Please, Daddy, No: A Boy Betrayed

by Stuart Howarth

  ‘OK,’ he said eventually. ‘Well, unless he says anything, this won’t go any further. But don’t do anything like that again,. OK?’

  Obviously Mellon didn’t say anything.

  I was beginning to know who my real friends were, because they were the ones who came in to see me at visiting times. There was a couple I’d met through my work at the electricity board. Their names were Sue and Geoff Hadfield. Geoff was a farmer who ran a successful wood recycling business on his land. I’d been sent to help them develop the electrical side of the site and we’d got on well. Geoff was a lovely man, the sort of bloke I would have loved to have had as a father. I wrote to them to apologize for not finishing their development work and explained what had happened. Sue wrote back, shocked and mortified, and told me what a fantastic guy I was, always coming in to work with a smile on my face. ‘We always thought you were so happy-go-lucky and we’re devastated to hear the truth of your story. If there is anything we can do to help just ask.’

  It made me cry when I read it. For the first time in my life all sorts of people were starting to show me that they really cared.

  The big problem in prison is always money. I was still being paid my salary since I was only on remand, and I was allowed to transfer thirty pounds a week into my prison account. It’s surprising how quickly you can spend thirty pounds when you’re paying inflated prison prices for toiletries and tobacco, so I needed to have other income. Prisoners who had already been convicted were only allowed fifteen pounds a week, so they always wanted to get their hands on the canteen stuff that remand prisoners could afford more of. But convicted prisoners were given more phone credits, so they would trade them, and it was the phone credits that I wanted.

  Drugs are a huge business in prisons. Ninety per cent of that drug use is heroin. Because it’s opium based it’s out of your system within twenty-four hours, whereas cannabis can take up to thirty days. So everyone ended up chasing the dragon, sucking up the smoke to escape from the reality of their lives inside. In a half-hearted attempt to keep the drug-taking in the prison under control, the authorities would occasionally get prisoners’ piss tested. If they were caught they could get an extra thirty days on their sentence. Because I was taking no drugs, my piss was clean, making it a valuable commodity to sell or barter. I would piss into the plastic snappy bags that had held our teabags and keep it warm on the hot pipe in the room. When the screws came round to do tests other inmates would give me half an ounce of tobacco in exchange for a bag. They’d take it into the test room with them and put it into the bottle.

  I had no problems at Forest Bank until Tracey’s brother, Paul, bumped into an officer from the prison called Frank. They used to go to school together.

  ‘Do you know Stuart Howarth?’ Paul asked.

  ‘Stuart’s on my wing,’ Frank said. ‘He’s all right he is. I look after him. Whatever Stuart wants, Stuart gets.’

  This was news to me. I used to say hello to him because he’d told me he knew Paul, but he never looked after me in any way. Paul, however, believed him and went and bought 200 fags for Frank to take in to me. A couple of days later Tracey told me about the fags.

  ‘I don’t need anything, Tracey,’ I said. ‘I’ve got enough money Tell Paul not to go messing things up for me here. I’m OK.’

  The next day Frank came up to me. ‘What fags do you smoke?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ll smoke anything.’

  Paul kept getting Tracey to ask if I’d got the fags yet. He even asked me himself once on the phone when I was talking to Tracey at work. I didn’t want to talk to him about it; I knew my calls were being recorded.

  A few days later I was on my way to the visiting area to see Tracey, making my way down the long corridor, going through all the gates as usual. When I got to one of them Frank was there. He had bruising all over his face and big swollen eyes, and I got a feeling everyone was acting funny around me.

  ‘You all right, Mr Thompson?’ I asked, but he didn’t reply.

  When I got to Tracey I discovered that Paul had bumped into Frank in a club and asked what had happened to the fags.

  ‘I’ve given them to him.’

  Knowing he was lying, Paul had battered him there and then in the club. Frank had since gone to the authorities and told them that I was trying to get him to take fags in, threatening to have him beaten up if he refused. This was another complete lie.

  Wanting to defuse the situation as quickly as possible I went to the wing manager and told him that whatever was going on with Frank was nothing to do with me. He told me to write down everything I knew about the situation. I said OK, but on my way back to the cell I thought I shouldn’t do anything without talking to my solicitors. The problem was it was Sunday and I knew I wouldn’t be able to get hold of them.

  Later that day a screw came to my cell. ‘Howarth, have you got that statement written?’

  ‘No,’ I admitted. ‘I just need to speak to my solicitors in case I incriminate myself.’

  ‘He wants it written today.’

  ‘I’m not writing it today.’

  He went off to report back and I felt a familiar wave of panic gripping me. A while later two screws came back.

  ‘Right, Howarth, you’re either going to get this thing written or you’re going to the segregation unit.’

  ‘You can put me in the hospital if you want,’ I said, ‘but I’m not going in that segregation unit because it’s full of paedophiles and sex offenders. I refuse to go down that area.’

  ‘Unless he gets that statement that’s where we’re taking you.’

  ‘Please, what’s the rush? Tell him he can have it tomorrow. Please don’t take me down there.’

  ‘Hang on a minute.’

  They plodded off again and returned a few minutes later. ‘No, he says he wants it in the next twenty minutes.’

  I’d been having some counselling with a woman called Ruth, who had been really helping me. ‘Go and talk to Ruth,’ I said. ‘I’ve had a lot of conversations with her and she’ll explain the situation to you about why I don’t want to go down there, and what it might do to me. It terrifies me to think what those guys have done before they came in here.’

  I would never have been able to stay sane if I’d been in a cell next to someone masturbating, imagining in my head what might be going on in theirs.

  The screws left again, locking my cell door behind them. I paced up and down, trying to keep calm. A few minutes later I heard a lot of activity outside and I peered out through the window. Everyone else was being locked up in their cells and I knew what that meant: they were coming to get me.

  ‘Stuart,’ a friend shouted, ‘what’s going on?’

  ‘They want to put me in the fucking seg, with all the dirty fucking beasts. There’s no way I’m going in there.’

  ‘Calm down, Stuart,’ someone shouted.

  ‘Take it easy, Stuart!’ came from someone else.

  ‘Go wherever they say.’

  The frustration was knotting me up inside. I couldn’t calm down; I could only explode. I knew I would rather kill myself than go into that place. I had two safety razors hidden away and I pulled them from their hiding place, fumbling to get the blades out. The noise was getting closer outside. The shouting died away and it all went quiet. I could hear them talking downstairs. I looked out the window and saw they were all in their riot gear: boots, shin pads, shields, helmets, and a camera.

  The flap on the outside of the door snapped shut and I couldn’t see any more. More voices and then the flap opened again and the camera was there.

  ‘Right, Howarth,’ a voice announced. ‘We are now going to be escorting you to the segregation unit. We’ll be coming in that cell shortly and we want you to come quietly.’ The camera moved away and a big fat screw, whom I’d never liked, looked in.

  ‘You’re not fucking coming in here!’ I screamed, brandishing the blades. ‘See these? I’ll fucking slash you. I’ll stab you. I don’t care. There’s
no way I’m going in there.’

  He laughed at me. ‘Do you think that’s going to stop us?’

  ‘Well, come in then,’ I challenged him.

  ‘We can wait all night,’ he laughed. ‘We aren’t going anywhere.’

  ‘Please.’ I tried one last time. ‘Lock me in one of the cells in medical.’

  He seemed to be deliberately winding me up, as if he wanted to see what would happen.

  ‘I’m not going fucking nowhere,’ I yelled and started slashing at my arms, crying all the time. ‘You bastards, look what you’ve made me do now.’

  The blades cut in deep and wide, much worse than I’d ever done before. Blood sprayed across the room. I sank down on to the bed. I was wearing shorts and there was blood all over my legs, running down and puddling on the floor.

  I could hear the stirrings of panic outside the door now.

  ‘Put the blades down, Howarth!’

  ‘Stuart!’ I heard a woman’s voice and recognized it as belonging to one of the women in the medical centre. She was an older woman who had always been nice to me. ‘Look at the state of you. Please put the blades down. Let us come in. We can’t come in while you’re still holding the blades.’

  ‘Look what they’ve done,’ I cried. ‘Why did they have to do this? They all know what I’ve been through. Please don’t take me to seg. Please take me to medical.’

  ‘All right, sweetheart,’ she said, ‘but please let me have those blades. Please push them under the door. You’re going to bleed to death.’

  She shouted at the men around her, demanding to know why they hadn’t come to get her earlier. The room was swimming and their voices were becoming distant.

  ‘All right,’ I said, my strength beginning to slide away, ‘as long as you look after me.’

  I managed to get to the door and slid the blades out. The door opened and she came in, wrapping towels around my wounds to try to stem the bleeding. Behind her I could see the faces of the screws, looking shocked and bewildered. I suppose they’d thought they were dealing with a hard man, the main man on the wing, and instead they found themselves dealing with a frightened little boy in a grown-up’s body.

  She got me on to my feet and walked with me to the medical wing, with them all around, their camera still filming.

  ‘This is Frank Thompson’s fault,’ I said. ‘I hope you get this on the tape. This is nothing to do with me. I didn’t ask for any cigarettes. I didn’t ask my brother-in-law to do anything. I was doing my best to get on here.’

  A guy who had never stitched anyone before did my stitches, but the thread kept pulling through the skin. The woman who had rescued me seemed so sad as she watched.

  ‘I’m so sorry. I wish I could take you home with me, love. I’ve known you, Stuart. You’ve never been an ounce of trouble. If anything the place has gone quiet since you’ve been here. There’s a lot less bullying going on. Why did it come to this? Why didn’t they come and get me first?’

  When the wing manager came to see me I was still caked in my own blood. He looked at me and sighed.

  ‘I don’t know, Stuart,’ he said. ‘You’re a silly lad, aren’t you?’

  ‘I might be a silly lad, boss, but I told you. I begged you not to put me in there. You’ve done this to me because you wanted that statement. I’ve done nothing wrong. It’s all because you’ve got an officer who isn’t working by the book.’

  ‘I’ve done the best I can for you, Stuart.’

  ‘You’ve done very well by me up till now,’ I admitted, ‘but you’ve mishandled this.’

  ‘Well, what I’ve come to tell you is that you’re being shipped out and you’re going to Strangeways. I’m telling you now, Strangeways is the worst jail you could ever hope to go to.’

  He didn’t have to tell me that. Everyone in the Manchester area had heard about Strangeways — a traditional prison run on traditional rules. I knew that many of the officers in there were staunch supporters of the National Front. I’d heard about the racism that went on, the squalor and dirt. I didn’t want to go there but he had decided I was trouble and I had to be shipped out.

  Chapter Sixteen

  STRANGEWAYS

  Tracey cried when I saw her the next day in the hospital block. ‘Please promise me you will never do anything like that again,’ she begged.

  ‘Tracey, I would rather have died than gone in there.’ ‘But things were going so well, you were looking better than I’ve ever seen you, and you go and do something like this. I don’t understand why.’

  The hospital section was also the young offenders’ section and the kids used to play football outside. Some of the younger ones were smashing up everything and kicking off against one another. They would jeer at me through the window of my cell. There were no curtains so I couldn’t get away from them: ‘Look at yer, yer fucking self-harmer! What’s up with yer?’

  When the time came to move me I was double cuffed to a screw, and chained to him as well. By the time we got to the transport I had an escort of eight screws. All of them travelled with me to Strangeways, a towering, red brick monster of a jail squatting in a run-down area close to the centre of Manchester, its watchtower visible for miles around.

  The moment I walked in, the contrast to Forest Bank was terrible. Instead of shining, polished floors there was rubbish and pigeon shit everywhere. Everything was ugly and run down, scruffy and dirty. All the screws looked older and their uniforms were more formal and official looking. Two of them took me off the bus and marched me in.

  ‘Right, Howarth, you’re at fucking Strangeways now. You’re no longer at Forest Gump. This is a proper jail. If you fuck about with us you’ll get in trouble. Do you hear me? We run this jail, not you, and this is how we start. Go and sit in that room there.’

  ‘Look, boss, I’m trying ...’

  ‘I didn’t ask you to fucking speak. Go and sit in that room there.’

  Some of my scars were still bleeding and my stitches were rough and frayed. I must have looked like a complete psychopath. They left me for a while and then I heard the keys outside.

  ‘Right, Howarth,’ the guard barked, throwing open the door. ‘You’re going to the block.’

  ‘I’m not going to the block. Please, I’ve done nothing wrong. If you tell me I’m going to the block I’m going to kick off.’

  ‘Oh, you’re going to kick off, are you?’

  ‘I’m begging you, please don’t send me to the block.’ I wasn’t sure what the block was, but I did know it wasn’t good and I’d heard that they stripped you naked and left you on a mat.

  He slammed the door and disappeared for a while. When he came back he told me I wasn’t going to the block, I was going to K Wing.

  ‘So, you’re a lucky lad, aren’t you?’

  I was taken in front of the doctor who ordered me to be put under suicide watch, and then I was escorted to a windowless cell, hot as a sauna, where I was left with about forty other dangerous-looking guys with no food or water. The toilet in the corner stank and there was no toilet paper.

  There were a few attempts at conversation, but no one really felt much like talking.

  ‘How’d you get them scars?’

  ‘Razor blades.’

  ‘What you in for?’

  ‘Murder.’

  ‘Fucking hell.’

  Five hours later they threw open the door. It seemed that the screws did things when they felt like it; there was none of the efficiency of Forest Bank here.

  ‘Right, K Wing lads.’

  About thirty of us stood up and filed out. The place was enormous. We seemed to be walking forever down noisy, filthy corridors and climbing staircases, kicking our way through discarded plastic and scavenging pigeons, our footsteps echoing off the bare walls. There were strip-searches, with no attempt at modesty or dignity, everything was taken off us, leaving us naked and vulnerable and humiliated. One of the rules of strip-searching is that the prisoner should be able to keep his genitals covered at all t
imes, but they didn’t bother with that. I tried to tell them that I’d been abused, but I was just met with deaf ears and disinterested stares. Maybe they hear it all the time. One screw actually put his hand on my abdomen and told me I was fat. The comment didn’t bother me, but the touch of his palm made me want to scream with fear.

  There were around two hundred men on the wing. We were all put together into a room and told to wait. As I sat there, listening to all the unfamiliar noises going on around me, another prisoner walked past the open door, stopped and walked back, peering in.

  ‘Stu?’

  It was a guy called Jimmy who used to live a few doors away from us in Smallshaw Lane. He was a fair bit older than me, but I remembered playing with him as a kid and seeing him about from time to time after that. He had actually been a friend of the guy I’d battered in the pub the night of Shirley’s funeral. The guy I hit had sent Jimmy and a few lads down the next night to beat me up, not realizing Jimmy knew me. ‘Stuart, how are you doing?’ he’d asked when he saw it was me. He knew Mum and he’d heard about our Shirley. There was no way he was going to beat me up. We had a drink and a chat instead. It was good to see his familiar face again outside the cell. I poured out all my problems.

  ‘I’ve seen you on TV and all,’ he said, standing in the door of the cell. ‘Leave it with me, I’ll sort you out.’

  I knew that if he was walking about he must have a job as an orderly of some sort, which meant he might be in a position to help me get settled in. In the meantime I was moved to the fourth floor. Netting had been strung between the floors so no one could throw themselves off the balconies. I was given a moth-eaten blanket, a sheet with shit stains on it and a set of plastics that had obviously been used to death already. The bowl looked like the ones Dad used to make us share with the dogs.

  The cell looked like it hadn’t been touched in twenty years, black with dirt, pigeons sitting on the windowsill. There was no tap or plug to the sink and the mattress was ripped and stained. I felt I had just plunged back into the very darkest years of my childhood. I was sharing the cell with another inmate, a scruffy-looking bloke, but by that stage I was just ready to sleep. I warned him not to move about too much in the night because it frightened me.