The moors lifted in a purple swell fading almost imperceptibly into the horizon, and at the head of the quarry a red flag danced in the slight breeze.
The explosion, 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. Tve 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.
‘Scan 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. Ts 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.