Hell Is Too Crowded

(3)

The governor of Manningham Gaol sighed. Men who had been in the condemned cell always seemed to have that look about them — as if the whole world was their enemy. On the other hand he’d always considered it rather barbaric to let a man sweat it out until the appointed day was almost upon him before reprieving him. It was hardly to be wondered that anyone who had gone through such an experience should be different from other men.

It was eight o'clock in the evening and he was already late for a bridge party. He shuffled the reports neatly together, replaced them in their file, and leaned back in his chair.

“This is a maximum-security prison, Brady,” he said. “There’s no way out except through the front gate. That’s why men are sent here. You’ll find that most of the inmates are serving long sentences or life, like yourself. Have you any questions?”

“No, sir!” Brady said.

The light from the desk threw his face into relief. It had fined down in the past three months and there was a touch of grey in his hair. His eyes were cold and hard and devoid of any expression. He looked a thoroughly dangerous man and the governor sighed. “I understand you attacked a prison officer while on remand at Wandsworth? I wouldn’t advise that sort of thing here.”

“I was under great stress at the time,” Brady said.

The governor made no comment, but opened the file again. “You were a constructional engineer by profession, I see. We’ll be able to make use of you. We’re building our own extensions, within the walls, of course. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t start in the morning with the others.”

“Thank you, sir!” Brady said.

“Of course, I need hardly mention that it’s a privilege which will be revoked at the first sign of bad behaviour. Do I make myself clear?”

“Perfectly, sir!”

The governor smiled briefly. “If you feel in need of advice at any time, Brady, don’t hesitate to see me. That’s what I’m here for.”

He got to his feet as a sign that the interview was over and the chief officer led Brady out.

Manningham was the third prison Brady had been in during the past three months and he looked about him with interest as he was taken to the clothing store, then to the kitchen for a meal, and finally to his cell.

The building had been constructed in the reform era of the middle of the nineteenth century on a system commonly found in Her Majesty’s Prisons. Four, three-tiered cell blocks radiated like the spokes of a wheel from a central hall which lifted 150 feet into the gloom to an iron-framed glass dome.

Each cell block was separated from the central hall by a curtain of steel mesh for reasons of safety, and the chief officer unlocked the gate into C Block and motioned Brady through.

They mounted an iron staircase to the dimly lit top landing. The whole place was wrapped in an unnatural quiet and the landing was boxed in with more steel mesh to stop anyone who felt like it, from taking a dive over the rail. It gave one a feeling of being in a steel labyrinth and Brady shivered slightly as the Chief paused outside the end door on the landing and unlocked it.

The cell was larger than he had anticipated. There was a small barred window, a washbasin and fixed toilet in one corner. Against one wall, there was a double bunk, against the other, a single truckle bed.

A man was lying on the single bed reading a magazine. He looked about sixty, white hair close-cropped to his skull, eyes a vivid blue in the wrinkled, humorous face.

“New cell mate for you, Evans,” the Chief said. “He’ll be joining the gang on the building site tomorrow. Show him the ropes.” He turned to Brady. “Remember what the governor said and watch your step. Play fair with me, and I’ll play fair with you.”

The door closed behind him with a slight clang and the sound of the key turning in the lock seemed to carry with it all the finality in the world.

“Play fair with me and I’ll play fair with you.” The man on the bed snorted in disgust. “What a load of crap.” He sat up and produced a twenty packet of cigarettes from under his pillow. “Have a fag, son. My name’s Joe Evans. You’ll be Brady, I suppose?”

“That’s right.” Brady took a cigarette. “How did you know?”

Evans shrugged and gave him a light. “Got it on the vine from Wandsworth. Hear you tried to do a screw down there?”

Brady lay on the bottom bunk and inhaled with conscious pleasure. “He needled me from the day they got me in there on remand. I couldn’t take any more.”

“Those Sunday papers gave you a rough time, didn’t they?” Evans chuckled. “I expected you to have fangs and two heads.”

In spite of himself, Brady grinned, and Evans smiled back at him. “That’s the way, son. Don’t let the bastards get you down. If you ever feel really depressed, spit right in some screw’s eye. It can always be guaranteed to liven things up.”

“I’ll bet it can,” Brady said. “What’s it like here?”

“Better than some. They’ll be sticking some other bloke into that top bunk soon, but you’ve got to expect that these days. I came here three years ago when they made it a maximum-security nick for bad lads. There hasn’t been a single crash-out since then.”

“How long have you got to do?”

The old man grinned. “That’s up to the Board. I’ve served six years of a seven-stretch. Would have been out by now if I’d minded my manners to start with.” He blew smoke up in a long plume to the ceiling. “Not to worry. My old woman’s got a nice little guest house going in Cornwall. They won’t see me back here again.”

“I seem to have heard that one somewhere before,” Brady said.

“But I mean it,” Evans said. “I’ll tell you something, son. You know what ruined me? Being too good at my bloody job. When I blow a safe, it makes no more noise than a mild belch. Trouble is, I do it so expertly, the cops always know where to come.”

“You seem to have things pretty well organized here anyway,” Brady said, holding up his cigarette.

Evans grinned. “I’m not complaining. You fell on your feet, getting in with me, son.”

“What’s this building work the governor was telling me about?”

“They can’t cope with the crime wave, so we’re having to build ’em another cell block in the main yard. It’s a good number. Better than sewing mailbags or sitting on your fanny in here all day going slowly nuts. Should last another ten months if we take it easy.”

“I don’t intend to be around that long.” Brady stood up and went and peered out of the window. The outer wall was perhaps forty feet high and the main railway line ran on the other side of it. Beyond, through the autumn night, the lights of Manningham gleamed fitfully. They might as well have been on another planet.

“Now look, son,” Evans said seriously. “Don’t beat your head against a stone wall. That’s the way to end up in the other place. Nobody can crack this can. I’ve been here three years and I tried every possibility. There’s no way out.”

Brady turned and looked at him. “But I’ve got to get out. I was framed, Evans. Somebody else battered that girl and used me as a fall guy. I want to know who and why.”

“The story you told at the trial was one thing,” Evans said. “It was a good try, but it didn’t work. We’re all guilty in this place. Guilty of getting caught.”

Brady shrugged helplessly. “Sometimes I think I must be the only sane person in a world gone mad.” He walked across to the door and touched it lightly with his fingers. “If only I could open this for a start.”

Evans stood up and crossed to the cupboard under the washbasin. He opened it and took out an ordinary spoon. “Always happy to oblige.”

He pushed Brady out of the way and knelt down in front of the door. The lock was covered by a steel plate perhaps nine inches square. He quickly bent the handle of the spoon and forced it between the edge of the plate and the jamb. He worked it around for a few moments and there was a click. He pulled and the door opened slightly.

“God Almighty!” Brady said.

Evans pushed the door gently into place and worked the spoon round again. There was another slight click and he stood up.

“But that’s incredible,” Brady said.

Evans shook his head. “An old lag’s trick. Plenty of geezers in this place can do as much. Most of these doors are mortice deadlocks, fitted years ago. One of these days they’ll get wise and change them.” He grinned. “Not that it would matter much. Show me any key you like for five seconds and I’ll copy it from memory.”

He went back to his bed and lit another cigarette. “But I don’t understand,” Brady said. “You told me it was impossible to crash-out of this place.”

The old man shook his head pityingly. “Have another fag, son, and let me tell you the facts of life. Getting out of this cell is only the start. You’ve got to get through the cell-block gates downstairs. That puts you in the central hall. From there you’ve got no less than five gates to pass through before you hit the yard, and the main entrance is a fort by itself. Even the governor has a pass.” He shook his head. “This is maximum security, son. Some of the worst bastards in the business are doing time here. That’s why they converted the place.”

“I’ll find a way,” Brady said. “Just give me time.”

But it’s got to be soon, he said to himself as he lay down on his bunk. It’s got to be soon. I can’t take much more of this. He closed his eyes and the face seemed to smile at him out of the darkness, the face that had stayed with him through his trial and the two weeks as a walking dead man in the condemned cell.

Why me? he asked himself. Why me? But there was no answer, could be no answer until he got out of this place and found one. He turned his face to the wall, hitched a blanket over his shoulders and drifted into a troubled sleep.

The days that followed merged into a pattern. Each morning after breakfast, fifty men paraded for the chief officer in the main yard and were allocated their work for the day. The main fabric of the building was already in an advanced state of construction, but there was still a considerable amount of work to do on the steel framework of the fourth storey.

Evans had been working as a welder and riveter up there and Brady was placed in his charge. After seeing the skill with which the American handled a blow torch, the old man sat back and let him get on with it.

“By God, son,” he said. “What I could teach you to do with that torch is nobody’s business. You’re a natural.”

Brady grinned and pushed his goggles up from his eyes. “You’re incorrigible, you old hellion. You’ll come to a bad end yet.”

Evans gave him a cigarette and they crouched down in a corner between crossed girders and looked out over the town. It was a crisp autumn day, the air tinged with a hint of the winter to come. Beyond the gaunt chimneys of the grimy Yorkshire industrial town, the moors lifted in a purple swell, fading almost inperceptibly into the horizon.

“By God, it’s good to be alive on a day like this,” Evans said. “Even in here.”

Brady nodded and glanced briefly down into the main yard below, watching the men working on the brick pile below with the duty screws hovering near by. There could be no illusion of freedom there, not with those dark uniforms standing out so clearly.

He looked across at the glass dome of the central tower and his eyes followed the fall pipe that dropped forty feet to the roof of D block. The block branched out from the central tower like a pointing finger, and stopped thirty or forty feet from the perimeter wall. He sighed and flicked his cigarette end out into space. A man would need wings to get out of this place.

Evans chuckled. “I know what you’re thinking, son, but it just isn’t possible. You’re in a privileged position because it’s all spread beneath you like a map. If you can find a way out, I can get you five hundred quid for the information any time.”

“Maybe I’ll hold you to that” Brady picked up his torch. “Let’s get back to work.”

For the next two weeks he kept his thoughts to himself, but each day, working high on the extension, he used his eyes until finally, every detail of the prison buildings was imprinted on his brain. It would take careful planning, but already there was the glimmering of an idea at the back of his mind.

Just before noon on Thursday, a duty officer called him down and told him he had a visitor. As he waited in the queue outside the visiting room, Brady wondered who it could be. He had no friends in England and both his parents were dead. There was only his sister in Boston, and she had been over already for the trial.

When his turn came, the duty officer took him in and sat him in a cubicle. Brady waited impatiently, the conversation on either side a meaningless blur of sound, and then the door opened and a young girl came in.

She was perhaps twenty, her dark hair closecropped like a young boy, the skin sallow over high cheekbones, the eyes dark brown. She was not beautiful, and yet in any crowd, she would have stood out.

She sat down hesitantly, looking rather unsure of herself. “Mr. Brady, you won’t know me. My name is Anne Dunning.”

Brady frowned. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“You knew my father, Harry Dunning,” she said. “I believe you worked together on the Zembe Dam in Brazil.”

Brady’s eyes widened and he leaned forward. “So you’re Harry Dunning’s daughter. How is he? I haven’t heard from him since we parted company in New York after finishing the Zembe job. Didn’t he go to Guatemala?”

She nodded, hands twisting her purse nervously. “He’s dead, Mr. Brady. Died in Coban six weeks ago after a bad fall.”

Brady was genuinely shocked. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said awkwardly. “Your father was a good friend of mine.”

“That’s exactly what he said about you,” she said. “I flew out as soon as word reached me of his accident. I was with him for two days before he died. He’d heard about your trouble. He told me you could never have done such a thing. That you must have been telling the truth. He said you once saved his life.”

“It’s nice to know that somebody believed me,” Brady said.

She opened her purse and took out an oldfashioned silver watch and chain. She held it close to the gauze screen so that he could examine it. “He wanted you to have this. He asked me to see that you got it personally. I suppose I could give it to the governor to put with your other things.”

He shook his head gently. “It’s no use to me here. You keep it for me.”

“Would you really like me to?” she said.

He nodded. “I might be out of this place sooner than you think, then you’ll be able to give it to me personally.”

She slipped the watch back into her purse and leaned forward. “But I understand they’d turned down your appeal?”

“Oh, I’ve got a few things working for me.” He smiled, dismissing the subject. “Tell me about yourself? How did you know where to find me?”

“There was a bit in the newspapers when they moved you,” she said. “I’m with a show playing Manningham Hippodrome this week. It seemed like a good opportunity. I telephoned the governor this morning and he said it would be all right.”

“How’s business?” he said.

She grimaced. “Terrible. We’re supposed to be on a twelve-week run of the provinces, but I think we’ll fold on Saturday night.” She sighed. “I really thought I’d got a break this time. A good second lead and three solo spots, but that’s show business for you.”

“I’d give a hell of a lot to be sitting slap in the middle of the front row tonight when you come on,” Brady said.

Her eyes crinkled at the corners and she smiled warmly. “And I’d give a lot to have you there, Mr. Brady. I think my father was right. Do you think they’ll let me come and see you again before I leave Manningham?”

He shook his head. “I’m afraid not, but you could write.”

“I’d like to do that,” she said. “I’ll let you have my London address.”

The duty officer touched him on the shoulder and Brady stood up. For a moment she just stood there, looking at him through the gauze and it was as if she wanted to speak, but couldn’t find the words. She turned abruptly and went out and he followed the duty officer down to the dining-hall, thinking about her all the way.

When they paused for a smoke back on the job that afternoon, Evans quizzed him about her. “Who was she, son? I hear she looked pretty good.”

“Is there anything you don’t hear?” Brady demanded.

Evans grinned. “If there is, it isn’t worth knowing.”

Before Brady could think of a suitable reply, the whistle blew signifying the end of work for the day and they packed up and started to descend the scaffolding.

There was a press of men jammed together on the narrow platform which spanned the scaffolding at the third storey. Brady was at the front and as he started to turn to go down the ladder backwards to the next level, a hand shoved him violently in the small of the back.

He went head first into space with a cry of fear and then someone grabbed at his denim jacket, jerking him to one side. His hands fastened over a length of scaffolding and he hung there for a moment before scrambling to safety under the rail.

The whole incident had taken place in a second and the majority of the men hadn’t even noticed it. Brady leaned against the rail and wiped sweat from his face as Evans pushed through the crowd towards him. “I’ve never moved faster,” he said.

“Did you see how it happened?” Brady asked.

Evans shook his head. “There was a hell of a push back there at the top of the ladder. Everyone was in such an all-fired hurry to get down.”

“I guess I was lucky you were on hand,” Brady told him.

But the thought stayed with him, the niggling doubt. A hand had pressed him squarely in the small of the back and pushed outwards into space, of that he was certain. But why? He had made no enemies and his friendship with Evans alone assured him of a privileged position amongst the other prisoners.

He thought about discussing it with Evans, but decided to let it go. He had more important things on his mind. Much more important.

That one omission proved almost fatal. On the following morning, just before noon, he was working on the third-storey catwalk welding a fractured pipe. Behind him, bricks were hauled by hand in a canvas bucket to the fourth storey.

It was pure chance that saved him. He pushed back his goggles to pause for a breather, and out of the corner of one eye, caught a quick flash of something coming towards him. He dropped flat on his face, and the loaded bucket swung lazily out into space over the end of the catwalk, and back again.

He glanced up as it was hauled over the edge of the catwalk above him by a tall, swarthy individual with a broken nose and dark, curling hair. The man returned his gaze calmly for a moment and then walked away.

Brady went up the scaffolding hand-over-hand to the fourth storey, where he found Evans welding angle irons in one of the half-completed rooms at the north end of the building.

The old man pushed up his goggles and grinned. “Time out for a smoke?”

“Someone just tried to make me take a dive off the third storey,” Brady told him.

Evans stood up slowly. “You sure?”

“It’s the second time in two days,” Brady said. “That business at the top of the ladder yesterday afternoon was no accident.”

“Got any ideas?” the old man asked.

Brady nodded. “Come outside and I’ll show you.”

The man with the broken nose was loading a wheelbarrow with bricks at the other end of the catwalk.

Evans frowned. “That’s Jango Sutton. Fancies himself as a bit of a tearaway. Doing a seven-stretch for robbery with violence. Clobbered a seventy-year-old nightwatchman with an iron bar. A real hard man,” he added sarcastically.

“He looks like a foreigner,” Brady observed.

Evans shook his head. “He’s a diddy-coy — a gipsy. Lives here in Manningham as far as I know. Married a local girl.”

“I’d like to know who put him up to it.”

Evans nodded grimly. “That’s easily handled. You get him in here and leave the rest to me.”

Sutton wheeled the load of bricks along the catwalk and they went back inside the room and waited. As the gipsy passed the doorway, Brady reached out, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, and pulled him inside with such force that Sutton staggered across the room and hit the opposite wall.

“Here, what’s the bloody game?” he demanded, getting to his feet.

“You’ve tried to make me take a dive twice in two days,” Brady said. “I want to know why.”

“Get stuffed!” Sutton replied and ran for the door.

Evans stuck out a foot and tripped him and the gipsy sprawled on his face. As he twisted and started to get up again, Evans shoved him down with one foot and squatted beside him, the blow-torch in one hand. He adjusted the flame until the steel tip glowed whitehot and grinned wolfishly.

“We only want you to be reasonable, Jango.”

The gipsy licked his thick lips and gazed in fascinated horror at the tongue of flame. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“But I’ll be doing you a favour,” Evans said. “Five seconds of this on your kisser and you’ll be able to put Boris Karloff out of business when you get out. They won’t need to make you up.”

“You’re mad!” Sutton said and his voice cracked slightly.

“I will be if you don’t tell us what we want to know,” Evans told him and suddenly, his voice was cold and hard and utterly ruthless. “You’d better start talking, boy. Who put you up to giving my pal here a push off the catwalk?”

Sutton shook his head from side to side and tried to crawl away backwards. Evans grabbed him by the shirtfront with his free hand and advanced the torch.

Sutton struggled madly, his face contorted with fear. “I’ll tell you,” he said hysterically. “It was Wilma — my wife. She came to see me yesterday morning. Told me there was five hundred nicker for me if I saw that Brady met with an accident. An extra twofifty if it happened by Sunday.”

Brady stood in the doorway, one eye on the catwalk outside in case a screw turned up. “Who put her up to it?” he demanded urgently.

“I don’t know,” Sutton replied. “She wouldn’t tell me.”

“He’s lying,” Brady said. “It doesn’t make sense.”

Evans pulled Sutton upright and held the torch so that the heat started to singe the gipsy’s black hair. “It’s the truth,” Sutton screamed. “I asked her who was behind it, but she wouldn’t tell me.”

Evans glanced up at Brady. “Satisfied?”

The American nodded and Evans pulled Sutton to his feet and held him close for a moment. “You put a foot wrong from now on, boy, and I’ll see you get sliced from here to Christmas.”

He shoved Sutton away from him and the gipsy twisted like an eel under Brady’s arm and out of the door. Evans turned off the torch and took a couple of cigarettes from his jacket pocket. “Can you make any sense of it?”

Brady shook his head. “Do you know anything about his wife?”

“Keeps a drinking club down by the river,” Evans told him. “It’s called Twenty-One, and anything goes, believe me. She’s been on the game since she was fourteen.”

Brady lit his cigarette and stood by the door, a frown on his face. After a while, Evans said, “What’s running through your mind now, son?”

“A lot of things,” Brady said. “For example, the fact that somebody’s got a vested interest in seeing me dead. I’d like to know why. If I can find out, I think it’ll give me the answer to a lot of things including who killed Marie Duclos.”

“And what are you going to do about it?” Evans said shrewdly.

Brady turned and grinned. “You’ve got a nose like a ferret.” He went across to a pile of rubble and bricks in one corner and pushed a hand down the back and pulled out a coil of manilla rope. “There’s forty foot there,” he said. “And a six-foot sling that fastens with spring links. I’ve had them here for a week now and there’s a pair of wire-cutters hidden in my mattress. That’s all I need.”

“All you need for what?” Evans said, frowning.

“I’m crashing-out,” Brady said. “I’ve got a lead now — Wilma Sutton. I’ll find out who put her up to this business if I have to beat it out of her.”

“You’re crazy,” Evans said. “It can’t be done.”

“Anything can be done if you put your mind to it,” Brady said. “Come up top and I’ll show you.”

They went out on to the catwalk, climbed up the scaffolding and squatted in an angle of the steel framework. “You were right when you said that getting out of the cell didn’t achieve anything,” Brady said. “Nobody could ever hope to get through all those gates and guards. I’ve decided to cut them all out.”

“How the hell do you plan to do that?” Evans demanded.

Brady nodded towards the glass dome of the central tower. “Have you ever noticed the screw turning a handle by the entrance to our cell block in the central hall? A system of wire pulleys goes right up into the dome and opens a ventilating window there. That’s the way I’m going.”

“You must be crazy!” Evans said. “That central tower is all of 150 feet.”

“It can be done,” Brady told him. “I’m going to cut my way through the steel mesh at the end of the landing. From there I can reach part of the iron framework which supports the tower. It goes right up into the dome.”

“Nobody could climb that lot,” Evans said. “Those beams are nearly perpendicular. It can’t be done.”

“It can by someone with specialized experience,” Brady told him. “Don’t forget I was a structural engineer. I’ve worked on bridges and tall buildings all over the world. I’ll wear rubber shoes and use the sling with the spring links as a safety belt.”

“Let’s say you get out through the dome,” Evans said. “Then what?”

“There’s a fall pipe drops down to the roof of D Block.” Brady nodded across. “I can crawl along the roof ridge to the chimney of the laundry. From there, I’ll rope down to an iron pipe that runs across to the perimeter wall. It’s the one really weak link in this place, but I figure they must think it’s harmless. Nobody could reach it from the ground. It’s forty feet up.”

“And forty feet across,” Evans said. “Even if you got that far, you’d still stand a fair chance of breaking your neck.”

“I’m going,” Brady said stubbornly. “Nothing’s going to stop me.”

Evans sighed. “When are you thinking of trying?”

“Sunday evening,” Brady said. “It’s dark by five and we’re locked up for the night at six. From then on, there’s only one duty screw who works from the central hall, checking all blocks.”

“That could be dodgy,” Evans said. “He usually pussyfoots around in carpet slippers. You never know where he’s going to hit next.”

“I’ll take my chance,” Brady said. “With luck, they might not find I’m missing till breakfast time. I’ll need you to do the necessary with that spoon, of course.”

Evans grinned. “You’ll need me for more than that. Let’s say you get over the wall and into the town. What are you going to do for money and clothes?”

Brady shrugged. “Break in somewhere. Take my chances. What else can I do?”

“I’ve got a key I made for myself in the machine shop,” Evans told him. “It’s hidden back in the cell. Opens any mortice deadlock known to man.” He grinned. “Well, almost any. If you can get over the wall, cross the line to that churchyard over there. On the other side, you’ll find a little lock-up shop. One of these surplus places. You can outfit yourself there. If you’re lucky, you might even find a float in the till.”

“Are you sure about that?” Brady said.

Evans nodded. “Remember I told you how I tried to find a way out of here when I first arrived? A bloke in my cell put me on to the shop. That’s why I made a key. It was a perfect set-up, but I could never find a way out. Now, it’s too late.”

Brady turned and looked out across the wall to the railway line and the churchyard beyond. The shop and the key were the final touch. He felt completely calm, completely sure of himself.

It was only after the noon whistle when he was following Evans down the ladder that his hands started to tremble slightly because he was crashing-out and nothing was going to stop him.