Running Blind / The Freedom Trap

by Desmond Bagley

  I looked back along the street and saw the big cherry-picker move ponderously into view and the great arm fell forward, completely blocking the street. Men tumbled from the cab and ran, and then we turned another corner and I saw no more of that.

  Slade leaned against the side of the truck with his head lolling on one side. His face was grey and he seemed thoroughly exhausted. I remembered that he had been in hospital not long before. The man with us thumped his elbow into my ribs. ‘Pay attention!’ he said sharply. ‘You’ll be transferring into a little black mini-van. Get ready to move.’

  The truck was moving fast but there was little traffic to hinder us on that Saturday afternoon. Suddenly we swooped to a stop behind a mini-van which stood at the kerb with its rear doors open. ‘That’s it. Into there—quickly.’

  I jumped out of the truck and took a header into the mini-van, and heard the doors slam shut behind. I lifted my head and, looking through the windscreen between two broad-shouldered men in the front seats, saw that the truck I had left was already on the move with Slade still in it. It turned ahead to the right and at high speed.

  The mini-van took off more sedately, well within the speed limit, and turned to the left. I felt absolutely breathless. My lungs were strained and my heart was thumping as though it was going to burst in my chest. I lay there panting until I felt better and then raised myself and poked at the passenger in front with my finger. ‘Why were we separated?’

  He made no answer to that, so I tried again. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Shut up and keep down,’ he said without turning. ‘You’ll find out soon enough.’

  I relaxed as much as I could, sitting there on the hard metal floor of the van. From what I could gather from the brief glimpses I saw from the rear windows we were covering a complicated course among the streets, stopping properly at all the traffic lights and not moving fast enough to excite attention.

  The van turned into a side street and swung up an alley. I leaned up on my elbow and looked forward cautiously. Ahead were two big wooden doors which were open, and inside the building was a huge moving-van with the tailgate down. Without hesitation the driver headed right for it in low gear, bumped up the ramp formed by the tail-gate and drove right inside the pantechnicon. Behind us something came down from the roof, enclosing the van completely, and I heard the slam of the tail-gate as it was closed.

  We were in complete darkness when the rear doors of the mini-van were opened. ‘You can get out now.’ It was a woman’s voice.

  I scrambled out and bumped into her, steadying myself on a soft arm. The front door of the mini-van slammed. ‘For God’s sake!’ she said. ‘Turn on a light.’

  A light came on in the roof and I looked around. We were in a cramped compartment just big enough to take the van with a little space left over. The woman was a tall blonde dressed in a white overall and looking like a doctor’s receptionist. One of the men pushed past me and bent down; I saw he was attaching a shackle to the rear bumper of the mini-van.

  I heard the throb of a heavy diesel engine and the whole compartment lurched. The man straightened up and gave me a grin. He patted the side of the van. ‘We don’t want this to get loose, do we?’

  There was another lurch and a grinding of gears. The big pantechnicon was travelling, taking me to—where?

  The blonde smiled at me. ‘We haven’t much time,’ she said practically. ‘Take your clothes off.’ I must have gaped at her because she said sharply, ‘Strip, man! Don’t be prudish—you won’t be the first man I’ve seen bollocknaked.’

  I took off the grey flannel jacket—the uniform of servitude—and watched her unpack a suitcase, producing underwear, socks, a shirt, a suit and a pair of shoes. ‘You can start to get dressed in these,’ she said. ‘But don’t put on the shirt yet.’

  I took off the prison uniform and dressed in that lovely soft underwear, then balanced uneasily against the rocking motions of the moving pantechnicon to put on the socks. One of the men said, ‘How does it feel to be out, chum?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure I’m out, yet.’

  ‘You are,’ he assured me. ‘You can bank on it.’

  I put on the trousers and then the shoes. Everything was a perfect fit. ‘How did you know my measurements?’ I asked.

  ‘We know everything about you,’ the man said. ‘Except maybe one thing.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  He struck a match and lit his cigarette, then blew a plume of smoke in my face. ‘Where you keep your money. But you’ll tell us, won’t you?’

  I zipped up the trousers. ‘At the proper time,’ I said.

  ‘Come over here,’ said the blonde. She had pulled up a stool in front of a basin set on a shelf. ‘Sit down. I’m going to give you a shampoo.’

  So I sat down and she lathered my hair, digging her fingers deep into my scalp. She rinsed and then shampooed again before giving a final rinse. Then she took me by the chin and tilted my head. ‘That’ll do. Now for the eyebrows.’ She got to work on my eyebrows and when she had finished she handed me a mirror. ‘How do you like yourself now?’

  I looked at my reflection in the mirror. Gone was the black hair and I was now middling blond. I was surprised at the difference it made; even Mackintosh wouldn’t recognize me now. I felt her fingers on my cheek. ‘You’ll have to shave twice a day. That dark five o’clock shadow would give you away. You’d better shave now—you’ll find the kit in your suitcase.’

  I opened the case and found it very well fitted out with everything a man would normally travel with. There was a small battery-powered shaver which I put into use immediately. As I shaved she began to lay objects on the shelf. ‘Your name is Raymond Cruickshank,’ she said. ‘Here are your initialled cuff-links.’

  ‘Do I have to be that kind of a man?’ I asked lightly.

  She wasn’t amused. ‘Don’t be funny,’ she said coldly. ‘The same initials are on the suitcase. All this is your insurance, Rearden; insurance against getting caught—treat it seriously.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  ‘You’ve been to Australia, Rearden. You were mixed up in something in Sydney a few years ago, so we’ve made you an Australian. People over here can’t tell the difference between a South African and an Australian accent, so you should get away with it. Here’s your passport.’

  I picked it up and flipped it open. It had a photograph of a blond-haired me.

  She produced a wallet and opened it for my inspection. ‘This is all pure Cruickshank; you’d better check it to make sure you know what’s in it.’

  So I did, and was very surprised. This mob was superefficient—no wonder Cossie had said it needed time to set up. There were membership cards of Sydney clubs, an odd Australian two-dollar note among the British currency, an Australian AA card together with an Australian driving licence and an International driving licence, a dozen business cards announcing where I lived and what I did—it seemed I was the managing director of a firm importing office machinery. All very efficient, indeed.

  I held out a dog-eared photograph. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘You and the wife and kids,’ she said calmly.

  I looked at it more closely in the dim light and, by God, she was right! At least, it was a blond-haired me with my arm around a brunette’s waist and with a couple of kids in front. A nice tricky photograph.

  I put it back into the wallet and felt something else at the bottom of the pocket which I dug out. It was an old theatre stub, dated two months previously—the theatre, naturally enough, was in Sydney. Apparently I had been to see Fiddler on the Roof.

  I put it back carefully. ‘Very nice,’ I said admiringly. ‘Very nice indeed.’ I laid down the wallet and began to put on my shirt. I was just about to fasten the sleeves with the cufflinks when she said, ‘Mr Cruickshank, I said all this stuff was your insurance.’

  I paused. ‘Well?’

  ‘Hold him, boys,’ she said sharply, and I was grabbed from behind and held cru
elly tight.

  ‘What the hell…?’

  ‘Mr Cruickshank,’ she said clearly. ‘This is our insurance.’ Her hand came from behind her back holding a hypodermic syringe which she held up to her eyes and squirted professionally. With one movement she rolled up the unfastened shirt sleeve. ‘No hard feelings,’ she said, and jabbed the needle into my arm.

  There wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it. I just stood there helplessly and watched her face go all swimmy. And then I didn’t know any more about anything.

  II

  I woke up with the feeling of having been asleep for a long, long time. I didn’t know why this should be, but it seemed a hundred years since I had gone to sleep in my cell, the new cell into which I had just been moved. I certainly didn’t feel as though I had wakened from a normal night’s sleep; after all, by now I had got used to the light being on all night.

  And I had a hangover!

  Hangovers I don’t mind when there has been a cause for them; one takes one’s pleasures and pays the consequences. But I strongly object to the consequences when the pleasure has been missed. I hadn’t had a drink for eighteen months and to have an unaccountable hangover was abominable.

  I lay there in bed with my eyes closed stickily. My head felt as though there was a red-hot iron bar wrapped around it and it throbbed as a blacksmith beat lustily on it with his hammer. I also had the old familiar dehydrated feeling and my mouth tasted, as a friend once inelegantly put it, like the inside of a Greek wrestler’s jockstrap.

  I turned over slowly and groaned involuntarily as the blacksmith gave an extra hard thump. Then I opened my eyes and looked at the ceiling vacantly. With care I traced the elegant moulding of the cornice which was picked out in gilt, being careful not to go too quickly in case my eyeballs fell out. ‘Funny !’ I thought. ‘They’ve given me a nice cell this time.’

  With grudging movements I leaned up on one elbow just in time to see someone leave. The door closed with a gentle click and there was the sound of a key turning in a lock. That was familiar enough, anyway, which was more than the cell was.

  As I stared uncomprehendingly at the dove-grey walls and the gilt rococo panelling, at the Dolly Varden dressing-table and the comfortable armchair standing on the thick-piled carpet, it hit me suddenly. My God, I made it! I got out of the nick!

  I looked down at myself. I was dressed in silk pyjamas and the last time I had seen those was in the bottom of a suitcase in a moving-van.

  A moving-van?

  Slowly and painfully it all came back. The frantic grab at the rope; the wild swing over the barbed-wired wall; the jump into the truck, then into the mini-van, then into the pantechnicon.

  The pantechnicon! That was it. There was a blonde who had dyed my hair and who gave me a wallet. My name was Cruickshank and I was an Australian, she said. And then the bitch doped me. I put my hand to my arm and rubbed it where it felt sore. Now, why the hell had she done that?

  I threw back the bedclothes and swung out my legs. No sooner was I standing upright than I felt violently ill, and so I staggered to the nearest door which gave at a push and I fell into a bathroom. I lurched to my feet and over to the water-closet where I retched up my guts, but nothing came forth but a thin brown mucus. Still, when it was over I felt fractionally better, so I got to my feet and swayed towards the wash basin which I clutched hard as I stared into the mirror at the unfamiliar face.

  She was right, I thought; the five o’clock shadow does give the game away. The blond hair with the black-bearded face looked incongruous and the whole ensemble wasn’t improved by eyes which looked like burnt holes in a blanket. I rubbed my arm again and, on impulse, rolled up the pyjama sleeve to see five red pinpricks.

  Five! How long had I been unconscious? I fingered my beard which rasped uncomfortably. That felt normal for about thirty-six hours, or maybe a bit longer. Unless they’d shaved me when I was dead to the world—which was a distinct possibility.

  I turned on the cold tap and ran some water into the basin, then gave my face a thorough dousing, spluttering a bit. There was a clean towel at hand and, as I wiped myself dry, I began to feel better but the feeling tended to ooze away when I caught sight of the bathroom window. There were thick steel bars on the inside and, although the glass was frosted, I could see the outline of similar bars on the outside.

  That was going one better than the nick. Even in there they had but one set of bars to a window.

  I dropped the towel on to the floor and went back into the bedroom. Sure enough the bedroom window was also barred inside and out, although here the glass was clear. I looked through the window and saw a courtyard surrounded by buildings. Nothing moved except a blackbird foraging for worms on a neatly mown lawn.

  I watched the courtyard for five minutes but nothing happened, so I turned my attention to the bedroom. On the dressing table by the window was the toilet case and the shaver that the blonde had provided. I opened the case, took out a comb and combed my hair. Shaving could wait a while. I looked into the mirror and stuck out my tongue at the changed man who faced me. He did the same and I hastily pulled it in again as I saw the coating on the tongue.

  Then I stiffened as I looked over his shoulder, and I whirled about to face the room. There were two beds; the one I had occupied had rumpled sheets, but the other bed was occupied. I strode over and found Slade breathing heavily through his mouth and totally unconscious. I slapped his cheeks and prised open his eyelids all to no avail; apart from the breathing he was a reasonable facsimile of a dead man.

  So I left him to it, principally because I had seen a newspaper lying by the side of the armchair. Whoever had been waiting for me to wake up hadn’t taken his Sunday Times with him.

  We were front page news. The headlines blared in a most uncharacteristic Sunday Times manner, but I’d bet the News of the World outdid them in that respect. There was a photograph of the outside of the nick with a thick, pecked line to show the course of events—there was a photograph of the cherry-picker with its neck collapsed across the entrance to a street, looking a bit like a dead Disney dinosaur from Fantasia; there was a photograph of someone being carried to an ambulance on a stretcher—Senior Prison Officer Hudson had unaccountably broken his leg!

  The front page news story was pretty factual and they hadn’t got much wrong as far as I could see. I read with interest that the exterior closed-circuit TV cameras had been rendered inoperable by having paint sprayed on to the lenses. That was a nice touch. It was also interesting to read that the small open truck had been found abandoned near Colchester, and the black mini-van near Southampton. Police had established road blocks around both areas.

  Slade captured most of the limelight. What was a jewel thief compared with a master spy? But Brunskill had a go at me. ‘This man is dangerous,’ he said, with a straight face. ‘He was convicted for a crime of violence and has a record of violence extending back for many years. The public should be wary of him and should on no account try to tackle him unaided.’

  That was the most libellous thing I’ve ever read. Two convictions for violence over twelve years and I was being described as a Jack the Ripper. All Brunskill was trying to do was to build up the original arrest. I hoped his bosses threw the book at him for talking out of turn.

  Insight had nothing to say about it, but they would, they would—I’d have to wait until next week’s issue to get the inside story on how we’d escaped. But the editorial went off pop! The escape was described as a colossal piece of impudence and that if criminals were going to use such methods as mortar-fired smoke bombs then it was time that the prison authorities should also use military means to defend the integrity of the prisons.

  I thought so, too.

  Lord Mountbatten was not available for comment, but lots of other people were, whether they had anything relevant to say or not. One man especially fulminated about it—a Member of Parliament called Charles Wheeler who spoke bitterly about gangsterism in our English streets and swore
he’d put a question to the House at the first available opportunity. I wished him luck. The mills of government grind slowly and it takes a hell of a long time to close even a stable door.

  I quite enjoyed reading that Sunday paper.

  I had just finished when the door clicked open and a man in a white coat wheeled in a trolley on which were several silver-covered dishes. Behind him followed a tall man with a balding head fringed with silvery hair. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you would relish a light meal.’

  I looked at the trolley. ‘I might,’ I said cautiously. ‘If my stomach will stand it.’

  He nodded gravely. ‘You feel a little ill; that I can understand. You will find two bottles on the table. One contains aspirin and the other a stomach preparation. I had assumed you would find them.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ I said, and held up the paper. ‘I was more interested in this.’

  He smiled. ‘It does make interesting reading,’ he agreed, and tapped the white-coated man on the shoulder. ‘You can go now.’ He turned back to me. ‘You don’t mind if I stay for tea?’

  ‘Not at all,’ I said magniloquently. ‘Be my guest.’

  White Coat had laid the table and pushed out the trolley; he closed the door behind him and again I heard the snap of the lock. They weren’t taking any chances even with one of their own in the room. I looked with attention at the tall man; there was something incongruous about him which I couldn’t put my finger on—and then I had it. He was tall and thin but had a curiously pudgy face, ill-suited to his build. It was as though the face of a fat man had been grafted on to a thin man’s body.

  He gestured. ‘You’ll find a dressing-gown behind the bathroom door.’