15

Untouchable

IN the weeks leading up to our date at Woolwich Crown Court, Dentif became such a regular on the HSU he was virtually an inmate himself. We went over everything we knew about the police evidence and kept returning to the same conclusion – we were shafted.

My only chance lay in Kevin seeing sense, taking the rap and getting me off. In many ways it was the noble course of action. I really had nothing to do with the vast majority of the two months of conspiracy and only got involved to do him a favour.

As police evidence continued flooding in, the screws allowed us a video recorder so we could watch copies of the taped exhibits.

‘Something will come up,’ Kevin kept repeating, refusing to accept what was staring him in the face. ‘You’ll see. There’s no way they’ll pin this on me.’

I became exasperated. ‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do,’ I said. ‘You won’t listen to me, but maybe you’ll listen to a second opinion.’

I walked back to the pool table where Ramzy was playing a game with Roger.

‘Ramzy,’ I said. ‘Come here for a minute.’

He followed me back down the spur to the TV.

‘Sit down,’ I told him. Then I turned to Kevin.

‘Now bear in mind, Kev, he’s not from our game and he’ll look at this just like members of the jury will.’

‘Have a watch,’ I said to Ramzy, and I pressed the play button.

The video showed a high street on a roasting hot day in July. There were women walking around in miniskirts, summer dresses and vest tops, men in t-shirts and shorts, while to the rear of the shops a small, wooded area with a footpath leading into a park could be seen.

Suddenly, Kevin popped out from there. He was wearing latex gloves, a heavy jacket, a roll-hat and a pair of sunglasses. All he needed was a stripy jumper and a bag with ‘SWAG’ written on it. If it hadn’t been so serious it would have been funny.

Just to add the finishing touch, the camera panned from where Kevin was standing, following his eyeline over the road to where a security van pulled up outside a branch of Barclays. Kevin then started striding towards it, full of purpose. I paused the video.

‘Ramzy,’ I asked. ‘What do you think’s going to happen?’

‘It looks like he’s going to rob that van,’ Ramzy said.

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about!’ Kevin cried. ‘You’re thinking like a copper. That’s what the filth would say!’

I thanked Ramzy and he left us to it.

‘Do you know what I think, Kev?’ I said.

‘What?’

‘I think you should go guilty and get me out of here. They’re doing you for the whole two months. I was only there at the end. You’re probably going to get life, but if you hold your hands up, you’ll get a much smaller tariff. If you fight this, you are screwed, I promise you. You might never get out.’

He looked at me coldly.

‘Don’t you know who I am? Kevin Barnes never goes guilty.’

News of our situation trickled through to people on the outside. Even Uncle Micky spoke to Milner, trying to apply a bit of traction. Nothing worked. Everyone else could see the reality. The police had a lot on Kevin, but not much on me. Yet speaking to him was a waste of breath.

A week before the date for our hearing Dentif came in with the barrister from his office, a guy called Charles Conway. We discussed my options and decided that my best course of action was to go guilty and hope for a deal. If I did that, Conway suggested there was a 50 per cent chance I could escape a life sentence. The most likely outcome was somewhere in the region of 15 years.

In the days that followed, I stepped up my attempts to convince Kevin that he was on the path of madness, but it remained pointless. He was guarded and cynical and carried on as if he didn’t give a shit. Our discussions became more heated and a few turned into all-out arguments. His attitude really bugged me. You can be like that when your own future is at stake, but not when it’s someone else’s.

‘Kev! Get fucking real mate. This is damage limitation. We just have to think of ways we can get out of the situation as fast as possible. Look, if you do your bit and get me off, I’ll get you out. I promise. I’ll make sure you’ve got money. I’ll look after you. You just have to do this one thing for me.’

‘I’m Kevin Barnes,’ he would repeat, stubbornly. ‘I don’t do that.’

With the hearing just days away, Dentif came back.

‘What deal will they offer?’ I asked.

He shook his head.

‘Nothing John, it’s the lot I’m afraid. They’re going to get you for all of it one way or the other. But pleading guilty is still your best option. It’s the only way you might avoid a life sentence.’

I nodded and accepted the reality. It was that, or live in jail until old age. Back on the wing I told Kevin of my decision.

‘I’m going guilty.’

‘I can’t fucking believe it.’

‘Listen Kev, you are fucked. And you’re so fucked that you’re going to drag me down with you. I’ve got no choice.’

Forty-eight hours before the trial we were given yellow and green jumpsuits to wear, put back into the van and driven through the prison grounds to the main reception block. Once inside, the screws led us to the side of the building and opened a thick, vault door in the wall. We passed through it on to a gently sloping corridor that took us underground.

Built from reinforced concrete, like a smaller version of the Blackwall tunnel, the Woolwich Crown Court tunnel is a giant echo-chamber. Every little sound reverberates down there, footsteps, voices, coughs, while all the while you hear the heavy, ever-present rumble of traffic on the road overhead.

Once we reached the midway point of the tunnel we came to another enormous door. A series of locks clicked from inside and it swung open smoothly and steadily, revealing another corridor that took us up into the court. We were there for a standard pre-trial hearing, but once they got us into the dock and the judge started talking through the preliminaries, Dentif stood up and said, ‘Mr McAvoy wants to change his plea, your honour.’

‘Very well.’

It was the hardest thing I had ever done. I looked over at the police sitting smugly in a line beneath me and despised their eager faces. Worse than that, I felt I was letting them win. The judge asked me to stand and the clerk read, ‘Count one, conspiracy to commit armed robbery. John McAvoy?’

Before I had hope, even if only a sliver of it, now I was giving it up. I looked back at the police then up at the judge. It took me a long time to get the word out.

‘Guilty,’ I said, at last. I felt sick.

‘Count two, possession of firearms with intent to commit an indictable offence. John McAvoy?’

‘Guilty.’

‘Count three, possession of live ammunition with intent to endanger life. John McAvoy?’

‘Guilty.’

‘Count four, possession of a stun gun with intent to commit an indictable offence. John McAvoy?’

‘Guilty.’

I sat back down and the court blurred around me. Other things were discussed. I paid no attention. Before I could get my head together they started leading us back downstairs.

‘How do you feel?’ Kevin asked.

‘I feel all right,’ I lied.

‘Don’t worry mate,’ he said. ‘I’ll be out soon and I’ll send someone for you. I’ll get you out and make sure you’ve got some money. I’ll look after you.’

It was almost comical. Kevin was such a throwback, one of the old school of villains. He hadn’t adapted to the ways the law had developed. There was simply no way, with his prior record and the huge mountain of evidence piled against him that he was getting any result other than a very long sentence, but he remained stuck in this delusion that somehow everything would magically work out. He was so detached from reality I felt sorry for him.

‘Okay mate,’ I said and left it there.

They took us back through the tunnel. Returning to the HSU was tough. It felt different.

I was no longer on remand. I was a convicted criminal, awaiting sentence. It seemed darker in there, like someone had switched off a few lights. At 22 years old I knew it was very unlikely I would see the outside world until my 30s. While my friends and associates were making money and living it up, I would be locked away for the best years of my life.

Dentif returned a couple of days later. He assured me that my decision was the right one under the circumstances, but my mood was still low.

‘Can you hurry them up?’ I asked. ‘I want to be sentenced so I can get out of this hole.’

He completed the paperwork, but the application was blocked by the prosecution on Kevin’s case. They believed that if I received my sentence, I would then offer myself as a witness for the defence, take the blame for everything and get Kevin off. Once you’ve been sentenced, you can turn up in court and say what you want. There are no repercussions.

For me it was crushing news. Kevin’s case was a drawn-out affair and I had to wait until it was over before any decision on my future could be decided, meaning I faced an uncertain period stuck in the HSU.

With things poised like that and no clear way out to aim for, I became miserable. Without a distraction I could easily have drifted into serious despair. And it was then that my exercise sessions began to take on a different character. At Belmarsh we were only allowed to use the gym three times a week, which was rudimentary at best, little more than a small room with a multi-gym and stereo in it, but I tried to make the most of it. I got a friend from outside to send me in some CDs, the kind of pumping dance music I had been listening to on pills in Spanish nightclubs, which I would have on full-blast while working out.

Needless to say, Hamza, who came along to train his legs, was not keen. ‘Brother,’ he would moan, between sets of squats, ‘my ears, this hurts my ears, please turn it down.’ I often got the impression that some of the younger Muslims enjoyed it, although they would never admit it. Dance music was a symbol of western decadence, after all.

As the gym facilities were so limited, I would use the exercise periods in the yard as fully as possible, beginning to find something in my outdoor circuits that had not been there before. It’s not just that my fitness was increasing, although it was, or that the other lads found it harder and harder to keep up with me, although they did. It was that it had such powerful psychological effects.

Prison can be a savage thing to cope with, particularly if you are in long term. Banged up in my cell for hours on end, all sorts of things would pass through my mind. It’s for those reasons so many prisoners suffer mental illness or end up attempting suicide. I believed I was strong-minded and resistant to such possibilities, but still needed something to take me out of there, to raise me beyond the walls. Some prisoners used drugs for that. Others would take up reading or art. For me, exercise became that thing.

I grew so attuned to it and felt so alive when I ran and jumped and used my body. I could almost forget where I was. For that hour, out in the yard surrounded by anti-helicopter wire and concrete I could zone out, or maybe zone in. I could lose myself in the moment, in my aching lungs and pumping heart and just be. Nothing else mattered.

Sometimes in the association area I would use the rowing machine or exercise bike, but they didn’t particularly interest me. I rowed 500m for the first time in Belmarsh and found myself out of breath, but as the months dragged on and my fitness increased naturally, I would sometimes sit there for the full hour, just rowing or pedalling without even looking at how much distance I covered.

Soon I was adopting a rigid routine that involved two and a half hours of exercise a day. I would wake early, at around 5.30am and do a 90-minute cell circuit consisting of squats, burpees, sit-ups, step-ups and other bodyweight exercises. Then in the afternoon I would do my outdoor circuits in the exercise yard with the other boys. There was probably something compulsive in it. I was feeding a habit in the same way an addict does, but the effect on my state of mind was like voodoo.

Despite the upturn in my spirits and my new found interest, I still could not conceive of a life of normality, whatever that means. Having a job, travelling to work, paying bills, why would I? My frame of reference was what I grew up with and I had no plans at all outside of crime. I only thought to get out of Belmarsh as quickly as possible then move down through the security categories until they put me in an open prison, so I could scarper and return to the continent.

One afternoon, while Kevin’s trial was going on, I sat in association chatting to Roger.

‘I need to get of here, mate,’ I said. ‘I’m convicted now. I just want to go to a normal nick.’

‘I know,’ he agreed. ‘There are some places where they let long-term prisoners cook their own food and have more time out of their cells. I’m the same. I want to go somewhere like that.’

That night I found it hard to sleep. The routine and tedium of life in the HSU nagged at me. I lay there twisting and turning, eating myself up with resentment at the system that had no place for me other than a cell. I’d show them, the bastards. One day, I’d show them.

At 6am my door pinged open. I was already awake. Five or six screws stood there.

‘Morning John,’ the one at the front said.

‘What is this?’

‘You’re gone.’

‘What?’

‘Come on.’

I was dragged downstairs, strip-searched and cavity checked, then given a fresh green and yellow jumpsuit to wear.

‘I’m being ghosted out, aren’t I?’ I asked.

They said nothing.

‘Where am I going?’

They said nothing.

I was marched out, loaded into yet another lorry and strapped into another Hannibal Lecter box. The HSU screws handed me over to another bunch. Seven of them sat outside, eyeballing me.

‘I’m getting used to this gents!’ I told them, from inside my cage, feigning good spirits.

They said nothing.

Once the lorry started moving, these new screws began speaking among themselves. Boring chit-chat about pensions and what they were doing on their holidays. I looked from one to the other. They had the letters ‘WD’ on the lapels of their uniforms.

‘WD?’ I thought. ‘It’s Woodhill. I don’t believe this. They’re taking me back to Woodhill.’

I soon found out the reason for my sudden move. Probably in desperation, Kevin and his solicitor had adopted a defence tactic of blaming everything on me, saying I was the ringleader of the operation and he was following my directions. It was a poor strategy and didn’t achieve much, but the authorities believed there could be problems between myself and Kevin if we continued to be housed in the same facility. I had been transferred to avoid the possibility of physical violence between us.

I don’t believe we would have come to blows, but although I expected him to try something, I didn’t see the point in his ploy. It was unlikely to change much for Kevin, particularly bearing in mind all the video footage of his activities, but if the judge and jury gave it any credence at all it could still affect the length of my sentence. As a trial gambit, it was foolish and selfish.

Milner phoned me during my brief stay back in Woodhill and offered me the chance to go QE.

‘Currie is offering the Queen’s Evidence option again,’ he said. ‘In return for a substantial reduction in your sentence, it would mean a guarantee of not getting life and the possibility of being out in a year or two.’ He paused. ‘I have to ask, John.’

I laughed and so did he.

‘I tell you what you can do, Henry.’

‘Go on.’

‘I want you to do this word-for-word, okay?’

‘Of course.’

‘Ring Currie back and tell him to go fuck himself with a truncheon. I’ll sit in here and do life if I have to.’