That morning, for example. It had kicked off at breakfast. He hadn’t seen it coming. Out of nowhere, two men were wrestling across the table. Half a dozen others piled in and by the time it was over, there was blood on the table, a jagged white tooth fragment stark against the red.
And so today he wanted to use his broadcast to talk about fear again because fear underpinned every aspect of life in jail. Everyone was always afraid, even the kingpins and hard men. Maybe the kingpins and hard men most of all, because nobody had more to lose than them. He wanted to talk about that fear in a way that wouldn’t sound like a challenge or an insult to their manhood. Because helping them to cope with their anxiety was the first step towards changing their future.
‘There’s one thing we all have in common inside these walls,’ he said softly. ‘Whether we’re a prisoner or a prison officer. We’re all living in a permanent state of fear.’ He said it again, testing it for potential pitfalls.
‘Acknowledging our fear, even if it’s only to ourselves, isn’t cowardice. It’s the opposite of cowardice. It’s bravery. Deep down, I think what we fear most is that we’ve become stuck in a way of life that means we’re never going to escape the cycle of prison and its consequences. That it’s going to be like the Hotel California. You can check out, but you can never leave.’ That wasn’t bad. Maybe a bit too formal, too jargon-heavy in the middle. And he should probably take out the reference to prison officers. Neither side of the dividing line would want to be lumped together on this one.
Where to now? ‘Before I ended up here, I spent most of my working life trying to help people avoid their future being as much of a car crash as their past. The question outsiders asked me most often was how I could stand to spend my days being drawn into those messy lives, those messy heads. The answer’s simple. Sometimes I could help them to rewrite the script. To give themselves a different future.’ God, he sounded so bloody worthy. He was going to have to work on that. Make it more conversational, not like he was condescending to them. That would be a one-way ticket to a good kicking.
‘Maybe you’ve lost heart about what lies ahead of you. Maybe you’ve lost your wife, your lover, your kids, your home already. I do understand what loss feels like, how empty you feel inside. I won’t pretend there’s an easy way to make those feelings disappear. But there are things you can do to help yourself feel better. To imagine a future that doesn’t include coming back here.’ And then he’d segue into the meditation script he’d been refining since his first broadcast.
He’d been afraid his fellow inmates would probably think it was a stupid hippy-dippy thing to try. But he’d known there were prisoners here who were a long way from being hopeless cases. A few of them might give meditation a go in the privacy of their own cells once they were banged up for the night. If they could learn how to turn themselves into their own oasis of quiet and calm in the midst of the turmoil, it would be a step towards a different future.
What was the worst that could happen, he’d asked himself. He didn’t think he’d provoke anything more than a heavy dose of the verbals from some of the men whose self-image as hard men was more precarious than they’d ever admit. And he had to do something constructive with his time behind bars. It wasn’t enough just to play to his own self-interest by writing his book.
It had played out better than he’d hoped. Not many of the men gave him positive feedback, but the jeering and the put-downs had gradually diminished. The hardcore hard cases left him alone these days. And every now and again, someone on the wing would mutter something positive in passing.
For the sake of his own self-respect, he’d had to find a way to use his skills. Otherwise he’d have been no better than the worst of them. And that was a judgement he couldn’t face having to make.
20
One of the hardest things we have to do is learn to take responsibility for our own actions. Trying to sidestep actions that deep down we know are shameful is a powerful instinct.
From Reading Crimes by DR TONY HILL
Jezza Martinu didn’t look back to check that the woman cop was actually leaving. He thought that might look as if he had a guilty conscience. The cops and the forensic experts were totally occupied right now with excavating the remains and putting the jigsaw skeletons back together, but sooner or later, they were going to start asking different questions. Nobody would believe a bunch of nuns had dug those graves. Especially since most of them were knocking on a bit. Then the finger would point at him. And he’d better have his ducks in a row.
He unlocked the substantial shed at the bottom of his garden and stepped inside. He closed the door and leaned against it, breathing deeply until his heart stopped galloping like a runaway pony. He hung the hammer in its slot on the peg board that held his tools, checking first that it didn’t need cleaning. Jezza took pride in his tools, just as he did in the quality of his work. He tried not to think about the examples of his work that the police were busily excavating right now.
Until he’d caught the woman peering in through his living room window, the only cop he’d spoken to had been a young lad in uniform. He looked like
