Peter May - Cast Iron

It was almost startling to see herself so close up and personal after all this time. Her face stained and streaked with dirt, her tan faded now to a blue-white pallor. Her hair was tangled and matted about her head. The wild-eyed creature that stared back at her from the glass was virtually unrecognisable. Certainly not the face she was accustomed to seeing every morning in the mirror above the bathroom sink, where she washed and plucked her eyebrows and applied her make-up.

But even as she looked at this strange creature gazing back at her, she saw the determination in her own eyes. An oddly dead-eyed determination that fuelled her nearly obsessive attempt to free the second hinge pin.

She had been working at it for much of the day, and now into the night. She had no idea what time it was, but darkness had fallen beyond the bars several hours ago. The bolt in the lower hinge had been stubbornly determined not to budge. For some reason, it was more badly rusted than the other.

Her hands were greasy with the butter she had been using to lubricate it, and the spoon kept slipping through her fingers. It was bent and twisted unrecognisably, and she was beginning to despair of ever getting the bolt to move.

There was a gap between the top of the metal framework of the bars and the underside of the window frame into which it was fitted, and finally, in frustrated desperation, she rammed the heels of both hands hard up under the top of the frame. To her astonishment it slid up, and the gap vanished. She held the bars, then, in both hands and pulled down sharply. The frame moved again, and she was amazed to see that the lower hinge pin had stayed slightly raised, providing her with a quarter of an inch gap into which she could work the remains of the spoon with ease.

For the first time in several hours, hope returned. An almost debilitating depression had descended on her at regular intervals. With each fresh tray of food had come the fear that this could be her last meal. Then each time left alone, she had grabbed the fresh pack of butter to start working it again into the hinge. An emotional roller coaster that had taken her from the depths of despair to impossible peaks of euphoria and then down again.

Now she was on the way back up. There was movement in the bolt. She wiped the butter from her fingers on her jeans, gripping the head of the pin and twisting as she pulled with one hand, grasping the bars with the other and shaking them violently.

And suddenly it simply came away. She stood looking at it in her hand, dumbfounded by the abrupt and unexpected success. She clutched it tightly, excitement rising in her throat and very nearly choking her. She slid the top bolt out of the upper hinge and stuffed both pins into her pocket. With trembling fingers she grasped the bars with both hands and pulled sharply inward. The whole frame came away, except where it was attached at the other side by the padlock. Hardly daring to breathe, she lowered the frame so that it rested against the wall below the window, suspended from the padlock, and reached for the window handle itself. To her astonishment the handle turned quite easily and the window swung open into the room. No need to break the glass.

Fresh air rushed into the stale warmth of her cell, stimulating and intoxicating at the same time. She pushed her face out into the darkness and felt the cold of the rain on it, like tiny chilled drops of freedom. And with a great effort she pulled herself up on to the frame of the window, crouching to very nearly fill it, and balancing herself to get a first real glimpse of the world outside.

About two feet to the left of her window, a rusted downpipe ran from a gutter ten feet above, to a drain set into the road twenty feet below. It was attached to the wall every few feet by brackets that had seen better days, corroded by time and weather. If she was going to escape this place, she was going to have to trust her life to them holding long enough for her to slide her way down to the ground. Fear and hope filled her heart in equal measure.

Even just to reach the downpipe, though, would be fraught with risk. She would have to swing herself from the window, holding on to the nearside of it, until she could grasp the pipe. Then she’d have to let go and trust that it was going to take her weight while she grabbed it with both hands and used her feet to brace herself and stop herself from falling.

She breathed deeply, imagining everything that could go wrong, and the consequences of tumbling twenty feet to the ground. She leaned her back against the frame of the window and realised, for the first time, that she could see further than the brick wall opposite. The narrow road below opened out beyond the facing buildings into a vast area of industrial wasteland, pitted with lakes of milky green and the stumps of derelict buildings. Interlacing strings of old streetlights illuminated roads long fallen into desuetude. In the far distance she could see the lights of a city reflecting on the underside of low cloud, suffusing the rain-filled night with a disturbing orange glow.

And with that came the realisation that, even were she able to reach the safety of the ground, there would still be a very long way to go before she was free.

The sound of approaching footsteps out in the hall brought her back to her present situation with a sudden, stinging shock. There was no time to try to effect her escape now. Even if she managed to get to the ground, they would be after her in moments. She wouldn’t stand a chance. She needed a head start.

She jumped lightly back down into her cell and swung the window shut. With fumbling fingers she lifted the frame she had left dangling from the padlock and pushed it back into place. But there was no time to replace the hinge pins. She just hoped to God that they wouldn’t notice.

By the time the footsteps had reached her door, she was lying on her camp bed, pulling the single blanket over her. Which is when she saw her wet footprints on the floor. The soles of her shoes had picked up rainwater on the outside sill of the window. Panic consumed her. All these hours of patient perseverance in loosening the hinge pins had gone to waste. Her captors could not fail to see her stupid damned footprints on the floor. She wanted to scream. But instead held her breath and listened as the footsteps passed the door and carried on down the hall.

She leaped off the camp bed and spread the blanket over the telltale signs she had left on the concrete, and sat on it, her back to the wall. In the silence that followed she could hear her heartbeat. She could hear the blood pulsing in her head. The sound of her breathing seemed to fill the room.

She waited, then tensed again as she heard the footsteps returning. Once more they passed without stopping, and she released a long, slow breath of relief, as if letting it out too quickly might make sufficient noise to bring those footsteps running back.

Sometime soon, she knew, they would come to take her to the toilet, and then they would leave her be for the rest of the night. That’s when she would make good her escape. While they were sleeping and she had time to get out, and be a long way away even before they knew she was gone. She leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes.

The realisation that she had been asleep startled her awake. She sat blinking in the harsh electric light, without any idea of how long she might have slept. They had not come to take her to the toilet as she expected, and as consciousness returned she could hear the sound of voices from the room at the far end of the corridor. There was an argument in progress. A man was shouting. And then a woman’s voice. As before, imperious, commanding. Followed by silence.

Sophie strained to hear as the conversation resumed, this time at a lower level. She got to her feet and crossed to the door, pressing her ear to the cold metal and listening hard. But she could discern nothing more than a murmur of voices, a soft vibration.