Staying Alive Read online

  ‘I have a sneaking feeling you would have to go through a legal procedure to achieve that.’ The look on his face told me I was right. ‘I want my solicitor and I’ve the impression you’re denying me access to legal representation and I think that comes within the Human Rights Act and PACE, so I suggest we stop this harassment now.’

  ‘I see. Have you anything you can tell us?’

  ‘Yes, one thing; you’ve revealed information to all the people in this room, two of whom are not cleared to have access to such information, that fingerprints found on Raymond Tidy are on the national database and the police have been denied access to the name of that person and that I, Jake Robinson, have been questioned about that. A leak of that information inside this prison may lead to speculation that my fingerprints are on a national database and the police cannot access my name. That form of speculation can put my life in danger. I’ll be taking action through the courts should there be any indication of an information leak. Not only that, if any legal action is taken against me I’ve witnesses in this room that I was denied access to legal representation, which I think you’ll know, being a barrister, would cause any prosecution to be thrown out.’ I wasn’t sure this was true but it was worth a try, as I knew I had the right to legal representation.

  Mr Brian Benton shook his head. ‘Given the situation Inspector Elliot now faces, I’ll grant him permission to arrest you for the murder of Raymond Tidy and take your finger prints.’

  ‘In the unlikely event that those prints are mine, you know why you cannot have access.’

  ‘Do we?’ said Benton. Surely he couldn’t have been stupid enough to come here without doing some background checks.

  ‘I was and I still am, until I’m dismissed, a member of MI5. I was transferred here from the USA due to a miscarriage of justice there and I expect to be released from here and again to resume my service.’

  ‘All that is immaterial given the facts that are presently in evidence.’

  ‘Mr Benton, you’re on very thin ice. I’ve two or three witnesses in this room to this conversation and irrespective of the findings with regards to fingerprints, any competent judge will throw them out and legal proceeding will be taken against you.’

  ‘I think not, Mr Robinson.’ He must have known he was breaking the law and more serious action could be taken against him.

  ‘And my protection against leakage?’

  He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head.

  ‘You’re setting a precedent and you know this is a breach of procedure and as such, it will render any court proceedings, should any result, null and void.’

  His square-cut, rimless glasses flashed in the light of the sun coming through the window as he raised his head to look at me. He then looked at Elliot and the governor and licked his lips. I read this as concern. He was operating under instructions and he knew what he was doing was wrong; not just wrong – it was illegal. He was no hero just a gofer and he couldn’t refuse the instructions given to him.

  ‘Sir, I’m an MI5 officer; I was an RMP captain. I know how to follow procedure. I know you’re breaking procedure. That means you’ve a reason to do that and you probably also know that that breach can get me killed in here. Tell your Family contact to talk to Mabry.’

  Benton looked at me. He was unsure and had a decision to make. I was struggling with who it could be and then it came to me. ‘Ha, it was Superintendent West, wasn’t it? Tell him if something happens to me in here and I survive, he’ll be dead and you better lock your doors.’ West and I had crossed swords on more than one occasion. He was a creature of the Family.

  ‘Robinson, I’ll not have those sorts of threats in my prison to an officer of the crown,’ said the governor.

  Elliot was just sitting watching this exchange, clearly not understanding what was going on.

  Benton said, ‘Oh, I think we’ll cross any bridge if any comes up.’ His voice didn’t reflect the words he was using. The man was a dolt.

  Elliot then arrested me, telling me I’d the right to remain silent, to have a friend or relative told of my arrest and to speak to a lawyer. I was also told that I was being arrested for the murder of Raymond Tidy with other details of date and place. My fingerprints were then taken. I knew I was in trouble as a match would be easy, worse still I was dead meat in the prison and I knew that was West’s little game. He was protecting The Family and none of this would ever see the light of day.

  Elliot said, ‘You may go now and I’ll interview you tomorrow with your solicitor present.’

  ‘I don’t think so, Inspector,’ I answered and left the office, accompanied by Senior Prison Officer James. She looked around and we walked on. She looked around again and then pressed a telephone in my hand.

  ‘I just knew you’d be trouble, Jake Robinson, and I think you need to make some phone calls or you might just spend the rest of your very limited life in here. Just let me have my phone back when you can and don’t get caught with it.’

  I just knew I’d been born under a lucky star.

  ‘I’d like to go to the library, ma’am.’

  ‘I’ll just escort you there then.’

  We walked into the library and Jacko the librarian was there as normal.

  ‘You, out, and nobody comes in, right?’ said my personal officer.

  Jacko’s eyebrows went up and it dawned on me what he must have thought. I had to smile and Officer James was about to disabuse him of his thoughts when I shook my head and her lips compressed.

  ‘You, out, and say nowt,’ she said.

  He left and she leaned against the door. I phoned Barrow and got Pauline. I told her the problem quickly and simply.

  ‘What do you suggest, Jake?’

  ‘One, the post mortem prints are replaced both at the police station and the mortuary. Two, any prints that might be on the body are cleaned off so the exercise can’t be repeated.’

  ‘Timescale?’

  ‘Immediate. Ideally tonight.’

  ‘Okay, Jake.’

  ‘Please get Barrow to ring Mabry to muzzle West and block a guy named Benton from the CPS. Meanwhile, I’ll just try to stay alive.’

  ‘Good as done, Jake.’

  ‘Thank you, Pauline.’

  I gave Officer James her phone back. ‘I just knew you were trouble, Jake Robinson. I just didn’t know how much. It’s okay. Mum’s the word.’ She now had the confirmation she wanted that I was undercover.

  ‘You better undo the top button of your jacket.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Bit of confirming realism for Jacko.’

  ‘Fuck off, Jake Robinson,’ she said as she undid her top button and we waited ten minutes. We were both laughing when she opened the door and said to Jacko, ‘Say nothing if you want to retain your balls.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said, looking quite concerned.

  ‘You may be in time to see the second half, ma’am,’ I told her. We then parted and went our separate ways.

  22

  Maniac was still in my class. He was still switching between personalities. I understood why his classmates called him Maniac; he did have some weird ideas and they were fairly consistent. He would talk to Joe, though. I had asked him who Joe was but then Joe sometimes disappeared and Maniac could become aggressive because I had driven him away. The other class members had learned not to talk to Maniac at all when he was with Joe. I now felt it was a multiple personality syndrome but apparently the psychiatrist didn’t think so. Correction: the HMP psychiatrists didn’t think so but the guy currently treating him did. I had witnessed a couple of episodes when Joe apparently controlled him and at other times Maniac just wasn’t there in my classroom at all, but Joe was. The fascinating thing was that Joe could read better than Maniac, was co-operative and logical. He would respond to questions and participate in discussions more logically and with better thought-out arguments than Maniac. In fact, I, and the class members, liked Joe better than Maniac, but Joe would only appear about tw
ice a week and his appearances were random. It seemed that Joe sometimes controlled Maniac. It was, or seemed, that they were both there. It was odd watching and listening to two personalities in one body arguing. Usually, Maniac would be disruptive – he would shout and argue, become angry and throw things – and Joe would turn up and a battle would ensue between them. Sometimes Joe won and Maniac would settle down and become Joe and at other times, Joe would leave and we had to cope with Maniac being unreasonable or sulking or storming out and we might not see him again that day, or he would return as the ‘normal’ Maniac. Mind you, normal Maniac wasn’t a normal, rational person. He would hear things that we couldn’t hear, or he would just lose interest or if asked a question he would argue about it or argue with another class member. He also had or seemed to have hallucinations. I imagine that all classes have a difficult person but this was way outside of difficult.

  My conversation with the doctor wasn’t a lot of help. The medics had tried him on drugs since our first discussions but they’d apparently been worse than not drugging him. The HMP psychiatrist was even less help. He smiled and nodded and gave the distinct impression that I was the one with the mental problem not Maniac. I talked to a couple of the other instructors who had had Maniac in their groups and they just told me to get rid of him, but that was easier said than done as he had turned up in their classes until he decided to move on, which is how I had ended up with him.

  He had now started the new treatment and I was supposed to keep a record of his behaviour. It did seem to have changed, but not a lot. It seemed he had bonded with my class, so if there was a group of them he would just join them; he didn’t seem to recognise that he wasn’t wanted. This had the effect that my class members became close, as other prisoners would leave them when Maniac turned up. Teaching was tough enough but with Maniac in the class it could sometimes be purgatory, but things were improving. I had a feeling his behaviour was improving and I was on the point of reporting the improvement when it all went pear-shaped.

  It was a Wednesday. Wednesdays for me were usually the day of the week where if things were going to go wrong they usually would. I was with the usual crew at our table when Maniac came up to the servery. I just knew things were going to go wrong. I could read him. It was the way he looked, his eyes, the way he moved, nothing exaggerated, nothing specific just little indications. Pansy was serving soup. As you might guess, he was called Pansy because he was a pansy. Maniac snatched the ladle from him and hit him on the head. The duty officer went to Pansy’s aid and he was attacked. Prisoners moved back; why should they get involved with a nutter? I looked at Arty and we went to sort it. I tried talking to him.

  ‘Come on, Maniac, we need the ladle for the soup.’

  ‘Fuck off, Captain. They’ve poisoned it.’ Here we go into delusion land again.

  ‘Have they? Who poisoned it?’

  ‘That Pansy. He wants us to catch HIV and die of AIDS.’

  ‘Who told you that then, Maniac?’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What does Joe say?’

  ‘Joe ain’t here.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you ask him?’

  Maniac stood still; he was puzzled, lost. Two prison officers moved in and he just surrendered to them. He was escorted away and so was I. I sat in a waiting room for about half an hour then Senior Officer James arrived and I was wheeled in to see the governor. The doc was also there and the two officers who had turned up and led Maniac away.

  The governor asked what I had done to provoke Prisoner Arkwright. I outlined what had happened and that Maniac was under control when the prison officers arrived. I also suggested they talked to Pansy and the downed officer. This wasn’t greeted with enthusiasm. However, after a few more questions, I was dismissed. Senior Officer James came with me.

  ‘You can be a real dick, Jake,’ she said.

  ‘Why? What did I do?’

  ‘One: you got involved. Two: it seems you sorted the problem or at least took the sting out of Maniac. Three: you told it how it was.’

  ‘How’s that wrong?’

  ‘Jake, this is a prison. You’re a prisoner. You aren’t supposed to be capable of taking initiatives let alone successful initiatives.’

  ‘But Maniac could have done a lot of damage with that ladle.’

  ‘Yes and he has done things like this before and we’ve handled it using brute force and beaten Maniac to pulp, so you’ve made the system look stupid.’

  ‘But he’s mentally ill.’

  ‘You know that, I know that, the bloody doctor knows that, we know he shouldn’t be in here but the law doesn’t understand that, so the governor plays the game and you come waltzing in and bugger the whole thing up.’

  ‘You have to be joking.’

  ‘No. Maniac killed two women and a kid. He was tried for murder and found guilty but the docs don’t know what’s wrong with him. He was just a bit weird at his trial so he got fifteen years, as he pleaded guilty, because Joe told him to. He was regarded as responsible for his actions.’

  ‘Christ, there has to be a better system than this.’

  ‘No, he is, as far as the law is concerned, as sane as you or I, but I’m not too sure about you and I must be nuts to do this job, but the psychs said he knows right from wrong so he’s sane. Christ, you know the law, Jake; you were a policeman.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right.’ I did know that in criminal and mental health law sanity is a legal thing not a medical thing; therefore, a person can be acting under profound mental illness and yet be sane, and can also be ruled insane without an underlying mental illness.’

  ‘So what happens now?’

  ‘Now we forget the whole thing.’

  ‘And Maniac?’

  ‘He’ll turn up tomorrow. You’ll run your class tomorrow and hopefully, he won’t hit anybody with a ladle and if he kicks off and you’re around you’ll walk away. We’ll beat seven bells out of him, stick him in the sick bay to heal and recover and turn him loose on the rest of you again, got it?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Good.’

  23

  Harry and I were receiving too much deference. The inmates of this prison knew I’d killed Ratty and they knew I was going to get away with it. It also seemed that the information about my prints hadn’t leaked or the reaction to me would be very different. What I hadn’t recognised was that the killing gave me a lot of respect and I’d gained that respect without exerting any violence to force compliance of my wishes. I’d also successfully gone up against Tug Wilson in front of a large audience and that had knocked the prestige of the present power regime. I hadn’t of course expressed my wishes but there were a lot of prisoners who wanted the reign of Mr Wharton to end. The problem was that Mr Wharton was becoming concerned. The fact that we were now known as Captain and Sergeant was also a threatening factor for Mr Wharton. Tug Wilson guarded him. Tug was nearly as big as Harry with a reputation as a sadistic, homosexual bully. I was surprised I’d taken him. In fact, surprise had given me the edge. Mr Wharton had now recruited two other minders, Pete Costello and Marty Clifford, probably because of the dining room incident with Tug. These two had been muscle for hire in the prison but now they were aligned with the current power structure. Yes, I thought, Harry and I were vulnerable.

  It was a Friday morning. Harry and I went to breakfast. Seemed a normal day. We joined the end of the queue to the servery. Then the two guys who were chatting in front of us went quiet and moved out of the queue, and in behind us. One of the group of three now in front of us then became aware that we were there. He brought that to the attention of the other two and all three moved out of the queue and joined behind us.

  Harry said very quietly, ‘Say and do nothing, Captain.’

  We moved rapidly down the queue and we were served with very generous helpings of the things we chose. Some people, like Mr Wharton and Tug Wilson, always walked to the front of the queue, as did one or two others like Dad. Da
d was the oldest prisoner and wasn’t only respected because he was an old man, a fine man, but he was also a frail man. I was determined we wouldn’t adopt the arrogance of the few like Mr Wharton and Tug Wilson who regarded it as their right to queue jump. I had an urge to thank the people who moved aside for us but I recognised Harry’s instruction to say and do nothing was a wise one. If we said nothing then it hadn’t happened and if it hadn’t happened then there was no reason to say anything.

  As we left the servery with our trays, Mr Wharton and Tug Wilson were standing looking at us. I presume it was supposed to be some sort of threat.

  I smiled and said, ‘Good morning gentlemen.’ Tug went to step forward but Mr Wharton just put his arm in front of him.

  ‘Good morning, Jake.’ He had a quiet voice.

  This was the first time I had been up close to him. He was in the usual orange suit but he was, as always, wearing a brown trilby hat set towards the back of his head like Frank Sinatra. He wasn’t a tall man but bulky with a large head and fat lips. On the wrist of the arm he had put in front of Wilson was a large gold watch with a heavyweight gold wrist strap. He held out his right hand to be shaken. I took it and we shook hands. On this wrist he had a very heavy gold chain. His brown eyes held mine. He smiled.

  ‘I think we may need to have a conversation soon, Jake.’ And he let go of my hand and turned away.

  We went to the table where we usually sat. There were three spaces.

  ‘Can we join you?’ I asked. This had been my routine learned in the States. Always be polite. One of the seated men went to leave.

  ‘Flash, you haven’t finished your breakfast.’ I smiled.

  He sat down again. They were all looking at me. There was uncertainty in their expressions.

  ‘Fellas, today’s Friday and it isn’t really different from yesterday and tomorrow will be much the same as today. I’m the same, Sergeant’s the same and you’re the same so let’s do the same things as before.’

  They were all thinking, mulling over what I’d said.