'A local male let himself into the property shortly after your arrest,' the copper told me. 'We suspect that he's your accomplice. Both of you are being charged with terrorism. If we find any blood on the gun, the charges could be upped to murder so I hope for your sake that we don't.'
His words sent an icy chill down the base of my spine. Murder? They thought I might have killed somebody? I just prayed that the truth would come out now that they had taken the real owner of the weapons in for questioning. Otherwise it looked as if I had narrowly escaped imprisonment in Spain only to be jailed for another crime I hadn't committed back in the UK. Unlucky really wasn't the word. It seemed as if a black cloud followed me wherever I went.
I was kept in custody for the entire weekend and spent the whole time feeling on the verge of a major panic attack. The police had told me that I was looking at eight years if I was found guilty of terrorism or even longer if it came out that the gun had actually been used. I wondered how they would take to an English girl in a Northern Irish prison. Eight years is a long time to be banged up in a place where a good number of the inmates hate you solely based upon your nationality. If the jails were half as divided and territorial as Northern Irish society was in general, then I was in for a right time of it.
On Sunday morning, Billy turned up at the station to drop off a suit for me to wear in court. The police allowed him into the cell so that we could have a chat, which helped to calm me down a bit. He told me that he had been taken in for questioning as well because he was a regular visitor at my house but that he had eventually been released without charge. It was nice to see a familiar face but the fact that he had been set free and I still had to go to court didn't bode too well. It meant the police obviously thought that I was more likely to be a terrorist than him. As he left the cell, I wondered when I would next get to see him and more importantly, whether or not it would be in a prison visiting room.
'When am I due in court then?' I asked the cop who came to lock the door.
'I'll come and get you tomorrow morning,' he told me. 'Make sure you're ready when I come to the cell.'
This meant I had another twenty-four hours left to contemplate my fate. I still wasn't sure if I was going to get bail and didn't fancy being remanded. The prisons where they sent terrorists awaiting sentence were guaranteed to be hardcore. Salto del Negro was bad enough and that was on a peaceful little island in the sun so I didn't even want to think what life behind bars would be like in a country known for violence and extremism. It would no doubt be a place where the strong prospered and the weak became victims.
After a night of bad dreams that were actually less scary than reality, I woke up with a stomach full of butterflies and a head full of uncertainty. The copper came to my cell shortly after I had got up to tell me it was time to go, so I flung on my suit and followed him out of the door. I was taken to the court in the passenger seat of a minibus. The driver told me that the lad that I had given my spare key to was being held in a compartment in the back and warned me not to talk to him.
'If I hear a single whisper from either of you, you're going to be in even more trouble than you're already in,' he threatened us. 'Anything you want to say to each other can be said in your trial.'
As with my court appearances in Spain, I wasn't required to state my case straightaway. The only reason that I had been summoned was to enter my plea and to see if I was eligible for bail. After a short drive, the copper ushered us out of the vehicle and into the Crown Court building. We were made to sit in front of a judge and asked if we pleaded guilty or not guilty to the charge of terrorism.
'Not guilty, Your Honour,' I told him.
'Guilty,' said my co-accused.
I breathed a sigh of relief. The fact that he had confessed would surely get me off the hook. The judge told him that he was to be remanded without bail and then turned to address me.
'Teresa Daniels, I am setting your bail at two thousand pounds. Do you have the money with you now?'
'No, Your Honour,' I sheepishly replied.
Surely he was going to allow me to remain free until my mum could get there with the cash.
'In that case you are to remain in custody until you're able to pay. You are to be taken to Maghaberry Prison pending the receipt of your bail money.'
So they were still sending me straight to jail even though I hadn't been remanded? This was just my luck. I was going to be eaten alive the minute I arrived.
The same policeman who had escorted me into the court building walked me to the minibus and put me in the front again. The only slight silver lining was the fact that I knew I wouldn't be locked up for too long. No matter how horrific life in Maghaberry was, I was sure that I could stick it out until my bail arrived.
The prison was only a short drive from the court. It was very old-fashioned and looked as if it was a dungeon rather than a jail. As we passed through the huge, imposing metal gates that separated the free world from the world of terrorists and criminals, I swallowed hard and prepared myself for the worst.
The minibus came to a halt within the prison grounds and a hard-faced warder ordered me outside. He marched me through the doors of the reception building and took me to the front desk, where I was searched for drugs and weapons. The screws also did rigorous checks to see if I had anything with sectarian or political imagery on it. Items that contained paramilitary symbols or Rangers or Celtic logos were strictly forbidden. Once the staff were satisfied that I didn't have an IRA necklace on or an 'I love the UDA' bracelet hidden away somewhere, I was told to follow a big bruiser of a guard through a doorway into the bowels of the prison.
It was only when I reached the wing where I was to be housed that I appreciated just how dangerous the other inmates in Maghaberry were. There were only six cells in the unit with a single prisoner in each. This was because the prison held the worst of the worst and the residents were considered too much of a risk for there to be any more than this in each section of the jail.
To say that Maghaberry has had a colourful history would be a major understatement. It has housed the likes of UDA leader Johnny 'Mad Dog' Adair, UVF commander Billy 'King Rat' Wright and Real IRA bomber Marian Price, along with many equally notorious non-sectarian prisoners. It is Northern Ireland's highest-security jail, reserved for the maddest, baddest and craziest inmates going. Why on earth they ranked me alongside these people I will never know.
The wing was only a fraction of the size of the unit that I was kept on in Salto. It was literally just a small seating area, a servery and some cells. I got the impression that the inmates didn't spend a lot of time out of their rooms, which was all right by me because the less I had to mingle with the bombers, murderers and lunatics that I was forced to share the unit with, the safer I would be.
As I scanned the names above the cell doors to try and get an indication of what type of people I was in with, I noticed that they were all Catholic. It doesn't take long to learn which surnames are Catholic and which are Protestant when you live in Northern Ireland. If you value your kneecaps, you soon learn how to identify the people that would eagerly remove them if they got the chance.
Was I the only Protestant on the wing? Surely not. The guards wouldn't put a lone English girl in with five Catholic nutters, would they? Well, they might put an English girl with a Catholic surname in with them. My dad was an Irish Catholic and they probably decided which unit people were sent to based upon their names. This was just my bloody luck. I was locked up on a unit with a load of Northern Irish separatists who hated anything remotely British. It was looking increasingly unlikely that I was going to get out in one piece.
The guard who was escorting me unlocked one of the cells and motioned me inside. At least I would be safe whilst I was locked up in my digs. I shuffled through the entrance and heard the key turn in the lock behind me. If I was going to survive until Mum arrived with the cash then I would have to play upon the fact that I was half Irish. The offence that I had been charged with
would no doubt get me killed if the other prisoners got onto it. Even the name of the street the bomb was found on would mark me out as a Protestant. Life in HMP Maghaberry was going to be like walking through a minefield.
After spending what seemed like an eternity with only my thoughts for company, the door finally clunked open and a guard poked his head through the gap.
'Come on, let's have you,' he told me. 'You've got half an hour's association.'
'Association' is the time in which prisoners are allowed out of their cells to socialise with one another. I would have rather remained banged up but didn't have that choice available to me so I held my breath and stepped out into the lion's den. As the other inmates hurried over to check out the new arrival, I prayed to God that I would be able to convince them that I was a Catholic because otherwise I would be beaten to a bloody pulp.
My fellow prisoners were an eclectic bunch. Some of them looked like drug users but others seemed as if butter wouldn't melt in their mouths. They were all female because although Maghaberry was a mixed prison, the men and women were never allowed to socialise with one another.
'Hey, how are you finding it in here?' asked the most typically Irish-looking girl that I have ever seen, with dark brown hair and a thick, Northern Irish accent.
'Yeah it's OK,' I mumbled, hoping that she wouldn't pick up on my accent and kick off straightaway.
'Whereabouts are you from then?' she asked, eyeing me suspiciously.
'I was born in England but I'm half Irish,' I told her, getting my mitigation in before she had a chance to throw a punch. Now it was just a matter of crossing my fingers.
'Well, so long as you're not a Protestant 'cause they reckon I was trying to blow them up. The coppers caught me with a bomb in my shed. They said that it was even bigger than the Omagh bomb, so they did.'
God almighty. She looked as innocent as they come. If I had met her on the street I wouldn't have thought she had a violent bone in her body, but here she was talking about an act of terrorism as if it was the most normal thing on earth.
'No my dad insisted on bringing me up Catholic,' I lied. 'I hate the Protestants just as much as you do.'
The next girl that I spoke to was even crazier than the bomb girl. She was the only inmate who wasn't in for terrorism, which would have made her less of a threat if she wasn't a complete nut-job. When I asked her what she had done to end up in Maghaberry, she laughed and told me that she had cut off her boyfriend's head. I thought that she was taking the mickey at first but then she started telling me how she did it and I realised she was being deadly serious.
'He was knocking me about so I taught him a lesson,' the sadistic loonie grinned at me. 'He got what was coming to him.'
Decapitating somebody is not something that any sane person could ever find amusing no matter what their motivation was for doing it. She came across as if she had gained some kind of perverse satisfaction from talking about her crime, so I marked her down as another inmate to avoid and edged away to talk to the other girls, who were all in for minor terrorist offences. Most of them had kept things for their boyfriends and ended up getting caught with them.
As soon as I had got all my introductions out of the way, I headed over to the phone to give my mum a call. I felt awful ringing up to spring another disaster on her but knew that there was no other way of getting out. She was absolutely dumbstruck when I told her the story of how I had ended up in prison and promised to get to Northern Ireland with my bail as soon as possible. Hearing the stress and fear in her voice made me feel terrible. All my poor old mother ever got from me was heartache and worry.
I was glad when association was finally over and I could return to my cell. The call to Mum had stressed me out no end and the other prisoners oozed menace from every pore of their bodies. Even the girls who were in for the least serious offences looked liable to snap at any given moment. Some of them seemed OK until you talked to them and got a measure of what their personalities were like. The hatred behind their eyes burnt like the fires of hell, especially when they talked about the Protestants. I was lucky nobody had a problem with me being half English. If they were willing to blow up people that they had never met just because of their religion then what would they be likely to do to somebody who had willingly deceived them? The head-chopper girl would probably wear my liver as a hat if she ever got onto the fact that I had lied to her about my faith.
Luckily I was only in Maghaberry for a total of four days so none of the other prisoners had time to grill me too heavily about my crime. Whenever anybody asked what I was in for, I babbled on about various different made-up offences. My stories weren't in the least bit believable but I still somehow managed to convince my fellow inmates that I was fiercely pro-Catholic. I kept up the pretence until a guard came to my cell to tell me that it was time for my court appearance and then breathed a heavy sigh of relief and thanked my lucky stars that I would soon be home.
The prisoners in Maghaberry were considered far too dangerous to attend court sessions in person so I was forced to watch my bail hearing on a TV screen. One of the screws escorted me to a phone booth with a flat-screen telly in it that displayed an image of Mum sat in front of a judge.
'Do you have Teresa's bail money with you?' the judge asked my nervous-looking mother.
'Yes I do,' Mum told her.
'OK I'm granting your daughter bail on condition that she stays out of Northern Ireland until the day of her trial.'
I didn't know how to feel about this. I was made up that I was heading home but gutted that I would have to leave Billy behind. Our relationship was just beginning to get serious and would be difficult to carry on from across the Irish Sea.
'You are now free to leave the court,' the judge proclaimed.
Everybody got up off of their seats and walked out so I opened the door of the booth and signalled to a nearby guard that I was ready to be returned to the wing.
Looking back, I think the judge probably ordered me to keep out of the country for my own protection. The UDA would no doubt have been fuming that the lad that I had given my key to ended up in prison. I had been sent back to England to ensure that their foot soldiers didn't blame me for it and come after me, but the expulsion still upset me and put a downer on my release. By the time Mum had arrived to pick me up, I was in the mood to end all moods. I was going to have to start my life from scratch again and wasn't pleased about it.
A guard walked me over to the entrance to the prison and opened the gates for me. I had survived being on remand but there was still a chance that I would be sent back to Maghaberry if I got found guilty. In the meantime I was an outcast, forced to leave my house and all my friends behind for a second time. Mum greeted me outside the prison with open arms and a smile but I was unable to reciprocate.
'I'm so glad that you're OK,' she told me. 'I was worried sick about you.'
'Let's just get out of here,' I sulkily replied.
I should have been gushing with gratitude but only thought about myself. When I look back at it now, I feel ashamed of how I acted. Mum had travelled overseas to bail me out and I was going on like a stroppy little madam.
'Don't worry,' Mum reassured me, assuming I was upset because I still had a court case pending. 'I'll get you a lawyer and we'll sort all this out. I'm sure the court will realise that you had nothing to do with bombs or terrorism or anything like that.'
'But Mum, they're making me go back to England,' I complained. 'My life is in Northern Ireland now. Whenever I get settled anywhere, I have to go back home.'
Mum was rightfully annoyed by this.
'You selfish cow,' she scolded me. 'Is that all that you can think about? You could wind up dead if you stay there. They found a bomb, you know? This isn't a game, Terry.'
My mum was clearly in the right. She deserved a medal for getting me out of so many sticky situations, not an earful of bad attitude. I should have spent the journey back home thanking her but I was too stressed and depressed to
express anything other than moodiness and frustration.
Arriving back in Wingrave made me feel even worse because the village brought back memories of Dad's death. It was also strange being at home again because Dad had told his best friend Mickey to look after our family once he had passed away and Mickey was now getting very close to Mum. She liked him a lot and he was kind and supportive so I had no problem with it, but it was still a lot to take in.
One of the first things that I did when I got home was ring Billy and tell him what had happened. He was a hard little lad and didn't show too much emotion but I could still tell he was gutted.
'I'll be able to come and see you again once this is all over,' I assured him, although we both knew deep down that we were finished as a couple. Over the next few weeks, we spoke to each other less and less until the relationship gradually fizzled out. It was a shame because I really liked him but it's impossible to carry on going out with somebody when they're living in a country that you're banned from visiting. He didn't fancy abandoning his life in Northern Ireland to move to England, so there was nothing that we could do.
Passport To Hell: How I Survived Sadistic Prison Guards and Hardened Criminals in Spain's Toughest Prisons Page 13
