Stephen Leather - Breakout

‘I thought I was past being surprised by what goes on in here,’ Harper said, ‘but it turns out I was wrong.’

In another cell, Harper glimpsed the primitive apparatus used to convert coca paste into cocaine, before the door was hastily slammed shut by one of the two burly prisoners guarding the cell. He fixed Harper, Ricardo and Lupa with a baleful stare as they walked past. The other one wolf-whistled and called out ‘ Que bella! Cuánto cuesta, hermosa ?’ to Lupa, but she whipped round and gave him a fierce glare and a torrent of Spanish insults that silenced him at once.

In the yard just in front of a ground floor cell in the next section, there was the fierce red glow of a fire burning in a small forge. One prisoner was forcing air into the fire through a pair of bellows, made from what must have once been a leather coat, because a row of sewn-up buttonholes was still visible in it. The asthmatic wheeze of the bellows was punctuated by the clang of iron on iron, as a second prisoner, his face cast into deep shadows by the glow of the fire burning in front of him, pounded a strip of red-hot metal with a heavy hammer.

‘They can make anything here,’ Ricardo said, ‘tools, cutlery, pots and pans.’

‘Weapons too?’ Harper said.

‘Officially no.’

‘And unofficially?’

Ricardo gave a theatrical shrug. ‘Like I said, they can make anything.’

Harper stepped closer, smiling and nodding as he studied the fuel the blacksmith was using. ‘Charcoal,’ he said. ‘That could be handy. Where do they get it from?’

‘Like everything else here,’ Ricardo said, ‘someone must bring it in for them through the front gates.’

Next door to the forge was an open-fronted cell where two prisoners were up to their elbows in icy water in two stone sinks, washing some bedding and clothing, using a bar of coarse soap. Their hands and arms looked red raw. ‘It’s tough work,’ Ricardo said, following Harper’s gaze, ‘but if you’ve no money and no other work, you can make a few pesos doing other prisoners’ cleaning and washing for them.’

On the wall above the sinks, a painted sign set out the house rules and Lupa translated them for Harper. ‘It is forbidden to steal another inmate’s property; extort or assault another inmate; do physical damage with knives or other sharp objects; or incite others to commit acts of violence. Sanctions are expulsion from the section and being reported to the Council of Delegates and the Governor.’

‘That doesn’t sound like much of a sanction,’ Harper said.

Ricardo shrugged. ‘Don’t be too sure about that. The Delegates appoint the Disciplina - the internal security - and nobody wants to tangle with them. At the least you’ll get a bad beating, but they can also take you to the isolation cells where not only they, but also the prison guards, can use you as a punch-bag. Even worse, they can get you transferred to Chonchocoro - the maximum security prison, and believe me, you wouldn’t ever want to go there.’ He glanced around. ‘See those two guys over there?’ He nodded towards two powerful looking prisoners wearing black tracksuits emblazoned with a logo of a lion and unicorn supporting a heraldic letter “V” with “ VICTORINOS ” inscribed beneath it. ‘The Disciplina all wear that uniform,’ Ricardo said. ‘There are about thirty of them altogether and if you fight with one of them, you have to fight them all.’

‘What does Victorinos mean anyway?’ Harper asked

‘Winners.’

‘Winners who’ll spend most of their lives in jail - not much of a victory is it?’

‘Just don’t let them hear you say that,’ Ricardo said.

CHAPTER 12

As they walked through the passage from the previous section and came out into the next open courtyard, they found themselves at the edge of a cramped football pitch complete with nets and white line markings. A game was in full flow, with both teams wearing what looked like brand new strips and boots. A painted sign, covering the wall behind the goal, read ‘ Bienvenidos a Cancha ’. The wooden gallery running round the walls at first floor level was packed with prisoners watching the match below, some leaning on the rail, others sitting with their legs dangling between the uprights. From the brutality of the tackling, and the shouts and curses of the spectators, this was a grudge match. ‘It’s just like professional football,’ Ricardo said. ‘The section bosses own the teams and even pay transfer fees for players switching to their section.’ A goal was scored as Harper stood watching and he could see money immediately changing hands among the spectators. ‘They bet fortunes on these matches,’ Ricardo said, following his gaze. ‘Not just on the result but on the times goals are scored and the players who score them. Men who lose big sometimes extract pay-back from the players - and I don’t mean money. One of the Guanay players missed an open goal against Cancha when I was in here and the boss of his section had him stabbed. The Palmar goalkeeper didn’t wait for his punishment after he let a weak shot go through his legs; he hung himself from the balcony surrounding the courtyard that night.’

The bars at the edge of the yard were doing a roaring trade and many of the football spectators were drunk. Empty aluminium cans, bright purple and branded with the name Caiman littered the ground.

‘What’s Caiman ?’ Harper said.

‘Almost pure alcohol. Ninety-six per cent.’

‘Bloody hell - if you drank that you’d go blind, if it didn’t kill you first.’

‘They don’t drink it neat, the bars dilute it with water or juice, or they add a shot to a beer to boost the alcohol content.’

‘It would do that all right,’ Harper said

A prisoner was shuffling round, picking up the empty cans and stuffing them into a sack.

‘Recycling too?’

‘Nothing’s wasted here,’ Ricardo said. ‘The metalworkers make toys out of the empty cans.’

Harper thought for a moment. ‘I imagine the cells aren’t fitted with en suite facilities, so where are the latrines? I don’t need a piss or anything, I just want to take a look at them.’

Ricardo gave him a puzzled look. ‘There are no proper drains here,’ he said. ‘So everyone just shits into a trench which the poorest prisoners have to dig out and load into the shit cart that calls once a month.’

‘And the urinals, what are they like?’

‘Some are concrete troughs, and some are just earth closets.’

‘Show me.’

Ricardo raised an eyebrow but when no explanation was offered, he just shrugged and led Harper across the yard to a small, adobe-walled enclosure built in the angle of the prison walls. It was open to the skies but still stank of stale urine.

‘Perfect,’ Harper said, smiling despite the stench.

As they left the courtyard for the gloom of another passageway, three figures stepped out of the shadows and blocked their way. Two of them were built like weightlifters and wore the black uniform of members of the Disciplina, but the other was dressed more like a New Jersey pimp than a prisoner, in a purple suit with a silk Versace shirt, a bootlace tie and a pair of sunglasses with the Versace crest on them. He was in his forties and more than a little overweight, with fleshy features and black, thinning hair.

‘That’s the boss of the prison,’ Ricardo murmured to him. ‘Don Lorenzo. Not a man to cross.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ Harper said.

The man walked over to them smiling broadly to reveal several gold teeth. ‘Welcome señor ,’ Don Lorenzo said. ‘I heard there was a stranger in our midst, so I decided to come and see for myself. What do you think of San Pedro?’