The Traitors

by Tom Becker

  “Really?” Major X didn’t look convinced. “And did you see who this prisoner was?”

  Adam shook his head.

  “So how do you know it wasn’t the accused then?”

  “Caiman?” Adam laughed. “Up on the perimeter wall?”

  There was a strangled cry behind him. Mouthwash jumped to his feet. “Of course it couldn’t be Caiman, Major!” he exclaimed. “He’s terrified of heights – everyone in our dormitory knows that! He gets the shakes just looking out of a second-floor window. Caiman’d never make it up to the perimeter wall. Adam’s right – he can’t be the rat!”

  The resulting clamour threatened to rattle the dormitory’s windowpanes in their frames.

  “Order, order!” raged Major X, hammering away with his gavel. “Why didn’t you tell us about this before, Wilson?”

  “Why bother? You wouldn’t have believed me, would you?”

  “Who says I do now? Have you got anyone who can back up this story?”

  Adam’s breath caught in his throat. He had been so excited to have worked out that Caiman was innocent, he had forgotten that, on its own, his word might not be enough.

  “Yeah, I can back him up,” came a voice from the back of the room. “I was on the roof with him.”

  Adam didn’t need to turn round to identify the speaker.

  “Doughnut,” said Major X, through gritted teeth. “I should have known. And did you see Mr Pitt meeting a prisoner on the wall?”

  He couldn’t have – Doughnut had been inside when the sandstorm hit. Adam had been on his own.

  “Yes,” Doughnut replied firmly.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Hundred per cent.”

  “Then in light of this new evidence, I can only declare Caiman innocent of all charges,” the Major said, with a shake of the head. “Case dismissed.” He banged the desk a final time.

  The crowd burst into applause, submerging Adam beneath a sea of handshakes and claps on the back. Even the bandaged boy banged the ceiling in appreciation. Major X shoved his way out of the dormitory, with Corbett and Fletcher in grim attendance. Only Caiman remained seated, his expression unchanged.

  Adam waited until the congratulations had died down and the crowds had melted back to their own rooms before seeking out Doughnut, who had returned to his bunk and was flicking through a comic.

  “Listen,” Adam began hesitantly. “Thanks. For, you know, backing me up. I know you didn’t see them.”

  “No, but you did,” Doughnut replied evenly. “You wouldn’t lie about something like this – that’s not your style. Surprised you took the risk for Caiman, though. He’s a first-class idiot.”

  “He’s also innocent,” said Adam. “It’s not nice to be accused of something you didn’t do – trust me.”

  Doughnut watched as Caiman sloped past them back to his bunk, disappearing beneath his blanket without a word.

  “If you think he’s going to thank you for helping him, you’re in for a long wait.”

  “That’s all right,” Adam replied, with quiet satisfaction. “I’ve got plenty of time.”

  It seemed to Adam that, no matter how hard he tried to keep his head down on the Dial, trouble tracked him down like a sniffer dog. One way or another, he had fallen out with almost every prisoner he had met. Despite their successful defence of Caiman, he and Doughnut still hadn’t made up properly, and judging by the murderous looks Corbett flashed at him in the week following the court martial, Adam’s actions had only worsened his standing amongst the Tally-Ho.

  But one shadow loomed larger over Adam than any other. Mr Pitt appeared to be on a one-man mission to make his life as uncomfortable as possible. If a plate was dropped in the mess hall, if a comb went missing from a dormitory, if a half-dug tunnel was found in a cellar, then Adam was always to blame. When a boy and a girl started whispering furtively to each other during a morning roll call, it was Adam who was singled out for talking and made to wait behind. He watched forlornly as the rest of the inmates trooped out of the exercise yard, leaving him alone with Mr Pitt. The warder briskly lit up a cigarette.

  “No excuses, Wilson?” he asked archly. “No whining protestations of innocence?”

  “No, sir,” Adam replied evenly.

  “That’s not like you. Are you feeling all right, son? Coming down with a bout of manliness?”

  “No, sir,” Adam replied again.

  Mr Pitt marched up to him until their noses were almost touching. With every inhalation, the burning end of his cigarette glinted like the eye of a malevolent beast.

  “You’re a toad, Wilson,” whispered Mr Pitt. “A warty little toad, hopping from one stinking pond to the next. One of these days, you’re going to drown in your own muck. And I’m going to be there to watch.”

  Adam turned his face to one side, trying to escape the warder’s stale breath. Gazing at Adam through his filmy eye, Mr Pitt dropped his cigarette to the floor and ground it beneath his foot. He patted Adam on the cheek, too hard to be a friendly gesture, then strode off towards the walkway.

  “Kitchen duty for a week,” he called out over his shoulder.

  Adam watched him leave with barely concealed hatred. After months of persecution, the seed of fear that Mr Pitt had planted in Adam’s soul had grown into something blacker and harder. He was still fuming later that day, when he returned from the mess hall to hear Mr Pitt’s stentorian bark coming from the side of the prisoners’ quarters. Peering around the corner, Adam saw that the guard had backed two inmates up against the wall – the boy and the girl who had been whispering during roll call.

  “I thought I’d seen some squalid sights in my time here, but this one takes the biscuit!” Mr Pitt yelled. “To catch the pair of you sucking on each other like leeches in the shadows – and so soon after I had eaten! Did you think I wanted to see that? Well, did you?”

  “No, sir,” the girl replied, in a faltering tone.

  “No, sir, indeed,” said Mr Pitt. “This is a prison, not a Mexican bordello! Perhaps my memory fails me, but I thought the rules explicitly stated that this kind of disgusting fraternization between inmates is strictly forbidden. Does my memory fail me?”

  The boy mumbled a reply.

  “Correct, Barker, it does not. . .”

  Aware from bitter experience that Mr Pitt was just warming up, Adam backed away from the corner of the building, only to see Mouthwash heading towards him across the walkway. The inmate was struggling with a large bucket that he was holding at arm’s length, and there was a wooden clothes peg clamped over his nose.

  “That’s a good look for you,” Adam said dryly.

  “Go boil your heb,” Mouthwash replied, his jaws moving like pistons as he chomped furiously on his chewing gum. “You try smellib bis.”

  He lifted up the bucket, sending a swell of foul odour over Adam: a smell of sewers and toilets, of rotten eggs and fish and worse. Adam’s stomach churned as he peered into the green mess.

  “That’s gross!” he exclaimed, holding his nose.

  “Why d’you think I’b got thib peg on by nobe?” Mouthwash replied.

  “What is it?”

  “I gabe Mr Harker some chat, and he mabe me clean out a blocked sewer. There’s years of scub here.”

  “I can see that. Where are you taking it?”

  Mouthwash jerked his head towards the perimeter wall. “Going to chuck ib ober there.”

  Looking down at the revolting slime, Adam was struck by a sudden delicious thought.

  “Don’t worry about that,” he said. “I’ll take it.”

  “You whab?”

  “Give it to me. I’ll sort it out for you.”

  Adam carefully took the bucket of slops from his bemused friend’s grasp. Mouthwash removed the peg from his nose, and took in several grateful gulps of fresh air.

&n
bsp; “God, that was minging. I never thought old Harker could be so cruel.” He held out the peg. “Want this?”

  Adam shook his head.

  “I probably don’t want to know what you’re going to do with that, do I?”

  A smile played across Adam’s lips. “I’ll see you later, mate.”

  He turned and walked away, carrying the bucket as if it were a landmine, desperately trying to avoid any of the slime splashing on to his clothes. Even though he tried to hold his breath, the stench from the bucket still seared his nostrils.

  “This place is getting to you!” Mouthwash called out after him. “You’re going nuts, mate!”

  Adam hauled the bucket into the prisoners’ quarters, disregarding the looks of disgust and loud protests from the other inmates. He laboured up the staircase to the second floor, where he darted inside an empty storage room facing out towards the mess hall. Still retching at the ghastly smell of the sewage, Adam balanced the bucket on the window sill and opened the window.

  Cast in the glow of a summer’s afternoon, there was a certain grave beauty about the Dial’s burnished brickwork. But Adam only had eyes for the patch of ground directly below him, where Mr Pitt’s oily hair glistened in the sunlight as the warder continued to scream at the two inmates.

  Adam didn’t even think about it. He pushed the window further open and tipped over the bucket, sending a waterfall of green scum cascading through the air and down on to the guard’s head.

  “AAAARGH!”

  Mr Pitt’s shocked bellow echoed around the Dial. He staggered like he’d been shot, stinking gloop covering him from head to toe. Barker and his girlfriend took one look at each other and scampered away to safety. Clawing the sewage from his eyes, Mr Pitt reeled blindly back towards the walkway, shoving away a guard who had run over to help him.

  As the second guard looked up towards his window, Adam ducked inside the room – but not before their eyes had met. He dropped the bucket with a clang and sprinted out of the room, bounding down the stairs as the first newsflashes began transmitting along the Dial’s communication channels. Drawn to the window by the yelling, inmates were laughing and pointing at Mr Pitt, tears of laughter rolling down their cheeks.

  Adam’s dormitory was empty; he hared inside and jumped into his bed. He lay there for a few seconds, barely able to believe what he had just done, then burst out laughing. Who was the toad in the muck now?

  From the moment he had taken the bucket from Mouthwash, deep down Adam had known there was no way he was going to get away with it. The fact that the guard had seen him at the window only set it in stone. But the prospect of a spell in the punishment cells left him strangely untroubled. Even a month in solitary would be worth it, just for Mr Pitt’s agonized screams.

  So as the other inmates gossiped and giggled over dinner, Adam kept his own counsel and waited. In some ways, it was almost a relief when Mr Harker approached their table.

  “Hello, sir,” Doughnut greeted him cheerily. “What’s up?”

  The guard ignored him. “Wilson,” he said, his face stony. “Come with me.”

  “What’s going on?” Doughnut asked.

  “It’s nothing,” Adam told him, although his nerves had begun to tingle with trepidation. He followed Mr Harker out of the mess hall, through an honour guard of loud whispers from the other tables:

  “What do they want him for? Caught tunnelling, was he?”

  “I heard he was the one who threw that gunk on Pitty. . .”

  “No! Him? I heard Scarecrow boasting that he did it.”

  “Well, if you listen to idiots like that. . .”

  As they passed the Tally-Ho’s table, Corbett started humming the funeral march, prompting laughter from his friends. Adam was surprised to see Major X nudging his giant companion into silence, before giving Adam a little nod of respect.

  Outside, the Dial was unnaturally quiet, as though everyone in the prison was holding their breath. Mr Harker marched across the walkway towards Wing IX, pointedly rebuffing Adam’s attempts to talk to him.

  The guards’ quarters were housed in a rambling, three-storey building topped by a lone tower rising up from one corner of the roof. Two men were standing guard at the front door, rifles slung over their backs. As he reached the gate at the end of the walkway, Mr Harker unlooped a key from a chain on his belt and unlocked it. He led Adam past the sentries and into a narrow hallway inside the building. Through a half-open door, Adam caught a glimpse of a recreation room, where a couple of guards were engrossed in a game of snooker. One of the men paused in the middle of his shot and stared at Adam. The look on the guard’s face – not one of anger, exactly, but bordering on apprehension – unnerved him.

  Before Adam could say anything, Mr Harker grabbed him by the shoulder and ushered him up the staircase at the end of the corridor. At the third floor, past the radio station and the Records Office, the stairwell closed in upon them, and the steps became twisted as they wound their way up the tower. Adam became aware of his heart pounding against his ribcage, his earlier exhilaration replaced by a sinking dread. At the top of the staircase, Mr Harker pushed the door open and waited for Adam to enter the room beyond before closing it firmly behind him.

  Mr Pitt was standing at his desk, his back turned to Adam. The warder had cleaned himself up and changed into a new uniform without a speck of dirt or hint of a stain upon its sharp creases. He didn’t move or say a word.

  Adam coughed nervously. “You wanted to see me, sir?”

  At the sound of his voice, Mr Pitt’s shoulders began trembling. For an astonished second Adam thought that the warder had started to cry, but when the warder whirled round he saw that Mr Pitt was shaking with rage.

  “Wilson,” he said raggedly. “You . . . little. . .”

  “Sir?” tried Adam.

  Mr Pitt stepped up and punched Adam in the face, the force of the blow sending him reeling backwards. The attack was so sudden that there wasn’t time to try to defend himself, or strike back, or even feel afraid. Adam was aware of another blow hitting him in the head, and the smack of the floorboards against his back. Mr Pitt’s sovereign rings gave a warning flash as they hurtled towards Adam’s face, and then the lights went out.

  Even unconscious, there was no respite for Adam. A feverish gallery of faces flashed through his mind: his mum and dad, Doughnut, Jessica; all of them shaking their heads with sorrow and disapproval. Then Adam was back at the skate park near his home. He was chasing after Danny, trying to say he was sorry, but his friend was walking ahead of him and it felt like Adam was trying to run through treacle. Eventually Danny stopped and turned around. He pointed at Adam, laughing, and as Adam turned round he saw to his horror that the ground beneath him had turned into a watery current, dragging him backwards towards the Dial’s chasm, which had appeared with a great yawn in the middle of the skate park. With a despairing scream, Adam tumbled over the edge. . .

  And then he was awake. Adam opened his eyes, immediately regretting it as a barrage of white light exploded in front of his vision. There was an agonizing throbbing in the back of his head, and his face felt puffy and sore. Even blinking hurt.

  Squinting out of his right eye – his left wouldn’t open properly – Adam pieced together his surroundings. He was lying in a hospital ward, in the middle of a row of beds pushed up against whitewashed walls. All around him were children in varying degrees of discomfort: those with their limbs encased in plaster and hoisted into the air on pulleys; those with skin covered in angry red spots, who groaned in distress as they tried to resist the urge to scratch themselves. The cloying stench of antiseptic couldn’t mask the smell of sickness and despair.

  As Adam stirred, a pretty young woman in a white nurse’s uniform appeared by his bedside and looked down at him.

  “Oh, you’re awake!” she said brightly.

  He tried to reply,
but the words poured from his mouth in a slurred, soupy mess.

  “Don’t worry, love,” the nurse said, checking his pulse rate against the watch pinned to her dress. “We gave you something to help you sleep. Don’t try to speak just yet.”

  As she continued to count his pulse, a voice boomed out across the ward like a gunshot. “What have we here?”

  At once the nurse stepped back, her eyes fixed dutifully on the ground. A burly woman with arms like rolling pins barrelled up to Adam’s bedside, with the violent intent of a boxer approaching the ring. She was dressed in a blue uniform, her hair tightly pinned beneath a flowing headdress. Her skin was lined and weathered, a tuft of black hair visible in the light as it dangled from her chin.

  “This is Adam Wilson, Matron,” the younger woman said meekly. “He was admitted yesterday evening.”

  “Well, give me the report, Nurse Waters!” barked Matron.

  “As you can see, he’s been beaten up quite badly. There’s severe facial bruising, swelling around the left eye, and he’s lost a tooth. Probable concussion, too, I’d imagine.”

  “We’ll see about that.” Matron reached down and grabbed Adam by the chin, twisting his face left and right. He winced as lightning bolts of pain shot through his skull. Eventually the woman let go, wiping her hand on her uniform as though Adam were infectious. She turned to Nurse Waters.

  “He can stay here for the time being, but I want him out of here by the end of the week. Don’t waste too much medicine on him, and no visitors – this little monster is under caution for provoking a guard.” She leaned in so close to Adam that the hairs on her chin almost tickled his nostrils. “You come anywhere near me with a bucket, young man,” she hissed, “and you’ll regret it.”

  With a final warning glare, the matron stormed out of the infirmary. Nurse Waters waited until she was halfway out of the door before sticking out her tongue at her superior’s back.

  “Don’t listen to that old dragon,” she whispered to Adam. “Everyone knows she’s got a thing for Mr Pitt. I’ll make sure you’re taken care of. Are you in a lot of pain right now?”