Mr Philips was standing on the walkway outside my cell with a look of complete indifference on his face.
“Follow me,” he said as he walked off down the walkway. I set off after him, listening to the jeers and catcalls that always accompanied anyone getting moved with almost no notice. I ignored most of them until I walked past one of the cells and heard my name being called out. I looked across and could just see one of my friends from the library, Jimmy something or other, armed robbery. He was looking through the observation window of his cell door.
“Good luck Gareth,” he said. “Wherever you end up.”
“Mate, can you tell Mac goodbye from me when he gets back?” I slowed my pace as much as I dared. “Tell him I’ll be in touch, yeah?”
“Yeah, course mate,” Jimmy replied. “No worries.”
“Come on, Dawson,” I heard Mr Philips shouting at me. “You don’t want to miss the happy bus.” His words were followed by a chorus of laughs and jeers that echoed around the wing.
I followed Mr Philips through the wing and out of the air locked doors that separated us from the outside world. As I stepped out into the courtyard, I shivered. It was freezing, a typical cold November morning. I looked up at the sky, enjoying for a moment a different view of it than from the exercise yard, but it was just as grey and dismal. I followed the prison officer towards the Serco Sweatbox, as the white prison vans were known. Ironic really, as the only time you ever sweated in them was in the middle of summer. The rest of the year they were bloody freezing. I took my place in the metal cage in the back of the van and sat on the hard metal seat as Mr Philips locked both my cage and the rear door of the van. There were eight compartments in the back of the van, each one separated by metal bars. An opening in the door of each one allowed you to put your hands through to have handcuffs put on or taken off. I leaned back against the bars, wincing at the cold of the metal I was sitting on, and waited.
It was an hour, maybe an hour and a half later when the door to the back of the van was reopened. I was sitting in the same position, arms wrapped around me to try to keep warm. I felt the van’s suspension dip a little and saw Mr McLoughlin step into the back of the van.
“I heard you were being shipped out at Morning Prayers,” he said. I had to think for a moment before I worked out he must be talking about their morning briefing session. Not many of the prison officers struck me as churchgoers. “So, I thought I’d stop by and say goodbye.” That was a surprise. I got to my feet to speak to him.
“Thanks, Mr McLoughlin,” I said. “I appreciate that.” He shook his head.
“Now don’t get soppy, Gareth,” he smiled. “No tears, you hear?” I grinned back at him, and we stood there in silence for a few seconds. “Anyway, I would say it’s been a pleasure, but I’m sure you wouldn’t agree with me.”
“I think the pleasure’s been all Her Majesty’s,” I said, and we both laughed. The next thing Mr McLoughlin did really surprised me. He put his hand through the slot in the door and into my cell, palm extended. As I shook his hand, I realised that this was the first actual contact I’d had with any of the prison officers in Whitemoor.
“You don’t know where I’m going, do you?” I asked him, deciding to take advantage of the situation. He smiled back at me, and again I reflected on how different he looked with a smile on his face.
“I’m not allowed to tell you where you’re going,” he replied. “I don’t understand why, but rules are rules.”
“That’s fine, I get that,” I said, feeling bad for putting him on the spot.
“I’m sure wherever it is, it’s a fine city.” My smile widened at his words. At every entrance to the city of Norwich was a sign proclaiming it as ‘a fine city’. I was going home.
Mr McLoughlin let go of my hand and walked towards the back door.
“Thank you, Mr McLoughlin,” I called after him. He stopped and said something that I didn’t quite catch. “Sorry, I missed that?”
“My name’s Richard,” he said. “I said my name’s Richard.”
Compared to Whitemoor, HMP Norwich was like a Holiday Inn hotel. Not a great Holiday Inn hotel, but a hell of a lot better than the previous place. I didn’t have a cell to myself, but at least the beds didn’t have plastic mattresses or pillows. The bedding had a thin plastic covering, but it wasn’t made of the stuff. The two beds in the cell were side by side, separated by a small desk area with a solid looking metal chair, and only one of them was made. A pile of linen at the foot of the unmade bed marked it as mine. The chair looked solid enough to be used as a weapon, but also solid enough not to be taken apart easily. The cell was lit by an opaque window high up in the wall. At least it was natural light and not just fluorescent tubes buzzing away on the ceiling.
I sat on the edge of the left-hand unmade bed, thinking about the last couple of hours and wondered who my new cellmate was. The journey down to Norwich had been uneventful. There weren't any other prisoners in the van, which was a bonus. I’d heard stories of the sweatboxes doing the rounds of loads of different prisons, dropping prisoners off, picking other prisoners up, with some of the occupants spending twelve hours or more in the vans until they got to their final destination. I’d had none of that.
When we’d eventually left, the drive took around an hour and a half at the most. The two guards up front were decent enough, but that might have been because they weren’t prison officers but contracted security guards. They’d even bought me a Big Mac and fries when they’d stopped off to get lunch somewhere off the A11 on the way back to Norwich. I’d sat there in the back of the swaying van, enjoying the unexpected treat. Before I’d been sentenced, I hardly ever went to McDonald’s, but I enjoyed the lukewarm burger and soggy fries more than I’d enjoyed a meal in years.
When we arrived at Norwich, it was back to the same routine I’d been through a couple of times before. Straight from the van to the processing area, where I sat with a couple of twitching junkies and some nut job who kept asking me what I was in for. He must have asked me nine or ten times before I told him, at which point he stared at me before sitting on the other side of the processing cell. When I heard my surname being called, I’d gone through into the processing room itself. I was photographed, asked if I did drugs, told the rules, stripped, searched, the whole works. It was the only environment I’d ever been in where another man told you to bend over and cough and you did so, knowing full well that he was staring up your arsehole.
A prison officer gave me a light blue t-shirt and scratchy tracksuit to wear and led me into the general population. As I followed him through the wing, I could feel lots of pairs of eyes on me. I looked around, careful not to meet anyone’s gaze for more than a couple of seconds at the most. I was trying to tread the line between not being a wet, and not being seen as a hard man. Both ends of that spectrum would cause a scuffle of some description as the locals would try to put me in my place. The last thing I wanted was to get into any bother. I was confident enough that if somebody started, I could hold my own, but you never knew. All it would take is someone to have a shank and it could be game over before it had even begun. I was shown into my cell and told to wait for my personal officer. This would be interesting, I thought as I waited. I’d never had a personal officer at Whitemoor, or at least if I had I’d never met him. After about ten minutes, a prison officer walked into my cell. I took one look at him and figured out straight away he probably didn’t see much in the way of trouble. He was huge, way bigger even than the gorillas back at Whitemoor. It’s not often that I look at people with a sense of trepidation, but this time I did.
“Dawson, is it?” he asked in a deep voice that suited his build perfectly.
“Yes sir, that’s me,” I replied, standing and inclining my head down a touch. The classic ‘please don’t hit me’ pose. He stood there, staring at me, as I looked at him from underneath my eyebrows. He had a good five to six inches on me height wise and was broader than me by about the same amount. Although it w
as November, the heating here was the same as it was at Whitemoor which meant it was freezing. He had a tight fitting short sleeve white shirt on that looked as if the buttons on the front of it would burst if he sneezed.
“Sit down, Dawson,” he said, nodding at the bed behind me. I did as instructed, and he pulled the chair away from the desk and sat on it. He looked like an adult sitting on a child’s chair, and I had to stop the corners of my mouth from creeping up into a smile. We sat opposite each other, him looking at me and me looking at him, again from under my eyebrows. I wondered if this was some sort of psychological trick to see what I would do, so I remained silent and waited. I figured that I had less to do with my day than he did, so I could wait him out. After what seemed like ages, he broke the impasse. “Look at me properly, please.”
I raised my head and looked at him, meeting his stare full-on. He had a crewcut, number one all over from the looks of it, and dark brown eyes. I could just see the ends of a couple of colourful tattoos snaking down from beneath both shirt sleeves, some sort of weird inked designs winding their way around his enormous arms.
“I’m Mr Jackson,” he said. “But you can call me sir.” He smiled, but it was a forced smile that was nothing more than the movement of some muscles around his mouth. “I’m your personal officer while you’re here at Norwich, which means you belong to me. So if you’ve got a problem, it’s my problem.” I looked at him, not sure what he meant.
“I won’t cause any problems, Mr Jackson,” I replied. “Sir,” I added as an afterthought. He sat back in the chair, which complained with a loud creak as he did so.
“No, I don’t think you will,” he replied. “I’ve read your file from Whitemoor. Model prisoner by all accounts, bar one isolated incident the other week, which either means you’ve been a good boy or that you’ve just not been caught.” I tried a self-depreciating smile and thought about telling him about the ‘isolated incident’, but gave up after a few seconds when I saw his eyebrows knit together in a frown.
“I’ve been well behaved, sir,” I replied, feeling like I was back at school in front of the headmaster. Which was a fairly common occurrence back in those days. Tommy and I used to joke that we’d got season tickets to his office, we were in there that often.
“I don’t doubt you have been,” Mr Jackson replied, leaning even further back on the chair. If it broke, I knew I wouldn’t be able to not laugh. “But to be honest, it’s not really you I’m worried about. In terms of causing a problem, that is. My concern is that the problems might come to you.”
That was interesting. I’d been determined since I was sentenced that I would be the grey man in whatever prison I ended up in, the man that no one really noticed. I relied on my size to deter any chancers, but at the same time had been careful not to be the big man.
“Can I ask what you mean by that?” I asked, risking the question. The chair creaked again as he leaned forward and put his shovel-like hands on his knees. It could have been my imagination, but he looked as if he was relaxing a bit.
“This is a Cat B prison,” he said. “And you’re still a Cat A prisoner. Not only that, but you’re on C3 wing.”
“Okay,” I replied. I didn’t understand the significance. He got the drift, though.
“C3 wing is mostly sex offenders. There’s a few Rule 45’s on here, but don’t worry. We keep them separate.” Rule 45 prisoners were classed as ‘vulnerable prisoners’ because most people wanted to cut them to ribbons.
“Nonces? I’m in the same wing as the nonces?” I said.
“They’re not nonces,” Mr Jackson replied. “Well, not all of them are. But you don’t need to worry about them.” He paused, smiling grimly. “I don’t think you’re their type, to be honest. You look like you’d probably fight back pretty hard.” Damn right I would.
“We’re going off track,” Mr Jackson said. “My point is that you’re a target because you’re a Cat A prisoner, and there might be certain individuals in here who might want to make a name for themselves. Be the ‘Top Boy’ as it were.” He was starting to sound like a football hooligan and, looking at the size of him, he’d probably have made quite a good one. I’d have stood behind him on the terraces, back in the old days. Definitely behind him though, not in front.
“Okay, I’ve got that,” I said. “But what do I do?”
“Nothing. You do nothing.” He pointed at me with a stubby index finger. “Keep your head down, and your hands in your pockets.” His forehead creased, and any sense I’d had of him relaxing disappeared in an instant. “You won’t be here for long. In a few weeks, you’ll get sent back to Whitemoor where you belong.” He leaned further forward and pressed his index finger into my solar plexus. I resisted the urge to grab his finger and see how far it would bend backwards until it snapped. That wouldn’t end up well. “Until then, you answer to me. You call me sir. Not gov, not boss. Only sir. Understand?”
I spent the rest of the day in my cell, not really wanting to venture outside. One thing that disappointed me after the conversation I’d had with Mr Jackson was that I wasn’t on my own in the cell. Another problem was that I was starving, having decided not to venture out for scoff. What he had said earlier had rattled me. It was in part the thought of queuing up for food next to someone who might be a paedophile, or having a conversation with someone that started with the usual question ‘what are you in for’ and ended with the word ‘rape’. I didn’t know how I’d handle that, so decided not to find out. Going hungry was a small price to pay, in my opinion.
About ten minutes before the end of social, a shadow appeared at the door of the cell and a man dressed in the standard grey tracksuit walked in. I got to my feet slowly to greet my new cellmate. He was fairly small, at least compared to me he was, and a fair bit older. Anywhere between late thirties and early forties, by my reckoning. He had the face of a heavy smoker, and I caught the smell of roll-ups coming off his faded grey tracksuit. I nodded at him, and he smiled in response, showing me his yellow teeth with gaps between them that were way too big for a toothpick.
“Hello mate,” he said, extending a hand out for a handshake. “You must be my new roomie.”
“Yep, I am. I’m Gareth,” I said. When I shook his hand, he winced, so I relaxed my grip a touch. He looked young for arthritis, but that’s what his fingers felt like.
“I’m Pete,” he replied. “Please to meet you.” He followed this up with the standard question. “What you in for?”
“Fifteen for murder. Got sentenced a couple of months ago.” I watched as his smile faltered and he let go of my hand. “I’m here on appeal though. That’s what I got done for, but I didn’t do it. I know everyone says that, but in my case it’s true. How about you?”
“Shouldn’t you be in Cat A?” Pete ignored my question. I smiled, trying to put him at ease.
“I guess they didn’t want to be bringing me here every day from Whitemoor. My trial’s being heard here.”
“Maybe so.” He didn’t look convinced. “You from here then?”
“Yeah, about two miles that way.” I pointed out of the window. I didn't know which direction I was pointing, but it was good enough. “Thorpe St Andrew.”
“Right,” Pete said, turning away and sitting down on his bed. “So, you might be on the out soon then?” He used the standard term for anywhere that wasn’t inside a prison.
“I doubt it. Even if I get through the appeal for murder, they’ve still got me for attempted murder or grievous bodily harm at a minimum.” That’s what Laura had told me, anyway.
“How come?” Pete asked.
I sat on my bed and outlined what had happened. I had nothing to lose by talking to the bloke, it wasn’t as if he could grass me up for anything. He sat there and listened, nodding occasionally. When I got to the part about attacking Robert his eyes widened.
“Mate, that’s not murder,” Pete said. “That’s justice that is, right there.”
“Yeah, that’s not how the system saw it.�
�� I went through the original trial and sentence in a couple of minutes, not wanting to go into any detail.
“Harsh mate,” Pete said when I finished. “Very harsh. Some countries they’d give you a medal for that, so they would.” The sad thing was he was probably right.
“So, what’s it like here then?” I asked him. “I was on remand here, but got shifted to Whitemoor pretty much straight away.”
“Could be worse,” Pete said. “I’ve been here for a year, got four for burglary. There’s the usual crowd of idiots. The youngsters who all want to be the boss, and lags like me who just want a quiet life. The screws aren’t too bad in the main, though. That’s the main thing.” The way Pete spoke told me that this almost certainly wasn’t his first time inside. One thing I knew he was lying about was the reason he was in this wing. Cons who’d been done for burglary didn’t get put in with the vulnerable prisoners.
A while later I was lying on my bed listening to Pete snoring. He’d gone to sleep about two minutes after he’d closed his eyes, which irritated the hell out of me. I tried to ignore the droning and get to sleep, but as usual, I couldn’t. With my hands laced behind my head, I let my mind wander back in time to when life was different. Before Jennifer died. Before I was put away for murder. It didn’t do me any good at all, it never did. I knew it was negative, but I didn’t really have anything positive to think about.
Not anymore.
The lawyers’ room in HMP Norwich was a lot nicer than the one in Whitemoor. It was much larger for a start, and it was freshly decorated. Instead of stained grey walls, it was painted in an off-white emulsion and I couldn’t see any graffiti anywhere. Mr Jackson and I were sitting in comfortable armchairs, instead of hard backed plastic chairs, and the table between us didn’t have a single cigarette scar. The room even had a window. You couldn’t see anything out of the window because of the reinforced glass, but it let in natural light which was always a bonus. We were waiting for Laura and Paul to arrive, and Mr Jackson had not said a word since we sat down. He sat opposite me and stared at the wall. That was pretty much the extent of how our relationship had developed in the week I’d been back in Norwich.
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