The Summons

Peter Lovesey
Chapter One

They say when one door shuts, another opens.

In Albany Prison, when one door opens, another shuts.

A frustrating problem.

When a judge tells a convicted man that life in his case should mean the rest of his natural span, and when he is repeatedly denied leave to appeal, that man’s mind may turn to other ways of shortening the sentence. John Mountjoy was classified as Category A, highly dangerous to the public, the police or the security of the State. And he was thinking of moving.

Those doors. They function on an ancient principle. You pass through one and find another barring your way. Before the second can open, the first must close behind you. That was how castle gates were made a thousand years ago. But in the electronic age the mechanism is automatic.

They tell the new arrivals in Albany that they don’t have maximum security. It is ultimate security. All the gates and doors are linked to a computer housed in a control room bristling with television monitors. Approach a door anywhere in Albany and you are up there on the screen. That control room really is the hub of the place. Apart from the monitors, it houses a master location panel, radio-communications sys- tern, the generator and, of course, the team of prison officers on duty. By a stroke of irony that causes no end of amusement to the inmates, those screws have to be banged up more securely than anyone else in the prison. Steel doors, dogs, floodlights and a chain-link security fence all round. If anyone broke into the control room, there would be scenes like the last reel of a James Bond movie.

Mountjoy was confined in D Hall, where most of the lifers were. When leaving D Hall to visit the workshops they were escorted through the double doors, courtesy of the computer, into the central corridor where there was always an unbroken line of screws observing them.

D Hall has glass doors. Smile if you wish, but it is no laughing matter to the inmates. The glass is bandit-proof and lined with steel mesh. Those doors will not budge except at the touch of a switch in the control room. There is a seven-second delay between the closing of one and the opening of the other. Anyone wanting to enter or (more likely) exit from D Hall is compelled to stand in the hermetically sealed unit and be scrutinized. If the control team has the slightest doubt, the interval can be extended indefinitely.

It took John Mountjoy a week of observing the comings and goings to conclude that there was no chance of outsmarting the electronics. You might outwit a human. Not a microchip. The wisdom inside is that even if the power system failed, one of those doors would always remain closed.

No other escape routes beckoned. The walls are half a meter thick, the windows have manganese steel bars and every ledge and wall outside has a razor-wire topping. Tunneling was out of the question for Mountjoy because of the rule that lifers must be housed with other cells above and below and on either side of them. Surveillance cameras are located everywhere. If he got outside the main prison block, he would still have to negotiate dog patrols, geophonic alarms, five-meter chain-link fences and massive walls lit by high-mast flood- lights. Albany was built to replace Dartmoor. It is known as the British Alcatraz because they located it on the Isle of Wight. So even if a man succeeded in getting over the wall he would still have some thinking to do.

The first step Mountjoy took toward escaping was unplanned. In the corridor outside the recess (where the prisoners slop out) he found a button, a silver button with the embossed crown design, a button from a screw’s uniform. You never know when you might find a use for something, so he kept it hidden in his cell for eighteen months before he acquired another.

The opportunity came one summer evening when the screws frogmarched him to the strongbox, one of the punishment cells for troublesome prisoners. He had got into a brawl, a right straightener as the old lags termed it, over a letter some cretin had snatched from him, a letter from his mother. Mountjoy wasn’t pleased. He fought when the screws stripped him and threw him inside the strongbox. He ended bruised and bleeding, but in credit. In his fist he had compensation, a shining silver trophy ripped from a black serge tunic. When eventually he was returned to his cell it joined the first button in a secret space under the spine of a dictionary.

Screws hate being shown up as negligent. The slightest character flaw anyone reveals in prison is magnified many times, and the screws fear exposure as much as the men they guard. Prison lore suggests that they are worse than the prisoners at grassing on each other. Rather than admit to losing a button and making a search that everyone hears about, a screw will keep the loss to himself and have his wife sew on another. Prison culture doesn’t always work in the best interests of the system.

Mountjoy began to see possibilities in this. He started actively adding to the button collection. While working in the tailoring shop a month or two later, he met a new prisoner, a kid of eighteen transferred from Parkhurst and desperate to obtain tobacco. A deal was struck. Everything in the prison is open to barter. Mountjoy let the kid know that a breast-pocket button would be worth cigarettes to him, and he told the kid truthfully that if he got in a scuffle with the screws they’d treat him leniently the first time. Within a month he had the button and the youth had five roll-up butts, one match and a threat of castration if he grassed.

One sunny afternoon a long time after this an unimagined opportunity came Mountjoy’s way. Another feud had ended in fisticuffs and he was back in the segregation unit under Rule 48. If they let you exercise at all in Y Hall, as the unit is known, it has to be solitary. The yard is divided by thermalite blocks into a series of narrow exercise bays. The screw watching Mountjoy had just hung his tunic on the back of a plastic chair when he was called suddenly to a disturbance nearby. In the few seconds Mountjoy was left unattended except by a camera, he completed his set of buttons. Three years inside had taught him how to dodge the camera lens.

In the prison world certain escapes have passed into legend. The springing of the spy George Blake from Wormwood Scrubs in 1966 is still spoken of with awe, and so is the helicopter grab of two men from the yard at Gartree in 1987. John McVicar’s escape from Durham was made into a film. John Mountjoy was about to earn his place in the hall of fame. People say it was an astonishing gamble. It was nothing of the sort. It was a sober calculation, the shrewd bid of a player in a poker game of infinite duration.

How would you plan it, given that you had a full set of buttons? Mountjoy rejected the obvious. He didn’t make himself a prison officer’s uniform in the pious hope of bluffing his way through the doors. That would run too great a risk. Screws may not be noted for their IQs, but they are capable of recognizing one another and spotting the flaws in a homemade uniform.

He studied art. That is to say, he gave himself a reason to work with pencils and paper, drawing abstract shapes and shading them. Nothing too ambitious. As the tutor remarked, his style was more Mondrian than Picasso. Just black and white squares. Small ones, regular in size. The tutor suspected Mountjoy was more interested in making a miniature chessboard than an abstract, and it became a long-running joke between them.

He also worked with other art materials. In secret, he experimented using paints as dyes. He wanted a mix that would blacken T-shirts. The aim was pure black. It was a painstaking process, progressing through a series of grays. He was patient. He had abundant time and a good collection of rags harvested from the security fence around the yard, where rubbish is routinely tossed from cell windows and picked off next day by cleaning squads. Only when he was satisfied with the blackness of his dyed rags did he begin immersing two prison-issue T-shirts. Then by night-using needles from the tailoring shop and a blade formed from the handle of a toothbrush honed to razor sharpness on his cell wall-he started the laborious process of cutting and sewing together a passable tunic. A police constable’s tunic.

Black has two things going for it. First, it is an easier color to achieve with dyes than the midnight blue of a screw’s uniform. Second, the joins and the stitching are less obvious. The effect is better still when gleaming buttons divert the eye.

The police cap, curiously enough, was easier to make than the tunic, but more difficult to hide, so he left it till last. He prepared the materials without assembling them. Strips of checkered paper reinforced with cardboard were to form the rim. The flat top would be of dyed cotton stretched over a cardboard disc and the peak would be cut from the shiny black lid of a box of Conquerer typing paper filched from the Assistant Governor’s wastebin.

There remained the cap badge and the silver buttons and numbers on the epaulettes. As basic material for these he used a tin-foil freezer pack discarded in the kitchen. The resulting badge was a minor masterpiece of forgery, accurately molded into the insignia of the Hampshire Constabulary, copied from a sheet of notepaper also scavenged from the Assistant Governor’s wastebin.

Compared to that, the shirt and tie were child’s play.

Obviously he had to keep his escape kit hidden. Cell searches generally take place in the evening during association, so he removed anything liable to cause suspicion and wore it under his prison grays. Some items the screws tolerate. They wouldn’t report you for possessing pieces of cloth or a needle and thread. They’re more interested in finding drugs.

With everything organized except the date, Mountjoy cultivated patience. His escape could not be hurried. Outside factors would dictate the timing. Eight months passed without a whisper to encourage him. That is, three years and eight months since he started his enforced residence in Albany. Then a new prisoner was admitted to D Hail. Manny Stokesay was a murderer, which is not unusual; he was said to have snapped a man’s spine with the edge of his hand, which is. Impressive. Stokesay was a bodybuilder, six foot three and sixteen stone in weight. And he had an evil temper.

Within a week of Stokesay’s admission, Mountjoy prepared to leave. He had seen large, dangerous prisoners before, watched them systematically ground down by the screws. This one, he reckoned, was unlikely to submit without a fight. The outcome would be bloody, if not fatal. A major disturbance inside D Hall was essential to his plan and now the chance of its happening increased day by day. He finished sewing up his black trousers. He put his police cap together. So he was committed. A cell search now would scupper him.

But he was confident of action. The new inmate was creating tension among the prisoners. Loyalties were threatened and new alliances being formed. There are no ties of friendship in prison, only of fear. Some of the old hands decided that Stokesay was too dangerous to cross and made it known that they supported him. Others who survived by their wits set themselves up as power brokers. The prison hierarchy was shaken to its foundations by so much uncertainty.

Mountjoy was a loner. He had always resisted attempts to recruit him to one group or another. He crossed nobody and unobtrusively went about his duties. In three years, eight months and twenty-three days he had managed to avoid physical contact with inmates and screws alike. Except in combat situations.

A series of small flare-ups over several days paved the way for the big one. Three times a day in Albany the toilets are heavily in use, the last at eight-thirty P.M., just before bang-up. Precisely what was said that evening Mountjoy never discovered, because he had already washed and returned to his cell, but from the shouting carried along the landing it seemed Stokesay took offense and struck a man called Harragin. This happened in the recess, where the toilets, sinks and dustbins are housed. Harragin was no match physically for Stokesay, but he was a tough specimen, a West Indian ex-boxer with a history of violence. And he had a strong following. Two of his sidekicks were in there and went to his aid. The big newcomer thrust one of them so hard against a washbasin that he cracked his skull. Mountjoy could hear the crunch of bone from where he was. A Caribbean voice yelled, “You’ve topped him, you honkie bastard!”

Mountjoy stepped out on the landing. Someone in the recess picked up a dustbin and hurled it and bedlam ensued. The two screws meant to be supervising were bundled outside by Harragin’s people. At least a dozen prisoners dashed from their cells to join in; failure to assist might have been punished later.

He told himself, this is it.

His cue.

The alarms were triggered, a horrible sound that stops anyone being heard. More screws came running to assist, but their way was barred by a heap of dustbins crushed into the space between the walls. The lads in the alcove wanted to settle their dispute without interruption. If Mountjoy had learned anything about prisoners, after a bloody maul they would join forces to keep out the screws. This had all the makings of a riot.

Mountjoy didn’t have long. The screws would bang up everyone not already behind the barricade. They would come in from every section of the prison. If necessary reinforcements would be summoned from Parkhurst, the neighboring prison.

He stepped back into his cell when the alarm went, removed his police uniform from its various hiding places and tucked it into his prison-issue washbowl. He closed the cell door behind him. No going back. But he had hardly started along the landing when a screw downstairs shouted up to him, “Where the bloody hell do you think you’re going?”

“Back to my cell.”

Mountjoy thanked Christ that the screw didn’t usually work in D Hall. He hadn’t seen where Mountjoy came from and he didn’t know which cell he occupied. He shouted, “Get in there fast, then.”

“Yes, sir.”

Of course Mountjoy didn’t. He moved toward the end of the opening farthest from the disturbance. The last door was open. It was the screws’ office and no one was going to be in there while there was trouble along the landing.

After looking over his shoulder to check that he hadn’t been watched, he stepped inside the changing room. There was a table with two mugs of coffee still steaming. A girlie magazine open on a chair. A row of lockers. A notice board covered with prison bumf. A portable TV set in the corner with a repeat of Inspector Morse under way.

This will be one hell of a test, he thought. I dare not come out until the police are admitted to the block-as they must be if there is reason to believe a man has been killed by a prisoner. I reckon I must wait at least twenty minutes hoping that the thugs in the recess hold out that long. The most unbearable stretch of my sentence. I dare not change my clothes yet.

He could count on exclusive use of this room for as long as the disturbance lasted. Riots occur so regularly in our prisons that there is a standard procedure for dealing with them. A high priority is to make sure that there is no chance of prison officers being taken hostage, so these days there are no heroics. They don’t charge the barricade at once. They bang up all the cells they can reach with safety and report downstairs to the principal officer. Some of them put on MUFTI, Minimum Use of Force Tactical Intervention gear, and get issued with crash helmets, brown overalls, Perspex shields and batons and supplies of tear gas. This was probably happening right now, Mountjoy calculated.

In his pocket was a false mustache made from his own hair, attached to Sellotape he took from a letter. You learn to scavenge everything inside. To preserve its adhesive qualities, he hadn’t once tried the tash on. If it didn’t feel secure, he would abandon it, which would be a pity, because it was beautifully made, a neat strip of dark whiskers of the kind favored by the plod. Sadly, one side wouldn’t adhere. He cursed and stuffed it back in his pocket.

A rhythmic banging started up. In a moment of panic Mountjoy thought it must be the riot shields already, much sooner than he expected. Then he got a grip on his nerves and decided the noise was coming from the far end of the landing. It had to be the mob in the recess. They must have had their punch-up and now, united against authority, they were doing their best to work up some courage. They’d have ripped out most of the plumbing and armed themselves with mop handles.

He tried the mustache again. More pathetic than ever, a giveaway. At least he could cut off his sideboards. Anything that would alter his appearance was a bonus. He got to work with the toothbrush blade. It felt as if he was tugging out more hairs than he was cutting, but it was worth persevering, and it filled some time.

After fifteen minutes in the screws’ room he put on the clothes. They were tailored to fit over his regular shirt and jeans. They had no lining of their own. He drew them on gently, fearful of ripping a seam. They felt strange. He reminded himself that they had to look convincing on a control monitor, that was all. He’d got to have confidence in them, or he would be sunk. Last, he put on the cap. It fitted snugly and felt right. No one in Albany had ever seen him in a hat. He stood up straight, shouldets back. PC 121.

Ten more minutes passed. Ten empty, dispiriting minutes. He wished he could stop the ape-men drumming. It was impossible to tell what the screws were doing. He dared not step outside until he was reasonably sure there were police in the building. He opened the door a fraction and listened.

Someone was using a loud-hailer.

The mob didn’t stop to listen.

Mountjoy strained to hear what was being said.

“… in need of medical attention. If you refuse to let the doctor see him, the consequences could be extremely serious for you all.”

That kind of talk wouldn’t impress a bunch of lifers.

He pushed the door outward just a little more and his T-shirt felt cold against his skin. He could see a raiding party in riot gear moving along the landing toward the barricade. He pulled the door shut. This was a quicker move than he had expected. Surely they wouldn’t go in? Maybe they were just assessing the situation.

Some metal object clattered along the landing. Presumably the raiding party had been spotted. A chorus of swearing followed. And the sound of more missiles hitting the iron railings.

He needed to know what was happening downstairs. Twenty-five minutes must have passed since the incident began- time enough, surely? He was going to have to make his move PDQ, or the landing would be swarming with screws. The nearest staircase was about four strides from the door. He was counting on getting down without drawing attention to himself.

He took another look. The screws had retreated apparently. The Assistant Governor-it was his voice Mountjoy heard-was issuing another warning.

“… reason to believe a man was seriously injured, possibly killed. I have no option but to bring this disturbance to a quick end. The prison staff have been joined by a number of police officers…”

That was all Mountjoy wanted to hear. He took one more look and stepped outside, moving rapidly to the staircase. It was a double flight with a small landing halfway. Eight steps down, about-turn and eight steps to the ground. Then it would be time to say his prayers.

The first flight was partly sheltered from view. The second offered no protection. He remembered a clip from a film called The Last Emperor. That little kid stepping outside the Imperial Palace and facing a mass of people. That’s how I’m going to feel any minute, he thought. Conspicuous.

As he descended, his confidence drained. What am I doing for Christ’s sake, dressed in dyed rags and cardboard, masquerading as a policeman? How did I ever persuade myself that this was a feasible plan?

He reached the landing and turned. Keep going, he told himself. Whoever is ahead, keep going.

There were scores of dark blue uniforms down there. Fortunately most of them weren’t looking his way. The landing where the barricade was built was the focus of attention. A spotlight beam moved along the ironwork. Mountjoy started going down the stairs. To his left, at the edge of his vision, someone in a suit was issuing instructions to more of the riot squad. He looked straight ahead, trying to avoid eye contact with anyone at all, fully expecting to be challenged any second.

He reached ground level and hoped to merge with the crowd. Some of the lights had been switched off down there, he supposed to confuse the rioters, which ought to be to his advantage. He estimated fifteen paces to the first security door, but the floor was too crowded to take a straight line. It was the proverbial minefield. God, he thought, will I come face to face with a screw who knows me?

Stiff back, he told himself. Walk like a copper. What I could do with now is a personal radio to thrust in front of my face and talk into if anyone approaches me. A bit bloody late to think of it.

He was in a stupor of fear. Things were registering in slow motion as if he were just an observer. He supposed it was the stage before screaming panic sets in. Although the place was seething with screws, he hadn’t spotted a single one of the fuzz yet. He didn’t want to meet any, but it would be useful to know that they were there.

He was sidling around a group when the loud-hailer spoke and he reacted with such a jerk that he almost lost his cardboard cap.

“Move back under the landing,” the Assistant Governor announced. “We need more space here.”

He wasn’t speaking just to Mountjoy. The attention shifted from upstairs. A general movement began. Someone at Mountjoy’s side asked him, “Was anyone killed up there?”

“Nobody can tell yet,” he muttered, trying to move against the tide and being forced off course. He was starting to feel like a drowning man. He hated the proximity of people, and these were screws. He was shoulder to shoulder with them, unable to move.

He could do nothing except shake with fear.

Behind him someone said, “They’re going in again.”

It seemed that the riot squad had taken up a position on the very staircase that Mount joy had just come down. There was a general movement forward to get a sight of them. The congestion eased slightly and he edged to his right. He was still less than halfway across the floor to the door. So eager was he to make progress that he barged into someone and practically knocked him over.

The screw turned and stared at Mountjoy. It was Grindley, one of the SOs he saw every day. There was a petrifying moment when Grindley’s eyes narrowed and he appeared to have recognized him. Mountjoy was ready to surrender. Then Grindley blinked twice. It was obvious from his face that he wasn’t quite sure. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing and cold reason was telling him he must be mistaken. He actually said, “Sorry, mate.”

Mountjoy dared not speak. He nodded and moved on.

He was so close to the first door now. God help me, he said to himself-a group of police were standing beside it.

He couldn’t halt in his tracks. He was on camera so he would have to act the part he was supposed to be playing.

A couple of the rozzers turned his way and looked surprised, and no wonder.

They expected him to speak, to supply some explanation for his presence. He said with all the credibility he could dredge up, “A man is dead up there. The Governor wants us to stand by.” Then he approached the door and raised a hand to signal to the screw in the control room.

Quaking in his shoes, he waited.

One of the police said, “You from Cowes, mate?”

He answered, “Shanklin,” and added, “on detachment.”

“Thought I didn’t recognize you. How did you get in before us? We’re just down the road.”

“A tip-off,” Mountjoy answered, and then-Praise the Lord-the door swung open. He stepped inside.

This moment over which he had lost sleep every night for years seemed like an anticlimax. He had to stand there for those seven seconds and be vetted by the team in the control room. But this place was a refuge after the ordeal he had just been through.

Nothing happened.

He waited.

He counted mentally, staring ahead.

Seven seconds had passed. Must have passed, he thought. He’s having a long look at me.

Then the second door opened and he felt the cooler air of the central corridor on his face. He stepped forward.

He could be observed all the way now if they suspected him. He walked briskly, head erect, past the entrance to C Hall on his right and the hospital on his left. He was familiar with the route because it was the way to the classrooms and the library-always under escort, of course. The main entrance was beyond the classrooms and to the left.

B Hall was coming up. The door opened and a party of screws came out just as he was reaching there. They ran toward Mountjoy and for a sickening moment he thought they must have had instructions to stop him. But they dashed straight past, heading for the hall he’d left. He moved on and turned the corner.

The main entrance to the prison complex is controlled by a triple system of sliding doors. The lighting here is brilliant and Mountjoy felt certain that every stitch in the rags he was wearing must show up on the monitors. There was a bell to press, quite superfluous, he was sure.

He stood to wait, trying to achieve a compromise between confident informality and the upright bearing of your typical English bobby.

Then there was the rustle of static and a voice addressed him. “Leaving already, officer?”

He supplied the answer he’d had ready in case he met anyone. “Hasn’t the support arrived? I’m supposed to brief them.”

The first door slid across.

“Thank you.”

He stepped forward.

He waited.

The second door opened.

And the third.

In the real world it was dark by this time, but the towering floodlights made a gleaming desert of the prison yard. He had at least six shadows radiating from his feet. Parked outside the main entrance were two red-striped police cars. Knowing that he was under video surveillance he paused by the nearer car and leaned on the window frame for a few seconds as if making a radio report. Then he started marching across the yard toward the gatehouse.

A dog barked and its handler shouted something to disabuse the animal of its conviction that John Mountjoy was an escapee. More barking followed. At least two dog patrols were on the perimeter, by the first of the two fifteen-meter fences inside the wall. He still had to bluff his way through four gates.

And now he believed he would.