Apollo glanced at the TV again, his eyes starting to look glazed and dopey. ‘Females,’ he said, before racking up another line of heroin.
‘Maybe you were right then,’ I said.
‘Yeah? Right about what?’
‘Maybe they are all fucking whores then!’ I tried to joke. I didn’t believe a word I was saying – I was just scared and nervous.
He smiled. ‘Of course I’m right. Reh Andrea, auto einai diko sou – Andreas, man, this one’s yours.’
I looked at the line of heroin in front of him; it was smaller than the one he’d just snorted. It was a little taster for beginners. ‘No prezza reh, oxygen is my drug,’ I said – plagiarising my cellmate Vasilis’s expression.
‘OK,’ Apollo said. He pushed the line back into the pile of heroin and grabbed a plastic card to cut it with the bigger pile of paracetamol. ‘Eisai roufianos? – Are you a rat?’
I tutted.
‘Eisai kalo paidi – you’re a good kid; I can tell I can trust you. Now can you leave me? I have some business I need to deal with,’ he said, brushing me off.
29
* * *
AN EASY TARGET
* * *
Journal extract – Day 147 – 14 December 2009
Teresa bought me a Bible, so I’ve decided that I’m going to read it. Not as a Christian, but just to educate myself. I’ve heard so much about this book, but who has actually read it? It’s bloody long.
Today was the pakali (grocery) and for some reason they didn’t have the document with my money, so I couldn’t get my things and have to wait until Thursday. It’s Monday today. I had only three €4 telephone cards, I rang the parents for an hour and saved €2 on the card for next time, only I was pick-pocketed and lost it. So it means that I lost an hour on the telephone, which I needed because I’m not getting more cards until Thursday now. It’s only €2, but it’s stressful how something so small can bring me down.
Riya is flying to Greece tomorrow, but I doubt I will get to see her until Thursday because she lands too late and visiting is at 3 p.m. It’s all just pushing it too fine. The social worker here says she hasn’t even been accepted yet for a visit … and in Avlona when we planned her trip she was allowed three open visits – her flights were based around that! It’s stressful but I need to see the positives; if I can’t see her tomorrow at least I can call her and it that we don’t get an open visit, but it’s better than nothing.
So, what’s been going on the past few days? Waking up around 9 a.m., going for a walk outside, 11 a.m. taking the food, which is chaos. At first I didn’t want to push through people to get to the front, but I realised everyone was pushing in front of me. So I’ve started to join in and hope someone doesn’t want to punch me.
At the front of the wing, on the right, was a staircase that led down to the communal shower area. Other than being absolutely disgusting, having a shower in Korydallos Prison was a bit like listening to the Middle Eastern version of The X Factor. There were usually inmates singing in there, very badly, in different languages. It wasn’t an open shower room that all inmates shared; there were five or six shower cubicles that were separated by a concrete structure. There were no cubical doors, so most of us would hang a sheet over the doorframe for privacy. It was better that way, considering privacy is almost non-existent when behind bars.
Inside the cubical, I would take off my clothes and hang them over the concrete frame, above the sheet where the cubical door should have been. It made it easy for inmates to steal clothes. Luckily it happened to me only once – just a pair of boxers. I always wore flip-flops and made sure that I never touched the shower walls because they were always covered with semen. On a positive note, the water was lukewarm, a lot warmer than the water in Avlona (the Archi Fylakas there was right in that sense). I would turn it on and let the water run first, which poured out of a rusting tap. The only downside was that (occasionally) the water would stop running. There would be a clogging sound, then the tap would spit out a spray of brown liquid and I’d have to quickly move my body to the side so that it wouldn’t cover me.
Each cubical shared the same drainage system: an open gutter on the floor that channelled the dirty water from each cubical to a drain on the left side of the room. Unfortunately, inmates would use the showers as a toilet, probably because they couldn’t afford toilet paper. When I showered, lumps of shit would often flow past through the gutter that ran on the floor, against the wall. Sometimes the faeces would be so big that they would get stuck in my cubicle. The smell was unbearable! I would fill up both my hands with water and try to splash the crap away – back into the ever-flowing stream of piss and spunk. Ashmul used to shower with no flip-flops and no sheet – butt naked for everyone to see. He didn’t seem to care about what he was standing in barefoot.
If I took a while showering, the inmate waiting to use it would start shouting and force me to hurry up. The queue of inmates in the shower room was always long because the wing was far too overpopulated. I would rush, having to put my clothes back on when I was still wet. Sometimes I would drop them, which would upset me because they were now covered in different bodily fluids. I would walk back through the chilly wing back to cell forty-nine, which was more often than not full of Stelios’s friends. If I then needed to use the toilet, I would have to ask everyone if they could leave the cell for a few minutes. We all did it for each other – it was a rule that we could use the toilet only to urinate when we were locked up.
On one occasion, when I got back to my cell after a shower, a man with a perfectly hooked nose and hunched back was lying on my bunk with his back against my pillow. On the chair next to Stelios’s bunk sat Thoma, a man with long oily hair I’d previously met, who was smoking a cigarette. He didn’t talk very much and seemed always to be in his own world. Vasilis told me that he had recently moved to Gamma from the psychiatric wing. Staring into space, he looked like a broken man.
The three of them were in the middle of a conversation, but stopped as I walked into the cell.
‘Peirazei? – Do you mind?’ asked the man lying on my bunk, referring to whether he should move.
‘Katse fileh mou – Sit my friend,’ I replied, brushing a cockroach off the end of my bunk with my palm. The truth was that it did matter – I wanted him to leave. It was so frustrating not having my own space; all I wanted was a bit of privacy and space to change into some warm clothes. I sat down on the end of my bunk and began to dry my feet with a towel before sliding on a clean pair of socks.
The hunchbacked man was called Nicos, but Stelios had nicknamed him ‘methadone man’. Methadone was the substitute drug for heroin that the prison doctors would give the addicts to wean them off without going ‘cold turkey’. While on a course of prescribed methadone, ‘methadone man’ was still buying heroin from Apollo’s guys and taking it regularly. On top of that, he was taking any pill he could get his hands on. Stelios handed him a pill; I had no idea what it was. Methadone man crushed it up on the table using a plastic pre-paid telephone card, racked it into a line and snorted it using a segment of a plastic straw.
‘What’s he snorting?’ I asked Vasilis, who was lying on his top bunk.
‘Andrew, I don’t know; he’s a very stupid man. He snorts everything, even painkillers.’
Thoma and methadone man would be in our cell every day, sometimes for hours on end.
Journal extract – Day 153 – 20 December 2009
Every day I spend here I’m realising what it’s really like – there are so many heroin addicts. Stelios and methadone man were smoking it in our cell the other day, the second time I’ve seen it done in front of me. They used the metallic seal from a coffee can, put a lump of heroin on it, put a lighter underneath and sucked the smoke through a straw. It has a distinct smell. They were stoned afterwards, but not as stoned as you would think – probably because I witnessed Apollo cut it with 70 per cent paracetamol! Good if they had a headache I guess.
Also, I’ve re
ad Genesis, Exodus and Leviticus from the Bible and am going to start Numbers soon. I’m learning so much.
I’d waited for three days to see Marios (the social worker) and I desperately needed to speak to him. Riya was flying to Greece and I still didn’t know if she’d been accepted as a visitor yet. In Korydallos Prison, only outsiders who share an inmate’s surname are allowed to visit them without a previous application made to the social worker. To book an appointment with Marios, an inmate had to write his name on a piece of paper and post it into a box at the front of the wing – this procedure could take weeks. On the day that Riya had arrived in Athens, I noticed Marios walking into the Gamma wing office. There was no point in asking the ypallilos if I could see Marios briefly – I would have been forced to book an appointment again. Instead, I caught the attention of the ypallilos and shouted ‘farmaca! – medication!’ He buzzed me through, thinking that I needed to take my medicine. Rather than going to the doctor’s office, I quickly knocked on Marios’s door when the ypallilos wasn’t looking.
I pleaded with Marios that he allow Riya to visit, but not only for one visit, for as many as possible! At first he was sceptical, but told me that he would try his hardest. When I suggested an open visit he said, ‘Now you’re pushing it!’ Nevertheless, my little stunt managed to have Riya approved for visiting, and he allowed her to come and visit me three times.
I remember my heart thumping as I walked into the visiting room and I saw her face behind the dirty pane of glass. She was a foot away from me, but between us was a clouded force field, stopping me from holding her in my arms again. A Skype video call would probably have offered a better-quality image, but nevertheless, seeing her in front of me was amazing – and I’m sure the feeling was mutual. I was filled with happiness. We spent our visits talking about anything other than prison, as though I wasn’t even in prison at all. She told me that I looked really different, probably because of the unshaven stubble and rugged hair.
When she wasn’t visiting me, or seeing many of Athens’ beautiful sights, I would call her hotel for a tenth of the cost of a call to England. I was over the moon for the entire week she was there. I didn’t care about sleeping with cockroaches, I didn’t care about shit in the showers, I didn’t care about living with criminals and I didn’t care about being wrongly accused of murder any more – all I cared about was knowing that when I woke up, I would see her face. The week ended, she flew back to the UK and everything turned to shit again. I was the most depressed I’d ever been.
Journal extract – Day 153 – 20 December 2009
I had a really bad dream last night. My body was deteriorating, my skin and muscles were all falling off my body, my teeth were falling out. My skin cracked like an eggshell. My dad was there, in shock, holding my heart and trying to put it back into my body. I was screaming – ‘I’m dying, I’m dying!’ Scary shit! The other night I had a fucked-up dream too – I can only remember one bit. There was a little girl sitting on the floor, then I realised she was holding a knife and cutting off her own foot. I seem to be having dreams of people chopping off their own limbs and bodies falling apart. It’s fucked up, why would my mind do this to me?
Journal extract – Day 157 – 24 December 2009
Today I have been a waste of space. I haven’t wanted to do anything. Not lie down, not sit up, not stand up, not walk, not read, not watch television. I just want to be unconscious.
Yesterday the guards called my name through the speaker and I received a document, which I thought said my court date was 15 January. It would have been amazing, but it is just a ‘symvoulio’ – a judicial council review that all inmates have after six months of imprisonment. It could get me out of prison, but I’m trying not to bank on it. I was excited when I thought it was a court date, now I feel a bit let down. It’s that feeling again, every time it gets worse and worse, my heart sinks. I can’t help how my body feels.
I just need closure. For the truth to come out and justice to prevail. Justice will never truly prevail though. The dodgy ‘cops’ who got me here in the first place will just get away with it. No one will stop them.
For the first time since my arrest, the fear of being found guilty started to gnaw at my mind. I was already a murderer in the eyes of the Greek authorities – what if witnesses in court were to tell lies? What if Jonathan Hiles’s friends were to claim that it was me who killed their friend? Would their South Wales Police statements be accepted in a Greek court? Or would their false words (along with those of the Zante police) absolutely destroy my life? I had no control over their actions and it was eating me alive. I was facing twenty years’ imprisonment for a crime that someone else had committed. What would be the point of living? I would be institutionalised and branded a murderer, I would have a criminal record and I would be in my forties with no work experience or degree. What would be the point? Riya would move on and marry somebody else, my friends would settle down with wives and kids, my family would move back to north London and carry on as normal. If I were to be found guilty, my life would be over. The constant battle between positive and negative thoughts had become too exhausting and I started to realise that being found guilty was a possibility. It was the first time that I’d imagined a scenario of the trial verdict – sitting in the courtroom and discovering that I’d been wrongfully found guilty. How would I feel? Just thinking about it devastated me in ways that I couldn’t even describe. In the twenty-first century, how could anything so unjust even be a possibility?
Journal extract – Day 158 – 25 December 2009
We wish you a shitty Christmas, we wish you a shitty Christmas, we wish you a shitty Christmas and a crappy New Year. Shit lamb meat we bring … for you and your cellmates … we wish you a shitty Christmas and a crappy New Yeaaaaaar. Actually, I take back the crappy New Year bit. I’m hoping 2010 will be a lot better.
On Christmas Day the guards left the doors open for a bit longer in the evening, so all of the prisoners could celebrate together. The prison guards gave each prisoner a can of beer, which is the stupidest thing that they could have done. The inmates with no money (which is a hell of a lot) would sell their beer to inmates with money, so there were several drunk inmates roaming the wing and causing trouble. A number of them were probably stoned on heroin too. Up until that point, I’d never seen so many fights in one evening.
Journal extract – Day 162 – 29 December 2009
Today is Michael’s birthday; he would have been twenty-three. Felt a bit weird today but I asked Riya if maybe she could go to his grave and put some flowers down for me. I’m sure she did, I’ll call her tomorrow.
I finished Deuteronomy in the Bible and started Joshua. Moses died, it was a huge shame, but Joshua seems to be handling things OK. The Old Testament is crazy: if you work on a Sunday you shall be put to death, or if a girl has sex before marriage she shall be stoned at the door of her father’s house! If those rules applied these days we would run out of stones and women would be extinct. It would be a world with no humans or stones. Actually that’s not true, you could always use the stones more than once! Anyway, it’s a bit crazy. After the Jews were led by Moses out of Egypt – cut a long story short – they basically went around to different towns after trekking through the desert for forty bloody years, and killing everyone and taking over. I don’t understand. What happened to ‘thou shall not kill’?
I always saw Leonarde the Romanian guy walking around Gamma, but he started to ignore me after a while. I don’t know why. He seemed to be the kind of guy who stuck to his own kind, and he’d made it pretty clear on my first day that he was only walking with me so that others knew I wasn’t alone. After a while he’d talk to me only when he wanted something, like a packet of cigarettes or some coffee. The day before New Year’s Eve, he came into my cell with a large water bottle filled with alcohol and tried to sell it to me – or swap it for a multipack of 200 cigarettes. He referred to it as the spirit ‘Raki’, but it was probably prison-brewed in a similar way to
how we brewed alcohol in Avlona. Vasilis told me that half of it was probably water. Either way, I didn’t want it, so I declined the offer.
I hadn’t seen Apollo in about three weeks and I hoped that he’d been moved to a different wing. His clique usually hung around next to the bench in the far right-hand corner of the courtyard, but they’d been there without him for quite a while. All of a sudden, Apollo popped up again in the hallway when I was walking back to my cell one day.
‘Reh Andrea, they caught me for dealing drugs and put me in solitary for a week. When are you coming for coffee?’
‘Maybe later. I have episkeptirio – a visit.’
‘Meta – After,’ he insisted.
I didn’t have a visit that day; I went back to my cell to sit with Stelios and methadone man. When I later went to collect the food, Apollo saw me and pressured me to go into his cell again. One of his cellmates was cooking some sort of stew using a miniature, portable electric hob, and he insisted that I stayed to eat with them.
‘No, it’s OK. You eat, I’m eating later,’ I said.
He frowned. ‘You eat this shit they give? It is full of salio.’
My face told him that I didn’t understand.
He turned to his cellmate. ‘Pavlo, poia einai i lexi yia to “salio” sta Anglika? – Pavlos, what’s the word for “salio” in English?’
‘Saleeveh,’ Pavlos answered.
‘Saliva. Yeh, I could’ve guessed that,’ I said. ‘All right, cool.’ I sat on his bottom bunk while he played tavli with Pavlos. Apollo’s eyes were distant and he kept closing them as though he was constantly falling asleep. His reactions were sluggish; it took him a few moments to throw the dice into the backgammon board and move the pieces. At one stage he made a mistake and started to move Pavlos’s pieces by accident. Apollo forced his eyes open, took a breath and gave himself a few little slaps on his cheeks to sober himself up.
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