Lunch was at twelve. Stomachaches were at half past. After that we were allowed two hours’ exercise. Sports were encouraged at Strangeday Hall. But not all sports. Cross-country running, for example, had been crossed off the agenda after the junior team made it to Scandinavia during the interprison finals.
We were locked in our cells until dinner . . . and that was where I’d come in. Dinner finished at six-thirty and then we were locked up again until the lights went out at ten. One day—any day—in the life of a jailbird. Because all of them were always the same.
But I was still working on Johnny Powers, my express ticket out. You’d have thought I’d have been able to get somewhere with him after four weeks in the same cell. But you’d be wrong. He was about as suspicious as a snake in a handbag factory and twice as poisonous. I was playing the tough kid, anxious to learn from him. All I wanted was one name—the Fence. All I got was monosyllables and sneers.
Worse still, he was cracking up fast. He got these headaches. One minute he’d be sitting there vandalizing a good book. The next he’d be curled up with his head in his hands, groaning and sweating. I tried offering him aspirin but he didn’t even hear me. That was when I found out about his mother. He might have sold his granny to the salt mines, but he still loved his mother. He’d call out for her. And hours later, when the headache had gone but she hadn’t come, he would sit there, hunched up, sucking his thumb. I could see what Snape meant. Powers needed a new jacket. The sort with the sleeves that button up behind the back. Another few weeks and he’d be swapping his cell for one with padded walls. And where would that leave me?
Everything changed one afternoon. I was on cleaning duty. I’d cleaned the kitchen, the dining hall, and two corridors and they were still pretty filthy. At Strangeday Hall you could never get rid of the dirt. You could just rearrange it. It was late in the afternoon and I thought I’d finished, but then one of the screws came up to me. His name was Walsh.
We called him “Weasel” on account of his thin face, his pointed nose, and his little mustache. He didn’t like me. He didn’t much like anyone.
“Finished, 95446?” he asked.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Walsh.” I smiled at him. “Why don’t you call me 954 for short?” I said. “It’s more friendly.”
He stared at me, his left eye twitching. “Are you trying to be funny, 95446?” he asked.
“No, Mr. Walsh.”
“Now the showers. I want them spotless.”
“But, Mr. Walsh—”
“Are you arguing, 95446?”
“No, Mr. Walsh.”
Prison officers and teachers have a lot in common.
It must have been about half past four when I set out across the yard to the showers, which were in a low building on the other side. All the other inmates were either in the classrooms or locked up in their cells. High above me, the guards looked down from their metal watchtowers, fingering their automatic rifles like I was a duck in a fairground. Scratch one Diamond and win a goldfish. I looked up at them and waved. Somebody telephoned the central-control guardhouse and a moment later the door to the shower cubicles clicked open.
The door led into a white-tiled room with hooks and benches where we undressed. From here a long corridor stretched down to the far wall with metal cubicles on both sides. The showers were regulated by three huge taps in a maze of pipes, valves, and gauges close to the changing room. The whole system must have been out-of-date the day it was built. And that day must have been sometime before the Victorians.
I’d thought I’d be alone there, but I hadn’t taken two steps before I heard voices, low and threatening, behind the drip of the water. Carefully, I put down my bucket and mop, then edged toward the corridor. There was something about the voices that I didn’t like, and I couldn’t even hear what they were saying yet. But nobody was meant to be in the showers. If they’d sneaked in in the middle of the afternoon, it wasn’t because they fancied a wash.
I reached the corridor and slipped behind the first of the partitions, next to the taps. From here I could get a better view. With my cheek pressed against the cold metal, I peered around. What I saw was even worse than I had expected. And at Strangeday Hall expectations were always pretty bad.
Johnny Powers was there, slumped against the far wall. It was difficult to see in the half-light, but I could tell he’d taken a beating. He was sitting like a broken doll. Nobody had scratched their initials into him yet, but his nose was bleeding and for once his hair was ruffled. There were three guys with him.
I recognized them at once, even with their backs to me, and my mouth went dry.
The tallest of them was Mark White—three years for armed robbery. He was the most crooked con in the joint: crooked shoulders, crooked hips, and a crooked smile. With him was a Scottish guy, McNeil. He was small with greasy hair and a pronounced stomach . . . which he pronounced “stumma.” Half the time you couldn’t understand what he was saying. Most of the time you didn’t want to. I didn’t know what the third guy was in for. His name was Blondie, and it was true he had blond hair. But you could have also called him Ugly and you’d have been right there, too. Somebody once told me he’d murdered his dentist. If I’d had teeth like his, I’d have probably murdered mine.
“Aren’t you going to call for help, Johnny?” White was saying. I could hear them all now. “Maybe one of the screws will hear you.”
“I don’t need help from no one.” Powers spat blood.
“Let him have it,” Blondie hissed. “Do it now.”
“Yeah—do it now.” Powers giggled. “Whassa matter, White? Mebbe ya’re a bit yellow, too. White and yellow—like an egg.”
White moved to one side. That was when I saw what he was carrying. I couldn’t believe it. Just about every prisoner at Strangeday Hall had a weapon of some sort, usually homemade daggers or “shanks,” as they were called. But White had gone one better. Somehow he’d gotten hold of a gun. And he was pointing it at Powers.
“You’re going to get it, Johnny,” he said. “But not yet.” He glanced upward. “I reckon you’ve got another couple of minutes . . .”
Another couple of minutes. My mind was racing. What would happen in another couple of minutes? Then I realized. The prison was on the flight path to Heathrow. They were waiting for a plane to drown out the sound of the gunshot. It was the perfect cover. Johnny Powers would be drowned and shot at the same time.
If it had been anybody else, I might have just backed out then and there. It was none of my business who was shooting who or why. But this was Powers. I had no choice. I had to get him out of there—and in one piece.
I looked around me. I don’t know what I expected to find. An automatic rifle accidentally left there by one of the guards? If so, I was out of luck. All I could see was a broken shoelace and an old towel lying in a puddle of water.
“Two minutes, Johnny,” White said. “You got any last-minute requests?”
“Yeah. Drop dead.”
That was typical Powers. If he’d made a request on the radio it would have been for “The Funeral March.”
But looking at the towel had given me an idea. Moving as quietly as I could, I went over and examined the Victorian plumbing system. There were three taps—one for hot water, one for cold. The third controlled the pressure. There was also a gauge with pipes snaking in and out, a circular clock-face with a big slice of red. I guessed the system had never been turned to full pressure. The whole thing would probably explode.
Well, there was always a first time . . .
I gripped the tap. The metal was cool and damp against the palm of my hand. Hoping it wouldn’t squeak, I gave it a quarter turn to the right. There was a loud shudder. The pipes coughed and water gurgled like a man with indigestion.
“Whassat?” McNeil asked. He’d heard it, too. He’d have had to be deaf to miss it.
“It’s nothing,” White replied, and I breathed again. “Just the pipes.”
I turned the tap again. It made two complete revolutions before it tightened, fully open. All the pipes were bubbling and groaning now. I looked at the pressure gauge. The needle had jerked up like a conductor’s baton. Already it was vertical, and even as I watched, it began to shiver toward the right.
“You sure?” McNeil asked again. He had a sulking, unhappy voice.
“Go check it out if you’re so worried,” White replied.
