V1: S’me. Can’t talk for long. Only got one f- card. Tell Davy I need a job doing, don’t I. [Indecipherable] S’important.
V2: A job? What sort of f- job.
V1: Never you f- mind. Just tell him I know someone who wants to buy a Roller.
V2: A f- Roller? What you on about?
V1: Listen, c-. Ask Davy to have a word with Chiller about it. And don’t ask no f- questions.
V2: Oh, right.
V1: I’ll ring you Tuesday.
V2: OK. S’long.
V1: S’long.
Tuesday’s conversation was even less fulsome:
V1: Billy?
V2: Yeah.
V1: You talk to Davy?
V2: Yeah.
V1: What’s he say?
V1: He says a decent f- Roller is hard to come by these days. Could be f- expensive. Cost your friend a packet.
V1: How expensive?
V2: Fifty big ones, plus expenses. Number f- plates, an’ all.
V1: [Indecipherable]
V2: You what?
V1: I said tell him I’ll f- think about it.
Two days later we had:
V1; That you, Billy?
V2: Yeah. Listen. Davy can do your friend the Roller, at the price agreed, including all expenses, if you can arrange accommodation. No f- problem. And he wants to know when he’d like to take delivery. He says sooner the f- better.
V1: Right. Right. Tell him we might have a f- deal.
Thomas came in with the teas, on a tray with china cups and a plate of biscuits. We both thanked him and Gwen poured the tea. I reached for a bourbon, saying: “Whoever transcribed this cares about your sensibilities.”
She beamed at me. “Sweet, isn’t he?”
“What’s Mann’s tarrif?” I asked.
“Thirty years,” she replied, easing an over-filled cup in my direction.
“So ordering a Rolls Royce would seem a little premature?”
“I’d say so.”
“And would you say that fifty thousand pounds was a reasonable price for killing a man?”
The cup was halfway to her lip. She paused and lowered it back to its saucer. “Mann killed his girlfriend because the baby was crying,” she told me.
I bit half off the biscuit and slowly chewed it. When my mouth was empty I asked: “What did he do with the baby?”
“The baby? Oh, the room was on fire, so he tried to save the baby. He threw her out of the window. Says he forgot they were on the seventh floor.”
“Jee-sus,” I sighed.
Chapter Eight
The prisons have a dilemma. It doesn’t take long for a hierarchy to form, with men like Mann and Chiller as the kingpins. They build up a coterie of acolytes and prey on the weaker inmates. Contrary to popular opinion, for most prisoners once is enough. All they want to do is put their heads down, serve their time and never come back. Faced with someone like Mann, they back down, accept the bottom bunk, hand over their phone cards and cigarettes. The men at the top never want for drugs, booze, cigarettes or sex. They still run their outside empires through a network of contacts, and anyone who steps out of line gets hurt. The occasional broken leg, slashed face or crushed hand is amazingly good for business
So the prison governors move them. They allow the hard men to become established and then transfer them to the other end of the country, with maximum inconvenience. It’s called ghosting. He eats his breakfast in Brixton, full of the joys of life, and at lunchtime finds himself hobbling out of the van in Armley, squinting up at the coils of razor wire above the walls, wondering who the top cat is. On any Monday morning prison vans, usually accompanied by the local police, are criss-crossing the country like worker bees seeking out new feeding grounds.
There is a down-side, of course. The constant exchange of prisoners creates an unofficial inter-jail communications network that cannot be improved upon. When the inmates of Hull decide to have a dirty protest, or to hurl tiles down from the roof, it’s no coincidence that the prisoners in Strangeways, Bentley and Parkhurst choose exactly the same time to do exactly the same thing. The great revolution of the late twentieth century has been in communications, and the prison population is leading the field.
Some of it is high-tech, some of it lower than you’d believe people could go. Phone cards, not snout, are the new currency, but the big porcelain phone in the corner is available to everyone with a strong stomach. The days of slopping out are over because most cells now have a toilet. The prisoners are not as overjoyed about this as you might expect. Once they had a room, now they have a shithole in the corner of the cell, behind an aluminium sink unit to give a modicum of privacy when you’re sitting there. What no one envisaged was the communications opportunities this created. What no one realised was the ingenuity of caged men.
All the toilets lead down to a common drain. Take a small receptacle — your cellmate’s drinking cup will do fine — and drain all the water out of the toilet u-bend. Pour it down the sink. You are now connected to the drain. If somebody else does the same thing elsewhere in the prison, even in another wing, you can now have a conversation without raising your voice above a whisper. There may be interruptions of a nature that BT users never experience, but you’ll never be left hanging on through three movements of the Four Seasons. To break the line, terminate the call, you simply flush the toilet.
I didn’t feel hungry. I’d had no lunch but the thought of having a long and meaningful conversation with your head down the pan, listening to all the extraneous noises, savouring the odours, is a wonderful appetite suppressant. Perhaps I could sell the concept to Weight Watchers and never have to work again. I won twenty-five thousand pounds in a quiz programme on television, then had a long hot soak in the bath. Freshly scrubbed, I managed a tin of chicken soup, with some decent bread, followed by a few custard creams. In deference to all the people who think I looked tired I went to bed early and, unusual for me, slept like a little dormouse.
“Where were you, yesterday?” Gilbert asked at the morning prayer meeting.
“Bentley prison,” I replied, sliding a chair across and placing my mug of tea on a beer mat on his desk. “I left word.” There were only the two of us, because Gareth Aidey had a court appointment and was polishing the buttons on his best tunic.
“So you really went to Bentley?”
“Of course I did. Where did you think I was — having a round of golf?”
“I don’t know what you get up to. I’m only the super. Regional Crime Squad were after you, said that Special Branch had tipped them off that you were on to something.”
“Christ, that was quick.”
“Nobody had a clue what it was all about. I felt a right wally.”
“Sorry, Gilbert, but I didn’t know myself until after five o’clock. I was at Bentley until nearly seven.”
