But I was still working on Johnny Powers, my express ticket out. You’d have thought I’d have been able to get somewhere with him after four weeks in the same cell. But you’d be wrong. He was about as suspicious as a snake in a handbag factory and twice as poisonous. I was playing the tough kid, anxious to learn from him. All I wanted was one name—the Fence. All I got was monosyllables and sneers.
Worse still, he was cracking up fast. He got these headaches. One minute he’d be sitting there vandalizing a good book. The next he’d be curled up with his head in his hands, groaning and sweating. I tried offering him aspirin but he didn’t even hear me. That was when I found out about his mother. He might have sold his granny to the salt mines, but he still loved his mother. He’d call out for her. And hours later, when the headache had gone but she hadn’t come, he would sit there, hunched up, sucking his thumb. I could see what Snape meant. Powers needed a new jacket. The sort with the sleeves that button up behind the back. Another few weeks and he’d be swapping his cell for one with padded walls. And where would that leave me?
Everything changed one afternoon. I was on cleaning duty. I’d cleaned the kitchen, the dining hall, and two corridors and they were still pretty filthy. At Strangeday Hall you could never get rid of the dirt. You could just rearrange it. It was late in the afternoon and I thought I’d finished, but then one of the screws came up to me. His name was Walsh.
We called him “Weasel” on account of his thin face, his pointed nose, and his little mustache. He didn’t like me. He didn’t much like anyone.
“Finished, 95446?” he asked.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Walsh.” I smiled at him. “Why don’t you call me 954 for short?” I said. “It’s more friendly.”
He stared at me, his left eye twitching. “Are you trying to be funny, 95446?” he asked.
“No, Mr. Walsh.”
“Now the showers. I want them spotless.”
“But, Mr. Walsh—”
“Are you arguing, 95446?”
“No, Mr. Walsh.”
Prison officers and teachers have a lot in common.
It must have been about half past four when I set out across the yard to the showers, which were in a low building on the other side. All the other inmates were either in the classrooms or locked up in their cells. High above me, the guards looked down from their metal watchtowers, fingering their automatic rifles like I was a duck in a fairground. Scratch one Diamond and win a goldfish. I looked up at them and waved. Somebody telephoned the central-control guardhouse and a moment later the door to the shower cubicles clicked open.
The door led into a white-tiled room with hooks and benches where we undressed. From here a long corridor stretched down to the far wall with metal cubicles on both sides. The showers were regulated by three huge taps in a maze of pipes, valves, and gauges close to the changing room. The whole system must have been out-of-date the day it was built. And that day must have been sometime before the Victorians.
I’d thought I’d be alone there, but I hadn’t taken two steps before I heard voices, low and threatening, behind the drip of the water. Carefully, I put down my bucket and mop, then edged toward the corridor. There was something about the voices that I didn’t like, and I couldn’t even hear what they were saying yet. But nobody was meant to be in the showers. If they’d sneaked in in the middle of the afternoon, it wasn’t because they fancied a wash.
I reached the corridor and slipped behind the first of the partitions, next to the taps. From here I could get a better view. With my cheek pressed against the cold metal, I peered around. What I saw was even worse than I had expected. And at Strangeday Hall expectations were always pretty bad.
Johnny Powers was there, slumped against the far wall. It was difficult to see in the half-light, but I could tell he’d taken a beating. He was sitting like a broken doll. Nobody had scratched their initials into him yet, but his nose was bleeding and for once his hair was ruffled. There were three guys with him.
I recognized them at once, even with their backs to me, and my mouth went dry.
The tallest of them was Mark White—three years for armed robbery. He was the most crooked con in the joint: crooked shoulders, crooked hips, and a crooked smile. With him was a Scottish guy, McNeil. He was small with greasy hair and a pronounced stomach . . . which he pronounced “stumma.” Half the time you couldn’t understand what he was saying. Most of the time you didn’t want to. I didn’t know what the third guy was in for. His name was Blondie, and it was true he had blond hair. But you could have also called him Ugly and you’d have been right there, too. Somebody once told me he’d murdered his dentist. If I’d had teeth like his, I’d have probably murdered mine.
“Aren’t you going to call for help, Johnny?” White was saying. I could hear them all now. “Maybe one of the screws will hear you.”
“I don’t need help from no one.” Powers spat blood.
“Let him have it,” Blondie hissed. “Do it now.”
“Yeah—do it now.” Powers giggled. “Whassa matter, White? Mebbe ya’re a bit yellow, too. White and yellow—like an egg.”
White moved to one side. That was when I saw what he was carrying. I couldn’t believe it. Just about every prisoner at Strangeday Hall had a weapon of some sort, usually homemade daggers or “shanks,” as they were called. But White had gone one better. Somehow he’d gotten hold of a gun. And he was pointing it at Powers.
“You’re going to get it, Johnny,” he said. “But not yet.” He glanced upward. “I reckon you’ve got another couple of minutes . . .”
Another couple of minutes. My mind was racing. What would happen in another couple of minutes? Then I realized. The prison was on the flight path to Heathrow. They were waiting for a plane to drown out the sound of the gunshot. It was the perfect cover. Johnny Powers would be drowned and shot at the same time.
If it had been anybody else, I might have just backed out then and there. It was none of my business who was shooting who or why. But this was Powers. I had no choice. I had to get him out of there—and in one piece.
I looked around me. I don’t know what I expected to find. An automatic rifle accidentally left there by one of the guards? If so, I was out of luck. All I could see was a broken shoelace and an old towel lying in a puddle of water.
“Two minutes, Johnny,” White said. “You got any last-minute requests?”
“Yeah. Drop dead.”
That was typical Powers. If he’d made a request on the radio it would have been for “The Funeral March.”
But looking at the towel had given me an idea. Moving as quietly as I could, I went over and examined the Victorian plumbing system. There were three taps—one for hot water, one for cold. The third controlled the pressure. There was also a gauge with pipes snaking in and out, a circular clock-face with a big slice of red. I guessed the system had never been turned to full pressure. The whole thing would probably explode.
Well, there was always a first time . . .
I gripped the tap. The metal was cool and damp against the palm of my hand. Hoping it wouldn’t squeak, I gave it a quarter turn to the right. There was a loud shudder. The pipes coughed and water gurgled like a man with indigestion.
“Whassat?” McNeil asked. He’d heard it, too. He’d have had to be deaf to miss it.
“It’s nothing,” White replied, and I breathed again. “Just the pipes.”
I turned the tap again. It made two complete revolutions before it tightened, fully open. All the pipes were bubbling and groaning now. I looked at the pressure gauge. The needle had jerked up like a conductor’s baton. Already it was vertical, and even as I watched, it began to shiver toward the right.
“You sure?” McNeil asked again. He had a sulking, unhappy voice.
“Go check it out if you’re so worried,” White replied.
“I wanna ask ya something,” Powers said suddenly.
“What is it?” White said.
“Who put ya up to this?” Powers demanded. “Who sent ya the gun? I’d just like to know.”
“Who do you think?” White asked. There was a pause. “Big Ed.”
“Big Ed?”
“Yeah. He figured it’s time you kinda left the scene. Permanently. Know what I mean?”
“Well, whaddya know?” Powers muttered. “Big Ed . . .” But then he stopped. I could hear another sound now, even louder than the pipes. It was a distant whine getting louder and closer by the second.
A plane was coming in to land. And time had just run out for Johnny Powers.
“Here it comes,” White said. “Say your prayers, Johnny.”
I reached for the towel, picked it up, slapped it against the hot tap. Even with the wet material, I could feel the metal burning underneath. The showers might have been lukewarm for us, but right now they were white-hot.
I glanced at the pressure gauge. The needle had passed right through the red section and was trying to find a way out on the other side. The whine of the plane had become a roar. Clutching the tap through the towel, I turned it as fast as I could.
Then everything happened at once.
There was a great hiss as the water rushed through the taps. All the showers sprang into life at once, boiling water spraying out in all directions. The pipes rattled and shook like they were trying to tear themselves out of the wall. Steam filled the room, a sudden impenetrable fog.
“What the . . . ?” White began.
Then one of the showers exploded, the head shooting across the room like a bullet. Steam and water bellowed out in a jet.
The plane was right overhead now. The whole building was vibrating. There was a gunshot. Even at that close range I hardly heard it. Then a second shower blew itself apart, unable to bear the pressure. Blondie screamed, his face disappearing in a blast of white heat.
I’d wrapped the towel around my face and I was on my knees, crawling underneath the swirling clouds. I couldn’t see anything. I could hardly hear anything. The pipes were slamming against the wall in a frenzy. Three more showers exploded. Burning water cascaded onto my back.
“Johnny!” I called out. My voice was muffled by the towel. Then there was a splat of fist against flesh and a figure flew through the mist, crashed into a cubicle, and slumped beside me. It was White. He was out cold—about the only thing in the building that was cold. He no longer had the gun.
Then somebody else lurched out of the steam on all fours. This time it was Powers. Miraculously, he didn’t seem to have been burned.
“Good work, kid,” he said. There was a glimmer in his eyes and he was smiling. I couldn’t think of anything to say. He was actually enjoying all this.
It was over as quickly as it had begun.
The plane flew past. The pipes buckled, broke, then fell silent as the pressure went down. Water, suddenly cold, splashed down on the concrete floor. Somewhere in all the steam, McNeil groaned. White and Blondie lay still, their bodies vague outlines in the haze. Powers and I crawled back to the door and stood up. Somehow I found the presence of mind to pick up the mop and bucket. I gave Powers the mop. Together we walked back across the yard. The guards didn’t try to stop us.
That night, back in the cell, Powers asked me why I’d saved him.
“I told you.” I shrugged, trying to make nothing of it. “I admire you. I wasn’t going to let those creeps put a bullet in you.”
Powers stood up, holding out a hand. I shook it. “Ya’re all right, kid,” he said. “Ya’re okay.”
That was as close as he could get to saying thank you. But I was satisfied as I went to sleep. I’d become his friend, just the way Snape wanted. Surely it could only be a matter of time before I was out of Strangeday Hall.
It was only a matter of time—although things didn’t happen quite the way I’d expected. But then, when did they ever?
OUT!
The day after the attack in the shower room, Powers got a letter. We received letters twice a week, but only after the prison warden had censored them. If he didn’t like a sentence, he simply took a pair of scissors and cut it out. I got one letter from Tim that more or less fell apart in my hands. It began
Dear Nick,
and ended
Your big brother, Tim.
The rest was just holes apart from the single word “peacock,” which I found screwed up at the bottom of the envelope. Well, at least that told me he was still looking for the lost Ming vase. Unless, of course, by some miracle he’d already found it.
The letter Powers got had come through uncut. He read it three times, concentrating on every word. Then he paced up and down the cell for an hour. By now I knew enough not to ask any questions. If Powers wanted me to know something, he would tell me. At last he turned around and walked over to the table. “I’m getting outta here,” he said.
“Out, Johnny?” I didn’t know what to say. “How come?”
“Read this.” He pushed the letter into my hands. I read it.
Johnny,
Bad news, I’m afraid. Grandpa’s in emergency care, dear. They’re talking of another operation. Kingston Hospital is ready now, but Grandpa’s last operation wasn’t very successful. Everyone is really upset.
Caroline and Oliver got married in Edinburgh yesterday. He’s an optician, and marvelous with eyes. We’ll all miss them.
No other important news.
Take care.
Yours ever, Ma
I finished the letter and glanced up. Powers was staring at me, waiting for me to speak. “That’s bad,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“I mean you must be worried about your granddad, but I don’t see—”
“My granddad died ten years ago.” He snatched the letter back and spread it out on the table. “Ya don’t understand,” he went on. “Ma and me have this secret code.”
I read the letter again, but still couldn’t see it.
Powers jerked a thumb toward the page. “Ya take the first letter of every other word. That way ya get the real message.”