“For a guy who topped his wife,” said Frank, “he’s very considerate.”
“It doesn’t mean a man’s got no feelings,” said Hal. “Maybe she made his life hell. Women are good at that. From the moment you drag them off to the town hall they start behaving like pigs… That’s the way it goes.”
“You married?”
“For my sins…”
Hal gave the mute his rag back after rinsing it through.
“Thanks,” he said, speaking clearly so that he would be understood.
The mute smiled sadly and slipped the rag back under his pillow.
“He was lucky, given the fix he was in,” said Frank.
“Lucky?”
“Sure… Lucky to be in France… It’s one of the few countries where you can do your missus in without having your head separated from your shoulders.”
“A grand place right enough. The jails are comfortable… It’s only the lack of sex that gets the thumbs-down.”
He groaned. The cold water had temporarily dulled the pain but the whack he’d taken from from the leather stick was now gnawing his cheeks with bared teeth… Fine, pointed teeth, closely set and sharp as a pike’s.
“That guy,” he murmured, “is a sadist.”
“Damn right,” said Frank. “They all get like that, more or less. Spending your life in jail without having to is a clue… How about you? Did you ever do time in prison?”
“This is my first stretch.”
“Same here.”
“So we’ve got one thing in common,” said Hal. “What did you do on the outside?”
“I sold petrol,” said Frank after a moment.
“You mean you were a pump attendant?”
“No, traveller for an oil company.”
“That’s something else we got in common,” said Hal happily. “You sold petrol and I used it. I drove trucks.”
“Do you like strawberries?” Frank asked unexpectedly.
His cellmate looked at him, wondering if he was trying to get a rise out of him. But Frank seemed to be serious.
“Yes,” he answered. “Why are you asking?”
Frank got up and approached Hal’s cot. He bent his knees and leant them on the wooden frame.
“So do I, Hal,” he said, without ceasing to be deadly serious, “so do I. I like strawberries too. So you see, that makes a third thing we’ve got in common. Keep on looking and we might find more. Look, what’s the idea? You want me to be like you, or you to be like me? Or maybe your old man canoodled with my old lady or my old dad with your ma? Or maybe we could be brothers?…”
He grabbed Hal by the lapels of his fatigues.
“Would that make you happy?”
Hal firmly pushed him off.
“You’re a clown!” he muttered.
“And you’re not, I suppose? Watch your step, pal, or you’ll get into what makes us different and that would be a real shame!”
He stood up, did a few physical jerks, then walked to the far wall and leant against it just under the small high window. The sun did not shine into their narrow cell because a wall nearby was in its way. But the aperture allowed a square patch of bluey-green light to enter. By now, the muffled roar of the sea had melted into the background noise of the prison… At times the despairing cries of seabirds drifted in, raucous and plaintive.
“Trying for a tan?” asked Hal after staring at his companion upside down.
“In a sense, yes,” said Frank.
“What sense is that?” growled Hal.
“The other sense… I mean the wider sense… The sun… Do you think the sun still exists?”
“I don’t know,” sighed Hal. “I don’t know anything any more!”
4
But the sun was still there. They were able to deduce as much that afternoon during exercise.
They were only able to get a sense of its presence from between four grey cliffs enclosing the yard. The exercise hour never coincided with the moment when the sun was directly above the bleak cement rectangle. Cement! Bars! Greyness!…
The men walked round and round in a circle with their hands held behind their backs. In the middle of the yard, a warder sat on a stool, on which he swivelled as and when he needed to.
“He’s going to give himself the staggers,” a prisoner whispered in Frank’s ear.
Frank gave an imperceptible nod.
Encouraged, the prisoner went on:
“That was one hell of a scrap between you and your pal. How come the pair of you went at it hammer and tongs in the shower?”
Frank looked up and said out of the corner of his mouth:
“Incompatible temperaments…”
“Like a divorce case,” sniggered the man.
The warder bawled:
“Halt!”
The joyless procession stopped.
“Oi, Mariole!” called the warder.
The prisoner who had just spoken to Frank stepped out of the line and started walking towards the warder.
“You called me, Monsieur Plaud?”
“Were you chatting with the new man?” asked the warder.
He was red-haired, young and wearing glasses. He looked like a school prefect. He had that same nasty look in his eye and the same power complex.
“Course not, Monsieur Plaud.”
“Shut up! And don’t lie. I saw you.”
Prisoner Mariole smiled obsequiously.
“Since you saw me, Monsieur Plaud, I can’t deny it. You don’t miss a trick. Sometimes I wonder if you don’t have eyes in the back of your head…”
“Button your lip!” said the warder.
Still, he was flattered by the prisoner’s comment about his keen eyesight.
“What were you saying to that smart chancer?”
“That he’d been stupid to mix it with the other one.”
“Yeah…” said the warder. “They’re both idiots, but they won’t do it again!” He yelled: “Am I right, you two?”
Frank and Hal nodded their heads:
“Oh no, sir, it won’t happen again, sir!”
It happened again the same day. But this time, it all went badly wrong for them.
After the evening meal, the three of them were in the same cell watching the daylight fade in the small high window. Suddenly Frank asked Hal, point-blank:
“What was it you did that landed you in here?”
Hal did not answer at once, as if he hadn’t heard the question. At length, just as Frank had stopped expecting to get an answer, he murmured:
“Oh, just stuff…”
“What stuff?” Frank persisted.
“What about you?”
“You’ve got a funny way of answering questions…”
There was a lengthy silence. The night light came on. It cast a bluish glow over the wall, which grew stronger as the daylight died.
Frank turned on his side.
“It was night…” he said.
Hal knew straight away that though nothing had led up to it, Frank was beginning to tell his story.
“I was in a town up north…”
He stopped, distracted by the variety and flow of his memories.
“Go on,” said Hal. “You’re getting me interested.”
Frank obliged and continued:
“I’d called on my clients during the day and decided to spend the night in a small inn… But they didn’t have garage space for my car… I had to park the jalopy in a farmyard…”
“What happened?” asked Hal in a voice from which he stripped any suggestion of curiosity, to avoid giving Frank the satisfaction of making him wait.
But Frank was not fooled:
“Are you really interested?” he asked.
“Course I am!”
“When I got to the farmyard, the wife was watering the horses… She was carrying a storm lantern.”
“I can see it now,” mused Hal.
“She was short and fat and wore a headscarf.”
“Wha
t happened then?”
This time, Hal could not disguise his curiosity.
“Get lost!” Frank snarled suddenly.
“Oh, suit yourself… No need to get stroppy!”
Hal sighed and groped his way to the tap. He turned it on and splashed water on his face. Then he drank from the tap. The water was warm and tasted of copper.
“She had large, flabby breasts,” Frank resumed.
Hal smiled in the dark and sat on the foot of his bed, facing the storyteller. There was less than a metre between them.
“Hell!” he smiled. “You’re starting to strike me as a bit of a skirt-lifter in your own small way… Large, flabby breasts, eh?”
Frank shrugged his shoulders.
“Everyone can have a moment of madness… at certain times.”
“True,” said Hal.
“Sometimes it goes wrong. Other times, it turns out all right…”
“Did it go wrong for you?”
“You see…”
“Did you rape the farmer’s wife?”
“Shut your mouth!” cried Frank. “I don’t like that word,” he added, lowering his voice. “I grabbed her… She started shaking… Then screaming… I tipped her into the straw—the yard was full of it… I had her… with the flames blazing round us…”
“Flames!” cried Hal. “What flames?”
“The lamp had tipped over onto the straw.”
Hal pictured the scene. A frown suddenly spread over his face and he said in a quiet voice: “Surrounded by flames! Damn! I’d have paid good money to get an eyeful of that. What happened then?”
“I panicked.”
“And?…”
Frank reached with both hands in the gloom. His hands were big and covered with fair hair. Hal stared at them the way people stare at objects displayed in a glass case.
“You strangled her?”
“Yes,” Frank said without elaborating. “Right, your turn now… Let’s have it.”
Hal stretched out on his mattress, which creaked under him.
“Oh with me, it was simpler. It happened in a truck drivers’ cafe… I was a bit pie-eyed. I got into a shouting match with this guy who was there. It was about politics. I’m not interested in politics—it’s so damned stupid! All it’s good for is making a small number of crooked characters very rich.”
“What happened?” Frank broke in.
“Oh yes… What can I say? I didn’t like the line the guy was shooting. So I smashed a beer bottle over his skull, but it turned out his skull was pretty thin!”
“What kind?” Frank asked matter-of-factly.
It took Hal a moment or two for the question to register.
“What?” he said.
“The beer,” Frank explained. “What kind of beer was it?”
“Virginia.”
“Are you sure?”
Hal became suspicious.
“Of course. When I raised the bottle I saw the label upside down… It’s the sort of thing you remember!”
“You’re lying!” cried Frank, leaping to his feet.
“I swear…”
“And I swear you’re lying through your teeth! Virginia bottles don’t have necks. So you couldn’t have crowned anybody with one.”
Hal went quiet. He opened his mouth to protest but changed his mind.
“You never thought of that, did you, you dummy!” Frank said as he kicked the mattress his cellmate was lying on. “Bull! Pure bull! Anybody would think you were trying to pull the wool over my eyes…”
The mute sat up in his cot when he saw that the two men were at each other’s throats. He looked at each in turn, uncomprehending. He didn’t dare intervene…
Frank grabbed Hal round the neck.
“What do you want from me, eh? What are you after?”
Hal bucked, straightened his back and managed to get hold of his attacker’s wrists.
He was unusually strong. Frank released his grip. When he had been forced back, Hal growled:
“Listen, Frank. A man’s entitled to spin himself whatever yarn he likes, isn’t he? Anyway, you started it…”
“What do you mean?”
“That farmer’s wife with her flabby breasts and her storm lantern and the guy jumping into the middle of an inferno! You read that in James Hadley Chase!”
Frank looked down. Hal let go of his wrists and his arms dropped loosely down the sides of his body, where they hung like two broken branches.
“You wanted to wrong-foot me, didn’t you, you bastard,” barked Hal. “Don’t you think I got your number the first time I set eyes on you? Your face gives you away—it says what you are trying to hide. It’s got stoolie written all over it! It’s as obvious as if it was up there in lights!”
“Are you going to shut your mouth?” bawled Frank.
He was jumping up and down with rage. His whole body was shaking. His teeth chattered with fury.
“I said shut your trap!”
“Stoolie!” yelped Hal. “Stoolie!”
He flung the insult as though it were a complaint. It was almost a cry of anguish. He put his whole being into it… His whole life…
“Stoolie!”
The word rose through the silence of the sleeping prison. As it travelled it woke the others from their dreams. Protesting voices from every side blended into a chorus:
“What’s going on?”
“It’s those new men kicking up a rumpus!”
“Move them to another cell!”
“Knock it off, will you!”
The sound of footsteps… The screws were coming, and they were not in the best of moods…
Frank had got Hal by the throat again.
“You’re the stoolie! It’s you!”
“That’s right,” grunted Hal gasping for breath. “I got my face smashed in so I could come and listen to you tell boring stories. Your plan’s a bit obvious, you know. Spreading lies so you can get to the truth…”
Frank let him go. He’d suddenly had an idea. He said:
“Show me your hands!”
“But…”
“Come on, show me your hands!”
Hal held out his hands in the glow of the night light. Frank spat on them.
“Call those truck driver’s hands?” he said calmly. “Who do you think you’re kidding? You were still having manicures the day before yesterday!”
“And what about you, a travelling rep for an oil company!… Tell me, Monsieur Shell: where exactly were you prospecting?”
“Pas-de-Calais,” said Frank with a scowl.
“Right! So what’s the name of the guy who’s got the contract in Saint-Omer? Well?”
Frank gave a shrug.
“Just drop it,” he murmured.
“That’s more like it!” gloated Hal. “You see, it’s you!… You’re just a low-down cop!”
“Say that again!”
“A lower-than-a-rat’s-tail cop!”
They laid into each other once more, rolling around, grappling on the floor. They were still at it when the warders separated them using boots and cudgels.
When the Bull showed up, in his slippers, all that remained for him to do was administer the final touches with his stick to the pair, who were now incapable of reacting in any way.
“Take these two lowlifes down to solitary,” he ordered. “Each man in a cell of his own! And put them both on bread and water! And don’t forget to go gentle on them: they’re delicate little things!”
But they did not wear kid gloves, and the two prisoners were bundled roughly down to the floors below.
As they passed, their fellow prisoners, whose sleep they had disrupted, hurled abuse at them.
Before he left, the Bull swatted the mute with his stick.
The man with no voice cowered on his bed and began to weep for a world full of sorrows.
When he said that there were rats in the solitary cells, the Bull had not overstated the facts. The arrival of a new prisoner in the windowless base
ment dungeons was always manna from heaven for the rodents, because with him came loaves of bread, which the newcomer had to fight for with the repulsive sitting tenants…
5
A week went by in those two tomb-like dungeons. A week, as slow and black as the blackest night. When the two men emerged they were taken straight to the prison governor, a tall, acerbic man who read them the standard lecture on good behaviour, which ended:
“I could separate you, of course, but that would be the easy answer. I prefer to think that you will reach some form of gentleman’s agreement… if I can put it that way,” he added, with a look full of contempt.
“Now get out. Any more antics from you and I promise that I’ll come down on you like a ton of bricks.”
Frank and Hal had not looked at each other since they had been reunited. They were marched out of the governor’s office, eyes furiously to the front so that they would not have to acknowledge each other’s existence until the very last moment.
The Bull, who was boss on their floor, was waiting for them. There was a rose between his teeth, which would have looked more at home on a sick horse.
“Why, if it isn’t my old pals!” he said. “Well, I did tell you that I’d be keeping an eye on the two of you… From now on, you play by the rules… I like lads who stay in step…”
He had followed them into their cell and sat down next to the mute, who looked scared to death.
“Now see here,” he said, giving a sigh of contentment, “if you go on larruping each other like this, you’ll very likely end up dead… Whichever of you puts the other one’s lights out for good will automatically be for Charlie Chop… Never heard of it? It’s an amazing thing… The guy who invented it was called Guillotin… And he was a doctor!… As you see, I know my French history!”
He gave a blood-curdling laugh.
“A public benefactor… A machine for cutting troublemakers down to size… It’s already paid us three visits since I’ve been here!… We have to get up early, but there’s a bit more money in it for us… And it’s coming again, boys… in just a couple of weeks… We’ve got a customer needs a haircut. A citizen who mowed down two cops—not a wise move, you could say… Such a reckless lad!
“The poor lamebrain has these fantastic notions! He imagines the president is going to give him a pardon! It’ll never happen! Police hides are sacred!”
The Wicked Go to Hell Page 3