Staying Alive Page 7

  I found the C-Wing corridor and set off down it. There were no numbers so I counted the cells with some trepidation. I avoided looking into the cells as I passed them. These were the private living quarters of prisoners. Nevertheless, it’s impossible not to have glimpses of the interiors. The cells I did see had posters with nudes, occasionally crucifixes, TVs, some had sheets tenting out the bunks and some were singles. What struck me was that even though the prisoners had cells and weren’t in a dormitory, as I’d been in training, they weren’t individual cells as in Parchman Farm, so privacy was in short supply. Most of the cell doors were open and nobody was inside, so not only was there no privacy but also no security of possessions. Then I thought; what could you steal from a man with nothing? Then the thought struck me that the little they did have would be even more valuable to them.

  I soon found the corridor I needed and Cell 24. The bunk bed was, as I was to find out, typical prison issue: no sharp corners, rusty and cold. The cell was sparse; it had a sink and a toilet, a table and a wall-mounted television. There was even a remote control – wow, modern technology! It was so cramped, however, that standing at the sink my back was against the bed.

  In the top bunk was an Afro-Caribbean guy named Lenny who was due to visit the magistrate’s court the next day for shoplifting and resisting arrest.

  I’d purloined a book when being interviewed (I had a feeling that purloining something is much less of a crime than stealing), so at least I had something to read. It was South Riding and the prison officer who watched me nick it didn’t mind as it belonged to a female prison officer who had put it on the desk when she went to get the paperwork. I sat on the bunk at the cell door end to get some light and started to read.

  ‘It will be lockdown soon,’ said Lenny.

  ‘Okay, and?’

  ‘Oh, nothing.’

  So that meant there was something but he wasn’t going to tell me. On guard, Jake.

  A shadow passed across my book and a very large, fat man stood in the doorway. I looked up.

  ‘Oow-er you?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m Jake.’

  ‘Got yer breakfas’ pack?’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  He laughed. ‘Give it me.’

  ‘No.’

  There was a click as he flicked open a blade. ‘Wot cheu say?’

  ‘I said no, Fatso. Put that toy away or I’ll stuff it up your arse.’

  There was a look of disbelief on his face.

  ‘Wot cheu say?’ He took a step forward. Mistake. He had led with his left foot so he was vulnerable and my right fist was driven upwards and hit him in the testicles. He cried out in pain and clasped himself, dropping his blade. As I stood, driving up through my legs, I hit him in the throat with my fist. He staggered backwards through the door and collapsed, gasping for air and choking in the passageway. I threw the blade down the passageway and closed the door. Lenny was standing hard against the end wall and he was a paler shade of black. He mumbled some words that I interpreted as ‘you can’t do that’.

  Some minutes later I heard a shemozzle outside and five minutes later the door opened. A prison officer stood there.

  ‘What happened?’ he demanded.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Ten minutes ago.’

  ‘Ask me another; that one’s too hard for me.’

  ‘Smart arse,’ he exclaimed as he slammed the door and locked it.

  This was not a good prison: overcrowded, two in single cells, long time in lockdown where you eat, drink, wash, go to the toilet, watch TV and sleep. In fact this was primitive, lacking privacy and was unsanitary.

  Morning came and I’d slept reasonably well. I’d acclimatised quickly to the odd smell of this prison. I already understood that all prisons have their own smell. This one was just old, the ubiquitous smell of cabbage was old cabbage, the smell of ancient brickwork permeated other smells such as that of sweaty bodies and faeces, but the biggest impact was the draughts. No matter where you went there was a draught. It would cut across the floor and numb your ankles, or slice horizontally across a room and paralyse your back or descend vertically down and give you a stiff neck. The drafts had to have been designed into this building. It was just not possible that they occurred naturally; their temperature was at least 10 degrees below ambient temperature.

  At ten in the morning I was taken once again to the governor’s office and Sarah Sands was there. I’d heard of Sarah but never met her. I knew she’d done the legwork on getting me back to the UK, working for Keith Todd, my solicitor, and Sir Nicolas. I didn’t know if she knew I was undercover but that would be buried deep. I knew her mother was Indian and her father was English. The whole family apart from her were in the medical professions. Father and one brother were surgeons, mother and other brother GPs and a younger sister was a clinical psychologist in the NHS. She was bucking the trend being in the legal profession. She had a beautiful skin colouring, a bronze that shone with health, long black shining hair and a true size twelve, slim, attractive figure. A most unlikely solicitor, but that’s my prejudice. She had a reputation for being as sharp as a razor, incredibly detail-conscious and disciplined. Hence, my secret was safe.

  As I walked in she stood, held out her hand and said, ‘I think we’ve got this little mishap sorted, Mr Robinson. Some member of a committee looking at the welfare of prisoners had noted the anomaly of you coming back to the UK and being sent to Peasmarsh when you live in London and did her do-gooding bit, and a civil servant obliged her by you being transferred to Brixton.’

  I wasn’t sure about Sarah’s phraseology that a civil servant had obliged the do-gooding woman, but she was from the upper reaches of society.

  ‘They’d overlooked the fact that the American authorities had insisted that you were to be imprisoned in a high security establishment, a friend of yours is already in Peas-marsh and the committee had already approved you being sent there to be with that friend. The fact that he is an Afro-Caribbean seems to have weighed heavily with the committee members at the time so the chairman, who we spoke to, wasn’t enthralled that you’d been transferred and he was quite annoyed that such an action had been taken without him being informed. We requested the name of the committee member who instigated your transfer but the chairman preferred not to tell us. However, he said he didn’t understand how this committee member would know about you coming to the UK from America. He found this most strange. The governor has put the transfer action in place.’

  Well that was that then. I’d said nothing, the governor had said nothing and all was hunky dory.

  ‘Thank you, Sarah. May you live long and prosper.’

  She laughed. ‘I didn’t know you were a trekkie.’

  ‘Well, you have to do something to keep out of prison.’

  She had a beautiful smile: white, even, attractive teeth and a beautiful shade of lipstick that suited her skin colouring. She held out her hand and I took it.

  ‘Keith said I’d be looking after your interests and he’s given me a deep briefing. Goodbye, Jake.’ She turned to the governor, held out her hand and said, ‘Goodbye and thank you, Governor.’

  He said his goodbye as she headed for the door. Job done.

  ‘Well, Robinson, you’re somebody that definitely needs watching. I expected a month of wrangling and your young friend sorted it out in a matter of an hour. I don’t expect to see you again and you’ll be transferred out of here in about an hour.’

  Alarm bells were ringing in my head. Somebody somewhere didn’t want me in Peasmarsh and had pulled the prison move. Not a very smart move, as they must have known it couldn’t work, so it was a junior person in The Family. What it told me was that The Family knew what I was doing. Well, Mabry knew, but I thought he was on my side in this, so where was the problem? It must have been one of his staff or it could have been Superintendent West. Screwing me would be something he would want to do.

  ‘Thank you, Governor.’

  I was taken back to
my cell, packed my gear and sat waiting for the transport out of there. It was a great relief when it arrived.

  12

  My arrival at Peasmarsh Prison was similar to the training simulation but nowhere near as traumatic. The approach was along a new arrow-straight concrete road in a bus that had picked me up at the station. It seemed as if this was a normal bus converted to carry prisoners. It was a small bus of ten specially constructed seats on each side, each one carrying one prisoner. I had a belt locked around my waist that had a chain to a lock on the aisle floor. I knew it could be released electrically because the guards (oops, sorry – prison officers) tested it before we left. Two prison officers and a driver staffed it.

  My four fellow passengers didn’t look any different from any other travellers on a bus. I knew the one forward on the left was very dangerous because he was also bound in handcuffs. I’d seen his picture in the papers: Marvin O’Brian, late of Strangeways, where he killed two prison officers, one of them female, whom he was trying to rape. He didn’t look dangerous but apparently he’d a string of rapes and murders to his credit. A medium-sized man, wavy fair hair starting to recede; it was difficult to believe he had killed two adults with his bare hands and it took a number of others to restrain him even after he’d been hit with a Taser. I was under the impression that a Taser causes strong muscle contractions and incapacity but apparently this guy went on fighting. But that was just a newspaper report and it was difficult to believe what they said. The snippet on me in the Mirror that morning said that I was a war hero who killed in self-defence and the court in the US was wrong to convict me as the plea bargain was illegally obtained. It seemed that newspaper reports about me were so different to create confusion in the public eye but in each I was a hero.

  It was drizzling and the dirty windows of the prison transport were streaked and distorted everything we saw, but still the prison could be seen in the distance across the open moor: a three-storey concrete eyesore. Aesthetics weren’t in the mind of the architect when he designed this monstrosity. I could remember the protestors objecting to the prison being an outrage. If it had been browns and greens it would have disappeared, but grey concrete was a blemish even in this bleak, less than attractive moorland. As we approached, I noted that there were no watchtowers and a wire fence surrounded the prison: just a simple wire-link fence about 8-feet high, topped with barbed wire. It seemed to be designed to keep people out rather than to keep anybody in. I was surprised. I thought that an insurmountable outer fence was a requirement of a high security prison, particularly as I’d been briefed that Peasmarsh was primarily for Category A prisoners who were highly dangerous to the public or to national security if they were to escape. Me, I was just a miserable Category B: a prisoner for whom the highest security conditions weren’t necessary, but the powers that be just didn’t want me to get out. Perhaps the fence was there because the public and protestors were more dangerous than the prisoners. You had to keep the prisoners safe from the local forces of protest, you know.

  As we approached the gate I noticed it was open and the grounds inside the fence to the left of the gate were like allotments with men working them. They must have been sodden working in this continual drizzle, but they didn’t seem to be concerned. Inside the fence it looked like there was a tartan track and at intervals, there were obstacles such as steps up and down, parallel bars, a high bar and other apparatus, so this was an exercise track. This was like the training establishment in the States. I had also seen them at Stresa in Italy, but I was surprised to see one in a British prison.

  There were signs facing the outside announcing that there were guard dogs, so I think dogs were a warning to protesters. There were also floodlights and CCTV cameras at regular intervals, and I was told later that there were movement sensors that triggered the equipment and traced the movement, so technology rather than physical barriers was the security methodology. There was also a helicopter pad. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to cross this boggy moor at night where a helicopter with infrared would find it easy to pick you up.

  The induction was just like the training: shower, strip search, peer up your bum, but interestingly none of the prison officers actually touched me; apparently, this was an EU regulation: human rights or some such. If they couldn’t see something stuck up your bum they couldn’t take any action and, if they needed to, all they could do was park you until it came out naturally – bit different from the States. I had a perfunctory medical that was more questioning than any real inspection, and then received my prison clothing. I was given a natty blue number but Anil Mouratoglou, a terrorist bomber, was in a fetching orange outfit that, I was reliably informed, by overhearing the officer giving him his suit, glowed in minimal light and some form of detector strips were incorporated in it so if he escaped he would have to do it in the nude. It was amazing how some people got their kicks. Each of us also had a tracker. This was a new one on me. Mine was on my wrist like a bulky watch. The orange-suited prisoners had a second one on their ankles. Mine just tracked where I was at any one time, so if I was being looked for I could be found. A record was kept of where Cat A prisoners had travelled in the prison and computer software analysed their movements. I understood that some dogooding team was conducting a test case claiming this was an infringement of human rights. I have never been quite clear why killing somebody or their family being deprived of a relation wasn’t an infringement of human rights.

  I was shown to a booth that was about 2 by 2 metres and open on one side, with walls that went up about 2 metres and a ceiling way above that. It contained a table and two chairs, one on either side of the table. Sitting on one of the chairs was a large, tough-looking female prison officer. She was a bit overweight and her red hair was cut like a Second World War German soldier’s helmet. It looked solid: probably sprayed with fibreglass resin so that it was a helmet. She wore no makeup or any adornment except a plain prison officer’s uniform: pale-blue shirt with epaulets containing a pip and below that a crown, a black skirt, black stockings and regulation laced shoes. This wasn’t a lady who had any regard for her appearance; her clothes just sort of sat on her bulky, muscular frame. I’d read that female prison officers had been warned not to appear sexy; no chance with this one. Perhaps she was James Bond’s antagonist Rosa Klebb, but she wasn’t knitting with poison-tipped knitting needles. Perhaps she’d a poisoned knife blade concealed in those heavy shoes. No, that was wrong; with red hair and a poison blade in the toe of her shoe she must have been Irma Bunt, and Irma Bunt wasn’t killed so this is where she had turned up. I laughed at my make-believe and the prison officer looked at me strangely. She may have thought I was nuts and, as I was to find out, a number of prisoners were.

  ‘Please sit down, Jake. I’m Senior Officer James and I’m your personal officer.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. What’s a personal officer?’ I could smell her. It was a mixture of carbolic soap and a body spray called Goddess that the housekeeper who cleaned my flat twice a week used. It came in very large spray cans and I had assumed it was for killing insects. Perhaps I was wrong; on the other hand… Senior Officer James was clearly a practical woman.

  ‘If you’ve any problems, if you’ve any questions, I’m the person to ask. If you find yourself in trouble I’ll be your spokesperson, if you feel you need a spokesperson. I’ve your personal file here.’ She pointed at a file about half an inch thick. ‘And I’m surprised that you ended up breaking the law. It says you killed an FBI special agent, but it’s a bit vague, very surprising that. How did this come about?’

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘So that I’ve an understanding of you and the reason you’re here.’

  ‘Are all prisoners asked these questions?’

  ‘No, it’s unusual, but you’re very unusual. A commissioned army officer with a psychology degree, served in the RMP with what appears to be a distinguished record, a medal for bravery, seconded to MI5, goes to the USA and kills somebody, not
just anybody but an FBI special agent and as far as I can tell from the information here, no motive.’

  ‘And what does that tell you?’

  ‘I was hoping you’d tell me.’

  ‘Will I end up in solitary if I tell you to fuck off?’

  ‘Are you telling me to fuck off?’

  ‘No I’m seeking information. You said if I’d any questions to ask you, so that’s what I’m doing.’

  We sat looking at each other. ‘Are you going to answer my question?’

  ‘Yes. You won’t go to solitary for telling me to fuck off.’

  ‘Let me ask a different question then.’ I paused, waiting for permission.

  ‘Go on then.’

  ‘Tell me your real role here.’

  ‘I told you I’m a senior officer.’

  ‘And my ol’ man’s a dustman. Not your apparent role, your real role.’

  ‘What makes you think I’m not a senior officer?’

  ‘Well that may be your rank but that isn’t your role, is it?’

  ‘And what on earth makes you think that?’

  ‘One: your pronunciation. Two: your syntax. Three: the structure of your questions. Four: the questions you’re asking.’

  ‘Yes, if we’ve a strange one I’m the person that becomes their personal officer.’

  ‘Just you?’

  ‘No, there are two of us.’

  ‘Your degree?’

  ‘I don’t –’

  ‘Bollocks.’

  She looked at me. She was evaluating me. She’d a decision to make and she could only make a decision in the light of her role here and her evaluation of me after seeing very limited information about me. This was an educated woman. She was bright, aware, confident, and she had purpose. She had to make a decision. If she lied to me and I recognised the lie then confidence would be broken and she needed my trust if she was going to achieve her goal, but at the same time she knew I knew that she wasn’t what she pretended to be. Could I trust her if she told others her doubts about me – and I could feel she had doubts that I was the genuine article? I held her eyes and gently tipped my head to my right. She answered my question.