‘Fool!’ said Sampson, ‘Stupid, idiotic fool.’ His voice menacingly soft, Sampson said. ‘I warned you what would happen if you did anything to endanger the attempt. And you did endanger it. OK, so you got away with it, but you’re still a stupid bastard to have tried it in the first place. From now on you’ll do exactly as I say, when I say and how I say. You understand?’
If everything were for real and he’d got the knife Charlie thought how much he would have liked to shove it right up the ass of this cocky little sod. ‘Yes,’ he said, humbly. ‘I understand. I’m sorry.’
‘Good!’ said Sampson, savouring the bully’s control. ‘So from now on you’re going to be the model prisoner. From now on you do everything by the book and you don’t even let an insolent thought enter your thick head. I don’t want any screw or any instructor to be aware of your existence even.’
‘A knife might have come in useful,’ said Charlie, exploring.
‘I’ll decide any protection we might need,’ said Sampson. ‘And arrange it.’
So there was a possibility, somehow, of weapons. Charlie realised he’d have to be careful of that, like he had to be careful of everything else. ‘You heard anything?’ he said, nodding to the radio.
Sampson nodded, the anger slipping away at the opportunity of boasting about a favourite toy. ‘All fixed,’ he said. ‘Practically all, anyway.’
‘So what is it?’ demanded Charlie. ‘When? How?’
Sampson smiled at Charlie’s urgency. ‘What’s the rule, about information? Our sort of rule?’ he prompted.
‘A need-to-know basis,’ recited Charlie.
‘Good to know you haven’t forgotten everything you were ever taught,’ said Sampson. ‘For the moment, you’ve no need to know.’
‘I thought you trusted me,’ said Charlie, knowing he had to make the protest.
‘I never said anything about trusting you,’ corrected Sampson. ‘I said I was glad that after so long you were becoming sensible, that I knew you couldn’t stand to stay in here and that I was taking you along because there isn’t any alternative and I know bloody well that because of how you feel you’d shop me if I tried to go without you. That isn’t trusting you: that’s knowing you.’
‘I know I risked cocking everything up, over that damned knife. That it was a mistake,’ said Charlie. ‘But there’s the danger of an even bigger mistake – a disastrous mistake – if you leave me blind. I’ve got to know something.’
‘I won’t leave you blind,’ assured Sampson. ‘You’ll be told, every step of the way.’
He’d forced it as far as he could – as far as Sampson would professionally expect him to force it and become unsettled if he didn’t – but Charlie recognised it was now time to stop. He said, ‘Christ, I can’t wait to get out of this bloody place!’
‘You won’t have to, not much longer,’ promised Sampson.
The corridor leading into the administration block to which he was still assigned passed the former library and as he filed along it to work the following morning Charlie was aware of the partially erected scaffolding, through the window. It was a restricted view and he only looked fleetingly in the direction because he didn’t want to attract the interest of any prison officer, but Charlie’s impression was that there appeared a lot of it. Charlie assumed, obviously, that the break would be at night; wouldn’t be easy, negotiating all that planking and tubing, in the dark. Certainly not in these pinching, constricting bloody prison boots. He didn’t expect there would be Hush Puppies, in Moscow. What would there be? he wondered. Difficulty, he decided. A hell of a lot of difficulty. With no choice – indeed, confronting a positive threat as an alternative – he’d had to agree to everything that Wilson had demanded but with the opportunity of proper, sensible examination that had been possible during his period of solitary confinement Charlie recognised it was a near impossible mission. He’d made blind contacts in the past, several of them, but then the authorities hadn’t been able to monitor or suspect his doing it. He didn’t know but he very much doubted that they’d let him wander around Moscow, going where he liked and doing what he liked. Not at first, anyway. And he didn’t intend staying a day over the agreed six months. Or did he? Back in the department, Wilson had promised. Past misdeeds forgotten and everything reinstated. Be nice to go back to a place where it appeared, from what everyone said, he still had a name and some sort of reputation with a brand new coup under his belt. Be like going back with a reference, a testimonial that he was as good as he’d ever been. Be showing he could win, too. That was how Charlie always thought of any operation in which he was successful. Winning. Charlie Muffin liked to win.
Charlie had been conscious at breakfast that two prisoners from his landing were missing but had not thought overly about it because there could have been many reasons for it, so it was not until he got into administration, where one of them worked, and saw he was absent from there as well that he asked around and heard of the sickness outbreak on his landing. It had started, according to the gossip, on the second day he was in solitary, sudden attacks of convulsive vomiting that the doctor had diagnosed as food poisoning. Almost a dozen men, five from Charlie’s landing alone, had gone down with it. There had been a cleanliness check in the kitchens and before he’d been released from solitary special disinfecting of the slop-out rooms. He mentioned it to Sampson, because in the cut off society of prison anything, no matter how inconsequential, is a talking point and this was hardly inconsequential anyway, aware as he did so of the man’s smile and not understanding the assurance that they wouldn’t go down with the complaint. It was not until the end of the week when they spoke about it again and this time it was Sampson who raised it, smiling as he had on the first occasion.
‘Doctor can’t seem to get to the bottom of this food poisoning,’ he said.
‘We’ve been lucky,’ said Charlie.
‘No, we haven’t,’ said Sampson.
What was the self-satisfied bugger talking about now? wondered Charlie. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.
‘Know what an emetic is, Charlie?’
‘Of course I do,’ said Charlie.
‘Apomorphine is an emetic,’ said Sampson.
Charlie was fully attentive now, knowing this wasn’t a meaningless conversation. ‘Where did you get it?’ he said.
Sampson sniggered. ‘From the very hospital where the poor victims are being treated! Isn’t that classic?’
‘How?’
‘Miller, the pederast who took the booze to you, when your arm was being treated. Supplied him, too, of course. Until he became dependent and I was able to make the demands.’
‘How did you introduce it into the food?’
‘Easiest thing in the world, in those canteen lines,’ said Sampson.
‘What’s the purpose?’
‘It’s already been achieved,’ said Sampson. ‘Officially there’s a salmonella outbreak they can’t control. They’re used to it and our going down with it will be just another indication of how ineffective they are being, in finding the cause.’
The corridor leading to the now abandoned library linked with the hospital, just one landing higher, realised Charlie. And wasn’t separated by the heavy dividing steel doors that partitioned off the individual landings in the main section. ‘When?’ he said.
‘Tonight,’ announced Sampson, enjoying the role as master of ceremonies.
‘Sick tonight or out tonight?’ persisted Charlie.
Sampson hesitated. ‘Both,’ he said.
Charlie felt a tingle, of expectation and excitement. Apprehension, too. What if he wasn’t as good, as he’d once been? It had, after all, been a long time. Four years, nearer five.
‘Frightened?’ demanded Sampson.
‘Yes,’ admitted Charlie, because there wasn’t any danger in the confession.
‘Everything is going to be OK,’ assured Sampson.
‘I’d still like to know more,’ said Charlie.
Instead of replying, Sampson extended his hand. In the palm lay two small, white pills, unmarked.