by Tom Becker
Adam nodded.
“Let’s see if I can give you something to help with that.”
Patting his hand, the nurse produced a needle from a surgical tray and injected him in the arm. Immediately Adam felt the pain in his face begin to ease, and he slipped gratefully back into unconsciousness.
It was the middle of the night when he woke again. The harsh overhead lights had been turned off – now slender candle flames wavered in the draughts. As he lay there, still and numb, Adam had the unsettling feeling that he was being watched. Cautiously turning his head, he recognized the bandaged boy sitting in a rocking chair by the window, his small frame wrapped in a tatty dressing gown. The boy seemed to be staring straight at Adam, his expression unreadable beneath the swathes of dressing. Before Adam could try to speak, the boy stood up and walked silently out of the ward, nodding at Adam as he passed his bed.
Over the next couple of days, Adam began to understand why many of the inmates considered a spell in the infirmary to be a blessing in disguise. The ward was steeped in a blissful lethargy, the patients soothed to sleep by a lullaby of soft moans and painkillers. Nurse Waters was the beloved queen of the ward, dispensing kindness and relief in equal measure. At one point, half dreaming, Adam confused her for an angel, and was rewarded with a tinkling laugh of delight.
On his third day in the ward, Adam was roused from his stupor by the ward’s excited greeting of the lunch time trolley. He looked up to see Jessica handing out the meals, her trustee armband wrapped around her sleeve. When she saw Adam’s bruised face, her hand flew to her mouth.
“Oh, Adam!” she gasped. “Look what he did to you!”
Adam tried to force a smile, even though the gesture made his face ache.
“It’s not that bad, is it?” he mumbled.
Jessica caught herself. “No, no . . . it’s just a shock, that’s all. I heard what had happened, but . . . I mean, I thought even Mr Pitt couldn’t be cruel enough to. . .”
“Trustee!” boomed Matron from across the ward. “Less dilly-dallying! Give him his meal and move on!”
“Take care,” Jessica whispered. “I’ll be back if I can.”
She squeezed Adam’s hand as she passed him his meal, then hurriedly wheeled her trolley away. Later in the afternoon, Adam got up to go to the toilet, and inspected himself in the mirror. He could see why Jessica had reacted the way she had – the entire left side of his face was a swollen purple mess of bruising.
In the early evening, when the ward had quietened down, another familiar figure slipped in through the entrance. It was Doughnut. The portly fixer glanced left and right before awkwardly sidling up to Adam’s bedside and pulling up a chair.
“All right?” he said.
Adam smiled weakly. “Doughnut! I’m not allowed any visitors, you know. You’ll get into trouble if they catch you.”
“I’ll be OK. I gave Nurse Waters a new pair of stockings to keep an eye out for me.”
“I should have guessed.” Adam paused, then added meaningfully: “It’s good to see you, mate.”
“Yeah.” Doughnut shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Look, I’m sorry about all that stuff between me and you. I shouldn’t have given you such a hard time about that Luca stuff.”
“Forget about it,” Adam said. “It wasn’t your fault – I was being an idiot. If it hadn’t been for you I’d have been done for months ago.”
The fixer gave him a wry look. “Have you looked in a mirror recently? You look pretty done for now, if you ask me.”
“You know what I mean.”
Doughnut glanced over at the maudlin huddles in the beds around them. “Lively here, isn’t it?” he remarked. “What time’s the party starting?”
“This is better than any party I’ve been to,” replied Adam. “The beds are comfier, and you get more food. Don’t hear any news, though. What’s going on outside?”
“It’s great, mate. Everyone’s still buzzing.”
“Buzzing? Why?”
Doughnut laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “Because of you, idiot! You’re the talk of the prison! No one’s ever had the guts to get Mr Pitt like that before. And to top things off, he’s in all sorts of bother now.”
“What do you mean?”
“When they found out how badly he’d beaten you, Mr Cooper suspended him. Pitt’s confined to the guards’ quarters until further notice. Bookworm reckons there’s a chance they’ll kick him out for good. If that happens you’ll probably be made King of the Dial.”
Adam lay back on his pillow. He wasn’t sure what to think. After nearly a year of fights and arguments, the constant struggle to fit in, it felt surreal imagining other inmates cheering his name. But what would happen if Mr Cooper did decide to send Mr Pitt away? The Assistant Chief Warder would come after him for sure.
From somewhere on the ground floor of the infirmary came a shrill blast of a whistle. Doughnut got up from his chair.
“Time’s up,” he said. “I’ll see you when you get out, yeah?”
“Count on it,” Adam replied.
Doughnut crept out of the ward, silently slipping a bar of chocolate under Adam’s pillow before he left.
The lazy rhythms of infirmary life lulled Adam into a state of happy lethargy. He spent most of his time dozing in bed, fanned by the warm breeze floating in through the open windows. His bruises lost some of their angry glow, and the swelling in his face began to subside. Every afternoon he closed his eyes and listened to the faint strains of the orchestra as they persevered with their discordant charade above the classrooms. Twice more Doughnut managed to slip back into the ward to keep Adam updated with Dial gossip – with only days to go until the summer show, excitement was apparently reaching fever pitch.
In the middle of his final night, Adam was awoken by the insistent nagging of his bladder. He crept out of bed and past the elderly nurse on duty, who was fast asleep in her chair. In the corridor beyond, a warm late-summer breeze drifted in through the open window. The bandaged boy was sitting beside it, playing a sad tune on a harmonica. He stopped playing at the sight of Adam.
“Hello again,” he said.
“Hi,” Adam replied uncertainly. “I . . . erm . . . needed the toilet.”
The boy chuckled. “Don’t have to explain to me. I’m not Matron.”
“Why are you up?”
“Why not? I’ve spent enough time here asleep.”
Adam drew cautiously nearer. “Aren’t you going to get into trouble? The nurses don’t like it if we’re up in the middle of the night.”
“They don’t care,” the boy replied nonchalantly. “The exits are all guarded. Most of us aren’t in a fit state to get out of bed, let alone start digging tunnels. What’s the worst that could happen?”
“I saw you at the court martial the other night.”
The boy nodded. “I saw you, too. Quite an impressive performance. Can’t keep out of the spotlight, can you?”
“It’s not on purpose,” Adam said ruefully. “Trouble follows me around here.”
“I know the feeling,” the boy replied. “It seeks me here, it seeks me there, trouble seeks me everywhere. . .”
Adam started. He would recognize that phrase anywhere. Suddenly he was back in the library, staring at a mocking poem in the Codex Treacherous. All sorts of thoughts and possibilities began flashing through his mind.
“Nino?” he breathed. “Nino D’Annunzio? Is that you?”
The boy blinked with surprise. When he spoke again, there was amusement in his voice.
“Afraid you’ve got the wrong brother,” he said. “I’m Luca.”
Adam gaped at the bandaged boy as he sketched out an extravagant bow, his eyes twinkling with delight.
“Surprised?” asked Luca.
Adam was too shocked to reply. All this time, all these years,
and all along Luca D’Annunzio had been walking round under everyone’s noses. The Dial’s most infamous escapee had never even left the prison!
“Unbelievable!” Adam managed finally. “But . . . how . . . why?”
Luca glanced up and down the corridor, then took Adam by the arm. “Perhaps we should continue this conversation somewhere else,” he said softly. “The walls have ears, and all that.”
Adam allowed himself to be led up the staircase to the top floor of the infirmary, where a corridor came to an end at a forbidding set of swing doors. Above the doors, a hand-painted sign warned: “Infectious Disease and Hysteria Ward. No Unauthorized Admittance.” Luca walked nonchalantly through the swing doors, and into a long, gloomy room with a row of beds running alongside each wall. None of the patients stirred beneath their blankets as they walked past. As Adam covered his mouth with his hand, he noticed that the floorboards were stained and the walls grimy with dirt.
“It stinks in here,” he whispered. “Where are the nurses?”
Luca shrugged dismissively. “Downstairs putting their feet up and having a cup of tea, probably. The kids up here have either lost their minds or got something pretty nasty that the nurses are scared of catching. So they drug the patients and stay away from the ward. That’s why it’s the best place to hide in the whole prison.”
“But aren’t you worried that you might catch something?”
“If it happens, it happens,” Luca replied breezily. “I can’t worry about everything.”
He pushed through another set of swing doors into an icy, deserted room where the beds were draped in cobwebs and thick layers of dust.
“This room’s been empty since poor Cowley died of pneumonia,” Luca continued. “Everyone reckons it’s haunted. And it is, I guess – by me.”
The final bed in the left-hand row had a heavy green curtain pulled around it, discouraging any closer inspection. Luca slipped through the curtain and jumped on to the empty bed beyond. As Adam looked on, the bandaged boy reached up and pulled down a hatch set into the ceiling. A rope ladder tumbled down to the bed from the hidden room above them.
“Very handy,” Adam remarked.
“Years before they closed this ward, I got chickenpox and was stuck in this bed,” Luca explained softly. “I spent a week staring up at the hatch, wondering what was above it. Thinking about that took my mind off the itching. Anyway, before they discharged me I made sure I had a look around, and made some alterations to make getting up here easier. You never know when you might need a hiding place.”
He scampered up the rope ladder and disappeared through the hatch, leaving Adam to make slightly more laboured progress after him. Pulling himself up into the room, Adam found himself in a musty attic nestled in the gables of the infirmary. The roof sloped sharply down on both sides of the room, forcing him to stoop every time he strayed from the centre. In the facing wall, a door with an inlaid window led out on to a narrow balcony. The room was sparsely furnished: two battered armchairs spilling stuffing out on to the floor; a wooden school desk; a large wicker basket; and a cracked mirror above a mantelpiece covered in candles. The desk and the walls were submerged beneath sheets of paper covered in diagrams labelled in Luca’s sweeping handwriting.
Standing on his tiptoes, Adam looked through a grimy circular window out over the Dial – from the distant expanse of the exercise yard to the ominous edifice of the Commandant’s Tower and the Re-education Wing to his left. Despite the warmth of the evening, the air was chilly in the attic, and draughts of cold air gnawed at Adam’s ankles. He shivered, imagining what this room would be like in winter.
Luca began unwrapping the bandages from around his head, gradually revealing a mischievous face with an olive complexion and tousled dark brown hair. It was as though Paintpot’s drawing had come to life before Adam’s eyes.
“If I had known how much of a pain it was going to be dressing up like a mummy every day,” he declared, tossing the bandages on to one of the armchairs, “I’d have chosen a different disguise.”
Running a hand through his tangled hair, Luca picked up a box of matches and began lighting the candles on the mantelpiece. As the light played across the boy’s face, Adam saw that Luca was about the same age as he was – even if, like so many other inmates on the Dial, there was a world-weary edge to his movements that suggested a life lived far in excess of his age.
“It’s a pretty good disguise, though. Especially your hand.” Adam peered down at the scarred skin on Luca’s right hand. “Is that make-up?”
“I wish,” grimaced Luca. “I knew that if I was going to pull this off then my disguise had to be convincing enough to stop people asking too many questions, so I crept down to the kitchens one night, turned on a stove and . . . well, you know.”
“You burned your own hand?” Adam asked incredulously.
“You’re looking at me like I’m crazy,” said Luca. “Maybe you’re right – maybe I am. How are you supposed to stay sane here? If you sit there quietly and just wait for three hundred years to go by, isn’t that more crazy than doing anything you can to get out? Even if it means burning your own hand?”
Adam rubbed his face. “I don’t understand any of this,” he confessed. “What are you doing up here? Everyone thinks you escaped years ago!”
“I know what everyone thinks,” said Luca, plumping himself down into one of the armchairs. “I’m a collaborator, right? The most hated prisoner ever to do time?”
There was a bitter edge to his voice. Adam looked away.
“It’s because of Caiman,” he said quietly. “It’s because you betrayed him.”
“I didn’t betray him!” Luca replied fiercely. “It was the other way round! Caiman was the collaborator, not me!”
“What?”
“The morning we were supposed to escape, something happened to me, something so important that I decided that I was staying. I tried to get word to Caiman, but he was busy finishing off the tunnel. Afterwards, when I heard that Pitt had somehow rumbled us, I knew something was wrong. Seeing as everyone else had been at the Bucketball game and thought I’d escaped, I decided to hide up here. That night I broke into the punishment cell wing – got as far as Caiman’s window when I heard him and Pitt talking. Seems they’d had a deal; in exchange for selling me out, my ‘friend’ was going to get smuggled back to Earth. I guess Caiman figured it was safer that way – he always was a coward.
“Problem was, I never showed up. They both came to the wrong conclusion: that I’d double-crossed Caiman and made an early run for it. Pitt did his nut and threw Caiman in solitary. But neither could risk anyone finding out the truth about what had happened, so they got together and blamed it all on the person who wasn’t there. Me. Pitt got a promotion; Caiman got everyone to feel sorry for him, and make sure no one thought he was the rat.”
“But you were there!” Adam exclaimed. “Why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you tell people he was lying?”
“And blow my cover?” Luca shook his head. “It doesn’t matter what people think about me. I don’t exist. I’m a ghost. I can walk around the Dial without making anyone suspicious.” He gestured at the sheets of paper stuck to the walls. “I can plan. I’ve learned my lesson, Adam. This time I will break out, and no one’s going to double-cross me.”
“I won’t say a word,” Adam said solemnly. “You can trust me.”
“I know,” replied Luca. “You proved that at Caiman’s court martial. And when you tipped that gunk over Pitt. No one would ever do that unless they were on the level – or as crazy as me.” He grinned. “But how on earth did you find out about Nino? I thought if I tore out my entry in the Codex no one would find out. After all, it’s not like he’s going to tell anyone.”
“There’s a copy of the report in the guards’ quarters,” said Adam. “I sneaked in and read it.”
“Really?” Lu
ca’s eyes came alive. “You took a hell of a risk there. How did you manage it?”
And so Adam explained the trail he had followed, from Paintpot’s picture to the Codex Treacherous and on to the Dial Cookbook. Luca listened intently, a look of growing admiration upon his face.
“I’ve got to hand it to you,” he said finally. “After all these years I never thought anyone would be able to track me down.”
“Not even your brother?”
Luca said nothing, shifting uncomfortably in his armchair.
“Nino’s still on the Dial, isn’t he?” asked Adam.
“Yes. Though he hasn’t been called Nino for a long, long time.”
“What happened between the two of you? Why did you fall out?”
“Have you got a brother?”
Adam shook his head.
“Then you wouldn’t understand. It’s complicated.”
Luca abruptly stood up and walked over to his desk, which was covered with a hand-drawn map of the Dial, overlaid with a complicated network of arrows. Adam peered over his shoulder.
“What are the arrows?”
“Wind currents,” Luca replied. “I’ve been measuring them for years.”
“Why?”
“Because with their help, I’m going to break into the Commandant’s Quarters, turn on the warphole, and get the hell out of here.”
“What?” gasped Adam. “No one’s ever got inside the Commandant’s Quarters! How are you going to do it?”
“Remember when we talked in the chapel, and I told you about my dream?”
Adam frowned. “The one about the sky tunnel?”
“Exactly!” cried Luca. “It was trying to tell me something. Other prisoners keep trying to escape by digging tunnels, but they’re going the wrong way. They need to go straight to the warphole! They need to go up, not down!”
“OK,” Adam said slowly. “So you’re going to dig a tunnel through the air?”
“Well, no. That’s impossible.” Luca grinned. “I’ve got the next best thing, though. Look!”