The Violent Enemy

‘Any particular reason?’

‘It’s dark by six and we’re locked up for the night at half past in my wing. From then on there’s only one duty screw who works from the central hall checking blocks. If I’m not missed, and there’s no reason why I should be, they won’t find I’m gone till they turn out the cells at seven on Monday morning.’

‘Which sounds sensible.’ Soames hesitated and then said carefully. ‘You’re certain you can get out?’

‘Nothing’s certain in this life, Mr Soames, I’d have thought you’d have found that out for yourself by now.’

‘How right you are, Mr Rogan.’ Soames picked up his bowler hat and briefcase and pushed back his chair. ‘I don’t think there’s anything more to discuss. I’ll look forward to Monday’s newspaper with interest.’

‘So will I,’ Rogan said.

He stood there watching as Soames walked to the door and waited. A few moments later, the Principal Officer came for him and they went back into the corridor.

As they went back across the courtyard, he said, ‘Any joy?’

Rogan shrugged. ‘You know what these lawyers are like. Big with their promises and fees, but short on hope. I gave up counting my chickens a long time ago.’

‘The best way of looking at things and the most sensible.’

When they reached the top landing, the bell was sounding for the midday meal and when Rogan went back into his cell, Martin already had the plates ready on the small table. When the door closed, he waited for a moment, then looked at Rogan questioningly.

‘And what was all that about?’

For a moment, Rogan was going to tell him and then he remembered the old man’s words earlier. That in a place like this a man could only be pushed so far. He was right, of course. If Sean Rogan had learned one thing from the thirteen years of his life spent between four walls, it was that no one was ever completely dependable.

He shrugged. ‘Some friends of mine on the outside have clubbed together and dug up a lawyer. He wanted to meet me personally before trying the Home Secretary again.’

Martin’s face creased into the perpetual smile of hope of the long serving convict. ‘Hell, Irish, maybe things are looking up.’

‘You can always hope,’ Sean Rogan said and moved to the window.

It was still raining and a slight mist curled across the top of the hill beyond the walls where the quarry lay. If you listened carefully you could almost hear the river; dark, peat-stained, splashing over great boulders on its long run down to the sea.

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Rain dashed against the window as Rogan peered into the darkness. After a while, he went to the door and stood listening, and from below the steel gate clanged hollowly as the Duty Officer closed it after him.

He turned and grinned tightly, his face shadowed in the dim light. ‘A hell of a night for it.’

Martin was lying on his bed reading a book, and he pushed himself up on one elbow. ‘For what?’

Rogan crouched beside him and said calmly, ‘I’m crashing out, Jigger. Whose side are you on?’

‘Why, yours, Irish, you don’t need to ask.’ The old man’s face was grey with excitement and he swung his legs to the floor. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Open the door,’ Rogan said. ‘Just that. When I’ve gone, you leave it unlocked, get back on your bed and stay there till they turn out the cells at seven.’

Martin licked his lips nervously. ‘What happens when they bring me up in front of the Governor?’

‘Tell him you got the shock of your life when I opened the door, that you lay there and minded your own business.’ Rogan grinned coldly. ‘After all, that’s just what he’d expect you to do. Any con who did anything else under similar circumstances wouldn’t last twenty-four hours before the boys got to him. The Governor knows that as well as you do.’

The threat was implicit and Martin got to his feet hastily. ‘Hell, Irish, I wouldn’t do anything to balls things up, you know that.’

Rogan turned over his mattress, slid his hand through the seam at one side and pulled out a coil of nylon rope and a sling with snap links at the end, of the type used by climbers.

‘Where in the hell did you get those?’ Martin asked.

‘They use them up at the quarry when they’re placing charges in the cliff face.’ Rogan took out a narrowhandled screwdriver and a pair of nine-inch wire cutters which he tucked into his belt.

‘These came by way of the machine shop.’ He nodded towards the door. ‘Okay, Jigger, let’s get moving. I’m on a tight schedule.’

Martin took out the spoon and knelt in front of the door, his hands shaking a little. For a moment he seemed to be having some difficulty and then there was a slight click. He turned, his face very pale in the dim light, and nodded.

Rogan quickly arranged his pillow and some spare clothing from his locker into some semblance of a human form under the blankets on his bed. He moved to the door.

‘I just thought of something,’ Martin said. ‘You know how the duty screw pussyfoots around in carpet slippers?’

‘He’ll have a look through the spyhole, that’s all,’ Rogan said, ‘and if he can tell that it isn’t me in that bed in this light, he’s got better eyes than I have.’

Suddenly, Martin seemed to undergo a change. It was as if ten years had slipped from his worn shoulders and he laughed softly. ‘I can’t wait to see the expression on that screw’s face in the morning.’ He clapped Rogan on the shoulder. ‘Go on, son, get to hell out of it and keep on running.’

The landing was dimly lit and the wing was wrapped in quiet. Rogan stood in the shadow of the wall for a moment, then moved quickly to the stairs at the far end.

The great central hall was illuminated by a single light, and above him its roof and the dome were shrouded in darkness. He climbed on to the rail and scrambled up the steel mesh curtain to the roof of the cell block. He hooked the snap links of his sling into the wire, securing himself in place and took out the wire cutters.

It didn’t take him long, cutting in a straight line against the wall, to make an aperture perhaps three feet long through which he pulled himself. Once on the other side, he again hooked himself into place and carefully closed up the links one by one so that only a close inspection could reveal his passage. His previous escape had been made from B block on the opposite side of the hall and in three years no one had discovered his route out from there.

Steel supporting beams lifted into the darkness, each one supported on a block of masonry which jutted from the main fabric of the wall. He reached the first one with ease and wedged himself against the wall, judging the five foot gap to the next carefully. A quick breath, a leap into darkness and he was across. He repeated the performance three times until he had completed the necessary half-circle which brought him to the beam close to B block.

A door clanged and he glanced down and saw the Duty Officer and the Chief walk through the pool of light below to the desk. They were talking together in low tones, the voices drifting up as the Duty Officer made an entry in the night book. There was a burst of laughter and they crossed the hall, unlocked the door leading to the guardroom and disappeared.

Rogan slipped the sling around the beam and his waist, snapped the links together and started to climb, leaning well out.

The difficulty lay in the fact that the beam itself started to curve, following the line of the wall, leaving only an inch or two for the sling. It was now that his perfect physical condition and massive strength stood him in good stead. He gritted his teeth and heaved his way up into the darkness almost inch by inch and the pool of light receded beneath him. A few moments later, he reached his objective, a large steel ventilation grille, perhaps two and a half feet square.

It was held in place by two large screws on either side and he braced himself against the wall, leaning back in the sling, took out the screwdriver and set to work.

The screws were brass and came out easily, but he left one partly in position so that the grille swung down, no longer obscuring the entrance, but still securely held.

He had now reached the most difficult moment. He carefully unhooked the spring links securing the sling and pushed it into the shaft quickly, then forcing his fingers behind the beam he walked up the wall and pushed himself feet first into the zinc-lined ventilating shaft. Clouds of dry dust arose, filling his nostrils. He choked back a cough and reached out and swung the grille back into place. Very carefully he pushed his fingers through and replaced the screw he had removed, covering his tracks completely.

On his previous attempt he’d had an electric torch, something he hadn’t managed to get hold of this time, and from now on he had to work in darkness, relying completely on memory.

He had worked out the route after a fast ten minutes with a map of the prison’s ventilation system carelessly left on a bench in the machine shop by a heating engineer, but that had been three years ago and there had been structural alterations since then. He could only pray that the section he was using had been left alone.

He moved backwards into darkness, the dust filling his eyes and throat, sweat trickling down his face, and after a while, came to another opening. He went into it head first and slid gently down a shallow slope, slowing his descent by bracing his hands against the sides.

At the bottom, he paused. It was completely dark, no chink of light anywhere. He was boxed in as securely as if he had been in his own coffin. He pushed the idea away from him and inched forward again.