'Gary Lucas is dead,' Sullivan pronounced with an air of finality.
'No, he isn't,' Gregson said. 'Lucas is alive and I'm going to find him.'
EIGHTY-FOUR
He could feel his hand throbbing.
Scott sat on the floor of the cell looking at the raw flesh, wincing as he touched it. It was beginning to blister in places, large pustules rising on the pink skin. At the time he'd felt nothing. Even when he'd forced Draper's head into the boiling soup he'd felt no pain. All he'd felt was the furious pleasure of being able to inflict agony on his tormentor. For all he knew Draper could be dead. A slight smile touched Scott's lips. So what if he was? What could they do to him? What more could they threaten him with? He was destined to spend the rest of his life inside; how else could they punish him? Fuck them.
Fuck the law.
Fuck Draper.
Fuck Plummer.
Plummer.
He clenched his fists as he thought of his boss. The act of closing his hand causing him pain, but he seemed not to mind it. One of the blisters on his palm burst, spilling its clear fluid over his skin.
Fuck Carol.
That treacherous, lying, spineless little whore.
He closed his eyes and sucked in an angry breath through clenched teeth.
Carol.
He hated her.
The vision of her came into his mind.
He wanted her.
Just to see her would be enough. For a few fleeting seconds.
To touch her.
To kill her.
He whispered her name.
The sound of the key in the lock startled him. He looked up to see the door opening, a shape silhouetted in the doorway. The solitary cell was tiny, less than six feet square, containing just a mattress and a slop bucket. Scott banged against the bucket as he hauled himself onto the mattress, trying to see who his visitor was. It was dark inside the cell and the light from the corridor outside dazzled him momentarily, obscuring the features of his visitor. As the door closed the light inside the cell went on. Scott looked up at the man but was none the wiser.
'They'll stick another five years on your sentence for what you did to Draper,' Nicholson told him.
Scott sneered.
'What's five more years on top of life?' he grunted.
'You would have been out in fifteen with good behaviour. Now you'll be an old man when they let you out.'
'What difference does it make to you? Who are you, anyway?'
Nicholson introduced himself.
'And, by the way,' he added, it makes no difference to me at all when and if you get out. You can rot in here for all I care.'
'So why the visit?' Scott wanted to know.
'Do you want to spend the rest of your life in here?'
'That's a fucking stupid question. What do you think?'
'I think that you'd settle for another six months in here instead of another twenty years,' Nicholson said cryptically. 'But there are risks.'
Scott looked vague.
'If I told you there was a possibility you could be out of here in six months, would you be interested?'
Six months is too long.
Scott looked wary.
'How?' he demanded.
'Would you be interested?' Nicholson persisted.
'Tell me how.'
Nicholson banged on the door and a warder opened it. He turned to leave.
'Tell me,' snarled Scott, getting to his feet, moving towards the Governor.
'Remember, there are risks,' Nicholson said as he stepped out of the cell. The door was slammed and locked. Scott was left with his face pressed against the metal.
'I don't care about the risks,' he shouted, banging his fist against the steel door. He struck it again, ignoring the pain as more of the blisters burst. Blood began to dribble down his arm. He pounded for long moments.
'I don't care,' he whispered breathlessly, but there was no one to hear his words.
He sank slowly to the floor of the cell and lay there gazing at the ceiling.
EIGHTY-FIVE
There was always one.
David Lane muttered to himself as he rang the bell and the bus pulled away, passing Kensington Market on the right.
Always one who wanted to sit upstairs. Always one who ensured that he, as conductor, would be forced to climb the bloody stairs. At the beginning of a shift he didn't mind; he'd happily bound up and down the stairs to collect fares. But today he could hardly manage to walk from one end of the bus to the other, let alone up to the top deck. He'd pulled a muscle in his thigh playing football the previous Sunday and it was giving him a lot of pain. He'd thought about calling in sick, but he had actually received a phone call asking if he'd work a double shift as someone else had called in to report an illness. Consequently Lane had been working for almost ten hours, with just a break for lunch, and his leg was killing him. He moved among the passengers on the lower deck, cursing the single passenger who had chosen to sit above.
The bus was moving slowly, picking up at nearly every stop as it moved down Kensington Road towards Hyde Park Corner. Just the odd one or two extra passengers but they all, luckily, chose to sit downstairs.
Except the one bloke who'd got on at the earlier stop.
Lane massaged the top of his thigh gently as he waited for an elderly woman to find her bus pass. Perhaps he was getting too old to be dashing about every Sunday morning. He was approaching thirty-three and his wife had told him he should be taking it easier now. But what the hell, he enjoyed playing, despite the fact that he'd picked up half a dozen niggling little knocks since Christmas. And his pub team were doing well in the league; he didn't want to forsake them now. Anyway, thirty-three was hardly an age to think about 'taking things easy'. Plenty of time for that when he got old. He smiled as he thought of his wife's concern. Michelle was always worrying about him. The long hours he worked, how little sleep he sometimes got. His musings were interrupted as the old girl found her bus pass and presented it to him. He smiled and handed it back to her, steadying himself as the bus came to a halt and two passengers got off. He rang the bell and continued collecting fares, making his way to the back of the bus, pausing at the bottom of the stairs. As they passed Hyde Park Corner he began to climb.
