Kicking Off Read online

  When the noise of the alarm bells erupted through the jail, McGregor responded like a wild animal. His head jerked backwards and his eyes widened. The shoulders, which had taken on a slumped, acquiescent form, braced back, while his hands, open and slack upon his thighs, clenched into fists. As he half-rose, Pendlebury could see his eyes dilating. Beside him, the watchful officers matched his movements. It was like a gridiron football confrontation with one man naked.

  ‘No!’ shouted Pendlebury.

  It was too late. All three protagonists jumped simultaneously, and the governor was thrust to one side. He tripped and fell heavily, banging his head against the padded wall. As he clambered to one knee, the double door flew open, and two more monstrous spacemen burst in. The noise from outside increased, the bells, the baying, the wild cheers.

  A third spaceman slammed the inner door, then came to Pendlebury, lifting him upright by one arm. On the padded floor, McGregor was struggling with terrifying abandon. Pendlebury saw feet and claws, caught a glimpse of wild eyes, foam-flecked screaming mouth, as the officers tried to contain his violent motion. Their cumbersome white bodies covered his, their thick arms sought to get behind his neck, to pinion his flailing limbs. Within a short time he was trapped, on his back, rigid. But his mouth was open, bellowing, his diaphragm pumping air up through his throat, rocking the huge men who lay across his chest. His eyes had rolled, white, into his skull.

  The battle at the sluice room was bloodier, but far more diffuse. Lister, who had hit the prison officer backhand across the face before the contents of the bucket soaked him, had not followed up on the attack. The officer was an easy target, gasping, white-faced, dripping mucoid liquid, defenceless. But Lister had no quarrel with him, nor with anyone. He wanted to escape the danger zone. Before the going got rough.

  At first, he did not achieve it. There were three or four men at the doorway with him, and two of them attacked the officer, as if by reflex action. Lister, who needed to get past and away, grabbed one of them to drag him off, just as the first of the back-up officers arrived. He piled into Lister – very bravely, considering his fear of him – with a flurry of punches to the face. Lister rode this, dropping back and keeping calm. As the officer followed him, it opened him to attack from the side, and Lister could withdraw still further. When the other two arrived, Lister was well clear, not posing any threat.

  ‘Inside!’ he shouted. ‘They’re murdering the faggot.’

  Three of the officers, pushing aside the struggling inmates, drove themselves, wedge-like, through the door. Despite the sound and fury, several of the men inside were already beaten, the exhilarating burst of energy and anger gone. They were staring at their hands and arms, dazed, dragging flesh across cloth to try and clean it. Others still punched and kicked each other, bouncing from the cubicle walls and wash basins, and some turned towards the screws with indiscriminate fury, only to be jumped on by other prisoners from behind. But although the fight was barely minutes old, the men were tiring. They wanted to submit. Enough damage had been done. Enough bridges had been broken. If they were lucky, they would avoid a kicking. That would be sufficient.

  Raymond Orchard was in a lavatory cubicle, and it had saved his life. As the first wave of furious men had attacked, he had been knocked fortuitously backwards, cracking his head against a vertical doorpost. There were no doors on the lavatories, so he had collapsed into it, driven before a flurry of fists and feet. For a moment he had balanced on the toilet pedestal, which had half-cradled him. Then he had been knocked sideways and backwards, and seen the U-bend, the four-inch soil pipe, the small, cramped space behind the pan. He pushed his head far into it, wrapping his arms around the base of the pedestal. Kick and scramble as they might, the men could not get their boots to bear on his face or head. The rest of him they hammered.

  By now, the galleries of B-floor were thick with officers. Charles Lister, his back still to the wall, held his hands out, palms upwards, warily. Although below him he could still see fighting men and officers on A-floor balcony, the officers approaching him had cleared their territory.

  Many of them held sticks and short-shields, and one or two had combat helmets on. As the men spilled from the sluice they were jabbed and herded with the sticks along the walls. Lister, silent, was silently surrounded. It was a golden opportunity to bring him down, and he assumed that they would take it. OK, he thought. Every dog has his day. Today it’s yours, tomorrow…

  At that moment, though, two things happened. The last of the inmates in the sluice were driven out, followed by three prison officers carrying Raymond Orchard. Below, on the main hall floor, Richard Pendlebury, with a praetorian guard of Martians, appeared in his grey suit. He raised his arms, peculiarly, in some kind of supplication. Lister could see his mouth was open. Presumably he was shouting.

  As if he had not been hearing it, Lister became aware of the noise around him. It was thunderous, a swelling, pulsing din. Hundreds of prisoners throughout the jail were clattering on their doors with fists, pots, anything. It was arhythmic, but a rhythm was emerging. Gradually, as the shouts and screams died down, the battering took over.

  Close to him, the screaming of Orchard, whose left arm was broken and dangling as the officers hurried him along, was thin and insignificant.

  ‘OK, you guys!’ yelled Lister to the men surrounding him. ‘I didn’t start this, see? I’m an innocent bystander. Get me back home in one piece, and I’ll buy you all a drink!’

  Pendlebury, on the main floor, watched the riot fizzle out. Above him, the last prisoners were being pushed through doors, some of them under raining blows from fist or club. The flags beneath his feet were strewn with broken cups, slop-pot lids and other missiles, slippery and dangerous. He was alone, an old, grey-haired man, stooping in a wilderness. He began to move towards his office, stepping carefully, to make his phone calls. It occurred to him that the men behind all this, the men in ultimate charge, would not even be at their work in Queen Anne’s Gate yet. Ah well, all the better. It would give him time to think.

  For the next hour or more, however, coherent thought was virtually impossible. In the offices, there was a constant stream of reports and messages coming in, filtered for the governor by his duty-deputy, Ian Serple. The senior officers from every hall concentrated first on injured staff, then on injured inmates. Then there were preliminary assessments of the numbers in each cell, and the totals for each floor and finally each wing. Nobody had been seen to escape, or try to, but the numbers in the jail had obviously to be verified with the utmost urgency. Given the number of injuries and the speed with which the landings had been cleared, this would not be easy. Many men had gone into the wrong cells, some onto different floors. Many of the prisoners were refusing to be counted, covering their spyholes and hiding under beds when a visual check was made. Eighty cells had been barricaded, and about forty were known to have been wrecked. After ninety minutes, worst of all, the rhythmic banging of the doors had hardly diminished. Even in the admin block – far away and thickly carpeted – it could be heard. It was unnerving, demoralising. And nothing could be done about it.

  Pendlebury, when he judged that Christian Fortyne’s secretarial staff would be at work, put in a call. As expected, he had not arrived, so Pendlebury left his name. He would like to be rung by Mr Fortyne immediately he reached his office, he told the girl, it was extremely urgent.

  When he put the phone down, he smiled at Serple. ‘That’ll give us a nice long breathing space,’ he said. ‘Remind me to ring again in an hour or so. If I kept it up all day and never mentioned a riot I could make him look a complete and utter fool.’ The half-smile left his face. ‘And I’d get the sack.’

  lan Serple, observing the thoughtful look that settled on the boss’s tired features, made no comment ...

  *

  Queen Anne’s Gate. Fortyne and Sir Gerald.

  When Christian Fortyne did ring back at last, and found out what had happened, he did not waste his time on anger.
He listened carefully to the governor’s dry outline of the disturbance, and he asked him about the current situation and his assessment for the immediate future. As soon as he had put the phone down he contacted Sir Gerald Turner’s private secretary and made an appointment. His own urgency received a much more positive response.

  ‘The question I most ask myself,’ said Fortyne, after he had briefed the Home Secretary thoroughly, ‘is whether to contact Donald Sinclair. The prisons are very much his baby now, although he’s in America. I suppose he ought to know?’

  Sir Gerald made a steeple with his fingers. He had been talking about Sinclair in his club the night before. There were questions in his mind.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Donald certainly would be interested. But I am Home Secretary, you know. I trust you’re not suggesting I can’t handle the prisons on my own?’

  There was a twinkle in his eye, which Fortyne acknowledged, warily, as indicative of a minor joke. But he knew he had to demonstrate where his loyalties lay, that at least he had not become Sinclair’s exclusive creature.

  ‘Good lord no,’ he said. ‘And if you think so, there’s no pressing reason why I should let him know. It’s just that the ball was in his court, rather, with all his statements after Buckie and so on.’

  Turner nodded, the twinkle growing.

  ‘He did perhaps give the impression that everything was solved,’ he said. ‘However, this is by no means a major outbreak, and in general things have been very quiet, on both sides of the border. You’re not suggesting Donald’s made a muff of it?’

  Fortyne was suggesting no such thing, and Turner knew it. He was merely providing both of them with an escape route, in case of need. Turner continued: ‘In any case, this won’t get into the press, will it? There was nothing visible, no madmen on the roof, no fires, no people hopping over walls, so if anyone does ask questions it won’t be for days, and then it’s old hat. The one thing is, it’s proved Pendlebury right about the state of Bowscar. How much should that be worrying us?’

  ‘Not a lot,’ said Fortyne. ‘Fair enough the boil’s burst, but it’ll take a damn long time to grow again. More importantly, it won’t infect the other jails if no one knows about it. That was what was so damnable about the Scottish problems. The copy cat syndrome.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Turner. He raised his eyes to Fortyne’s. ‘About the press, though. I’m getting reports. I needn’t say who from, but it’s always the same two names. Andrew Forbes, Susanna Nixon. Tell me what you know about them.’

  Christian Fortyne cursed inwardly. But his face and manner were unchanged. Suave, bland, his eyes untroubled behind his spectacles. Donald, he thought, you’re in danger of getting in the mire. He cleared his throat.

  ‘Rosanna, I believe, not Susanna. She’s a Scottish journalist, apparently a freelance now. Andrew Forbes is a well-known bloody nuisance. Wrote a book about the secret services, inevitably, which cost us a damn lot of money to injunct half of. He makes a living on the fringes, bit of specialist research, bit of much-raking. Obsessive dislike of the status quo.’

  ‘Subversive?’ said Sir Gerald. And smiled. ‘You know what I mean, I’m using PM-speak for convenience. But he’s seriously digging, is he? And the woman. Do we know exactly why?’

  Briefly, as it was not his place to lie, Fortyne outlined what they knew. That Nixon had seen McGregor fall, had been pressing for a post mortem result, an inquest date. Forbes had joined her, for reasons as yet unknown, and they had lately discovered evidence that Sinclair had been in Buckie on the night. What they hoped to do, eventually, was unclear. But Sinclair’s advice, from experts, had been that all the time nothing could be proved, they were unlikely to make waves, or even ripples. They had no muscle.

  Sir Gerald Turner mused. So that was it at last. He had known the basic cover-up, of course, but the significant lie – to the extent that Sinclair had withheld the truth from him – was the fact that the fall had been observed. It was a huge omission. It was the sort of omission that, if held up to the light of day, could bring somebody down. Like him. Something else slipped into place. In all his public utterances after Buckie, Sinclair had bent over backwards to share the credit, to keep Sir Gerald Turner’s name in public view.

  Abruptly, he thanked Fortyne and dismissed him. He did not actually know that Sinclair was being less than one hundred per cent with him, and he did not necessarily believe the signs that he was. But perhaps his protegé was aiming too high, too soon? A touch of hubris creeping in? Maybe the Bowscar thing should be given to the press after all? A small, judicious leak to bring Sinclair down a peg or two?

  But no, thought Sir Gerald. Time enough for him to dig his own grave, if need be, no need for extra rope to hang himself just yet. Truth was, that he thought very highly of Donald Sinclair, still.

  Although not highly enough to let him steal his job.

  TWELVE

  Gorton. Peter Smith.

  Peter Smith was very happy when he at last got home that night. To put it another way, he was legless. Since getting off the bus from Chorlton Street coach station, he’d been in four of his favourite locals, and he’d bought drinks in every one. Not just for himself, for all his mates as well. Not mates, acquaintances, he scorned to call them mates. They thought he worked in some two-bit fabrication shop, they thought he was a jumped-up labourer. He told them, as he bought them drinks, that he’d come up on the horses. He was not even tempted to tell them the truth. Secrecy was the name of the game. He was good at it. They drank his ale, they played him at darts, they patted him on the back when he went to his next pub on the crawl.

  The house in Gorton, when he got back to it, was cold and rather lonely. Peter Smith turned all the lights on, and two of the gas fires. He switched the television on, quite loud and sod the neighbours, and rummaged in the cupboard for a bottle of Scotch whisky. He poured himself a tumblerful, and sipped. He thrust the bottle back into the cupboard, out of temptation’s way.

  What a triumph it had been – world class! The memory of the fat girl’s face as she had struggled off the Bowscar coach with her buggy and her brats had been enough. She had seen him waiting, and she had forced a smile. Yes, it said. No problems. Peter Smith had actually gone to help her. In the café, he had offered her a cake. He had bought plastic cups of insipid orange for the kids.

  ‘They had a riot there,’ she told him. ‘Wednesday I think it were. Wayne said. He said I wa’ first batch to be allowed back in. First visitors. Lucky.’

  Bleeding hell, thought Peter Smith. You don’t know how right you are, you great fat tart. In his elation, he wondered if he ought to proposition her. Give her some extra for a romp around the bed, like he had the skinny one. He wondered what she’d look like naked. Like a mountain of blancmange. He wondered how he’d ever find the hole. Stick a little flag in maybe, like on a golf course! Get her to fart, to give him a clue! But he dismissed the thought. Her face was just too much. Tonight he’d do a little drinking.

  He did not tell her that the job was finished, that she would never see him again, that that cake was going to be her last. When he’d drunk his cup of coffee, he slipped her the brown dirty envelope and watched her count the notes, then he left and caught his bus, and he metaphorically hugged himself in glee. Four grand this trick had earned him so far, with another grand to come. And the satisfaction, he told himself piously, of a job well done.

  With his nightcap whisky only half-finished, Peter Smith decided to have a little gloat in his emporium. He switched on the light at the top of the cellar steps and clattered down. Another switch, and his workshop was bathed in harsh, clean, working light. Light enough for engineering to the smallest tolerances; light enough for making guns. Peter Smith ran his eyes, then his hands, lovingly over his two small lathes, vertical and horizontal milling and drilling machines, his neatly stacked supplies of steel, from mild to carbon of the highest quality. On the workbench, in a vice, was part of a finely detailed model of a triple expansion steam engine, th
at was his cover. If a team of detectives searched the workshop for ten days, they would find no trace of anything that spoke of guns. There was nothing written down, nothing drawn. He held it in his head. Everything.

  The last job had been one of glorious satisfaction, the specification a challenge of the truest sort. It was a single shot pistol, of only two-two calibre, that was capable of discharging a sporting cartridge of enormous power. It had to be small, it had to be accurate, it had to be reliable. But most of all, it had to be dismantleable, it had to come to pieces, easily and quickly, into a minimum possible number of simple, foolproof parts. And a man, possibly under pressure and without instruction beyond a basic expertise with firearms, had to be able to assemble it. He could imagine it, fondly, lying loaded in the palm of someone’s hand in Bowscar. The fat woman had bangled in the fifth and last bullet today.

  Peter Smith jumped when the doorbell rang, then looked at his watch. Ten minutes to midnight. He closed his eyes to concentrate, being fuddled, but no explanation came. The boys were due tomorrow with his last payment, weren’t they? Sure. Tomorrow. But maybe it was them. No other bugger ever called. He put his whisky down, turned off the lights, and clambered heavily upstairs. Boy, but he was pissed.