“How long have you been doing this?”

“Twenty-five years, sir.”

“Remember your first, do you?”

He did.

*

The air was so cold that the thick skin of clean white gloss that covered the room of steel and brick could have been ice.

“Now, Albert, remember everything we talked about. We’re here to do a job. Simple as that. I’m the lead, you’re assisting. Easy money for you today, you’re here as a witness more than anything else. I’ll see to his bindings. Nothing for you to worry about.”

“Yes, Uncle Tom.” As they waited Albert found that his main concern was whether it was proper that he had carried his satchel into to room with him. His mother had prepared ham and pease pudding sandwiches for them. Two rounds each, thick sliced, to give him strength on his first job. They sat there now, heavy in the satchel, wrapped in greasy paper, one good stride from the trapdoor. Albert’s stomach rumbled.

“Mr Pierrepoint, not Uncle Tom. I’m Mr Pierrepoint in here, and so are you. Not that anyone should be talking to you. And there’s no need for you to be talking to anyone. Just pay attention to everything.” As Tom spoke he was checking the rope, testing that it passed smoothly through the metal eye to make the slipping loop. As calm as if he was fixing a puncture on his bike. He had taught Albert to do that too. 

“What if he talks to me?”

“They sometimes speak to the guards, sometimes God, occasionally me, but nowt that requires a response. If he speaks to you, say nowt. Alright?”

“Yes, uncle… Mr Pierrepoint.”

“Good lad. When it’s time the guards will come, we’ll go out into the corridor and then into the cell together. I’ll bind him, we’ll come into here through the adjoining door there,” Tom pointed to a white steel door only a few feet from where they stood in the small windowless room. “I’ll put him on the spot, put the cap on him, fit the rope and then it’s the lever.”

Albert saw the chest-high lever, clean and oiled like something a railwayman might use to change the points. Uncle Tom had tested it the day before when one confident pull had made an eleven and a half stone sack disappear through the banging trapdoor. Albert had apologised in his prayers that night for allowing his thoughts to drift to a memory of a music hall illusionist’s trick. In the chamber there had been no climactic fanfare, only the bang of the swinging trapdoor as the heavy sack vanished and the rope snapped bow-string tight. Albert hoped the banging would disguise any other noise. As a butcher’s boy he’d heard the pop and crackle of many a neck, but not one belonging to a being that read the newspapers, or smoked a pipe, or mended his bike.

“Do they just let you do it, Uncle Tom?”

“They do, lad. They do. They usually come to us ready. But we must be swift. Whole thing should take seconds. He’s in, into position, bag, rope, lever. No time for questions, no time for suffering.”

“What if we get our measurements wrong?”

“We don’t, lad. Never. That’s what yesterday was about.”

They had viewed the man through the Judas hole in a cell door that, it seemed to Albert, could have held back an ocean, let alone a slim young man, pale in the grey light of a high, barred window. Albert wondered what the staring boy had done to find himself alone and so close to the end of a life that should just be beginning. Uncle Tom knew, and had decided not to say. If Uncle Tom had decided not to tell Albert, then it was right that Albert did not know, and he should not ask. It was hard to believe that the slight body perched on the edge of the low prison bed was eleven and a half stone in weight. Uncle Tom had known the drop length from memory. Albert had consulted his official Home Office table to check. Uncle Tom had been right, of course. Six foot two and a half inches.

“But what if he does…”

“There was only once that one spoke to me if that’s what you’re still worried about. Your dad told me a good trick for dealing with it. This prisoner was panicking. The guards had had enough of him. There were three of them instead of the usual two. They were expecting bother. He was ranting, appealing to me, trying to make out that what happened next was up to me and that I could save him. Clock was ticking, it was only getting worse for him. When he started on about his kids I used your dad’s trick. I said, “What’s your favourite type of pie, lad?” Stopped him. He couldn’t help but think about what I’d said for a second. It was only a second, but long enough that the bag was on and he was gone. The human mind is prone to easy distraction, Albert, and it’s a very powerful thing.”

“But what happens if something goes wrong? What if he fights?”

“What’s the drop length for a nine stone chap, Albert?”

Albert pulled his new printed table from his jacket pocket and read off the number. And then several others as Tom fired body weights at him. It was as he was returning to the chamber from taking his satchel to the guard’s room on his uncle’s stern orders that he noticed how peaceful the corridor was. His steps clicked in a monastic silence. The violent purpose of the place was neutralised by hospital cleanliness. Albert preferred it to the chop and chatter of his usual work in the butcher’s shop.

Uncle Tom and two guards were already waiting for him outside the cell door. As soon as he joined the group of older men they moved, speechless and solemn through the door and into the cell where their group became five without question or pause. Then into the cold chamber where the lever reduced the group once more to four. Twelve seconds, cell door to trapdoor, his Uncle Tom informed him later. He had done well. Next time he would have more of a job to do.

Albert had walked with the two guards back to their room to retrieve his satchel and wait for his uncle, who had stayed in the chamber to complete the work with the assistance of unseen helpers in the room below. When Tom joined him in the guards’ room they ate their sandwiches, which tasted better than any Albert had ever eaten.

*

“Twenty-five years of murder! You don’t have to do this do you?”

The guards took half a step closer.

“No good man could do this!”

Albert reached into his jacket pocket and touched his old dog-eared Home Office drop table, where physics and biology conspired to do the law’s bidding.

“You don’t have to do this. Please, for God’s sake!”

Albert took the man by the arm and asked him very calmly, “What’s your favourite type of pie, lad?”