Scraping of chairs and tables.
Evans: “Thank you very much, sir.”
McLeery: “A’ right, was it?”
Evans: “Not too bad.”
McLeery: “Good... Mr. Stephens!” (Very loud)
The Governor heard the door clang to for the last time. The examination was over.
“How did he get on, do you think?” asked Stephen as he walked beside McLeery to the main gates.
“Och. I canna think he’s distinguished hissel, I’m afraid.” His Scots accent seemed broader than ever, and his long black overcoat, reaching almost to his knees, fostered the illusion that he had suddenly grown slimmer.
Stephens felt pleased that the Governor had asked him, and not Jackson, to see McLeery off the premises, and all in all the morning had gone pretty well. But something stopped him from making his way directly to the canteen for a belated cup of coffee. He wanted to take just one last look at Evans. It was like a programme he’d seen on TV — about a woman who could never really convince herself that she’d locked the front door when she’d gone to bed: often she’d got up twelve, fifteen, sometimes twenty times to check the bolts.
He re-entered D Wing, made his way along to Evans’s cell, and opened the peep-hole once more. Oh no! CHRIST, NO! There, sprawled back in Evans’s chair was a man (for a semi-second Stephens thought it must be Evans), a grey regulation blanket slipping from his shoulders, the front of his closely cropped, irregularly tufted hair awash with fierce red blood which had dripped already through the small black beard, and was even now spreading horribly over the white clerical collar and down into the black clerical front.
Stephens shouted wildly for Jackson: and the words appeared to penetrate the curtain of blood that veiled McLeery’s ears, for the minister’s hand felt feebly for a handkerchief from his pocket, and held it to his bleeding head, the blood seeping slowly through the white linen. He gave a long low moan, and tried to speak. But his voice trailed away, and by the time Jackson had arrived and despatched Stephens to ring the police and the ambulance, the handkerchief was a sticky, squelchy wodge of cloth.
McLeery slowly raised himself, his face twisted tightly with pain. “Dinna worry about the ambulance, man! I’m a’ right... I’m a’ right... Get the police! I know... I know where... he...” He closed his eyes and another dip of blood splashed like a huge red raindrop on the wooden floor. His hand felt along the table, found the German question paper, and grasped it tightly in his bloodstained hand. “Get the Governor! I know... I know where Evans...”
Almost immediately sirens were sounding, prison officers barked orders, puzzled prisoners pushed their way along the corridors, doors were banged and bolted, and phones were ringing everywhere. And within a minute McLeery, with Jackson and Stephens supporting him on either side, his face now streaked and caked with drying blood, was greeted in the prison yard by the Governor, perplexed and grim.
“We must get you to hospital immediately. I just don’t—”
“Ye’ve called the police?”
“Yes, yes. They’re on their way. But—”
“I’m a’ right. I’m a’ right. Look! Look here!” Awkwardly he opened the German question paper and thrust it before the Governor’s face. “It’s there! D’ye see what I mean?”
The Governor looked down and realized what McLeery was trying to tell him. A photocopied sheet had been carefully and cleverly superimposed over the last (originally blank) page of the question paper.
“Ye see what they’ve done, Governor. Ye see...” His voice trailed off again, as the Governor, dredging the layers of long-neglected learning, willed himself to translate the German text before him:
Sie sollen dem schon verabredeten Plan genau folgen. Der wichtige Zeitpunkt ist drei Minuten vor Ende des Examens... “You must follow the plan already some-thinged. The vital point in time is three minutes before the end of the examination but something something — something something... Don’t hit him too hard — remember, he’s a minister! And don’t overdo the Scots accent when...”
A fast-approaching siren wailed to its crescendo, the great doors of the prison yard were pushed back, and a white police car squealed to a jerky halt beside them.
Detective Superintendent Carter swung himself out of the passenger seat and saluted the Governor. “What the hell’s happening, sir?” And, turning to McLeery: “Christ! Who’s hit him?”
But McLeery cut across whatever explanation the Governor might have given. “Elsfield Way, officer! I know where Evans...” He was breathing heavily, and leaned for support against the side of the car, where the imprint of his hand was left in tarnished crimson.
In bewilderment Carter looked to the Governor for guidance. “What—?”
“Take him with you, if you think he’ll be all right. He’s the only one who seems to know what’s happening.”
Carter opened the back door and helped McLeery inside; and within a few seconds the car leaped away in a spurt of gravel.
“Elsfield Way,” McLeery had said; and there it was staring up at the Governor from the last few lines of the German text: “From Elsfield Way drive to the Headington roundabout, where...” Yes, of course. The Examinations Board was in Elsfield Way, and someone from the Board must have been involved in the escape plan from the very beginning: the question paper itself, the correction slip...
The Governor turned to Jackson and Stephens. “I don’t need to tell you what’s happened, do I?” His voice sounded almost calm in its scathing contempt. “And which one of you two morons was it who took Evans for a nice little walk to the main gates and waved him bye-bye?”
“It was me, sir,” stammered Stephens. “Just like you told me, sir. I could have sworn—”
“What? Just like I told you, you say? What the hell—?”
“When you rang, sir, and told me to—”
“When was that?” The Governor’s voice was a whiplash now.
“You know, sir. About twenty past eleven, just before—”
“You blithering idiot, man! It wasn’t me who rang you. Don’t you realize—” But what was the use? He had used the telephone at that time, but only to try (unsuccessfully, once more) to get through to the Examinations Board.
He shook his head in growing despair and turned on the senior prison officer. “As for you, Jackson! How long have you been pretending you’ve got a brain, eh? Well, I’ll tell you something, Jackson. Your skull’s empty. Absolutely bloody empty!” It was Jackson who had spent two hours in Evans’s cell the previous evening; and it was Jackson who had confidently reported that there was nothing hidden away there — nothing at all. And yet Evans had somehow managed to conceal not only a false beard, a pair of spectacles, a dog-collar, and all the rest of his clerical paraphernalia, but also some sort of weapon with which he’d given McLeery such a terrible blow across the head. Aurrgh!
A prison van backed alongside, but the Governor made no immediate move. He looked down again at the last line of the German: “... to the Headington roundabout, where you go straight over and make your way to... to Neugraben.” Neugraben? Where on earth—? ‘New’ something. Newgrave? Never heard of it. There was a Wargrave, somewhere near Reading, but... No, it was probably a code word, or— And then it hit him. Newbury! God, yes! Newbury was a pretty big sort of place but—
He rapped out his orders to the driver. “St. Aidâtes Police Station, and step on it! Take Jackson and Stephens here, and when you get there ask for Bell. Chief Inspector Bell. Got that?”