Dead Men's s Boots

On the screen, successive still photos of Pentonville were overlaid with computer graphics mapping a route through a gate, now hanging off its hinges, over an inner wall of impressive height and down through an interior space punctuated with inspection posts Ãspeuteand barred, locked doors. The voice was still talking, but I was momentarily distracted by the pretty pictures.

Another talking head popped up, this time wearing a suit and batting for the Home Office. He denied allegations that staff cuts had played a part in these events.

‘There were plenty of guards on the scene. Three at the first guard post and three more in D wing itself. Two of them were very seriously assaulted – hospitalised. The rest seem to have been exposed to some sort of drug – a nerve gas, or a hallucinogen – and are unable to give a clear account of what happened.’

Cutaway to some hand-held footage of another uniformed guard sitting on the steps of an ambulance with a blanket round his shoulders. He was staring at nothing as cameras flashed all around him.

‘She just looked at me,’ he said. ‘She just – and then – I was – I don’t know. I don’t know. I was so-’ He hid his face in his hands, either trying to evade that remembered gaze or to relive it.

Cut to still image of Doug Hunter: an archive shot of him walking into court, presumably on the day of his remand hearing. His face impassive, closed, giving nothing away.

‘This is the man who walked out of the front gate of Pentonville this evening, leaving the prison and the system it represents in chaos—’

I’d found the remote by this time.

Now I found the off switch. Moloch had made his point: Juliet was home, the fewmets had hit the windmill and if time had ever been on my side then it sure as hell wasn’t any more.

I limped through into the bathroom, so overwhelmed with tiredness that I felt like my body had melted and then congealed again as a lump of undifferentiated matter. I splashed cold water in my face, stripping one layer off the exhaustion and revealing a lot more layers underneath.

Try to forget about Juliet, at least for now. What she’d done, terrible though it was, was no surprise – and it was a big silver lining that she’d managed to do it without killing anyone. How long that would last was another question altogether. If she just let Myriam Kale walk away in Doug Hunter’s body after the jailbreak, then it was only a matter of time before Kale met some guy who pushed all the wrong buttons for her.