Charlie Muffin: The Blind Run Part 2

'What's this then?'

'I don't know.'

'Never seen it before?'

'No.'

'Perhaps it's a sample,' said b.u.t.terworth.

'He's not on the hospital list,' said Hickley, moving ponderously through their prepared joke.

Hickley withdrew the stopper and made the pretence of smelling the contents. 'Whisky!' he said, the voice that of someone making an important discovery. He came to the door, looking out at Charlie. 'What you doing with alcohol in your cell?'

'Not mine,' said Charlie stubbornly.

'Bulls.h.i.+t.'

'Don't know anything about it.'

'You're up before the governor,' announced Hickley. 'You're in trouble. Big trouble.'

a.s.shole, thought Charlie.

The governor's name was Armitrage. He had a pink face, a lot of white hair, disordered clothes and the distracted, absent-minded demeanour of an academic. It was an impression heightened by his att.i.tude towards the prisoners. He regarded them as a hopeful schoolmaster regarded unruly pupils, slightly bewildered and vaguely disappointed at their rejection of the trust he placed in them but always refusing to abandon the expectation that they would one day reform and make the world a perfect place.

'You've heard what Chief Officer Hickley and Mr b.u.t.terworth have said?'

'Yes, sir.'

'And you insist you know nothing whatsoever about it?'

'Yes, sir.'

The governor looked expectantly towards the two warders.

'Nothing there during the cell search a week ago, sir,' insisted Hickley, stiffly to attention. 'He's sole occupation, on your instructions.'

Armitrage came back to Charlie. 'It's a serious matter.'

Charlie said nothing.

'I ask you again, what was a partially filled bottle of whisky doing in your cell?'

'Don't know, sir. I'd never seen it before.' Charlie was conscious of the tightness with which Hickley and b.u.t.terworth were holding themselves. Armitrage was a man who would never thoroughly convict without proof and by maintaining his ignorance, Charlie was denying that absolute proof. He was making it worse for himself on the landing, but he didn't give a f.u.c.k: things couldn't be much worse than they already were. Twelve years, eight months, one week and one day. Dear G.o.d!

'I'm not convinced,' announced Armitrage.

One way or the other, guessed Charlie. 'Don't know anything about it, sir,' he repeated.

Armitrage sighed, looking aimlessly around his desk. The office was in the highest block of the prison and the windows weren't barred. Charlie could see the barbed wire topped walls and then the White City beyond. There were some high buildings which he guessed were the television centre and beyond that tufts of trees. Shepherds Bush straight in front, Charlie calculated: Notting Hill to the left. There were people out there, ordinary people, worried about mortgages and debts and girlfriends being pregnant and bosses not liking them and imagining that nothing could be worse, whatever happened to them. Lucky sods.

'What about fingerprints, Mr Hickley?'

The chief officer went even more rigid. 'There were none, sir,' he said.

Because you were too b.l.o.o.d.y anxious, thought Charlie. If they'd waited, just five minutes after lock up, they'd have caught him bang to rights. It had been instinctive to wipe the bottle, after securing it in its hiding place. Some things still were.

'Then there's no definite proof, is there?' said the governor mildly.

'Concealing it, sir,' said Hickley desperately. 'It's an offence to conceal liquor.'

'True,' agreed Armitrage. He turned back to Charlie. 'You lose all privileges for a fortnight,' he declared. 'No recreation period, no tobacco, fined your work allowance and confined to cell immediately after evening meal.' The governor paused. Then he said, 'Your employment in the prison library is a favoured one. I won't take it away from you on this occasion. If there are any further infringements of the regulations, I will.' The man appeared embarra.s.sed at his own forcefulness.

He'd won, Charlie decided. Apart from the tobacco and the wages, he wasn't losing anything he hadn't lost already. He was still in the library which was the important thing. Charlie knew they were trying to get him into one of the prison workshops, among too much noise and too many people. They'd try again.

'Remember what I said,' warned the governor.

'Yes, sir.'

Charlie marched militarily between Hickley and b.u.t.terworth from the governor's office, through the outer area and then back into the corridors leading into the jail. He didn't think they'd attempt anything openly against him but he still walked tensed against the smallest movement from either side. No one spoke. He reached his cell without incident, thrusting suddenly into it before they could trap him in the doorway. Hickley smirked at the fear.

'You should be frightened,' said Hickley. 'I'm going to get you. Really get you. Don't like smart b.u.g.g.e.rs on my landing. Don't like them at all.'

Charlie knew he meant it.

The restrictions were supposed to be a penalty but Charlie actually found them a relief. He didn't smoke, so the tobacco represented only a currency and the deprivation of that and of his official wages was bearable. He'd already abandoned the recreation period and his feet, which ached constantly within the incarceration of the prison-issue boots, had always made exercise more of an ordeal than a benefit to his health: he far preferred walking back and forth along the length of his cell in his stockinged feet. In his cell he was safe: protected. He recognised it as an inst.i.tutionalised att.i.tude; of fear, of Hickley and b.u.t.terworth and Prudell and G.o.d knows who else. So what? He was inst.i.tutionalised. And he was scared. s.h.i.+t scared. Worse than ever before. What made it worse was knowing he only had two weeks of safety.

The governor's decision meant he was escorted every day from his cell to the library and back again and that the warder in charge had to have him constantly in sight; obediently Charlie obeyed every rule, so there was no opportunity for any conversation between him and Hargrave. Despite the difficulties, the old man thanked him on the first day for not gra.s.sing and identifying him as the purchaser of the booze. It was during shelf stocking, the best time.

'You're a good guy, Charlie.'

'It's a minority opinion.'

'There's a joke, going around.'

'About what?'

'The booze. Prudell diluted it, you know.'

'I know.'

'Do you want to know how?'

'No,' insisted Charlie, swallowing with difficulty.

'He's a b.a.s.t.a.r.d.'

'Right b.a.s.t.a.r.d,' agreed Charlie. He felt sick.

'I wanted to be your friend, Charlie.'

'I understand.'

'I'm sorry.'

'It's all right,' said Charlie. 'Stay safe.'

'And you.'

'I'll try.'

'Try hard,' murmured Hargrave. 'I've seen this happen to people before in the nick. They end up mad.'

It was on the fifth day of restrictions when he heard them coming along the landing, an hour after he'd been confined to the cell: it wasn't quite dark, the grey time of night. The cell light was on but it didn't seem to help much. Charlie pulled away from the door, hunched on the bunk, knowing intuitively where the footsteps would stop. They did.

It was neither Hickley nor b.u.t.terworth: Charlie thought he recognised one of the screws from reception but he wasn't sure. Between them was a comparatively young man, younger than Charlie anyway, still upright and looking about him demandingly. He had an outside haircut and the discomfited look of a new prison entrant, suddenly deprived of clothes that fitted him and put instead into the bluish grey uniform that came only in stock sizes.

His nose wrinkled at the very entrance to the cell. 'Dear G.o.d!' he said. 'What on earth is this!' It was an exaggerated voice, stretching vowels and consonants, a voice that had responded to tutors and prep school teachers and university dons and got respect from head waiters and hotel doormen.

'Home,' said Charlie. 'There's no place like it.'

The British emba.s.sy to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics borders the Moskva river, almost opposite the Kremlin: the view from one to the other is uninterrupted and the story is that during his manic, despotic reign Stalin used to become apoplectic looking from his window to see the Union Jack rippling so close and so defiantly in the wind.

The communications centre for the British emba.s.sy is a peculiar room, deep in the bas.e.m.e.nt and far below ground level: before workmen were flown in from London to tank the chamber, dampness from the adjoining river seeped through the walls and stained them. Appropriately, the discoloration was an iron red, not the green of mould.

The brickwork they created remains. Within it has literally been built another room, suspended from the roof and from the base and the sides by single streel struts, so that it looks like a module created for physics instruction. There is a medieval-type drawbridge, linking this suspended chamber to the one outside. It is withdrawn like the castle of the middle ages from inside, so that the suspended structure is completely isolated apart from its support bars and those are swept weekly by electronics experts, to ensure no listening attachment has been installed upon the diplomatic and secret radio traffic that emanates from it.

Progress is usually synonymous with improvement. For signals transmissions clandestine transmissions, that is it isn't so. Microwave relay is the easiest thing to eavesdrop on, particularly when an emba.s.sy is so close to a suspicious seat of a suspicious government.

By the sixth week of the coded messages being relayed to London, they were being intercepted with complete clarity if without any understanding at 2, Dzerzhinsky Square, Moscow.

That's the headquarters of the KGB.

Chapter Three.

The man shuddered as the cell door closed solidly behind him, turning to stare at it. Charlie remembered doing the same; everyone did, the first time. After several moments the man moved further into the cell, his belongings collected in a rolled up towel. In his swamping tunic, Charlie thought he looked like a s.h.i.+pwreck victim rescued on an island of big men. The newcomer seemed aware of it as the impression came to Charlie, looking down at himself as if for the first time, plucking disdainfully at the rough cloth with his fingers. He put the towel roll on the empty bunk and gazed around, at the table and the chair and the wall rack, briefly at Charlie and then, for the longest time, up at the narrow triangle of light from the only window. Charlie waited and saw the abrupt sag of his shoulders.

'Christ,' he said, hollow-voiced.

'You get used to it.'

The man started, as if he'd forgotten Charlie's presence. He turned to face Charlie and said 'Sampson. Edwin Sampson.'

He offered his hand. The instinctive politeness of public school, thought Charlie. He allowed the briefest contact between them, not bothering to stand. Sampson frowned at the rudeness.

'I know who you are,' said Sampson. 'They told me.'

'I read about you,' said Charlie. 'The beginning of the trial, at least.'

'Thirty years!' said Sampson. 'That's what I got. Thirty years.' He looked again towards the window.

'You must have done a lot of damage.'

'That sounded critical.'

'It wasn't meant to sound anything.'

'You can hardly b.l.o.o.d.y talk: there isn't a section in the department that doesn't know what you did,' said Sampson, viciously, if you hadn't managed to run until the Treason Law limitation ran out, you'd be doing thirty years too: most probably.'

'I wasn't criticising,' repeated Charlie, wearily.

'Everyone said you were b.l.o.o.d.y rude: people who could remember you, that is.'

Sampson swore with a small-boy defiance, as if he were trying to shock. Charlie swung back on to his bunk, lying with his hands cupped behind his head. He had bigger problems than worrying about offending a snotty-voiced little b.u.g.g.e.r who'd sold his country down the river. Charlie hadn't done that; no one but he could ever accept the qualification, not even the d.a.m.ned judge to whom it had been so patiently explained, but it was the truth. Charlie knew he wasn't a traitor.

'What am I supposed to do?' asked Sampson. There was a plaintiveness about the question.

'Why not make your bed?' suggested Charlie, nodding towards the folded blankets. 'This is recreation period but you don't get it first night in.'

'Recreation?'

'There's a television room, place to play chess and draughts and things like that.'

'Why are you locked up then?' demanded the younger man.

Clever, thought Charlie, 'I'm on restrictions ... punishment,' said Charlie.

'What for?'

Charlie sighed. 'In prison you don't ask anyone what they're doing time for and you don't ask about their punishments. You don't ask about their background or their families. In fact you don't ask about anything. This is the nick, son: not a public school.'

'That was another thing they said about you: that you're an inverted sn.o.b,' said Sampson.

'I don't give a s.h.i.+t what they say about me,' said Charlie. It was all past: too long past.

'Is it bad? In here, I mean?' The nervousness was obvious in Sampson's question.

Charlie turned again to look at the man. 'You'll find it rough, at first,' he said, 'In fact, you'll find it b.l.o.o.d.y awful. But you adjust, learn to behave prison fas.h.i.+on. Keep your head down, until you learn the rules,' Charlie paused. 'And I don't mean the official ones, on the printed form.' Pity he didn't practise what he preached, thought Charlie.

Sampson had his back to Charlie, trying to arrange the blankets in some proper shape over the bed and failing. Charlie thought kids made their own beds at public school: or did they still have f.a.gs to do it for them? Sampson would get a b.o.l.l.o.c.king at cell inspection. After several moments Sampson turned and sat down, squatting forward towards Charlie.

'I want you to know,' he announced.