B002RI919Y EBOK

by Peters, Joe

‘It was the most disgusting shit I’ve ever tasted.’

  ‘Ah,’ he smiled. ‘Our chef isn’t in yet, I’m afraid. One of the officers made it.’

  I felt pretty sure that if that was the case there would have been more ingredients than eggs in the mix. No wonder it had tasted so foul. Now that he could see I had calmed down, he told me to follow him and we went through to the custody sergeant to get my details taken down. The sergeant was one of the men who had beaten me up in the early hours.

  ‘I want to complain about him,’ I said as soon as I saw him. ‘He was one of the ones who gave me a hiding.’

  ‘We’ll worry about that later, shall we?’ the inspector said. ‘Let’s just get this sorted. If you prefer, I’ll process you myself.’

  He went round the desk and the sergeant stepped back.

  ‘What’s your address?’

  ‘I live in a squat,’ I told him, giving the address.

  ‘You can’t put that,’ he said. ‘We have to say “no fixed abode”.’

  ‘What’s an abode?’ I asked, exaggerating the word but genuinely curious.

  ‘The place you live,’ he said patiently.

  ‘But I have got a “fixed abode”. I’ve lived there nearly a year.’

  ‘No, you are there illegally. You don’t pay any rent or anything.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  He had to take my picture as well and I kept messing about, pulling faces and flicking a finger at the camera. He was amazingly patient considering how cheeky I was being and how I was wasting his time.

  ‘Come on,’ he said wearily. ‘Do this properly, lad. This is going on the record and you don’t want to look like an idiot, do you?’

  ‘Who’s going to see it?’

  ‘The courts maybe, and police intelligence.’

  He was so reasonable, as if he was actually trying to help me, that I started doing what he said.

  ‘We’re charging you with criminal damage and four thefts,’ he said.

  I didn’t know why he had decided on the figure of four, but I couldn’t be bothered to argue.

  ‘I suppose you’re going to charge me with hitting the coppers as well,’ I sneered.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  That shut me up. I realized that he was offering me a deal. If I didn’t complain about the coppers, they wouldn’t charge me with assault. Thankfully, I was calm enough by then to realize that it was a good deal for me, so I kept quiet. If they were just going to charge me with the thefts, maybe I would be able to get out quicker than I had feared and get to the hospital in time to see my baby again. Once I was logged in, they got me a duty solicitor and interviewed me. They told me that I could have a copy of the recording as well if I wanted.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, wanting to put them to as much trouble as possible. ‘I’ll have one of them.’

  The solicitor read the papers once they were prepared.

  ‘They are charging you with “crimes to be taken into consideration”,’ he said.

  ‘What are you on about?’

  ‘Let’s not worry about that at the moment. I suggest you cooperate with the police.’

  All the way through the interview I answered almost every question ‘no comment’, which was what Ben and Jock had always said we should do if we were ever caught for anything. That way the police couldn’t bend our words and use them against us in court or against one another at a later date. The policemen doing the interview told me they had interviewed Jake and that he had told them all the robberies were down to me. I was pretty sure that they were trying to catch me out, although I wouldn’t have put anything past Jake on his past performance.

  ‘He’s a fucking liar,’ was all I said, before going back to ‘no comment’.

  I guess Jake must have given the impression that he was cooperating with them while I was being a complete pain in the arse. They needed to find a ringleader, someone to blame, and it must have seemed obvious to them that I was the best candidate for the job. I kept telling them that the bag with the jeans in wasn’t mine, but they obviously didn’t believe me and I suppose as far as they were concerned I was as likely to be lying as Jake. They decided to raid the squat to see what else they could find. They thought about taking me with them when they went, but decided against it because of the way I had behaved in the cell and during my arrest the previous day. I guess they thought they would have to spend all their time restraining me instead of searching and dealing with anyone else they came across. Apparently there was no legal requirement for me to be there, since I didn’t legally live there.

  So I had to wait in the cell, not knowing what was going on, fretting all the time about the hours that were ticking away, during which I was still not able to see Lisa or the baby. Every time I got to see the inspector I was begging him to let me go to the hospital. I knew it was no use asking any of the others for any mercy.

  ‘We can’t do that yet, son,’ he kept saying. ‘I’m sorry.’

  He did, however, agree to make a call to the hospital on my behalf to find out what was going on.

  ‘They’ve had to section your girlfriend,’ he told me, ‘under the Mental Health Act because she is a danger to herself, so she won’t be coming out any time soon.’

  He went on to tell me the details about her trying to cut her own throat with the broken glass, which explained why the alarms had gone off while I was there and why everyone was running around. The things he told me just made me want to be with Lisa all the more, to help her and comfort her and reassure her that I would always be there for her. I could imagine how terrible she was feeling at being left on her own, because that was exactly how I was feeling, locked in my cell while the police and the hospital staff and everyone else went about their business and decided on my fate.

  ‘We’ll get you into court first thing Monday morning,’ the inspector said (it was then Friday), ‘or at least the day after. We’ll ask for bail, but we’ll have to fix you up with a bail hostel before there’s any chance they will grant that.’

  There was no option for me other than to be patient and endure the agonizing wait to see what happened next. Later I discovered that on the raid the police arrested every single one of my housemates. They took out countless sacks of stolen goods and everyone told them that it was all down to me. The police now seemed to be forming the opinion that I was responsible for virtually every smash and grab that had happened in the area over the previous six months.

  ‘We hardly had any of these crimes in this area till you turned up,’ the inspector told me. ‘Once you showed the way other people started jumping on the bandwagon. You started your own little crime wave.’

  ‘Really?’ This didn’t sound too good.

  ‘We reckon,’ he went on, ‘that you and your mates are responsible for about seventy per cent of the crimes against “non-dwelling” properties in the city over the last half year.’

  I was amazed. I had never thought of it in those terms at all. I thought it was just a few pairs of jeans and a few shirts. I didn’t see myself as a serious career criminal.

  When I finally got into court on the Monday, the Crown Prosecution Service asked to have me remanded in custody because of the number of crimes I had been accused of. Apparently no one had been able to find a bail hostel that was willing or able to take me, so there was no chance of any bail and I was taken down to the police cells beneath the courts and left there. I was still only sixteen and I really didn’t have much idea of what was going on around me as everyone tried to find somewhere for me to be taken to.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Prison

  After hours of waiting, my lawyer told me that I was going to be taken to Lewes prison, a Category A establishment for hardened criminals, despite the fact that I was only sixteen. Everyone who heard that that was where I was going looked surprised and double-checked that a mistake hadn’t been made. There hadn’t, and the more shock I saw on people’s faces the more terrified I became.

  All I knew
about this place was what I heard other people saying and I didn’t like the sound of it at all. It triggered all my worst fears. Once again I was going to have my freedom taken away. I was going to be locked in a cell, just as I had been for so much of my childhood, and I was going to be surrounded by hard, violent adult men. I assumed many of them would be murderers and rapists and child abusers–exactly the sort of men who had attacked and tortured me in the past. It was as if I was about to be transported back to my own private hell, and this time my imprisonment was going to be officially sanctioned by the legal establishment. There was no one else I could turn to and beg for help, no one I could believe might come galloping to my assistance.

  Once they had decided where they were going to dump me, I was handcuffed and led out to a waiting prison van. The back doors were swung open and I was escorted in and guided into one of the tiny, confined cubicles that kept each prisoner separate. The door of the cubicle was slammed shut and locked, and I sat listening to the swearing and shouting of the other prisoners as they were put behind the other doors, swapping news on what had happened to them in court and talking about the place we were about to be driven to. I was trembling with fear at the thought of what might lie in wait for me at the end of the journey.

  In the privacy of that cubicle I started to cry like a baby, blaming myself for my own stupidity almost as much as I blamed Jake for framing me so blatantly to save his own skin. I’d been told that he had been bailed, along with all my other housemates from the squat, and the police had found somewhere for him to go. If I hadn’t been so aggressive and angry and unreasonable, they would almost certainly have been able to do the same for me. It looked as though I was going to be carrying the can for the crimes of the whole house, as though I was some sort of gangster or criminal mastermind, and I realized now that it was partly my own fault for being so uncooperative with the police. I thought of Lisa and our baby in the hospital and the longing to get to them was like a physical ache.

  The first thing that happened when we were delivered to the forbidding-looking prison and unloaded from our cubicles was a strip search. Standing virtually naked and being frisked before being given the standard issue prison outfit brought back a thousand memories of being at the mercy of grown men and again I dreaded to think what lay in store for me once I was inside.

  ‘How old are you?’ one of the screws asked, looking back and forth between me and my paperwork, obviously finding it hard to believe that I was even sixteen, given my skinny frame and baby face.

  ‘Sixteen,’ I said, trying to keep the tremble of tears out of my voice and sounding more aggressive than I should in the circumstances.

  ‘What’s this little lad doing here?’ the screw asked one of his colleagues, obviously not bothered by my tone. I guess they were used to dealing with tougher men than me. They’d seen it all before and must have realized that I was terrified.

  Everyone was puzzled and shrugging, but they kept on processing me through the system, following the orders of the court.

  ‘Governor wants to see you,’ I was told once all the formalities were over.

  I followed the screw as instructed, too frightened now to be giving anyone any of the backchat that I had been indulging in at the police station. This screw seemed quite a fair guy, a tough ex-soldier covered in tattoos. I discovered he was called Matt.

  ‘I can’t believe a kid like you is in a place like this,’ he said as he marched me towards the governor’s office.

  There was a woman typing in an outer office, shooting curious looks across the room as I came in.

  ‘You don’t sit down unless the governor tells you,’ Matt instructed as we paused, ‘and don’t speak unless you’re spoken to.’

  I nodded my understanding and he knocked on the door. A deep voice told us to enter. The governor looked me up and down and told Matt to stay in the room. I expect he had been told that I was liable to lose my temper and could be violent, although as far as I was concerned I had only ever been defending myself.

  ‘So, Joe,’ he said, thumbing through the paperwork on the desk in front of him, ‘you’ve been making a bit of a nuisance of yourself, haven’t you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I said, sharply.

  ‘Did I ask you to speak?’ he said sharply, looking up at me over his glasses, and I could almost hear the exasperated breath escaping from Matt’s lungs. I glanced at him and he shook his head in warning.

  ‘I’m not happy with you being sent here,’ the governor went on, ‘but apparently there is no space for you anywhere else and we’ll have to make the best of the situation.’

  He went on to tell me a bit about the prison and how I would be wise to keep my head down and not cause any trouble.

  ‘Keep yourself to yourself,’ he warned. ‘Don’t get involved with anyone. Prisoners have to share cells here because we’re overcrowded, but if a single cell comes up I’ll try to make sure you get it.’

  On the outside I pretended that I didn’t care about any of it, as if I was hard enough to handle whatever they threw at me, but my insides had turned to jelly when I thought about who I might have to share a cell with, imagining it might be a man like Max or Uncle Douglas or Amani.

  ‘I know you’re nervous,’ he went on, obviously seeing right through my ‘tough guy’ act. ‘I would be at your age. We’ll put you on A Wing, which is where the less violent men go.’

  He was thumbing through lists of prisoners to try to find me a cellmate who he thought would be suitable while I continued to try to look as if I wasn’t bothered and fought to stop myself from shaking.

  ‘Ah, we seem to be full on A Wing.’ He looked momentarily perturbed. ‘Well, this chap has been a pain, so we’ll temporarily move him to B Wing and let you have his bunk.’

  Getting someone thrown out of the non-violent wing so that I could have a bunk didn’t seem like the best start possible. It seemed to me there would now be people resenting me before I even arrived.

  As Matt marched me off to my designated cell, we went through what seemed like endless sets of bars and gates that he opened with his clanking set of keys, and into a recreation area where prisoners were playing snooker, smoking or watching the fuzzy picture of a little portable television. They all looked up as I came in. A female screw announced my name and gave me a piece of card which had all my details and what I was in for, and which was going to be posted outside my cell. I could see that all the prisoners were shocked by how young I looked, nudging one another and whispering.

  My cellmate was lying on his bunk as I followed Matt in through the door. He looked as if he was in his early twenties. I didn’t want to say anything, for fear that I might say the wrong thing and get a beating the moment Matt had left us, but the other guy was pretty friendly and chatted away, asking what I was in for.

  ‘Who did you kill?’

  ‘I didn’t kill anyone,’ I said. ‘Just did a few smash and grabs.’

  He seemed to lose interest and changed the subject. I was only in there a few hours before Matt came back to tell me I was moving to another cell. The governor must have decided to have a word with the hardest man on the wing, a Scotsman called Frank, and had asked him if he would keep an eye on me. Frank, who I would guess was in his forties, must have agreed and I was told to move to his cell. He was inside for killing his girlfriend and attacking some man she had been playing around with. Half the time he would admit to me that he was guilty; then he would deny it and say it was an accident and he was innocent. I soon learned that everyone in prison always claims they’re innocent and I got some funny looks when I happily confessed to my misdemeanours, as if I had broken some secret prison code.

  Frank gave me a wry look as I came into the cell. ‘You’re nothing but a wee boy, aren’t you?’ he said once Matt had left us. ‘What’s a wee boy like you doing in here?’

  It was as if he was ticking me off for being a bad boy, like an indulgent old uncle. There was something about him, though, which told me
not to give him back any cheek. To be honest, I pretty quickly realized how valuable it was going to be to have him by my side, since everyone obviously respected him. When we went out of the cell to socialize, he actually warned the others off touching me.

  ‘If any of these fuckers give you any trouble,’ he said, ‘you tell me.’

  It wasn’t long before I realized just how protected I was with Frank on my side and I returned to my cocky form, giving everyone except him a lot of backchat, knowing that I was safe. Most of them could probably see that I had issues and that I shouldn’t have been in a place like that and were willing to leave me alone, but I could see there were some who were itching to take me down a peg or two and if they had ever managed to get me on my own I would have been in big trouble, so I stuck close to Frank at all times, like a faithful little puppy. My antics seemed to amuse him most of the time.

  ‘He’s looking at me funny, Frank,’ I would say, just to make mischief for someone I didn’t like the look of. ‘Give him a hiding.’

  ‘Behave yourself,’ he would chuckle whenever I started to get gobby.

  I was in there for my seventeenth birthday in March and a lot of the inmates made cards for me and even sang ‘Happy Birthday’. As I relaxed amongst them I gradually became less aggressive and started to respect them all. Slowly but surely I was learning the advantages of trying to get along with other people rather than always looking for trouble.

  The worst thing was missing Lisa and never being allowed to see or hold the baby again. I heard there was going to be a little funeral for him and I asked Matt if I would be allowed to go on compassionate grounds. He asked for me, but the answer came back as no. It made me sad to think he had gone completely from the earth and I had only been able to spend those few short minutes with him in my arms. He had been taken away from me just as brutally as my dad had been and it seemed like one more demonstration of how unfair life could be. It didn’t seem fair on him either, not to have his dad at his funeral.