by David Wilson
This added to Mrs Shankland’s growing unease, but she had followed all the instructions given to her, and was confident Napoleon would not sit by her.
She moved silently forward, and then stood to attention on the pink square, as Napoleon edged towards her.
“Go on boy,” encouraged Officer Cook as Napoleon began to get excited.
Suddenly a small child leapt in front of Mrs Shankland, and patted Napoleon on the head.
“Don’t pat the dog!” shouted Cook, but it was too late, Napoleon’s concentration had been broken.
Officer Cook retired Napoleon to his kennel, and Mrs Shankland quickly excused herself to go to the lavatory.
All the visitors had to sit facing away from Wright’s desk, on specially coloured brown chairs, and the prisoners had to sit facing the desk on a red chair. For extra security, the prisoners wore a blue bib with “HMP” emblazoned on it, and they were no longer allowed to go to the toilet, or to buy anything from the WRVS stall, which served teas, coffee, and homemade cakes. In the centre of the room was a circular dome, like a disco ball from the seventies, which contained a series of cameras that could pan and tilt three hundred and sixty degrees around the room, checking for any drugs being passed, and recording anything unusual.
The prisoners found ever more ingenious ways of smuggling contraband into the jail. The favourite method at Greenbank was to pass a cellophane-wrapped package mouth to mouth on first meeting your visitor. After all what could be more natural than wanting to kiss your wife, or your girlfriend? Then the package would be swallowed, and when nature had taken its course a few days later, the drugs economy of the jail would be in full swing once more. As a therapeutic community there were fewer users at Greenbank than there would be in other prisons and most had changed their drug habit to suit the introduction of MDT – Mandatory Drug Testing, or the “piss test” as it was called. Cannabis stayed in the system for as long as twenty-eight days, but after forty-eight hours there was no trace of heroin, so it didn’t take a genius to realize the prisoner’s illegal drug of choice.
Other contraband was passed including money and alcohol, and if things were becoming too hot for mums or girlfriends, they could always hide things in the baby’s nappy – staff would never look there. Wright remembered the arm of one visitor’s wheelchair that doubled as an optic.
Wright studied the kisses at the start of visits with the intensity of a dirty old man, trying to work out who spent too long inspecting the other’s tonsils. He’d let the security office know his suspicions, and later have them check the cameras to see if they had caught anything on tape. The following day the “random” drugs tests would include a fair smattering of those he had spotted. And failing the test meant an end to therapy, and a return to the system.
Shankland, one of the prison’s armed robbers, or in prison-speak a “blagger”, saw his mother, put on his HMP bib, and walked over to where she was sitting. He held her in his arms, and she started to cry. “Don’t cry mum, c’mon. Sit down. Drink your tea.” He held her hand, and she reached into her pocket for a paper tissue. She blew her nose, and put the tissue down on the table in front of her.
“I can’t keep doing this. It gets harder every time. I don’t like it. People look at me, and I get scared.”
“It’ll be fine – you’ll see,” Shankland tried to sound reassuring. His mum brightened a little, and she asked about the murders.
“Yeah, it’s got everybody spooked, but I’d rather be here than back in a dispersal. I can look after myself.” He flexed a heavily tattooed right arm, marvelling at the way the heart and dagger on his bicep ballooned with each clench.
Shankland had only been at the jail for about ten months, and whilst he was clever – perhaps too clever for his own good – he was still coming to terms with therapy. It was a big culture shock not only to be in a therapeutic community, but also to leave behind the “blagger–nonce” hierarchy. Almost from the first day Shankland had made it clear that he thought that sex offenders – nonces – were the lowest of the low, and couldn’t understand why they were allowed to be on the same planet, let alone the same group as him. The therapist had pointed out that whilst their crimes might have been different, he had also made people victims. Walking into a jeweller’s shop wearing a balaclava and pointing a sawn-off shotgun at the staff would traumatize them for life. He still reckoned his crimes were more legit than the scum he encountered at Greenbank, and he worried his bad attitude would get him into trouble. More than once his anger very nearly broke out into the open and he had to fight the urge to pin one of the nonces against the wall with his ample hand around his throat until the guy stopped squealing, kicking and pleading and never would again. So far he’d kept his actions far below the radar.
“That’s your lot,” shouted Wright. “Please make your way back to the gate. Prisoners remain seated where you are.”
People started to say their goodbyes, with promises to visit again next month.
“All right, please make your way to back to the wings,” bellowed Wright. Shankland reached forward, and pocketed the tissue that his mother had been using. He quickly removed the two wraps from the tissue in his pocket, and leaning forward whilst still seated pushed them both into his anus which he had liberally lubricated with soap earlier.
They all waited until the four prisoners who had been selected for a search were released, and then they hurried down the M1, back to their cells.
*
Shankland eased out the two wraps, which wasn’t difficult with the practice he’d had, but he wasn’t comfortable with probing his rectal passage, it was a no-go area for him in any circumstance other than carrying. He shuddered at the thought.
He quickly washed the wraps under the tap at the sink amazed, as he always was, by his mother’s neat handiwork, carefully folded, shaped and watertight like special treats in his lunchbox for school. She was a darling, never let him down, never questioned anything he did, perhaps that was why he was banged up in a place like this, no one had ever drawn a line. And now he was in some deeper shit.
Someone knocked at his cell door and he quickly tried to pull up his trousers but hadn’t managed to buckle his belt when the bolts slammed back, the key hit home and the door swung open.
“My you’re looking more like Charles Bronson every time with your pecs rippling and your arse hanging out of your kecks. Ready to rumble my friend?”
“Fuck off Brock,” said Shankland, clipping his belt onto the tightest hold.
Brock closed the door. “Being cheeky to an officer of HMP Service could land you in some serious mire, my friend, perhaps we can settle this if I slapped your butt cheeks until they were red raw and you were crying for more?” Brock was frequently amused at how a beefcake like Shankland could be reduced to a quiver with a few well aimed innuendos. Find a weak point and they’ll play, everyone has one. Shankland was a blagger so off limits to any further, more intricate abuse.
“Gear?” said Brock.
“And some,” said Shankland showing him the wraps.
“One for me and one for you,” said Brock. “Eeny, meeny, miny, mo…”
“No mate, one’s horse and one’s whizz, want to risk getting it wrong?”
“Fuck no, why do you take that heroin shit, it turns you into a zombie. Speed’s the thing for me, performance.”
Shankland made a snorting noise and doubled up on his bed, giggling like a madman in anticipation of chemical oblivion. “What like a V-8 motor or a Formula One car, you planning on beating Usain Bolt in the sprint? That’s just sad.”
“So I don’t feel pain, yes? Or remorse, or fear or regret, so I don’t cry out in the middle of the night like some fucking spineless jerk when I think about what’s been done to me, what’s been done to us, and what I’m doing to make things better.”
Brock took one of the wraps and bit open a corner, tasting the crystals.
“Rocket fuel, you are the Messiah, I would kiss your ass but you migh
t end up enjoying it.” Brock pocketed the wrap and slipped out of the cell slamming the locks forcefully.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Cleland House – Prison Service Headquarters – just off Millbank in London was a depressing place at the best of times. It seemed even more depressing on Monday morning as Munro drove down the M4 mentally preparing himself for a meeting with his area manager – Margery Hardy. He’d spent his Sunday fielding calls from anxious staff, liaising with the police and trying to keep a lid on things. In the evening he managed to pick up the last cheese sandwich on the shelf from his local Tesco Express but he hadn’t eaten since. He’d forgotten the last time he had slept through the night, if he’d slept at all; he was aware of vague periods of unconsciousness but his dreams seemed as vivid as his waking nightmare.
Over the years he’d grown to despise everything that happened at Cleland House, a view that had become more hardened after he had been posted there as an area manager support grade, which had inevitably coloured his view about area managers too. They were paper pushers, bureaucrats, in tray, out tray and pending jockeys, bloodless parasites. His two years there had not been a happy experience, but at least he had picked up some of the game that was played out in the highest reaches of running the prison service, which was why he knew he should meet with the area manager face-to-face.
There were no formal rules to the game, beyond “not embarrassing the Minister”, and by and large you learned by your mistakes, or what a friendly soul was prepared to tell you. Munro’s friendly soul had been Tim, an executive officer in the area manager’s office that Munro had been posted to. “It’s all a question of balance,” he had revealed over a pint, after Munro had been there for about a month and had apparently made one cock-up after another. Munro thought he’d performed well – he’d been efficient, progressing matters as quickly as he could, making decisions and offering advice.
“Balance. We slag off the prisons behind their backs, and explain away any policy deficiency to our political masters by claiming that the prisons are ‘reluctant’ or ‘resistant’ to change – which is why the POA comes in handy, but when we speak to the prisons we slag off the politicians and say things like, ‘He’s trying to make a name for himself,’ or, ‘He doesn’t understand how these things work.’ And to keep that balance going we need time, which is why you have to slow down. Nobody is going to thank you for making decisions here, which is why you keep cocking up. This game is played at only two speeds – dead slow and stop. Remember: what we are trying to achieve is a quiet life. What we want is the status quo, and for as long as we possibly can.”
Tim’s words echoed in Munro’s ears as he parked his car in John Islip Street, and pushed forward the heavy, glass revolving door of Cleland House. Balance. A quiet life. What exactly is a quiet life: death? Was Margery Hardy explaining the murders away to the Home Secretary by demolishing his competence to govern Greenbank? He walked up to the front desk, showed a distracted civilian his ID, and hopped into the lift to take him to the fifth floor.
Over time Munro had realized that there was a balance too between what the area managers were prepared to reveal to their governors, and what governors were prepared to reveal to their area managers. And as the lift made its way upwards his thoughts returned to Greenbank and Kate’s plan, which would certainly not feature in his discussions in London today. Munro was here to taste the air; feel the atmosphere, and get a sense of what Hardy was saying and doing about Greenbank.
Margery Hardy had been area manager for London North for four years, and her appointment had been a controversial one, given that she had no previous experience of running a prison. She had been a “cross-hierarchical posting” from Health, and her first few months were filled with controversy, partly prompted by the Prison Governors Association (PGA), which had seen her appointment as the thin end of the wedge to get more civil servants into the management of the prison service rather than governors. Things only settled down when the PGA saw that they could turn her mistakes to their advantage by painting her as inexperienced, and by implication not as good as a governor.
What they were trying to resist was the idea that running a prison was the same as running Tesco or Marks and Spencer – that being a prison governor was just another management job. Time after time the PGA would try to hammer home the message of how unique and different running a prison was, and how the special cultures that developed in prison took years to understand and control, and were resistant to Key Performance Targets that seemed to dominate virtually every discussion. So having Hardy make mistakes was no bad thing, but inevitably it did little to build trust between her and their members. In a culture that was dominated by watching your back, Hardy watched hers more assiduously than most.
Munro understood all of this; it was the stuff that filled the bars at prison service conferences, but gradually he had started to feel sorry for Hardy. Sure she was inexperienced, but she had been helpful since he had taken over Greenbank and whilst she had one eye on her own career, it was she who had drafted the Home Secretary’s PQ which had been supportive of him. At least so far.
He walked into the area support office and tried to spot Tim. Everyone seemed to be bent double over a computer screen, occupying themselves by looking busy, Munro used to marvel at the interests of the support staff, several of whom were highly educated, and often enrolled on or teaching OU courses in their spare time. Many of them were probably using their office time to prepare their next teaching or writing assignment instead of answering prisoners’ requests or complaints, dealing with related correspondence and planning for the next round of budgets. No wonder there were cracks appearing in the system.
A familiar head popped up from behind an impressive looking Home Office report.
“Oi, Munro – they’ll be calling you the Lord High Executioner next.”
It was Tim.
“I suppose you’ve heard the latest,” said Munro, to which Tim nodded and offered a smile which suggested “tough times”.
“You look shit,” said Tim. “Must be hard on the front line, the war against crime, the war against drugs, it’s always a war isn’t it? You have my deepest sympathies old man.”
“Thanks, what are you reading?” said Munro.
“Nothing really – just the latest White Paper promising to end crime, punish the guilty and make England a risk-free place where dangerous dogs, persistent young offenders, drug dealers, paedophiles and anyone else that the Daily Mail has taken a dislike to will be driven from the land.”
“Didn’t we do all of that last year?”
“One more push,” laughed Tim. “Just one more push – and an extra £100 million for all those bobbies on the beat. Seriously though, it looks like this time they are trying to change the basis of the criminal justice system from one which is based on due process to a system based on crime control – and all that that will mean.”
“So, what will all that mean?” asked Munro.
“Oh nothing much – just an end to trial by jury, or being innocent until proven guilty. Or better still, not having access to a solicitor at your trial. Cameron’s keen to abolish the Human Rights Act, but do you think he’ll be happy to go down in history as the man who ripped up the Magna Carta?”
Munro felt a twinge of guilt. There were things he’d like to do to sort out his current crisis that had nothing to do with “due process”. “So it’s right to grant prisoners the vote like the European Court of Human Rights says we should?” he said. “Or let terrorists avoid deportation because the ECHR says there’s a ‘technical hitch here folks’? They’re not staring down the barrel of an AK47.”
“Fair point,” said Tim. “The Conservatives want us to uphold our nation’s standards in the face of European liberalism, but how can you define ‘common sense’ or ‘British values’?”
“Yes, I don’t like it,” said Munro. “One man’s crime can be another man’s moral victory. Depends whose child gets murdered or abducted, the
n common sense goes out of the window. How many are we locking up today?”
“Over eighty-six thousand – we’re back to three to a cell, and of course we are now planning to buy another ship because the numbers keep going up. Oh, and my new favourite statistic – we have more life-sentenced prisoners in the UK than the whole of the European Union combined.”
“Well that’s why we’re all so safe walking the streets!”
“Safe – do you understand the meaning of the word at Greenbank?”
Munro noticed that Margery Hardy was standing at the window of her office, gesturing for him to come in.
She was in her power suit, early forties, with two divorces and three children behind her. She knew how to turn her charm to her advantage, and pointed at a chair.
“You must be exhausted,” she said, and then asked, “Tea?” Munro shook his head. “Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot. You prefer coffee. Shocking business about Johnsson.”
“Yes – a real broadside that one, never saw it coming, and no, no coffee, I’m fine. Thanks. I just wanted to give you a verbal report about what has been happening, and to thank you for your support.”
Hardy looked slightly quizzical, but Munro quickly prompted – “I am presuming you wrote the Minister’s PQ.”
“Ah that,” replied Hardy, taking the credit for Tim’s work. “Yes. Thanks, we’re a team, we look after our own.”
Munro nodded sagely but felt a sudden dread like a drop in temperature before a hurricane. He imagined in reality the support he was getting was as thin as the paper it was written on, and as combustible but he proceeded to give Hardy an update on events at the jail. Of course he studiously avoided mentioning Kate’s plan that was probably in the process of being implemented as they were speaking. Hardy listened intently, nodding in the right places and gasping at the audacity of the Mazurskis. “I’ll make a note to inform the Treasury solicitor,” she said, and scribbled something down on her “To Do” list. In all Munro spoke uninterrupted for about forty minutes, and when he had finished Hardy thanked him for making the trip and for bringing her up to date.