The English Prisoner

by Tig Hague

  I found myself kneeling on the floor, breathing rapidly and stretching my back to ease the pain at the bottom of my spine and across my shoulders. Food packets lay strewn across the room, some with their contents spilling out on to the floor. Both our mattresses and pillows had been ripped open and their Hoover-bag stuffing was all over the bunks and the hanging sheets they’d ripped down. Our small box of washing powder had been emptied out on to the floor near the toilet area. Within a minute the corridor was silent again, and as soon as they were gone, Zubi rushed to the tiles by the door and lifted them up.

  ‘Charger’s here!’ he said, holding it up as if showing me the proof.

  He darted to his bunk, pulled out the phone battery from behind the brick and then leapt on to the top bunk next to mine, squeezing his body up against the bars as he stretched his arm out along the wall. He brought the brick in and put it in his other hand, then stuck his arm out again, and his anxious face instantly dissolved into a giant grin.

  ‘Fucking idiots couldn’t find no pussy in a whorehouse!’ he said, lowering himself back down and slapping me painfully on my sore shoulder. ‘There are just two problems, though, English boy. They know we’ve got a phone and they’ll keep coming back to look for it. And if that fails, then they’ll send in the kaziol.’

  ‘What the fuck’s a kaziol?’

  ‘It means goat in English; in Russian prisons it means informer. Then we’ll be properly screwed.’

  10

  Dad and Rob were coming to Moscow the following week for a string of meetings with lawyers and people from the Embassy, so I spoke to them every night, facing the wall on my bunk and whispering quickly into the mobile. We were trying to formulate a plan of some sort and make a decision about what lawyers to go with as quickly as we could, before the cops came and discovered the phone, or lumped one of their informers in our midst. The calls home, even with Mum and Lucy, became very pragmatic, mainly because I had to be quick in case the guards came crashing in. I was so paranoid that we were being bugged somehow that we started talking in a weird kind of code, a mixture of English slang, abbreviations, acronyms and garbled, twisted idioms that only we as a family and as Londoners might fully understand. The judge became the ‘J’, the lawyer ‘L’ or ‘muppet’, the Prosecutor the ‘P’, money was ‘spondoolies’ or ‘wedge’ or ‘bangers and mash’, the cockney for cash… There was no time for tearful or loving chats. It was always straight down to business and it was only later as I lay on my bunk that I wished I’d said something kind, or thoughtful, like asking how their day went. But it was all about me.

  It was impossible to know what to do, but we had to act pretty quickly so that our legal team had as much time as possible to prepare for the trial. Did we stick with the uninspiring but experienced Piskin? Did we go with Zubi’s crew, who sounded dodgy but who, he promised until he was blue in the face, would definitely get me off? Or did we go with one of the firms that Dad and Rob had contacted from London? None of us were familiar with the Russian criminal code or judicial system, although Zubi made out he was a professor who’d spent a career specializing in the subjects. The more I got to know Zubi the more I realized he was one of those guys who was always right about everything, who never conceded that someone else might have a better idea or plan. Zubi always knew best, and it was starting to get on my nerves. I grew increasingly sceptical about his judgement on how my family and I should handle my case, and it was depressing to feel my confidence in the man who had held me together for a month slowly starting to ebb away. The flipside to that was good, though, or so I kept telling myself, because it meant I was slowly getting a grip on the situation, growing ever more confident and stronger in my own judgement and less dependent on Zubi. I was no longer the little lost boy I’d been on arrival.

  I woke up excited the day Dad and Rob were scheduled to visit me. It was Tuesday 12 August and they’d been in town since Sunday, trying to put my legal team together. I was desperate to see them, not least to hear if there had been a breakthrough or developments. I was led down to the ground floor and given the pat-down with my arms and legs spread before I was buzzed through to the visiting area. This consisted of two rows of cubicles facing each other, with a gap of about a foot separating the visitor’s from the prisoner’s. The booths on either side were fronted with thick glass or Perspex and you communicated with each other through an old-style telephone with a smelly mouthpiece. I squeezed into my chair with my knees rammed right up against the wall underneath the shelf and sparked up a Marlboro Red. I was drawing heavily and smoking quickly as I waited, straining my face against the window to see if I could catch a glimpse of any activity at either end of the booths, but all I could see was lots of hands pressed up against the glass, reaching out to touch their loved ones.

  Then the short, stocky, white-haired figure of my dad appeared in the booth opposite, beaming a big grin from ear to ear. For some reason, right then, I remembered one of his favourite little sayings: ‘I may be five foot five, son, but that’s big enough to join the fire brigade!’

  He picked up the phone and in his thick London accent said: ‘How’s my little lad then? Who’s been a naughty boy, eh? I tell you what, son, when I get you out of here I’m gonna kick that fucking arse of yours all the way back to London.’ I started laughing and then crying a bit, not blubbing, because I wasn’t at all sad. They were just tears of relief and delight. My dad was there in Piet Central! Sitting right in front of me!

  For ten minutes he made me laugh, and I knew it was a bit of a show and that inside he didn’t feel so funny. We had to be very careful not to say anything about the mobile phone upstairs, because I was convinced our meetings would be taped and monitored, but I asked him how the lawyer situation was looking. He gave me the thumbs-up sign and said: ‘It’s all in hand. Don’t you worry. We’re on it. We’ve got two guys on board, an Artur something and an Arseny something, who were recommended by one of your Russian clients. We met them in a bar last night and they seem like the real deal. We even cracked a bottle of champers and raised a glass to your impending acquittal. Don’t you worry about it, worrying’s our job. You just keep your head down and stay strong. Right, my boy, I’m going to let that Herbert brother come in and talk to you. I can hear him climbing the walls outside. You look after yourself and just remember that we’re not going to rest until you’re out of this dump. I’m going in for a hip operation at the end of September so I won’t make it out for the trial. I’ll see you at home, my lad, where you belong. We’ll have a joint party to welcome you and my new hip. And when I say “joint”, son, I mean “shared”!’

  He gave me a little salute and a big grin, and then he was gone.

  Rob’s face peeked round the corner sideways, about halfway up the doorway, before he squeezed himself into the booth, pointing at me and laughing. ‘Look at the state of you!’ he said, picking up the receiver. ‘Fuck me, is that what they make you wear in here? You look like a fashion model for a car boot sale. It’s Sue Ryder – the autumn collection! You look like shit, my friend. Are they not feeding you in here?’ Like Dad, he carried on giving it the comic bravado and I wept with laughter on the other side of the glass. I was crying so much I could barely smoke my fag. It was the first time I’d laughed properly in over four weeks, and it was just what I needed. A bit of boys’ banter and piss-taking, with all the bigger emotions we were feeling kept well out of sight.

  I was almost more nervous than excited when Mum and Lucy came to visit almost three weeks later on Tuesday 2 September, because I was going to find it difficult to hold it together. If one of us broke, I knew we’d all go to pieces, and that wasn’t how I wanted it. I didn’t want them to leave that booth and fly home to England with an image of misery imprinted on their minds. Visiting times were always in the afternoon and I spent the better part of nine hours fidgeting and fretting in the cell before the guard finally came to lead me downstairs. I wanted to make myself look as nice as possible, so I washed and combed my h
air, shaved as close as I could, and brushed my teeth. I put on the smartest of my two tracksuits and my laceless Pumas, which I’d been allowed to keep when they took the rest of my personal belongings away. They were the flashest pair of trainers in the entire prison, and I didn’t wear them often for fear of drawing attention to myself. But this was a very special occasion and I felt just that little bit more self-confident as we made our way down the corridors and stairwells to the visiting area.

  I’d been sitting restlessly in the glass booth for twenty minutes or so, wondering if something had gone wrong and the girls had been unable to make it, when I saw Lucy sweep past the open door in the visitor’s booth opposite. I stood up and started shouting, ‘Luce! Luce! I’m in here!’ But of course she couldn’t hear me. Mum suddenly appeared in the doorway and our faces lit up simultaneously. We both began waving frantically and doing thumbs-up signs. Mum motioned Lucy to come back, and in she bounced looking more beautiful and radiant than I’d ever seen her with her gorgeous curly brown hair tumbling over her shoulders. There was barely enough room, but both of them managed to squeeze into the tiny space, like two girls having their photos taken in a high street picture booth. It was like being in a silent movie for the first minute or so, as we all grinned and waved and stared inanely and pressed our palms up against the glass panes in front of us. The joy of the moment washed over me like a hot shower.

  The two of them passed the phone piece back and forth to each other, and we were all talking so fast we were barely listening to what the other person was saying. The point of the exercise was just to connect, to communicate, to make contact, to hear each other’s voices, to express and feel our love. The words that passed between us were virtually irrelevant. We might as well have been talking in Serbo-Croat. The thirty minutes we were allowed shot by and I couldn’t believe it when the female guard stuck her head around the door and shouted, ‘Dva minuta!’ (‘Two minutes!’). Mum, who never does long goodbyes, said: ‘I love you. I think of you all the time. Be strong. We’ll get you home soon. It won’t be long now.’ She kissed her fingers and pressed them up against the window and then walked straight out without looking back. I was glad it was like that, and not a painfully drawn-out tearful affair. It was the same with Lucy. We both managed to avoid blubbing as we said our goodbyes, blowing each other kisses and pressing our hands against the glass. As I backed my way out of the booth into the corridor, trying to hold her in my sight for as long as possible, I carried on blowing kisses and mouthing, ‘Love you, Babes, love you!’ Then I turned around and there, right next to me, was a line of prisoners waiting to go back to the holding cells. My cheeks burned with instant embarrassment, and I went straight back into ‘prisoner’ mode, putting on a frown and trying to look hard.

  We were led into the corridor of holding booths round the corner and I continued to stand, trying to avoid coming into contact with the filthy walls. Normally it was quiet in that area and all you could hear was the odd shuffling of shoes on the floor or the flare of a match being struck. But there was a bit of a commotion on this occasion and I heard locks rattling, doors opening and prisoners talking and laughing. Suddenly my own door was pulled open and I found a short thick-set man with a hairy chest grinning at me and holding up the shoelace with which he had just unlocked my door. There were half a dozen prisoners milling around in the corridor, but I didn’t want to leave my booth. What was the point? What was there to do? But the others seemed to think it was just hilarious to have escaped from their cells, and they walked about like naughty schoolboys while I stood in my open doorway, making a weak show of joining in the fun.

  The self-appointed ‘booth-breaker’ was unable to open the door opposite mine and the guy inside started asking for a cigarette to be handed over the door. Among the group in the corridor was a very tall and skinny young guy, at least six foot four, wearing only a T-shirt, boxer shorts and a pair of slippers. He took out a cigarette and stood on tiptoe as he reached up to pass it over the top of the door. As he turned his back to me I recoiled into my booth and looked away. The seat of his shorts and the backs of his legs were caked in dry shit, right down to his knees, and as he stretched his arm up, his T-shirt rose up his back to reveal dozens of livid red boils and weeping sores, each the size of coins, some leaking pus and blood. I could see black and yellow bruises all along the inside of his lower arm where he’d been injecting himself.

  After we returned to the cell the guards delivered the provisions Mum and Lucy had brought in, and in among all the food and the fags were a few items of clothing from home, including my favourite motheaten, paint-splattered fleece. I pressed it into my face and breathed in the lovely, familiar aroma of Mum’s washing powder and conditioner. It smelt of home and of my childhood and of happier times. As I pulled it over my head I resolved not to wash it until I was back in England.

  It would be an exaggeration to say that the week that followed was a happy one, but it was probably the least troubled of the seven weeks I’d been detained. That was mainly because, though my trial date still hadn’t been set, I knew it couldn’t be too much longer. I was just counting down the days. The end was moving ever closer. What’s more, seeing Mum, Dad, Rob and Lucy had given me a massive boost. Until their visit, and in spite of having the mobile phone, I’d felt cut off from my world, marooned on a small island of misery with no hope of escape or rescue. But seeing them in the flesh gave me the strength and hope to get through the final few weeks. Life in the cell was boring, but boring was better than unbearable, which is what it would have been in any other cell in Piet. The shmon riot cops paid us two more flying visits, smashing the cell to smithereens, just as they had done the first time, and leaving Zubi and me with some impressive bruises across our arms and shoulders. But the raids lasted no more than five minutes, and they never found any of our phone equipment. If it’s possible to get used to the experience of being truncheoned by screaming men in balaclavas, then we did.

  My health, too, was just about holding up, although I’d lost roughly a stone in weight. I’d had no excess fat to lose when I arrived in Moscow, so when the equivalent of fourteen bags of sugar disappeared, I became very bony and gaunt. I must have looked more unhealthy than I was feeling. I was taking no exercise, smoking about twenty fags a day, and I’d experienced more stress in those seven weeks than I had done in my entire life. I was living off noodles, biscuits and coffee, with the odd slice of onion and sausage, and the occasional piece of fruit, finding its way into my system from time to time. For a few days after a food delivery, we had a bag of oranges and/or apples, but we ate them quickly before they perished and we’d then go two or three weeks without anything fresh. The slop provided by the prison had virtually no nutritional value whatsoever and I very rarely ate it. The porridge-style gruel we were given in the morning and the slice of black soda bread we got with the soup at lunch and supper were the healthiest options, but the soups were really no more than warm water with a handful of miserable strands of meat or over-boiled cabbage floating around on the surface. Occasionally you might spot a few bits of diced carrot or some other root vegetable in the murk, but that was rare. It was little wonder there was so much illness in Piet when the authorities were providing the prisoners with just enough nutrition to keep them alive but absolutely nothing more. Zubi and I were among the lucky few who had people on the outside keeping us stocked up with half-decent produce. Compared to the Russians in their overcrowded, squalid cells, Zubi and I were leading a life of prison luxury.

  But that all changed on the morning of Tuesday 9 September.

  11

  It was as if they had finally had enough of us, the two foreigners on Easy Street, with a clean cell all to ourselves, a cupboard full of food and fags, and a mobile phone they knew we had but couldn’t find. We were lying on our bunks, waiting for the morning cell check, when two of the more senior guards entered the room and started gesticulating and half-shouting at us. I jumped to attention and stared at them without th
e faintest clue what they were saying, but aware that something serious was afoot. These officers never carried out the cell checks and Zubi wasn’t coming back at them with his usual stream of banter and wisecracks.

  The door slammed shut and Zubi put his head in his hands. ‘They’re moving us to Razburg! The fucking dungeon!’ he said, exhaling loudly. ‘That is not fucking good, my friend. That’s where they put the bad boys. Start packing quickly and cram in as much as you can because they won’t let you come back to pick up what you can’t carry. Hurry, because as soon as they come back, we go, whether we’re ready or not.’

  I grabbed my favourite clothes and as much of the food and toiletries as I could squeeze into my sumka and suitcase, then rolled up my matras with my eating utensils inside. Zubi’s first act was to grab the three components of the mobile phone and bury them deep inside his matras. Between us we managed to pack up about three-quarters of the food in the cupboards. We sat down on our bunks, breathing hard and fast, and exchanged apprehensive glances. Within a few minutes the door was opened and a guard barked at us to leave. Usually the guards ambled along the corridor without any sense of urgency and the prisoners just shuffled along behind them, but on this occasion they marched us away at speed. I was in my backless slippers with my matras under one arm, a suitcase in one hand and an overflowing sumka in the other. I was struggling to carry it all, not because it was very heavy but because it was awkward. Two packets of noodles and a bottle of shampoo spilled out of the sumka as I tried to rearrange the way I was holding the bags while trying to keep pace with the guard in front, with the one to my rear prodding me with his truncheon if I slowed up. By the time we reached the bottom of the eighth flight of stairs the muscles in my upper body were quivering under the strain.