Chapter 29
BECAUSE OF THE DISTURBANCE IN THE KITCHEN, BECAUSE RYAN Finlay had been rushed to hospital—and from there to the morgue—and because Avery had locked the gate in the chain-link behind him, it was almost an hour before he was found to be missing and not just banged up in the wrong cell or hiding somewhere for his own safety. And it was another twenty minutes before a screw spotted Toby and Yasmin and anyone realized that Arnold Avery had gone over the wall.
Since being promoted from his post as assistant governor at Newport Open Prison in South Wales, the governor of Longmoor had lost four prisoners. Four in four years. It was not a shockingly high number. Longmoor was a training prison; a few select prisoners were even sent to work outside the walls on cleaning details or farm duties as part of their rehabilitation. Understaffing meant that on two occasions a couple of men had simply ducked behind a bit of machinery or wandered off into a thick mist. All four had been recaptured on the roads before any driver would stop for them.
But four escapes in four years had the unfortunate ring of a pattern to it. As if it might be five escapes in five years, six in six years, and so on, and that gave the governor palpitations.
So, once Avery’s escape was detected, every available officer was immediately dispatched onto the roads, and roadblocks were established to search cars leaving the area. It was assumed that—like those before him—this particular escapee would head for the nearest road, then flag down or steal a car. To do anything else was stupid and dangerous, even in summer.
Having taken this view, the governor then took another: escapes reflected poorly on prison staff and that led to a lowering of staff morale.
The governor was a good man, and wanted to keep morale as high as possible.
If only Avery could be recaptured within the next few hours. If only the fact that a formerly notorious child killer had gone over the wall could be kept out of the press until he was safely back within those very walls …
The governor was a good man.
But he made a bad choice.
He didn’t call the police.
Arnold Avery’s first half hour of freedom after eighteen years in prison was the worst thirty minutes of his life.
As soon as he straightened up from the twelve-foot drop, he panicked.
The feeling grabbed him by the throat and squeezed, and he ran blindly onto the moor, his terror making him whine with every snatch of out-of-shape breath. His legs burned, there were daggers in his lungs; even his arms ached from running—all within four hundred yards of the wall. Years of sitting in his cell, thinking, had done nothing for his muscle tone.
He stumbled and panted and whimpered until his own self-loathing finally slapped the panic down and forced him to stop, regain control, and take stock.
His panic was groundless. However many times he looked back, he saw no sign of pursuit. The prison itself had melted away behind him like a bad dream.
Built in a large natural hollow, Longmoor Prison was a village-sized stone monstrosity that was barely visible to the thousands of walkers and tourists who roamed the moors each summer. One minute they would be striding out with only short yellow grass and pale granite outcrops for company; the next they’d be gazing down on the huge dark grey wheel inside a crater, often only the pitched roofs and chimneys jutting up through the fog, as if the whole prison was sinking into a lake of dirty milk.
Out here now, with the prison disappeared and only the sunny moor around him, Avery felt his panic shredded and scattered by the bracing breeze. In its place he felt the sudden, laughing excitement of being free.
He had an almost irrepressible urge to throw his arms out and spin dizzily across the slopes.
Contrary to his forerunners, he had no intention of flagging down a car or going anywhere near a road if he could help it.
He would have considered stealing a car but he was a serial killer, not a common car thief, and had no idea how to hot-wire a car—or even to break into one unless it was with a brick through a window.
For the first time in eighteen years, Avery regretted his isolation from other prisoners. He could have learned so much. Too late now …
Avery wished he did not need a car at all. But he knew that the instant he’d started running, a clock had started ticking. Soon his face would be on TV screens. By tomorrow morning it would be on the front page of every tabloid.
He was wearing his blue-and-white-striped prison-issue shirt and dark blue jeans. He wished he had kept his pullover because, although it was June, the sun had not yet warmed the air. He knew he would wish it even more fervently as night fell.
He passed two sheep lipping the vast, immaculate lawn of the moor. Neither bothered looking at him.
He walked calmly now, not noticing where, just regrouping as he moved forward.
His throat relaxed and cooled enough for him to properly appreciate the bright, fresh air that did not smell of today’s dinner or yesterday’s socks. It was heady stuff and he swayed as he sucked it into his lungs, feeling it pressing to his very fingertips as it replaced the stagnant prison fumes.
Having had no burning desire to escape until he received the photo SL had sent him, Avery had only the vaguest notion of what lay before him. He knew, for example, that the south and east of Dartmoor was dotted with tiny villages, some little more than a handful of houses around a pillar-box or a bus shelter. He also knew that the north and west of the moor was even less populated. More than that, he only knew that between him and the northern edge of Dartmoor were miles of desolate and difficult terrain, rocky and boggy by turn. Coupled with the unpredictable weather, it was no wonder most escapees took the easy option of the roads, despite the increased likelihood of being caught, because of the decreased likelihood of dying.
But now that he had gone over the wall, Avery had nothing to lose and everything to gain by avoiding recapture.
It had all changed. If he was caught now, he would lose eighteen years’ worth of Brownie points for having been a model prisoner. His chance of parole was now precisely zero, and he’d languish for twenty-five or thirty years maybe, back in somewhere like Heavitree, where he’d spent the first sixteen years of his sentence in fear and squalor.
He would rather die than go back there.
He realized with a little jolt that that was true, and then the jolt became a warm certainty. There was something steeling about having only one option left. It focused the mind.
“Nice morning!”
He turned to find a middle-aged man, and what Avery presumed to be his wife, just yards away. Both carried telescopic walking poles, day packs, and map cases. Both wore khaki shorts over sun-wrinkled legs—his lean and hairy, hers stubbornly chubby.
Thank god he’d stopped that crazy headlong flight. They would have known for sure.
“Yes,” he nodded, in complete agreement.
“Going to be hot.”
“Yes,” he said again, feeling that he should be making more of a contribution to the exchange, but at a loss to know how. “
We’re on our way to Great Mis.”
Avery noticed that now the man’s eyes were sweeping him from head to prison-issue-black-booted toe, looking for evidence that he was a walker, and starting to be suspicious that he wasn’t finding any. Avery was temporarily happy that he’d ditched his pullover; the dark grey with the distinctive blue strip through the ribbing
