A/N: Okay, I originally meant to scrap this story, as it didn't really get much interest. But I was re-reading it and I'm kinda proud of the work, so I thought I'd finish it anyway.

Chapter 7

The boss thrived once his focus was drawn to something concrete. His mind was working all hours planning his escape route. Mere escape was only the first stage of the plan; he had to work out how to avoid immediate recapture, and get to Steelport. Sinclair, no longer involved in the more banal aspects of drug imports, couldn't even recommend a good passport provider. The True Saints had no way to produce a passport. It was irrelevant, though; once the prison authorities found out that he had escaped, his face would be plastered everywhere. All airports and seaports would be firmly closed to him.

He scolded himself also for planning the post-escape part of the plan before he'd even broken out. Belmarsh was one of the most secure facilities in the UK. They may as well have locked him up in the Tower of London, like an enemy to the crown.

Fortunately, he had assistance in that area. He'd found himself saddled with a hanger-on, a sidekick. Jamal Kelly was an affable, well-spoken kid, one of the youngest of the lifers at nineteen. The boss had to admit feeling sorry for him. He was a natural outsider; his dad was Jamaican, his mum was English, and he was the only mixed-race member of his cousin's Poplar street gang. He'd been targeted by other crews because of it. He had found himself in a life-or-death situation involving an attack in his local park by some rivals from Stepney, and by sheer force of adrenalin had stabbed two youths to death. The jury hadn't accepted a self-defence plea from a known gang member, and he'd been sentenced as fast as he could blink.

The kid talked a lot. He would drone on about UEFA, or Tarantino films, or Cheryl Cole, for hours on end. The boss had initially swatted him away like a fly, but the constant talking eventually became a pleasant hum. When he wasn't yapping like a Chihuahua, he asked questions. He had read about the Saints with rapt fascination, and while no newspaper had ever publicly named the boss with the gang, every lifer knew he was in charge. Jamal asked about his life, what living in Steelport was like, and whether Shaundi really was easy. The boss had initially wondered if he was some sort of undercover plant, to establish a relationship between him and the gang, but he didn't need to be Legal Lee to know that would be massively illegal.

At first, he had a purely sentimental reason for letting the kid stay around. In many ways, he reminded him of Carlos. He saw the same wife-eyed enthusiasm, the same apprentice mentality, and had a general manner that made him impossible to dislike. The boss always felt he had done wrong by Carlos, and that he could redeem himself by helping Jamal. But he came to be practically useful, also. When he was sixteen, apparently, he had been sent to a young offenders' institute for shoplifting a bottle of vodka. And he had broken out. He wasn't intelligent in a classic sense, and had all the trappings of the uneducated in terms of cultural likes and aspirations. But when it came to buildings, he had a strange affinity. Escaping, infiltrating, it came as second nature. If he wasn't useless at staying hidden, then he would have stayed free. His proficiency only extended to the buildings themselves.

They worked around the clock on the different stages of the plan. As lifers were monitored far more closely than the short term prisoners, it was difficult to survey the block's weak points. But the boss had a view of the courtyard from his cell, and they agreed early on that it was the key to any attempt. Once they could brainstorm around it, it would lead them straight out.

It was two weeks after Pierce's last visit that the message came through to his cell of another visitor. At first, assuming it to be Pierce, he was angry. The guy had a war to win, and he was wasting time making social calls halfway around the world.

But it wasn't Pierce. Sitting patiently in the visitors' room was Jack McGraw. He looked as if he had let himself go slightly; the CID tended to dress sharply, but he was now wearing an old sweater and chinos. Plus, the impressive muscle mass that had defied his advanced years seemed to have turned into fat slightly.

"Afternoon," he said, cooly.

"Welcome to my humble abode," he said, smiling despite himself. It was a strange sensation, meeting McGraw alone, face to face. He had been kept under wraps during the journey to London. In fact, the only reason he knew so much about McGraw was his testimony during the trial.

He stared ahead, uncomfortably. "Look, there's something I wanted to say first and foremost. I'm...I'm sorry about Colin Francis. Not the kill itself, but what it's done." He meant it; like any casual killer, he started to see his victims as less than human. He put as much moral consternation into murders as one would stepping on a cockroach. The consequences of his actions were completely beyond him. When he looked at McGraw, however, he saw how his actions did indeed have side effects. This man's life had been massively impacted. His eyes lacked the light of humanity. There seemed to be an overwhelming cynicism to his every word and action. He hadn't been defeated, though; in a strong sense, he had been hardened. This was a man who had looked the world in the face and decided it could go fuck itself.

"Cheers for that," said McGraw, and some of that hardness seemed to fade, even if it was for a moment. "You know what's bizarre though? It almost feels worse now."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Trying to hunt you down has given me meaning. It's like a...shaggy dog story. Know what I mean?"

"Not really, no."

"Alright, say...there's a bloke that travels the land searching for a golden apple. He goes high and low, near and far, and gets into all sorts of whacky hijinks along the way. It's mental. He's doing it for years. Finally, he finds the golden apple. But it's not actually made of gold. Kind of a let-down, to be honest."

"Bad news for the bloke."

"He thinks that at first," said McGraw. "Then he realises that he doesn't give a shit about the apple. The adventures he had along the way were what was important. Ten years I had this fantasy in my mind that you were only a single step ahead of me. That you would slip up and I'd be there to swoop in. Turns out, you were miles ahead."

"Well, lemme tell you this," the boss replied. "I'm getting out of here soon. I feel comfortable telling you this because it's going to happen. You could talk to the prison authorities or have a conference with Dave at 10 Downing Street, it's going to happen. And I reckon you know exactly why I'm telling you this. I reckon you'd enjoy your twilight years a lot more if you spent them doing something productive."

"Like hunting you down like the animal you are? Waiting for you to make a wrong move and moving in for the kill?"

"Exactly. Reckon it'll do you good. What do you say?"

"I say, you've met your match, you evil bastard," McGraw said, but he grinned in a way that suggested optimism for the first time in a long while.

It was only two nights after that conversation that they escaped. Jamal had smuggled a sharp steak knife from the canteen kitchen. They used it to skilfully cut around the window's seal, meaning that it would not wake the whole place up when ripped out. The crossbars guarding the window were more tricky. They were held in place by a combination of steel nails and industrial glue. They slid the knife under the support structure and chipped away at the dry glue. Once the adhesive support was gone, they used the knife as a crowbar. It bent beyond all use, but managed to disengage the bar. With a clear run to the window, they disengaged it and pulled it away, leaving only an opening.

There was a fair distance to the ground of the courtyard outside, but they hauled his mattress out of the window. The boss landed on it first, followed by Jamal. The courtyard was deserted; late-night outdoor guard duty seemed redundant in an age of electronic surveillance. There was even a camera in the boss's cell, but it would barely be watched now.

They made their way to a utility shed on the far side of the area. The wall was as high here as anywhere in Belmarsh's compound, impossible to scale, but scaling it had never been their intention. Jamal pointed to the shed, when they reached it, whispering.

"If I'm right, an' I'm always right, man comes down here anytime now ta get the…what they called…pallets ready for when food comes in. Wait until he's inside, then knock the clart out."

He gestured forward and the two men crouched on the far side of the shed, waiting in near silence. The boss almost didn't breathe in the cold night air, as his breath would alert their target. After around ten minutes of silence, they heard a whistling. It was coming from the far side of the utility shed. A man in a utility jumpsuit twirled the keys on his fingers and headed towards the shed. Judging by his casual gait, he couldn't see them crouching on the other side. He shone a light onto the padlock protecting the utility shed and fumbled briefly with it, then opened the shed.

The boss didn't wait to move. He crept in, closing the shed door behind him. The workman turned around in surprise, but he didn't get a chance to make a sound. He put his hands on the man's neck, using his arm to cover his mouth and stop him shouting. Using all the physical force he could muster, he choked him, suppressing the man's frantic struggle to stay alive. His own hands shook with the sheer exertion. After several moments of grotesque thrashing, the light left the man's eyes.

Jamal followed him in and gasped. "Jesus!" he said in the strongest whisper he could manage. "I told you to knock him out, not kill him!"

"He would have woken up," the boss replied, impassively. "If we pull this off, we'll both head to Steelport and you'll be a Saint. Part of being a Saint is being ready to kill. Got it?"

"Got…I got it," he replied uneasily. They hid the body behind a pile of burlap sacks in the corner of the room and took his jumpsuit as well as the spare one that was hung up. Looking like prison warehouse workers, they left, and Jamal took a pallet truck from the shed.

It was a tense twenty minute wait for the first delivery van to arrive. It was now three in the morning, and the early-shift guards would arrive for work soon. Both of them breathed a sign of relief, though, when they saw that the first set of headlights belonged to a huge lorry.

Following Jamal's lead, they went over to the delivery area and greeted the driver. He seemed a little surprised to see them, pausing slightly before getting out, as if expecting something to happen.

"Alright?" he said, nervously. "Where's Kevin?"

"Wasn't feeling himself yesterday," the boss replied, offhandedly. "He's called in sick."

"Gotcha," said the driver, getting out of the cab and opening up the back. "Just a few boxes today."

"Nice one," said Jamal. He took the pallet truck towards the back of the van. It took around ten minutes to unload the ten boxes of food supplies and place them in the corner. Anyone who oversaw the work wouldn't have spied anything out of the ordinary.

When they were finished, Jamal approached the driver. "Could you do us a favour? There's a couple of new forms to sign. Prison health and safety, you know the drill."

"I'm on a bit of a tight schedule," he replied. "Alright. But if it takes more than five minutes, I'll have to do it next time."

"It won't take long. Mind waiting in the office over there?" He pointed to the far corner. "I'll be right with you."

"No problem," the driver replied. When he was out of earshot, Jamal directed the boss into the back of the open lorry. It was dark, but they managed to navigate themselves to the boxes in the back.

"I've caught him moanin' 'bout schedules a couple of times," said Jamal. "He'll wait two minutes, get vexed and go."

"I hope you're right," said the boss, climbing behind a box.

"Not that one. Go to the back. The guards will inspect the lorry on the way out, but they're way too fuckin' lazy to search all the way to the back." They found themselves squashed at the back, but were completely hidden from view. When the guards shined a torch inside, they would see nothing.

Sure enough, the now-furious driver returned in under five minutes, cursing. He mumbled to himself about making sure those dickheads weren't here to meet him the next time, and that he was going to be late. The boss had always heard that talking to yourself was the first stage of madness. The driver checked inside briefly then locked the bolts on the back.

The boss and Jamal were absolutely silent as the lorry left Belmarsh. They knew to be absolutely still when they heard the driver complaining about being kept waiting to other murmured voices outside. From the sound of it, the gate guards were getting riled up themselves. The boss heard one remark that it was four in the fucking morning, and he didn't need this. But instead of cause a fuss, the driver swore under his breath and opened the back doors for inspection.

The boss saw torchlight pass near him. One of the guards climbed aboard. If he decided to do his job properly and search all the way to the back, it would be a month at least in solitary, and then more charges for the death of the poor fucker in the utility shed. But both him and Jamal breathed an inaudible sigh of relief when the guard's inspection was completed without even checking behind the first lot of boxes. Whatever he was being paid, it was too much. The back doors were then slammed shut, and the lorry kicked into motion once more.

"How do we get out?" the boss asked Jamal. He shot him a glance that said wait and see. He got up and moved to the back doors. He lifted the rubber sealant on the bottom of the door and observed the road through a thin strip, now exposed. He indicated for the boss to join him. They watched the road for about ten minutes until Jamal was satisfied the lorry was on the open road. Then, he punched the side of the lorry with full force three times.

The effect was instantaneous. The driver pulled over, and the boss heard one of the doors slam. Jamal gestured to hide again, further up, behind the boxes. He spotted something in the corner of his eye on the top of the nearest and largest crate; it was a crowbar, used to jimmy open the wooden seal. He handed it to the boss without explanation. Then, they ducked down.

The driver pulled open the back doors carefully, his face full of concern over what he'd dropped. He was probably worried about how much pay he would be docked if the larger food crates broke open, spoiling the food as it hit the dirty floor of his lorry. He shined a torch on their position, not seeing them yet. When he stepped further in, Jamal jabbed the boss, and pointed to the crowbar.

That was all the cue he needed. With a roar of anger, he sprung up from behind the crate. The driver let out a high-pitched scream of terror. He bore down on the man, koshing him over the head with the crowbar and knocking him straight down. While he lay prone, the boss drove the instrument onto his skull again, going for maximum damage. He brained the driver with around five hits, and what was left of his face wasn't human anymore. The lack of resistance told him that the fifth strike had killed him. His face was a macabre crater, and his skull was bleeding. If he had seen it with more light, it would have been a truly gruesome sight.

"I was gonna say put his uniform on," said Jamal, weakly, looking at the blood that was now seeping down his chest, "but it's probably alright. Okay, we have a van, and it'll be a few hours until there's an alert out for us. How do we get out of the country?"

"You leave that to me," said the boss, thrilled the first stage of his plan had worked.