The King of Diamonds

‘Do you know him?’ David asked

‘Yeah, I think I know who you mean, if it’s the same guy. Jesus Joe he was called when I last saw him. Down in Winchester nick a couple of years back. We’ve crossed paths once or twice. He doesn’t like me and I don’t like him. That’s all. Nothing to write home about.’

There was a casual note in Eddie’s voice that sounded forced somehow. It was like he knew more than he was saying.

‘Why doesn’t he like you?’ asked David, persisting with his questions.

‘I don’t know. He’s stupid and I’m not. I nick stuff and he listens to the Ten Commandments. Thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain,’ said Eddie, imitating O’Brien’s deep Irish voice surprisingly well. ‘You know what I mean.’

Turning round, Eddie stood looking down at his cellmate for a moment and then came and sat down beside him on the bottom bunk.

‘Got you worried, has he, this Irish bloke?’ he asked, looking David in the eye.

‘No, not really. It’s not that. It’s just, well, it’s just I don’t get why you’re so interested in me, why you keep asking me all these questions, why you’re nice to me. I mean other cons aren’t like that. Some of them are all right, but . . .’

‘They’re not like me?’ said Eddie, finishing David’s question for him.

‘Yes.’

David felt good and bad all at the same time. Good because he’d got out the question that he needed to ask. Bad because he didn’t want to give Eddie offence, and he hoped he hadn’t. Eddie was the only friend he’d got in this God-forsaken place and he didn’t want to lose him.

‘So, if I say I’m nice out of the goodness of my heart, it won’t do for you?’ asked Eddie with a smile.

David shook his head, feeling relieved. At least Eddie didn’t seem to be taking it the wrong way.

Eddie eyed David meditatively for a moment. He looked like a bookmaker weighing up the odds. And then, as if making a decision, he leaned over and clapped David on the shoulder.

‘All right, Davy, I’ll tell you why I’m nice. But don’t you go blabbing if you don’t like what I say.’

He put his forefinger up to his lips, and David nodded.

‘Okay. I’m nice to you because I like you, but it’s also because I need you.’

‘Need me!’ David sounded shocked. It was the last thing he’d expected to hear. Eddie was the resourceful one, able to get almost anything he wanted from God knows where. What could he possibly need David Swain for?

‘To escape,’ said Eddie, answering the question.

Escape. It was the thought that was always at the outer edge of David’s consciousness, that he wouldn’t let in because he knew there was no way out of this hell and thinking about it would send him crazy. And yet here it was, spoken aloud as if it was something possible, something that could actually happen. David felt his heart beating like a hammer inside his chest; he put out his hand and held on hard to the metal ladder leading up to the top bunk as if to prevent himself falling, even though he was sitting with his feet on the ground.

‘I need you because it’ll take two of us to get out of here, and I think you want it as much as I do. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt it’s that you’ve got to want to escape more than anything else in the whole world if you’re going to have any chance of success. Do you want it that much, Davy? Do you?’

David didn’t answer and so Eddie went back on the attack.

‘Don’t you want to see that Katya woman one more time and tell her what you think, tell her how you feel? Or maybe you’re happy to let her sit there in that great fine house of hers laughing at you while you rot away in here?’

Eddie looked at his cellmate expectantly. David swallowed hard but he still didn’t respond. And yet Eddie knew he’d found his mark. There was a fire in David’s eyes. They were wider open than they’d been since his arrest. He’d been thinking of the world outside – of air and water and trees and grass, but now he thought of Katya and his mouth twisted in a grimace. Eddie was right. She had these things every minute of the day. Fuck her, he thought savagely. Fuck her.

‘Yes, I want out of here,’ he said. ‘I want it so much it hurts.’

‘All right,’ said Eddie, looking pleased. ‘That’s what I thought. But you’ll have to do as I say. It won’t be easy. Escaping’s no piece of cake.’

David nodded and then looked up instinctively at the tiny window set high in the back wall of the cell. It was tiny, far too small for a man to fit through, even if he could find a way of sawing through the three thick metal bars cemented inside the frame. There was a ventilation shaft in the ceiling above the window, but that too was a hopeless cause. The aperture was a third the size of the window. And the cell door was three inches of solid steel that couldn’t be unlocked from the inside. The only opening in it was a spy hole near the top, the so-called Judas hole, through which the screws could watch their charges without being seen themselves.

Not easy! Getting out of here was downright impossible. It was stupid to even think about it.

Eddie smiled. He knew what David was thinking. He’d watched his cellmate’s expression change from hope to despair as his eyes travelled around the cell.

‘Don’t worry, Davy,’ he said. ‘It’s not this cell we’re getting out of. It’d take more than a year to dig your way out of here. Even if we had the tools, which we don’t.’

‘How then?’

‘You know they’re going to be painting the gym and the rec room over in the new block next week?’

‘No.’

‘Well, they are. They’re putting up scaffolding tomorrow on the top floor. They need it because the ceilings are so high.’

‘How do you know?’

‘A little bird told me. It doesn’t matter how I know. What matters is they’re doing it,’ said Eddie impatiently.

‘Sorry.’

‘The point is, Davy, the scaffolding’s an opportunity for us. And opportunities are your best chance. Not tunnelling away for a year and a half just to find yourself moved to another wing when you’re still chiselling away in the small hours.’

‘How’s it an opportunity?’

‘Because we can use it to get at the rec room ceiling, punch a hole in that, and climb out onto the roof. And then down into the rear yard.’

‘But that’s thirty feet. More maybe.’

‘Twenty-eight I reckon. We’ll use dust sheets. They put down plenty of them when they painted the canteen last month, and they’re bigger than the sheets we have in the cells.’

‘How do we get out of the rear yard?’ asked David, growing more sceptical by the minute. ‘There are two bloody great walls to go over once you’re out there. If you get out there. And the perimeter one’s more than thirty feet. I know it is. I’ve seen the top of it over the roof of the new block from the back of the exercise yard, so it’s got to be higher than the rec room. How do we go thirty feet up in the air, Eddie? I doubt the builders left too many footholds.’

‘We don’t need any footholds. There’ll be a rope ladder and a car on the other side. I’ve got connections, or have you forgotten that?’

‘So why do you need me if you’ve got connections?’

‘Because they’re on the outside, not in here,’ said Eddie, sounding as if he was running out of patience. ‘Until we get to the perimeter wall we’re on our own. And so I’ll need you to keep a lookout and help me over the first wall. I’m a lot more worried about that one than the other one, to be honest.’

‘Why?’

‘Because we’ve got to find a way to get up it without a ladder. Down’s easy, it’s up that’s the problem. But don’t worry. I’m working on it,’ said Eddie, tapping the top of his head with his forefinger.

David sat back heavily, resting his head on the wall behind him, trying to digest the information he’d been given. He felt like he’d been put through a wringer, catapulted from one conflicting emotion to another with no time to catch his breath and think. He’d felt excitement at first as he dared to think about escape for the first time as a real possibility, then doubt and anger too that he had let down his defences and allowed himself to be suckered into believing in miracles, and then the beginning of a new thought – that maybe Eddie did know what he was talking about, that maybe he could get them out of here.

‘How do you know about all this escaping stuff?’ he asked.