Conor hung his head in defeat, in reality hoping he had not overplayed his role. The entire revolver notion was merely misdirection, any magician’s meat and potatoes. Fill Billtoe’s mind with notions so that he would be less attuned to what was unfolding in front of his eyes.
‘Now, let’s be off to work. Well, work for you. I’m off topside to supervise your… my… coronation balloons.’
Conor sidled past Billtoe, through the doorway, careful to keep his mud-caked back on the guard’s blind side. His plan was a house of cards, a citadel of cards. One unlucky glance could bring the entire structure down.
No time for that now. Begin your count.
His count. Another largely theoretical card in the citadel. Conor had long since discovered that there was a blind spot in the corridor between his cell door and the diving-bell wing. One of the mad wing’s occupants had been in front of him six months previously on the walk to the warden’s weekly speech. The man was tiny with a disproportionately large head, especially the forehead, which sat atop his eyebrows like a porcelain slug. It was the man Billtoe had called Numbers, because inside his strange head, everything was reduced to mathematics, the purest science. He would spout long streams of digits, and then laugh as though he were watching cabaret in Paris.
On that morning, half a year ago, Conor had watched the man lope down the line before him, muttering his numbers, measuring his steps.
Fourteen was the last in his list.
Then Numbers took a sideways hop, and disappeared.
No. Not disappeared, but certainly not as visible. There, in sudden black shadows, shaking with mirth at his own joke. A joke that could see him hanged.
Numbers held his position until Pike noticed him missing, then hopped from his hiding place.
‘Fourteen,’ he exclaimed in a screeching shriek. ‘Fourteen, eighty-five, one half.’
Pike did not get the joke, proceeding to cuff Numbers round the ear hole several times.
There were no more demonstrations from Numbers, but Conor learned quickly. He had seen the trick once and set about dissecting it.
How do you unravel a magician’s secret?
Start at the reveal and work backwards.
There was a natural blind spot in the corridor, something magicians and escapologists created artificially on stage with lights, drapes or mirrors. A tiny spot of isolated darkness, surrounded by stimuli that drew the eye. A patch of near invisibility. It would not stand up to any scrutiny, but for a second in frenzied circumstances it would do.
For the next few weeks, Conor watched the space and analysed the numbers.
Fourteen, eighty-five, one half.
It was no deep code. Numbers had taken fourteen steps from his cell door along the path, then hopped half a step, eighty-five degrees to the right. Into the belly of the blind spot. Conor simply added the five steps necessary to find the spot for himself.
Once there, he was amazed by how obvious it was. Overlapping layers of shadow, untouched by torchlight, further shaded by a slipped cornice stone, with a spume of spilled crimson paint on the flagstones a foot to the left. A cylinder of blackness that would take no more than a heartbeat to pass through. But, once inside, it formed a cloak of near invisibility that could be enhanced by further misdirection.
Billtoe walked beside him, muttering about his lack of respect for his superiors.
Twelve.
‘And the warden? Don’t talk to me about the warden. That man makes decisions that boggle the mind. Too much time in the Indian sun if you ask me. Blooming Calcutta fried his mind.’
Fifteen.
‘The money the man wastes. The cash money. It makes my heart sick. I fair feel ill just talking about it, even to a Salt.’
Nineteen.
Billtoe clicked his fingers at Conor, meaning stop where you are.
Now comes the vital moment. All strands converge. Live or die on this instant.
Billtoe stepped to the wing door, tinging the bell with his fingernail. No response for a long moment, then a familiar mocking voice from the spy hole above.
‘Ah, Billtoe. Is it out, you want? From the mad wing? Are you certain sure that’s the right direction?’
Billtoe’s posture stiffened. A dozen times a day he had to endure this ribbing.
‘Can you not simply open a bolt, Murphy? Turn the wheel and lift the bolt, that is all I require from you.’
‘Sure I know it’s all you require, Arthur. The rest is free, a little daily gift. I am the funny fairy, dropping little lumps of humour on your head.’
Six feet up, the wheel was turned and bolt lifted. The door to the mad wing swung open.
‘If I could put in words how much I hate that man,’ muttered Billtoe, turning. ‘Then Shakespeare himself could kiss my…’
The final word of Billtoe’s sentence turned to dust in his dry throat because his prisoner had disappeared. Vanished into the air.
Not my prisoner, thought Arthur Billtoe. Marshall Bonvilain’s. I am a dead man.
While Billtoe stood glaring skywards into the spy hole, Conor found himself rooted to the spot. He had imagined this moment so often that it seemed unreal to him now, as though it could never really materialize. In his mind’s eye he saw himself confidently putting his plan into action, but the flesh-and-bone Conor Finn stayed where he was. One and a half steps to the left of the corridor’s blind spot.
Then Billtoe began his turn, and Conor’s life to come flashed before him. Five more decades under night and water until his skin was leeched of all colour and his eyes were those of a tunnel rat.
Act! he told himself. It is a good plan.
And so he acted in an exhaustively practised series of movements. Conor took a pace and a half to his right, spun round so his muddied back faced Billtoe and tossed his open handcuffs into the grate of the nearest sealed chimney. The rattle drew Billtoe’s eyes away from the blind spot.
‘Stupid boy,’ he groaned. ‘He’s gone up the spouts.’
The guard hurried past Conor, who huddled camouflaged in his hiding place, his brown jacket blending effectively with the corridor walls. Billtoe kicked the grate angrily, then bent low to holler up the chimney.
‘Come down from there, halfwit. They are sealed, all of ’em. The only thing you’ll find up the spouts are the mouldering remains of other scatterfools.’
There was no response, but Billtoe imagined he heard a rustle.
‘Aha!’ he shouted. ‘Your clumsiness betrays you. Down now, Finn, or I will discharge my weapon. Do not doubt it.’
Conor moved like a prowling cat, stealing sideways to the open wing door. He must not reveal himself. This plan would only succeed if nobody worked out that he was gone. To be spotted now would mean a brief chase and a long time recovering from whatever beating the guards decided to dish out. He edged beneath the spy hole, searching for a face. There was none, just the tip of a boot and the lower curve of a cauldron stomach.
Conor slipped across the door saddle, and the closeness of freedom sent him light-headed. He almost bolted for the outer door. Almost. But one stumble now could kill him. It was so close, tantalizing. Only a dark wedge of stained wood separated him from the outside world.
The door opened and two guards strolled through, sharing a snide sniggering joke.
I will have to kill them, decided Conor. It will be easily done. Snag the first’s dagger and gut them both. I can make a run for the balloons.
He flexed his fingers slowly, getting ready for the lunge, but it wasn’t necessary. The guards simply did not see him; they turned towards the mining wing without once pointing an eyeball his way.