The Donut Diaries (16 page)

From the outside, the hut had been indistinguishable from all the others. The inside was a different story. In place of the hard wooden floor and hard wooden chairs and hard wooden
beds
, there were the softest of soft furnishings: a carpet thick enough to swallow a midget, easy chairs draped in rich fabrics, and a four-poster
bed
, like something Henry VIII would have considered a bit too showy. I didn’t see anywhere for the other Lardies to sleep, and supposed that they must be the residents of Hut Two.

But they were here in strength now. As well as the mountainous Demetrius the Destroyer, I saw Gilbert Pasternak with his
LOVE
and
HAET
tattoos, plus a couple of other bruisers, looking like barrage balloons painted with angry faces. And there, on a long couch, propped up by satin cushions like a bloated slug, lay Hercule Paine himself. He was eating grapes.

‘Dear, dear boy,’ he said. ‘Do come in and make yourself at home. I apologize for the security precautions. I trust that Demetrius wasn’t too . . . rough? He has a gentle soul, but on occasion he can be somewhat over-exuberant.’

I thought about the sausage dog he was reputed to have bitten in half. Maybe he was just playing with it . . .

I sat down on a chair. It was the softest thing my bum had touched since I’d left home. It was probably the softest thing it had ever touched, except for the time I accidentally sat on my sister Ruby’s birthday cake.

‘Thanks for seeing me,’ I said.

‘Not at all. I like to regard my little organization as supplying the various, ah, welfare needs of the camp.’

One of the bruisers behind me laughed. It
sounded
like a knife blade being sharpened.

‘So, how can I be of assistance?’

‘I need to get out of here. And I need to take some, er, things with me.’

‘A common desire. But a futile one. And your time at Camp Fatso is almost up. Why not quietly see out your time and go back home a thinner, happier boy?’

Another chuckle from behind me.

I thought about the schedule. About the terrified eyes. About the meat.

‘I need to get out before Friday.’

‘I know I said that I could help – but I cannot work miracles. I—’

‘I know that there’s a tunnel. An escape tunnel. Dug by the Italians.’

‘A tunnel? Italians? What an imagination you have.’

But I knew I was right. A flickering eyelid told me so. As did the sudden silence in the rest of the room.

I stared into his piggy black eyes.

‘Where is it, Hercule?’

I felt a stinging slap on the back of my head.

‘Mr Paine to you.’

‘No, no, Gilbert, there’s no need for violence. Yet. Let us suppose that there
was
such a tunnel. Why should I tell you about it? What is there in it for me?’

‘Does there have to be something in it for you? Couldn’t you just tell me because it’s the right thing to do?’

Hercule Paine smiled. He had the kind of mouth that becomes slightly smaller when it smiles. It was almost indistinguishable from a look of disgust.

‘The right thing to do. What a quaint notion. Haven’t you realized yet where you are, my dear Donut? Look around you. How much goodness and virtue do you see here?’

‘I—’

‘You see people acting according to the dictates of power. To have power is to have right on your side. Morality is the slave of the boys with the strongest arms. And that’s me, Donut. What you see here is the truth, undisguised, unadorned. It’s why I love it.’

‘You’re a monster, Paine.’ SLAP. It didn’t stop me. ‘But there are boys here who don’t think like you. Kids who still value truth and honour and decency. Kids like—’

‘J-Man?’ Now Paine’s smile grew, becoming a grin, showing his teeth, which seemed unnaturally small and weak, as if his adult teeth
had
never come through. And as Paine grinned, the others guffawed. ‘Oh, how very, very amusing. You don’t know, do you? I’d assumed that you would have worked it out by now.’

‘What are you talking about?’ But even as I spoke the words, I knew. ‘J-Man—’

‘Is my creature. Of course he is.’

‘And it was him who told the goons about the first escape bid?’

Hercule Paine inclined his head, as if accepting a compliment.

‘And Ernesto . . .?’

‘A necessary sacrifice.’

I felt sick. Sick and angry. J-Man was a Lardy. Or a spy for the Lardies. A fink. A fake. A phoney.

‘But perhaps there is an arrangement we can come to. I have a certain interest in maintaining the status quo around here – it’s why I prefer
for
there not to be too many escapes or other disruptions. However, I could make an exception.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, it so happens that you are correct. There
is
an old escape tunnel. It begins under one of the huts, and carries on for a couple of hundred metres, out beyond the perimeter fence and into the woods.’

‘Which hut?’

‘Well, it’s here that we engage in a touch of mutual back-scratching. You see, for that information, you must help me with a little problem of my own. Now, do have a grape.’

This was it. As I’d been warned, to get something from the Lardies, you had to give something, and I was about to pay.

DONUT COUNT:

Of course. But even if I’d had one, I doubt I could have eaten it, so sick did I feel about J-Man’s betrayal. Well, OK, I probably could have eaten it. But I wouldn’t have enjoyed it. Oh, who am I kidding? If I’d been offered a donut I would have wolfed it down and begged for more.

Thursday 12 April

J-MAN KNEW THAT
something was up.

I’d avoided him all morning.

‘They tell you what you need to know?’ he asked, wielding his pick.

‘Yep.’

The pick cut into the ground.

‘There’s a kind of truth that sits cheek by jowl with a lie, Donut,’ he said.

‘And there’s a kind of liar who sits cheek by jowl with the Lardies,’ I spat back.

The pick slammed into the earth a couple of centimetres from my fingers.

And then something happened to me that had never happened before. I totally lost it. I’d managed to get through twelve years without having a fight (apart from with my sisters, which always ended in tears – my tears, usually), and I didn’t really know how to do it. But I threw myself at J-Man, and the surprise was enough to unbalance him. I landed on top of him and managed to stay there, shoving my knees into his chest.

I heard Renfrew shout out, ‘No, Dermot, he’s not worth it,’ but just ignored him.

‘You betrayed me. You betrayed us all,’ I yelled, and tried to land a punch in his face. He got a hand up and parried it. Then he caught my wrist.

By this time the whole work party had downed tools and gathered round. I knew the goons would be right behind them, but I didn’t care.

‘Donut, you don’t understand. They . . . they made me do it. They got a . . . a hold on me.’

‘I don’t care. What you did to Gogol – making him take the rap. That was unforgivable.’

The kids around us were cheering us on, the way you do when there’s a fight – particularly if the alternative form of entertainment is digging for worms.

I heard a grown-up voice say, ‘We stop them, Boss Skinner?’ And then the answering whisper, ‘No, let the girls fight it out.’

‘I feel bad,’ said J-Man as we struggled together. ‘But I couldn’t . . . I . . .’

Then he let go of my wrists and said meekly, ‘Do what you gotta do,’ and closed his eyes.

I drew back my fist, ready to drive it into his face.

I didn’t.

I don’t think I would have, even if I hadn’t been shot by Boss Skinner in the back. It was the most painful thing I’d ever felt, and the force knocked me off J-Man.

‘Girls done finished playing,’ said Boss Skinner.

But J-Man hadn’t finished. He sprang up with amazing speed for such a big kid and charged at the head goon. The boys who’d been watching dived out of the way. Of course, J-Man never reached Skinner – he was cut down by a wall of fire from the paintball guns. Four hit him in the chest, and he staggered back, but then came forward again.
Thwack, thwack, thwack
. Still he came on. And then Boss Skinner himself enacted the
coup de grâce
and sent a paintball pellet right into J-Man’s forehead.

‘Take these two ladies to the cooler,’ he said, a smile on his thin lips.

‘Can you hear me, Donut?’

It was an hour later. I was alone in the dark of
the
cell. J-Man was two doors away. He’d been calling to me ever since he came round.

‘Shut up, J-Man.’

‘You gotta listen, Donut. It was my kid sister. They got her next door in Camp Fitso. Life good for her in there. But they told me that unless I co-operate then that all gonna change. That girl only nine years old. I had to look out for her.’

That made me think. What would I do to protect Ruby and Ella, my two nightmare sisters? OK, maybe not a good example.

‘There’s no excuse for what you did.’

‘I know that. I see it now. I just want . . . atonement.’

‘OK, you can start by telling me about Hut Nineteen.’

There was a pause. Then a heavy sigh.

‘Yeah, Hut Nineteen. That where they keep the critters.’

‘The badgers. I know. Why?’

‘It’s what makes the camp pay. They use the hair to make fancy shaving brushes for rich folk. They undercut the Chinese, and still make a big profit on account of the slave labour they got here. And they get to use up the meat. But I guess you know that.’

‘And you’ve eaten it.’

‘Once you get the taste . . . it’s addictive. Especially when you ain’t got nothing else but gruel. But you know what I’m saying. Is there anything you wouldn’t do for a donut, Donut?’

‘I wouldn’t betray my friends.’

Silence.

‘But you know what, Donut? You cut a deal, didn’t you, with the Lardies? They gonna burn
you
, you know. They gonna sell you out.’

‘Maybe, but I’ve got a plan.’

And then, in the dark and the cold, I realized that I needed J-Man for my plan to work.

‘You really want redemption?’ I asked.