Brian Freemantle - The Blind Run

‘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.

The scaffolding ended abruptly and not as they expected, fifty yards from the outer wall – for it to finish at the wall would have been too much to expect – with another bundle of wire and with the access ladders removed, another security precaution.

‘Shit!’ Charlie heard the man in front of him exclaim.

Charlie drew up beside the man, gazing beyond the wire and through the now open end of the scaffolding tunnel even closer to freedom. ‘Ignore the wire,’ he said. He pushed at the canvas, which gave sufficiently for them to get between it, the scaffolding and the planking and use its protection to scramble, arms and legs wrapped round the tubing, downwards. They did not, however, go right to the ground because the scaffolding was erected at the very end on top of the flat roofs of some outbuildings. Unsure of what was below and apprehensive of the sound they might make they walked as carefully across the roof as they had earlier inched along the occupied corridor towards the library.

They were lucky. It was still an appalling breach of security and one which Charlie, in passing, guessed would be seized upon in the enquiry that was inevitable after their escape, but the ladders were laid, neatly one atop the other, beneath the protective parapet. But unsecured, by any chain or locking device. It was obvious, Charlie recognised, that the workers and the prison authorities imagined any danger to be from ladders stored in the yards and that because they were on inaccessible roofs the danger was minimal but it was still a lapse that would earn justifiable criticism.

At Sampson’s hand-gesturing sign language, they did not immediately try to move the ladders, instead creeping light-footed the full length of the roof on which they found themselves, reconnoitring for the best advantage. And they were lucky again. The building upon which they stood ran almost to the outer wall, only a narrow passageway separating the two. And what formed the roof of that was covered by a supporting structure and then mesh, once again to prevent any upward escape attempt, with no consideration of the advantage it created for someone from above. Without the elevation of the preventative mesh, one ladder length would have been insufficient to reach the top of the wall, but by carefully and quietly selecting the longest from the untethered pile, stepping delicately upon the mesh-support bars and not the mesh itself and using one of those same support bars as the centre base beneath the ladder, they were able to reach right to the very top, actually beneath the protruding spikes and use the ladder steps as footholds easily to manoeuvre over what was supposed to be an escape preventative. On top – once again – rather than below the spikes they actually provided a convenient platform upon which to crouch and stare over the outer rim, into the side street below. There were the regulated lights and there were lights, too, in several of the opposite houses, which Charlie presumed to be prison officer accommodation but the road itself was deserted.