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.
‘Because I’ve done it before.’
‘What? Got out?’
‘Once yes, twice no. You need some luck too, you know. And I don’t use violence. Not like your religious friend,’ said Eddie, pointing over at David’s discarded copy of jesus for prisoners.
‘Does violence help?’
‘Sometimes, but it’s hard to get weapons in from the outside. You can fake them, of course. Dillinger got the better of fifteen Indiana state troopers back in the Thirties. Used a dummy gun he’d made in the carpentry shop; whittled it out of wood and blackened it with shoe polish. But I prefer not to be seen on the way out if I can help it.’
‘Why do you do it?’
‘Escape, you mean? Because it gives you hope, keeps you alive. It’s easy to lose yourself in here. Why do you think they have those suicide nets hanging under the landings out there? And this time it’s also because I need to. I’ve got debts I couldn’t collect before I got sentenced and now I’m running out of time.’
Eddie got up and went and stood under the window, looking down at his cellmate. He took a shilling coin from his pocket and passed it up and down between the fingers of his hand several times before he broke the silence.
‘So, are you in?’ he asked. ‘I need to know, Davy, because that scaffolding’s not going to be there forever and I need to make my plans. And if it’s not you I’m going with, I’ll need to find someone else.’
David didn’t answer at first. Part of him still didn’t believe escape was possible. This prison was like a bloody fortress even if it was in the middle of the town. But then again, what did he have to lose? So what if he got a few more years added on to his life sentence. He’d be an old man anyway if he ever got out, way past his sell-by date.
‘All right, I’ll do it,’ he said. ‘But once we’re out, I want money and a gun. Not a fake one like that American bloke’s. A real one with bullets inside. Can you get that for me?’
Eddie looked hard at his cellmate, pursing his lips. Once again David was reminded of a bookmaker weighing up the odds. And then all at once Eddie seemed to make up his mind. He nodded, walked over to David, and held out his hand