by Mike Ripley
‘Would you open your mouth for me, please?’ she asked in a soft Scottish accent.
I was so relieved I almost made a witty remark, but remembered where I was just in time and did as I was told.
Her rubber fingers ran over my teeth and probed the roof of my mouth and down the sides of my tongue, then squeaked down the sides of my back teeth.
Her clear blue eyes met mine as she withdrew her hand and I thought for a moment she was going to compliment me on my teeth, which I do take care of, but she just said I could get my things and move into the waiting area.
Six of us congregated in a corridor while an officer locked one door behind us and then unlocked another with keys from a bunch chained to his belt. Through that door we were in an enclosed courtyard in the corner of which stood two more officers each holding Alsatian dogs on tight leads.
We were lead diagonally across the courtyard and were able to catch a glimpse of the upper floors of the cell wings and, beyond, the roof of the high security prison-within-a-prison. We could also see the outer walls from the inside and the ‘skyhawk’ cameras on tall posts, which offered somebody somewhere pinpoint closed-circuit television pictures of us as we headed for another door bearing a sign saying ‘Visitors’.
The waiting area reminded me of a cinema foyer, though I couldn’t think of a cinema I knew that had large signs asking customers to dump their drugs in the bins provided or announcements that the toilets were about to be locked. Being British, we formed an orderly queue leading to the double doors at the end. They had even painted a yellow line on the floor to show us where to stand, and everyone was behaving themselves; even the two micro-skirted foulmouthed girls had reduced the number of ‘fuckings’ in their conversation by about a third.
It therefore seemed totally unfair when they set the dogs on us.
Keep moving, there’s a good doggy. Move along, little doggy, move along. Just don’t sit here ...
So it wasn’t exactly a slobbering, growling, flesh-ripping hound. In fact, I was tempted to say ‘Frankly, Mr Baskerville, we expected something larger,’ but I kept my lip buttoned and hoped the damned dog would as well. In any other set of circumstances, I would have been tempted to bend down and stroke him or pat his head, or find somewhere to hide him if Springsteen was in the vicinity. I’ve always had a soft spot for spaniels, though I was prepared to make an exception in this case.
Spider had warned me about the active and the passive sniffer dogs the prison used, tossing in at no extra charge that Belmarsh had the largest population of working dogs of any prison, bar one in Northern Ireland, as if that was a comfort. The active sniffers, an unholy alliance of Labradors and spaniels, were known as the Dogs From Hell, being bouncy, unstoppably enthusiastic and totally dedicated to finding hidden, abandoned or buried dumps of drugs. But it was the passive sniffers you had to wary of. They were mostly spaniels, trained from pups to sniff out drugs on a person. They didn’t bark or slobber or whine or drag their handlers as if they were saying ‘Come on, get a move on, it’s over here ...’ The passives, all bright eyed and bushy tailed, just wandered casually in and out of people’s legs so you wouldn’t know they were there, until they found the scent they were sniffing for. Then they did an awful thing. They sat there and stared up at you with their big, brown spaniel eyes. They sat there, and no matter how hard you tried to send them a telepathic message to piss off, they just wouldn’t move.
Come on, Fido, give us a break. Move along. Please. For God’s sake, don’t start getting comfortable.
The dog had been let off the lead by the door and had trotted along the length of the yellow line behind which we all stood, backs against a wall. Then the damned animal about-turned, trotted back about halfway down the line to where I was and sat down, his front paws up against the other side of the yellow line, like a sprinter on the blocks.
I glanced to my left as surreptitiously as I could. Next in line was a young black guy, his shaven head pressed right back into the wall, his eyes staring straight out front, his face expressionless. He had totally ignored the dog’s presence, and wasn’t that a sheen of sweat on his head?
Now he looked guilty, or at least more guilty than me. I could see that; why couldn’t the bloody dog? Why did it have to park its bum right in front of me?
But looking down, resisting the twin urges to say ‘good doggy’ and to kick the thing into touch, I thought that maybe the sniffing spaniel wasn’t right in front of me. Actually, he was halfway between me and the person to my right.
To avoid any sudden guilty moves, I turned my head slowly as if my shoulders had been nailed to the wall, and eyeballed the woman in front of me in the queue.
I honestly hadn’t noticed her before. She was a short, overweight White woman, maybe 35, which made her and me among the oldest there, and was wearing a crumpled and in parts threadbare grey pinstripe two-piece. She had large, black-framed glasses, wore no make-up, had her hair scraped back in a stubby bun held by a pair of garish yellow hairbands (the only splash of colour on her) and she clutched a dog-eared paperback Bible to her chest.
Surely not?
Then, down the line, I saw the two micro-skirted girls looking up the line towards me and the dog. Looking very anxiously.
‘Come with us, please,’ said a voice.
Two officers, one male, one female, stood in front of me. Or were they in front of the woman next to me? My mouth was dry and I couldn’t think of a way to phrase the question. The damned dog wasn’t helping, just gazing balefully upwards and actually wagging its tail whilst still sitting there, making a swishing sound on the polished floor.
I knew there was something to say, but I couldn’t think what or how to say it. I couldn’t think at all.
‘Yes, you, madam,’ said the male officer. ‘This way, please.’
I must have exhaled loudly or perhaps even giggled. I certainly felt as if I was in control of my bladder once more, and however boorish my response to the misfortune of others, it was nothing to the reaction of the Bible-holding woman next in line.
‘I’ve got my period!’ she screamed. ‘That’s what your fucking dog can smell!’
‘Please, madam –’
‘Don’t you fucking touch me, you twat!’
‘Just come with us, my dear,’ tried the female officer.
‘I’ll have you for assault, you fucking dyke cunt!’
They each grabbed an arm and pulled the woman between them down the line and towards the doors we had come in through. She tried a half-hearted kick at the dog as it watched her, mildly amused, as she was hauled away.
I winked at the dog.
‘Good boy,’ I said softly.
Down the line, Spider’s two tart-decoys were staring openly now, their jaws sagging. The black one raised her arm and gave the finger to the backs of the officers, and the white girl joined in and did the same.
‘Let go of me, you twatting fucks!’ the woman shouted, and naturally we all turned to watch.
Almost at the door, the woman wrenched herself free from the two officers (who had shown remarkable patience in not slugging her so far) and then, like a frisbee, she flung the Bible she had been clutching towards the big metal bin reserved for those who wanted to opt for the drugs amnesty.
Whilst the officers’ attention was diverted and before they had a chance to get hold of her again, she had managed to put a hand up behind her head and flip off the two day-glow yellow scrunchy hairbands she had been wearing. The officers holding her didn’t seem to notice what had happened, nor did anyone else in the queue, and once they had a fresh hold on the woman – who was still screaming and spitting in their faces – they began a determined march towards the doors.
It was only me who was looking not at the free show, but at the two yellow hairbands on the floor.
Me and the two girls in micro-skirts further down the line, who had w
orn them on their wrists when they were in the Visitor Centre.
Me, them, and the dog, who had quietly gone and sat right next to them, his tail wagging and his nose twitching.
There’s a good doggy.
The Visits Room proper looked like the conference suite of a hotel or a polytechnic lecture room, apart from the fact that the rows of plastic chairs were bolted to the floor. There were tables with individual chairs, all also bolted to the floor, near the entrance, each with a number card on it, and there were two desks, one by the door we were using and one on the other side of the room, serving an entrance we couldn’t see. There were no more than six officers in the room, although if they were expecting a full house, I reckoned that around 200 visitors could be accommodated.
I waited in line for the desk, and then my VO was checked, I signed in and one of the officers used a rubber stamp to ink a purple square on the back of my left hand. I guessed it would show up under ultra-violet light and could well have got me into any Friday night disco in Plumstead, but I didn’t say anything, as I suspected the officers may have heard that one before.
They told me I would be Table 7 and to take a seat in one of the rows of chairs until they called me. I picked an empty row and sat quietly, avoiding all the other visitors, especially the two micro-skirt girls, who were sitting right at the back, eyes to the floor, dejected.
It gave me a chance to get my bearings, though, and to note that there were black-dome CCTV cameras in the ceiling – the black plastic domes meant you couldn’t see which way the cameras were pointing, but they could probably see you. There was also a small canteen where you could buy tea, coffee and jugs of fruit squash, although Spider had warned me that sales of orange squash were monitored closely. (An inordinate amount to drink during a visit would suggest the exchange and swallowing of smuggled wraps of drugs.)
It also became clear that the second desk across the room was where the prisoners entered, and the first few had already done so without me noticing. They wore casual clothes and were distinguished from the temporary visitors only by the fact that they all had fluorescent sashes across their chests, of the sort cyclists wear after dark.
The man who was shown to Table 7 was wearing one. He was small, balding, aged anywhere between 50 and 60 and had a barrel chest that strained the neon sash to its limit. He didn’t look like any cyclist I’d ever seen.
‘Table 7,’ said the prison officer at my side for the second or third time.
‘Oh, yeah. Right. Thanks,’ I said and got shakily to my feet, hoping my legs didn’t give way before I got to the table.
Then again, I could have broken into a run and gone straight by Mr Creosote, heading for the doors at a rate of knots. But I didn’t rate my chances.
They were probably used to people doing that in here.
‘Roy! So good of you to come, boyo!’
For a moment I almost looked around to see if there was someone behind me.
‘Mr Fisher. Good of you to see me.’
I took his outstretched hand and he squeezed mine hard.
‘Just keep smiling and sit the fuck down,’ said Mr Creosote, the Welsh accent evaporating. ‘We’re on camera but they don’t have sound, so we can talk.’
‘They don’t have sound mikes?’ I said stupidly.
My immediate thought was that no-one was going to hear me scream for help. It would also be impossible to prove what we had talked about, should I have to do so later.
‘Some European Court of Justice shit,’ he said. ‘They can’t read our mail and they can’t listen in on our conversations. So, no microphones, so we can have a nice chat. In a funny sort of way –’ I noticed a Welsh lilt creeping back in ‘– we have complete privacy sitting here. There’s not many places you can say that about, is there?’
He sat back and intertwined his fingers, resting his hands on the edge of the table. His face was circular and weather-beaten, although a white prison pallor was beginning to take effect. He was stocky, not large, and didn’t exude menace, but he wasn’t the sort of guy you’d push out of the way to get to the bar.
‘You’re not chatting, Mr Angel,’ he said.
‘It was you wanted to see me,’ I said, finding my voice.
‘No, you don’t understand. You’ve got to play their game. I told you they could see you – no, don’t look up, you prat – but they couldn’t hear you. But if you just sit there like a lemon and I do all the talking, then it looks on the cameras like I’ve called you in here for something, and that’ll make them suspicious.’
‘But you did send for me. I don’t really know why I’m here at all.’
‘Keep talking for a bit,’ he said, without moving his lips.
‘All right then, if you want to be a captive audience, that’s fine with me. After all, you’ve had plenty of practice.’
Seeing that he wasn’t taking offence, I leaned my elbows on the table and wagged a finger at him as if I was laying down the law. I hoped somebody in the control room was appreciating my performance.
‘And I am the injured party here. I’d never heard of you until last week but as soon as I do hear about you, I start to hear a lot of other things as well. Things involving an ex-con called Keith Flowers, who served time in this very nick. Coincidence? I think not.’ I was getting into my stride now. ‘And then I run into a very nice family called Turner.’
I watched his face closely, but he was giving nothing away.
‘Tell the truth, they’re not very nice; but, interestingly, they’re Welsh, and so, I would hazard a guess, are you. And then there’s another character who keeps cropping up. A solicitor called Haydn Rees, and he’s Welsh too. Is there a welcome in the valleys for me or what?’
I paused for a beat, but he came in.
‘Don’t lean too far forward, Mr Angel. They’ll think you’re trying to pass me something.’
I pulled back my elbows and resisted the temptation to look up to see if one of the cameras was watching me, not that there was any way I could have told. In doing so, I lost any initiative I might have had.
‘Right then,’ said Fisher/Creosote, ‘let me put you straight on a few things. First and foremost is that whatever dealings you’ve had with the Turner clan, I reckon they’ve been unpleasant. Am I right?’
‘I don’t want to repeat them,’ I said, nodding for the cameras, as if he was asking me if Aunty Vera had recovered from the operation, or similar.
‘Thought not. But bear in mind that even though they’re out there and I’m in here, I’m the one you really should be frightened of.’
‘Hey look, I don’t want my lounge creosoted.’
‘Stop flapping your hands like that,’ he said. ‘It looks like I’m threatening you.’
He hadn’t moved, his fingers still linked in front of him.
‘I thought you were,’ I said, stuffing my hands in my jacket pockets.
‘Not yet I’m not, just telling you what’s what. You’ll know when I’m threatening you.’ He allowed himself a brief smile. ‘You’ve heard about the creosote job, then?’
‘Spider told me.’
‘Thought he would. Sad case, that Spider. Anyway, we’re here to talk about you, Mr Angel, so let’s do that, shall we?’
‘Me? What have I done?’
‘What have you done? You’ve put my old and distinguished friend Keith Flowers in a mental hospital where even I can’t get a message to him. Well, haven’t you?’
‘It was probably me,’ I said reluctantly, ‘but I didn’t know he was your friend. He was your friend?’
‘No, not really,’ he said calmly. ‘More a business associate.’
‘That’s funny. That’s what Len Turner called him.’
I watched him closely for a reaction to that, and I got one; but not the one I expected.
‘I know,’ he said, grinning
like a loon.
Malcolm Fisher summed it all up beautifully.
‘Let me pose a question, Mr Angel. What interests do prisoners share?
‘Think about it. You’re banged up with people you’d normally cross the road to avoid, but in here you can’t avoid them. You eat with them, you shower with them, you shit with them, you share a cell with them so they fart in your face when you’re asleep. What do you do to break the monotony? They’ve taken your wife away, your mates, your kids. You can’t nip out for a pint or to put a bet on. They won’t even let you buy a Lottery ticket.
‘Okay, so you can’t vote and you don’t get calls from double-glazing salesmen, but those are the only advantages of being inside.
‘And it is so boring you could scream.
‘Boredom is the one thing everybody in here has in common. So what do they do to kill the boredom? Do they swap stamp collections? Do they sit around discussing books they’ve just read or make model airplanes or do Open University degrees? Do they bollocks.
‘They plot, that’s what they do. They plot revenge on whoever put them inside, because most of them firmly believe they’re only in here because somebody stitched them up, or grassed them up or dropped them in it.
‘Not the police, mind you – not unless a bent copper’s involved. Mostly the cops are just doing their job.
‘No, it has to be somebody they know who let them down. Somebody who deserves a good slapping when they get out. And they while away the long nights and the even longer days by plotting exactly how they’re going to give them that slapping.
‘Biggest single leisure activity in prison is plotting. Sod learning a language or metalworking or sociology or creative writing classes. Revenge is the one and only self-improvement course they all sign up for.’
And that was what it was all about.
A chance assignment of cell space in the overcrowded prison system had thrown Keith Flowers and Malcolm Fisher together for six months. Six long months of plotting, as it turned out.