by Tig Hague
‘Right, let’s get a new charger, English boy,’ he said, bounding back down. ‘It’s gonna take time and it’s gonna be risky but we’ll get one. Don’t you worry. Zubi’ll work his magic. I’m gonna start working on bilander man from breakfast tomorrow, but we’ll need to promise him a shitload of stuff, maybe 400 cigarettes plus coffee, and then we gonna have to be double careful because from then on, they’ll be turning our cell over every other day to find the phone. After a few days, bilander man will tell the guards ’cos he knows full well we’ll come begging and bribing for another. He’ll take us for everything we got.’
The eye-slot was pulled open and Pasha was summoned to the door with what sounded like a rebuke. The exchange that took place was short, but when he turned round, all the colour had drained from his face. It was a pale, impassive face at the rosiest of times, but there was an obvious look of shock or dread written across it right at that moment.
Zubi asked him what was up, in Russian.
‘Krastna Prestnya,’ Pasha replied, looking at the floor. Zubi stood up slowly, put an arm round him, and spoke to him reassuringly in Russian. Pasha rolled up his matras and then, as he began to pack up his sumka, Zubi said to me quietly: ‘It’s the prison they put you in before they send you down to Zone 22, one of the gulags, in the middle of fucking nowhere. You don’t want to go to Zone 22.’
Within half an hour Pasha was gone.
9
There was no such thing as a ‘good night’s sleep’ in Piet Central, with all the tapping, the lights being on, the heat, the mosquitoes and the flies – not to mention the constant worrying – but the following morning I woke up about as refreshed and happy as a man could hope to be in there. The porridge shit went straight down the toilet hole and I brewed up a double-strength coffee with two sachets of Nescafé. I was too excited to eat. After a full body and hair wash with a big bowl of hot water, I put on the shirt and trousers I’d been arrested in, which were nice and clean, if a little crumpled after a night being pressed under my matras. I tidied my hair with the comb that had arrived with the provisions, took out a couple of packets of fags for what was likely to be a stressful day and made sure all my court papers were in good order. Zubi was very quiet for once as I got ready to leave, and I figured he was a bit sad at the prospect of living there by himself until the next foreigner pitched up.
All morning I paced the cell in my clean clothes, waiting for the guard to come, and every time I heard footsteps outside my heart leapt, only for the sound of the steps to fade slowly down the corridor. It was a hot day and I had to keep cooling my face and head with water, but it was as much my mounting impatience and my inability to sit or lie down as it was the heat that was making me sweat and fret. As the afternoon wore on, and still nothing happened, urgency turned to desperation. In the morning Zubi had done his best to reassure me that everything was going to be just fine; in the early afternoon he was telling me that it was probably just a backlog at the court system and that either they’d still come, or it’d be the next day.
By the time the bilander man had made his final delivery of slop at around five o’clock, all hope had passed and Zubi was sitting next to me, saying: ‘Be cool, English boy. You gotta get used to this shit. In here, no one is gonna come and apologize and explain what’s going on. You just gotta sit on your ass and stew until your time comes around. It ain’t like working for Garban I-Crap or whatever it is your fancy company’s called, where people email or text you to say sorry for missing the meeting. You’re just a piece of shit stuck in the system waiting to get cleared out. Don’t worry, man, Zubi’s gonna get you out of here.’
Friday turned out to be an exact repeat, the only difference being that I had barely slept and woke up in a foul mood that only got worse as the day wore on. No one came from dawn to dark, except the bilander man, and I went to bed dumb with despair but with my head racing with evil thoughts and fears, knowing I would have to wait at least another two full days before I went to court or was told what the fuck was going on. What was Piskin thinking? ‘Oh, fuck Tig Hague, Mr Hec-tic from London. He’s just a stupid pothead, we’ll let him know what’s going on next week, or when I can be fucking arsed!’
What the fuck were lawyers for? Or the fucking Embassy, for that matter? They’d probably buggered off to their dachas in the country for the weekend. Well, la-di-fucking-da, thank you very much, you useless twats…
These were my thoughts as I lay on my bed, tossing and turning in the heat, the sweat clinging to my clothes in the airless humidity of the cell, listening to that infernal bloody tapping on the pipes, swiping away the mosquitoes. I must have fallen asleep at least for a short time because I woke up lying on my back, with tears running out of the corners of my eyes, furiously scratching two clumps of mozzie bites on my neck and my forehead. The sound of another mosquito in my ear made me jump out of my bunk.
And then I lost it.
I started smacking my face and my neck, shouting: ‘Fucking cunts! Fucking cunts! I can’t stand this fucking shithole any longer!’ I kicked the bunks, punched the walls, threw my matras across the room, hurled the bowls and cups off the table, anything that I could reach I sent flying, all the time swearing and ranting. My body was quivering. Zubi looked shocked, even a little scared. He stood by his bunk, saying nothing, just holding out his upturned hands as if to say, ‘That’s cool, bro, you do your thing!’ letting me slowly burn myself out. Then he slowly walked towards me and gently sat me down on my bunk. I pressed my hands to my face to try to stop them shaking.
Piskin turned up at the prison on Monday with the air of a man just going about his daily business, like he had nothing of any consequence to tell me. He was looking distinguished in his grey suit, crisp shirt and conservative dark tie. I felt like a pikey in my tracksuit bottoms, supermarket T-shirt and old man’s checked slippers. I was sick all Saturday, didn’t eat all weekend, and the cumulative lack of sleep had left me feeling shattered. Leaning back in my chair with one leg crossed over my knee, a Marlboro Red burning between my fingers, I stared at Piskin coldly as he rifled through the notes from his briefcase in silence for a couple of minutes. I kept my mouth shut, but there was a lot of noise going on in my head. I had a lot to say to my so-called ‘lawyer’. I began to understand why they nail the furniture down in these places. The tension in the room was excellent, just as I wanted it to be, and my bloodshot, baggy eyes fixed him with a glare that must have felt like a laser in the side of his head. That’s what we needed right across the board in my case: ratchet up the fucking tension, knock some heads together, kick some useless lawyer arse, start banging the phones… and we were going to start right then. No more fucking about.
I broke the silence, but the tension remained.
‘Excuse me for interrupting, Mr Piskin, but if it’s not too much bother perhaps you could let me know how my bail appeal went on Thursday? Was it successful?’
The question and answer passed back through the translator Julia, who made a long, sympathetic face and said: ‘No, I’m sorry, Mr Hague, it was not successful. It is very rare for someone in your position, accused of smuggling drugs into Russia, to be granted bail.’
Piskin continued to organize his papers, jotting notes here and there in the margins. There was no urgency in his movements or manner. He seemed relaxed and at ease with himself and the situation. Not like me, the crazy, unshaven guy in the tracksuit, scratching his neck and scalp like a monkey.
‘Is that so? Well, that’s a bit of a shame, isn’t it? Perhaps Mr Piskin could see fit to explain why the hell he did not think it appropriate, in his capacity as my lawyer, my only bloody representative in this sorry mess, to come and tell me that the judge had not deemed me a suitable applicant for bail.’ I put the question quietly but firmly.
Piskin looked up at Julia and calmly delivered a couple of sentences to her. He’d been in court all day Thursday and Friday, the answer came back, and the prison authorities don’t relay messages between lawyer
s and prisoners.
‘So when’s my trial?’
Answer: some time at the end of September or maybe October. Depends on the schedule.
‘Will you tell Mr Piskin that I’d like to start looking at placing some money in the hands of the relevant characters in my case, so we can resolve this as soon as possible?’ I whispered this leaning forward over the table, because I was sure the room was bugged. To make certain Julia knew I meant ‘bribery’ and not regular legal fees, I gave her a couple of winks as I said it. She was only a young girl, obviously new to the world of criminal law, and she looked a little embarrassed as she relayed the message in hushed tones to the blank-faced, balding man to her right.
‘Mr Piskin does not think that will be necessary,’ came the relayed response. ‘He says he has had years of experience of the Russian criminal system, dealing in similar cases, and that his firm is one of the most respected in Moscow. He says that he would be very surprised, once all the evidence and character references have been collated, if you were not to walk from your trial a free man.’
‘You can tell him from me I’d be bloody gobsmacked if I didn’t,’ I snapped back.
Piskin looked up at me and made a sympathetic face. ‘He says he likes the English humour,’ said Julia.
So that was that. No more legal arguments or appeals. It was official. I was to be detained at the leisure of the Russian State until my trial at some unspecified date in the autumn, and until such time I would stew in my cell and go quietly insane – all expenses met by the Russian taxpayer – while my mum, dad and girlfriend would worry themselves sick and devote themselves to raising tens of thousands of pounds in legal fees, air flights, hotels and provisions from savings and donations. And all over a fucking pinhead of hash with the same intoxicating properties as a couple of lagers.
‘This is ludicrous! It’s crazy!’ I said, bringing my fist down on the metal table, startling them both. ‘Just say I hadn’t been fitted up and it was true that I was carrying 28.9 grams, an ounce – that’s the size of a bloody conker! That’s not smuggling, that’s worth 70 quid! The guy in Midnight Express had two fucking kilos of the stuff strapped to his chest! That’s about 100 times more than I’m alleged to have been smuggling – SMUGGLING! – and that geezer got four years, and that was in Turkey, a virtual police state back in the 1970s. Does nobody see how ridiculous this whole situation has become? It’s a storm in a fucking teacup!’
I realized I was getting heated and starting to swear a lot more than normal and I leant forward to Julia to apologize: ‘Look, I’m sorry to get so het up but this has all got way, way out of control and proportion. It’s just a nightmare. It’s horrible in here. I don’t deserve to be in here. I’ve been brought up to believe that if you do something wrong, you stand up and take your punishment like a man. But I’ve also been brought up to believe that a punishment should fit the crime, and I’m sorry, but banging me up for two or three months for a poxy bit of pot is just not right. So when I get angry, what I’m trying to say is that I need people to start taking some positive action and initiative, to go to the office and start earning their money. I can’t do anything for myself rotting up there in my cell, and this whole thing is starting to cause my mum, and my girlfriend and a lot of people a lot of grief. Please just tell Mr Piskin to pull his finger out and at least start showing me that he gives a flying shit about me and my case,’ I added, stabbing my cigarette at the ceiling.
I could tell that Julia didn’t translate everything that I said but I did hear the words ‘Midnight Express’. Piskin replied through her: ‘Mr Piskin is sorry for you and your family, and he understands the stress you are going through but what is done is done and we now have to be patient and wait for the trial until we can resolve your problem.’
I slumped forward in my chair and ground out the dog-end of my fag with the heel of my slipper.
*
I once read, or heard, a soldier describing war as long periods of boredom, of sitting around doing nothing, interspersed with bursts of intense, often terrifying activity; but all the time you’re sitting around doing nothing, bored by the monotony, the fear of those terrifying bursts was constantly eating away at the nerves. That pretty well summed up my experiences in cell 310, Piet Central. Ninety-five per cent of the time it was mind-numbing routine mixed with an underlying fear about what might suddenly happen next. Day after day, I smoked, I sat, I washed, I slept (or tried to) – I lay on my bunk dreaming of Lucy and dreaming of my freedom and dreaming of all the things we were going to do together when I was out. I ate noodles, I wrote up my diary, I talked to Zubi, I watched Russian game shows on the crappy telly on the floor, I brushed my teeth, I shaved my body, I shaved Zubi’s head, I swatted flies and mosquitoes, I paced the cell, I went for my weekly shower, and once in a while, to break the monotony, we’d take the walk up on the roof… But all the time, the fear was eating away at my guts. It was the fear of what would happen at the trial, the fear I would end up in a gulag for seven years, the fear that Lucy would leave me, the fear that Mum or Dad would die while I was inside, the fear I was going to lose my job and never get another one in the City, the fear I was going to get sick or stabbed or buggered, the fear I was going to go mad…
And then something terrible would happen. Like the day the shmon came.
It happened two days after the bilander man had brought us our mobile charger, quickly shoving it through the hatch with our black soda bread. It had taken him ten nerve-shredding days to get it and we gave him ten packets of Marlboro Reds in payment, which is serious currency in Piet, as big as a backhander gets. When he was gone Zubi and I danced around the cell, whooping for joy and punching the air. But, Zubi warned, the charger came at a high price, and it was only a matter of time before the bilander man spilled the beans and the bad cops came looking for the phone.
It was the afternoon of Tuesday 5 August, and Zubi and I had just seen David Beckham score his first goal for Real Madrid since joining them from Manchester United, a superb twenty-five-yard free kick against FC Tokyo in a pre-season friendly. I jumped out of my chair in celebration, but almost instantly Zubi turned the volume off the telly and put his ear to the door.
‘Listen,’ he said, his eyes bulging. We stood rooted to the spot and the smoke from my fag floated upwards in a virtually straight line through the muggy air. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the Real players mobbing Beckham as he stood with arms aloft, saluting the fanatical crowd. It was a muffled sound, coming from the other end of the corridor, but there was no mistaking what it was: a shmon cell raid, or ‘bad boy searching’ as Zubi called it. Slowly, every few minutes, the uproar grew that little bit louder and the shouts of the guards, the screams of the inmates and the barking of the dogs became that much more distinct as the riot cops moved from one cell to the next. The rate of their approach suggested that they were cherry-picking particular cells. Piet was so big it would take them all day to trash the whole place.
‘It’s just a show of strength,’ said Zubi. ‘Piet may be a Black Zone, largely controlled by the volk, not the FSB, but that doesn’t mean they won’t come in and smash the place to pieces and crack a few skulls from time to time, confiscating as many drugs, phones and weapons as they can along the way.’
There was nothing we could do but wait and pray that we were not one of the chosen ones that day. The loud crash of the barred metal gate nearest to our cell made us both stand up at once from our bunks. It was the first time I had seen Zubi show any fear and I watched him gulp in some air.
‘As soon as they open the door, put your arms over your head and just fucking run into the corridor. Don’t say anything, don’t look at them, just get out, don’t get cornered…’
‘Run? To where? In my grandad slippers?’
‘Just get out of the cell, ’cos you’ll get battered to fuck if you stay in here. We’re at the end of the corridor and these guys have got a taste for blood now.’
It was all going off in
cell 309 now. Heavy furniture – the bunks presumably – was being shunted across the floor and there was pandemonium out in the corridor as the prisoners piled out, yelling in pain and protest. There were at least two dogs, barking and yelping. Zubi motioned urgently for me to come and stand next to him a couple of yards from the door. My body was trying to pull me the other way into the far corner, but I went. The food hatch crashed down violently and in the space it left was a black balaclava, two eyes and a mouth.
The mouth spoke.
‘We’re next,’ said Zubi out of the side of his mouth. ‘They want the phone. Brace yourself.’
The sound of them coming was the worst bit. We heard 309’s door slam shut and the tramp of boots heading in our direction, and then the sound of the big metal key in the door. The door opened inwards and we both jumped back as two Alsatians, one after the other, rushed into the room, dragging their handlers behind them. Six men poured in after them, all in combat uniform and balaclavas, with black boots laced up their calves and short riot sticks above their heads. I felt the force of a truncheon crack against my shoulder-blade as I turned away, followed by several more on my right arm, which was wrapped over my head. ‘Run! Run! Run!’ shouted Zubi and the next thing I knew I was standing in the corridor, panting like a long-distance runner, with my arms spread against the wall. I looked straight down at the floor but to either side of us, out of the corner of my eye, I could see riot cops holding sub-machine guns across their stomachs with their fingers on the triggers.
I could tell by the noise that the cell was being completely turned upside down and in my head I was saying, over and over: ‘Not the phone! Not the phone! Please not the phone!’ I’d gladly have taken a proper beating rather than lose my one lifeline to the world outside. After a few minutes, the cops strode out, one of them shouting at us in Russian. I felt the nozzle of a sub-machine gun in my ribs, urging me back into the cell, and as I got to the door I felt the sharp heel of a combat boot dig into my lower back and propel me violently back into the room. Behind me, I heard Zubi cry out in pain as he hurtled in and the door was slammed shut.