12

My arrival at Peasmarsh Prison was similar to the training simulation but nowhere near as traumatic. The approach was along a new arrow-straight concrete road in a bus that had picked me up at the station. It seemed as if this was a normal bus converted to carry prisoners. It was a small bus of ten specially constructed seats on each side, each one carrying one prisoner. I had a belt locked around my waist that had a chain to a lock on the aisle floor. I knew it could be released electrically because the guards (oops, sorry – prison officers) tested it before we left. Two prison officers and a driver staffed it.

My four fellow passengers didn’t look any different from any other travellers on a bus. I knew the one forward on the left was very dangerous because he was also bound in handcuffs. I’d seen his picture in the papers: Marvin O’Brian, late of Strangeways, where he killed two prison officers, one of them female, whom he was trying to rape. He didn’t look dangerous but apparently he’d a string of rapes and murders to his credit. A medium-sized man, wavy fair hair starting to recede; it was difficult to believe he had killed two adults with his bare hands and it took a number of others to restrain him even after he’d been hit with a Taser. I was under the impression that a Taser causes strong muscle contractions and incapacity but apparently this guy went on fighting. But that was just a newspaper report and it was difficult to believe what they said. The snippet on me in the Mirror that morning said that I was a war hero who killed in self-defence and the court in the US was wrong to convict me as the plea bargain was illegally obtained. It seemed that newspaper reports about me were so different to create confusion in the public eye but in each I was a hero.

It was drizzling and the dirty windows of the prison transport were streaked and distorted everything we saw, but still the prison could be seen in the distance across the open moor: a three-storey concrete eyesore. Aesthetics weren’t in the mind of the architect when he designed this monstrosity. I could remember the protestors objecting to the prison being an outrage. If it had been browns and greens it would have disappeared, but grey concrete was a blemish even in this bleak, less than attractive moorland. As we approached, I noted that there were no watchtowers and a wire fence surrounded the prison: just a simple wire-link fence about 8-feet high, topped with barbed wire. It seemed to be designed to keep people out rather than to keep anybody in. I was surprised. I thought that an insurmountable outer fence was a requirement of a high security prison, particularly as I’d been briefed that Peasmarsh was primarily for Category A prisoners who were highly dangerous to the public or to national security if they were to escape. Me, I was just a miserable Category B: a prisoner for whom the highest security conditions weren’t necessary, but the powers that be just didn’t want me to get out. Perhaps the fence was there because the public and protestors were more dangerous than the prisoners. You had to keep the prisoners safe from the local forces of protest, you know.

As we approached the gate I noticed it was open and the grounds inside the fence to the left of the gate were like allotments with men working them. They must have been sodden working in this continual drizzle, but they didn’t seem to be concerned. Inside the fence it looked like there was a tartan track and at intervals, there were obstacles such as steps up and down, parallel bars, a high bar and other apparatus, so this was an exercise track. This was like the training establishment in the States. I had also seen them at Stresa in Italy, but I was surprised to see one in a British prison.

There were signs facing the outside announcing that there were guard dogs, so I think dogs were a warning to protesters. There were also floodlights and CCTV cameras at regular intervals, and I was told later that there were movement sensors that triggered the equipment and traced the movement, so technology rather than physical barriers was the security methodology. There was also a helicopter pad. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to cross this boggy moor at night where a helicopter with infrared would find it easy to pick you up.

The induction was just like the training: shower, strip search, peer up your bum, but interestingly none of the prison officers actually touched me; apparently, this was an EU regulation: human rights or some such. If they couldn’t see something stuck up your bum they couldn’t take any action and, if they needed to, all they could do was park you until it came out naturally – bit different from the States. I had a perfunctory medical that was more questioning than any real inspection, and then received my prison clothing. I was given a natty blue number but Anil Mouratoglou, a terrorist bomber, was in a fetching orange outfit that, I was reliably informed, by overhearing the officer giving him his suit, glowed in minimal light and some form of detector strips were incorporated in it so if he escaped he would have to do it in the nude. It was amazing how some people got their kicks. Each of us also had a tracker. This was a new one on me. Mine was on my wrist like a bulky watch. The orange-suited prisoners had a second one on their ankles. Mine just tracked where I was at any one time, so if I was being looked for I could be found. A record was kept of where Cat A prisoners had travelled in the prison and computer software analysed their movements. I understood that some dogooding team was conducting a test case claiming this was an infringement of human rights. I have never been quite clear why killing somebody or their family being deprived of a relation wasn’t an infringement of human rights.

I was shown to a booth that was about 2 by 2 metres and open on one side, with walls that went up about 2 metres and a ceiling way above that. It contained a table and two chairs, one on either side of the table. Sitting on one of the chairs was a large, tough-looking female prison officer. She was a bit overweight and her red hair was cut like a Second World War German soldier’s helmet. It looked solid: probably sprayed with fibreglass resin so that it was a helmet. She wore no makeup or any adornment except a plain prison officer’s uniform: pale-blue shirt with epaulets containing a pip and below that a crown, a black skirt, black stockings and regulation laced shoes. This wasn’t a lady who had any regard for her appearance; her clothes just sort of sat on her bulky, muscular frame. I’d read that female prison officers had been warned not to appear sexy; no chance with this one. Perhaps she was James Bond’s antagonist Rosa Klebb, but she wasn’t knitting with poison-tipped knitting needles. Perhaps she’d a poisoned knife blade concealed in those heavy shoes. No, that was wrong; with red hair and a poison blade in the toe of her shoe she must have been Irma Bunt, and Irma Bunt wasn’t killed so this is where she had turned up. I laughed at my make-believe and the prison officer looked at me strangely. She may have thought I was nuts and, as I was to find out, a number of prisoners were.

‘Please sit down, Jake. I’m Senior Officer James and I’m your personal officer.’

‘Yes, ma’am. What’s a personal officer?’ I could smell her. It was a mixture of carbolic soap and a body spray called Goddess that the housekeeper who cleaned my flat twice a week used. It came in very large spray cans and I had assumed it was for killing insects. Perhaps I was wrong; on the other hand… Senior Officer James was clearly a practical woman.

‘If you’ve any problems, if you’ve any questions, I’m the person to ask. If you find yourself in trouble I’ll be your spokesperson, if you feel you need a spokesperson. I’ve your personal file here.’ She pointed at a file about half an inch thick. ‘And I’m surprised that you ended up breaking the law. It says you killed an FBI special agent, but it’s a bit vague, very surprising that. How did this come about?’

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘So that I’ve an understanding of you and the reason you’re here.’

‘Are all prisoners asked these questions?’

‘No, it’s unusual, but you’re very unusual. A commissioned army officer with a psychology degree, served in the RMP with what appears to be a distinguished record, a medal for bravery, seconded to MI5, goes to the USA and kills somebody, not just anybody but an FBI special agent and as far as I can tell from the information here, no motive.’

‘And what does that tell you?’

‘I was hoping you’d tell me.’

‘Will I end up in solitary if I tell you to fuck off?’

‘Are you telling me to fuck off?’

‘No I’m seeking information. You said if I’d any questions to ask you, so that’s what I’m doing.’

We sat looking at each other. ‘Are you going to answer my question?’

‘Yes. You won’t go to solitary for telling me to fuck off.’

‘Let me ask a different question then.’ I paused, waiting for permission.

‘Go on then.’

‘Tell me your real role here.’

‘I told you I’m a senior officer.’

‘And my ol’ man’s a dustman. Not your apparent role, your real role.’

‘What makes you think I’m not a senior officer?’

‘Well that may be your rank but that isn’t your role, is it?’

‘And what on earth makes you think that?’

‘One: your pronunciation. Two: your syntax. Three: the structure of your questions. Four: the questions you’re asking.’

‘Yes, if we’ve a strange one I’m the person that becomes their personal officer.’

‘Just you?’

‘No, there are two of us.’

‘Your degree?’

‘I don’t –’

‘Bollocks.’

She looked at me. She was evaluating me. She’d a decision to make and she could only make a decision in the light of her role here and her evaluation of me after seeing very limited information about me. This was an educated woman. She was bright, aware, confident, and she had purpose. She had to make a decision. If she lied to me and I recognised the lie then confidence would be broken and she needed my trust if she was going to achieve her goal, but at the same time she knew I knew that she wasn’t what she pretended to be. Could I trust her if she told others her doubts about me – and I could feel she had doubts that I was the genuine article? I held her eyes and gently tipped my head to my right. She answered my question.

‘My first degree is an honours in psychology and criminology, and I’ve a master’s degree in forensic psychology.’

‘Now there’s a clever girl. And your real role here?’

‘To get inside the head of ambiguous cases.’

‘Why?’

‘Some people are exceptionally dangerous.’

I waited. She was going to outwait me but I needed information more than she did.

‘Am I exceptionally dangerous?’

‘We don’t know. It says here that you were in Parchman Farm, Mississippi and while there in Unit 32. I understand that’s solitary confinement.’

‘We?’ I’d ducked the implied question.

‘There’s a committee. The members of the committee review all people that come here. Some are obviously dangerous, some are obviously not and some are ambiguous.’

‘And I’m ambiguous?’

‘It seems so.’

‘I’ll tell you what. I’m likely to be here for a very long time so what I’d like is a straightforward briefing and after you’ve observed me for four or five years you can decide if I’m dangerous. How does that suit you? No, wait: I bet you’re one of those fast-track goodies, so in four years you’ll be a governor or you’ll have completed your doctoral thesis and be in some educational establishment and I’ll be a case study.’

She completely ignored what I said. She was cutting her losses. It must have been that I was too near the mark. Interesting.

‘I’d like to ask you a question about Parchman Unit 32. Did you do solitary?’

‘Everybody in Unit 32 does solitary.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s the routine.’

‘Tell me about it.’ She’d opened a spiral-bound American Quarto book with a shiny blue and white cover. I knew it was about Unit 32. I’d seen one before; well, I had one. I wondered how she had one.

‘What do you want to know?’

‘When did you go into solitary?’

‘First Monday at nine in the morning.’

‘Reason?’

‘Everybody in Unit 32 does a short spell in solitary just so they know what will happen if they play silly buggers.’

‘When did you come out?’

‘Saturday, five days later, in the same order that we went in.’

‘We?’ She’d just done to me what I’d done to her.

‘All the new entries to Unit 32.’

‘How many?’

‘Five’

‘So five of you went in on the Monday morning and five came out on Saturday morning?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did they tell you before they put you in?’

‘The Chief lined us up and told us there were five things to remember.’ I wasn’t making this easy for her. Why should I?

‘They were?’

‘The first one was silence is golden, so we could enjoy its riches. Prayer is good for the soul, so we should pray. He said we should eat well because it would give us strength to endure the pain of the remorse for what we’d done. Exercise to maintain flexibility of body and through that, maintain flexibility of the mind. And the last one was to masturbate as little as possible as it’s better to conserve our strength, dignity and self-respect. He said we would know not to return.’

‘What did they tell you when you came out?’

‘Same sort of stuff: learn from your experiences, good actions – no, positive actions – have positive consequences and disruptive actions have negative consequences or something like that, learn and behave yourself. It was like being in school again.’

‘What was it like when you came out?’

‘What was it like?’

‘Yes, how did you feel?’

‘Right, um, yes. Immediately I felt relief. After four days you’re scared they won’t let you out so when you come out you feel relief. Then you feel, or I felt, anger. What right did they have to do that to me?’

‘So what did you do?

‘Nothing.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I might get solitary or a lethal injection.’

‘Okay, Jake Robinson, here is your number. Each number is unique and it’ll tie together everything that’s to do with you and is done to you.’ She droned on: the rules, health care, what I can take to my cell, cell cleaning, what is in the canteen and on and on until she said, ‘Anything I’ve missed?’ What a neat trick question. She was testing if I was a plant.

‘How the hell would I know?’

‘Oh, I just thought you’d know about prisons.’

‘I know this is very different from Mississippi State.’

‘How?’

‘They’re very careful in Mississippi. I was an oddity so they stuck me in Unit 32. You probably know from your notes there that Unit 32 is high security and most people in it are in solitary lock down, and some are just in close confinement as I was, so for the short period I was there I saw little and heard little. No cosy conversations like this. I was convicted of killing a federal officer, so by definition I was a dangerous prisoner and I was doubly dangerous as there were people trying to get me transferred out and what was even worse they weren’t Americans, so I must also be a terrorist, but as they’d lawyers and politicians looking over their shoulders they just kept me in close confinement.’

‘I see.’ She was again evaluating what I said.

‘Well, there’s something I’d like to know.’

‘What?’

‘Visiting.’

‘As a Category B prisoner serving a long sentence you’ll be allowed at least two visits lasting one hour or more every four weeks. If you behave yourself and stay out of trouble for the next six months then that may be increased.’

‘Wow, I’m going to be overwhelmed by the social round. When will the first visit be?’

‘In about two weeks. Just fill in a form and it will be authorised.’

‘Phone calls?’

‘We’ve a pin-number system here. You can make calls lasting a total of one hour each month so you can have one, one-hour call or sixty, one-minute calls. You have to be here two weeks before you get your pin number.’

‘Are they monitored?’

‘Most calls are recorded and may be monitored at any time except if they are made to a legal adviser or the Samaritans. Some numbers are blocked, such as chat-lines.’

‘My lawyer?’

‘You looking to find a legal way out?’

‘I want to see my lawyer.’

‘Why?’

‘Two things: The first is that I want to challenge my conviction and secondly, I want to challenge the regime in here on the basis of infringement of human rights.’

‘Who is your lawyer?’

‘You’ve read my file.’

She opened the file and turned over some pages. ‘The criminal one is Sir Nicolas Ross QC. Sir Nicolas Ross, eh? That’s a bit high powered.’

‘You better believe it, lady.’

‘Does he know you then?’

‘You know he does. He got me back here from the States so that he could work on my case.’

‘He’d be very expensive.’

Oh dear, Jake; you’ve just made your first cock-up.

‘Not really, Senior Officer James. I was a witness in a case before him and he took a shine to me. I was also in MI5 at the time of my arrest and they’ve recognised the cock-up that got me imprisoned, and Sir Nicolas, as you know, got me back here.’

‘It says you’ve a solicitor, Keith Todd.’

‘Yes, I want to start a challenge using human rights legislation. Keith Todd will find me the person I’ll need.’

‘What human rights abuse are you going to challenge?’

‘This thing.’ I held up the tracker on my wrist.

‘So you think that violates your human rights?’

‘I’m not a lawyer but let’s see Article 3: Prohibition of Torture. A person has the absolute right not to be tortured or subjected to treatment or punishment which is inhuman or degrading.’ I held up my wrist. ‘Article 4: A person has the absolute right not to be treated as a slave.’ I pointed to my wrist. ‘Article 5: The right not to be deprived of their liberty without a proper legal basis in law. The judge didn’t mention this thing. Article 11: Right to associate with other people. I reckon somewhere in this lot you are violating my human rights by putting this thing on me.’

‘I think you might be very dangerous, but in a different way to how we thought.’

‘You’d better believe it, lady.’ I thought I’d thrown enough sand in her eyes for them to leave me alone, at least in the short term. ‘Can I ask you a question?’

‘Is it about telling me to fuck off.’

I had to smile. ‘No, it’s about me being sent to Brixton and then here when I was told I would be coming here from the States.’

‘Now that is interesting; I was going to ask you about that. Why do you prefer to be here?’

‘Well, here you get a personal officer and Brixton is, to be polite, a disgusting shit hole.’

‘See, two very good reasons, Jake, but could it be that somebody doesn’t want you here?’

‘You know I thought that, but I couldn’t think why not.’

‘Yes, Jake Robinson, you can lay more false trails than a Red Indian.’

‘You’re not allowed to say that; it’s racist. You have to say Native American.’ I used a prissy voice. She smiled.

‘You’re good at avoiding answering me, Jake.’ She pulled out a pink form, ticked a number of boxes, put crosses in a couple and wrote a little note at the bottom.

‘So that’s the report?’ I asked

‘Yes. Despite what I’ve read about Unit 32 Parchman, you show no evident psychological maladjustment or psychotic disorganisation.’

‘Your conclusion?’

‘I haven’t reached one yet.’

‘Don’t believe all you read, lady.’

She tipped her head to the left, looking at me; she was definitely unsure about me. ‘Well, you’ve a friend in here and you’ll be sharing a cell with him.’

‘Who?’

‘Harry Mount.’

‘Harry Mount? I’m not sure I know him.’

‘He says you do and he says he knows you.’

‘Give me a clue.’

‘He’s about six foot three or four, weighs about eighteen stone of solid muscle, ex-Royal Marine Commando. Said you were a hero in Iraq. Pulled you out when you got injured in a riot.’

‘Christ, yes – a big, black sergeant.’

She winced: probably the fact I mentioned his colour when she avoided mentioning it. ‘That’s right.’

‘What happened to him?’

‘Took some drugs and killed five men over a period of seven weeks. He’s a Category A prisoner. You’ve nice friends, Captain.’

‘I never heard about this.’

‘No, you wouldn’t. He was a mercenary in Nigeria when he went on his killing spree. When the Nigerians caught up with him they were going to shoot him but the British Government did a deal and he came back here to Brixton as a Cat B, but he was a trifle disruptive and after only a week inside he made a break. That would be about two months ago and a policeman got seriously injured. He was upgraded to Cat A and transferred here. He’s been absolutely no trouble since. I’d say he’s a model prisoner. Strange that, don’t you think?’

‘Don’t I think what?’

‘That someone has a record of violence, was highly disruptive in one prison, comes to another and he’s just a pussy cat.’

I decided to tackle this one straight on and say exactly what this very bright lady was thinking. ‘Perhaps he disliked Brixton or, I know, he’s a plant and it was a way to get him in here.’

‘I was thinking the same thing.’

‘Yes, I know; that’s why I said it.’

‘Why might he be planted in here?’

‘Well,’ I pretended to think, ‘he heard that in here is a very sexy red-headed senior prison officer named James who loves to shag six foot four, black, ex-Royal Marine sergeants.’

Her whole being relaxed and she smiled. ‘It’s going to be great having you here, Jake. Let’s go and see him.’

Complete with my roll of gear, I followed her to B-Wing and had my first glimpse of my new living quarters. It was similar to one of the modern American prisons I’d viewed: very open and light due to the sloping glass roof, with wings radiating from a central area. It smelled fresh, open and clean, the way all institutions should smell, but already it was suffering from what all British prisons suffer from – overcrowding. On the first landing the cells were built as singles and already, due to the lack of prison space, most were doubled up.