Free The First Casualty by Ben Elton

his.’
    ‘Yes, well, Mr Jenkins,’ the doctor complained, ‘I would be obliged to you if you could arrange to have him assaulted at a slightly more social hour next time. I do not appreciate being called from the due conclusion of my vittles. It impairs digestion and is most inhibiting to the maintenance of properly regulated bowels.’
    The warder and the doctor then departed, leaving Kingsley alone with his thoughts. And grim thoughts they were. It was clear to him that his already desperate situation was only going to get worse and that it could lead to only one conclusion. He was going to die, not immediately but quite soon. Unless of course he could find a way out.
    ‘So would yiz loik a shot o’ morphine, moi foin pacifist friend?’ Kingsley could not turn his head to look but he presumed that this was the voice of a medical orderly.
    ‘Oi could see yiz was conscious while those two bastards was gabbing on,’ the voice continued. ‘Jesus wept, yiz mosst be in a terrible load o’ pain. Oi can give yiz a bit o’ relief for that easily enough.’
    It was the first offer of kindness Kingsley had received for some time. It made him feel weak and emotional, as if he wanted to cry, something that he had not done since he was a child. Not even when he found the white feather on his pillow. Not even when he had returned home to find that his son had been removed from his corrupting presence. As the tears seeped between his swollen eyelids, causing the cuts to sting with the salt, Kingsley wondered whether he was crying for those things now.
    ‘Thank you,’ he whispered through swollen, blood-clotted lips, wincing in pain as the movement caused the splits in them to open up and bleed afresh.
    ‘You’re welcome.’
    ‘Not many in here are concerned about my comfort. ‘Not many at all.’
    ‘But you are.’
    ‘Well. All God’s creatures, eh?’
    ‘Why do you not despise me?’
    ‘Woi would Oi dispoice a man whom de King sees fit t’incarcerate?’
    An Irishman. And a Republican, of course.
    ‘Any fockin’ fellah dat annoys his precious Imperial fockin’ Majesty is foin boi miself. Now d’you want dis shot o’ morphine or don’t ye?’
    Strange to be finding comfort from such a source. How many times had Kingsley heard that same soft accent hurling hatred and abuse at him? Police relations with the Irish in London were almost uniformly hostile, particularly since the Easter Rising of the previous year, and it was an unfamiliar thing indeed for him to find himself on the receiving end of Irish good humour.
    ‘No thank you,’ he said. ‘But thank you all the same.’
    Kingsley did not want morphine. No matter what pain he was in he knew that above all he must keep his wits about him; they were literally all he had left. Besides which, years spent trying to police the bestial horrors in the labyrinths between the Strand and New Oxford Street had given Kingsley a morbid horror of drug addiction.
    ‘Suit y’self,’ said the orderly. ‘Oi hope yiz won’t mind if Oi do.’ Moments later Kingsley made out the tiny sound of a syringe being depressed, followed by an audible sigh.
    ‘Oh, very noice. Very noice indeed,’ said the orderly, his voice now slightly abstracted, ‘and all accounted for boi de book. Oi shall tell de doctor dat yiz had your shot as properly prescribed, so Oi’s hope yiz won’t be goin’ an’ contradictin’ us.’
    ‘No, I shan’t.’
    ‘Good.’
    ‘Perhaps you could give me a little water?’
    After the orderly had placed a cup to his damaged lips and then departed to enjoy his dreaming, Kingsley once more fell to considering his position and what if anything he might do about it.
    First of all he considered escape.
    People had got out of Wormwood Scrubs before and Kingsley flattered himself that his mind and eye were sharper than most. But to escape he would need all his strength and agility. Currently, beaten black and blue as he was, he had neither and was unlikely to