The Violent Enemy
When his turn came, the Duty Officer took him in and sat him in a cubicle. Rogan waited impatiently, the conversation on either side a meaningless blur, and then the door opened and Soames came in.
He was small and dark with a neatly trimmed moustache and soft pink hands. He carried a bowler hat and briefcase and wore a neat pin-striped suit.
He sat down and smiled through the wire mesh. ‘You won’t know me, Mr Rogan. My name’s Soames – Henry Soames.’
‘So I’ve been told,’ Rogan said. ‘Who sent you?’
Soames glanced each way to make sure that no individual conversation could be overheard in the general hubbub, then leaned close.
‘Colum O’More.’
A vivid picture jumped into Rogan’s mind at once, one of those queer tricks that memory plays. He had just volunteered to ‘go active’ as they’d called it in the Organization in those days, a callow, seventeen-year-old student. They’d taken him to a house outside Dublin for the final important interview and had left him alone in a small room to wait. And then the door had opened and a giant of a man had entered, the mouth split in a wide grin as he laughed back over his shoulder at someone outside, wearing his strength and courage for all to see like a suit of armour. Colum O’More – the Big Man.
‘Are you sure, avic?’ he’d said to Rogan. ‘You know what you’re getting into?’
Mother of God, who wouldn’t be sure and face to face with such a man?
‘So Colum sent you?’ Rogan said.
‘Not directly.’ Soames smiled faintly. ‘I believe there’s something like half of a ten-year sentence still hanging over his head in this country. He is in England at the moment, but we’ve only met personally once. Since then I’ve been working through an accommodation address.’
‘If you’re thinking of raising my case again with the Home Secretary, you’re wasting your time.’
‘I couldn’t agree more.’ Soames smiled slightly. ‘To be perfectly frank, Colum O’More was thinking of adopting more unorthodox means.’
‘Such as?’ Rogan said calmly.
‘Assisting you to leave without the Home Secretary’s permission.’
‘And what makes you think I could?’
‘A man called Pope,’ Soames said. ‘I believe he shared a cell with you for a year? He was released six months ago.’
‘I still have the stink of him in my nostrils,’ Rogan said contemptuously. ‘A cheap, two-a-penny tearaway. The worst kind. Was a peeler with the Metropolitan and got done for corruption. He’d sell his own sister on the streets if you made it worth his while.’
‘He tells an interesting story, Mr Rogan. He insists that in 1960 you were caught in the early hours of the morning outside the walls of this prison. That to this day the authorities have never been able to find out how you got out.’
‘He has a big mouth,’ Rogan said. ‘One day someone will be closing his eyes with pennies.’
‘Is it true?’ Soames said, and for the first time there was an urgency in his voice. ‘Have you a way out?’
‘And if I had?’
‘Then Colum O’More would be glad to see you.’
‘And how could that be managed?’
Soames leaned even closer. ‘You know the quarry and the hamlet between it and the river – Hexton?’
‘I’ve been working there for the past year.’
‘Below the quarry there’s an iron footbridge. On the other side of the river you’ll find a cottage. You can’t miss it. It’s completely isolated.’
‘Will Colum be there?’
‘No, Pope.’
‘Why him?’
‘He’s proved very useful. He’ll have clothes, a car, even an identity for you. You could be clear of the moor within half an hour.’
‘And where do I go?’
‘Pope will have full instructions. They’ll take you to Colum O’More. That’s as much as I can tell you.’
Rogan sat there, a slight frown knitting his forehead, considering the situation. He wasn’t happy about Pope, and Soames was a hollow man if ever he’d seen one, but was there really any choice? And if Colum O’More was behind the organization …
‘Well?’ Soames said.
Rogan nodded. ‘How soon can Pope be ready?’
‘He’s ready now. I’d heard you were a man who doesn’t like to let grass grow under your feet.’
‘It’s Thursday today,’ Rogan said. ‘Better make it Sunday.’
‘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.
3
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.
He came to a side shaft and then another and paused. Six or was it seven? No, six before he roped down to the first level. He pushed forward again, counting until he reached the shaft on his left. He ran his hand along the right side and found at once the supporting bracket he had forced from the wall as a support on that other occasion. He pushed forward, then eased himself backwards into the hole. He supported himself with his arms, uncoiled the nylon rope, looped it into a running line around the bracket he had forced out from the wall, then lowered himself carefully down the shaft. Thirty feet below, it curved into a straight line and he moved into it backwards on his belly, pulling the rope down after him. He coiled it carefully and inched backwards.
Light showed through in several places and he paused at a grille and peered down into the main kitchens. There was a light on, but they were quite deserted and he moved on, emerging into a slightly larger shaft. He twisted round and went forward on his hands and knees.
He was now at the far end of the central block and perhaps forty minutes had elapsed since he left his cell. He moved on quickly and came out into the bottom of a wide shaft that lifted vertically above his head, bands of yellow light cutting into it from grilles set at several levels.
The zinc lining of the shaft was held in place by a network of steel stays which provided excellent footholds and he started to climb quickly. His objective was a side shaft at the very top which ran through the roof and out across the courtyard to the hospital on the other side.
He became conscious of a strong current of air and a low, humming sound, and frowned. This was something new and the heart moved inside him. A few moments later he reached the top of the shaft and his worst fears were confirmed. Where there had previously been only the entrance to the link with the hospital, there was now a metal grille protecting an electric extractor fan. He stayed there for a moment, tracing the edge of the grille with his free hand, knowing it was hopeless, then started down.
The first grille he came to was only a foot square and he moved on down to the next. This was perhaps two feet square, a tight squeeze certainly, but possible. He could see into a quiet corridor, dimly lit and remembered that these would be the bachelor quarters for unmarried officers.
He hesitated for only a moment, wedged there in the narrow shaft, then took out the screwdriver and pushed his hand as far between the bars of the grille as it would go, holding the screwdriver by the shaft. He felt for the head of the left hand screw and to his relief it started to move at once. A moment later, the screw fell to the floor and he forced the grille down with all his strength.
He went back up the shaft a little way so that he was able to lower himself through the grille feet first. There wasn’t much room, and for a moment he seemed to stick and then went through in a rush, shirt tearing, landing six feet below in the corridor.
He picked himself up quickly, turned and forced the grille back into position, then moved along the corridor. He could hear a radio playing and there was a quick burst of laughter, strangely muted and far away. At the end of the corridor, he came to the stair-head and looked over the banisters. Three floors below he could see the entrance hall quiet and still in the light from a single yellow bulb. He went down quickly, keeping to the wall.
At the bottom he paused in the shadows, then crossed quickly to the door, then opened it and hesitated in the porch. A lamp jutted from the wall, casting a pool of light to the path below, and he went down the steps quickly and moved into the darkness at the front of the walls.
The rain was falling heavily now, bouncing from the cobbled courtyard like steel rods and he glanced up at the ventilating shaft high above his head stretching across to the hospital. It had originally given him access to the hospital roof, now he had to find another route.
He kept to the shadows of the wall, working his way round the courtyard until he reached the hospital and moved round to one side. It was then that he remembered the fire escape. He found it a moment later and started quickly, head lowered against the driving rain.
The final landing was outside a door directly under the eaves of the roof and he climbed on to the rail, reached up to the gutter and tested it quickly. It seemed reasonably secure and he took a quick breath and heaved himself up and over.
He scrambled up on to the ridge of the building and moved along it, a foot on either side, hands braced against the tiles. It took him a good five minutes of careful work to reach the end of the building and the chimney stack of the incinerator.
No more than fifty feet away from him through the darkness was the spiked edge of the outer wall of the prison, and beneath him an iron drainage pipe cut through space to meet it. Rogan uncoiled his nylon rope, flung one end round the chimney stack and went straight over the edge gripping the double strand tightly.
His feet slipped on wet brickwork and he swung wildly, skinning his knuckles and bruising his shoulder painfully and then his legs banged against the pipe.
He sat on it, legs astride, and pulled the rope down, coiling it again, then he started across. The narrow pipe cut into his crotch and he moved painfully on, pushing away the thought of the cobbles forty feet below, concentrating on the task in hand. Was it now, or was it three years previously? There was no way of telling and life seemed a circle turning upon itself endlessly. His fingers touched stone and he looked up to see the darker line of the wall against the sky.
He carefully stood up, reached for the rusty spikes and pulled himself on top. With hardly a pause, he uncoiled the rope, looped it around a couple of spikes and went over the edge, using the same double strand technique as in descending from the hospital roof. A few moments later he dropped ten feet into wet grass at the foot of the wall, pulling the rope down after him.
He was soaked to the skin and for a moment he lay there, his face in the coolness of the wet grass and then he scrambled to his feet. He coiled the nylon rope quickly, hooked it over his head, turned and moved quickly away through the darkness.
Remembering his previous experience, he gave the married quarters a wide berth, striking up the hillside to the open moor and the quarry.
Darkness was his friend and five minutes later he reached the crest of the valley and paused to look back. Below in the hollow the prison lay like some primeval monster crouching in the darkness, shapeless, without form, a yellow light gleaming here and there and at its feet the houses crouched.
Rogan was suddenly filled with a fierce exhilaration. He laughed out loud, turned and started to run across the moor. It took him fifteen minutes to reach the quarry and beyond it, the river, swollen by rain, tumbled over boulders in the darkness.
Halfway across the iron footbridge, he paused and tossed the rope, screwdriver and wirecutters into the foam. Somehow there was a finality about the act. This time there would be no going back. He ran across the bridge and moved along the bank, and a few moments later the lights of the cottage gleamed through the dark trees of the wood.
4
It was cold in the stone-flagged kitchen and Jack Pope shivered involuntarily as he piled logs into the crook of one arm. He moved back along the passage and went into the living room of the small cottage.
Flames flickered across the oak-beamed ceiling, casting fantastic shadows that writhed and twisted convulsively and he piled more logs on to the already large fire.
He went to the dresser, took down a bottle of whisky and half filled a glass.
Outside the wind moaned, driving the rain against the window with the force of lead shot and he shivered, remembering the place on the other side of the hill beyond the river where he had spent five years of his life. He emptied the glass quickly, coughing as the raw spirit burned its way down his throat, and reached for the bottle again.
There was no sound, and yet a small cold wind touched him gently on the right cheek. He turned slowly, the hair rising on the nape of his neck.
Rogan stood in the doorway, shirt and pants plastered to his body, moulding his superb physique, rain mingling with the dust from the ventilating shafts, washing over him in a patina of filth.
And Jack Pope knew fear, real primeval fear that loosened the very bowels in him so that in the presence of this strange, dark man he was like a frightened child, completely dominated by some elemental force he couldn’t even comprehend.
He moistened his dry lips and forced a ghastly smile. ‘You made it, Irish. Good for you.’
Rogan crossed the room, soundlessly, took the glass from Pope’s hand and poured the whisky down in one quick swallow. He closed his eyes, took a long breath and opened them again.
‘What time is it?’
Pope glanced at his watch. ‘Just after half past eight.’
‘Good,’ Rogan said. ‘I want to be out of here by nine. Is there a bath?’
Pope nodded eagerly. ‘I’ve had the water heating all afternoon.’
‘Clothes?’
‘Laid out in the bedroom. What about something to eat?’
Rogan shook his head. ‘No time. If you’ve got a vacuum flask fill it with coffee and make a few sandwiches. I can eat them on the way.’
‘Okay, Irish, anything you say. The bath’s at the end of the passage.’
Rogan turned abruptly and went out, and immediately the forced smile was wiped from Pope’s face. ‘Who the hell does he think he is, the big stinking Mick. God, how I wish I could turn him in.’
He went into the kitchen, put the kettle on the stove, then he rummaged in a drawer till he found a bread-knife, took down a loaf and started viciously to cut it into slices.
The bathroom was a recent extension to the rear of the cottage and the bath itself was small. Not that it mattered. Rogan filled it with hot water, stripped off his wet clothes and climbed in. For a brief moment only he sat there enjoying the warmth, then he started to wash the filth from his body. Five minutes later, he stepped out, dried himself quickly, then went along the passage to the bedroom, a towel about his waist.