by Gary Mulgrew
Kyle and Lucy, two Scottish neighbours in my apartment block had introduced me to Sergei, a Ukrainian personal trainer who was to become a good friend of mine, and as much a philosopher as a fitness coach. He was in his late thirties and handsome – a cross between Daniel Craig and Arnold Schwarzenegger. I approached him to train me with a clear mandate to teach me to fight, which he took to with some enthusiasm. We trained almost every day, often double or triple sessions, and my weight quickly increased as we mixed weights with martial arts and boxing. At that stage I was waiting for a letter to arrive to tell me when and where to report to prison, which made going to the mailbox a daily nightmare, my hand trembling each time it reached inside, but which also gave my training an intensity and focus Sergei liked.
‘Shit, Mulgrew, you seem more angry than usual today. This eez good!’ he would exclaim in his heavily accented English, as he cuffed me around the ear and told me to keep my guard up. He would hit me quite often as our training progressed, ‘To get you used to the pain and numbness; so it doesn’t stop you from hitting back,’ he explained gleefully. So we focused on hitting and moving away; hitting and moving away; getting down on the ground, then quickly back to my feet for a quick one-two combination, then flat on the ground again. It was exhausting, but exhilarating and I felt that if I had to, if I really had to, I could at least hurt the person trying to hurt me.
Sergei also talked to me throughout the training, encouraging me and reminding me: ‘Everyone is scared. Remember that. Everyone is scared – always.’ That made me feel better, but I wondered if it was true.
The plane started its descent and I looked anxiously over at Reid as he gave me another compassionate smile. The realisation that I was getting closer, and that I would soon find out if any of my preparations had counted for anything, made my stomach lurch. I felt ashamed, an idiot, when I considered the final part of my preparation, the time I’d spent in the cupboard trying to control my fear of the dark; a coward, a boy entering a man’s world. I rubbed the sweat off the palms of my hands as the plane touched down and my breath shortened. I leaned forward in my chair with my eyes closed, wishing I was somewhere, anywhere, but here.
4
BIG SPRING, TEXAS
WITH NO LUGGAGE AT ALL FOR the second time in my life, we were swiftly out of the airport and into the hire car Reid had pre-booked. Midland/Odessa seemed as dreary as I had imagined, a small town ten hours’ drive from Houston and six from Dallas. Its claim to fame was that George Bush Jnr had lived there and by all accounts intended to return some time after his presidency was over. He was completely welcome to it. After a few minutes we were on the I-20 heading east towards Big Spring, around seventy miles away. If we had gone in the other direction, four hours west, we would hit Juárez on the Mexican border, just across the Rio Grande and by now the murder capital of the world. I thought of suggesting we head west to Reid, but my stock of jokes was wearing thin. We were getting closer.
We drove along the long, straight endless road in silence, my mood darkening. The landscape was bleak, desolate and unforgiving. Flat as far as the eye could see and hot, damned hot! ‘What the hell am I doing here?’ I thought as I surveyed what looked to me like the end of the Earth. I’d lived the dream; now I was living the nightmare, and it kept getting worse. Nothing but tumbleweed and abandoned jack-hammers. I felt I was being taken to a place time had forgotten, a place you take people simply to punish them.
‘I can’t believe you’re having to do this,’ Reid said eventually, disturbing the silence.
‘I can’t either,’ I murmured back, still looking out at the endless stretch of desert.
‘I keep beating myself up that I should have been able to get you out of this, that I should have been a better lawyer,’ Reid said, genuinely emotional as he spoke.
‘This was the best I was going to get. We were always going to get extradited no matter what, and we never would have won at trial. I’ve been fucked for a long time, all this was inevitable.’ I waved my hand lamely at the tumbleweed and emptiness as I tried to make him feel better, knowing that what I was saying was ludicrous – how could any of this ever be inevitable?
I looked out across the empty wasteland again; barren and desolate.
After a while the long road found a destination and the town of Big Spring shimmered into view. Population of 33,267 – not including the 1,500 inmates of the Federal prison or the 3,000 housed in the nearby immigration facility. The town’s website had boasted that the sun shone uninterrupted on Big Spring for over 320 days a year, and this was certainly one of them. It was named after the ‘big spring’ in Sulphur Draw, a historical watering place for coyotes, wolves, and herds of buffalo, antelope and mustangs, but all I could see was run-down housing and abandoned trucks. The spring had supposedly been a source of conflict between Comanche and Shawnee Indians with hundreds of skirmishes over the years, until the white settlers came along and turned it into the paradise it now was. Looking up into the sky, I wiped my brow and peered towards the sun. There wasn’t a cloud to be seen; always the saddest of sad sights for a Scotsman. It looked like it hadn’t rained in months. We drove through the stretched-out town in silence.
‘Jeez, even the prison has to be better than this,’ I said to Reid as we surveyed the abandoned trailers and boarded-up houses at the sides of the road. Reid stayed silent.
Halfway up the main street, we saw a Rib Shack and parked in there. It was still only eleven o’clock, three hours before I was due to report. I had no intention of turning up early, although the state of the town was giving me second thoughts. Reid ordered some food and I stepped outside to phone home to say some difficult goodbyes. As promised, I spoke to Calum and tried to sound upbeat. I told him the prison looked nice, like a library, and the people looked pretty friendly. I joked that I hoped they wouldn’t feel too intimidated when they saw me.
Actually Big Spring did look a bit like a library when I had searched for it on the Internet.
For two months I had been going to my mailbox every morning, waiting for the letter from the Bureau of Prisons to tell me when, and where, I had to report to prison. I tried to kid myself that it didn’t matter, that I didn’t care – a prison was a prison, after all – but the truth was my hand would shake every day as I felt for the dreaded letter. Sometimes my heart would be beating so violently as I approached the mailbox I was sure it must be visible to anyone walking past. I would struggle to breathe and it would take me twenty minutes or so to recover my composure once I’d found the mailbox empty.
In the end, as it happened, the news didn’t come via the postman. I was at Dan Cogdell’s house – David’s lawyer – with him and David, when David called his pre-trial officer to find out where and when we were going. He called out his prison first (a reasonable facility on the Californian coast) then shouted, ‘Big Spring for Mulgrew.’ Dan’s face went white – so white that I wished I’d waited for the letter after all. It didn’t help when he stopped opening the bottle of wine he was uncorking, walked over, put his arm around me and said, ‘Sorry Mulgrew. Unlucky. You lucked out.’ I didn’t ask why he was saying that; I didn’t want to know. David also confirmed that I was going in first, in ten days’ time, with Giles heading off a week later to somewhere on the East Coast and David another week thereafter. They couldn’t have placed the three of us any further apart.
By the time I got back to my apartment, fear was gripping me, and I plunged straight onto the Internet to find out what I could about the notorious Big Spring. Surprisingly, they had put quite a flattering photo of it on the Bureau of Prisons (BoP) website. Without the barbed wire and the fences, the main building looked somewhat like a library – just as I told Calum. I even got excited when I first explored the site, because on the drop-down list on the left-hand side of the BoP home screen, alongside items like Daily Routine, Visiting Rules and Facilities, it had a section headed ‘Conjugal Visits’. Despite my anxiety to find out about the prison, I ignored everything else
and double-clicked straight onto that page. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but all there was to read was spelt out in bold capital letters: THERE ARE NO CONJUGAL VISITS. Oh how I laughed. Some bastard in the Bureau of Prisons clearly had a sense of humour, which was reassuring since I was checking in that afternoon for an extended stay.
The call with Calum passed quite well, and I surprised myself at how easily I managed to stay calm and assured. I didn’t talk to him for long for fear I couldn’t keep it going. Next I called my mum and found her in ‘Politician Mode’. It was the stance she’d started to adopt ever since she’d been elected, a few years earlier, to the Scottish Parliament. She sounded strong and assured, only betraying her feelings briefly at the end as we said goodbye – I wondered how long for.
Then I phoned Julie, with whom I could be more honest. I reminded her that it might take two or three weeks to ‘clear’ my phone numbers with the prison authorities; maybe even longer in my case since all my phone numbers would be foreign. Even then I would only be able to speak for a few minutes each week, as the cost would eat into what little monies I was allowed or could earn in prison. Julie sounded very strong, as she always seemed to be, and promised me she would take care of Calum like he was her own. We finished the phone call quickly, both fearful of the strain and emotion of the conversation, and Julie ended by promising to tell me everything that happened back home in Britain – no matter how good or bad. We agreed not to say goodbye and I promised her for the thousandth time that I’d keep my head down and stay out of harm’s way, and that I loved her.
My last call was to Jim Moonier, a great American friend who had travelled from Hawaii to be there the day I first arrived in Houston and had introduced me to two friends of his, Bob and Teresa Rose, who had helped me settle so much into a challenging new life in Houston. Jim had then dedicated a lot of his time to trying to help me track down Cara Katrina. He told me he had finally made contact with a private investigator who had experience of dealing with Tunisia and that he seemed confident that if she was there they could locate her, and make an assessment of what kind of life she was leading. They would look at whether she was going to school, her living arrangements and the family circumstances. When I had first arrived in Houston I had spoken to Cara just one time, when Laura had briefly put her on the phone about a week after I arrived. ‘Love you daddy’ were the last words I had ever heard her say. I’d quickly said ‘Love you too Cara’ but Laura had taken the phone back and although I knew it was a small thing I often wondered if she’d heard my words. I prayed she had, that they were the last words she’d heard from her father.
For years later I clung to the simple fact that she’d sounded happy. After that, the mobile number Laura had given me rang out, but was never answered and after a few more weeks I began to panic. Since Laura hadn’t contacted Calum either, I was sure they had gone. My initial phone calls from Houston to the British Police had got me nowhere, with the police refusing to take seriously my concerns that Cara had disappeared. I could hardly blame them; by the time I had explained my circumstances and extradition their cynicism was understandable. I was, after all, a bad guy – no one really buys in to the concept of ‘innocent until proven guilty’, and anyway, a few weeks or months without contact didn’t necessarily mean abduction.
Time, however, is always of the essence in a disappearance case – the trail goes cold very quickly. Eventually, frustrated by numerous phone calls where the police continued to refuse to give me a case number unless I reported the disappearance in person at a police station in the UK (slightly awkward given my circumstances), my step-mother Audrey and my half-sister Anoushka marched into a station in Sussex and refused to leave until I was given one. Without a case number, I couldn’t begin the court process of seeking the phone records and bank account details that I hoped may provide some clue on where she might have been taken to. Their perseverance ensured we had some leads which in time pointed to Paris, then possibly Ohio in the US (it shares the same 216 telephone code as Tunisia and Laura, as a US citizen, had always liked the mid-West), then eventually to Tunisia, Abdul’s birthplace.
My heart lurched when Jim said the investigator thought he might even be able to get a photograph of Cara. A photograph? Of Cara? How would she look now? Frankly, the idea frightened me. It would be a visual confirmation of how much time had passed since I’d last seen her. I couldn’t imagine my daughter looking any different, although I knew she must. Still, it was very encouraging.
Buoyed by this conversation, I walked back into the Rib Shack where Reid was looking incongruous in his suit amongst the dozens of assorted truckers, bikers and red-necks. I ate my ribs with renewed relish, suddenly hungry.
‘Wow, did Bush call and give you a reprieve?’ Reid asked, surprised at my new-found energy.
‘Not funny,’ I said. ‘No, Jim Moonier thinks he’s found a private investigator that might lead us to Cara. He thinks he might be able to find out how she is. Maybe even get some pictures of her . . .’ The words were catching in my throat; the thought of seeing a picture of my little girl again making me feel very emotional.
‘He’s some friend. You’re lucky to have someone like him.’
‘Yes, yes, I am,’ I said, meaning it. And I realised that even on this darkest of days I could find some positives. All my calls had gone better than I expected, and then the good news Jim had given me about the investigator had boosted me further. But the thought of being that close to a breakthrough in finding Cara also added to my frustration. As if sensing the dip in my mood, Reid spoke.
‘Look. You have to concentrate on one thing now – getting yourself home safely and as quickly as possible. When you get there, they will give you a Case Manager, and it’s your right to see them within the first month you arrive. You need to put that in writing as soon as you can and hold them to the one month. There are probably only about three Case Managers in Big Spring for 1,500 inmates, so you might only get ten minutes with yours. At that first meeting you MUST put a transfer request in immediately to get a return to the UK. If you don’t request it in writing, they won’t process it. You will only get one ten-minute meeting with your Case Manager each year, so you can’t afford to waste time discussing anything else with them – no matter what else may be happening to you inside.’
Ten minutes, once a year. I focused on it, like it was a chink of light.
‘The papers covering your case and Cara’s abduction have all already been sent to the prison and they may even give you them today or tomorrow. It’s your legal right to receive them. They show the deal you did with the US Government to get you transferred home to England early, when you can properly search for Cara – but don’t assume that your Case Manager will have the slightest knowledge about it or care anything about the fact Cara Katrina is missing. You need to push them on that point.’ I smiled at Reid as he paused, grateful for all he was trying to do for me.
‘Time is against you, Gary,’ he continued, more solemnly than before. ‘It’s been two years already since you last saw her, and the longer it takes to get you home, the less likely it will be that you will find her again, or have any chance of getting her back into your life. That’s just the reality. Whatever you do in there, keep out of trouble and don’t get involved in other people’s disputes. With luck you could be transferred out of there in a year . . .’ He trailed off, not sounding too convinced it could be that quick. His little speech had helped me though, and I tried to focus on what the prize was – however far away. Even though I had the legal right to bring Cara back to the UK, I had to do what was right for her, and every day that she became more settled and comfortable in a foreign country increased the possibility that allowing her to remain there might be the best thing for her. It was always about her – about what was best for her. The problem was: how could I be sure she was happy there, that Tunisia was a better life option for her than England? Deep down I didn’t think it would be, but without knowing exactly where she was and w
hat her life was like, I could not be sure. These thoughts swirled through my head as we decided to make our way down to the prison and drive around the perimeter. Even though we were just killing time, I was, understandably, still reluctant to go in early.
The facility was huge, wrapped in a twenty-foot barbed wire fence that stretched for miles around its perimeter. It sat on a slight hill and had panoramic views of the dustbowl of Texas on three sides. It was just after 1 p.m. now, the sun was at its most brutal, and all the resolve I’d built up in the Rib Shack quickly melted away. I hardly saw any inmates, but those I did see milling around immediately intimidated me.
We drove around a little longer, saying very little, until it approached 2 p.m. – my check-in time. We didn’t speak as we approached an inauspicious-looking front door. It could have been a tax department or the place you went to pay your parking fines, apart from the sturdy crew of Correctional Officers milling about. I stood with Reid for a moment outside to say our goodbyes. It felt awkward, and I was anxious to get started; to get on with it and to get home to Cara and Calum. I hugged Reid again, gave him the $50 I had in my pocket, thanked him for the twentieth time and stopped him from saying sorry for the thousandth. I walked away and got ready to go in the main door. Reid was still standing there about ten feet away, just watching me.
‘Dude!’ (It sounded more like ‘doood’ in a Scottish accent.) I turned to face him. ‘You need to bugger off back to Washington and let me get on with this.’ I looked to the floor, unable to take the intensity of his gaze. Finally looking back up, I moved towards him then quickly hugged him one more time. ‘Go!’ I said, pointing towards his car and the highway to freedom. He went to speak, but said nothing, just gave me an apologetic tap on my arm, picked up his bag, and turned and walked away.
