6.
On that last day I was roughly awakened by one of the guards just minutes after the first measly beam of light started shimmering into my cell. The officer on duty was a middle-aged bloke with a face so plain that I couldn't remember from seeing him before. He freed me from my manacles, only to replace them with a set of hand and feet cuffs with very short links so that after he had yanked me up and forced me to follow him I sort of had to hobble along behind the bloody wanker. When we passed by Pete's cell I heard the boy calling out from behind the rusty metal door.
"Will! Don't tell them! Please! Don't! Don't tell them!"
"Don't worry! I'm not going to tell them anything! You have my word!"
"Shut the bloody hell up!" The guard shouted. He banged on the metal with his wooden club, and then he smacked the soddin thing flat on my injured left side.
"And you, keep your head straight! Keep on walking!"
When the heavy steel doors closed behind us, I could still hear Pete's fearful cries echo down the deserted hallway.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
The room was just like how I remembered it from my dream. A grim and eerie space, a rectangular box with gray walls that once must have been white, a large crack running across the floor like the ground had been split by an earthquake, and two small barred windows; one looked out at a blind wall of red bricks, the other provided only the tiniest glimpse of the world outside. It was grimy, musty and old. It was like a soddin tomb with a very mediocre view. Alarming stains of various colours spread like dried up fountains all on the floor, and I wondered worryingly if it was blood or other types of bodily fluids that a bloke was not supposed to lose in too large quantities. There were three crumbly bricks lying against the foot of the metal door, keeping it open. The guard picked them up. The door slammed shut with a heavy bang as he carried the bricks to middle of the room where he carefully placed them on top of each other, right on the spot of a very disturbing looking, dark brown stain.
"Step up that pile." He commanded.
Warily, I climbed up the shaky structure. With my hands tied behind my back and my feet cuffed together by a five-inch long chain, it was rather difficult to stay in balance. The guard gave me a push and I tipped myself over, almost chipping my teeth on the concrete floor.
"What are you doing?" The bastard laughed. "Can't you even stand up on a couple of bricks? We didn't hurt you that much, did we now, you little Nancy?"
He smacked me again with his club on my legs, causing my knees to buckle.
"Now step back right on it! Move!"
I stepped back on the pile of bricks and tried to keep balanced this time. The structure swayed dangerously as I stood there shaking on my legs. The guard circled me, dirt crunching underneath his soles as he stepped around calmly. I tried not to look at him or follow the tiny movements of his hand holding on the slap-happy wooden stick. I sucked in a deep breath, kept my eyes on the small window that looked out at the open sky. I thought of the day that Pete had found me in the back alley behind the St. Giles. The sky had the color of bleached linen that morning and snow fell down in a soundless storm, covering a gray and joyless world under a blanket of pure bright white. Everything had been so quiet, so peaceful. I wished I could hang on to that memory, carry it on me like a shield for all the bloody horrible things to come.
Something cold and coarse, heavy like an anvil, was hung around my neck. The guard pulled a chain that hung next to me, and suddenly, the links around my throat tightened, and I felt the heavy drag of the nose on the rest of my body. Panicking now, I stretched myself as tall as I could and balanced on the tips of my toes. The pile of bricks under my feet wobbled treacherously.
"Now be careful. Don't go hang yourself." The guard said, bloody amused.
"Seriously, a bloke before you just fell off and strangled himself when I was taking a leak. Made a big mess in here."
He struck me in the back, and laughed when he saw how I almost lost my balance again and had to hop on my feet to get the pile of bricks from tumbling over. In my panic, I kicked off the one lying on top, and suddenly I was dangling from the ceiling, the nose closing around my throat where it squeezed shut my air pipe till it felt like it was reduced into the miniature size of a bloody straw.
"What did I tell ya? Stop fooling around!" The bastard mocked, and he kept laughing when he bended over to pick up the brick and placed it back on the pile. I searched frantically with my feet and found the support that I so desperately needed. Eagerly, I took in gasps of air and filled my lungs till they felt like bloody balloons.
The guard watched me struggle with a wide monkey grin on his leathery gumboot face.
"Easy lad. Easy. Don't waste all your breathe on this little accident. There's a lot more to come." He rattled with the chain and looked meaningfully up to the ceiling.
Somehow, between the choking and the dry retching, I managed to say something worthwhile.
"Get bend, arsewipe."
The wanker stepped up, his face so close that I could admire his yellowing teeth and enjoy his revolting cigarette/sewage breath. He was no longer smiling.
"You want to die now? Is that it?"
The guard grabbed me by my hair, pulled at it to make me look him into the eyes.
"You and your no-good friend killed somebody. Do you realize that? You two petty minded monsters have coldheartedly butchered a well-respected gentleman. A good, law-abiding citizen. Someone whose life is worth a hundred times more than your miserable existence!"
He cleared his throat and then spat a huge globule of spit into my face.
"Do remember this next time we make it a little too comfy for you in here and you start wishing that you were dead"
His mouth stretched into a gleeful grin.
"This is only the beginning, boy. The way I see it, you have to suffer all this and still have the eternal fires of hell waiting for you. So I wouldn't rush things if I were you."
The guard let go, and strolled off to a dark corner of the room. He took a chair, turned it around and sat on it with the back turned to his chest and his legs spread on each side like he was riding a horse. He lit a fag, rested his hands on the back of the chair as he blew out thin rings of smoke.
Time crawled by the way it only could when you were in agony or in deadly fear, or, both. Minutes stretched into years, decades, bloody centuries. The effort to keep myself standing up was starting to strain on me. Muscles and bones protested, nagged loudly, then screamed desperately for me to stop bloody hell abusing them. My feet felt mangled, like the tendons were slowly being pulled apart and were close to snapping.
I closed my eyes, forced myself to keep my mind off the pain. I tried to think of the gray sky and the snow. That wonderful, soothing snow that could ease all the hellish fires raging inside my broken body. That one cold day in winter, beautiful and kind that could leave me unfeeling and non-existing, a day that could bring an end to all my suffering and grant me my peace.
I forced that comforting image into a small, hard ball. Buried it, deep inside of me. It was not much for a shield against these horrific tortures I was being put through, but it was like a lump of ice, pushed against open sores. It helped. Just a bit. Just enough to keep me from kicking down the pile of bricks beneath my feet and take a leap into the air. But then I realized that I was only trying to fool myself. I didn't want to die. I didn't want to strangle myself to escape the cruel ingenuity of my torturers. Even if I knew what was going to happen to me, how it was going to end. For now, I was still breathing. I was still alive.
I still had a smitten of hope.
A scream, loud and dreadful, coming from outside the corridor, and my eyes flew open fearfully. The guard turned his head to the noise, smoking his fourth fag already with the same sittin-in-the-pub-and-havin-a-pint attitude. He caught me looking at the door, and he grinned, baring his yellow teeth.
"Your friend." He said, and nodded his chin into the direction from where the cries came from. "A very squeamish little fellow. They hardly started working on him yet."
"What are they doing to him?" My voice had not even the strength of a rodent's squeak. Outside the small cosmos of the room, the terrible, heart breaking cries just beamed through the inches thick prison walls like the death throws of a dying star.
"Whatever they have to do to make him talk, I guess. Or make you talk." He tapped the ash from his fag onto the floor, and grinded the ash into one of those questionable stains. "As long as you two keep your gobs shut we can't do anything really, so we have to try to be a bit more persuasive."
"You sick bastards!" I yelled. "You monsters!"
The guard shrugged and gazed back at me with the bloody innocent expression of a praying mantis.
Another cry cut through the icy silence.
"You have to stop this." I begged. "You're going to kill him. He's just a kid."
The guard just looked back at me with much disinterest.
"Look, the boy is innocent! It's not his fault! He didn't kill anyone!"
"If that's true." He paused, lifted his fag from his lips, then breathed out clouds of smoke out of his nostrils. "Why don't you confess then?"
The only thing I could do was gaze back at him, my tongue lying like dead chunk of meat on the bottom of my mouth. Outside, Pete's screams of agony and pleads for mercy blended into one long and piteous cry that burned into my conscience.
The guard grinned.
"Not exactly jumping onto the opportunity, are we?"
His screams lasted for over an hour, but to me, they seemed to sound for an eternity. Finally, they ebbed away and turned into quiet sobbing and soft exhausted pleads. Then, there was silence. I closed my eyes again, wondering if they had killed him or that he had just passed out because of his injuries. It would be better if they had killed him, I thought bitterly, but in my heart I knew that they hadn't.
By the time the sadistic bastard had just stumped out his fourteenth fag on the floor, and was busy lighting up his new one, the door of the tomb-like room opened and another officer stepped in. Someone of a higher rank then the chain-smoker with the - I don't give a bloody shag- mind-set, judging from the younger bloke's uniform. He also wasn't just another copper with a plain and forgettable face. Actually, he did look familiar to me, and somewhere, from the back of my mind, I recalled seeing him before.
In the alley, where Pete and I were caught. Walrus face. The man that Pete killed. He somehow looked like him. He was younger, fitter and much less corpulent, less covered in sea-mammal blubber so to speak. He didn't have a large trembling bird sitting on his upper lip and his cheeks were not flaps of heavy skin land-sliding down his chin, but there was something about him. There was something that compelled me to make that connection.
The guard sprang on his feet and tipped his hat to salute the young officer. The new bloke just nodded solemnly, then came at me with his clean- shaven face as deadpan as an Egyptian death mask. He held something in his hand, but it was half hidden in the shadows of his coat. I couldn't exactly see what it was.
"Did he confess?" The officer asked.
I caught the guard glaring at him. When the older copper answered, he seemed to be a bit nervous.
"No, sir."
The young officer stepped closer to me. His face still expressionless, his eyes stale and cold.
"Well, that's not unexpected, is it?"
Suddenly I realized what it was that made me recognize him. His eyes. Dark, moody, and bloody scrutinizing. The bloke had his old man's eyes.
"I guess we won't get an honest word out of this lowly scumbag without being persuasive, without lending him a hand."
Dark liquid dripped on the floor, adding another fresh stain to the countless old ones. The bloke lifted the object that he had brought with him up against my tattered shirt, and I felt the cold sting of the tip of a blade on my flesh.
"Your nasty little friend didn't want to tell us anything. He was wasting my time." He said calmly, while slowly forcing the blade into me and watching me scream.
"But maybe you can be persuaded to cooperate."
He lifted the blade. Raised it high enough just for me to get a good look at it.
"Recognize this, killer?" he asked.
The Swiss army knife. The one I had given to Pete for his birthday. The knife the boy had used to kill this man's father.
The murder weapon that I had pried out of his dead daddy's neck.
The young officer smiled at me, a bitter and joyless smile. I could see the hate shimmering underneath his calm appearance. The grief that was consuming him and his need for revenge.
His smile wore thin, and then vanished.
"Ironic, isn't? This is same knife that you used on your victim."
He drove the knife into my chest, drawing a long awful cut that was not deep enough to take my life, but enough to make me clinch in agony.
"You should know how it feels like, you murderer!"
He cut me repeatedly with Long, hateful gashes. Blood welt up, the lines in an angry child's drawings, it drenched my shirt into a deep wine crimson.
"Tell me you killed him!"
"Come on you bastard! Confess to your crime!"
"Tell me!"
"What were your motives? Hey?"
" Why did you have to kill him?!"
"Why?!"
"Bloody hell, why!!"
He kicked the pile away from underneath my feet, and once again, I was in floating in the air. The burning pain of the numerous wounds on my chest was cut short by the balmy sensation of being strangled to death.
"Why did you kill my father you useless, son of bitch! Why did you kill him!?"
Bright colors explode before my eyes, while the world around me slowly dissolved into growing patches of darkness.
"Sir! Get a hold on yourself!"
The guard grabbed me by my legs and picked me up. The nose's deadly grip loosened around my neck and I was able to take in a lungful of air. The blood raced back up with enough oxygen to made my head tingle, my vision blurred back into normal.
I knew it.
I knew Walrus face was his dad even before he told me. I knew it because I had dreamed it how it was going to happen, exactly like this, just the night before.
The grieving son waved the knife dangerously at me. His eyes stung with tears.
"He would have retired today! Did you know that? You heartless bastard! He was going to receive his batch of honor. The job at the National would have been his last! Why did you have to kill him?!!"
I couldn't have answered him, even if I had known what to say. The guard was getting tired and the nose started to strain on my neck again, leaving me half breathing, half suffocating.
"Sir! He's getting strangled! Loosen the bloody chains!"
His young superior just looked at him as if he was condemning that man for trying to help me. His dark brown eyes blazed with pure hatred and indignation.
"If you don't, it would be murder, sir!"
That snapped the wanker out his bloodthirsty haze for moment, and he unlocked the chain that had been fastened to a bolt in the wall. The pressure on my neck vanished, the links rattled down noisily and I fell as the guard let go and dropped me on the floor.
"Right." Snapped the officer, his nostrils flaring like something nasty was trying to push its way trough.
He marched away, swung open the prison door and barked his orders out into the hallway.
"Bring in the other one! NOW!"
Pete was unconscious and was half dragged, half pushed into the cell by another guard. They had hurt him badly; his right eye was beaten shut. His lower lip was red and swollen. There were cuts, shallow ones all over his chest, his arms, and his legs. The copper threw him unceremoniously on the floor, and was then ordered to leave and to shut the door behind him.
The young officer stared down at me and stepped on the back of the boy's head, pushing his face to the ground with his black leather boot, causing his victim let go a small frightened whimper.
"Still not keen on telling the truth?" He asked. He bowed down and pressed the blood-drenched knife on the back of Pete's neck, the sharp blade gleamed murderously against the pale flesh.
"Not even when you're endangering the life of your friend?"
I stayed motionless, my body frozen, heart drumming in my throat. My eyes could not stop staring at the blade, could not turn away as it was pushed deeper and deeper into the skin.
"Last chance. Save the boy, William. Confess. Admit you've done it." He said.
I swallowed, wanted to help. I really did. I really wanted to save my friend. All it would take was just a couple a words, my confession to this crime. Tell them I did murder the copper and give this son of a bitch the opportunity to retaliate for his old man.
But I couldn't.
I couldn't because for one cowardice and insane moment, all I wanted was to cling onto life just a bit longer.
The revengeful wanker snorted, and then, without looking down at his victim, without even a change of expression but the one of utter disgust and hatred that was already chiseled on his face, he pushed the knife through. There was a terrifying sound of splitting bone and the horrible, fierce scream coming from the boy. The guard, who still must have been too awestruck from his boss trying to strangle me to react, snapped out of shock mode and rushed over, doing a great deal of mad screaming himself.
"No, sir! Stop this! Stop it!"
But the crazed out officer just pushed the guard away violently. Blood splashed up like a fountain when the blade hit the arteries, and splattered all over the young officer's face.
Pete's cries passed on into something that sounded like water gurgling down the drain. Then it died down completely, leaving only silence.
Blood collected underneath the body, it spread like a black pool, swallowing up all the dark stains in the concrete floor. I cried out hoarsely when it reached me and soaked the ripped rags of my shirt. I crawled up, turned my eyes away from Pete and stared down at my toes that were dipping in a puddle of my friend's blood.
"Good Lord, sir! What have the bloody hell have you done!"
The guard's face was paler than that of a ghost. Shaking his head, he removed his service hat. The young officer stood next to Pete's corpse with a crazed and distant look in his eyes. He looked down, probably hardly registering what he had done. He pried the knife out of Pete's neck, and wiped the blood from his hand clean over the side of his trousers. The older guard watched this with a horrified expression as the young copper caught his eyes.
"Don't panic." He said in a monotonous voice. "It will wash out."
"Sir. Don't you realize the gravity of the situation? You killed the suspect!"
"I killed a murderer or at least an accomplice."
"This is murder sir! Cold blooded murder!"
"They killed my father!!" The young man yelled, his white-rimmed eyes were bulging and bloodshot.
The guard backed up a few paces.
"I didn't do anything wrong! They are just beasty criminals! They are a pestilence for the good people of London! They don't deserve anything better!"
"Sir." The guard swallowed and stretched out his hand to him. "Give me the knife."
"Why?"
"I don't want you to hurt the other prisoner."
A faint smile crept up the officer's face. "What are you doing, Grimsby? I though that you were my father's friend?"
"Yes I am. But even you're father wouldn't allow -"
"You promised that you would help me to bring these two to the gallows!"
"Yes, I did." The older man nodded, slowly. "I did agree to help you to make them confess but I didn't agree on bloody murder!" he moved his hand, palm open, gesturing gently. "Now listen to me son. Listen. Hand me over that knife. You're already in knee-deep shit as it is. Give me that knife, and I promise you that I would do anything in my power to help you."
The young officer observed him with a faraway look in his eyes.
"You're not going to turn me in, are you Grimsby?"
The guard hesitated, but then reluctantly shook his head.
"No sir. If you give me that knife, I won't. The coroner on duty, he is a friend of your dad's. He is used to dealing with incidents like these. I can ask him to forge the prisoner's death certificate. And I will testify for you. Tell them that it was an accident."
The officer smiled grimly. "What sort of accident?"
"Fell off the stairs, broke his neck." The guard shrugged, blinking perspiration out of his eyes. "That sort of crap. Whatever I can make up in time."
I giggled like an idiot. My throat hurt badly and my mouth tasted of blood. When I noticed that I had caught the coppers attention, I quickly pressed a hand on my mouth and bit in it, hard.
The officer stared down at me for a moment. Then when he got me real nervous and I started rocking back and forth, he suddenly stepped up and shouted into my face, causing me to cry out in fear.
"This one's brain is toast." He said, gleefully. "Must be a shock to see your mate's neck just snap like a twig, isn't it?"
I looked back at him and tried to hold back my tears, but for some daft reason, my eyes kept leaking.
"Please sir." The guard pleaded. "This isn't worth it. This isn't worth the rest of your life!"
"Poor man. We were too harsh on you." The officer persisted deliriously, turning a deaf ear on his senior colleague. "Bloody interrogations, all that good copper/bad copper business did some bad tricks on your mind."
He turned to Grimsby.
"Give me the key for his handcuffs."
"What? Sir, what are you trying -"
"Just hand them over, Grimsby. I promise I won't hurt him. You give me the keys, I hand you over the knife."
Grimby hesitated, but did as he was told. The officer removed the restrains from my feet and hands while I kept myself small, rocking back and forth and stared warily at him. He got up, and rumbled with his free hand under his coat at the height of his belt, reaching for something.
"Sir. You promised to hand over the knife." Grimsby tried.
A small pistol appeared from underneath the young man's coat. He pressed it against my temple, just above my right ear.
"I think I may have a better idea, Grimsby." He cocked back the safety. I heard the click resonate in my skull. Then the cold touch of steel was lifted, and the officer walked back a few steps with his eyes and pistol still aiming at me.
"I don't understand -"
"It's simple. We stick to your plan. Peter Mc Derby's death is an unfortunate accident alright, but he didn't fell off the stairs."
A sick grin spread over his face. He tossed the knife to where I still sat, all huddled in a puddle of Pete's blood. It landed right before my feet.
"Pick it up."
I looked down at the Swish knife that was covered in ink black blood, the solid bits that stuck to it looked like pieces of sliced up liver.
"Pick it up I said!"
I reached for it. My hand shivered uncontrollably.
"What are you doing?!"
"Peter Mc Derby was interrogated." He explained to the guard in a cold matter of fact voice. "Then he was locked up inside this cell together with the other subject also accused of the murder on the honorable chief constable Alexander O'Brien. They were left unguarded for a couple of minutes when a quarrel arose between these two. Officer Grimsby rushed in to see what was going on, and our William Doe here, snatched the murder weapon from the constable. In his fear that his young protégée might expose and testify against him in court, the criminal killed the young boy with a stab in the back of the neck." He grinned devilishly and wet his lips before he continued, constable Grimsby standing next to him like a tiny little angel sitting on an mad killer's shoulder, unable to stop him while he had to listen to his crazed, wacked-out plan with growing disgust.
"The murderer tried to flee the scene, threatening constable Grimsby, and almost succeeded in taking him hostage. Fortunately, I became aware of the racket inside cell 12B and rushed in, just in time."
Holding the knife in my hand, I gazed up at the man holding the pistol.
Suddenly, I remembered the loud, shattering sound. Like thunder. But I couldn't remember if hurt or not, what I would be able to feel when it happened.
"Jesus! Eric! You promised me! You promised me you wouldn't hurt him!"
Eric, Eric O'Brien. That was his name. Now I was at least properly introduced to my murderer. Although I wouldn't doubt it for a second if somebody told me that I had known his name all this time, that it had only been buried underneath the forgetful sand of my mind.
This was after all, a nightmare and a memory, and both of them were inescapable.
My cheeks were wet. I was crying, for Pete and because I was scared, even now I knew that this was what was supposed to happen.
"I'm sorry!!" I shouted, my voice broken, and inside my head, the girl from the gallery spoke to me in a sad voice.
- Me to. I'm sorry for you too. And for the boy. -
"Think of your own life Eric. Don't do something stupid! Think of your own father!"
Eric O'brien grinned as he pulled the trigger.
"I am."
A sound like thunder. A scream. The little piece of rounded metal bore into me, I imagined at same the spot that O'Brien had marked out on my skull. Strangely, there was no pain. The strength just left my body, and I slumped down at my side, my blood flowing out of my nose, out of my ears and out of the wound in my head, joining and becoming one with Pete's.
I slumped, slumbered, fell into darkness.
TBC
On that last day I was roughly awakened by one of the guards just minutes after the first measly beam of light started shimmering into my cell. The officer on duty was a middle-aged bloke with a face so plain that I couldn't remember from seeing him before. He freed me from my manacles, only to replace them with a set of hand and feet cuffs with very short links so that after he had yanked me up and forced me to follow him I sort of had to hobble along behind the bloody wanker. When we passed by Pete's cell I heard the boy calling out from behind the rusty metal door.
"Will! Don't tell them! Please! Don't! Don't tell them!"
"Don't worry! I'm not going to tell them anything! You have my word!"
"Shut the bloody hell up!" The guard shouted. He banged on the metal with his wooden club, and then he smacked the soddin thing flat on my injured left side.
"And you, keep your head straight! Keep on walking!"
When the heavy steel doors closed behind us, I could still hear Pete's fearful cries echo down the deserted hallway.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
The room was just like how I remembered it from my dream. A grim and eerie space, a rectangular box with gray walls that once must have been white, a large crack running across the floor like the ground had been split by an earthquake, and two small barred windows; one looked out at a blind wall of red bricks, the other provided only the tiniest glimpse of the world outside. It was grimy, musty and old. It was like a soddin tomb with a very mediocre view. Alarming stains of various colours spread like dried up fountains all on the floor, and I wondered worryingly if it was blood or other types of bodily fluids that a bloke was not supposed to lose in too large quantities. There were three crumbly bricks lying against the foot of the metal door, keeping it open. The guard picked them up. The door slammed shut with a heavy bang as he carried the bricks to middle of the room where he carefully placed them on top of each other, right on the spot of a very disturbing looking, dark brown stain.
"Step up that pile." He commanded.
Warily, I climbed up the shaky structure. With my hands tied behind my back and my feet cuffed together by a five-inch long chain, it was rather difficult to stay in balance. The guard gave me a push and I tipped myself over, almost chipping my teeth on the concrete floor.
"What are you doing?" The bastard laughed. "Can't you even stand up on a couple of bricks? We didn't hurt you that much, did we now, you little Nancy?"
He smacked me again with his club on my legs, causing my knees to buckle.
"Now step back right on it! Move!"
I stepped back on the pile of bricks and tried to keep balanced this time. The structure swayed dangerously as I stood there shaking on my legs. The guard circled me, dirt crunching underneath his soles as he stepped around calmly. I tried not to look at him or follow the tiny movements of his hand holding on the slap-happy wooden stick. I sucked in a deep breath, kept my eyes on the small window that looked out at the open sky. I thought of the day that Pete had found me in the back alley behind the St. Giles. The sky had the color of bleached linen that morning and snow fell down in a soundless storm, covering a gray and joyless world under a blanket of pure bright white. Everything had been so quiet, so peaceful. I wished I could hang on to that memory, carry it on me like a shield for all the bloody horrible things to come.
Something cold and coarse, heavy like an anvil, was hung around my neck. The guard pulled a chain that hung next to me, and suddenly, the links around my throat tightened, and I felt the heavy drag of the nose on the rest of my body. Panicking now, I stretched myself as tall as I could and balanced on the tips of my toes. The pile of bricks under my feet wobbled treacherously.
"Now be careful. Don't go hang yourself." The guard said, bloody amused.
"Seriously, a bloke before you just fell off and strangled himself when I was taking a leak. Made a big mess in here."
He struck me in the back, and laughed when he saw how I almost lost my balance again and had to hop on my feet to get the pile of bricks from tumbling over. In my panic, I kicked off the one lying on top, and suddenly I was dangling from the ceiling, the nose closing around my throat where it squeezed shut my air pipe till it felt like it was reduced into the miniature size of a bloody straw.
"What did I tell ya? Stop fooling around!" The bastard mocked, and he kept laughing when he bended over to pick up the brick and placed it back on the pile. I searched frantically with my feet and found the support that I so desperately needed. Eagerly, I took in gasps of air and filled my lungs till they felt like bloody balloons.
The guard watched me struggle with a wide monkey grin on his leathery gumboot face.
"Easy lad. Easy. Don't waste all your breathe on this little accident. There's a lot more to come." He rattled with the chain and looked meaningfully up to the ceiling.
Somehow, between the choking and the dry retching, I managed to say something worthwhile.
"Get bend, arsewipe."
The wanker stepped up, his face so close that I could admire his yellowing teeth and enjoy his revolting cigarette/sewage breath. He was no longer smiling.
"You want to die now? Is that it?"
The guard grabbed me by my hair, pulled at it to make me look him into the eyes.
"You and your no-good friend killed somebody. Do you realize that? You two petty minded monsters have coldheartedly butchered a well-respected gentleman. A good, law-abiding citizen. Someone whose life is worth a hundred times more than your miserable existence!"
He cleared his throat and then spat a huge globule of spit into my face.
"Do remember this next time we make it a little too comfy for you in here and you start wishing that you were dead"
His mouth stretched into a gleeful grin.
"This is only the beginning, boy. The way I see it, you have to suffer all this and still have the eternal fires of hell waiting for you. So I wouldn't rush things if I were you."
The guard let go, and strolled off to a dark corner of the room. He took a chair, turned it around and sat on it with the back turned to his chest and his legs spread on each side like he was riding a horse. He lit a fag, rested his hands on the back of the chair as he blew out thin rings of smoke.
Time crawled by the way it only could when you were in agony or in deadly fear, or, both. Minutes stretched into years, decades, bloody centuries. The effort to keep myself standing up was starting to strain on me. Muscles and bones protested, nagged loudly, then screamed desperately for me to stop bloody hell abusing them. My feet felt mangled, like the tendons were slowly being pulled apart and were close to snapping.
I closed my eyes, forced myself to keep my mind off the pain. I tried to think of the gray sky and the snow. That wonderful, soothing snow that could ease all the hellish fires raging inside my broken body. That one cold day in winter, beautiful and kind that could leave me unfeeling and non-existing, a day that could bring an end to all my suffering and grant me my peace.
I forced that comforting image into a small, hard ball. Buried it, deep inside of me. It was not much for a shield against these horrific tortures I was being put through, but it was like a lump of ice, pushed against open sores. It helped. Just a bit. Just enough to keep me from kicking down the pile of bricks beneath my feet and take a leap into the air. But then I realized that I was only trying to fool myself. I didn't want to die. I didn't want to strangle myself to escape the cruel ingenuity of my torturers. Even if I knew what was going to happen to me, how it was going to end. For now, I was still breathing. I was still alive.
I still had a smitten of hope.
A scream, loud and dreadful, coming from outside the corridor, and my eyes flew open fearfully. The guard turned his head to the noise, smoking his fourth fag already with the same sittin-in-the-pub-and-havin-a-pint attitude. He caught me looking at the door, and he grinned, baring his yellow teeth.
"Your friend." He said, and nodded his chin into the direction from where the cries came from. "A very squeamish little fellow. They hardly started working on him yet."
"What are they doing to him?" My voice had not even the strength of a rodent's squeak. Outside the small cosmos of the room, the terrible, heart breaking cries just beamed through the inches thick prison walls like the death throws of a dying star.
"Whatever they have to do to make him talk, I guess. Or make you talk." He tapped the ash from his fag onto the floor, and grinded the ash into one of those questionable stains. "As long as you two keep your gobs shut we can't do anything really, so we have to try to be a bit more persuasive."
"You sick bastards!" I yelled. "You monsters!"
The guard shrugged and gazed back at me with the bloody innocent expression of a praying mantis.
Another cry cut through the icy silence.
"You have to stop this." I begged. "You're going to kill him. He's just a kid."
The guard just looked back at me with much disinterest.
"Look, the boy is innocent! It's not his fault! He didn't kill anyone!"
"If that's true." He paused, lifted his fag from his lips, then breathed out clouds of smoke out of his nostrils. "Why don't you confess then?"
The only thing I could do was gaze back at him, my tongue lying like dead chunk of meat on the bottom of my mouth. Outside, Pete's screams of agony and pleads for mercy blended into one long and piteous cry that burned into my conscience.
The guard grinned.
"Not exactly jumping onto the opportunity, are we?"
His screams lasted for over an hour, but to me, they seemed to sound for an eternity. Finally, they ebbed away and turned into quiet sobbing and soft exhausted pleads. Then, there was silence. I closed my eyes again, wondering if they had killed him or that he had just passed out because of his injuries. It would be better if they had killed him, I thought bitterly, but in my heart I knew that they hadn't.
By the time the sadistic bastard had just stumped out his fourteenth fag on the floor, and was busy lighting up his new one, the door of the tomb-like room opened and another officer stepped in. Someone of a higher rank then the chain-smoker with the - I don't give a bloody shag- mind-set, judging from the younger bloke's uniform. He also wasn't just another copper with a plain and forgettable face. Actually, he did look familiar to me, and somewhere, from the back of my mind, I recalled seeing him before.
In the alley, where Pete and I were caught. Walrus face. The man that Pete killed. He somehow looked like him. He was younger, fitter and much less corpulent, less covered in sea-mammal blubber so to speak. He didn't have a large trembling bird sitting on his upper lip and his cheeks were not flaps of heavy skin land-sliding down his chin, but there was something about him. There was something that compelled me to make that connection.
The guard sprang on his feet and tipped his hat to salute the young officer. The new bloke just nodded solemnly, then came at me with his clean- shaven face as deadpan as an Egyptian death mask. He held something in his hand, but it was half hidden in the shadows of his coat. I couldn't exactly see what it was.
"Did he confess?" The officer asked.
I caught the guard glaring at him. When the older copper answered, he seemed to be a bit nervous.
"No, sir."
The young officer stepped closer to me. His face still expressionless, his eyes stale and cold.
"Well, that's not unexpected, is it?"
Suddenly I realized what it was that made me recognize him. His eyes. Dark, moody, and bloody scrutinizing. The bloke had his old man's eyes.
"I guess we won't get an honest word out of this lowly scumbag without being persuasive, without lending him a hand."
Dark liquid dripped on the floor, adding another fresh stain to the countless old ones. The bloke lifted the object that he had brought with him up against my tattered shirt, and I felt the cold sting of the tip of a blade on my flesh.
"Your nasty little friend didn't want to tell us anything. He was wasting my time." He said calmly, while slowly forcing the blade into me and watching me scream.
"But maybe you can be persuaded to cooperate."
He lifted the blade. Raised it high enough just for me to get a good look at it.
"Recognize this, killer?" he asked.
The Swiss army knife. The one I had given to Pete for his birthday. The knife the boy had used to kill this man's father.
The murder weapon that I had pried out of his dead daddy's neck.
The young officer smiled at me, a bitter and joyless smile. I could see the hate shimmering underneath his calm appearance. The grief that was consuming him and his need for revenge.
His smile wore thin, and then vanished.
"Ironic, isn't? This is same knife that you used on your victim."
He drove the knife into my chest, drawing a long awful cut that was not deep enough to take my life, but enough to make me clinch in agony.
"You should know how it feels like, you murderer!"
He cut me repeatedly with Long, hateful gashes. Blood welt up, the lines in an angry child's drawings, it drenched my shirt into a deep wine crimson.
"Tell me you killed him!"
"Come on you bastard! Confess to your crime!"
"Tell me!"
"What were your motives? Hey?"
" Why did you have to kill him?!"
"Why?!"
"Bloody hell, why!!"
He kicked the pile away from underneath my feet, and once again, I was in floating in the air. The burning pain of the numerous wounds on my chest was cut short by the balmy sensation of being strangled to death.
"Why did you kill my father you useless, son of bitch! Why did you kill him!?"
Bright colors explode before my eyes, while the world around me slowly dissolved into growing patches of darkness.
"Sir! Get a hold on yourself!"
The guard grabbed me by my legs and picked me up. The nose's deadly grip loosened around my neck and I was able to take in a lungful of air. The blood raced back up with enough oxygen to made my head tingle, my vision blurred back into normal.
I knew it.
I knew Walrus face was his dad even before he told me. I knew it because I had dreamed it how it was going to happen, exactly like this, just the night before.
The grieving son waved the knife dangerously at me. His eyes stung with tears.
"He would have retired today! Did you know that? You heartless bastard! He was going to receive his batch of honor. The job at the National would have been his last! Why did you have to kill him?!!"
I couldn't have answered him, even if I had known what to say. The guard was getting tired and the nose started to strain on my neck again, leaving me half breathing, half suffocating.
"Sir! He's getting strangled! Loosen the bloody chains!"
His young superior just looked at him as if he was condemning that man for trying to help me. His dark brown eyes blazed with pure hatred and indignation.
"If you don't, it would be murder, sir!"
That snapped the wanker out his bloodthirsty haze for moment, and he unlocked the chain that had been fastened to a bolt in the wall. The pressure on my neck vanished, the links rattled down noisily and I fell as the guard let go and dropped me on the floor.
"Right." Snapped the officer, his nostrils flaring like something nasty was trying to push its way trough.
He marched away, swung open the prison door and barked his orders out into the hallway.
"Bring in the other one! NOW!"
Pete was unconscious and was half dragged, half pushed into the cell by another guard. They had hurt him badly; his right eye was beaten shut. His lower lip was red and swollen. There were cuts, shallow ones all over his chest, his arms, and his legs. The copper threw him unceremoniously on the floor, and was then ordered to leave and to shut the door behind him.
The young officer stared down at me and stepped on the back of the boy's head, pushing his face to the ground with his black leather boot, causing his victim let go a small frightened whimper.
"Still not keen on telling the truth?" He asked. He bowed down and pressed the blood-drenched knife on the back of Pete's neck, the sharp blade gleamed murderously against the pale flesh.
"Not even when you're endangering the life of your friend?"
I stayed motionless, my body frozen, heart drumming in my throat. My eyes could not stop staring at the blade, could not turn away as it was pushed deeper and deeper into the skin.
"Last chance. Save the boy, William. Confess. Admit you've done it." He said.
I swallowed, wanted to help. I really did. I really wanted to save my friend. All it would take was just a couple a words, my confession to this crime. Tell them I did murder the copper and give this son of a bitch the opportunity to retaliate for his old man.
But I couldn't.
I couldn't because for one cowardice and insane moment, all I wanted was to cling onto life just a bit longer.
The revengeful wanker snorted, and then, without looking down at his victim, without even a change of expression but the one of utter disgust and hatred that was already chiseled on his face, he pushed the knife through. There was a terrifying sound of splitting bone and the horrible, fierce scream coming from the boy. The guard, who still must have been too awestruck from his boss trying to strangle me to react, snapped out of shock mode and rushed over, doing a great deal of mad screaming himself.
"No, sir! Stop this! Stop it!"
But the crazed out officer just pushed the guard away violently. Blood splashed up like a fountain when the blade hit the arteries, and splattered all over the young officer's face.
Pete's cries passed on into something that sounded like water gurgling down the drain. Then it died down completely, leaving only silence.
Blood collected underneath the body, it spread like a black pool, swallowing up all the dark stains in the concrete floor. I cried out hoarsely when it reached me and soaked the ripped rags of my shirt. I crawled up, turned my eyes away from Pete and stared down at my toes that were dipping in a puddle of my friend's blood.
"Good Lord, sir! What have the bloody hell have you done!"
The guard's face was paler than that of a ghost. Shaking his head, he removed his service hat. The young officer stood next to Pete's corpse with a crazed and distant look in his eyes. He looked down, probably hardly registering what he had done. He pried the knife out of Pete's neck, and wiped the blood from his hand clean over the side of his trousers. The older guard watched this with a horrified expression as the young copper caught his eyes.
"Don't panic." He said in a monotonous voice. "It will wash out."
"Sir. Don't you realize the gravity of the situation? You killed the suspect!"
"I killed a murderer or at least an accomplice."
"This is murder sir! Cold blooded murder!"
"They killed my father!!" The young man yelled, his white-rimmed eyes were bulging and bloodshot.
The guard backed up a few paces.
"I didn't do anything wrong! They are just beasty criminals! They are a pestilence for the good people of London! They don't deserve anything better!"
"Sir." The guard swallowed and stretched out his hand to him. "Give me the knife."
"Why?"
"I don't want you to hurt the other prisoner."
A faint smile crept up the officer's face. "What are you doing, Grimsby? I though that you were my father's friend?"
"Yes I am. But even you're father wouldn't allow -"
"You promised that you would help me to bring these two to the gallows!"
"Yes, I did." The older man nodded, slowly. "I did agree to help you to make them confess but I didn't agree on bloody murder!" he moved his hand, palm open, gesturing gently. "Now listen to me son. Listen. Hand me over that knife. You're already in knee-deep shit as it is. Give me that knife, and I promise you that I would do anything in my power to help you."
The young officer observed him with a faraway look in his eyes.
"You're not going to turn me in, are you Grimsby?"
The guard hesitated, but then reluctantly shook his head.
"No sir. If you give me that knife, I won't. The coroner on duty, he is a friend of your dad's. He is used to dealing with incidents like these. I can ask him to forge the prisoner's death certificate. And I will testify for you. Tell them that it was an accident."
The officer smiled grimly. "What sort of accident?"
"Fell off the stairs, broke his neck." The guard shrugged, blinking perspiration out of his eyes. "That sort of crap. Whatever I can make up in time."
I giggled like an idiot. My throat hurt badly and my mouth tasted of blood. When I noticed that I had caught the coppers attention, I quickly pressed a hand on my mouth and bit in it, hard.
The officer stared down at me for a moment. Then when he got me real nervous and I started rocking back and forth, he suddenly stepped up and shouted into my face, causing me to cry out in fear.
"This one's brain is toast." He said, gleefully. "Must be a shock to see your mate's neck just snap like a twig, isn't it?"
I looked back at him and tried to hold back my tears, but for some daft reason, my eyes kept leaking.
"Please sir." The guard pleaded. "This isn't worth it. This isn't worth the rest of your life!"
"Poor man. We were too harsh on you." The officer persisted deliriously, turning a deaf ear on his senior colleague. "Bloody interrogations, all that good copper/bad copper business did some bad tricks on your mind."
He turned to Grimsby.
"Give me the key for his handcuffs."
"What? Sir, what are you trying -"
"Just hand them over, Grimsby. I promise I won't hurt him. You give me the keys, I hand you over the knife."
Grimby hesitated, but did as he was told. The officer removed the restrains from my feet and hands while I kept myself small, rocking back and forth and stared warily at him. He got up, and rumbled with his free hand under his coat at the height of his belt, reaching for something.
"Sir. You promised to hand over the knife." Grimsby tried.
A small pistol appeared from underneath the young man's coat. He pressed it against my temple, just above my right ear.
"I think I may have a better idea, Grimsby." He cocked back the safety. I heard the click resonate in my skull. Then the cold touch of steel was lifted, and the officer walked back a few steps with his eyes and pistol still aiming at me.
"I don't understand -"
"It's simple. We stick to your plan. Peter Mc Derby's death is an unfortunate accident alright, but he didn't fell off the stairs."
A sick grin spread over his face. He tossed the knife to where I still sat, all huddled in a puddle of Pete's blood. It landed right before my feet.
"Pick it up."
I looked down at the Swish knife that was covered in ink black blood, the solid bits that stuck to it looked like pieces of sliced up liver.
"Pick it up I said!"
I reached for it. My hand shivered uncontrollably.
"What are you doing?!"
"Peter Mc Derby was interrogated." He explained to the guard in a cold matter of fact voice. "Then he was locked up inside this cell together with the other subject also accused of the murder on the honorable chief constable Alexander O'Brien. They were left unguarded for a couple of minutes when a quarrel arose between these two. Officer Grimsby rushed in to see what was going on, and our William Doe here, snatched the murder weapon from the constable. In his fear that his young protégée might expose and testify against him in court, the criminal killed the young boy with a stab in the back of the neck." He grinned devilishly and wet his lips before he continued, constable Grimsby standing next to him like a tiny little angel sitting on an mad killer's shoulder, unable to stop him while he had to listen to his crazed, wacked-out plan with growing disgust.
"The murderer tried to flee the scene, threatening constable Grimsby, and almost succeeded in taking him hostage. Fortunately, I became aware of the racket inside cell 12B and rushed in, just in time."
Holding the knife in my hand, I gazed up at the man holding the pistol.
Suddenly, I remembered the loud, shattering sound. Like thunder. But I couldn't remember if hurt or not, what I would be able to feel when it happened.
"Jesus! Eric! You promised me! You promised me you wouldn't hurt him!"
Eric, Eric O'Brien. That was his name. Now I was at least properly introduced to my murderer. Although I wouldn't doubt it for a second if somebody told me that I had known his name all this time, that it had only been buried underneath the forgetful sand of my mind.
This was after all, a nightmare and a memory, and both of them were inescapable.
My cheeks were wet. I was crying, for Pete and because I was scared, even now I knew that this was what was supposed to happen.
"I'm sorry!!" I shouted, my voice broken, and inside my head, the girl from the gallery spoke to me in a sad voice.
- Me to. I'm sorry for you too. And for the boy. -
"Think of your own life Eric. Don't do something stupid! Think of your own father!"
Eric O'brien grinned as he pulled the trigger.
"I am."
A sound like thunder. A scream. The little piece of rounded metal bore into me, I imagined at same the spot that O'Brien had marked out on my skull. Strangely, there was no pain. The strength just left my body, and I slumped down at my side, my blood flowing out of my nose, out of my ears and out of the wound in my head, joining and becoming one with Pete's.
I slumped, slumbered, fell into darkness.
TBC