Sampson was ready before he was, whispering ‘come on! come on!’ from the doorway. He unlocked it a second time as Charlie approached, easing it back from the frame and staring out. He nodded, indicating that it was clear, leading out into the corridor with Charlie directly behind. There were no cells on this landing, which formed the beginning of the administration section. It was illuminated by the dull green night-lights. The two men still moved cautiously, hesitating every few steps for any noise of approaching officers. The longest pause was at the steps leading to the lower landing, where the empty library room was: the cells began at the far end and if a prisoner were standing against the bars of his cell there was a possibility of their being seen. Sampson mimed a treading motion with his hands, warning Charlie to walk softly, then slowly began his descent. When they reached the bottom of the stairway they stopped again, pulled into the concealing cover of the well. From the far end came the murmur of conversation from the cells. From where they were, it was impossible for Charlie to see if anyone were against the cell door: it was a very common place for prisoners to stand, particularly if they were attempting some sort of contact with a neighbouring cell.
Sampson led again, keeping to the left of the corridor, to bring himself to the library door. Charlie crept behind him, nerves tight for some shout of discovery. What happened if they got caught now?, wondered Charlie. If everything was cocked up before it even had a chance to start and Wilson lost his chance would the man come forward and admit to a deal, with a prison officer suffering Christ knows what injuries? And another man as well? Government departments didn’t do that, when things went wrong. They put up the barricades and denied everything. Jesus! thought Charlie.
But they reached the door unchallenged. Sampson held the connecting chain in his left hand, to prevent it vibrating and sounding against the door and tried to locate the correct key with his right. What if the officer didn’t have the library key on his chain? The fresh fear surged through Charlie. Taylor was attached to the section, so he supposed there should have been a key but the room was disused now and in any case there might be the system of limiting keys, to apply only to the necessary duty. Charlie strained forward, feeling the sweat run in irritating, itching paths down his back.
Sampson opened the door on his fifth attempt, with only two more keys to try. Charlie was aware of Sampson’s shoulders sagging, a moment of abrupt relief, and realised the other man had had the same fear as himself. The click, as the lock moved, seemed to reverberate along the corridor and they both stared in the direction of the occupied cells, for any sign that it had been heard. There was nothing. Still Sampson was carefully easing the door open to guard against any squeaking sound and only creating the minimum gap for them to slip through. Sampson went first, then Charlie. Sampson was as careful closing it as he had been opening. The lock clicked shut with another loud-sounding noise and again, momentarily, they tensed. Again, nothing.
The corridor lights and that which came in through the window were sufficient for them to move across the room, which was cleared anyway of everything except the skeletal shelves to be restocked when the outside extension work was completed. Charlie set out immediately for the window, aware as he got closer that the bars had been removed, but his attention was more fully upon Sampson. The man wasn’t going to the windows, as he should have done, but standing instead against the shelving by a far wall, legs apart and gazing up, as if trying to orientate himself. As the impression came to Charlie he realised that was exactly what Sampson was doing. The man paced off two divided sections in the shelving and reached up and even from where he stood Charlie detected the grunt of satisfaction.
‘What is it?’ whispered Charlie, when Sampson came to the window.
The other man held out his hand, palm uppermost. Charlie felt the sensation of sickness, like he’d known earlier in the day after ingesting the drug. Cupped easily in Sampson’s hand was a short-barrelled gun. In the poor light Charlie couldn’t positively identify it but it looked like a. 38, maybe a Smith and Wesson.
‘Where the hell did you get that?’
‘Get anything, with the right contacts,’ said Sampson. ‘And I didn’t bugger about, remember? Arranged for my bank to transfer?2,000 into Prudell’s account, a month ago. Prudell’s sister brought it in, inside a radio just like mine. Idiots didn’t check the inside of the case, just that it played when they turned the knobs. Didn’t think that a small transistor inside a big case left lots of room for something to be hidden.’
‘What do you want it for?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’
‘Why’s it so bloody necessary to hurt people!’
Sampson levelled the gun, so that the muzzle was only inches from Charlie’s chest. ‘I told you nothing was going to stop me,’ he said. ‘Just like I said I’d kill you if you got in the way. You thinking of getting in the way?’
‘The sound of that would bring every screw in the place here in about thirty seconds,’ said Charlie.
‘But you wouldn’t be alive to see it,’ said Sampson.
The bastard was mad enough to do it, Charlie thought. He said, ‘No, I’m not going to get in the way. Let’s get to hell out of here.’
Without bars at the windows, some attempt had been made at security by meshing barbed wire against the scaffolding frame. Sampson adopted his customary role as leader, squatting on the window ledge and carefully trying to ease the strands aside, to create a sufficient gap, but even when he moved his clothes were snagged on barbs and Charlie was caught when he tried to follow and in twisting, to try to free himself, he drove a point deeply into his hand, wincing at the sudden pain. He felt the warm stickiness of blood on his hand as he crawled forward, through the wire and on to the planking that had been set up, as a walkway, between the metal struts. Sampson was just beyond, hunched impatiently, not talking through the fear of discovery but making his familiar snatching, beckoning movements. Despite Sampson’s demand for speed, they could not move fast. The floodlights were on in the yard, but there were canvas sheets hung like a wall along the edge of the scaffolding and while that sheeting provided them with perfect protection against any outside patrol, it meant no lights penetrated their narrow, uneven walkway. They shuffled along, one behind the other, using the metal tubing as both a guide and support. The wind was comparatively strong, occasionally lifting the canvas in a snapping, crackling way and Charlie supposed it was quite cold: he was sweating so much, through nervousness, that he was unaware of it. At each intersection there was more barbed wire. There had been some light by the library window, when they first encountered the obstruction, but now there was none and they had to grope and bend in a tunnel of complete darkness. Ahead Charlie heard the other man grunt in what could have been pain and hoped he’d impaled himself. Hoped it hurt, too.
After about two hundred yards the scaffolding broke away from the main prison building, jutting to the left over some lower buildings where the main extension work was being carried out, raising them in extra storeys to provide additional accommodation. Without the protection of an adjoining wall the wind was stronger here, lifting the canvas more easily. Once it snagged, for several seconds, and through the gap Charlie could see the yellow streetlights of Shepherds Bush and actually hear traffic moving along the streets outside. And in a brief burst of excitement at the thought of freedom – any freedom – forgot what had just happened back at the prison and what might happen in the future. The wall was very close, close enough for him to see the outline of the bricks and the backward pointing metal bars that would make it difficult for anyone to get over, even if they reached the top and the black threads of the floodlight wire. Reality flooded back very soon – too soon – but Charlie knew that as much as he hated and despised Sampson and as much as he feared whatever faced him in Moscow – if he ever got to Moscow – freedom from the life he had known inside prison was going to make a lot worthwhile. Why the hell had it been so necessary for Sampson, whose tight ass was jerking only inches from his face in the sudden infusion of outside light, to be as brutal as he had been? In Charlie’s time in the service there had been regular, mandatory assessments, psychiatric as well as psychoanalytical, specifically to identify the sort of mental illness he suspected Sampson to be suffering. But was it mental illness? He had a deal, a set-up. If he’d been facing thirty years and had the chance, just one desperate, possible chance, of getting out wouldn’t he have done everything possible to have prevented that chance being taken from him, even if it meant pummelling the shit out of a fat man who tried to be kind doing a bloody awful job, and some eye-twitching sexual misfit? He didn’t know, Charlie acknowledged. He didn’t think so – didn’t want to think so – but truthfully he didn’t know. There had been a lot of times in the service when he’d set people up, either to escape himself or create a situation of advantage and because he hadn’t actually pulled the trigger or inflicted the punch or made the arrest that would lead to God knows how many years in prison he’d still done, by proxy, what Sampson had done back there in the hospital office. So maybe he wasn’t a psychopath. Maybe with a different accent and a different background and different breeding Sampson was what he always proudly regarded himself as being: a survivor.