Dad, who was well over seventy, knew all about Joyce Grenfell. He thought I was a magician. He’d been trying to learn to read for about ten years and he was now nearly through Book 1 after only a few weeks with me. It’s funny really. I don’t know what I did but whatever it was had unblocked something that was stopping him learning to read and the Arthur thing, I was sure, had helped.
As we walked along the landing, Officer Moorby was waiting.
‘Jake, you’ve a medical this afternoon. Go for a shower now,’ he said.
I didn’t like Moorby, or Manson come to that, but I’d be hard-pressed to explain why. On the face of it they were like any other prison officers but my sixth sense said these men were slippery. When they told you something it was as if they were doing you a personal favour for which you should be grateful and their utterances were full of innuendo. When they gave you information it often lacked clarity or a vital piece of information so you were pushed into a position of seeking clarification.
‘Senior Officer James didn’t tell me.’
Harry had slipped into our cell while I was talking to Moorby.
‘She’s off today so I’m telling you.’
‘What time?’
‘In half an hour.’ He still gave no time and no answer to my question.
‘Okay, I’ll be at the blue room in ten minutes.’
That was another odd thing about this place; the bath and shower rooms were called the blue rooms.
When I walked into the cell Harry said, ‘Sit. Listen good now. Go into the shower room, B-Wing doorway and straight down the first leg. Turn the fifth or sixth shower on, on the right side. Go to the end of the row and along the back row to the fifth shower. Get stripped, turn the shower on and leave your gear there. Go back to the first shower that you put on. Here’s a chiv and a shank.’ He handed me a cutthroat razor; the blade was taped open. The shank was a five-inch ice pick. ‘When they come at you do your best. When you’re successful go to the shower on the back row. Have a shower. Make sure there’s no blood on you. Leave the showers, get dressed and come down the far side past the baths to the A-Wing side door so you don’t pass the damage you’ve done.’
I loved the ‘when’ and not ‘if’; he left the unsuccessful unsaid.
‘What about the blades?’
‘Yes, the upper window at the end of the first line of showers is always open. Drop the blades out of there. Wash them first, no blood, no prints; The Brothers will pick them up. Oh, and turn the first shower off before you leave it. No prints, though.’
26
I wandered along to the blue room. Moorby and Manson were leaning on the landing rail outside. Clearly only I was going into the showers. I could feel the expectation in the wing or perhaps it was just my raised level of adrenaline. The blue room served two wings, A and B, and all the levels. The A-Wing door was on the left and the B-Wing door on the right. Mr Wharton and Tug Wilson were in A-Wing, so they would probably come in through the left door. I followed the instructions Harry had given me and wondered how he knew what to do. But mine was not to wonder why; mine was but to do and hopefully not die.
I was in the first shower row, the fifth shower cubicle along, and I heard someone approaching. Suddenly Mr Wharton was standing in front of me, naked and erect. He was still wearing his hat.
‘How about that one, soldier?’ His hands were above his head and his hips were thrust forward.
I swung the razor upwards, right to left, across his body, cut deeply into his pride and joy, and blood spurted everywhere. His scream died as I slashed sideways again from right to left, aiming for his throat. More by luck than anything else, the blade sliced into his neck and forward into his windpipe. I had to pull it free. An artery must have been cut or perhaps a major vein as the blood pumped and poured out. My stomach tied into a knot; I was horrified at what I had done and was fighting to breathe and at the same time, my thinking was clear, ice cold. I stepped across the body into the opposite cubical and heard the sound of running feet above the whoosh of the two running showers opposite. Tug appeared. He was naked apart from the plastic faceguard they had fitted because of the facial damage I had inflicted, looking like the phantom of the shower room. He was facing the first running shower, looking down at his master. I picked my spot and stabbed him with the ice pick between the shoulder blades. I held him on the spike as I reached around his body and used the razor to cut his throat. His knees folded, he tipped forward and the long, slim pick in my hand pulled free from his back. He was dead before he hit the ground.
I froze, looking at my hands and the weapons in them. For the first attack I’d had the razor in my right hand and the pick in my left. At some point I’d changed hands so the razor was in my left and the pick in my right and that aided my attack, but I didn’t recollect doing that.
The two naked bodies were at my feet face down. Wilson was draped around Wharton and slightly over him. Wilson’s right arm was around Wharton’s chest and his chest against his back like two lovers dreaming. I shuddered at the gross image and the realisation of what I’d done. I was trembling and my breathing was shallow and rapid. I’d killed before, more than once, but this was different, very different. I wanted to be sick, gagging. But I daren’t as this might identify me through DNA. I swallowed with that revolting acid taste left in my mouth.
I washed the blades and stepped into the still-running second shower. Blood flowed into the first one, the spots of blood on me washed off and I gargled and spat. I turned off the second shower and used my wet flannel to clean the shower valve. The first shower was still running, washing the blood down the drain. I cleaned the shower valve and I wonder why Harry wanted me to do this shower routine. Then I was confused, did he actually tell me to do that? I walked to the end of the row, wiped the blades with my flannel and rolled them in a rag that was on the window ledge. Luck was with me and I dropped them through the window. There was a hose dribbling at the end of the line of the second row of showers. I turned it on full and washed the passageway between the showers so that if I’d dripped any blood from me it would be washed away.
I went to my still-running shower, along the back of the blue room, washed myself down quickly just in case any blood was still on me, dried myself, dressed and walked out of the showers, past the baths to the A-Wing door. The two prison officers were opposite. Their surprised reaction could be seen. Moorby put his hand onto Manson’s hand and they didn’t move. What could they do? I caught their eyes and did a little nodding tweak of my head in a greeting. I could see the confusion in their faces and in their stance, and I wandered nonchalantly back to my cell. I could hear a very quiet buzz just above a deathly silence. The atmosphere was electric. Expectation hung in the air. I was so relaxed I could have sung or danced but I held myself in, quiet and controlled; no rush, just the usual wander. How strange: from shuddering horror to happy relaxation in a few minutes.
Harry was waiting and when I got back to our cell, he hugged me and said, ‘Thank God for that, Captain. Are they dead? Of course they are; now you better go to your medical. You’ve an appointment.’ He was proud of me. How strange. I could hear it in his voice. He hadn’t doubted me for a minute. This is what sergeants expect – no, want – from their officers, to be listened to and then for the officer to do the job excellently as their leader.
I walked along the landings, down the stairs, through the passageways to the medical centre. It seemed to me that everybody knew something had happened; it was in the very air that we breathed; it was in the creaks and bangs and scrapes of the very fabric of the building and voices of the prisoners. The ‘what’ wasn’t known but the fact that something had happened or was about to happen was there – an intangible knowledge.
27
Medical departments are all the same. They have specially designed, uncomfortable chairs and they leave you sitting for a minimum of ten minutes after your appointment time just to get you frustrated and raise your blood pressure. They also have the s
ort of pictures that nobody wants to look at on the walls. I’m sure that it’s all part of a cunning ploy by the NHS to create an environment of non-expectation so that the non-thinking section of the general public are pleased with the poor service they actually get. No, that’s far too clever for the NHS; it’s just 1948 socialistic bureaucracy carried on to the present day.
I was shown into a treatment room and I was trying to explain to the sister that there was nothing wrong with me when the hoo-ha broke out. An alarm sounded followed by a Tannoy message for all prisoners to return to their cells. The phones in the medical centre were ringing and a message came over for medical staff to go to the A and B bathroom. The sister shot off and I wandered back to my cell. As I did, prison officers were shouting at me to get a move on.
There followed a lock down, the second one in two weeks and for the same reason – murder. This time a double murder. I was feeling differently about this one. It was self-defence. No longer was I elated; I just had a sense of relief mixed with a sense of horror of what had happened and what could have happened to me. My hands were now trembling, my mouth was dry and I felt sick. I realised that for the first time in my life I felt fear and it was after the event. I’d had apprehension before when in action. I’d concerns that my men could be injured but it was never me. I’d always assumed I would be okay. No, that’s wrong; I’d never thought about me and I’d always been okay, well, more or less. Yes, I’d been injured and wounded but never what I considered seriously. I wonder why that was. I’d seen men terrified and thought I understood but I didn’t because I’d never experienced what they were experiencing. Now I understood fear: a black illogical dread that you couldn’t prevent. Something so awful it had no name happening to you and yet this was after what could have happened was past. I realised if I’d felt like this in the showers I couldn’t have done what I did. Thank God for Harry’s little mind game. For the first time I understood the suffering some people had through fear and made a resolution to never let fear incapacitate me.
We sat and waited. I was reading a John Grisham novel, The Summons, and Harry was sticking some bits of cardboard and wood together for some kid’s party somewhere. The door opened and we were hurried out of our cell. The search team went in and took the cell apart. Everything – the cupboards, the drawers, even the misnamed sponge bag (who the hell has a sponge in prison?) – was scattered on the floor. For what purpose? Perhaps just to relieve their stress and anger. Needless to say, they found nothing in our cell. After all, we’d been trained so that if we had anything we shouldn’t have had, they wouldn’t find it. They then locked us in and just left us to clear up the mess. Harry wasn’t a happy bunny. The bastards had smashed the toy castle he was making. What petty mindedness. He started again.
28
I’d been dreaming that I was drowning, drowning in blood, the blood of Mr Wharton and Tug Wilson. They’d been pulling me into their blood. A big stinking pool of blood; I could feel its cold clammy stickiness and its contraction as it congealed on my skin and turned from red to chocolate brown, and the iron metallic taste in my mouth and the smell – that smell. I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared; no, I’d never been so scared. I was soaked in sweat and had difficulty breathing. I just lay still and controlled my breathing. I ached. I tried to lift my head but my neck was like rock. My eyes were open but I could only see the dim outline of things in the glimmer of light from the blue safety lamp over the cell door. It was so dark it must have been the middle of the night. I could feel my hands trembling and my heart pounding. I lay on my bunk looking upwards at the grey area above me as the darkness was hiding the ceiling from me. I could feel the sensation in my right hand of the cutthroat razor slicing into Mr Wharton’s throat and see the blood flowing across the bathroom floor reflected in the greyness above me in curling streaks, like a modern abstract painting. I could see his face reflected in this bizarre picture, surprise, shock, horror, floating in the cold darkness. I could see his grey, dying body in the light of the blue safety lamp. I could feel his coldness in the chill of this cell – cold, very cold in death – and the greyness of the dead body that had pumped out its blood from the severed arteries and veins in his throat and penis. I could hear him choking and whispering in the scraping and rattling that pervades the bareness of the prison, in the cries of other prisoners, but most of all in the soft rasping of Harry breathing in the bunk below me, whispering with a voice that I’d cut from Mr Wharton. I pulled my skinny blanket up to my throat in an attempt to shield myself from that, that from which I couldn’t hide. No warmth, no hiding place from what I’d done.
‘Are you okay, Captain?’
‘Not really, Harry.’
‘Bad dream?’
‘Yes, a bad dream.’
‘The killings?’
‘Yes, Harry.’
‘But you’ve killed before, Captain.’
‘Yes and I’ve had nightmares before but not quite like this one.’
‘What was it?’ It was a simple open question.
‘Blood, Harry. I’ve never stabbed anyone before.’
‘Messy stuff blood: shooting at a distance or breaking someone’s neck is kind of clean but blood is messy stuff.’ I could hear the understanding in his voice. An understanding that none of the counsellors had had when I’d spoken to them in the past about killing people. Odd isn’t it: organisations send people to counselling with people who have never actually been engaged in the real situation. They may have attended the lectures or read the good books but they’ve never actually killed anybody or been stabbed or shot or lost a leg or a child. How would they know what it feels like, the horror, the fear, and the self-loathing? Yet, I’d done it, I’d been a counsellor and not really known what the poor bastard I was supposed to help was going through and because of the enormity and the personal nature of the problems, they couldn’t really tell me, but Harry had been there, done it and suffered from the results.
‘You had nightmares, Harry?’
‘Oh yes and nights when I couldn’t get to sleep, but not now, not anymore. You’ll be okay, Captain. Those bastards deserved to die.’
The strange thing was that his words relaxed me. Harry knew; he’d been there. He was something special. My shakes stopped, the stiff neck evaporated and I felt tired. I was going to be all right with Harry guarding my back. I even started to giggle. I could see the two bodies like lovers and could imagine the images on the police photos.
‘What is it, Captain?’
‘Oh, it’s nothing, Harry. I’m okay now. Thanks.’
Then I must have just fallen asleep. Well, I knew that I had as I had a dream.
It was raining, I could hear the rain and we were in my car. The rain bounced off the roof with that drumming noise and the rain splashed off the windscreen and we were looking through the streaky windscreen across green fields and there were cows. We were talking and I knew it was Sam with me and I felt wonderful but I couldn’t see her.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked.
‘To the village.’ She was pleased.
‘Can we go to the restaurant?’
‘Yes,’ I said but the car wouldn’t start and she got out and she walked away and I couldn’t get out because the door was locked. And I was shouting for her, it got dark and I could hear her calling me.
Then we were home and she was in the bath and calling me and I said I was coming and Harry woke me up.
‘You okay, Jake?’ he asked. ‘Why?’
‘You were shouting.’
‘Sorry.’
He got back in his bunk.
29
It was dawn. The sun was coming up and shining through the window of our cell. It was our cell now, it had always been our cell, Harry’s and mine; we were a team, an unbeatable team. I was lying on my back with my hands behind my head looking at the ceiling, grey-white cracked plaster, and thinking, reviewing what might lay before me that day and working out how I was going to slide from under the aval
anche of corruption that was about to fall on me. I worked out step by step what I would do if I was investigating this killing; what would I want to know and what would I want to find? The whys, the whens, the hows, the whos and wheres. Some were obvious but the obvious for me, as an investigator, would beg other questions. Now, how could I screw the investigators?
‘Okay, what is it?’ Harry asked.
‘I was just wondering.’
‘And what were you just bloody wondering?’ said the voice from the bunk below me.
‘How’d you know I was lying here wondering?’
‘I can tell from your breathing when you’re awake and you only ever sleep on your side so you’re lying on your back stock still, so you’re bloody thinking and when you start thinking, somebody, probably me, is in the crap.’
‘Harry, you’ve people who have access to the prison officers’ offices, locker rooms, etc.?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘So they might know where particular prison officers’ lockers, desks and things are?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘And they’ve the razor and ice pick?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘So they could put them somewhere that wouldn’t be in view but if a search was made they might be found?’
Staying Alive Page 15
