Amber White had only started working as a prison officer a few weeks previously and already she was finding out that the job was proving to be much more challenging than anything she’d covered in the role-plays and written exercises she’d done during training.
She was sitting in the meeting room in the administration block with the rest of the other prison officers waiting for the Governor to arrive and begin their daily morning briefing.
‘How long is it going to be before one of us gets murdered?’ Terry was saying. ‘That’s what I want to know.’
Terry Brinkle was one of the longer-serving prison officers and he also functioned as the staff union rep. A big man with an acne-scarred face and lidded eyes, he gave the impression that he was perpetually half-asleep, but Amber had soon realised he was an unusually alert and calculating individual.
As staff union rep he always seemed to have something to gripe about in the morning briefings, but in this particular case his concerns appeared to be justified. The other prison officers seemed to think so too, as there was a general murmur of accord in the room.
‘Yeah I don’t want to get stabbed up,’ she heard someone say.
‘They did more than just stab her up!’ someone else said.
‘We don’t get paid even remotely enough to face those kinds of risks.’
The murder in the laundry had happened not long after Amber had started and it had proved to be a particularly unpleasant introduction to life in the prison.
She swallowed nervously and adjusted her large thick-rimmed spectacles. She located a few loose strands of blonde hair which had escaped her tight bun and tucked them behind her ear.
‘Try not to let it scare you,’ whispered Maggie in her ear, attempting to reassure her. ‘This kind of thing is quite unusual and hopefully it’s just a one-off. Although, I have to say, it is a nasty one. No doubt about that.’
Maggie Cooper had been working in the prison system longer than Amber had been alive. Her face was etched with a multitude of deep worry lines around her mouth and eyes, and Amber had a horrible feeling that if she stayed in this job long enough she’d end up with a face like Maggie’s. But what Maggie lacked in the looks department she more than made up for with an abundance of seasoned experience and wisdom.
Amber had heard about how gory the killing had been. About all the blood everywhere. And apparently it had entailed some kind of horrible mutilation, the exact nature of which hadn’t been made clear yet. She’d done a control and restraint course as part of her prison officer entry level training at the Prison Service College near Rugby, but she was beginning to have doubts that it would be sufficient to cope with this level of violence.
‘So who do you think did it then?’ she asked apprehensively.
Maggie shrugged. ‘Could be gang-related. Could be personal. It’s hard to tell at this stage. I just know that in all my years here I’ve never seen anything like it.’
Terry had now moved onto one of his favourite topics – government cost-cutting. ‘As I keep saying again and again, this prison is horribly overcrowded, yet government cost-cutting means that we’re desperately understaffed, which means we’re expected to work excessive hours, yet when anything goes wrong we’re the ones who have to carry the can. No doubt we’ll end up getting the blame for this murder.’ He made each point with the blade of one meaty hand chopping into the palm of the other.
Amber hadn’t quite worked out if Terry griped because he was a union rep, or if he’d become a union rep in order to legitimise his need to gripe. He exerted a certain amount of influence over the other prison officers and relished any opportunity to whip up discontent whenever he could. But underneath his reactionary facade she suspected that he was basically a malingerer.
It still surprised her just how fractious the prison staff were, let alone the inmates. She was still on her probationary period as a New Entry Prison Officer and wanted to make a good impression by looking smart and professional, and she was determined not to succumb to the kind of cynicism which enveloped some of the more seasoned members of staff like Terry.
‘Don’t let Terry get you down,’ said Maggie. ‘There’s obviously a lot of truth in what he says, but this job is largely what you make it.’
‘I guess I should take a leaf out of Dylan’s book,’ murmured Amber, glancing over at Dylan Prince, who was sitting there with his foot up on his knee, whistling softly to himself, projecting an unconcerned easy-going demeanour. He noticed her looking at him, flicked back his sandy-coloured hair and shot her a wink. She smiled and looked away.
One of the other things that had surprised Amber, as a newcomer, was the relatively high proportion of male staff here, more than she would have expected in a women’s prison. Probably just under half of the staff were men. And that included the Governor.
As soon as he entered the room, the conversation subsided into a resentful silence and Dylan’s whistling petered out.
The Governor was a large man in his mid-fifties who, unlike them, was dressed in a suit rather than a uniform. He stood there in front of them and fiddled with his cuffs, confronted with a tone of sullen obedience; he might be their superior, but he wasn’t one of them and never would be.
He cleared his throat, his jowls shaking slightly, and spoke in his well-modulated Home Counties accent, looking at them uneasily, not wanting to meet their eyes. ‘Today you are going to carry out a full prison cell search in relation to the recent… uh… murder.’
A murmur of dissatisfaction rippled through the room. A full prison cell search would take a whole day to complete. It would mean no end of aggro from the inmates. All their contraband would be found.
A full prison search was usually not announced in advance. This was so that the inmates didn’t have time to hide or get rid of anything incriminating. It also ensured that any guards with loose tongues wouldn’t let on about it, for in her short time here Amber had quickly come to realise that gossip formed an intrinsic part of life in the prison, both for the staff and for the inmates.
Normally, the Deputy Governor would have handled the logistics of a prison search, but she’d recently gone on maternity leave and apparently they’d had problems finding an interim replacement. In the meantime, the Governor himself was dealing with everything.
‘This is a full lockdown,’ he added. ‘Only essential services will continue – the kitchen and the like. Any inmates involved in those activities will need a full cell search beforehand. You’ll be looking for anything suspicious, anything out of the ordinary. It’s imperative that you keep an eye out for any weapons. The murder weapon has still to be recovered. All areas of wing accommodation will also need to be searched.’ That meant TV rooms and bathrooms in addition to cells.
‘This should have been done last week,’ whispered Maggie. ‘Probably too late to find anything by now. They’re closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.’
Amber could see Terry puffing up, ready to say something.
‘A murder weapon,’ he began. ‘By all accounts, this murder was particularly savage. Surely it is indicative of the rising levels of violence in the prison, no doubt exacerbated by overcrowding and spending cuts. Can I remind you that protection of staff should be paramount here? We need proper protection where use of force is necessary. Basic control and restraint procedures are just not adequate. As I’ve said many times before, what we need are side-handle batons.’
The Governor had adopted that pained look which he always took with Terry, who constantly seemed to find something to have a go at him about.
‘Look, we’ve covered this before,’ said the Governor. ‘It’s not going to happen. You’ll just have to make do.’
‘Just like we always have to make do?’ Terry shook his head in disgust. ‘The police have them.’
‘You’re not the police.’
‘Exactly. Our job is so much tougher than theirs is, yet we get treated so much worse. Every minute of our working day consists of dealing with violent, suicidal, mentally ill and substance-addicted criminals. All they have to do is arrest them. In terms of contact time, we have to interact with these people on a much more frequent basis.’
‘While I understand these objections,’ said the Governor, ‘I don’t want them to be getting in the way of the current police investigation. I want you to give the police your fullest co-operation.’
Since the murder, police detectives had been in the prison conducting an investigation, but as far as Amber had heard, they hadn’t made much headway into solving the case.
‘Bloody coppers,’ muttered someone behind her. ‘Coming in here. Walking around like they own the place, like they deserve some kind of respect. Well, we’re the ones who deserve respect. More than them.’
There was another disgruntled murmur of assent among the assembled prison officers.
‘That’s enough whinging,’ snapped the Governor. ‘The sooner you help them clear it up, the quicker they’ll be out of your hair. And the sooner they’re out of here, the better because it’s not the kind of thing that looks good in the newspapers.’
Amber knew how much the Governor cared what people thought of him. She’d been in his office one time when she’d first started and remembered seeing a big framed photograph on the wall depicting him standing next to the current Home Secretary with a proud grin on his face.
‘One more thing,’ said the Governor. ‘I should also remind you that with this murder the inmate was mutilated… scalped. The scalp was missing from the crime scene and still hasn’t been found. This is also something you need to look for when you carry out the cell search.’
There was a chorus of groans and whistles of disgust.
‘Scalped?’ whispered Amber. ‘Why on earth would someone do something like that?’
Maggie shuddered. ‘Beats me.’
‘Let me get this straight,’ said Terry. ‘We’re looking for a human body part?’
‘That’s correct,’ replied the Governor uneasily.
‘It’s not part of our job remit to be looking for human body parts,’ huffed Terry. ‘There are hygiene issues for one thing. We haven’t received adequate training to deal with this kind of situation. We’ll see what the union has to say about this.’
‘Just get on with it!’ snarled the Governor and turned and marched out of the room.