Brian Freemantle: The Blind Run

Hickley filled the entrance, with Butterworth behind. And then Charlie saw two more warders as well and knew it wasn’t lock-up time.

‘Cell search,’ announced Hickley.

Set-up, thought Charlie. Fuck!

He got to his feet. ‘Nowhere else?’ he said.

‘Not interested in anywhere else, just here,’ said Butterworth. As if fearing Charlie hadn’t heard, he said again. ‘Cell search.’ He jerked his head. ‘Outside.’

Obediently Charlie moved out on to the landing, putting himself between the two waiting warders. He stood with his back against the rail, gazing back in. Hickley and Butterworth were very good, working as a team, jabbing at brickwork for loose or disguised mortar, expertly stripping the bed and pressuring the mattress and pillow for anything concealed, then upending the actual wooden furniture, probing the undersides of drawers and frames, knowing every hiding place. They left the pot until last purposely Charlie was sure. Hickley turned it over, the confident conjuror knowing the rabbit would be in place.

‘What’s this then?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Never seen it before?’

‘No.’

‘Perhaps it’s a sample,’ said Butterworth.

‘He’s not on the hospital list,’ said Hickley, moving ponderously through their prepared joke.

Hickley withdrew the stopper and made the pretence of smelling the contents. ‘Whisky!’ he said, the voice that of someone making an important discovery. He came to the door, looking out at Charlie. ‘What you doing with alcohol in your cell?’

‘Not mine,’ said Charlie stubbornly.

‘Bullshit.’

‘Don’t know anything about it.’

‘You’re up before the governor,’ announced Hickley. ‘You’re in trouble. Big trouble.’

Asshole, thought Charlie.

The governor’s name was Armitrage. He had a pink face, a lot of white hair, disordered clothes and the distracted, absent-minded demeanour of an academic. It was an impression heightened by his attitude towards the prisoners. He regarded them as a hopeful schoolmaster regarded unruly pupils, slightly bewildered and vaguely disappointed at their rejection of the trust he placed in them but always refusing to abandon the expectation that they would one day reform and make the world a perfect place.

‘You’ve heard what Chief Officer Hickley and Mr Butterworth have said?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And you insist you know nothing whatsoever about it?’

‘Yes, sir.’

The governor looked expectantly towards the two warders.

‘Nothing there during the cell search a week ago, sir,’ insisted Hickley, stiffly to attention. ‘He’s sole occupation, on your instructions.’

Armitrage came back to Charlie. ‘It’s a serious matter.’

Charlie said nothing.

‘I ask you again, what was a partially filled bottle of whisky doing in your cell?’

‘Don’t know, sir. I’d never seen it before.’ Charlie was conscious of the tightness with which Hickley and Butterworth were holding themselves. Armitrage was a man who would never thoroughly convict without proof and by maintaining his ignorance, Charlie was denying that absolute proof. He was making it worse for himself on the landing, but he didn’t give a fuck: things couldn’t be much worse than they already were. Twelve years, eight months, one week and one day. Dear God!

‘I’m not convinced,’ announced Armitrage.

One way or the other, guessed Charlie. ‘Don’t know anything about it, sir,’ he repeated.

Armitrage sighed, looking aimlessly around his desk. The office was in the highest block of the prison and the windows weren’t barred. Charlie could see the barbed wire topped walls and then the White City beyond. There were some high buildings which he guessed were the television centre and beyond that tufts of trees. Shepherds Bush straight in front, Charlie calculated: Notting Hill to the left. There were people out there, ordinary people, worried about mortgages and debts and girlfriends being pregnant and bosses not liking them and imagining that nothing could be worse, whatever happened to them. Lucky sods.

‘What about fingerprints, Mr Hickley?’

The chief officer went even more rigid. ‘There were none, sir,’ he said.

Because you were too bloody anxious, thought Charlie. If they’d waited, just five minutes after lock up, they’d have caught him bang to rights. It had been instinctive to wipe the bottle, after securing it in its hiding place. Some things still were.

‘Then there’s no definite proof, is there?’ said the governor mildly.

‘Concealing it, sir,’ said Hickley desperately. ‘It’s an offence to conceal liquor.’

‘True,’ agreed Armitrage. He turned back to Charlie. ‘You lose all privileges for a fortnight,’ he declared. ‘No recreation period, no tobacco, fined your work allowance and confined to cell immediately after evening meal.’ The governor paused. Then he said, ‘Your employment in the prison library is a favoured one. I won’t take it away from you on this occasion. If there are any further infringements of the regulations, I will.’ The man appeared embarrassed at his own forcefulness.

He’d won, Charlie decided. Apart from the tobacco and the wages, he wasn’t losing anything he hadn’t lost already. He was still in the library which was the important thing. Charlie knew they were trying to get him into one of the prison workshops, among too much noise and too many people. They’d try again.

‘Remember what I said,’ warned the governor.

‘Yes, sir.’

Charlie marched militarily between Hickley and Butterworth from the governor’s office, through the outer area and then back into the corridors leading into the jail. He didn’t think they’d attempt anything openly against him but he still walked tensed against the smallest movement from either side. No one spoke. He reached his cell without incident, thrusting suddenly into it before they could trap him in the doorway. Hickley smirked at the fear.

‘You should be frightened,’ said Hickley. ‘I’m going to get you. Really get you. Don’t like smart buggers on my landing. Don’t like them at all.’

Charlie knew he meant it.

The restrictions were supposed to be a penalty but Charlie actually found them a relief. He didn’t smoke, so the tobacco represented only a currency and the deprivation of that and of his official wages was bearable. He’d already abandoned the recreation period and his feet, which ached constantly within the incarceration of the prison-issue boots, had always made exercise more of an ordeal than a benefit to his health: he far preferred walking back and forth along the length of his cell in his stockinged feet. In his cell he was safe: protected. He recognised it as an institutionalised attitude; of fear, of Hickley and Butterworth and Prudell and God knows who else. So what? He was institutionalised. And he was scared. Shit scared. Worse than ever before. What made it worse was knowing he only had two weeks of safety.

The governor’s decision meant he was escorted every day from his cell to the library and back again and that the warder in charge had to have him constantly in sight; obediently Charlie obeyed every rule, so there was no opportunity for any conversation between him and Hargrave. Despite the difficulties, the old man thanked him on the first day for not grassing and identifying him as the purchaser of the booze. It was during shelf stocking, the best time.

‘You’re a good guy, Charlie.’

‘It’s a minority opinion.’

‘There’s a joke, going around.’

‘About what?’

‘The booze. Prudell diluted it, you know.’

‘I know.’

‘Do you want to know how?’

‘No,’ insisted Charlie, swallowing with difficulty.