The Bedford Heist

by Frederick Linden-Wyatt

  Prologue

  Lucas A Payne was a well-educated English gentleman who had served six years in the British army fighting the war in Bosnia. After leaving the army he became a prison counsellor and married his wife Haylee who was a school teacher. He had been happily married for over 20 years when his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. She went through all the various treatments, but the cancer came back. They found out that a new drug from the USA could extend her life, however the new drug wasn’t available on the NHS and Lucas campaigned to get it approved by the British government. Lucas failed and his beloved wife died a few months later.

  If this wasn’t enough when he returned to work after caring for his sick wife, he found that he had a new prison governor who was totally opposite to the previous one. His new boss didn’t like him being a prison counsellor and a steward for the Prison Officers Association (POA) and had instructed him to stop doing both jobs. When Lucas refused the new governor set him up by claiming that he had supplied an inmate with a mobile phone, which of course he hadn’t. Lucas with the recent loss of his wife had had all the fight knocked out of him and was going to accept early (albeit forced) retirement but on his terms.

  On top of these two life changing incidents Lucas was tired of trying to push water uphill. Being a prison counsellor, he got to see first-hand what was wrong with the country and what needed to be fixed as all of Britain’s problems end up in prison. Lucas has always been neutral when it came to national political parties and he always voted for the person he felt would do the job to their best ability and not follow a single party. Over the years he had seen good and bad laws passed by both the Labour and the Conservative parties and even when a party had the majority of MP’s in parliament they still didn’t make the serious changes to the way the country was being run. The rich continued to get richer and the poor poorer and important matters such as the NHS, education and protection of the public never gets any better. It wasn’t just the dire treatment dished out to his wife but also the hundreds of inmates that showed hopelessness in their eyes every time he met them. During the book Lucas picks out many of the main continuing problems that face Britain today and hopefully offers a way to resolve many of these problems, so that we can all put the “Great” back in Britain once again.

  One of Lucas strengths was his ability to organise and with a private database of some of the country’s top criminals he was going to make the powers that be sit up, take notice and pay. Enjoy the journey to Bedford and the heist that brings the market town to its knees.

  Chapter 1. About Lucas Payne

  I’m glad you are joining me on the heist that I’ve arranged for a few friends and people I’ve met during the past twenty years whilst working as a prison consultant. Let me start by telling you a little about myself but if you’ll bear with me, I’ll keep details of the heist I’ve arranged until later in the book but it’s well worth waiting for.

  My name is Lucas A Payne and I’ve been described as a typical English gentleman by most people I have come to know. I’m 53 years young and told by many ladies that I’m quite good looking and having had free access to a gym for most of my adult life, I have kept myself in good shape.

  I grew up in a town called Stony Stratford which is now part of the new city of Milton Keynes. The only thing I can remember about Stony Stratford was the phrase ‘A load of Cock and Bull’ which is often said if someone is stretching the truth or telling a white lie (the word ‘politician’ springs to mind). The history behind the saying relates to the two public houses (pubs) which were staging post for the stage coaches that stopped for a short or overnight stay as this was on the old A5 trunk road (Watling Street) that ran from Canterbury via London, St. Albans, Stony Stratfor and on to Holyhead in north Wales. The route was serviced by various stagecoach companies with some stopping at the Cock hotel and others at the Bull hotel which is about 200 yards further down the Watling Street. This was long before emails, telephones, radio and TV, so news was spread around the country via these main routes. If a stagecoach stopped at the Cock hotel with a message that the Queen was unwell with a nasty bout of flu, staff would pass the message to their friends who worked at the Bull hotel but the message would now be that the Queen was dead. Hence the saying what a load of Cock and Bull.

  I did not like school that much. I was always left out of things with me ending up playing the cymbal in the so-called school orchestra or being the last kid to be picked for a team. I think this was down to being the older brother of a ‘mentally retarded spastic’. That's the title cruel kids gave him and their parents weren't much better. Nobody understood what autism was about and to have an autistic/spastic brother never did me any favours. It didn't worry me as I knew that my multi-handicapped brother was stronger and braver than all my so called class mates put together. If the Queen gave bravery medals out to ordinary people then my brother would be first in line as he has fought harder than any person I know, just to stay alive.

  As I moved up to senior school I managed to be free of my brother and made a few friends and we had some great times together. The one big thing that bugged me was that my friends had the better clothes and went on family holidays and loved to brag about places they had visited and fun they had. I never had any of these luxuries as going away with an autistic child isn’t possible as being severely autistic meant that they couldn’t tolerate any changes and would self-harm or be very vocal.

  In 1982 I left school after obtaining 6 GCSE’s grade A* to C, including English and Maths, and 2 A-levels. I was never particularly good at written course work and I’m sure I learnt a lot more since leaving school than I did in the 11 years I spent there. My childhood was anything but normal as most of it was spent being an unpaid carer for my multi handicapped brother and my extremely sick mother. My father couldn’t cope with my brother being disabled and left when I was 6 so I don’t have much respect for him and very few happy childhood memories. Although I loved my disabled sibling with all my heart I knew that the only way I would obtain freedom and a life of my own was to go for a place at university and make sure that it wasn’t anywhere close to home.

  In the end I took a place at Nottingham university studying Nursing (Mental Health) and at the end of the three-year course, I ended up with a BSc Hons (Bachelor of Science). I loved the city of Nottingham which is based in the middle of England and famous for the legend of Robin Hood who was a heroic outlaw in English folklore who, according to legend, was a highly skilled archer and swordsman. Traditionally depicted as being dressed in Lincoln green he is often portrayed as 'robbing from the rich and giving to the poor” along with his band of Merry Men. Robin Hood became a popular folk figure in the late-medieval period, and continues to be widely represented in literature, films and television.

  With 1 per cent of people in the United Kingdom owning more property and money than the remaining 99 per cent, you could say that we could do with the return of Robin Hood but this time he would be for real. I did a lot of online research before making the University of Nottingham my first choice. I also visited the city a few times and spoke to several students to see what they thought about the university and the city itself. They said that the Students’ Union offered a vast range of societies, organisations, student groups, community projects and campaigns to join.

  There are scores of activities and events for students at the University. Societies, clubs, student-run groups and more. Asking about the nightlife I was informed by a lot of female students that there are cafes, bars, clubs, art and performance, common rooms and associations. The social life here is vibrant, diverse and abundant but it isn’t for everyone. One student said that she didn’t like the nightlife (or the drugs and booze) that a lot of studen
ts went for, but she did become a volunteer as the University offers plenty of volunteering opportunities for all students. I personally didn’t get involved in the hectic nightlife mainly because I had never been to a night club or disco in my life and was a rather private person. During my time at university I did see the results of drink and drugs and many students being asked to leave. I did however make a nice group of friends who were also into volunteering and helping others. There were a few students who did both and only joined the various volunteering bodies so that it would look good on their CV’s.

  There was also plenty to see and do in Nottingham. There’s Trent Bridge for cricket lovers, Nottingham Forest for football fans and an ice-Skating rink where Nottingham ice dancing legends Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean will live on forever. Towards the end of the second year at university several career workshop was arranged with many of the country’s top employers attending trying to tempt students to join once they had achieved their BSc. If I got my BSc it looked as if the world was my oyster but I needed to think about what I really wanted to do for the rest of my life. I could have chosen a career in the NHS but I didn’t want to work in an environment that I alone couldn’t change and I would probably need a psychiatrist help for myself after banging my head against a brick wall. I had seen and witnessed the near non-existent help made available by the cash starved NHS toward anyone (like my mother) who had mental health problems. Having a multi-handicapped sibling who turned out to be severely autistic, meant that childhood memories of donkey rides and building sand castles on a lovely sandy beach was never possible.

  I should have hated my brother for all the things he prevented me from doing, but I didn’t but don’t ask me why as I couldn’t give an answer. I suppose love is the most powerful medicine, yet you can’t get a prescription for it from the NHS. If any social worker or NHS psychiatrist had asked me what I wanted or even bothered to check up on how I - the main carer was doing, then perhaps they could have given a bit of love back in the way of respite care for my brother or even arrange a few activities for all the school children who like me were unpaid carers. If my mum had been given more help at the start perhaps she wouldn’t have ended up being so depressed and living off a host of different pills every day. I hate to think what the cost of those pills would be during my mother’s lifetime. I bet it would be far more than the respite care or extra help she didn’t receive.

  I had already grasped most of what I would need to achieve a BA at the end of my three years at Uni. I could have gone straight into a job in my local community but the salary didn’t offer that much of a pull and I decided that a career in the army would suit me better. I passed my entrance exam with flying colours and after 13 weeks was posted to a barracks at Catterick Garrison which is in North Yorkshire and the British Army's largest training establishment in the United Kingdom. I soon settled in and didn’t get homesick unlike many of my comrades which was probably down to not having many happy memories of my home life. Surprisingly, as soon as I left home the local social services put into place a care package for my handicapped brother as they soon recognised that without me the home just couldn’t function. It makes you wonder how many other teenage carers there are in the UK that become unpaid carers and like me missing out on a normal life.

  In my fifth year of service my battalion and I was sent to Bosnia and the stories I could tell of my time there would fill another book but I try to block out what happened as some of it was to terrible to remember. The widespread media coverage of the atrocities by Serbian paramilitary and military forces against Bosnian women and children, drew international condemnation of the Serbian forces. Our role was to move in after many of the conflicts and try to bring some normality back to the region. The worst part for me and many of my comrades was dealing with the devastation of young children being raped and the systematic genocide of their parents’ just because they were of a different religion. I had only signed up originally for three years but had extended it to six years and was asked if I wanted to extend it further but I had made up my mind that six years was long enough. The horrors that we all witnessed in Bosnia broke many of my comrades and they were discharged on medical grounds.

  I had never heard of PTSD before joining the army but having witnessed post-traumatic stress disorder first hand, I knew that I wanted to use my BSc to help those suffering from it. I contacted the charity MIND about two months before my leaving date and had set up an interview with the charity to see if they could use my services. As it turned out I never made the interview as within a matter of days returning home as a hero, my mother told me about a local young man named Geoff Harding who had also served in Bosnia but had been discharged a year earlier suffering with PTSD. To cut a long story short he hadn’t coped well and couldn’t settle back in to main stream life and ended up sleeping on the streets and got in trouble with the law for several issues including robbery and GBH.

  My mother told me that the GBH had been the straw that broke the camel’s back and he had been sent to prison for three years. I contacted the young man’s family and ask their permission to visit him in prison. They felt that it could help him by talking to someone who had witnessed what he had been through. It only took 8 days for my visiting permit to arrive and I went to see him. I was shocked to see the state that Geoffrey was in and it nearly brought me to tears. I had seen photos of him at his parents’ home but he was a fraction of the size he was when they were taken. I asked him what treatment he was receiving for his PTSD and he said that he was waiting to see a counsellor but it was a long wait as they were short staffed. In the meantime he had been prescribed some strong anti-depressants but they didn’t look to me that they were doing any good whatsoever. One of the most common side-effects of anti-depressants was that they suppressed the need to eat and it looked as if the medication he was on was making matters worse and not better.

  It was on the drive back that I knew then that I would become a prison counsellor and help people like Geoff Harding. As soon as I got back, I logged on to my laptop and found out how to work for the prison service. As I held a BSc Hons, I could take the National Offender Management Service graduate programme which when qualified payed a lot more than the standard prison officer rate. It involved 6 weeks of training at the national training centre in Rugby which is a lovely market town in Warwickshire, England and home of the beloved game of Rugby Union. The 6-week course taught you how to use handcuffs, basic control and restraint techniques, and how to carry out searches. Most of the first 5 weeks was spent in the classroom which became rather boring but on the 6th week you were shadowing an officer in the prison for your first posting. You’ll then take on the role yourself.

  During the next 18 months I gained more experience and responsibility and progressed from prison officer to supervisor officer level. The first step on the ladder. After 18 months I was sent to another prison to take up the role of custodial manager, with a group of staff to manage. After a few months they thought I could handle the middle-management governor-grade role as an operational manager. After a very quick 30 months of my life I was now qualified and had an option to take on more training in my chosen field which was aimed at reducing re-offending. I could have taken on more management roles but this would involve moving around the country, but I wanted to stay close enough to keep an eye on what was happening to my brother and mother.

  The HM Prison Service - runs 110 of the 123 prisons in England and Wales with the others being privately managed. As I didn’t want to be posted anywhere in the UK, in the end I opted to apply at my chosen prison to take on the role of a Prison Counsellor. The big drawback is that you can’t be a prison counsellor and a prison officer as a counsellor should seem to be neutral to the prisoner and not be part of the “system”. By luck my chosen place of work was a male only prison that catered for category B & C inmates and as the role of prison counsellor was still being defined during my early years, I found myself as a guinea pig developing a way forwa
rd. Thankfully, I had a great governor in Jack Smithers who thought it a good idea and anything that helped to stop prisoner’s requesting a meeting with the governor was fine in his book. One thing that I soon realised was that delivering counselling in prisons was extremely challenging for me, both ethically and personally.

  On a daily basis, I had the environment to wrestle with along with a range of diverse and complex issues, including security, confidentiality and, perhaps most significant of all, how to develop the therapeutic relationship to promote psychological growth in an environment that mitigates against such processes. Things may be complicated further by prisoners’ unique backgrounds and the offence. For example, a counsellor may find themselves working with an offender who was sexually abused but has been sentenced to custodial care for attacking his perpetrator. One of the biggest problems I faced was to do with confidentiality. For example, an inmate may tell a therapist that he wishes to escape; what does the therapist do with this information? Or, in the case of record-keeping, who keeps the records? Where should they be kept? Who can they be shared with? This requires some agreement with the counselee on what can and cannot be shared. In the end I agreed with the Governor to do what I thought was best and just knock on his door if I needed any help. As my workload was expanding with all the caps I was wearing I decided to keep a copy of all files on my computer at home. This enabled me to check on where I was with certain inmates that I would have meetings planned for the next day. This one decision would prove extremely helpful later.