by Lee, Jane
‘Yous lot are taking the piss,’ I said.
One of the heavy mob took out a rule book and quoted from it. ‘Category-A prisoners are to bathe once every ten days and three inches of water is to be used.’
I wasn’t amused. This wasn’t a bath, it was a puddle and I refused to get in. Then one of the screws said they knew I wouldn’t get in it and at last they turned the taps on and filled up the bath properly. They thought they were doing me a favour but I told them their jobs had gone to their heads. I said I thought that they must have been bullied at school and that they were very sad.
The very next morning the heavy mob was back to take me back to Basildon University hospital for a check-up and to have my stitches removed. Eight of them took me to the minibus and then what looked like half of the British police force and army combined escorted me to the hospital. Roads had been shut off. Armed police units flanked the minibus and the hospital was crawling with officers. I was chained to one of the red-and-blacks and around ten armed police surrounded us.
All these normal people were walking through the hospital and I couldn’t stop laughing. ‘I’m innocent, I’m innocent!’ I shouted but they wouldn’t even look at me as they must have thought I was a terrorist or a mad woman. The security made me look like public enemy No. 1. I knew I was not what I had been made out to be. I never tried to kill anyone. So I just kept my head held high as we walked to the doctor’s room.
I had about 350 stitches removed and all the time they wouldn’t take the cuffs or chains off me. But I didn’t care. I’d had a bit of a laugh at the hospital. I’d had the army come out because of me and I amused the doctors and nurses with a bit of banter. I wasn’t pleased that they wouldn’t take the cuffs of but rules are rules, I suppose. All was well with my wounds, which was a big relief and lucky given the way I went without a bath in my unhygienic cell for over a week.
I learned that I had further charges to face. I had taken the blame for having the ammonia bottle, knuckle duster and joint in my van so that Matt wouldn’t get done for them. Now that little incident reared its ugly head and, having been arrested for it in Kent, I was taken to Ashford magistrates court. I’d already said I was guilty but I still had to appear in court. Inevitably, out came the armed police escort and they even locked the court doors. I swear the three magistrates looked at me with pure terror in their eyes. Only God knew what the police had told them about me. But I was in cuffs and they had no need to worry. When my solicitor spoke, it quickly turned out that this relatively minor case was being dropped because the attempted-murder charge was so severe.
I just thought to myself that God had got a full-time job looking after me and I thanked him with all my heart and soul as I left the court that day. Of course, I was still worried about the attempted-murder charge but this was a result and a step in the right direction.
God smiled on me again because there was more good news after I’d been in Cat A for about two months. Gary Jacobs was convinced by then I hadn’t fired a shot and was determined to build a good case in my defence. I grew to like Gary because I told him from my heart that I had not tried to kill anyone and he believed me and, on that basis of trust, he fought my corner.
He arrived as usual one day with a big smile on his face. ‘It’s great news, Jane,’ he said before he had even sat down in the visiting room. ‘The Home Office forensics report into the shooting shows your gun was not fired. It proves you did not try to kill anyone and that the police claims are wrong. There is no way you can now face attempted-murder charges against two officers. I’m delighted to tell you, Jane, that this means the police evidence against you on these major charges has crumbled.’
I was virtually speechless but managed to say, ‘Thank you so much. I told you I was innocent.’
‘Well, we still have a way to go on the other charges but it’s a major step forward,’ he said.
Poor Gary passed away in 2002 but I’d like to thank him and his partner Sunhil for their faith and hard work. They knew I was a villain but they believed in my innocence and had too much respect for the law just to take the easy path. They were good and honest men.
The night after that meeting with Gary I went back to my cell, believing my luck was finally changing for the better. I read the bible again and I found it a real comfort. Not as big a comfort as the fact of that police case against me crumbling though. That was Gary’s word – ‘crumbling’ – and it kept going through my head as I read on. There were a lot of the names in the bible I couldn’t pronounce properly but I liked and understood the stories.
The Governor turned up later on his nightly visit with more good news. ‘You are no longer a Cat A prisoner, Lee,’ he said. ‘As from tomorrow your Cat A status will be removed and you will be relocated in the prison.’
This was brilliant news and there was a very good reason I was no longer Cat A. The forensics had proved my guns hadn’t been fired at all on the night of the job, just as Gary had said, so I could no longer be treated as a dangerous woman. Things were now moving fast and in my favour. My excitement at being moved to a new cell after two months in Cat A soon turned to disappointment. The only difference in standard was that there was a small, square tin mirror on the wall, a table and chair made of wood instead of cardboard and I had a real bed with a real mattress instead of a concrete shelf. I don’t know what I expected but it was a bit more than that.
But things were going my way, I told myself. I’d got off on the squirter, knuckle duster and joint charges and now I wasn’t going to face an attempted-murder charge. OK, things were not great but they had got a lot, lot better. And now the cops knew they were wrong to have shot at me, which was definitely in my favour, so I was looking on the bright side for the first time in ages. Gary told me to hang in there because I was still facing armed-robbery charges.
The Governor told me I was still top security so for the first few days in my new cell I wasn’t allowed out. I was still what was known inside as ‘behind the door’ but I was now allowed regular baths and all the things that my family had sent me, including a hairdryer, clothes and pictures of my family. It was a lot better than Cat A because other inmates could come and talk to me through the door. I started to feel a lot better. Then other inmates told me about a bully on the wing who had been stealing. I made a mental note not to let that happen to me. I hadn’t met this woman and I didn’t like her already. She had been robbing ‘canteen’ from other prisoners. Canteen was really important in making life a little more bearable. On remand you could spend up to £100 a week on tobacco, chocolate, biscuits, tea bags, sugar, phone cards, make-up and toothpaste. Once convicted you could only spend about £25, which made life less pleasant. This was the general idea, I supposed. The way it worked was you got sent postal orders from the outside world and converted them to prison money. Matt was sending me money in every week without fail.
Almost a month after I had been taken off Cat A I was allowed out of my cell. This was the first time I had been allowed out without the heavy mob and the first time the prison didn’t have to go on lockdown when I was out. So what did I do? I walked into the dining hall and shouted, ‘Who’s the fucking bullying cow I don’t stop hearing about nicking off people and picking on them?’
The whole dining hall went quiet. Even the screws just stood there until, lo and behold, the mouthy cow jumped up and, before she could say a word, I was on top of her. I grabbed her and started punching her. I was beating the living daylights out of her and I swear the screws gave me a few seconds – which was all I needed – before they hit the alarm bell. They knew she was a wrong ’un and needed sorting and they let me do it for them.
In came the heavy mob with riot shields, helmets and batons and I was dragged back to my cell. You might imagine this did not go down too well with the Governor just a few days after my Cat A status had been revoked. I was taken before him the same day.
‘Are you out of your mind?’ he asked, genuinely confused but angry at the same
time. ‘You have been off Cat A for nearly a month and this was the first time you were allowed out of your cell and you went and beat the living daylights out of another inmate, who is now in the hospital wing. What have you got to say for yourself?’
‘It wasn’t me, Governor,’ I said.
He wasn’t happy with that answer. ‘Don’t take the piss out of me, Lee,’ he growled. ‘Fifteen of my officers had to drag you off the girl. Now, what do you have to say for yourself?’
‘Honest, sir, it wasn’t me,’ I repeated.
He gave up. ‘Well, it’s you who is going to have to spend one week in the block and then three weeks behind your cell door with all you privileges stopped,’ he said. ‘That’s three weeks’ loss of canteen privileges and thirty days on top of your eventual sentence. So tell me what you have to say for yourself, Lee.’
‘Thank you, Guv,’ I said.
‘Get her out of my sight,’ he snarled at the screws.
So I was in the block, which was solitary imprisonment. It was like Cat A all over again but I was OK because it was essentially all I knew of life in prison and I just kept reading the bible. When my dad next visited, he wasn’t pleased. I told him not to worry and that I was OK. During the visit all the other inmates were coming up to me and telling me, ‘Well done,’ for getting the bully. They were introducing themselves and I swear that by the end of the visit my dad knew more of the inmates than I did. They all told him he had nothing to worry about and that I could look out for myself. Anyway, they said that they would look out for me as well after what I had done to the bully.
‘I don’t know, my girl,’ Dad said before he left. ‘What are we going to do with you? You’re a one off, all right.’ But he left with a smile on his face and that was all I was worried about.
I only did a week in the block before I was returned to my cell. Everyone was coming up to my door thanking me and praising me for doing the bully. It was a hero’s reception, all right. I was still behind the door for three weeks with loss of canteen privileges but my new friends made sure I didn’t go without. I ate like a queen, as the girls who worked in the kitchen gave me fruit and cakes. At one point I had five pillows and five blankets in my cell and you were only meant to have one of each. They brought me phone cards and tobacco, which I wasn’t allowed because of the loss of my privileges. They all rallied around me and got me by. When they were allowed out of their cells, they took turns to come to my door and chat to me so I wasn’t alone all the time. I couldn’t believe how nice these people were to me. I don’t know what I expected but I was so touched by the kindness they were showing.
The girl who burned herself with cigarettes also made it into the general population – or normal location, as they call it. They put her in with an 18-year-old who was only in for playing her stereo too loud at night. What a joke that sentence was. I mean, take the stereo away but don’t put the poor girl inside for something like that. One night I could hear the poor stereo kid screaming because the nutter who burned herself had gone mental. Well, she already was mental but you know what I mean. She attacked the other girl and I swear the poor girl was screaming for her life but I couldn’t do anything to help. Nobody could. I started screaming for the screws to help her, kicked my door and caused a right racket. Everyone started banging their doors and screaming for help. When the screws did arrive, they could see what was going on through the slit in the door but they weren’t able to do anything because they were not allowed in the cell after dark. Only the heavy mob could go in and they needed the permission of the Governor. I could see them all looking at what was going on. They told the nutter to leave her cellmate alone but she didn’t.
‘Fucking do something!’ I screamed through my door. ‘Get the kid out of there and put her in with me.’
‘We cant do that because you are too dangerous,’ said one of the screws.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. All the time the nutter was punching the kid and threatening her. ‘I’ll read her a bedtime story and rock the poor kid to sleep but, for God’s sake, get her out of there. She’ll kill her,’ I pleaded. ‘What that mad cow does to her will be on your heads.’
Eventually, the heavy mob got permission to get her out and put her in another cell for the night. But that kid tried to commit suicide three times after that night. And all she ever did was play her music too loud. She wasn’t a villain and it just showed what prison can do to people. Word got around that the neighbour outside who had first complained about her music was a magistrate so we all knew why she got time for so-called antisocial behaviour. I don’t know how these people can sleep at night.
I was fuming about the whole incident. As soon as I was allowed out of my cell after the three weeks were up, I got the nutter. I smashed her all over the place. I really wanted to kill her but the heavy mob dragged me off and I was back down the block and in front of the Governor again. ‘I have just been informed by my security staff that you were acting in self-defence,’ he said, to my astonishment.
I was going say it wasn’t me, just like the last time, but instead I said, ‘Yes, sir. It was self-defence.’ So I didn’t get punished for that one and I must say the heavy mob earned my respect that day. Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t tell them anything and they were not my friends when I was inside but they got my respect. When I was taken back to my cell, they said, ‘Well done,’ because they wanted to do the nutter too. I had done their job for them. It was funny how things worked out sometimes behind bars.
I had now been inside for three months and I’d heard no more about the charges against me. I was allowed out of my cell again to associate with the other inmates. I met a girl off my manor in Rainham. She was called Den and remembered the big yellow van I used for doing the beer run. She said she was there when I attacked the two Irish blokes – the two who were going to kidnap John – with my sword. We both had a laugh about that. It turned out that we were in neighbouring cells so one of us would hang a mirror out of the cell window and we could see each other while we chatted. We became best mates inside.
Den and I were eventually moved to a dormitory with a girl from Liverpool, a gypsy girl, an Indian girl and a Greek girl. Den was in for supplying Class A drugs, the scouser for fraud, the Indian girl for the murder of her lover, the Greek for importing cocaine and the gypsy girl for credit-card fraud. We were all on remand awaiting trial and we all had a great laugh together. All of us planned to plead not guilty and one night the Scouse girl suggested we try a Ouija board.
‘I don’t know about that,’ I said. ‘I’m fucking scared of anything like that.’ But I agreed because I really did want to know what the future held.
So that night, when the lights went out, we played the board. I said to the Indian girl, ‘Did you do the murder?’ She said, ‘No.’ I asked the board and it said she did.
‘You fucking liar,’ I said. I couldn’t stop laughing.
‘Jane,’ she said, ‘I’ve got a couple of problems over his death.’
‘Well, tell us what they are and we’ll try to help you if we can,’ I said.
‘The police found his blood in the boot of my car.’
‘Fucking hell, girl. That’s a serious problem,’ I said. ‘What’s the other one? We’ll come back to that one, as that’s a bit tricky.’
‘They found his body buried in my back garden,’ she said.
She was so right and proper it was hilarious. She looked like butter wouldn’t melt but, to be fair, she looked bang to rights here and the board agreed.
‘Fucking problems!’ I said. ‘They are more than fucking problems, girl. I can’t help you. You need God’s help. He’s the only one who can help you now.’
I felt for this girl and I came to totally respect her. She was trapped in an arranged marriage and hated her husband because she still loved her childhood sweetheart. But the husband got jealous and killed him and then got her involved in hiding the body. How sad was that for her? The husband was also in jail for the
murder but I thought the Indian girl was innocent. He was the real guilty party.
Anyway, we asked the board what the verdict would be at her trial and it said she would be found not guilty so she was over the moon. And believe me when I tell you that this board was for real. It was. I know it sounds soppy. But read and learn.
The board told Den she would get a five stretch and the Greek that she would get eleven years. Now, the Greek girl was innocent, as God is my witness, having been set up by a so-called friend who secretly put liquidised cocaine in bottles of rum she brought into the country. The board said I would get bail on 11 May 1998 and also said I wouldn’t come back to prison. The scouser would get 18 months and the gypsy girl would be released the very next day.
‘How?’ asked the gypsy and the board said she would get bail. ‘I can’t’ she said. ‘I haven’t even gone for bail.’
Well, some of us got to hear what we wanted and some didn’t but we all believed it was real, that night in prison. The ones who got bad news from it put it down to a bad spirit.
‘And bad spirits lie,’ said the gypsy girl.
The next day the gypsy wanted to do the board again because it said she would get out that very day. So we did it again she asked the board if she would get bail and again it said, ‘Yes.’ She asked when and it said at 2.45pm that same day. It was already 3.30pm so our confidence in the board was shaken, to say the least. But the gypsy totally believed the board and started ringing the bell for the screws to come. When they arrived, she said she wanted to talk to her solicitor on the phone straight away. The screws let her ring him and – you are not going to believe this – I swear, as God is my witness, her solicitor told her she shouldn’t be in there. She had been granted bail at 2.45pm that day. So she told the screws and they checked the fax machine in the office and, sure enough, a fax had just arrived from the court informing the prison that she had been granted bail.
Well, this board game became our best mate. I asked it once if it minded us doing it and it said, ‘No,’ but when I asked if it was bad to do it, it said, ‘Yes,’ and we never did it again. But I’d just like to say that everything it said about our sentences came true. Den got five years, the Indian girl was found not guilty, the Greek girl, who was innocent, got eleven years and I got bail on 11 May 1998.
