The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 10

4 A.M., WHEN THE WALLS ARE THINNER by Alison Littlewood

STUMPY ELLIS TOLD a lot of stories about how he lost his thumb, and they always seemed to involve violence, and grinding, and eyes. I was the only one who heard the real story, and I never would have told. Stumpy had a temper, and a man with a temper in prison is like a powder keg in a room full of lit matches.

He had a shine in his eyes, Stumpy Ellis: a cold, dangerous kind of shine. It was like seeing a flat, wide sky in there, a grey sky, although the sun was shining in the yard when he stuck out his hand – the one with only half a thumb – and asked if I had a smoke. I looked at those eyes and took a cigarette from my pocket, without seeing what he had to trade. If I’d learned one thing inside, it was when to resist and when to bend.

He muttered around the cig in his mouth, to my back.

“Payment.”

I turned and waved his words away: no problem.

“I always pay,” he said. “I always pay and I always expect to be paid. Sit down.”

I felt stiffness working up my back and into my knuckles, but he sat down himself, so I sat next to him and smelled the burning in his lungs.

“I’ll tell you a story,” he said. “As payment.”

I waited.

He thrust out his hand in front of me, palm down, but I didn’t jump. Another thing I learned in prison: it doesn’t pay to be jumpy.

“See that?” he said, and I grunted. His left thumb was missing from the first knuckle to the tip, leaving a thick, blunt, flexible mound.

“Want to know how I did that?”

I grunted again.

“There was a guy thought he could cross me,” said Stumpy. “We worked together for a while. Building jobs, mainly. I’d get the business in, he’d mobilize the troops. Whoever was hiring us, they paid me, and I paid him. Only this one time, he came to me, he said, ‘Ellis – help me out. I need something extra.’”

He glanced at me, so I nodded.

“He took the money and the next time I see him, he’s coming out of the jeweller’s, and he sees me and he turns red-faced. And I knew, you know? You don’t fool Stumpy Ellis. Not when it comes to his missus.

“A picture, my missus.” He breathed out a long, jagged breath of smoke as he laughed. “Blonde. Tits out here. Legs up here.” He stared off into the distance, pulling hard on the cigarette.

“I didn’t follow him, didn’t need to. Told him I was off to see about a job, something out of town. And then I doubled round and went home. Knew as soon as I got there. Window was open, and this laughing floating out.”

I nodded, wondering why he would tell this story, why it didn’t bother him what his wife had done.

“She had him on his back when I got there. Her arse stuck up in the air.” He sucked noisily on the cigarette. “Know what I mean?”

I nodded.

“Got the shock of her life when I shoved her off the bed. Took half of it with her, and her looking all wide-eyed and surprised, trying to tell me she didn’t do nothing, with his blood running down her chin.”

He laughed, but I didn’t.

“So he was there, practically begging, so I start punching, and she’s digging in the cabinet and comes at me with the gun.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“My gun. My own gun. Keep it for – special occasions, you know? And she’s holding it with her hands, shaking everywhere, and screaming, and then she points it in the air, only she’s still shaking, and then she squeezes too hard and she fires it. And the only person more surprised than her is me, cause half my thumb’s gone, and there’s blood everywhere. All over the sheets, all over me, and all over the little prick who started it all. And I figure, she’s my missus, and what sort of a man hits his missus? So I turns round to him, my old mate, and he’s laughing at me. ‘See that?’ he says, and his voice is high as a girl’s. ‘See that?’ And he keeps looking at me and laughing.”

He stubbed out the cigarette, then spread his hand and stared at his thumb. “Put his eye out,” he said.

“What?”

“I said, I put his eye out.” He hooked his thumb and mimed gouging. “Didn’t even feel it. My thumb all covered in blood, and half missing, and I didn’t even feel it. Seems it wanted it, you see. My thumb knew what it wanted and it took it.”

He looked up. “Fucker never looked at my wife again.” He spluttered laughter and nudged me in the ribs.

I laughed. It wasn’t funny, but I laughed anyway.

He nudged me again. “See him?” He indicated an older man, thin, with white hair. He walked in a wide circle around the yard, his eyes fixed on the ground. “Librarian,” Stumpy said, and chuckled. “If you want to know anything, ask a librarian. He’s the one’ll get you out of here.”

“What?” I said.

“What?” he says. “Escape, that’s what. That’s the man’ll show you how. Just climb right out.” He gave a dry laugh. “Climb right out.”

I waited for him to say something else, but he shook himself.

“Another story,” he said, and stood. “You’ll have to pay me for that one. You’ll have to pay me good.” And he walked off without saying anything else, swaggering his way across the yard just as the guard called time.

I knew Stumpy hadn’t told me the real story about his thumb, and I didn’t care. What he’d said about escape, though; it stuck in my mind, and that was dangerous. Curiosity could get you killed in prison as well as anywhere else.

I didn’t approach Stumpy again, but when I got my lunch I saw an empty seat by the librarian, and I took it. If Stumpy knew something, he was a middleman. I didn’t deal with middlemen.

I nodded to the white-haired man next to me. “Si Jameson,” I said to him in a low voice. “Short for Simon.” He glanced at me, looked away, and said nothing.

“Hear you’re the librarian,” I said, but he went on grinding something over and over in his teeth.

“If you want to know anything, ask a…” I began again, but he stood, pushing his chair back so hard it rocked on two legs before slamming down behind him. He picked up his tray and was gone.

It took a moment for the sound of eating to resume, the scrape of cutlery, the low buzz of conversation. I didn’t realize Stumpy had sat down on the other side of me until I heard his voice.

“He won’t give it up, that one,” he said. “You can’t just introduce yourself to the librarian.”

I almost laughed, then remembered the flat metal shine in Stumpy’s eyes, and swallowed it down.

“You have to earn it,” he said. “It don’t come cheap.”

“What does he want?”

“Ah,” Stumpy said, smiling around a mouthful of sausage and mash. “Not like that. Smokes and money – they won’t cut it. You have to do something for him.”

“What?” I said, although the real question, the one I was thinking, was “Why?” He was nothing but an old man who spent his days sorting battered paperbacks.

“Nothing you can do for him, not in here. On the outside, though. Once you get out.”

Stumpy sat back in his seat and pushed his tray back with a scrape. “Old scores,” he said. “You might have noticed, but in here old scores go around and around. They don’t break up and they don’t fade. Just go round and round in a man’s head, never getting any smaller. Looking for payment. And him, he’ll never get out. He’s a lifer, like you.”

“Why doesn’t he just climb out?” I said, and smiled.

Stumpy grinned. “He’ll never leave, not that one. He likes it here. He’s fed, he’s watered. Says he’d be happy to stay here for ever, only he’s scared someone would notice eventually.”

I snorted. I guess the shine in Stumpy’s eyes didn’t seem so dangerous when he wasn’t looking straight at me. And I had been wrong to ask, wrong even to think about getting out. Some people shouldn’t think about some things, and I was one of them. I’d forgotten that, all for one stir-crazy psycho and an old man – the joke was on me, that’s all.

But Stumpy was off again. He waved a hand and the whole table turned to listen. “But anyway,” he said. “Did I ever tell you the story of how I lost my thumb?”

There were groans, splutters, and laughter. He began, some story about how he’d had the tip of his thumb removed because it was easier to grind out a man’s eye that way, because it was shorter, squatter, stronger. And I knew that this wasn’t the real story either, but I also knew something else: if anyone got to hear that story, the real story, it was going to be me.

I didn’t say anything, though. I just sat and ate and listened, because prison was like that. You learned when it was time to wait. You did a lot of waiting: I guess you got a feel for it.

I left Stumpy alone after that, but I always had cigarettes in my pocket, so I was ready the next time he put his hand out in the yard and asked me for a smoke.

“Never leave home without them,” I said, and passed one over.

“You don’t even smoke,” he said, “but I’ll help you out, don’t you worry. You don’t even have to pay me.” He scraped a match on the ground and lit the cig, shielding it against the breeze, which blew occasional spits of rain in our faces.

I was about to walk away when he gestured towards something. “He’s never short,” he said.

I turned and saw the librarian sitting on the ground nearby. His knees were drawn up under his chin, his posture that of a younger man. His eyes were a pale, piercing blue.

Then I saw him reach out with one hand and he did something with his fingers. I couldn’t quite see what it was: some kind of twist, some kind of flurry, and I lost sight of his hand for a split second. Then it was back and the librarian put a cigarette to his lips. It was lit, and battered-looking, half-smoked.

“Never lacks for anything, that one,” Stumpy said. “Just reaches out and takes it.”

I shook my head. I couldn’t see how he’d done it, and I didn’t know what to say.

“Climb right out,” said Stumpy. “That’s what he says, only I don’t quite have it yet. But one day I will. They’ll wake up and I’ll be gone.” He turned to me, eyes agleam. “I’ll show you,” he said. “You’ll be there. You can listen, anyway, and you’ll know I’ve done it. I’m moving cell.”

I raised my eyebrows and he nodded. “Guard owes me a favour. I’m moving tonight.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “About climbing out. You got a plan?”

He shook his head, narrowing his eyes against the smoke of his cigarette. “Don’t need a plan,” he said. “I’ve got a book. His book.” He nodded towards the librarian. “And I made a promise. Gotta score to settle.”

There was something about the way he looked. “Is it true?” I asked. “Are you going?”

He shook himself. “Everything I tell you is true,” he said. “Didn’t I tell you how I lost my thumb?” And he was away, waving the stub of his cigarette in the air, his eyes flat and grey and staring off into the distance, focused on nothing. He told me how he’d lost his thumb when he ground it so deep into a man’s eye it severed against the skull. The man had been screwing his wife, who was tall and brunette and had tits Stumpy paid a year’s salary for.

When Stumpy pulled his thumb out of the man’s eye he left the tip behind, protruding from the socket, all the evidence the pigs needed to put him away.

That afternoon I lay on my bunk, staring at the ceiling. I wasn’t sharing the cell but had taken the top bunk, so the ceiling was close. I listened to the quiet from below and the noise from the corridor, the banging, half-shouts, the footsteps.

I heard it when Stumpy moved into the cell next to mine. He was talking to the guards, loud and cheery and familiar. Setting things down, doors sliding and slamming. Then, after it had gone quiet for a while, I heard his voice at my door.

“Come in?” he said.

“Be my guest.”

The cells weren’t locked and he came in, his walk quiet and steady. His jauntiness had gone. I sat up on the bunk, and when I saw his face, I jumped down. “Smoke?” I offered.

He waved his hand. “Not this time. This one’s on the house.” He turned and his eyes looked pale, the shine in them absent, leaving them watery and somehow naked.

“I – I thought someone should know,” he said. “I’m going, later. Tonight. I thought you should know.” He pushed something into my hand. It was a crumpled photograph of a woman. She looked about forty, her hair mousy, clothes nondescript. She had a good smile and laughter lines around her eyes and no kind of tits at all.

“My wife,” he said. “That’s my wife.” He looked down and I saw that his eyes were full of tears.

“I got her a gardener,” he said. “I got her a house and a big garden, and she was always going on about it, so I got her a gardener. But she kept saying how she wanted this gazebo, a love seat she said…” He paused. “A love seat, and I couldn’t expect a gardener to build it, she said. I was the builder, and she wanted me to do it.

“So I did. I got this – this – gazebo. A stupid word for a stupid thing. It was just a frame that wouldn’t even keep the rain off, and a bench. Big enough for two, she said. She said…”

I didn’t say anything.

“So I started putting it together, only the damn thing wouldn’t go straight. And I was nailing one side together when the other one slipped, and it fell, right on my thumb.” He looked at his hand.

“Blood everywhere,” he said. “And I screamed. She took me to hospital, and they took the end off. But she kept looking at me, like, I dunno…”

I waited.

“She looked at me like I was a little kid who’d wet his pants, you know? All the time. Like I’d let her down. And then later, when we got home – later, after – when they took me away. She looked at me then, too. Like something the dog had shat out on the carpet. She looked.

“The last time I saw her, and she looked at me like that. She never visited me, you know. Never did, not once.” His face twisted. “She said she was leaving. I was in the fucking hospital, and she tells me this. She’d been seeing him. Her and the fucking gardener. All the time. Fucking.”

I put my hand on his arm, and he looked at it, and shook it off.

“I sorted it,” he said. “I sorted him. I had a gun, remember me telling you that? And they took me away and they put me in here. But I’m not staying. I’m going to see her again.”

He punched his fist into his palm, over and over. “I can still see her,” he said. “The way she looked at me with those eyes. Those eyes.”

He sat there for a long time. Finally, he stood and turned to me, although he still wasn’t looking at anything, not really.

“You know, people think it’s just a bit of your thumb,” he said. “But it hurt. It hurt.”

He walked out of my cell, then. That was the last time I saw Stumpy Ellis alive.

I woke, staring into the dark. I got the feeling something had woken me, but I didn’t know what. The night was full of noises. Men muttering to themselves; rasping snores; guards’ voices; metal on metal. Prison is never silent, even at night. It was one of the things I missed about the outside – real silence.

Then there was an almighty, shocking bang from the cell next to mine. And a shudder, as though I could feel whatever it was through the walls, the floor, the bunk. The banging noise seemed to hang in the air, echoing.

After that came a wet splatter, like rain, heavy droplets landing on concrete. It seemed to go on for a long time.

Prison was never quiet at night, but it was quiet then, like never before or since. The texture of the air grew heavy with listening, turning to grey speckles before my eyes.

I was the one who broke the silence.

“Stumpy?” I said. “Stumpy? You there?” And there was nothing, not one sound coming back. Not one.

I slipped down from my bunk and went to the bars, looked out into the corridor. There was a wet gleam on the floor outside Stumpy’s cell. I couldn’t see any further, but I heard the footsteps of the guards when they came running. They stopped. Then there was the nearer splatter of one of them losing their lunch outside Stumpy’s cell.

“They say his insides turned to soup,” someone said. “As though he’d taken a dive off a building. Everything smashed up.”

“They say his skull shattered.”

“Every bone in his body, broken, just like that.”

“He must have jumped off his bunk, only they say it wasn’t high enough to do that kind of damage. Even if he’d hung from the ceiling, it wasn’t high enough for that kind of damage.”

It was lunchtime, and it was all anyone could talk about, although I said nothing at all. I just kept replaying those sounds in my head, the bang echoing on and on, and the long splatter that came afterward. The thing Stumpy had said, over and over: “Climb right out. That’s what I’m going to do. Just climb right out.” And the way his eyes had shone when he said it.

I kept glancing around, looking for the librarian, but he was nowhere to be seen.

It was late before they allowed us back to our cells, and when they did there was a black cloth hanging across Stumpy’s bars. It must have been some kind of mess in there if they felt they had to hide it from the likes of us.

I climbed into my bunk and tried not to listen to the silence coming from the next cell, but I did, for a long time.

Something woke me later. It was deep night and my head was thick with the confusion of it, night seeping in through my eyes and ears. Then came a distant snore and I remembered where I was. If there was one thing I wanted on the outside, it was to sleep somewhere out of earshot of other men’s snores.

I looked into the dark, the walls and the bunk taking shape. I looked at the door of my cell. As I watched, the lock pulled back with a loud metallic clang.

After a time, I resumed breathing. The door was unlocked, but no one came to lock it again. It was just there in the dark, an open door, and no one to stop me walking out. Except of course there were guards at the end of the corridor; more locked doors.

All the same, I slipped off the bunk and went to the door. I didn’t touch it, though, not at first. I put out a hand, saw the thick, open bolt, but didn’t touch it. When nothing happened I gave the door a gentle push. It moved easily under my hand, sliding without a sound.

I put my head out into the corridor. I could see a shape further down, a door, more bars, dim light, long shadows. And then I saw the dull mark on the concrete outside Stumpy’s cell, a dark stain where the wet gleam had been. I moved out further and saw the curtain hanging across his cell suddenly fall, billowing as it filled with air, finding its way to the floor.

Stumpy’s cell was much the same as mine. The same bunk, the same box for a wardrobe. But everything was covered in those same dark spatters. The curtain came to rest on the floor, leaving humped whorls and shapes. At first it seemed there was the form of a body beneath it, but then it settled and was only a curtain.

Stumpy’s door, too, was open.

I stood and swallowed for a while. Then I went in, trying not to step on that stain in my shoeless feet.

There was stuff all over the floor, and those little number tags the forensics boys put down before they take pictures. It was like seeing two rooms: the one they had been over, investigated, and underneath it the room where Stumpy lived and slept and shat. Used to, I corrected myself. There was a radio on the floor, and I half expected the little dial to light up and some song to creep into the room, under my feet, and that was when the hairs on my arms started to prickle. But it didn’t light up, it didn’t make a sound. I looked some more. Stumpy’s uniform hanging in the box, just like mine. His stuff underneath that, a couple of pictures, a newspaper, a book.

A book.

I picked my way over there, half expecting to hear the door lock behind me, but nothing happened. I just went over there and nothing happened and I picked up the book. The cover was some kind of cloth, rough under my fingers. I ran my hand over it and felt grooves, lettering I couldn’t make out. A dark sliver of thread was tucked into the pages. I stroked the cover. A stain had soaked into it and I pulled my hand away. My thumb felt damp, just the tip, and I stared at it.

I turned, and that was when I saw the rope. It hung there in the middle of the room. When I looked straight at it, though, it was gone.

I tilted my head. I could feel those prickles again, but this time they ran all the way down my back, like little hands, unwelcome hands.

I started to edge my way back out of the cell, trying not to step in anything that looked wet. All the time I looked at that space in the middle of the room. Looked up. The ceiling was featureless. There was nothing to hang a rope from. Anyway, it had been low down, as though hanging upwards from the floor, just a few of feet of it and then nothing.

As I pieced it together in my mind I thought I saw it again, just for a moment.

My arm pressed up against the cell door and I almost cried out. I tucked the book under my arm and slipped out of Stumpy’s cell, down the corridor and back into my own. I tucked the book under the sheets of the bottom bunk and climbed into bed, pulled the sheets over my body and lay awake, this time trying not to think of the book, somewhere beneath me in the dark.

The book was a joke, it had to be. I turned it over in my hands. There was no stamp inside, nothing to show it belonged to the prison library, no publisher’s mark. The first pages were blank. All of them were yellowed and foxed, the edges rough and uneven. Inside the writing was tiny, and it was in script: handwritten, not printed. The ink had faded to a pale brown.

The pages seemed to be full of magic tricks. There were small, hand-drawn diagrams of cards and dice and coins. Coffin-shaped boxes and saws. Ropes and knots and the means of escaping them. And there, on the page with the bookmark, The Indian Rope Trick and Secrets Thereof.

How to make space where there is no space, rope where there is no rope. How to feel with your mind for what you need, and reach out and take it. There was a lot of stuff about dimensions, about how the things you needed were all there, somewhere. Somewhere there was a rope, somewhere a door. About bending things with your mind, until what’s there is also here.

Think of a reason, it said. Think of a reason and the rope will answer. Hold it in your mind as you climb, and the rope will not fail. Hold it in your mind: not the rope itself, or the journey, but the destination.

At the bottom, a note had been added. It was in rough, spiky writing and blue ink, and I could almost picture Stumpy forming the letters, his tongue poking out of his mouth: Go at 4.00 a.m., when the walls are thinnest.

I snapped the book closed and stared at the wall of my cell. Smiled and shook my head, as though Stumpy were having one last laugh. Did I ever tell you how I lost my thumb?

And then I started to dream of it, walking with my back straight, looking people in the eye, a free man. Tasting the air. Just – climbing out. Climbing right on out. And a rope, seen for a moment from the corner of my eye, hanging from nothing in the middle of a cell.

Think of a reason and the rope will answer.

What reason had Stumpy had that could be strong enough? All he had was revenge. I saw again the way he’d talked about his wife, and eyes, and grinding, all the time staring at that thumb of his. His obsession. But it hadn’t been strong enough to get him out.

I had no thoughts of revenge. Everyone I hated was already dead. I had no love either, no one waiting. So I tried to think about why. And what came into my mind was a park, a soft, green park, where people sat in the sun. They splotched the grass in twos or threes or fours, talking and laughing, the girls wearing white halter-tops so you could see their shapes beneath. I stood there. I would stand there, and I would turn my face up to the sun, and breathe. Only that.

His insides had turned to soup.

In the cell next to mine was a rope. It hung in the air beneath a blank ceiling.

I looked again at the book and in that second, just in the corner of my eye, it looked as though the tip of my thumb was gone. My left thumb, from the middle knuckle to the nail, leaving only a thick, flexible stump.

I pulled my hand back, dropping the book. I should burn the thing, I thought. Take a match, strike it on the concrete floor, and burn the damn thing right here in my cell. But I didn’t strike the match, and I didn’t burn it. What I did was slip it back beneath the sheets of the bottom bunk; then I sat down and stared at the wall for a long time.

Some people shouldn’t think of some things, I knew that. I was one of those people. Waiting: I was good at waiting.

But somewhere, in the cell next to mine, was a rope. Go at 4.00 a.m., when the walls are thinnest. I swallowed.

However stupid the idea of the rope, it was too late. I knew I couldn’t let it go, and it wouldn’t let go of me.

The cell door wouldn’t open. I tried to slide it, and it wouldn’t move. I got my weight behind it and pushed, hard, but it wouldn’t move. Of all the things that occurred to me that might go wrong, I never once thought the door wouldn’t open.

I glanced at the clock. It was 4.03 a.m.

I kicked the door. It still wouldn’t open.

I sat down on the bottom bunk, and felt the book beneath the sheets. All the air went out of me and I sat like that, my head down, for what seemed a long time. When I looked at the clock again, though, it said 4.07.

The rope, I thought. I had to get to the rope. Now, when the walls were thinnest. I reached out and put my palm to the wall between my cell and Stumpy’s. It felt thick and solid and cold.

And then it came to me: it had to be mine. Whatever this was, whatever crazy game, it had to be my reason and my rope.

I closed my eyes and saw the park. A group of kids were playing Frisbee by the lake. The Frisbee spun, too high, out over the water – and was snatched from the air by a young lad, who fell back to earth, laughing.

I opened my eyes and the rope was there. It hung in the middle of the floor, a strong, thick rope, in a little pool of spring light. I dropped to the floor and kneeled by it, but I didn’t touch it, not yet. I put my hand into that light, feeling it on my skin.

And then I saw my hand, really saw it, and drew in a sharp, hissing breath.

My thumb was gone. My left thumb. Not all of it, just the part from the middle knuckle to the tip.

I turned it in the light and it was a short, thick stump. Pulled it out and my hand was whole again. I grabbed the rope, pulled on it, and it held. It was a strong rope, a good rope. But there was a sour, sick taste in the back of my throat, and I wondered just how far away Stumpy was.

Dimensions, the book had said. Bending things with your mind, so that what is there is also here. What if Stumpy didn’t fall, not really? What if he climbed until he found a door, only it didn’t lead to a park, or a house, or a gazebo: it led to a place a little like this, and through the door was someone a little like him. And he bent things with his mind, and turned them, and he changed places.

Because at this time of night, at 4.00 a.m., it seemed the walls between were thin. I could feel it, like I could taste that sour taste in my mouth. They were thin, and in that moment, it didn’t seem like Stumpy had gone very far at all.

I swallowed. Stumpy believed in payment. You always had to pay for things, even if it was just a story. It was what he saw as right, his way of slapping meaning on the world. What had he said? I always pay. I always pay and I always expect to be paid.

Now I had to pay. I had Stumpy’s book, after all. And I thought of his wife with the gardener, grinning, laughing, while Stumpy worked on her gazebo, making a love seat just big enough for two. I closed my eyes, and thought of hitting, and eyes, and of grinding. And in the middle of it all, a rope.

I thought then how lucky it was that Stumpy had shown me that picture, the photograph of his wife; how lucky it was I knew what she looked like. Because I had a feeling I’d be paying her a visit real soon. And then we’d have a chat, a quiet little chat, me and Stumpy’s wife. Payment.

I looked up, swallowed hard, trying to get rid of that taste, and I tried the rope once more. It was solid. So I took hold, and lifted my feet from the floor and wrapped them around it. I closed my eyes, then opened them again, but didn’t look down. I saw only that park, the sunshine, felt the clean air in my lungs. I saw them, and held them in my mind, and I started to climb.