He blinked against the brighter lighting on the landing and went flat-footed out to join the line towards the sluices. To Charlie’s left, hung like spiders’ webs between the landings, were the protection meshes to prevent from self-destruction a prisoner who could no longer fight the despair, or the death of those who had infringed an unwritten law and might be heaved over, to avoid the irritating forensic enquiry which might have disclosed the clandestine activity in the engineering shops. To his right the cell doors gaped, like the beaks of hungry, unfed birds. He couldn’t miss the smell now: no one could, not even if they’d served twenty years and become accustomed to everything. Debris in a slowly moving stream of piss, thought Charlie. It was a fitting analogy.

Charlie had developed the prison walk, shoulders hunched and insular, his eyes away from any direct gaze and therefore possible challenge. He missed nothing, though. Never had. It was the beginning of the week and the shifts of the landing warders had changed; as soon as he rounded the bend, on the last run towards the sluices, Charlie saw Hickley and Butterworth.

They were two of the worst: bloody sadists. But clever sadists more obviously aware than the others that the prison was run by consent of the inmates and anxious to be friends with those who mattered, to the discomfort of those who didn’t. Hickley, the one who’d told him there was no possibility of parole, was at the sluice entrance, so that he could control the approach and Butterworth was inside the lavatory, supervising the actual cleaning. Charlie’s eyes avoided theirs; it was a precaution he had learned.

The challenge came, from Hickley, an arm thrust out across his chest, halting him and the line beyond.