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Here's a bit of NRPD: The Mean Streets.
A drop of cooled condensation crawled slowly over the stonework, dribbling down, eventually to rest in a crevice in the dirty grout between the heavy stones. Grimshaw lay on his side on his bunk watching the drips of water work their way down. This was something he did often. Sometimes he watched twin drops race their way down the wall, other times a singular drop of water was enough to entertain him. This is all he had. No real entertainment, no real life. This is what he subsisted on - watching water drip down the walls of his damp cell. There was a time when he had books to read but they had been confiscated when he had assaulted a guard with one of the bedsprings he had removed from his bunk. So his precious books had been taken away as had his bedsprings. Now he had to lie on his thin mattress on the floor whilst biding his time watching water run down the wall. All that for slashing a man’s throat - ridiculous. Come on, the bastard lived, just. Now Grimshaw was reduced to this.
He figured that lights out was coming soon. He had no clock, but he just knew. After so many years of lights on in the morning, lights out at night. No time, just twelve hours of light, twelve hours of dark. That was it. That was the only thing that denoted the days. And so there was no birthdays, no Christmas, no New Year. Fuck all. Just light and dark.
For once, tonight Grimshaw was waiting for the dark. He waited and waited. Eventually the lights went out and he heard the day guard shout goodnight. Routine went as normal. The night guard walked down the corridor flashing his torch into every nook and cranny in the old cells and then he flashed his light into Grimshaw’s cell. Grimshaw waved back at the light without actually raising his head from the mattress on the floor. He waited some more.
He slowly counted to sixty and then counted to sixty again. Then he counted to sixty another five-eight times. This was the only way he could estimate an hour. He was actually very close because he had practiced it many times. He knew the night guard usually took a walk an hour into his shift and then he would snooze for about four hours and then after a hot beverage he would take another walk around. Grimshaw was fortunate that the thick walls in this underground purgatory were very acoustic. The guard’s snores would start soon and then he would have approximately four hours before he heard the kettle begin to boil. He continued to wait.
He idly wondered, as he lay in the dark, on whether Nugus would follow the clues he had left. Personally, he thought the hints about the books were a little heavy handed, but he needed Nugus to fire up his brain and follow the silver. It was finally time that he got his revenge on that bastard Webster, and he needed Nugus to help him, whether he wanted to or not.
His night vision had kicked in after about thirty minutes, so he could see quite well now with the diffused glow from the guard’s office. He lay there silently for another ten minutes or so until the gentle snoring became rhythmic. Silently he crept from his bunk and stood in the middle of his cell and stretched. What he didn’t want now was the acoustics that had been to his advantage so far to work against him.
He stepped to the wall adjoining his cell with the empty one next door. Crouching down he counted out the lowest line of bricks from the metal bars. When he reached the fifth one he counted out vertically to the seventh brick and started to work his fingernail into the grout. It was softer than it should have been due in no small part to his constant digging and remoulding of the grout over the last six months. In a few minutes of teasing he managed to loosen the entire brick and lift it out and placed it on the floor. The brick was heavy and large as was customarily used in the building of Victorian masonry. By removing this brick he had left a substantial hole in the wall, but not yet big enough to crawl through. However, it did give him the leverage to pull at the next brick lower down. He heaved on it after three, and it budged a bare smidge. On the next heave it moved an inch. Then it moved two. Small pieces of crumbling sandy cement tumbled onto the floor. Anticipating this, he had moved his mattress close to the wall. Eventually, when the second brick came away after a final pull the brick fell silently to the mattress. Unfortunately, the hefty brick rolled and fell against his foot, grazing his ankle badly. He held in a scream, breathing rapidly in and out for a few minutes. He hadn’t anticipated that. Fucker. He held his ankle in the dark, no blood, but a bruise certainly. He stood and put his weight on it - sore but manageable.
He started to work on the next brick, it moved slightly easier and he only needed to move it out of the way , not actually extract it from the wall. The brick swivelled around on its axis.
Now there was enough room to scrabble his slight frame through the wall.
He had been planning this ever since he had noticed a loose piece of grout in the wall. This not only involved manipulating the disintegrating grout out of the wall around the brick and then disguising his handiwork with spit-softened cement, but he had also been starving himself so he could slender down enough to fit though a small hole. He knew he wouldn’t have the time or the strength to make a large exit hole. He was also bothered that if he had to remove too many bricks then he was risking creating more noise and alerting the sleeping guard. It was his one chance and he couldn’t jeopardise it. His timing was critical as well. He had to wait until the right somnolent guard was on duty and he also waited for the right day guard to store some crap in his neighbouring cell. Most of the guards made sure they locked the ‘store’ cell door. However one didn’t bother half the time, after all there was nobody in it, and it was unlikely that anybody would steal from it.
The one thing Grimshaw was good at was waiting and he had, until the time was right. Today’s visit from that nerdy detective had spurred him on and everything seemed to be coming together.
Grimshaw moved slowly through the newly excavated wall. His clothes snagged on the rough brickwork and he forced himself through, snaking out in the neighbouring cell being careful not to disturb anything stored in there. He dusted himself off and took a minute to orientate himself in this new environment. Detritus was built up in piles in this cell. It had become a dumping ground over the years for unwanted furniture and ornaments from the city hall over the years. He warily circumnavigated the unwanted bric-a-brac and made his way to the cell door. Pushing it open, he was relieved to find it open. It had crossed his mind several times since he started his escape that he could have been mistaken. If he’d have found a securely locked door then his months of planning would have been wasted. He was committed now and wouldn’t be able to put the bricks back in the wall without discovery. That would have, of course, meant more punishment. Severe punishment.
He was out now, but far from clear. As an after thought he stepped back into the cell and grabbed something. He made his way down the outer corridor to the office door. It was locked, but he knew that it was going to be. He positioned the object he had retrieved from the store cell on the floor, just out of the ring of light coming from the office through the small observation window, he then lightly started to scratch on the door. There was no response at first, but when he did it again he could hear the snores of the guard stutter and the chair creaking as he lifted himself up. He scratched again. The key in the door turned very carefully and the door slowly opened. The guards had been after a rat that had been roaming the cell floor for a while, and Grimshaw had done his bit by feeding it with his unwanted food. Now the guard was convinced that he had a chance to kill it and therefore wining the sizable pot that had been accruing for the eventual victor in this war against the offending rodent. With Grimshaw hiding behind the door, the guard stepped cautiously into the corridor and saw part of the stuffed ferret that Grimshaw had placed on the floor. The guard raised his baton slowly to strike the beast. He could almost hear the admiration of his colleagues. As he struck down, bringing him off his natural centre of gravity, Grimshaw lashed out with a sharp chop to the back of the guard’s neck and he collapsed heavily onto the cold floor. Immediately Grimshaw was upon him, relieving him of his keys and his baton. He handcuffed the groaning guard’s hands behind his back and then kicked him in the abdomen. He always hated this bastard, more than the others. He had a tendency to be cruel when he wasn’t sleeping on duty.
Shuffling through the keys, Grimshaw found the right key to the arms locker. He selected a 12-bore Franchi Special Purpose Automatic Shotgun or SPAS - a pump action anti-riot weapon capable of firing twenty-four to thirty rounds per minute of buckshot at a range of forty metres and a 9mm Berretta handgun. He stuffed two boxes of 9mm bullets and a box of shotgun rounds into the pockets of the guard’s coat that hung on the back of the outer door and donned said coat. Before he let himself out, armed, dangerous and warm, he had some unfinished business to attend to.
He turned to the semi-conscious guard and held his newly acquired baton high. Fighting oblivion, the guard’s eyes sprang tears of fear. He knew what was coming.
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