Charlie Muffin: The Blind Run Part 1

The Blind Run.

Brian Freemantle.

For Terry and Penny, with love.

What's in a name? that which we call a rose.

By any other name would smell as sweet.

Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet.

Prologue.

'The prisoner will stand.'

Charlie m.u.f.fin did, but awkwardly. They'd allowed the familiar and mourned-for Hush Puppies during the trial, moulded and scuffed into comfort, but his feet still hurt like a b.u.g.g.e.r from the remand-prison boots.

The court was spa.r.s.ely filled, because the entire hearing had naturally been in camera, no public and no press and officials reduced to the minimum, just the red-robed judge and the bewigged, raven-cloaked counsel, with their instructing solicitors behind. And the short, limited procession of witnesses, the barest of formalities, because Charlie hadn't denied anything. There wasn't anything to deny, after all.

And a deal was a deal.

He hoped.

The first to give evidence had been Cuthbertson, the Director he'd made to look a right p.r.i.c.k, still pompous, still purple-faced, still bl.u.s.tering. Still a p.r.i.c.k. Then Wilberforce, the deputy who'd deservedly gone down with the Director to whom he toadied, pastel-shaded as Charlie remembered, bony and sharp elbowed and with an adam's apple that went up and down like an uncertain weather cone. Another p.r.i.c.k.

It might have been a misleading impression, heightened by the emptiness of the court, but Charlie imagined the present Director had distanced himself from his predecessors. Charlie looked towards Sir Alistair Wilson. The Director looked back expressionlessly. Wilson seemed to find it easy to distance himself.

'... Charles Edward m.u.f.fin ...'

Charlie went to the judge, the reflection interrupted. Hallet, recalled Charlie. Or was it Habbet. Something like that. Port-mottled face and cheeks that wobbled when he talked; if he were allowed the red coat and the white wig after work he would have made a good Father Christmas. Yo Ho Ho and twenty years.

'... upon your own admission, you are guilty of a serious offence under the Official Secrets Act, a traitor to your country ...' began the man.

Not true, thought Charlie. But they'd never understand; nor had they tried to. Their way it fitted into the box files they tied with pink ribbon and then sealed, with wax. It was easier, in a world of boxes and patterns.

'... you conspired with the Soviet Union and exposed to Russian detention not only colleagues in the field but your superiors ... the Director himself ...'

There was a movement in the well of the still court as Cuthbertson s.h.i.+fted in his seat, embarra.s.sed at the reminder. Best service I ever performed for the country, thought Charlie. Difficult to convince anyone of that, though.

The judge coughed, thickly. '... upon your behalf learned counsel has entered arguments of mitigation. Much has been made of a very recent incident, when, still undiscovered by British authorities and therefore beyond capture, you nevertheless served as a decoy and led to the destruction of a major spy ring, acting not only against this country, but the West as a whole. Much has also been made of your original action being not that of a traitor but of a rebellious, vindictive man intent only on retribution upon those in authority whom it appeared ready to betray you in their own right ...'

At least the old b.u.g.g.e.r was mentioning it: he had to, Charlie supposed, to appear fair. Not that there was any likelihood of his entering an appeal. Not part of the promised deal.

'... they are arguments and pleas that I dismiss entirely. The matter of your being a decoy has been put to every witness who has appeared before me and every witness has denied the suggestion ...'

Because they're lying sods, even under oath, thought Charlie. None of them would have lasted a day in the streets, the streets and the gutters where he'd existed for twenty years.

'... there can be no mitigation, no excuse, for what you did. You are a traitor, to be treated as such. Upon you, Charles Edward m.u.f.fin, I am imposing the maximum sentence permitted me under the law, that of fourteen years imprisonment ...'

Charlie looked to Sir Alistair, alert for the smallest indication. The Director's face remained unmoving. Charlie felt a sink of uncertainty, the sort of sensation he'd known far too often.

Chapter One.

At first, in the early days and weeks and months, Charlie's immediate awakening impression had been one of the smell, the overnight urine and the odour of too many bodies too close together for too long. It didn't come any more. He'd become accustomed to it, he supposed. Like he'd become accustomed to everything else. Recognising the good screws from the bad screws. And the important prisoners, the hard b.a.s.t.a.r.ds who ruled the jail, from those who accepted that rule. And the all male marriages, some happier and more contented than those he'd known outside, where the wife had been a woman. And the weapon making in the engineering shop: knives honed like razors and spikes sharpened to impale an arm or a leg, even a bone if it got in the way. And the use of tobacco for money. And the black markets that existed: marijuana was available, because he'd watched and smelled prisoners smoking it. He'd not seen the cocaine, but he didn't doubt that it was around because he'd seen the snorting and been offered it in the first month. And booze. Charlie knew he'd have to make a contact soon, to get a drink. It had been a long time. Too long.

The prison was never completely quiet: always something metallic seemed to be hitting against something else metallic. This morning it was a long way off, on a far-away landing and Charlie gave up trying to guess what it was. He lay with his hands behind his head, staring up at the barred window; in the growing light, it looked like a noughts and crosses board, set out in readiness. Early on he'd actually used the reflected pattern that way, a mental chequer board, playing games against himself. Not any more.

He wished he could remember, precisely, when the smell had stopped being noticeable. It was important basic training to count days and weeks and to record events within them that mattered. That was the way to survive. To stop being aware of time was the first step towards becoming inst.i.tutionalised. And that wasn't going to happen to him. He knew the days and the weeks, even if he couldn't remember the smell: fourteen months, three weeks and five days. When he got up, it would be six days. Establis.h.i.+ng a regime was part of the training, too; he always made the count as soon as he got out of bed. Fourteen months and three weeks and six f.u.c.king days! And not a word. No approach, no 'don't worry' messages in the cells below the dock. No nothing. So they'd done it to him again. He'd trusted Sir Alistair Wilson; thought him a good bloke, like the Director who had preceded Cuthbertson.

Charlie stirred, aware of the metallic sound getting nearer. At least he'd lived: perhaps Wilson considered the bargain ended there. He'd only pleaded for that, after all, Charlie conceded; just his life.

Charlie looked away from the window and its neatly divided squares, to the table bare of any personal mementoes and the stiff-backed chair and the p.i.s.spot he couldn't smell any more. This wasn't life. Or rather it was, the sort of life he'd read about as a sentence and not thought anything about, because when he was free to get up when he liked and go where he liked and do what he liked it wasn't possible to imagine what imprisonment for life meant. He knew now: Christ, didn't he know now!

Charlie swung up off the bed, feet against the cold floor, head forward in his hands. Stop it! He had to stop the despair because that was another collapse, like forgetting to count the days or remember what was important in them. Despairing was giving up. And he wouldn't give up: couldn't give up. He never had. He was a survivor. Always had been. Always would be. Couldn't break him. No way.

Never been this helpless before, though.

He stood abruptly, angry at the self-pity. Needing actual movement against it, he went to the table and took from the drawer the calender he was allowed. He was careful to sit, before making the inscription, and then circled the day which would give him his current total of imprisonment. Twelve years and nine months and one day to go unless he got parole. If he got parole. Three of the screws three of the absolute b.a.s.t.a.r.ds and one of them in charge of the landing had told him the word was in and that he wasn't likely to get a hearing for years, even less a remission of sentence. He'd f.u.c.ked the establishment. Now they were f.u.c.king him. b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, thought Charlie; real b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. Always had been.

The sound on the landings had changed now, no longer a meaningless jangle but the slapping against the cell doors after the slop-out bell. Charlie swivelled from the desk and groped for his boots, wincing as he manoeuvred his feet into them. He didn't try to lace them but left them undone. He b.u.t.toned his trousers and secured the belt and finally put on his tunic jacket. He was ready before the key chain rattled against the door.

As it began to open, Charlie reached down for the pot. When he could smell it, the ritual had offended him; now it was automatic, just as it was automatic to shuffle forward and be by the door as it opened out on to the landing.

Charlie decided he would probably have been more disgusted if he'd had to share a cell. Not solitary, the governor had explained: apart from the cell, he was just an ordinary prisoner. It was just that there was no one else inside serving a sentence for a similar offence and it was sometimes difficult to gauge the reaction of the other inmates. Better to be safe in the cell, where he could sleep unprotected and safe from attack. But apart from that he would be treated no differently from anyone else. Charlie had thought it was bulls.h.i.+t at the time, like so much else; he didn't think it now.

He blinked against the brighter lighting on the landing and went flat-footed out to join the line towards the sluices. To Charlie's left, hung like spiders' webs between the landings, were the protection meshes to prevent from self-destruction a prisoner who could no longer fight the despair, or the death of those who had infringed an unwritten law and might be heaved over, to avoid the irritating forensic enquiry which might have disclosed the clandestine activity in the engineering shops. To his right the cell doors gaped, like the beaks of hungry, unfed birds. He couldn't miss the smell now: no one could, not even if they'd served twenty years and become accustomed to everything. Debris in a slowly moving stream of p.i.s.s, thought Charlie. It was a fitting a.n.a.logy.

Charlie had developed the prison walk, shoulders hunched and insular, his eyes away from any direct gaze and therefore possible challenge. He missed nothing, though. Never had. It was the beginning of the week and the s.h.i.+fts of the landing warders had changed; as soon as he rounded the bend, on the last run towards the sluices, Charlie saw Hickley and b.u.t.terworth.

They were two of the worst: b.l.o.o.d.y s.a.d.i.s.ts. But clever s.a.d.i.s.ts more obviously aware than the others that the prison was run by consent of the inmates and anxious to be friends with those who mattered, to the discomfort of those who didn't. Hickley, the one who'd told him there was no possibility of parole, was at the sluice entrance, so that he could control the approach and b.u.t.terworth was inside the lavatory, supervising the actual cleaning. Charlie's eyes avoided theirs; it was a precaution he had learned.

The challenge came, from Hickley, an arm thrust out across his chest, halting him and the line beyond.

'Got another one of you b.a.s.t.a.r.ds,' said the prison officer.

Charlie knew he'd have to say something. 'Yes,' he said.

'Know what we did with spies in the war?' Hickley was ex-Guards.

'No.'

'No what?'

'No, Mr Hickley.'

'We used to shoot them.'

b.o.l.l.o.c.ks, thought Charlie. Hickley had never seen a spy in his life; probably hadn't even seen combat. Hickley was a base camp type, a coal whitewasher and latrine scrubber.

'I think we still should,' said Hickley.

Providing his didn't have to be the guilty finger on the trigger. Christ, how he'd like to have kicked the bullying b.u.g.g.e.r right in the crotch, thought Charlie.

'What's wrong with your boots?' demanded the officer.

'Nothing.'

'Nothing what?'

'Nothing, Mr Hickley.'

'They're unlaced.'

'There isn't a regulation,' said Charlie, who'd checked.

'I like a tidy landing.' Hickley was shaven-headed and hard- bodied from exercise and had a sergeant's voice that echoed, so that everyone along the corridor could hear. 'Undone boots aren't tidy.'

Charlie said nothing.

'So lace them up.'

Charlie allowed the look, too brief for him to be accused of insolence but sufficient for the man who'd faced hostility on a hundred parade grounds to know he meant it. Then he knelt, cautious against upsetting either his pot or that of the man directly behind him, and secured his boots. He did it carefully, tugging each loop through its socket and taking his time over the knots; the murmuring and shuffling grew behind him and at last he was aware of Hickley's s.h.i.+ft of impatience. Charlie went slowly on, adjusting and tightening the laces.

'Get up!'

'I haven't tied them yet.'

'I said get up.'

Charlie stood, as slowly as he had descended, to confront the officer. Hickley's face burned red, except for the white patches of anger on his cheeks.

'Be careful,' said the man.

Charlie didn't respond.

'Very, very careful,' insisted Hickley. He stood back, to let Charlie pa.s.s.

There had been an audience inside the sluices, as well as out, grouped around the centre runway to see what was happening. Two, both long timers, smiled just briefly in appreciation. b.u.t.terworth, controlling the main gangway, recognised his colleague's defeat.

'Move on!' he said. 'Everyone move on!'

There was jostling and further delay, while the slowly moving line became organised again. Instinctively Charlie stopped by the main sluice, where it was widest and where there were most people, rather than go into one of the side drains where he would have been in a cul de sac.

'Move on,' insisted b.u.t.terworth.

Doggedly Charlie remained where he was, letting other prisoners swirl and spill about him. He'd been backed into more blank alleys than this poxy lot put together and he didn't intend the last day of the third month of his second year to start with some officially inspired thumping because he'd made some prison officer look a b.l.o.o.d.y fool. He was aware of b.u.t.terworth's apologetic look to his friend beyond the doorway.

He realised that Prudell, who occupied the adjoining cell, had kept dutifully close to him. A Hickley man, Charlie knew; had to be because Hickley sanctioned the cell changes when Prudell got fed up with whatever prisoner he was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g and felt like a change. And Prudell had sufficient muscle to keep the landing running smoothly.

'Shaken but not stirred, is it?' said Prudell, indicating the pot. He was a squat compact man serving eight years for grievous bodily harm: he'd nailed to his own desk the hand of a man who refused to pay protection money for a bingo hall in Haringay. The victim was sixty-eight years old.

'Something like that,' said Charlie. He was ready for the push when it came, not just from Prudell but from someone pa.s.sing behind so he was able to avoid most of the urine from his pot and that of Prudell's. Some still splashed on his trousers.

'Told you to move along, stop causing a jam,' said b.u.t.terworth.

Charlie put his pot under the rinse, scouring it out.

'Sorry about that,' said Prudell.

'Why not lend me some perfume?' said Charlie.

'Any time, if you're interested.'

Charlie picked up the line, going out past Hickley and back along the corridor. Inside his cell he looked down, disgustedly, at his stained trousers. Maybe it wouldn't last long, he thought hopefully. Then again, it might. Hickley had lost face and in a place as miniscule and insular as a prison that was something that grew out of all proportion.

Knowing he would have to avoid any infraction of the regulations, Charlie was ready at the first sound of the washroom bell but inside the ablutions he hung back, waiting for the shaving area he wanted, ab.u.t.ting the wall so that he only had to worry about one side and that in constant reflection. He maintained the caution in the food line, because there were urns with scalding water. The porridge was slopped half in and half out of his bowl. Charlie didn't protest.

He was as lucky with the seat in the mess hall as he had been in the was.h.i.+ng area, with his back against the wall. He saw Prudell smirking two tables away: the companion was new, someone Charlie hadn't seen before. Dark and very pretty: Greek or Italian, maybe.

Charlie had started eating by the time Eddie Hargrave eased in beside him.

'Saw what happened at slop-out,' said Hargrave, his voice hardly above a whisper, talking prison fas.h.i.+on, lips practically unmoving. He was a greying, wisp-haired man who had been a schoolteacher outside. Charlie still found it difficult to believe that after murdering his wife Hargrave had tried to dissolve her body in a mixture of lime and acid, even though Hargrave had talked at length about it and why he'd done it, because he found her in bed with his brother. The brother had been the headmaster, responsible for the school curriculum roster: he'd given the man two free periods by mistake, instead of a history lesson which would have kept him at school. Hargrave had killed him, too. Hargrave was in charge of the prison library in which Charlie worked, as his a.s.sistant.

'The b.a.s.t.a.r.d picked on me.'

'You asked for it, Charlie, scuffing about like that.'

'Got bad feet.'

'You cheeked him: shouldn't cheek someone like Hickley. He's authority and you can't beat authority.'

That was something he'd never been able to learn, thought Charlie. 'Careful it doesn't involve you,' he said sincerely.

Hargrave shook his head. 'No one bothers about me, Charlie. I'm not one of the hard ones but there's a kind of respect for a lifer.'