5
THE bald man handcuffed me and pulled me up to my feet. Another stepped in front and looked straight in my eyes, nose-to-nose, giving it all the macho bad-cop posturing he could muster. He had black curly hair and wore a lumberjack shirt over his bullet-proof vest. His breath smelled of Trebor Extra Strong Mints.
‘Where are the guns John?’ he asked, matter-of-factly.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
His voice remained even and confident. ‘Listen you little cunt. You’ve had a good run, had a decent score, but now you’re fucked. We know all about you and who you are. We know all about your stepdad and Kevin Barnes, so don’t mess me about, just tell us where the guns are and admit to what you’ve done.’
I grinned. ‘Oh please fuck off!’
He sighed, with measured melodrama. ‘So what have you been up to today then?’
‘I’m just out getting fit, doing a bit of jogging.’
He pursed his lips, looked up and then back down. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Have it your way.’
They threw me in one of the cars and we hurtled over to Orpington police station, where they dragged me out and shoved me through the doors.
The custody sergeant checked me in and asked if I wanted to call my solicitor.
‘Yeah.’
‘Who is it, Milner?’
I nodded. They didn’t even need to ask. Henry Milner had represented Billy and several of my other relatives, a trusted man within our world and a funny, quirky guy. I guess he had to be to defend the sort of cases he worked on.
He had an old-fashioned BBC accent and an upright manner, but really knew the law and would do whatever was best for his clients. He once told me, ‘It is not for the lawyer to decide a case on his opinion. My opinion is not the issue. A court case is a contest and I do not sit in moral judgement of my clients. I deal in legal justice, not moral justice.’
Whether you agreed with him or not, the man talked a lot of sense. After the phonecall they dragged me into an interview room where the interrogating officer, the macho idiot from my arrest, introduced himself as DCI Currie.
‘Name?’
Silence.
‘Name?’
I looked down at my lap.
‘Name?’
He gave up after that and they ushered me back to my cell. On the way a smarmy little bobby got in my ear.
‘You’re doing well then John,’ he said. ‘Taking over the family business I see. Tell your uncle I said hello won’t you? He’s a right character isn’t he, old Micky? He’s got a real creative side.’
A couple of years before Uncle Micky had tried to organise an escape from prison by helicopter. He had a dry run which went okay, but on the day was ratted out by someone on the inside and it all fell through. Even then, nearly 20 years after Brinks-Mat, he was still on the minds of Old Bill. The bobby wanted a reaction from me, so I blanked him and looked straight ahead.
Late that afternoon Henry sent a young barrister called Sutherland down and we went through as many of the details as I knew, without appreciating what the police had up their sleeve.
‘How fucked am I?’ I asked him.
‘If they don’t find any guns, the worst they can do you for is nicking the car.’
‘All right.’ I was happy with that.
‘Don’t tell them anything,’ he said. ‘Don’t wind them up, there’s no point, but don’t say a word.’ He was called out for a moment and when he returned looked a little less sure of himself, which worried me. ‘They want to interview you again,’ he said.
I was taken back to the interview room where Currie waited with his arms folded, like a man who had just ordered the bill at a restaurant.
‘We’ve had a turn-up,’ he said when I sat down. I could tell by the sound of his voice he was enjoying himself. ‘It’s all right, you don’t need to reply John. I know how much of an emotional strain it is for you to speak. The last thing we want to do is upset you. So for now, you can just listen. Are you listening?’
I looked down at the floor.
‘Here’s the thing. About two miles from the checkpoint you jumped, literally only about 20 metres from the car you abandoned, an old man was watering his rosebushes. Nice old fella. Now you’re not going to believe this, but do you know what he found John? He was most surprised.’
I shook my head despite knowing what was coming.
‘He found a .38 revolver, in his flowerbed, imagine that!’
I winced inwardly but hid it, looking down at the table.
‘So where does that leave us? Are you going to admit the gun is yours? Or have we got to drag this pantomime out any further?’
I remained expressionless. Currie shook his head theatrically, tutted and sent me back to my cell. I still thought everything would blow over, until that evening a screw came to my door and told me I had a legal call. My concern only deepened after I spoke to Milner.
‘I’m sorry I can’t be there in person John,’ he said, ‘but I thought I should let you know that Special Branch are coming to see you.’
‘Eh? Special Branch? They deal with terrorism don’t they? Why?’
‘It seems you were seen, in your BMW, casing a security depot in Ainsford a few months ago. The witness thought it looked suspicious and wrote the number plate down. Don’t say anything please John, but a week later a gang of robbers front and backed a lorry carrying about £8m in that location. They were armed with shotguns and one of them, get this, one of them ran up to the front windscreen and held up a landmine. He shouted to the driver what he was doing, then threw it under the wheel.
‘The police take that sort of thing very seriously, John. Landmines are weapons of war. Anyway, in the meantime a van turned up with a spike mounted on it and started ramming the lorry, trying to get the back doors open. Unfortunately for them, it didn’t work. The spike came off the bracket and ended up useless. The robbers had to leave with nothing. There was a canal nearby and they made their escape on speedboats. It was a really well planned operation, very high level stuff and because your car was seen there, you have been implicated. The police have discussed it and believe you and Billy led the job.’
‘Right,’ I said.
‘Forewarned is forearmed John. Sutherland will be back in the morning.’
The next morning, when Sutherland came back, he looked a touch stressed.
‘They want to interview you about other crimes,’ he said. ‘Now don’t say anything out loud.’
He held out a piece of paper with a list of robberies on it. ‘This is called a police disclosure. These are all the things they think you’ve been a part of.’
I looked through the list.
‘Hmm…’ I said. Sutherland’s face dropped.
‘Okay. I see. Don’t say anything other than your name and no comment.’
Before long I was taken back to the interview room to spend more quality time with Currie.
‘So it’s quite an impressive-looking CV we’ve got here John,’ he said. ‘Let’s pick out a few highlights shall we? There was an attack on a Securicor van where the guard was threatened but wouldn’t throw the money out. As a result shots were fired in the high street at midday. That’s a nice one isn’t it? You’re turning our country into a battle-zone, aren’t you John?’
‘No comment,’ I replied. He made a big show of perusing the list with wide eyes.
‘It seems the biggest earner was a raid outside an Abbey National cash machine at night time, when £150,000 was nicked. You know altogether we’re looking at half a million pounds’ worth of armed robberies here?’
‘No comment.’
He turned to Sutherland. ‘How old is he?’
‘He was born in February 1983.’
‘Seventeen!’ Currie cried. ‘Seventeen and he’s got this sort of form! I’ve never seen anything like it.’ My feeling that we were in trouble grew. Old Bill seemed too confident.
‘Do you know what’s funny about all this, John?’
‘No comment.’
‘If you were out the other morning getting fit, as you said and you know, fair play, you had your gym kit on, we all saw that. Why is it that you’ve been in this police station for three days and you’ve never once protested your innocence?’
‘No comment.’
‘If you were an innocent man, you’d be screaming the walls down at the injustice of being kept here. But I’m not seeing that. You’re only a kid but you’ve stayed cool. You’ve avoided all our questions. You’ve given us as little as possible, it’s textbook, John, absolute textbook. You’re not behaving like an innocent youngster, you’re behaving like someone who knows the ropes and will be fabricating evidence to get an acquittal. That’s what it looks like to me.’
I met his eye for a second. There was victory in it.
‘No comment.’
He was right though, that was exactly the strategy, to wait for all their evidence, or more specifically the holes in it and then build a case around that. For then, it was enough that they believed there was a strong case against me. They took me out and I soon found myself on the back seat of another car, on my way to Bromley Magistrates’ Court.
The magistrates took no time in remanding me to Feltham young offenders’ institution, in west London, where the policeman had told me all those years earlier, on Mum’s doorstep, that I would end up. Initially I was placed on the reception wing, with a bunch of nervous, sinewy little guttersnipes. It was like being back at school.
To begin with I thought I might stay there until my case went to trial, but on my second day some officers arrived and said I would have to go to the segregation unit, while they waited for information on my future. It was bleak down there and lonely. I sat on my own all day until about six in the evening, when the door opened up. A tall, blond man introduced himself as the governor.
‘John McAvoy,’ he said simply. ‘You’ve been made category A.’
There are four classifications of inmate in the British prison system, beginning with D which refers to those who are considered of no risk and can be kept in open prisons then heading upwards from there. My family connections, access to firearms and the incredible list of crimes they were preparing to charge me with, meant that I was given the highest classification, reserved for those whose escape would be highly dangerous to the public or national security. It was very unusual for someone of my age, on their first offence to be inducted into the prison system like this, but that was how it worked as a McAvoy, straight in at the top.
The problem was that the only category A prisons were in the adult system, but people under the age of 21 were not supposed to be housed in adult prisons. With my case they were therefore faced with an anomaly and at just 17 years old, after two short days in Feltham, I was transferred to HMP Woodhill, near Milton Keynes, a maximum security prison that had a young offenders’ wing attached to it. It was serious place. The so called ‘most violent inmate in Britain’, Charles Bronson, was a resident, among others. They hoped the administrators there could somehow sort through the muddle.
I arrived in my yellow and green cat A jumpsuit and walked on to the spur. The fact that I wore that marked me out to begin with and I got a lot of looks. I had to be in for something serious and was probably not a guy to be trifled with. Unsure of what to do with me, in the first instance the staff again placed me in the block, the segregation unit usually reserved for those who had committed a contravention of prison rules.
I had a cardboard desk, a cardboard chair and the bed was a little bit of concrete on the floor. Once a day they took me outside to a small, caged area where I was allowed to walk around in circles, for exercise. Category A, adult institution and in the block, welcome to the prison system, John McAvoy!
At Woodhill they operated a seven-stage model which was claimed to be for rehabilitation but in reality was designed to try and break you. You go in at stage one with no privileges at all. You cannot wear your own clothes, your cell is bare and it’s a really bleak existence. If they think you are showing progress and your behaviour is improving they will move you to stage two. You could be at stage two for a year, maybe allowed your own trainers to wear and eventually moved up to stage three. Again you could be at stage three for ages, be given a couple of minor perks, have one bad day, say the wrong thing to one of the screws and be bumped all the way back down to stage one. You would lose everything and have to start all over again. The guys that go through the whole process and come out at the end of stage seven are cabbages. All the repetition and monotony fries their brains.
After a week of complete solitude in the block, the governor came down to see me.
‘Look John,’ he said. He seemed all right. ‘This is a very unique set of circumstances and we can’t put you into the wider prison population with adults.’
‘Can you star me up?’ I asked.
That meant officially re-categorising me as an adult prisoner because I was considered such a risk. I hadn’t presented any problems in prison yet, but I thought if it would get me out of segregation, it was worth it.
‘We can’t do it,’ he said. ‘You’ve done nothing to warrant that. How about if we put you on the young offenders’ wing, but as a category A prisoner? How would that be? Are you going to start playing up?’
‘No.’
‘You won’t use your reputation to start bullying people and throwing your weight around?’
‘No.’
‘Okay. We can work on trust.’
So they took me down to the young offenders’ section in my yellow and green cat A suit, which drew admiring attention immediately. In my first day there I must have been asked about 20 times what I had done. There was only one other inmate on the wing in the same category and he was a murderer.
‘You must be proper serious, bruv!’ kids were saying, shaking my hand, touching fists with me. It probably made life a little easier. Sometimes, when I had legal visits from Sutherland or Milner, I would have to go over into the adult wing to use the meeting room. Whenever I was taken through there everyone was eager to speak to me too.
‘Are you Micky McAvoy’s nephew?’ they’d say. ‘He’s a top man, Micky. If you have any problems just let me know.’
Within the first week I began receiving special treatment. Screws came over from the adult wing to visit me on the young offenders’ side, bringing extra newspapers, books, food and other privileges. It was being organised by some of the most influential inmates in the jail. My name might have helped create my predicament, but had its advantages too.
The scenario was similar when I went to the prison gym. Because of my status I could not exercise with the other juveniles and had to go in a small group with the category A guys. I would be in there with all these hardened jailbirds, men who had committed very serious offences and done loads of time. They saw the way I refused to kowtow to the screws and liked it. There was no way I would let myself be bullied.
‘You’re game aren’t ya?’ they would say.
All the respect bolstered my ego and as I grew used to the internal dynamics of prison life, I used it in my psychological battle with the staff. I took no shit off them and made it very clear there was nothing they could do to intimidate me. I was not bothered about visits, like most prisoners, so I did not need to stay in the area. It was important they had nothing over me. For a lot of inmates, the screws used that as a bartering tool.
‘Look, if you keep playing up, we’ll move you up north and no one will come to visit you anymore.’
‘You can send me anywhere you like in the country,’ I would tell them. ‘I don’t give a toss.’
Uncle Micky had told me how he coped with his time inside by reminding himself that it wasn’t his life. ‘It was just an interval,’ he used to say. He would read a broadsheet newspaper every day, front to back, to keep up to date with world affairs. He would involve himself with as little prison routine as possible. It’s important to make your own decisions.
I took that attitude on board and knew I was mentally strong enough to get through whatever sentence they gave me. In my head, they had kidnapped me. I would get up every morning and say, ‘I am not here out of choice.’ It was like a mantra. ‘They choose to come here and I don’t. This is their life, not mine.’ I refused to become institutionalised, to be one of those people where prison becomes their whole existence as a human. There was still so much I wanted to do.
As a result of that way of thinking, I would not interact with prison officers on any level besides ‘I want to go to the gym’ or ‘I want to use the phone’. I would never make small talk with them. If they tried, I ignored them. One or two tried to chat about my case.
‘I’m innocent,’ I would say and walk away.
Plans began forming in my mind. I was not 100 per cent convinced that armed robbery was the right game to stay in. It can be very lucrative but so risky. Once the authorities know you are a player, they will always keep tabs on you. Maybe Aaron had the right idea? I thought perhaps as soon as they let me out, whether that be in two, five, ten years, whenever, I would break parole, skip the country and make a fresh start in a new business. But before any of that, one thing loomed large in my future. Soon I would have to face the judge.