Bang by Charles Kennedy Scott Read Free Book Online Page A

Go!’
    ‘It wasn’t me, I tell you.’ Drip drip. The water
dripped on.
    ‘Come now. Prisoners murder prisoners all the time.
It’s the done thing. Part of the deterrent. I mean, if you’d thought up there
on the escalators and moving floors that you might be murdered down here, you’d
have thought twice about breaking whatever law it was you broke. I’d need to
check the records – what did you do? Who was the arresting officer? Never
mind. Just admit your crime down here. Let’s get this silly business cleared up
and we can be on our way.’
    Delilah acknowledged something to herself now. If JJ
Jeffrey offered a stop to the dripping water, she would confess to the murder.
She’d work out a way of retracting her confession later. But he hadn’t so far,
and didn’t look likely to. She said nothing. Drip drip.
    ‘Okay, have it your own way. Bring in the Warden.
Bring in Dormitory 100’s warden.’
    A shrivelled old man in a nightcap was shuffled in.
    ‘Tie him to the post. Lash him up good.’
    ‘Go to sleep!’ cried the shrivelled old warden. ‘Go to
sleep, the lot of you!’
    ‘Bring in the Whipping Boy. Bring him on in.’
    ‘Go to sleep. Silence, prisoners. Go to sleep!’ cried
the warden.
    The Whipping Boy entered, dressed in leather and
buckles and sharpened studs. His whip was a Voltaire , a whip made from a
bull’s penis genetically modified to possess extra effective whipping
properties once dried, and far longer than a normal bull’s penis, which had
quite a shaft’s length in its own right. Legend had it that this whip was
inspired by the man who invented electricity. The connection was not clear. ‘I
have a very long pizzle,’ said the Whipping Boy, who Delilah reckoned could
have been no more than ten or eleven year’s old. ‘Would you like a taste of it,
old man?’ Before the old man warden could lift his old head to see what was
going on the Voltaire hummed deeply through the air and sliced the top
off his nightcap. ‘Take that, you wrinkly old git. That’ll teach you. Now
listen up everybody, I want some drugs. Does anyone have any drugs? I need some
stuff. I’ve had a hard day at school.’
    ‘Fetch the Whipping Boy an orange pill,’ demanded
Officer JJ Jeffrey. ‘And don’t spare the horses, make it snappy. Today!’
    An officer scampered away, then scampered back,
skewing the fork on Delilah’s finger on his way past, which he stopped to
painfully straighten, before giving the Whipping Boy an orange pill. The
Whipping Boy tossed it high in the air and it stuck to the wet ceiling. He
waited a moment and it fell. He caught it on his tongue, then swung his whip
again, this time extracting from the old warden an eye, while all the time
reciting calculus in preparation he said for an upcoming exam.
    ‘Did you see that, Warden?’ asked JJ Jeffrey. ‘The
Whipping Boy took your eye out. See with your other eye how your lost eye rolls
around the slimy floor like a marble. Now perhaps the prisoner will
talk …?’ He swivelled to Delilah, removed his pith hat, poured water out
of it, replaced it, and added, ‘The warden’s eyes – one down, one to go,
your call.’
    The warden stared pleadingly at Delilah with his
remaining eye and his lost socket, quivering with pain and old age, hopelessly
helpless. But the drips dripped on, sending Delilah slowly mad, so that she
barely noticed the old man’s pitiful one-eyed stare and his hunched, begging
shoulders.
    ‘It wasn’t me,’ she said. ‘I didn’t do it. You’ve got
the wrong person.’
    ‘Ha! So that’s your story, is it, madam, and you’re
sticking to it? Yet you had the motivation, after all. You planned to
murder every single one of them, didn’t you. So that one by one you’d gradually
be lowered to the ground and could unhook your harness, and escape through the
unguarded door with the sign on its handle saying Back in five mins .
Deny it.’
    ‘I do. I deny it.’ And still the drips dripped