when it came, echoed into the distance, the sound of it beating against the hills like thunder. As a great shoulder of rock cracked into a thousand pieces, smoke drifted in a white pall that curled over the edge of the rock and across the moor like some living thing.
A whistle sounded, and as the convicts emerged from shelter a Land-Rover came over the edge of the escarpment, rolled down the dirt road and stopped.
The youth at the wheel had very fair hair and blue eyes that somehow made him look even younger than he was. His uniform was brand new and he was painfully conscious of that fact as he got out of the Land-Rover and moved past a group of convicts loading a truck.
Mulvaney, the Duty Officer, moved to meet him, a black and tan Alsatian at his heels. He grinned. ‘Hello, Drake. Putting you to work already, are they?’
Drake nodded. ‘I’ve got a chit here for a man called Rogan. The Governor wants to see him.’
He produced a slip of paper from his breast pocket. Mulvaney initialled it and waved towards a small hollow at the bottom of the slope.
‘That’s Rogan down there. You’re welcome to him.’
The man indicated worked stripped to the waist and was at least six foot three, the muscles in his broad back rippling as he swung a sledgehammer above his head and brought it down.
‘God in heaven, the man’s a giant,’ Drake said.
Mulvaney nodded. ‘They don’t come much bigger. Brains and brawn, that’s Sean Rogan. Pound for pound, about the most dangerous man we’ve ever had in here.’
‘They didn’t send anyone with me.’
‘No need. He’s expecting his discharge any day now. That’ll be what the Governor wants to see him about. He’s hardly likely to make a run for it at this stage.’
Drake moved down the slope. Bronzed and fit, his body toughened by hard labour, Sean Rogan looked a thoroughly dangerous man and the ugly puckered scars of the old bullet wounds in the left breast seemed strangely in keeping.
Drake paused a yard or two away and Rogan glanced up. The skin was stretched tightly over high Celtic cheekbones, a stubble of beard covering the hollow cheeks and strong pointed chin. The eyes were grey like water over a stone or smoke through trees on an autumn day, calm and expressionless, holding their own secrets. It was the face of a soldier, a scholar perhaps. Certainly this was no criminal.
‘Sean Rogan?’ Drake said.
The big man nodded. ‘That’s me. What do you want?’
There was no hint of subservience in the soft Irish voice and Drake, for some unaccountable reason, felt like a young recruit being interviewed by a senior officer.
‘The Governor wants a word with you.’
Rogan picked up his shirt from a nearby boulder, pulled it over his head and followed Drake up the slope, the sledgehammer swinging easily in one hand. He dropped it beside the Duty Officer. ‘A present for you.’
Mulvaney grinned, took a battered silver case from his breast pocket and offered him a cigarette. ‘Is it likely at all, Sean Rogan, that I might be seeing the back of you?’
Rogan’s face was illuminated briefly by a smile of great natural charm. ‘All things are possible, even in this worst of all possible worlds. You should know that, Patrick.’
Mulvaney touched him briefly on the shoulder. ‘Go with God, Sean,’ he said softly in Irish.
Rogan turned and walked quickly towards the Land-Rover and Drake found himself trailing a step or two behind. As they passed the group of convicts loading the truck, someone shouted, ‘Good luck, Irish!’ Rogan raised a hand in reply and climbed into the passenger seat.
Drake got behind the wheel and drove away rapidly, feeling uncertain and ill-at-ease. It was as if Rogan had taken charge, as if at any moment he might order him to take the next turning on the right instead of keeping straight on to the prison.
The Irishman smoked his cigarette slowly from long habit, gazing out over the moor. Drake glanced sideways at him a couple of times and tried to make conversation.
‘They tell me you’re hoping to get out soon?’
‘One can always hope.’
‘How long have you been here?’
‘Seven years.’
The shock of it was like a blow in the face and Drake winced, thinking of the long years, the wind across the moor blowing rain, grey mornings, a brief summer passing quickly into autumn and the iron hand of winter.
He forced a smile. ‘I’ve only been here a couple of days myself.’
‘Your first posting?’
‘No, I was at Wakefield for a while. Came out of the Guards last year. Didn’t fancy another hitch and then I saw this advert for prison officers. It looked a good number so I thought I’d try it.’
‘Is that a fact now?’
For some unaccountable reason Drake felt himself flushing. ‘Somebody has to do it,’ he said defensively. ‘The pay could be worse and quarters and a pension at the end of it. You can’t grumble at that, can you?’
‘I’d rather be the devil,’ Sean Rogan said with deep conviction. He half-turned, folding his arms deliberately, and stared out across the moor, cutting off all further attempts at conversation.
‘It’s certainly one hell of a record,’ the Governor said, looking down at the file on his desk, ‘but then I don’t need to tell you that, Superintendent. I was hoping we’d see the back of him this time.’
‘So was I, sir,’ Vanbrugh said.
‘There are days when I distinctly welcome the fact that I retire in another ten months.’ The Governor pushed back his chair and stood up. ‘He’ll be here in about fifteen minutes. In the meantime, I’ve one or two things to do. You make yourselves comfortable in here and I’ll have them send you in some tea.’
The door closed behind him and Dwyer moved from the window to the desk. ‘I don’t know a great deal about Rogan, sir. A bit before my time. Wasn’t he a big man in the I.R.A.?’
‘That’s right. Sentenced to twelve years in ’56 for organizing escapes from several prisons in England and Ulster. Remember the famous invasion of Peterhead in ’55? They went over the wall under cover of darkness like blasted commandos and brought out three men. Got clean away.’
‘He was behind that?’
‘He led them in.’ Vanbrugh opened the file. ‘It’s all here. He spent most of his early life in France and Germany. His father was in the Irish political service. He was a student at Trinity College, Dublin, when he was wounded and caught during a weekend raid over the Ulster border. That would be just before the war.’
‘What did he get?’
‘Seven years. He was released in 1941 at the request of the Special Operations Executive because of his fluency
