All Debts Must be Paid

Chapter Two: The Ministry - Jacks

Denis Jacks sat doodling with a quill on the piece of parchment on his desk. There was nothing to do but wait, until Kellow came back from his meeting with the Minister. Since he had been more than five minutes, he felt it was reasonable to assume that Fudge had not reported that Black had been recaptured. He sighed. Merlin but Fudge was a joke! The ultimate compromise when it became impossible to appoint Crouch and Dumbledore wouldn't take the job. And like the good bureaucrat he was, he could never take a decision without sitting on it for as long as possible. Now all that had happened was that Black had nearly twenty-four hours on them. Hell, he could be anywhere by now.

He wondered if Scroby were not at that moment writing out his letter of resignation. The man couldn't possibly do anything else. That meant there would be a vacancy. Jacks gave a mirthless smile. Who was he kidding, he thought. No one in their right mind would want the job of Governor of Azkaban, or nobody with any imagination at any rate. Or perhaps you needed a naturally depressive personality. Scroby had certainly qualified on all those counts.

He threw his quill down onto the desk and looked at the clock, the minute hand slowly creeping around to six forty five. Every second that passed without action being taken, meant it would be that much more difficult to recapture the man. For the umpteenth time he picked up the file on Black and tried to read it again, wondering if anyone had actually read it from cover to cover over the last decade. If they had, they would have noticed that Black hadn't followed the normal pattern of a long term Azkaban prisoner. But then the writing was different on each entry, and after the initial fuss had died down, who had really cared anymore? It wasn't until after the first two years or so that the pattern had become significantly different in any case. Certainly, after then, he'd stopped trying to commit suicide. Those reports were pretty gruesome. It was sickening how creative the desperate for death could be. But then Azkaban was supposed to do that, make you think about nothing but your crime. And given what this man had done, it was small wonder then that he had tried to kill himself. In fact, the odd thing was that he'd stopped trying.

Reading the file, Jacks noticed that the man's periods of lucidity had extended until in recent years he had been fairly lucid pretty much most of the time. He certainly seemed to know who he was. Even so, it was hard to understand how he'd managed to use Dark Magic after all this time, but he must have done. It was the only possible explanation for his escape. However, it was hard to tell, the reports weren't regular or detailed enough to analyse properly.

Jacks flung the file back on the desk. No clues there. They'd locked Black up and thrown away the key, except now it seemed as if they'd thrown the key into his cell. He thought about the man described in the file and wondered what it was that had made someone like him turn to the dark side. He didn't remember him from Hogwarts. Black had been, what, five or six years behind him, but later he'd certainly known who he was, if not to speak to. He knew people that had known him and he remembered their incredulity when it became clear what had happened. Everyone had lost someone to the Death Eaters, but not everyone had been betrayed to them by their friends.

He glanced over to where Crusher was sitting at his desk, "Want some tea?" he asked, his voice dropping into the silence like a stone into still water.

"What?" Crusher looked up from where he had been scribbling. His desk was covered with Muggle tide and current charts of the sea around Azkaban. He was trying to work out where Black might have come ashore if he'd tried to swim for it. Good luck to him. Black would have been dead from the cold within hours. All they would find, if they were lucky would be his body. Still Crusher's work might show where it would be washed up.

Jacks repeated his question. "Oh, thanks, no," Crusher responded going back to his charts. Jacks never really knew what to make of Crusher; you had to make allowances of course, given what had happened to his family. It wasn't exactly the sort of thing you could say, come on old chap snap out of it, life goes on. If the only way the man could cope, was by developing a desire to hunt down every last remaining Death Eater that bordered on mania, who could blame him?

Jacks stood up and went over to the tea corner. He boiled the kettle with a tap of his wand and plonked a tea bag into his mug. He debated whether or not to have a piece of Cauldron Cake, and decided he would, as it was unlikely that he was going to get home until late.

He sat down again at his desk. God, how long did it take Fudge to say, get after him?

Suddenly he heard footsteps running along the corridor outside. Davies flung open the door and said, "You've got to come through. Kellow's back."

Jacks jumped up, lifting the Black file as he did so. "Come on," he said to Crusher, "Bring that stuff with you, he'll want us to summarise what we've been doing. Never know, you might get to sit in a boat off Shetland for the next few weeks."

Suddenly the previously quiet offices and corridors erupted with a milling crowd of people heading for the briefing room. All of them muttering variations on, "And about bloody time too."

Kellow was short and to the point. "As you all know, Sirius Black escaped from his cell last night. The Minister has now confirmed that he appears to have escaped entirely from Azkaban Island. It is our job to re-capture him before he does any damage."

The assembled Hit Wizards looked at one another. On his trail at last, even if it was a day late. Their satisfaction turned to horror when Kellow went on to explain what they thought Black was trying to do.

Once the murmuring had died down Kellow called them to order. "Now you've all been looking into your allocated areas. I do have a few leads for you." He told them about the crossword theory and Clithero, the magical cryptography bloke looked pleased at the chance to test his latest pet theory. "However," Kellow continued, "Interesting though it may be to learn the hard way how Black escaped, it will be more interesting to learn the easy way by asking him when we catch him."

Havers put up her hand. "Sir, if he did have help, isn't it likely that they were waiting to pick him up?"

"Perhaps Fudge's newspaper was a portkey," suggested Davis, who always liked to think of himself as a bit of a comedian.

There was a ripple of laughter; the sort given by deeply worried people who will laugh at anything to break the tension. However, Kellow responded, "Don't be a bloody idiot, Davis! But I think we should consider just about anything else, and I do take your point, Havers." He paused and looked round, "Right, Let's eliminate the easy ones first. If he tried to swim for it, we need to know where he might have washed up. Crusher, you've been looking at currents and tides haven't you?"

"Yessir," Crusher responded, glancing at Jacks with a sour smile. As usual, his assessment was detailed, fanatically accurate and extremely tedious. Jacks felt himself nodding off. He jerked fully awake as he heard his name being assigned with Crusher to patrol the northernmost tip of Scotland, this being the area Crusher thought Black was most likely to come ashore.

Later, once they had all described the areas they had been looking at, Kellow pulled him to one side as they filed out. "Jacks, my office for a minute if you wouldn't mind."

They walked along the corridor in silence. Once inside his office, Kellow waved him to a chair and sat down himself. "Interesting work you've done today, Jacks, if a bit unfocussed."

Jacks shrugged. "It struck me as being odd. Black's the only person I've ever come across who appears to be relatively sane after all that time in Azkaban, and he's also the only person who's ever escaped. I just wondered if there was a connection."

Kellow smiled in a perfunctory manner. "Well as I seem to keep saying at the moment, we can always ask him when we catch him. But that's not what I wanted to talk to you about. I've assigned you to Crusher because although you two don't always get on, you do at least seem to understand him better than most people."

Oh great, Jacks thought, baby-sitting the office crackpot. He wasn't quite sure what to say, wasn't flattered in the least. However, "Thank you, sir" seemed expected. He tried to keep the irony out of his voice.

Kellow continued, "Now I don't think for a minute that you're going to find Black. Someone using the Dark Arts to escape isn't then going to jump in the water and start swimming. And, if he did try and swim for it, I think he's either dead or washed up on one of the islands. In any case, whatever Crusher may think, it's far too soon for him to have swum all the way from Azkaban to the coast. However, that's the stretch of coast Crusher wanted and it'll keep him out of mischief. So, you take him up there -a wizarding family live about midway between Wick and John O'Groats I think. Go there first and reassure them, then let Crusher wander along the beach for a few hours. But," and Kellow raised a hand, "if by some remote chance you actually catch Black, keep a rein on Crusher."

"How am I supposed to do that, sir?" Jacks demanded, thinking oh bloody wonderful!

"You'll do whatever is necessary," snapped Kellow. "And you'll make sure Crusher understands that neither of you are authorised to use the Killing Curse. Whatever that idiot Fudge may say, we want Black alive."