Happiness is Door Shaped

by Ray Deveroux

  The chief, in a lower voice growled, if you mean Officers Donaldson and Scott, one, they were eating breakfast at the same time, and two, they wouldn’t dream of coming into the establishment before their shift times. They barely get through the gate on time at the best of times.

  Golden Boy was frantically reading through his report, trying to pick out something that actually made sense.

  The chief piped up: Mr. Chambers, did you do a key check this morning?

  Yes, chief, of course I did. Golden Boy was doubting himself now.

  Were any keys issued?

  No, the key safe was still locked. The NOO had the keys to the safe and he was talking to prisoner Smith to find out why he was under his bed, sir, Golden Boy replied.

  So, how the fucking hell did these Officers get into the jail, drag a prisoner into a locked exercise yard, through a locked cell door, and back again, securing all the doors with no keys?

  The chief was getting annoyed now at this debacle.

  Don’t know, said Golden Boy, they must have done it somehow, chief.

  Leave, the chief shouted to us.

  We got out of the office as quick as we could, slowing down just past the office window, where we could hear the chief, in a low rumbling voice, tearing strips off the Principal Officer.

  Golden Boy came onto the landing. He had a lopsided grin on his face that looked like he was constipated.

  Now you two, his voice in an appealing tone, you taught that little shit bag a lesson didn’t you? He laughed as though he was in with the joke.

  Sally and I looked at each other. We were no mugs, and we certainly weren’t going to play into this amateur’s hands.

  Even the chief knew what had really happened, but he wasn’t going to create paperwork and spend hours sorting out what went on for that little shit. No, the chief for all his faults was a staff man; he knew when to look after his staff and when to bollock them.

  Mr. Chambers, what are you trying to accuse us of? Sal and I were wearing our best butter wouldn’t melt in our mouths look.

  You know what I’m talking about. You can bullshit the old chief, but you can’t bullshit me!

  Oh yes we can. Sal’s and my brains were in the same thought pattern as we looked at each other.

  As the chief said, we were having breakfast at the time. The chief was on his normal table, he saw us. And, as he says, how can you get into a jail with no keys? You said yourself; you had checked them and none had been issued. The gateman told you the same.

  Old George had kept his end up.

  You fuckers did it somehow. I’ll find out and screw you to the wall, said Golden Boy.

  Of course he never found out.

  What we didn’t know was that Tommy Smith’s trial was starting today. All hell was breaking loose to clean him up so he looked half presentable for the judge. He still wasn’t very coherent, ranting on about “death-row”. Of course, no one took any notice. The nurse had been called to check him over to make sure that he was fit for court. She didn’t even give him a quick glance before signing the “fit to travel” paperwork. She had dealt with the poor lad that was raped by this animal and couldn’t care less that he looked like death warmed up.

  We managed, somehow, after using mops and brushes to clean him up, scrubbing like mad to get him half decent for court.

  Tommy, being Tommy, had got his little gang outside to terrorize the witnesses. They were only an old couple, but they had enough of the stress of interviews and statements, strange young men coming to their door all hours of the day and night, scaring them half to death.

  The only witnesses to the trial were so intimidated by the young thugs that they refused to come to court. Tommy never got in front of the judge. Small blessings, I suppose; he was a wreck.

  Our story, if needed was that we suspected he was using drugs the night before to get off his head so that he didn’t go to court, thereby delaying the proceedings. This is a trick that is common with remand prisoners.

  The judge had no choice but to throw the case out, the prosecution having no case to answer. I don’t think Tommy knew what was going on at the time, but he was free.

  We had heard from one of the prisoners that knew him on the outside the prison that he had took up bare knuckle fighting. He thought himself invincible. His first fight was with an experienced fighter, ten years his senior. Tommy never stood a chance, and he was battered into submission within minutes. Humiliated in front of his little gang, he took out a knife and stabbed his opponent in the back. This caused uproar, especially with his own family, who he had now brought shame upon. His family was still upset that he had been accused of mugging old women and allegedly raping a boy in jail. They couldn’t believe that of their Tommy.

  Tommy ran away, his little gang in tow.

  The next time Tommy was seen was in a ditch with a bullet in his head. It was said that he had committed the ultimate crime when he stabbed a fellow gypsy in the back after losing a fight and that his own family had him shot.

  He was, in the end, executed.

  As for the price on his head back at the jail, as is normally the case, when the main culprit gets out of reach of a debt that has to be paid, it falls on the next in line of the pecking order of his little gang in jail.

  Scott was a fat, tallish boy with piggy eyes; he soon took over from Tommy when he was released from court – an equally horrible lad with bad breath and rotten teeth.

  When I first met him I asked him his name, trying to establish some sort of rapport. He was even more odious close up. I stood far enough away to avoid his stinking mouth. When he spoke it sounded like he was gargling all the time, his uneven black teeth causing him to speak that way.

  When the odious boy eventually spoke he said, Scott.

  Scott who? I asked.

  Scott fuck all to do with you, he replied, sniggering. His card was marked from then on.

  Funny little bastard aren’t you, I replied, but he took no notice and walked off. He was on the library run. It was one day in the week when prisoners can go to the library for a book. Most of the time it was used to do deals. The library was the only place where adults and YP’s mixed. Usually, there were little problems; the prisoners got to pay their debts and do their deals, so they weren’t going to rock the boat by spoiling it. I would have to have a word in his ear about his behavior when he got back. Being a prison Officer, you cannot let a prisoner take the piss, no matter how minor it may be. If it’s not nipped in the bud, they get bolder and it starts getting out of hand. Prisoners will push you to the limit if you let them and, if not stopped Officers can be made to look fools.

  However, the notorious prisoner wanted his pound of flesh after one of his visitors got their car smashed up by one of Tommy’s gang. It was not going to go unpunished; he had a reputation to keep. A tall Londoner, a hard man in his sixties, was said to have connections with the Krays in London, and he was waiting for young Scott.

  Scott, like Tommy, never stood a chance. He was found on the floor of the library with a shank sticking out of his fat belly.

  The general alarm was sounded and we all rushed to the library.

  Of course, again, there were no witnesses. Scott was blue-lighted in an ambulance to the hospital. Thankfully for him, the hospital wasn’t far away, and he was losing a lot of blood.

  Golden Boy was the duty Officer, seizing his chance to get back at me for making him look like a twat (which he was) and knowing that it was my early shift and I was due to drive home, he ordered me and big Mel from the segregation unit, to escort Scott to the hospital. Mel was none too pleased either; he would miss his dinner time session in the gym. He hated missing that.

  So, with the fat odious Scott handcuffed to me, we set off, sirens wailing to the hospital.

  He was barely conscious when we got there. We thought it was going to be a quick in and out; he looked as though he was going to snuff it there and then. Good, Mel could get to the gym in time, and I could get off
home to see my wife and kids. I know, evil bastards weren’t we? But the Prison Service in those days made you like that.

  But the little bugger pulled through. After an emergency operation, he was moved to the recovery ward on the top floor. Mel and me were sitting by his bed, eating his hospital dinner between us. We were starving and had missed our dinner break in the mess. When he woke up, we hadn’t bothered with the closeting chain, a long chain that was used to cuff prisoners while in hospital beds. The chain was about six foot long and allowed the prisoner to move around. The cuff would be secured to the prisoner on his wrist and the other end on the Officer’s wrist. It was there not only for security, but also for dignity; if the prisoner wanted to use the toilet, the Officer could remain outside still cuffed to the prisoner.

  He was staring at us with his little piggy eyes. He opened his foul smelling mouth: Wanna shit guv. Noticing that he wasn’t cuffed, he said, I can do it meself you know, don’t want you pervs watching me ’avin a shit!

  Fill your boots son, says Mel. After all, he had nowhere to go, still hooked up to a drip and ten floors up.

  Piggy Eyes went to the toilets and locked himself in the cubicle, climbed on the toilet seat and jumped out of the window. Apparently, he thought he was still on the ground floor.

  I’ve never seen a big man move so fast. Mel was flying down the stairs, taking four at a time, with me doing my best to keep up. A hospital porter who was coming on duty saw a body fall out of a window and was there first. He had already called an ambulance on his radio when we got there.

  Scott was bleeding again from the stomach wound. On top of that he had broken his hip and arm. He was in a bad state. Mel and I were looking at the firing squad ourselves now. Golden Boy was going to have a field day with us.

  As it happens, we needn’t have worried. When the duty Governor got there, the doctors were explaining that it was their decision to un-cuff the patient, not wanting us in the operating theatre. Assurances had been given to us that the patient would be unconscious for at least two hours after the operation. The mess that the patient was in was entirely all his own doing.

  That was good enough for the Governor – less paperwork to fill in. The blame lay squarely on the shoulders of the patient and hospital. While prisoners are in hospital, the doctor, within reason, makes the decisions based on his or her clinical judgment.

  Scott was back in the operating theatre. The Governor had ordered reliefs for Mel and me; I was off home and Mel was off to the gym.

  I found out in the end that Piggy Eyes full name was actually Scott Scott. His parents must have been geniuses with names. Mind you I’ve come across a few more since that: Roger Rogers, Andrew Andrews and a little Chinese fellow called Ding Ding, to name but a few.

  Golden Boy contacted Scott’s parents to tell them what had happened; however, his mother wanted nothing to do with him adding that she hoped the little bastard died, which he probably did.

  Sally and me spent a couple more weeks there before we were to be posted back to our parent establishment, HM Prison Highdown. It was near Christmas and we both had leave to take. Fortunately, the jail didn’t want us to report for duty until the 5th January, so we had the whole of Christmas and New Year off – unheard of in the Prison Service for uniform staff. It was the only Christmas and New Year I had off in the entire twenty-five years of service.

  Coroner’s Court

  We both had to return nine months later for the inquest at the coroner’s court for the young lad who took his life at Winchester. Young Jason Page was sixteen years and ten months when he died in prison. It was the coroner who decided the cause of death, based on the evidence heard.

  Jason’s parents had asked the coroner to allow us to attend in civilian clothing. His father, a police Officer, did not want to be reminded of his son’s death in custody, which we thought was fair enough. Who would want to be reminded of the death of their son, seeing two Officers in uniform?

  The court was packed. The Governor was there, along with Golden Boy, the Principal Officer in charge on the day, along with family members. Unusually, the judge who sentenced him to one week’s custody was there as well.

  It came out that Jason, nearly 12 months ago and still at school, had accepted a lift from two ex-pupils at the school. Both had been kicked out of school for their bad behavior. Without Jason’s knowledge, they had stolen a car, a Volkswagen Golf GTI two door, which had been modified. Jason, not wanting to seem a prude, got into the back of the car. The two lads, wanting to show off, spun the wheels and took off down the road, laughing as they went. Neither had a driving license or insurance and the car was not fit for the road; it had failed its last M.O.T. But that didn’t stop them. The lad driving was going too fast, screeching around corners. He soon attracted the attention of the local police, who started following him. He was, evidently, spurred on by the police chase and drove faster and in a more reckless manner.

  It was only going to end one way. The young lad, being an inexperienced driver, went round a bend too quickly, straight through a fence into someone’s garden and stopped as he crashed into the front room of the house. The two young lads in the front were able to open the doors and make their escape. Jason could not; he was either frozen with fear, or couldn’t get out. The two lads left him there with threats that they would do him in if he grassed them up.

  The owner of the house saw Jason in the car and, like any citizen who had his fence and the front of his house demolished, held on to him until the police arrived.

  He was arrested and charged with T.W.O.C (taking without consent), reckless driving, dangerous driving, and criminal damage. All the charges brought can result in a custodial sentence, even though he wasn’t driving and he had no knowledge that the car was stolen; that had to be proved in court.

  His parents were absolutely devastated that their son could be involved in something like this. His dad, being a policeman, wanted to know all the details. Sadly, Jason was too scared of the two lads and his father to say anything. Even with the threat of prison, he would not open his mouth, scared of what his two accomplices would do to him.

  The judge in his trial had demanded to know the names of his accomplices with the threat of contempt of court if he did not comply. So poor Jason ended up in prison for a week

  The coroner had announced that he had indeed taken his own life. The verdict was suicide.

  The two lads were eventually caught. Apparently, when the whole episode ended up in the local paper, a man who had been in the cells with Jason, waiting to be transported to prison, had spoken to him. It turned out that Jason, sobbing, had told him the whole story. Ironically, he and Jason had the same solicitor. The man, after reading the article, contacted him and relived the story Jason had told him.

  In a bitter twist of irony, both the lads involved in the incident were brought to court and were found guilty after a trial. Having come from dysfunctional families, they were both said to have had a “poor start” in life. They both got off with probation, and never saw the inside of a prison.

  HM Prison Highdown

  The jail first opened late 1992, but didn’t really start to fill up until 1993. That’s when Sal and I eventually got there. Again, it was filled with new staff, straight from the school, and although Sal and me had barely come through probation ourselves, we were, in the eyes of the NEPO’s, “old sweats”. The jail hadn’t yet got its full complement of Senior or Principal Officers, so Sal and I were made TSO’S (Temporary Senior Officers) and we were in charge of a handful of new Officers on a newly built house block.

  Highdown was one of the new prisons, not unlike Whitemoor, which had house blocks instead of wings. Each house block comprised of three “spurs”, so, in effect, the building looked like a big “H” block from the top, with spurs or wings/units, running off of it.

  At first, I had six new Officers on my shift. Our task was to supervise the prisoners on one of the new wings. There were only sixty of them at the time; the
se were the so-called “advance party” brought in from London jails, such as H.M.P Wandsworth, and Pentonville. The prisoners were all R45 Sex offenders and had volunteered to come to Highdown to help set up the wings, put furniture in the cells, sort out bedding and stores, work in the kitchens, etc.

  Actually, when I say volunteered, they had to draw lots in their respective prisons, as they were old jails; they were coming from a relative shithole, to paradise, as they described it. Such was the popularity to come to a new prison with in-cell sanitation, that there was a waiting list for prisoner to transfer to H.M.P Highdown.

  The sixty that did come were handpicked; mostly low-level sex offenders serving relatively short sentences. They were a mixture of boy scout/cub leaders, teachers, vicars and gym coaches; in general, men from the community who were unable to keep their dick in their pants. You get the picture; nasty creatures, but easily managed and would get on with their jobs with minimum supervision.

  They were glad to be here, coming from the old London jails where not only was there no in-cell sanitation, but had to suffer from the mainstream prisoners who would abuse them at every opportunity. In the older jails, it was difficult to keep these types of prisoners separate from the mainstream prisoners. Mostly, the sex offenders would occupy the top landings to avoid having shit thrown at them; however, prisoners used to go upstairs and shove crap under the cell doors when the Officers weren’t looking.

  It was a major pastime of main prisoners to get to the R45 cells to throw piss and shit under the cell doors. They would also attempt to throw shit parcels (basically, shit wrapped in toilet paper) up to the windows of the cells above. However, inevitably, the cell windows being of the same distance upstairs as they were downstairs, the forces of gravity would prevail and the cells below would get the parcels. This led to more fights and standoffs in the exercise yard.

  On a daily basis, these same parcels had to be removed from the ground around the wings because of obvious hygiene reasons. This job was down to the six party, or shit party, who, on a daily basis, would go round and pick up the parcels.