Scott squinted in the gloom and finally found what he sought.
The laundry cart was there, just as Porter had promised.
Scott crossed quickly to it, rummaging through the dirty linen inside.
He found the prison overall.
Moving swiftly he pulled off the surgical gown and tossed it aside. Climbing into the overalls, he held on to the side of the cart momentarily as he felt a particularly violent stab of pain inside his head.
It passed. He continued searching through the cart, ignoring the stench that rose from its contents.
His hand closed over the torch and he pulled it free. Ficking it on, he tested the beam in the gloom of the furnace room.
At the bottom of the cart he found the knife.
It was fully ten inches long; Porter must have taken it from the kitchen. Scott ran his thumb gently along the edge of the blade, feeling its razor sharpness. Satisfied, he slid it into his belt.
The door of the furnace room opened out onto one of the prison's two courtyards. As Scott peered into the night he could see search-lights moving slowly back and forth over the open, cobbled area.
A little to his left was the drain cover, two feet square and rusted. He knew he must remove it.
He stood there for moments, trying to estimate how long he had between the light passing. It was no more than ten seconds.
The beam swept by and Scott hurried across to the cover. He dug his fingers inside and pulled.
It wouldn't shift.
The light was turning, sweeping back towards him.
He pulled at the lid again.
Jesus, it was heavy.
Five seconds before the light returned.
He pulled.
Pain filled his head as he grunted with the effort.
Four seconds.
It moved a fraction.
Three.
Scott dropped the lid again and scurried back inside the furnace room as the light swept by.
He watched it disappear in a wide arc then tried the lid for the second time.
It moved a fraction more, the rusty metal scraping against the stone.
The light was beginning its movement back towards him.
Scott lifted, his muscles screaming with the effort, the pain in his head intensifying.
Nine seconds away.
The drain lid was coming away.
Eight.
He lifted it free with a final triumphant grunt and shone the torch down into the black maw below.
Seven.
The powerful beam picked out a rusted metal ladder. Far below, the light reflected on the surface of a stream of filthy water.
Six.
Scott swung himself into the outlet, climbing down the first few steps. Gripping the metal grille in one hand, he hauled it back into place behind him.
Five.
Four.
The grille dropped into place above him.
Three.
He clambered down the next few rungs as the light swept over. Scott hugged the ladder, his breath coming in gasps. He shone the torch below surprised how far down the shaft went. The old sewers must be a good seventy or eighty feet below ground. Scott swallowed hard, then began to descend.
NINETY-ONE
The stench was almost unbearable in the tunnels but Scott pressed on, wading through filthy water that lapped as high as his knees. The walls on either side of him were crumbling, pieces of rotten stone falling away as he touched them. Occasionally his hand encountered patches of the green slime that coated the subterranean passages like putrid mucus. It was like walking through the gangrenous veins of some sleeping giant, paddling in stagnant blood.
Scott realised that the sewer tunnels were so full because of the rain that was still falling. The knowledge hardly made his journey any more palatable, all the same. He would stop every few hundred yards to catch his breath and try to get his bearings. The tunnels usually ran straight, but when he reached the junction of two he had to be sure he was travelling in the right direction; otherwise he would merely double back on himself and end up wandering these cavernous halls until he collapsed.
There was one such junction up ahead.
Scott leant against a wall, feeling the slippery slime soaking through his overall. He ignored the cold and pointed the beam ahead. It cut through the tenebrous blackness, picking out something that glinted dully in the luminosity.
About fifty yards ahead there was a grille, the steel not yet rusted and crumbling like most of the metalwork down there. It must have been recently fitted, he assumed. Behind the grille the tunnel was much narrower. At present Scott could walk without needing to stoop; if he'd been able to get past the grille he would have been forced to crawl, such was the narrowness of the outlet beyond.
He moved off to his right, grunting as he felt a renewed stab of pain inside his head.
He tried to quicken his pace, but the water rushing around his knees prevented that. He fought his way on through the reeking flow.
Again he paused, sucking in deep lungfuls of the vile air, coughing at its rankness. The spasm set off a dull and persistent ache in his skull. He closed his eyes for a moment, touching one hand tentatively to his bandaged head.
When he brought his hand away he noticed, with horror, that there was blood on his fingers.
'Oh God,' he whispered, the sound amplified by the confines of the tunnel.
He must have opened up the wound when he fell from the laundry chute, he guessed. He'd have to be careful to keep it clean. If any of the dirt down in the sewer got into it, God alone knew what would happen.
Scott pushed on, reaching another tunnel junction.
Left, right or straight on?
He shone the torch first one way, then the other.
The right hand tunnel was blocked about twenty feet on by a new stone wall.
He chose to go straight on, trying to get some kind of mental picture of where he was. He guessed he was below D Wing by now. He couldn't be that far from the wall, surely? It felt as if he'd been walking for hours. His body was quivering from the cold and the pain inside his skull was getting worse.
Perhaps it was the cold breeze blowing into his face which…
The realisation hit him like a thunderbolt.
Cold breeze blowing into his face.
The breeze had to be coming from up ahead.
He'd passed beneath many outlets above, but had felt no cold air coming through them because of the
