Singleton's Law Read online

  The gate at the top of the stairs was unlocked, confirming that this was the route Chaucer had taken. He and his supporters were not wasting time locking up behind them.

  He broke the silence for the first time in several minutes and murmured, “stairs”, to the girl, pulling her behind him and resting her hand on his shoulder. The other hand sought his other shoulder and she came up close behind, leaning into his back. He winced at the pain this caused.

  There was one stair less than he remembered and the jarring this gave his leg was almost as bad as missing a step. The sudden breaking of the rhythm they had set up during the descent unbalanced the girl and she fell forward against him. The pain this time made the earlier twinges a pleasant memory. He staggered forward a few paces with his companion clinging at his waist. Then the ground fell away under his feet and he crashed full length, remembering as he did so that the miscounted step was not a stair-tread, but a concrete step-down a yard from the foot of the stairs.

  As his chest struck the ground he let out a cry of pain. The girl, prostrate over his legs, dug him in the back with what he took to be a reprimanding blow. Her ribs weren’t broken, he thought indignantly. She poked him again; this time he began to push himself upright preparatory to dealing with her; then he saw what she must have seen already.

  Light. A thin golden line in the wash of grey. As he stared at it, it grew, thickened, ran out across the concrete floor on which he lay.

  A door was slowly opening.

  He tried to struggle to his feet but the girl seemed to be transfixed and he could not shake her weight from his legs. In any case there would scarcely have been time to retreat up the stairs before whoever was coming out appeared at the door. He managed to reach a kneeling position and waited. A posture of supplication seemed not unfitting though he doubted whether it would have any effect.

  The person coming from the warders’ room was taking his time. And the first sign of him was odd. A hand came round the door, grasping the jamb and apparently trying to pull it further open. And the hand was only a few inches from the floor.

  Now the girl seemed to regain her strength and pushed herself upright. Whitey followed suit and together they approached the room. As they did so the hand made a last convulsive effort and the door rolled back another foot. Whitey stepped inside and found himself looking down at George.

  Whether George recognized him or not, it was hard to say. Whether Whitey hoped he did was just as hard. Certainly the warder’s eyes were open and apparently focused. Blood ran down the side of his head from a wide gash along the top of his skull. But this was not the man’s significant wound. His tunic was open and out of a hole in his chest pumped spurt after spurt of blood.

  By the far wall of the room lay another warder, eyes open, too still to be anything but dead. George’s route along the floor towards the door was clearly marked in thick brown stains. It passed a telephone which had been wrenched from the wall.

  The girl pushed by him and looked round the room, poker-faced.

  “What happened?” was all she said.

  “God knows. I’d say that Chaucer’s strikers got in here, knocked them senseless, then …”

  “… killed them,” completed the girl. “They didn’t do such a good job on him, did they?”

  She glanced at George and moved to the other man, kneeling down by his body.

  For a second Whitey thought this was merely vain solicitude.

  “He’s dead,” he said.

  “I know it,” she replied, standing up with the warder’s truncheon in her hand. “But not long. We must be pretty close behind Chaucer. Let’s move.”

  She made for the door.

  “Wait a moment,” Whitey protested looking down at George who still crouched spaniel-like at his feet.

  “For Godsake,” she said. “We’ve got to move fast. We might just be able to walk out behind them, especially if they’ve been as thorough as this all the way in.”

  She indicated the room with a delicate gesture.

  “What about him?” asked Whitey pointing at George.

  “What about him?” she asked, her features set once more. “You forget, I’ve met both these gentlemen already.”

  George seemed to react to something in her tone. He made a great effort to pull himself upright, the blood pumped forth with increased force, he opened his mouth to speak, then he died.

  “There you are,” said the girl. “Like I said, no problem. Come on.”

  Abandoning caution now, they moved as fast as the darkness would permit them, following what Whitey guessed would be Chaucer’s exit route. They met three more dead warders on the way. The rescue party’s technique had been comparatively simple. After the initial entry of the building, they had murdered anyone they met and used the keys so obtained to open up the next sector. It was the plan either of a lunatic or of someone who knew just how casual and disorganized the prison’s security system had become. In either case, it looked as if it was going to work.

  They caught their first glimpse of Chaucer and his men as they stepped out into the main entrance yard. The paleness of dawn was already in the sky and after the oppressing blackness inside, the yard seemed almost floodlit by the starlight flickering fitfully through the scudding clouds. Moving along the base of the main wall to their left three or four men were visible for a couple of seconds before the shadows took them. They must have come in over the wall—once again the obvious, straightforward thing to do.

  “Let’s hope they’re as generous with ladders as they have been with open doors,” Whitey murmured to the girl.

  “What?”

  “If they pull their little bits of rope up behind them, we might as well go back to our cell.”

  She reflected on this for a moment.

  “That’s all right,” she said finally. “If they show any sign of doing that, we’ll let out a yell. They’ll think they’ve been spotted and after that no-one’s going to hang around to pull up a ladder. Come on.”

  Ingenious, thought Whitey, then seized the girl violently from behind as she made to step out of the doorway. Her slim body twisted convulsively in his arms but she did not cry out.

  “Look!” he hissed urgently. “By the main gate!”

  “I can’t see anything.”

  “No. He’s gone. But someone moved. He must have gone through the wicket door.”

  “Who? One of Chaucer’s men?”

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  No. Not one of Chaucer’s men. But someone watching. It was the plan of a lunatic. It failed because it relied on killing people and with every warder they killed, they broke part of the security circuit. Once the first body was discovered you could either set every alarm in the place going, or take a walk around the perimeter and spot where they were going to come out. With desperate men, probably armed, it would be much better to get them in your sights before making a challenge. Which meant that sitting at the other side of the wall there would be a little posse, calmly waiting for the kill.

  That it would be a kill, Whitey was sure. With their colleagues lying murdered inside, it was going to take more than a few orders to stop the ambush party from massacring the escapers. And it was doubtful whether anyone would care to give such orders anyway.

  “Wait here,” he commanded the girl.

  “Why? What…”

  He pushed her to one side and set off at a painful trot across the yard. Even if there had been more than one watcher within, it didn’t matter. A shot was the only thing that could stop him and a shot would arouse everybody.

  He was almost at the east wall before he saw them. Three men were crouched on top of it, another two were climbing up knotted ropes. As he watched two of the men on top dropped out of sight down the far side. The outside. The free side.

  Suppose he were wrong, thought Whitey. Suppose he had been mistaken and there was no ambush out there, nothing except freedom.

  The other two men had reached the top. He assumed that the
man in the middle was Chaucer. It seemed to fit—two going on ahead to prepare the way, another two coming behind to guard the rear. Any moment now he too was going to disappear over the wall.

  What do I care about him anyway? thought Whitey.

  And stepping from the shadows he shouted between funnelled hands, “Chaucer! don’t go over the wall! They’re waiting for you!”

  The three men froze. Whitey could almost feel the shock and fear which must have run through their bodies at his voice. Then they did exactly what the girl had forecast they would do if challenged. They took off.

  Well, I tried, thought Whitey as they disappeared. Time I started thinking of myself.

  He turned away from the wall, a shape detached itself from the blackness just below the parapet, slid with hand-scorching speed down a rope, dropping the last ten feet and flinging itself forward like a projectile which did not pause till it bore Whitey to the ground.

  “Right, you bastard!” said Chaucer. “I want …”

  But what he wanted was never spoken. A fusillade of shots cracked out on the other side of the wall. They could hear quite clearly lead striking stone. There was a confusion of shouts.

  As though at a command, Chaucer and Whitey started running, Whitey slightly in the lead, Chaucer following. They were heading towards the main gate which seemed stupid. The men outside would be pouring through there at any moment as soon as they realized they hadn’t got Chaucer. But it was where he’d left the girl and he had to go back.

  My trouble is I think I’m responsible for everybody, he told himself bitterly.

  The shooting was continuing sporadically which was good. They couldn’t start examining bodies till everyone was dead.

  The main gate was in sight and someone was moving in front of it. So he had been right—someone had remained and they would have no qualms at all about shooting now.

  “We’ve had it,” he gasped to Chaucer.

  Now the guard on the gate was moving to intercept them. Or get them in range. And he was shouting now.

  “For Christ’s sake!” yelled the girl. “Where are you going?” Whitey stopped and Chaucer cannoned into him.

  “I thought you were the guard,” Whitey said absurdly.

  “No. That’s the guard.” She pointed at a crumpled shape on the flag stones by the gate. “He came out to take a look at you and set off to stalk you with his little gun. Fortunately …”

  She thrust her stolen baton obscenely into the air.

  “Is he dead?” asked Whitey incredulously.

  “God knows. But those warders inside are. We’ve got to go.”

  “Go? Where?”

  “Out through the gate, of course. I have keys.”

  Something happened which Whitey could not quite place at once. Then he realized. The firing had stopped.

  “Come on!” he said.

  They spoke no more but charged across the yard to the gate. The girl had already fitted the key into the lock. It turned easily and within seconds they were outside and running madly past the warders’ houses to the street gate.

  Once out on Du Cane Road, Whitey took the lead, heading straight across to where some ancient riot had trampled down the barrier which separated the road from the parallel railway line. There was no time to run right until they reached a footbridge, and to head left would bring them face to face with the armed guards who at any moment must be issuing from the end of Artillery Road.

  Whether the Underground system was still functioning, he did not know. But panic took him straight over the lines, looking neither to left or right, with the others close behind. And panic kept them twisting and turning for what seemed hours through a maze of undistinguishable streets till they could run no more. Sobbing desperately for breath, they took refuge in a lane behind a row of lock-up shops, collapsing among dustbins and crates of rubbish for better concealment.

  After a while, Chaucer spoke for the first time since the shooting started.

  “We can’t stay here,” he said. “This whole bloody town’s going to be after us.”

  “What do you suggest?” snapped the girl. “Didn’t your boys have a nice escape route mapped out?”

  “No doubt,” said Chaucer. “But they had mapped it out. There’ll be a car, and money, and clothes waiting somewhere, but God knows where. What a bloody cock-up!”

  He smashed his right fist into his other palm in fury.

  “It’s your cock-up,” said Whitey. “Not much subtlety, your Strikers, have they?”

  “You’d be still inside if it wasn’t for them,” snarled Chaucer.

  “Correction. If I wasn’t a light sleeper. Anyway, let’s try to work something out. It’s over five years since I was in this town, so I’ve got little to contribute. What do you reckon?”

  The girl interrupted. She seemed to have burnt herself completely out and spoke in accents of near-despair.

  “What’s the use? What can we do? As soon as it gets light, they’ll spot us. Look at us, me in a kimono, you plastered like a hospital case, you in prison uniform!”

  Whitey looked at the others and had to admit she was right. He was the only one wearing clothing that could pass for normal. The girl’s kimono might do at a pinch, but Chaucer’s grey denim with large yellow circles was impossible to modify.

  He stood up.

  “At least let’s keep moving,” he said with as much brightness as he could muster.

  The girl remained slumped against a bin, but Chaucer got up.

  “One thing,” he said. “Why’d you come to warn me?” Whitey shrugged.

  “Everyone’s entitled to one mistake.”

  “Thanks,” said Chaucer, whether ironically or genuinely, Whitey could not tell.

  “Three together’s no good,” said Chaucer. “We ought to split up.”

  “Well, off you go,” said Whitey, turning away.

  “I intend to,” said Chaucer. Something in his voice made Whitey turn back. He caught a quick glimpse of the man’s face set with effort, heard the girl begin to say something, then the warder’s baton which Chaucer was swinging caught him at the base of his neck and he fell among the crates of shop rubbish.

  When he awoke, the dawn had broken and thin sunlight was sliding down the dustbin lids.

  He felt cold. When he shook his head, groaned at the effort and finally achieved something like normal eyesight, he realized why.

  He was wearing only his underclothes. Everything else had gone. The girl had gone. Chaucer had gone.

  But in a neat little pile at Whitey’s feet he had left his prison suit.

  Nixon Lectures : Fifth Series

  Audio-Visual Material

  3(j) B.B.C. Tele-commentary: F.A. Cup, Third Round 1982

  Now we’re going outside the stadium to look at the scenes on the roads approaching this famous Midlands ground. As you’ve seen, the ground’s practically full already, not more than a fraction of all these people out here can hope to get in. Those two coaches trapped in the crowd out there seem to contain visiting supporters. Thank heaven it’s not the visiting team, but they’ve been safe in their dressing room for over an hour now. Still, I shouldn’t like to be in one of those coaches, the crowd outside’s looking very angry. I hope they’ve got the sense to keep their doors locked and sit quietly till the police can reach them and clear a way through. I hope they’re quick. You can see how the crowd’s rocking that front coach, it must be like a rough Channel crossing in there, this looks like a very nasty situation. You can probably hear that police siren in the background but it’s a long way off and getting through this lot won’t be easy. Look! Is that smoke? Oh Jesus Christ! It’s on fire! Oh Jesus! I can’t believe it… the whole length of the bus … wrapped in flames … oh Jesus Christ!

  Chapter 4

  The streets of London may never have been paved with gold, but at least there had been a time when it was possible to see what they were paved with. Now in many places rubbish from shops and houses spilled so far over the si
dewalks that pedestrians were forced into the middle of the road. Sporadic collections, usually privately financed or yussed, had so far kept a passage open for motor vehicles, but fires were a constant danger and a permanent pall of smoke hung over the city.

  But the dangers to health were even more basic than this. Anyone walking the streets was looking for trouble, in one sense of the phrase or another. The only law was the law of what you could get away with. At night innumerable gangs roamed around, trying their strength against each other. The man alone was everyone’s victim.

  Whitey had no choice, however. He had to keep moving and at five o’clock in the morning the streets were probably quieter than at any other time of day. He had done the only thing possible with Chaucer’s prison suit, turning it inside out so that, while it still looked absurd from any distance up to three or four yards, at least it did not scream for attention from a couple of furlongs. But he had to find shelter before the city began to wake up and he became the object of everybody’s curiosity.

  At the moment it was only those who had been sent out specifically to hunt for him that he had to fear. And there might be relatively few of those.

  The Governor of the Scrubs might well have restricted the search to his own personal team in the hope that he could square things without reference to the Management. The price of failure at any level could be high and to lose a prisoner of Chaucer’s status as well as Singleton in one night was a pretty large failure. Not to mention the girl. Whitey realized he had no idea of her value. Why had she helped to bring the plane to England? Why had her reward been so violent? He did not even know her name. ‘Hydrangea’ would do, because of the eyes. Hydrangea. He ought to hate her because she was responsible that he was a fugitive in London instead of sitting on the by-lines of a nice safe war in the Sudan. Also because she seemed to have thrown in her lot with Chaucer. But the thought of her did not set the hate-glands secreting their bitter juices. Instead he hoped she was safe and well.