‘Keep your voice down.’ Jeb glanced around as if he were afraid someone might have overheard.
The howling seemed louder, the yells and catcalls of the surrounding voices closer. Magnus would have liked to have found a cell, climbed into bed and hidden himself beneath the covers, until whatever was about to happen, happened, but the smell of Pete’s illness was still sharp in his memory and he knew that once closed, cell doors were not so easily opened.
Jeb took a swift intake of breath and whispered, ‘They’re coming.’
The howling was upon them. A squad of men, most of them still in prison tracksuits, rounded the corner. The wolf-man gambolled beside them like a mascot. He was smaller than Magnus had imagined; a chubby, middle-aged man who it would be easy to imagine devoting Sunday afternoons to washing his car, were it not for the mad bluster of his dance, the crazy tilt of his head. The prisoners had broken up bunks and benches and armed themselves with chair and bed legs. A couple of them carried fire extinguishers. Magnus wondered why it had not occurred to him to arm himself in the same way. He leapt to his feet, ready to run in the opposite direction, but Jeb grabbed his arm.
‘Stand your ground.’ Jeb pulled his baseball cap low over his eyes, hiding his features in the shadow of its brim. ‘This is our best chance.’ He stepped into the middle of the corridor and raised a hand in greeting, like a man trying to stop a car on a country road. The group faltered to a halt. No one spoke and then Jeb said, ‘Okay to join you lads?’
‘We don’t need any screws,’ a voice from the back said.
There were about fifteen of them, Magnus reckoned. He wondered how they had got out and hoped that no one had seen him and Jeb crossing the courtyard, leaving other prisoners trapped in their cells.
‘Do we look like screws?’ Jeb’s voice was hard and challenging.
The wolf-man waved a chair leg lightly in the air, the way a fool might wave his sceptre. ‘You’re dressed like off-duty screws, or filth…’
Jeb’s head jerked at the mention of police. ‘We look like screws cos we nicked these clothes from their locker room. We thought they might help us get away. We just want out, same as you do.’
One of the prisoners started to cough, a second man joined in and another spat on the ground.
‘Anyone know these boys?’ a tall man near the front asked.
There was no one in charge, Magnus realised, no one to make the decision to let them join the group. He said, ‘I just got put in here on Friday, no trial, no lawyer. Emergency measures, the police told me.’ He let some of the despair he was feeling leak into his voice. ‘It’s been a fucking nightmare. All I’m interested in is getting home. I’ve got family I need to get back to.’
The tall man nodded. He looked at Jeb. ‘Do I know you?’
Jeb lifted his face and stared him straight in the eyes. ‘Ever worked the rigs?’
‘No.’
‘Maybe we met somewhere.’ Jeb shrugged. ‘I work the rigs, three weeks on, three weeks off. It makes you stir-crazy. Occasionally it gets me into a bit of bother. Drunk and disorderly; expected a night in the cells, woke up in here.’
The tall man glanced at the men behind him. No one said anything and he gave Magnus and Jeb a curt nod.
‘Plan is we go out mob-handed. Extra bodies should be a help.’
Magnus said, ‘We met a couple of guys earlier. They told us there’s a squad at the front door checking what people are in for and deciding who gets out.’
‘We heard that.’ The tall man snorted. ‘There’s always plenty want to make themselves fucking guvnor.’
‘Fuck the guvnor!’ the wolf-man shouted. A few of the men took up the cry. The wolf-man leapt into his dance again and the men stepped on, their voices rising once more. Magnus realised they were scared and the realisation tightened fear’s grip on him. Jeb shoved himself into the huddle of bodies. He grasped Magnus by the shoulder, taking him with him.
Magnus pulled the hood of his stolen jacket up over his head. ‘I’m not sure about this.’
Jeb’s voice was low. ‘Have you got a better suggestion?’
Once, on a Christmas visit to Edinburgh organised by the High School, his cousin Hugh had dragged Magnus on to the starflyer in Princes Street Gardens fairground. Joining the squad of escapees reminded Magnus of the sensation of suddenly being borne aloft by the ride. He felt the same swoop of danger in his stomach, the same loss of control.
Magnus had thrown up over the side of the starflyer. His vomit had been snatched away by the wind, travelling it seemed in one solid mass towards the south side of the gardens. Hugh had laughed so hard Magnus had thought his cousin might throw up too. ‘I was just imagining some poor wee man walking his dog and getting hit in the face by your spew,’ Hugh said later as the two of them walked along Rose Street in search of a pub that would not be too fussy about the age of its clientele.
Hugh had filled himself full of vodka and pills and walked into the sea, not long before Magnus had decided to hell with islands and left for London. Magnus had often wondered if Hugh had been scared when he did it, or if the drink and drugs had drowned his cousin’s fears, even as the bitter sea slid over his head and into his lungs.
The wolf-man capered beside them like a fool at a Morris dance. He waved the chair leg he was carrying lightly in the air, like a sceptre. ‘There’ll be a squad of soldiers waiting to mow us down soon as we step out those gates.’ The wolf-man’s voice was high and excited. He pointed the chair leg as if it were a gun and made a rattling noise, aiming it at the prisoners behind him. Somebody knocked it from his hand and someone else kicked it away. The wolf-man scrabbled on the floor, among the feet of the men, searching for it. Magnus thought they had lost him, but it was as if the wolf-man sensed something different about him and Jeb. He soon returned to their side.
‘Piss off,’ Jeb said. ‘Unless you want me to take that stick off you and shove it up your arse.’
‘You would, wouldn’t you?’ the wolf-man said in a camp voice, grinning with delight. He thrust his face close and whispered, ‘I know who you are.’ Jeb made a lunge for him, but the wolf-man was faster. He ducked backward into the small group of men. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not a grass.’
‘Prick.’ Jeb’s jaw bunched, but he let the wolf-man go.
The bodies of two screws lay slumped on the floor of the corridor, each of them marked with signs of the sweats.
Magnus whispered, ‘What the fuck is this thing?’
Someone said, ‘The army will have an antidote.’
Jeb touched the pocket that held the Taser, as if it were a talisman against infection. ‘It was probably those army bastards that caused it in the first place.’
Magnus said, ‘So maybe we should stick around and get vaccinated.’
Jeb laughed. ‘Think they’d share it with scum like us? Who’s to say they didn’t drop a test-tube accidentally-on-purpose? It wouldn’t be the first time inmates have been used as guinea pigs.’
The inmates’ conviction that the authorities knew everything reminded Magnus of the dying youth they had met earlier. They’ll sort us out, he had said.
‘The sweats isn’t just killing prisoners.’ Magnus jerked a thumb backward to where the screws’ bodies lay slouched together in a corner.
The wolf-man was suddenly at their side. He did a twirl and then staggered with the dizziness of it. ‘Collateral damage.’ He giggled. ‘Scratch a screw and you’ll find a bastard, it’s no great loss.’ He waved his chair leg in the air. ‘Me, you, these cunts, the whole stinking world. None of it would be a great loss.’