I watched him walk the length of the corridor, back to the stairs at the far end. I turned my attention to that shiny brown wall, imagining the red blood upon it, dripping to the floor, and poor Harry’s body writhing in its death throes, splattering his blood around. I followed in my mind the pages of the notebook Grimston had given me – the skull-shaped dome at the centre of the calculations and the estimations of speed – of that I was now sure – and the forces that needed to be applied to it through the resilience of the only structure unambiguously available in that hellish place.
I slowly retraced my steps along the corridor, counting the paces; at the head of the stairs leading down I noted their number. It did not surprise me that it matched the figure in Harry’s calculations: the distance in yards that would enable – for a fit and determined runner – to work up sufficient speed…
The governor looked up from the floor below. I smiled at him and waved, concealing as best I could the doubts that had now become certainties. As I did so the shrieks and howls from outside gave way to the banging of doors as the prisoners left the yard. The governor signalled to me to make haste, and then it was as if that malignant body of sound had suddenly been transplanted wholesale into the echoing emptiness of the building. It became a seething mass of raw masculinity, barbarous and threatening, without constraint. Against my will I was transported back to the bar of the Green Lion, and saw Harry’s shocked and innocent face as I thrust the bloodied knife into his hand; and heard myself saying ‘get rid of it for me’ before pushing my way, unnoticed, out of the scrum. Within that crush of bodies no-one had seen, and when the stunned and now silent mass began to disperse, there was Harry, bewildered and still, blood dripping to the floor from the knife held at his side.
Into my head came again the number of paces I’d taken along the corridor – the same figure circled in Harry’s notebook. The meaning of those calculations – of distance, and speed, and the consequences of impact – became icily clear. The governor’s clattering footsteps towards me seemed only seconds ahead of the advancing cohorts behind him. There was no going back. I turned to contemplate for one last time the length of the still empty corridor, and focused on that distant, beckoning brown wall. Then I lowered my head to achieve the greatest speed, and ran…
THE WIDOWER
Greville was busy at his workbench when the doorbell rang. Not the usual location for a workbench, in the bow of his drawing room window, but it was here that the light was best, and the view over the Thames was never less than inspirational.
It hadn’t always been like this. When Emma was alive he’d had to observe social norms. But since her death in a boating accident three years previously there had been no such restrictions, and he’d rearranged the house to please himself. So in that part of the room there were now lathes, electric drills, saws and goodness knows what else.
When he and Emma had started their distribution business out of a garage in Watford they could not have foreseen its takeover by one of the electronics giants and a windfall out of all proportion to its worth. That was what funded their move to a much grander house – Maple Lodge – overlooking the towpath at Strand-on-the-Green in Chiswick. And there, unencumbered by marital constraints, Greville had given free rein to his creative instincts – to be precise the development of miniaturised surveillance equipment that had already found a lucrative market with some of the more disreputable governments and, close on their heels, one or two of the scarcely more reputable multinationals. Above all, though, he enjoyed his work and wanted for little else in life, except that…
Except that his present lifestyle was not conducive to finding a replacement for Emma. Not that, towards the end, they’d enjoyed much of a physical relationship, but it had been enough to fend off temptation. Now, driven by self-determined abstinence, that need had grown.
Strangely, this was the thought foremost in his mind when, that bright autumnal afternoon, the doorbell rang. He’d forgotten the message from his niece Clarice to say she was calling by. She was his late brother Michael’s child, whom he hadn’t seen – nor frankly wanted to see – since Emma’s funeral. He remembered her as a gawky, bespectacled teenager, only dimly aware that – if the TV credits of recent documentaries were anything to go by – she was beginning to make a mark in that industry. So, when he opened the door, he was surprised to see a demure young woman, smartly dressed, with no sign of spectacles. He must have looked confused.
‘Uncle Greville, surely you remember me?’
‘Of course I do. Come on in.’
Greville was savvy enough to know that the visit was no social call. He surmised – wrongly as it turned out – that it had something to do with his business: a documentary perhaps, or a new series along the lines of Tomorrow’s World, a programme he’d followed avidly. ‘Now,’ he continued, ‘before we talk I must show you this.’ He held out a metal cylinder about ten centimetres long and slightly fatter than a fountain pen. ‘It’s what’s got people buzzing at the moment. I call it an inquiscope. Look.’
He pointed the object towards a bird sitting on a twig of a distant tree. Clarice saw the magnified image appear on a laptop screen on Greville’s workbench. And then, loud and clear, she heard the throaty warblings of the bird.
‘That’s impressive,’ Clarice said.
‘Then watch this.’ Greville pointed the instrument at an elderly couple walking along the opposite river bank. The expressions on their faces were clear to see and their voices carried around the room.
‘That’s amazing,’ Clarice said.
‘I thought you’d be impressed. Something there for us to talk about? A TV programme, possibly?’
‘Well, perhaps in the future. But you’re right about a television programme. Which is why I wanted to show you this.’ She handed him a neatly handwritten letter, which he began to read. ‘Wayside TV Productions – my company – is making a series where long lost family members are reunited. Not very original, but it will draw in the audiences. When I received this I thought of you.’
The letter was from a young woman – so Greville presumed – called Samantha, now living in the UK but who had been brought up as a foster child in Australia. By chance she’d come across a note from her long-dead mother to a man apparently trying to absolve himself from being her father – and giving his family name. Samantha had seen Clarice’s name – with the same surname – in a list of TV credits and this was her letter to the company. Clarice, dimly aware that an uncle had migrated to Australia as a teenager, had come to the conclusion they might just be related.
‘So where do I fit in?’ Greville asked.
‘We thought you’d like to meet her – for one of our programmes.’
‘Me? Why not you?’
‘Being an employee rules me out. Besides, with all this fascinating stuff’ – she swept her arm across the workbench with an expression of profound admiration – ‘you would be… well… of much more interest to our viewers.’
Greville glimpsed another opportunity for the commercial exposure of his inventions. ‘But what’s she like?’ he asked, foreseeing obstacles.
As if as an afterthought Clarice scrabbled in her handbag and drew out a photograph of a slim young woman with regular features and long, straight black hair.
‘Doesn’t resemble my brother,’ Greville said. ‘Was her mother English?’
‘I wouldn’t know. The question is, would you be happy to meet her?’
‘In front of the cameras?’
‘Of course.’