“Is he a pouter?”
“What?”
“Is he a pouter? Does he pout at you when he’s annoyed?” Laura laughed at my question. It was almost, but not quite, a cackle. In another life, I’d have described it as a filthy laugh, but that didn’t seem to fit given the circumstances. I’d not heard her laugh like that before, but it was a sound I would love to hear more of.
“That’s enough, I need to go.” She was still smiling though. I could tell from her voice. “We’ll talk soon, okay?”
“Okay,” I replied, realising that I didn’t want the conversation to end.
“Bye, bye, bye,” Laura said in quick succession. The next thing I knew I was listening to a dial tone. Smiling at the memory of Laura’s laugh, I put the phone down, got to my feet and banged on the door.
“How did that go?” Mr McLoughlin asked as we walked back to my cell. If it had been any other prison officer, I would have kept silent. His hard stare had disappeared, and I wondered again what all that was about.
“Pretty damn good, to be honest,” I replied. “That was one of my lawyers. She’s taking my appeal paperwork to the Court of Appeal in London. The judge signed it off.”
“Really?” Mr McLoughlin stopped and looked at me. “You serious?”
“Yeah,” I replied. “Straight up.” To my surprise, he smiled. I don’t think I’d ever seen him smile before. It changed the shape of his face and made him look like a different man. A much nicer one, to be honest.
“That’s great news, Gareth,” he said. I wondered for a moment if he was taking the piss, but looking at him, I didn’t think he was. “You’ll probably get shipped out if it goes through. Back to Norwich, I’d imagine.”
“Seriously?” I replied. “That’d be magic if that happened.” Mr McLoughlin carried on walking down the corridor to the door that led back to the general population.
“That’s what normally happens,” he said. “You’ll get ghosted back to the original area, even if it’s a lower cat. You’ve got a good record, so I can’t see the Guv’nor objecting.” Mr McLoughlin opened the door at the end of the corridor and stood back to let me go through it before he locked it behind me. “Have a good afternoon,” he called through the observation window in the green metal door.
I stood with my hands on the bannister of the walkway and looked down at the prison wing in front of me. There was a bustle about the place, which was normal during ‘sosh’, or social time. I watched as prisoners hustled each other, doing deals, sorting out arrangements. If, and it was a huge if, if I got out of here, I would never be coming back. Not to this prison, not to any prison.
All I needed to do was to get out first.
29
I was lying awake on my bed when the note got pushed under the door. I’m not sure what time it was, but it was late. More than likely it was early. I’d not been sleeping well at all for the last couple of weeks and had been tossing and turning for what felt like hours when I noticed a shadow pass across the observation window of my cell door. The prison officers looked in at random intervals anyway, presumably to make sure that no one had hung themselves after lights out, but this time the shadow stayed in front of the window for longer than normal. I heard a noise at the bottom of the door, and when I looked up, I could see a single sheet of paper had been pushed under it.
Swinging my legs off the bed, I got to my feet to retrieve the note. I didn’t have to worry about disturbing Mac as he was back on the hospital wing. Coughing up blood again. I’d never once seen him cough up anything other than thick phlegm, but he was insistent. Besides, he’d said, the food was better on the hospital wing. Although we bickered like a husband and wife most of the time, I missed him.
I knew some of the prisoners preferred to be in solitary, even to the point of staging fights to get assessed as high risk and locked up, but I didn’t think I’d manage that for long. I’d even heard a story about a lad who wet the bed all the time just to get his own cell, but I’d heard it from so many people I figured it was an urban legend. I picked the paper up off the floor and held it to the light coming in the observation window so I could read it.
“Oh for God’s sake,” I muttered as I read the text. It was an instruction to pack my things up and be ready to move at lights up tomorrow morning. That didn’t give me a chance to speak to anyone before I left. They always shipped prisoners out before the doors to the cells opened. I wouldn’t be able to say goodbye to the few mates I’d made in Whitemoor, and that included Mac. The instruction didn’t say where I was being moved to, just that I was being moved. “What am I supposed to pack my stuff into, anyway?” I said under my breath, looking around the cell. In reality, my personal possessions would fit into a shoebox.
One of the main advantages of being ‘ghosted’ out of Whitemoor was that Gejza or whatever his name was would be miles away. I didn’t doubt he could find out where I had gone, but it put at least one degree of separation between me, the Romanian, and his gorillas. I still hadn’t worked out what I would do about that problem, but perhaps being moved away would buy me some time until I’d come up with something. Lying back down on the bed, I stuffed the paper under my pillow. I stared at the bottom of the bunk above me, knowing I wouldn’t be able to get to sleep now. I closed my eyes anyway.
The next time I opened them it was morning, and my cell door had just been unlocked. I’d drifted off to sleep after all. With a start, I realised that I’d not packed any of my stuff. Wherever I was going, I didn’t want to leave any of it behind. I pulled the picture of Jennifer off the wall of the cell, trying to rub the congealed homemade glue off the back. It was made out of coffee whitener mixed with a dab of water and was as strong as superglue, but it messed the photos up for good. It was my one remaining photograph of her. I looked at it and frowned. I’d have to get Andy to send me another one in and hope it got through the postal system intact.
“You sorted, then?” a voice shouted through the open door. It wasn’t Mr McLoughlin, but one of the other prison officers. Mr Philips, I think his name was. “Come on, I haven’t got all day.” I moved about the cell, trying to get as much of my stuff together as I could.
“Have you got a box or anything?” I asked. “Please?” I heard a muttered swearword in response and a few seconds later a battered shoebox came sailing through the door. I dumped my few possessions into it and picked it up before leaving the cell without a second look.
Mr Philips was standing on the walkway outside my cell with a look of complete indifference on his face.
“Follow me,” he said as he walked off down the walkway. I set off after him, listening to the jeers and catcalls that always accompanied anyone getting moved with almost no notice. I ignored most of them until I walked past one of the cells and heard my name being called out. I looked across and could just see one of my friends from the library, Jimmy something or other, armed robbery. He was looking through the observation window of his cell door.
“Good luck Gareth,” he said. “Wherever you end up.”
“Mate, can you tell Mac goodbye from me when he gets back?” I slowed my pace as much as I dared. “Tell him I’ll be in touch, yeah?”
“Yeah, course mate,” Jimmy replied. “No worries.”
“Come on, Dawson,” I heard Mr Philips shouting at me. “You don’t want to miss the happy bus.” His words were followed by a chorus of laughs and jeers that echoed around the wing.
I followed Mr Philips through the wing and out of the locked doors that separated us from the outside world. As I stepped out into the courtyard, I shivered. It was freezing, a typical cold November morning. I looked up at the sky, enjoying for a moment a different view of it than from the exercise yard, but it was just as grey and dismal. I followed the prison officer towards the Serco Sweatbox, as the white prison vans were known. Ironic really, as the only time you ever sweated in them was in the middle of summer. The rest of the year they were bloody freezing. I took my place in the metal cage in the bac
k of the van and sat on the hard metal seat as Mr Philips locked both my cage and the rear door of the van. There were eight compartments in the back of the van, each one separated by metal bars. An opening in the door of each one allowed you to put your hands through to have handcuffs put on or taken off. I leaned back against the bars, wincing at the cold of the metal I was sitting on, and waited.
It was an hour, maybe an hour and a half later when the door to the back of the van was reopened. I was sitting in the same position, arms wrapped around me to try to keep warm. I felt the van’s suspension dip a little and saw Mr McLoughlin step into the back of the van.
“I heard you were being shipped out at Morning Prayers,” he said. I had to think for a moment before I worked out he must be talking about their morning briefing session. Not many of the prison officers struck me as churchgoers. “So, I thought I’d stop by and say goodbye.” That was a surprise. I got to my feet to speak to him.
“Thanks, Mr McLoughlin,” I said. “I appreciate that.” He shook his head.
“Now don’t get soppy, Gareth,” he smiled. “No tears, you hear?” I grinned back at him, and we stood there in silence for a few seconds. “Anyway, I would say it’s been a pleasure, but I’m sure you wouldn’t agree with me.”
“I think the pleasure’s been all Her Majesty’s,” I said, and we both laughed. The next thing Mr McLoughlin did really surprised me. He put his hand through the slot in the door and into my cell, palm extended. As I shook his hand, I realised that this was the first actual contact I’d had with any of the prison officers in Whitemoor.
“You don’t know where I’m going, do you?” I asked him, deciding to take advantage of the situation. He smiled back at me, and again I reflected on how different he looked with a smile on his face.
“I’m not allowed to tell you where you’re going,” he replied. “I don’t understand why, but rules are rules.”
“That’s fine, I get that,” I said, feeling bad for putting him on the spot.
“I’m sure wherever it is, it’s a fine city.” My smile widened at his words. At every entrance to the city of Norwich was a sign proclaiming it as ‘a fine city’. I was going home.
Mr McLoughlin let go of my hand and walked towards the back door.
“Thank you, Mr McLoughlin,” I called after him. He stopped and said something that I didn’t quite catch. “Sorry, I missed that?”
“My name’s Richard,” he said. “I said my name’s Richard.”
30
Compared to Whitemoor, HMP Norwich was like a Holiday Inn hotel. Not a great Holiday Inn hotel, but a hell of a lot better than the previous place. I didn’t have a cell to myself, but at least the beds didn’t have plastic mattresses or pillows. The bedding had a thin plastic covering, but it wasn’t made of the stuff. The two beds in the cell were side by side, separated by a small desk area with a solid looking metal chair, and only one of them was made. A pile of linen at the foot of the unmade bed marked it as mine. The chair looked solid enough to be used as a weapon, but also solid enough not to be taken apart easily. The cell was lit by an opaque window high up in the wall. At least it was natural light and not just fluorescent tubes buzzing away on the ceiling.
I sat on the edge of the left-hand unmade bed, thinking about the last couple of hours and wondered who my new cellmate was. The journey down to Norwich had been uneventful. There weren't any other prisoners in the van, which was a bonus. I’d heard stories of the sweatboxes doing the rounds of loads of different prisons, dropping prisoners off, picking other prisoners up, with some of the occupants spending twelve hours or more in the vans until they got to their final destination. I’d had none of that.
When we’d eventually left, the drive took around an hour and a half at the most. The two guards up front were decent enough, but that might have been because they weren’t prison officers but contracted security guards. They’d even bought me a Big Mac and fries when they’d stopped off to get lunch somewhere off the A11 on the way back to Norwich. I’d sat there in the back of the swaying van, enjoying the unexpected treat. Before I’d been sentenced, I hardly ever went to McDonald’s, but I enjoyed the lukewarm burger and soggy fries more than I’d enjoyed a meal in years.
When we arrived at Norwich, it was back to the same routine I’d been through a couple of times before. Straight from the van to the processing area, where I sat with a couple of twitching junkies and some nut job who kept asking me what I was in for. He must have asked me nine or ten times before I told him, at which point he stared at me before sitting on the other side of the processing cell. When I heard my surname being called, I’d gone through into the processing room itself. I was photographed, asked if I did drugs, told the rules, stripped, searched, the whole works. It was the only environment I’d ever been in where another man told you to bend over and cough and you did so, knowing full well that he was staring up your arsehole.
A prison officer gave me a light blue t-shirt and scratchy tracksuit to wear and led me into the general population. As I followed him through the wing, I could feel lots of pairs of eyes on me. I looked around, careful not to meet anyone’s gaze for more than a couple of seconds at the most. I was trying to tread the line between not being a wet, and not being seen as a hard man. Both ends of that spectrum would cause a scuffle of some description as the locals would try to put me in my place. The last thing I wanted was to get into any bother. I was confident enough that if somebody started, I could hold my own, but you never knew. All it would take is someone to have a shank and it could be game over before it had even begun. I was shown into my cell and told to wait for my personal officer. This would be interesting, I thought as I waited. I’d never had a personal officer at Whitemoor, or at least if I had I’d never met him. After about ten minutes, a prison officer walked into my cell. I took one look at him and figured out straight away he probably didn’t see much in the way of trouble. He was huge, way bigger even than the gorillas back at Whitemoor. It’s not often that I look at people with a sense of trepidation, but this time I did.
“Dawson, is it?” he asked in a deep voice that suited his build perfectly.
“Yes sir, that’s me,” I replied, standing and inclining my head down a touch. The classic ‘please don’t hit me’ pose. He stood there, staring at me, as I looked at him from underneath my eyebrows. He had a good five to six inches on me height wise and was broader than me by about the same amount. Although it was November, the heating here was the same as it was at Whitemoor which meant it was freezing. He had a tight fitting short sleeve white shirt on that looked as if the buttons on the front of it would burst if he sneezed.
“Sit down, Dawson,” he said, nodding at the bed behind me. I did as instructed, and he pulled the chair away from the desk and sat on it. He looked like an adult sitting on a child’s chair, and I had to stop the corners of my mouth from creeping up into a smile. We sat opposite each other, him looking at me and me looking at him, again from under my eyebrows. I wondered if this was some sort of psychological trick to see what I would do, so I remained silent and waited. I figured that I had less to do with my day than he did, so I could wait him out. After what seemed like ages, he broke the impasse. “Look at me properly, please.”
I raised my head and looked at him, meeting his stare full-on. He had a crewcut, number one all over from the looks of it, and dark brown eyes. I could just see the ends of a couple of colourful tattoos snaking down from beneath both shirt sleeves, some sort of weird inked designs winding their way around his enormous arms.
“I’m Mr Jackson,” he said. “But you can call me sir.” He smiled, but it was a forced smile that was nothing more than the movement of some muscles around his mouth. “I’m your personal officer while you’re here at Norwich, which means you belong to me. So if you’ve got a problem, it’s my problem.” I looked at him, not sure what he meant.
“I won’t cause any problems, Mr Jackson,” I replied. “Sir,” I added as an afterthought. He sat bac
k in the chair, which complained with a loud creak as he did so.
“No, I don’t think you will,” he replied. “I’ve read your file from Whitemoor. Model prisoner by all accounts, bar one isolated incident the other week, which either means you’ve been a good boy or that you’ve just not been caught.” I tried a self-deprecating smile and thought about telling him about the ‘isolated incident’, but gave up after a few seconds when I saw his eyebrows knit together in a frown.
“I’ve been well behaved, sir,” I replied, feeling like I was back at school in front of the headmaster. Which was a fairly common occurrence back in those days. Tommy and I used to joke that we’d got season tickets to his office, we were in there that often.
“I don’t doubt you have been,” Mr Jackson replied, leaning even further back on the chair. If it broke, I knew I wouldn’t be able to not laugh. “But to be honest, it’s not really you I’m worried about. In terms of causing a problem, that is. My concern is that the problems might come to you.”
That was interesting. I’d been determined since I was sentenced that I would be the grey man in whatever prison I ended up in, the man that no one really noticed. I relied on my size to deter any chancers, but at the same time had been careful not to be the big man.
“Can I ask what you mean by that?” I asked, risking the question. The chair creaked again as he leaned forward and put his shovel-like hands on his knees. It could have been my imagination, but he looked as if he was relaxing a bit.
“This is a Cat B prison,” he said. “And you’re still a Cat A prisoner. Not only that, but you’re on C3 wing.”
“Okay,” I replied with a frown, not understanding the significance.
“C3 wing is mostly sex offenders. There’s a few Rule 45’s on here, but don’t worry. We keep them separate.” Rule 45 prisoners were classed as ‘vulnerable prisoners’ because most people wanted to cut them to ribbons. That much I did know.
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