Breaking Out

by Janice Nix

  Why does he care anyway? This thing ain’t personal. It’s business.

  ‘Stedroy never said his sister was in business. I thought he managed it himself,’ said Adam.

  I shrugged.

  ‘We’re good mates, him and me,’ Adam went on, ‘and he never said a word about you.’ He was scowling.

  ‘I’m not close to my brother,’ I told Adam.

  ‘But you run his operation?’

  ‘We sometimes work together. Stedroy’s based at home.’

  ‘Right.’ He still stared at me suspiciously. What was this guy’s problem? I just wanted to leave Leicester. Now the van was loaded at last. This was it. Suddenly I was buzzing, hyper-aware of everything around me.

  ‘Let’s go,’ I said to Vernon. The last thing I saw in the mirror as I pulled out of the alley alongside the Apex was Adam. He was standing there quite still, shoulders hunched, face grim, staring after us. I’d have thought he would be pleased that we were leaving.

  Driving back south, I began to settle down. An hour went by. An hour and a half. We’d got onto the motorway at Junction 21, and now we were approaching 14, just seventy miles from London. I was still on high alert, watching carefully up front and behind. Everything seemed normal.

  Just relax.

  Then I glimpsed the helicopter high up in the sky, the size of an insect, following the traffic pouring south. It was very far away – but when I saw it, I clenched my hands tighter on the wheel.

  Keep calm. It’s nothing. It must be an accident somewhere up ahead. Or maybe they’re spotting for a stolen vehicle.

  I looked in the wing mirror. Now the sky was empty. Vernon hadn’t noticed anything. Better not to mention what I’d seen. I turned up the radio and fixed my eyes on the vehicles in front.

  Just keep driving. That chopper has nothing at all to do with us.

  Dusk began to fall. The first drivers were switching on their headlights. Another five miles passed. The exit sign for Milton Keynes came up.

  Suddenly, the ’copter was back. I heard its rotors’ thwack-thwack-thwack before I saw it. This time it was closer and much lower. It swept past us directly overhead.

  ‘What’s this?’ Vernon asked me, sharply.

  I peered upwards. The helicopter swooped to the right, away from the road. Just for a moment I felt a small, false hope. I clutched at it. Perhaps the ’copter’s gone.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ I said. I willed it to be true. Then, as I glanced sideways at Vernon, meeting his eyes for just a second, I saw how close he was to panic. His terror spread instantly to me.

  Hold on. Stay calm. Think. We don’t know for sure this is a problem. The ’copter might be nothing to do with us at all.

  I thought about dipping – edging up to a mark in the West End. If my heart was racing, it was as if the mark could sense an agitation in the air. I learned to slow my breathing to their rhythm – in and out, in and out – nice and easy. Always stay in control.

  ‘Relax, man,’ I said to Vernon. ‘Not much furth–’

  CHUKACHUKACHUKACHUKACHUK.

  With a pounding roar, the ’copter was back. This time it was right above our heads.

  ‘What the fuck?’ cried Vernon.

  In the wing mirror, I saw a bright blue wink in the traffic behind. Then there were two winks side by side. They were the flashing lights of police cars, closing on us fast. My mouth went bone dry. The thudding of my heart seemed to shake my whole body.

  ‘I think we’ve been busted,’ I said flatly. Vernon let out a dreadful wail and hid his face in his hands. No use asking him what we should do. The police cars had come right up behind us. Their headlights double-flashed, ordering us to stop. A third car, an unmarked brown Volvo, suddenly crossed in front of us and slowed sharply down. They forced us to a halt in the middle of the second lane.

  Pandemonium. Voices ordering us to get out of the van. We clambered out into the roar of the M1. Up above, the chopper was still circling. Around us, dusk was turning into night. Blue lights flashed in the black. As voices yelled from the darkness, I was blinded and confused.

  ‘Stay where you are!’

  ‘Keep still!’

  ‘Put your hands where I can see them!’

  ‘I said stay where you are!’

  Two of them grabbed Vernon, and two grabbed me. They handcuffed my arms behind my back.

  ‘You are under arrest for being concerned in the supply of a class B drug to another, contrary to section 28 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971.’

  We’re busted. How did this happen? What the fuck?

  The police drove us back up the M1 to Leicester in silence. In the police station, I was put in a cell on my own. Away from doors and windows, under artificial light, I lost all track of time. My brain felt hot-wired – tiny recollections of the day started sparking and jumping. Suddenly I realised, crystal clear, what I should have seen much earlier. Something had been wrong from the start. Right from that first phone call I made at Watford Gap.

  There’s been an informant. Someone dropped 10p.

  Why weren’t we arrested as soon as we left the Apex nightclub with the shipment in the van? Why did they let us get away? All that trouble and expense to chase after us, to scramble the helicopter. Why not just stop us leaving Leicester?

  There could only be one reason. When we got there, they weren’t ready. They thought we’d be arriving later on. Who could have told them that? It had to be Adam.

  I remembered his surprise when we turned up. How he’d tried to delay me with his coffee and his chit-chat. Why would he do that? Everyone – always – moved product on as quickly as they could.

  Suddenly, I saw what must have happened. He’d told the police that we were hours away from Leicester. Then we turned up early. Their plan to arrest us had gone wrong. I remembered my last glance back in the rear-view mirror – the grim, tense expression on Adam’s face. I’d walked into a trap.

  I remembered a question he had asked me that didn’t quite make sense. In my rush and anxiety, I’d let it just go by.

  ‘Oh,’ he’d said. ‘Right then. I expected Stedroy. So it’s your operation?’

  Why would he ask that? The whole entire time, he’d been probing me with questions. Why would he be digging for extra information? Why did it matter so much who I was?

  If Adam grassed, he must think he has a problem with me. But he doesn’t! We never even did business before. Why would he do this?

  Alone in my cell, my mind went on racing. How long did I have until the questioning started? How could I explain why I was driving that van?

  Keep it simple. I’ll say I thought the load was wooden carvings from St Vincent, imported by a friend. I picked them up as a favour. That’s all I know. There’s no other information I can give you.

  But Nadia. Oh my God. Nadia. I thought of our last conversation, and the words I had spoken.

  ‘No more jobs, Mom. No more drug deals. You’ve got to promise..’

  ‘Darling,’ I’d said to her. ‘I promise.’

  As I imagined how she’d feel and what she’d say when she heard of my arrest, a wave of despair rose through my body.

  ‘Your solicitor’s arrived now, Janice.’

  That meant it was already next morning. I’d had no sleep at all. I couldn’t think any more. There was nothing left to do here but play dumb.

  ‘Have you been in trouble before?’ Sasha Weller-Greene asked me.

  ‘Yes.’ My solicitor was listening, making careful notes. He looked like a school headmaster, tall and distinguished, with grey swept-back hair. He sat alongside me at the table, opposite two plain-clothes policemen.

  The questioning took hours. I stalled and kept on stalling. I knew it wasn’t working – nobody believed me. My only hope was that maybe – just maybe – they couldn’t link me directly to the shipment. I’d made so much effort to keep from leaving a trail. If they couldn’t make a definite connection, perhaps they might still let me go.

  ‘What were yo
u in trouble for?’

  ‘Possession of cocaine.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘It was nearly ten years ago.’

  ‘Nothing since?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What do you know about the crates in your van?’

  ‘I had a phone call from a friend, asking me to do him a favour. To go and pick them up.’

  ‘Did he say what they were?’

  ‘Art. Carvings, he said. Things he had imported.’

  ‘And you did this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Just like that – you drove all that way as a favour to a friend?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And your other friend, Vernon, who came with you?’

  ‘He’s not a friend. We only just met.’

  Mr Weller-Greene and one of the police officers exchanged glances.

  ‘So you didn’t know Vernon received an eighteen-year prison sentence for supplying drugs, but absconded last year? You weren’t aware of that?’

  ‘No.’ And it was true. I’d known nothing about it. Now I understood Vernon’s panic – his cry in the van as the police cars closed in. He’d known exactly how long he was going to be in jail.

  ‘What were you supposed to do with these carvings, when you got them to London?’ asked Mr Weller-Greene.

  ‘Phone my friend and ask where I should take them.’

  ‘Who were you going to phone?’

  ‘I can’t tell you.’

  ‘Janice, you must give us a name. It’s extremely important.’

  ‘I know it’s important, but I can’t.’

  There was a very long silence. I wondered just how obvious it was that I had no name to give. I had no story.

  ‘I can only help you if you tell me the truth,’ Mr Weller-Greene said at last.

  ‘I am telling you the truth.’

  He leaned back in his seat. Across the bridge of his nose was a frown line so sharp that it seemed to be cut into his face. I wondered suddenly how many times he’d sat here in this room, listening to clients telling stories as hopeless as the one I was giving to him now. He must have frowned each time, and that was how the line had grown so deep. All those desperate people just like me, who knew the game was up but still kept hoping that it wasn’t.

  ‘Janice,’ he said with a sigh, ‘you do understand that you’re in very serious trouble?’

  SEPTEMBER 2001 – HMP MORTON HALL, LINCOLNSHIRE

  ‘Take off your clothes,’ said the prison officer.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We’re doing a strip search.’

  ‘Take off everything?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Slowly I took off the smart black suit that I’d worn for my trial. I stepped out of my shoes and peeled off my stockings. I stood there in just my bra and pants.

  ‘Those off too. I’ve seen it all before, so don’t worry!’

  Her voice was bright and breezy. Perhaps she thought it helped.

  ‘Bend over,’ she instructed me. ‘Cough. Lift your tits.’

  What this was meant to tell me was that I was not a person any more. Not in there. I was not Janice any more. Not Nasty Girl. Not Mama J. I had no identity at all.

  13

  Alone time

  FEBRUARY 2015

  WHEN I FIRST MET Barbara, she was silent and closed off. A small, slight lady in her sixties, she worked as a carer. She used to keep an eye on Lynne, an elderly neighbour whose daughters lived some distance away. They’d been friends for years, and Barbara would drop round for cups of tea and do her housework and errands. Just recently, Lynne had developed mild dementia.

  Despite their friendship, Barbara wasn’t comfortable when Lynne asked her to withdraw £250 from her bank account. She insisted that Lynne’s daughters give permission. She also asked Lynne to sign the receipt she collected when she took the money out. Despite her dementia, Lynne seemed to understand, and she signed. This was the only time that Barbara took out any of Lynne’s money.

  Two months later, the police knocked on Barbara’s front door and told her they had come to search her flat. She was so surprised by this that one of the officers noticed it. ‘You don’t know why we’re here, do you?’ he said to her.

  Barbara didn’t know. But she quickly found out. In the last month, £4,000 had been drawn out of Lynne’s account in daily amounts of £250 – and now Lynne’s family had accused her of stealing it.

  The police search of Barbara’s flat found nothing. Barbara’s bank statements showed no unexplained payments. On CCTV footage from Lynne’s bank, Barbara appeared only once. That was on the day she had withdrawn £250 and Lynne had signed the receipt. There was no evidence at all that Barbara had committed a crime.

  Nevertheless, she was arrested and questioned. Then she was advised by a solicitor to plead guilty – that way, he said, she would receive a shorter sentence. If she contested the charge, she could expect four to five years inside for fraud. When she insisted she was innocent, he didn’t seem to care.

  Barbara was terrified. She did as the solicitor advised her. She was given eighteen months and sent to HMP Bronzefield. There she was so anxious and distressed that she constantly cried and couldn’t eat at all. Among her fellow inmates were some hard-looking cases and every single day she was convinced that she was going to be beaten up. She was too afraid to leave her cell, even for association or at mealtimes. She only stepped outside to fetch hot water in a flask to make tea.

  One day as she was sitting in her cell, the hardest of the hard cases stuck her head around the door. Barbara shrank away, convinced something violent was just about to happen. The woman walked over to Barbara, picked her up and carried her outside. She put her down at one of the lunch tables. Then to Barbara’s astonishment, she said: ‘You’ve not eaten for a week. You’re going to sit here now and have some lunch.’

  Barbara gave no trouble at all, and after just a few weeks she was moved to an open prison near Maidstone. She found it easier there than in the cells at Bronzefield, but the weeks of her sentence were passing very slowly. Now she felt less frightened, her anger was starting to grow. It was three very long and painful months before she was released on probation.

  I held private one-to-one meetings with women who needed them as often as I was able to. In one of those meetings, Barbara spoke to me at last. She swore to me again and again that she had stolen nothing from Lynne. She thought Lynne’s family must have been to blame – they had certainly had far more opportunities than she had. And she felt victimised by the police. On a low income and with access to Lynne’s bank account, how could she prove that she didn’t steal the money and then hide it? All the police ever wanted was to get a quick conviction. Now her guilty plea and her sentence drew a line under the case. She’d been branded a thief.

  As Barbara grew more confident, she told her story to the women’s group. The others were indignant, lifting her spirits by telling her that no one there thought she had done anything wrong. Being believed made such a difference. She stayed on long beyond the twelve weeks of her own attendance as our tea-maker and social secretary, helping new arrivals settle in. It was good to watch this woman, who had once sat silently staring at the floor, now greeting everyone, offering a drink, a smile and a word.

  I was glad that she felt better, but it wasn’t enough. There was no justice for Barbara.

  ‘I’ve got a criminal record now,’ she told the group. ‘It’s so unfair.’

  ‘How long for, Barb?’ someone asked.

  Barbara looked at me enquiringly.

  ‘Seven years,’ I answered. ‘After that, it becomes a spent conviction.’

  Barbara stared at the ground. To her, that seven years seemed very long.

  ‘They just decided to pin it on me,’ she said bitterly. ‘Criminal justice system? Don’t make me laugh. They don’t care much for justice, do they?’

  There’d been no chance of bail following my arrest on the M1. I was remanded in custody at HMP Pucklechur
ch, near Bristol, in March 2001. My trial took place in Leicester Crown Court six months later.

  In court I found out at last why Adam, the owner of the Apex nightclub, had informed. He hadn’t been paid for storing the previous shipment of weed. That was Stedroy’s fault, but Adam believed that I was in charge of the green channel. After all, when he asked me about it, I’d told him this myself.

  Scully had been right. He’d warned me that I didn’t know the men who’d set up that operation – their stories, their history, their dealings with each other. Who are they really? You don’t have that information, he’d said. And Glen had been right when he told me – the street ain’t stayed the same. I thought I could come back and take up where I’d left off. Instead, I got caught up in a drama that I didn’t understand.

  At my trial, I was sentenced to eight and a half years. At least this time no hotshot lawyer tried to tell me that it might not be so long. When I stood in the dock, I knew exactly what was coming. I was ready.

  As I walked along the corridor underneath the court, I saw the New York skyline on the little TV above the entry desk that always showed the news. One of the tall silver towers was pouring out smoke. Suddenly a plane, far too large and fast and low, came twisting right to left across the screen then vanished in a splatter of fire. The court jailer who was walking with me stopped.

  ‘Both towers! Oh my God!’ she said.

  ‘Isn’t that the World Trade Centre?’ I asked. ‘Is this an accident?’ The disaster seemed too massive to make sense.

  ‘They’re saying it’s a terrorist attack,’ replied the guard behind the desk. Other people were stopping now too. We stood in a puzzled little knot, all staring at the screen, all aghast.

  Then the jailer tapped me on the arm.

  ‘Come on now. In the cell.’ The world was in flames, but I wasn’t a part of that world now.

  On the first night of my sentence, a nurse brought me tablets. Tamazepam, she told me. I didn’t care what they were – I just took them. She said they’d help me sleep, but they didn’t. I wasn’t sure what the tablets really did, because I sat on my prison bed for hours and just stared into the half-light. I didn’t know what I felt or what I thought. Perhaps that was what Tamazepam was for – making everything go blank.