, I'll say that.'
From far down on the bed he heard the voice. He stared at Mr Jones's knees, and saw the careful darn of a short rip beside the knife crease. He remembered that it was said that Mr Jones had a kindly way with him. The cons reckoned there was a softness hidden behind the booming mouth and florid lips. The cons said that he'd learned a garrulous friendliness when he was young and had done shifts in the Pentonville death cell. They said that when things were really grim, like hideous and worse, that then Mr Jones could make himself almost a human. The old cons reckoned he'd have had a bright word for the lad who was being tripped through the door and up the steps and onto the platform as the clock chimed. He'd heard all those things about Mr Jones. You heard everything about everybody when you'd done three years in the Scrubs.
He raised his eyes. He saw the care of the afternoon shave, the eruption of worming veins on the cheeks, the nervousness flickering at Mr Jones's mouth.
'Don't you worry, Demyonov, Medic's on the way. Can't have you going under, can we? Not when you're going home. Well, that's the talk, isn't it?' The Medical Orderly was puffed by the time that he reached the cell door. The warder stayed outside, and the Orderly took Demyonov's fingers from Mr Jones. It was a cursory check, the wiping of the damp sheen from the prisoner's forehead, an open hand laid across his chest, two fingers on the wrist for the pulse.
'I'm going to get the Doctor in.'
'Drag him in from home?' queried Mr Jones.
'I'm not taking the rap for shifting this one… '
The Orderly turned from his patient to the warder in the doorway.
'… Get yourself down to the telephone, tell Admin that I want the Doctor. Make sure he knows who he'll be seeing, that'll bring him fast enough. Better get the Deputy Governor up too, but the Doctor first.'
And then there was nothing to do but wait and watch.
The Orderly crouched over the bed, wincing at the man's pain, and Mr Jones paced on tip-toe the short length of the solitary cell, and both wondered how long he would last. If he moved the man and killed him, he'd be subject to inquiry and inquest; if he let him be and allowed him to slip, the brickbats would fall as hard. This man above all others.
Everyone knew him in the Scrubs. Oleg Demyonov… described in chorus by the Attorney General and the Lord Chief Justice as the most dangerous individual threat to the security of the state of the last decade. A pudgy little bugger, overweight and balding, ready with a riposte to anyone.
Hold out, you little creep, hold out until the Doctor gets here. It was cold in the cell. Had to be, because for the last two years they'd shut the central heating down earlier. Not that Demyonov was shivering, he'd enough on his plate without feeling the chill of a January evening. The Orderly was cold, only the short white coat over his shirt, and his ears strained for sounds on the iron staircases.
The Doctor was young, with the aloof stamp of his trade.
Into the cell, opening his bag, taking the place of the Orderly. The Deputy Governor hovered behind him. The Doctor enacted his routine. Pulse, blood-pressure wrap on the arm, stethoscope to the chest. He spoke gently to the man who had been a spy, reacting to the faintest twitches of the eyebrows.
'Where's the pain, Demyonov…? Just in the chest…?
In the left arm as well…? Does the pain go further…?
Problem with breathing…? Has this ever happened before… ?'
The Doctor eased away from the bed, stripped off the wrap, laid the passive hand back across the man's chest.
'I want a 999 for an ambulance – he might have a chance at the Hammersmith. He's none here. His blood pressure's down in his boots.'
'If he's to go out of here to hospital, Home Office have to sanction it.'
'If he doesn't get to the Hammersmith, he'll be going out of here in a box.'
'It has to be cleared…'
'The ambulance or he's dead,' snapped the Doctor.
It was not a quick affair, the transfer of Oleg Demyonov some eight hundred yards from the Scrubs to the Hammersmith Hospital. Authorization to be granted, the patient to be carried tortuously on a stretcher down the steep staircase from the upper landing, locked gates to be negotiated. The prison was a whispering murmur of information by the time that the high wooden gates reluctantly swung'open, and the ambulance roared into a left turn past the gaunt homes of the gaol's staff. As if sensing freedom, the driver played a tattoo on his siren, though the road ahead was well lit and clear of traffic.
Into the Medical Block, into the lift, into the Coronary Care unit. The Doctor peeled away as the plastic double doors flapped shut in the wake of the wheeled stretcher. The Deputy Governor was at his shoulder.
'I wouldn't go in there if I were you. I mean he's not going to run away, is he? They're going to have their work cut out. He's not going to make a dash for the fire escape.'
The Deputy Governor and Mr Jones fidgeted in mutual discomfort. It went against the grain of their lives to let a prisoner out of sight. They heard through the doorway staccato shouts for jelly; for drip, for ECG. A small stampede of men charged past them and through the door. They heard the whining of a buzzer, the noise of fists beating on flesh.