Finally he reached the top floor. It was deserted, as he’d hoped. The inmates from the lower levels had for the most part headed straight down to the ballroom as soon as their doors had opened. Devlin made his way along the walkway, down the short row of solitary cells. Moulson was in the furthest, number 5.
He took one last look up and down the corridor. There was nobody in sight way up here at the top of the stack. Screams and impact sounds echoed from the ballroom below, where sixty or so officers were struggling to contain six hundred women.
Devlin also remembered to double-check the camera at the angle of the walkway, just to make sure that nobody had turned the CCTV system back on again. No red light on the fascia, so he was fine.
Devlin unlocked the steel cabinet on the wall and used Corcoran’s keys again to release the doors of the solitary cells, but they still weren’t fully unlocked. The doors were on a one-way latch, needing somebody on the outside to open them. He turned the handle of Moulson’s door and stepped inside.
He was surprised to see Moulson still asleep. He thought the noise from down below would have penetrated this far and woken her. But the soundproofing was very effective. As soon as he stepped into the narrow space and pulled the door to behind him, all external sounds faded almost to nothing.
Moulson was curled up in what looked like a foetal position under the single blanket, only the top of her head showing. She didn’t stir even slightly as the Devil approached the bunk. He’d given some thought to the question of how he was going to kill her. Throttling her, as he’d done Corcoran, would be easiest and quickest, but he didn’t want to work to a pattern. It would be bad news if anyone got to think that the two deaths were linked in any way. So he’d decided on suffocation as the least worst option.
He bent and picked up the pillow from the floor where it had fallen. Which brought his head down almost to the level of the bunk.
Jess kicked out with both feet. She’d returned from the night world a few seconds before, had barely had time to take up the reins of her body again, but she knew the danger she was in and she put everything she had into that kick.
Devlin caught it full in his face. He was slammed back hard against the opposite wall of the narrow cell. Something – his nose possibly, or maybe part of his jaw – crunched under Jess’s heel. He slumped to the floor, stunned.
Jess jumped up as he went down. Two steps brought her to the door. If he had closed it all the way, she was dead. She knew there was no handle on the inside. As soon as Devlin found his feet again, he would dismantle her, and in those close quarters she’d have no chance at all.
Her clawing fingers found the edge of the door and it opened. She fled.
But she skidded to a halt almost at once. Alex was still here. Inside Earnshaw, swallowed whole by her rage. Jess wasn’t thinking right then about the meaninglessness of miles and yards and inches in that other world: she just knew she didn’t want to leave him after swearing to him that she wouldn’t.
Fighting her own panic, she tried the handle of Liz Earnshaw’s door. It gave. Her hand shook as she eased it all the way down and pushed the door open. She stepped inside, moving quickly and quietly. Then, as Devlin had done, she pulled it closed again as far as she dared, almost but not quite all the way, the latch a trembling thousandth of an inch away from shooting home.
A metallic boom told her that Devlin had thrown open the door of her cell and stepped out on to the walkway. She held her breath. His steps went by Earnshaw’s door, but then slowed and stopped. He must be looking around, trying to get a sense of where Jess might have gone.
Or maybe he was looking at the door, seeing the tell-tale line where it failed to sit flush with the jamb.
Movement behind Jess made her turn her head, very slowly, terrified that a rustle of cloth would betray her.
Earnshaw had sat up on the bunk and was staring at her. The sheet fell away from her naked body, the harsh light of the neon strips shining down on a latticework of short, wide scars that covered her entire torso. Her jaw worked as though she was trying to swallow something. It was impossible to tell from her expression whether or not she was seeing what was in front of her. Jess stayed absolutely still and – vaguely remembering that this was how you survived a confrontation with a wild animal – kept her eyes averted and slightly downcast.
Earnshaw swung her legs around and let them slide to the floor. Ponderously, inexorably, she climbed to her feet.
Devlin’s boots clattered right outside the door. Jess braced herself. If the door opened, she would be caught between them. All she could do was fight until they put her down, which wouldn’t be long.
Devlin’s footsteps receded. A second later, she heard them clattering on the steps that led down to the next level.
So now there was only one homicidal maniac to deal with. Jess looked around for a weapon, but why would there be one in a solitary cell? Everything here was designed to be as little use as possible if a prisoner decided to try to hurt herself or anyone else.
Earnshaw strode towards her. Jess held her ground. “What have you done to him?” she demanded. “Where is he?”
Earnshaw put one massive hand on Jess’s upper arm and moved her aside with no visible effort. She pulled the door open. Jess grabbed her wrist and tried to drag her back into the cell. Earnshaw ignored her, and she was carried along by the other woman’s irresistible strength, jarring her shoulder against the door jamb.
“Alex!” Jess shouted. “Where are you? Talk to me!” Her feet slid and scrabbled on the steel walkway as she tried to get some traction and bring Earnshaw to a halt, or at least slow her down. And finally Earnshaw did stop.
But only to set her hand in the middle of Jess’s chest and push her away with such force that she staggered and almost fell.
The wild animal comparison came back into Jess’s mind, because that was what Earnshaw looked like right then: something that wore a human shape but had never learned speech and would rip your throat out if you crossed it.
She lumbered on and didn’t look back.
Jess didn’t try to close the gap with her again. She just followed her to the end of the walkway and down the stairs, staying a few paces behind all the way.
On the next level down, she found out what all the noise was. There were women throwing furniture and personal effects from their cells, or more likely other people’s cells, into the ballroom below. They were screaming abuse at the warders down there, who were laboriously clearing the big central space by advancing across it in a double line.
Earnshaw didn’t let anything slow her. The women who got in her way she violently pushed aside.
Jess moved in Earnshaw’s wake, staying close to the wall to keep from being seen. But nobody was looking her way in any case. Their minds were taken up with the fighting. There was a warder who did see her and recognised her, and decided to strike a blow for incinerated children everywhere. He strode straight at Jess, his nightstick in the ready position. Jess had about half a second, seeing him coming, to throw up her hand in a futile defence.
Lorraine Buller barged into the man head-on and pitched him over the railings into the suicide nets. She gave Jess a nod, and then she was gone too. It was a passing courtesy in the middle of the chaos, from one cellmate to another.
Jess speeded up a little. The closer she stayed to Lizzie, the less likely she was to be molested. She was calling Alex’s name in her mind, but there was no response. And now she realised with a sickening of the heart where Earnshaw was going. Not down into the ballroom, but left, and then straight along to the end of the level-three corridor.
To Grace’s cell.
The two women on guard at Grace’s door turned when they saw her coming, and moved into a defensive phalanx. Earnshaw slowed to a stop, and for a moment they faced each other without a word.