Bang (17 page)

‘Very interesting indeed.’

The junkie teacher cupped her hands to her ears, which
looked like cabbage leaves.

‘You can forget that wax key for a start, prisoner.
The locks are welded up. But there is a formula, one that Cagee didn’t know about,
yet later went on to lecture about, rather intriguingly. That’s right, I
attended a lecture of his once, in translation obviously, because as you’re
well aware the Authority owns the language and to get round that all public
broadcasts must be translated into another language not owned by the Authority.
Consequently it is not always so easy to understand such lectures.’ Delilah
raised her eyebrows and shook her head, muttering to herself something
contemptuous that reflected her views on the Authority. ‘However,’ continued
the warden, ‘and I think I’m safe in saying this, the formula is complicated,
to say the least. You could, though, if you cracked it be out of your cage by
the time I’ve finished my chiropody. Or it could be years, a lifetime. Longer
still. The Whipping Boy understands it, I believe, but he’s very hot on
calculus. Or was at least. He’s really gone downhill since Gentle was
slaughtered. Hit those drugs, he has, like nobody’s business. Snort snort, bang
bang. Personally I never much cared for Officer Gentle, though don’t tell him I
said that. There was a time, not long back, when he couldn’t put one foot in
front of the other without asking permission. Then he got in with the Whipping
Boy – what a strange pair they made, you should have seen them dance
together – and he was almost overnight a changed man. I say almost. And
that’s what I mean. His cruelty is of course to be commended. It’s his dress
sense I had the problem with. I mean, who in their right mind goes round in
crotch-high synthetic fur boots and matching hats? Lunacy. Did you know he had
waistcoats on order too? Anyway, where were we? The formula. Bit of a twister.
And even if I did understand it I wouldn’t tell you. But I do know, as you
would have worked out for yourself were you not a hopelessly dizzy hairdresser,
that by asking how long you are to remain caged you have just lengthened your
captivity.’

‘She’d never have worked that out for herself,’ said
the lift designer, ‘not a hairdresser. Highlighting is one thing, a formula is
quite another. My bag, actually, that sort of business. I’m not so bad with the
old mathematical teaser. Mind you, I couldn’t cut a man’s hair if my life
depended upon it. Ha ha.’

‘Ha ha,’ echoed the warden, but didn’t mean it either.

A formula, thought Delilah, but didn’t show it.

‘I have some rather unusual predilections,’ said the
lift designer. ‘And I was rather hoping they’d be catered for down here. I’m a
rich man, warden. Lifts, you know. Could we talk?’ He flashed his Life.

‘Come into my office.’

Now that she was stuck stood up in this cage, Delilah
wished she was back in the hand and voice chamber. In the chamber she’d wished
she was back in the shower unit. Nothing made her want to be back in Wet Room
102, nothing. But everything made her want to be back up outside, on the moving
floors, even in the arms of Harry for 25 seconds. Those 25 seconds were the
most recent, probably last ever, moments of kindness, if you could call them
kindness, that she’d had or would have. Harry was a distant memory. They said
that about prison, that your recent past became a distant memory. Really it was
only a few days ago. What worried her more was the future: her impending
miscarriage of justice, the sentencing, this cage. As the lift designer spoke
and the warden looked rather startled then nodded his head, Delilah gave the
bars a good rattle. But they didn’t, didn’t rattle. There was no give in the
apparatus, other than the wheels, which really were very shoddily welded to the
base. The locks were still welded as smooth as ever, very neatly done, the
food-poisoned plumber had been a dab hand with the torch. Rattling the bars
would according to the formula no doubt accord her an increased duration in
here but she didn’t think anybody had seen her: the officers on guard in Remand
111 were only half attentive with only three prisoners left to guard, and tired
too after dumping all the food-poisoned bodies in the lift and sending them to
330. Delilah needed to get out of the cage and needed to get an officer’s uniform
to the lift designer and didn’t have a clue how to do either. Not because she
was a hairdresser but because the task seemed insurmountable.

‘Cooee,’ called her junkie ex-teacher. ‘Got any more
pills?’

With that, Delilah began to have an idea, but didn’t
know what it was yet. She could only feel it, ideas were like that sometimes.
Soon somebody would explain why.

‘I’m high,’ said the teacher, ‘but I wanna get higher
still. I wanna get mashed, me. This is top quality orange. You’re a much better
supplier than the last one. He was a rip-off merchant. One day he encouraged me
to nibble the edge of a pill to convince me of the quality then sold me a piece
of orange chalk, saying it was how the pills came before they were cut. We’re
not allowed scissors down here, and that’s probably the real reason, so I
swallowed the whole thing and what happened? Nothing. Not the slightest hit.
All it did was settle my stomach. I complained next time I saw him and he told
me in his creaky old voice that it was just the way of the street and what was
he supposed to do about it. I said I didn’t know what the street had to do with
it. Anyway I had no choice but buy more pills from him because I needed a fix,
and these pills were distinctly iffy at best. Another day he took my cabbage
payment upfront, said he had to go see a man, then never returned. That was the
last we ever saw of that dealer. Have you seen him at all? He was old and wore
a nightcap, kept crying
Go to sleep, Go to sleep
. I’d have put him in
detention if I’d been his teacher. Your paths crossed at all? No? Now about
that pill? You’d make my day. Toss us one over, I’ll pay you later. You can
trust me, your old teacher. You were my favourite pupil. I kept an eye out for
you.’

Now in the forced employ of the Whipping Boy, and
working her idea over, Delilah delved into the package for a pill. The orange
pills were wrapped ten apiece in smaller packages, like little tubes, and their
supply was bountiful. What hadn’t been made clear was how the Whipping Boy
expected Delilah to take payment. She didn’t have a Life down here, not even a
limited one like some of the now-dead remand prisoners, and certainly not a
flash one like the lift designer’s, which could have been her old one it looked
so similar, even the tiny scratch – so she couldn’t take payment that way.
What the Whipping Boy would want with a cabbage she couldn’t imagine. Nor could
she imagine where her ex-teacher sourced these cabbages – a further 32
formed a pyramid in the corner of the junkie pen. Crossing her fingers, she
tossed a whole tube over to her ex-teacher and cried, loud as she could, ‘No
charge for those ten pills!’

Now she had to do two things at once. She cried, ‘Let
me out. Let me out. I hate it in here. Let me out. Please let me out. You’ve
got to let me out. Let me out. I demand that you LET ME OUT.’ This would
achieve two things she hoped.

First, remove any hope, an unbearable hope at that,
that she might at any moment be released: the Superintendent said he’d take her
hope away, but rather than let him do it, she did it herself. That felt good.

Second, and followingly, she hoped by shouting to be
let out she was forcing the Authority into a position where they couldn’t
release her, thus taking control
away
from the Authority, acted for by
the System, or in this case Warden 111, and in doing so her intention wasn’t so
much to crack the formula – that would be too hard – as to overstrain
it, upset it, mess with it, and leave them with only one option: release her
from the cage, back into their control.

Beyond that, she needed the uniform, so that the lift
designer could dress up as an officer and escort her, his prisoner, to the lift
and up and out. At least that was the idea. Escape, get beyond that Whipping
Boy’s clutches, before he came for her. She knew he would. But didn’t know he
was already on his way.

The commotion began quickly. ‘Free drugs?’ shouted an
agitated officer. ‘You can’t give the teacher free drugs. I want some too.’

Bargains, thought Delilah, no one can resist them.
‘Come and get your pills.’ She hoped that jealousy and greed, always good
motivators, would conspire with her plan and urge it along.

An officer said, ‘If you’re giving him some, you’ll
have to give me some too. I’m senior to him. Also I’m naturally the better man,
if I may use the word
naturally
.’

Another officer said, ‘I’m subordinate to that officer
but superordinate to the other one, who is a foolish fool and invents stupid
rubber stripes he has no idea what to do with. So you’ll have to give me pills
if you give them both some. You’ll have no choice. There would be no question
about it. Only an answer. His stripes are very stretchy. But they are
purposeless. I want some pills.’

‘We’re having a party,’ called Delilah, eager to
further gee up the officers as they arranged themselves with much argument into
a pecking order, Warden 111 at the queue’s head ready at Delilah’s bars for his
drugs.

An officer said, ‘Parties are illegal.’

An officer said, ‘So are drugs, technically. I will
make good use of my elasticated stripes, just you see.’

An officer said, ‘Technically, yes, you are not wrong
there, I agree, but we’ve a hard day, what with the prisoners’ mass suicide. I
wonder why they all decided to kill themselves like that? Still, they’ll regret
it once the Former Bottle Manufacturer gets his hands on them. I’m telling you,
your stripes have no purpose.’

‘They
do
. I have friend with a sowing machine.’

The Warden spoke in his deep nasty voice. ‘A party it
is then.’

‘Fancy dress,’ said Delilah.

An officer said, ‘Not likely, we don’t do fancy dress.
We’re System officers.’

‘I thought you could all dress up like Officer Gentle,
to salute his memory. I have been bequeathed his clothes. It is only right that
you all wear them,’ said Delilah. ‘You ought to honour him.’

An officer sniggered.

‘Ha, ha,’ said the Warden in his deep nasty voice, who
didn’t seem to have a laugh itself. ‘That would be rather amusing. Send for the
prisoner’s bequeathment! Lock up the prisoners, we’re having a party.’

‘I’d like to come, too, if I may,’ said the rich lift
designer, after Delilah shot him a look, and flashed his life again.

‘You may. It will cost, though. Ha ha.’

Delilah handed the drugs out, liberally. The party got
under way and the officers ran around, some in pink crotch-high synthetic fur
boots that presumably Gentle had retained for private occasions, some not.
Delilah watched from her bars and shouted and clamoured to be released. And
waited.

She watched two painters in bespattered overalls
repainting Remand 111 an imperceptibly lighter shade of lilac than it already
was, and wondered what the point of this was, and she waited.

And waited.

Her plan didn’t seem to be working. She stared at the
plumber’s weld torch still on the floor where JJ Jeffrey had dropped it
earlier. She was full of hope, and it hurt like anything. Hope was a pain.

I am an officer,’ said an officer in an officer’s
uniform who was in fact the lift designer, ‘and I’ve been instructed to remove
you from this cage.’ He picked up the weld torch. ‘This decision has been taken
by the Authority, which is acted for by the System, which is acted for by
Warden 111 or by any party so designated by his instruction to so act, in this
case me. I think that’s how it went. You, prisoner, have taken too much power
into your own hands. You will therefore be released from the cage into the care
of the Authority who will reassume control of your body and mind, not that the
two are actually separate, as we have recently discovered. Additionally, and
directly contradicting what I've just said, and by the power invested in me by
the Authority to speak on its behalf, and citing the unpredictability that all
absolute powers have, and further not because you have ruined the formula,
because through your amateur double-bluffing you have not come close to doing
so, but for another reason, which you will at any moment discover, I am told, I
am releasing you.’

‘Just unweld the lock and shut up!’ said Delilah. He
did so.

‘I have been promoted,’ the lift designer said when
he’d done that and let her out. ‘I am now an officer.’

‘Be quiet,’ said Delilah. ‘We need to escape.’

‘When I asked the officer for his trousers he said,
‘Be my guest, officer, they are on the floor over there. Slip them on.’

‘Yes, yes. Whatever.’

‘You will furnish me a little more respect, madam.’

‘If you say so. Now get out of my way.' She raised a
flat hand, a hand of the like that had initiated Gentle’s death, thought better
of it, sidestepped the lift designer, feeling sure that she was missing something
she should have thought of. As drug-high officers watched on in amusement,
pointing, she reminded him, 'Remember, I'm your prisoner. You’re escorting me.
Now, let's get go. This way, the lift.’ The lift designer followed. In this
manner Delilah tried to pretend he was escorting her. It wasn’t very
convincing.