Everything went quiet. Then a glass fell to the ground; a warder coughed; the governor carried on shaking. And I let him feel the point of the blade.
I had to carry on, as he had upped the ante. I was in an impossible situation. I couldn’t let him go. The screws were all pent up, and I knew if I let him go they would have ripped me to pieces like a pack of wild dogs. They had all the reasons they needed by saying the governor had been taken hostage by a violent prisoner who had had to be restrained.
We were all aware at the time that there were deaths in prisons through the practice of restraint using body belts. These are belts that go around the body with fitted handcuffs: no way out of those. And they are still in use today.
I pushed my forehead into his face, as if preparing for a head-butt. ‘You tell me why the screws have been kicking the shit out of my lads. Do that and I might let you go.’
Still, no one moved. The screws stood hunched in a circle, ready to pounce if I dropped my guard.
‘YOU BASTARD,’ I yelled in the governor’s ear. I knew I had to make a decision. ‘He’s coming with me,’ I announced to the assembled friends and enemies, sounding as menacing as possible. ‘No one makes the slightest movement. Is that understood?’
They understood, and my brain raced to work out the next move. I was in deep, deep trouble and I sensed that things were going to get a lot, lot worse. I took the deepest breath I’d ever taken and marched along the landing with the governor of Albany Category A prison. He must have believed that his life was hanging by a thread.
I took the governor as far as my cell, turned him around, kicked him up the arse and threw him out. I closed the door and wedged it shut because the screws were ready to come in mob-handed. They left me in there for three days – their way of punishing me, I suppose. They were good enough to slide some rations into the cell so at least I didn’t starve.
When the cell door finally opened – electronically, of course – after those painfully long days and nights, I saw a line of screws stretching all the way down to the prison van.
My punishment: long spells of solitary confinement. No one spoke to me, and my food was delivered to the cell door. They isolated me from everyone else.
After that, I was labelled ‘the most subversive man in Britain’ and ‘the most dangerous person in the country’. Also, on my files, it said: ‘He takes hostages.’ Yes, I had very little going for me in the mid-1980s.
At that time Albany was a top-security jail, housing around 300 inmates. Albany was originally built as a Category C training prison in the early 1960s. The jail took over the site of a former military barracks.
Albany and Parkhurst, a short distance apart, were known as dispersal prisons. This meant that the country’s most serious offenders would not all be housed together. They were kept at a small number of jails and could be ghosted to another dispersal prison at short notice. I was regularly moved between Albany and Parkhurst.
The staffing at Albany was around fifty when you included the governor and his people, admin, catering and warders. The idea was to reform and rehabilitate, so there were woodwork classes and all that. But it was a brutal system and I didn’t see much rehabilitating going on.
Some men carried out maintenance work or had jobs in the kitchen. Others worked in the hospital wing, and a few guys kept the gardens tidy. I was kept away from the other prisoners and didn’t get involved in the woodwork classes or odd jobs.
We were paid around £3 a week, as basic, which was used as credit at the prison shop. Prisoners who carried out work received a bit extra. The shop sold newspapers, sweets, orange juice, biscuits, tinned milk and all that. The milk tin lids came in handy as sharp, razor-type weapons to cut people with.
Nearby Parkhurst was a grim-looking place. It was built as a military hospital in 1805 and became known as Britain’s Alcatraz. Boys awaiting deportation to Australia were held there.
Prisoners built a wing of the prison in 1847, and it was still in use during my time there. The inmates had dug the clay and baked the bricks themselves.
Many children who had stolen food to survive were kept at Parkhurst, in leg irons. Around 1863 this forbidding place became a female prison. After six years of feminine occupation, Parkhurst was converted to a male prison and that was how it stayed.
The next stop after Albany and Parkhurst was Broadmoor, if you had mental problems, as happened with Ronnie Kray. Violent but sane, I avoided that fate.
Despite being locked up, prisoners who had businesses on the outside were safe in the knowledge that their interests were still being looked after: their families stepped in to keep things ticking over, ready for their release date.
My distinctive business style was well known to other prisoners. On the outside, when someone wanted to do a deal with me, I put £1 and a bullet on a table. ‘If you want to do business with me, there are two ways,’ I used to say. ‘If you carry out a straight deal, you will make lots of money,’ I would say, pointing to the £1 coin. ‘If you fuck with me you’ll get that,’ I would add with a snarl, pointing to the bullet.
On the inside I conducted business meetings, too … only then I made sure that I was tooled up with a blade in case things got out of hand.
The entire prison system, from top to bottom, knew that I could fix everything, from a smuggled steak to more sinister activities. It was best that people knew not to fuck with me. In a maximum-security prison, I learned brutality and the art of survival.
During one spell in Parkhurst, I got to hear that the Krays wanted to form a sort of gangster union. They were talking to the Mafia and getting ideas. Reggie said they were getting older now and they could be the Mustache Petes. The younger guys would be the Godfathers. Reggie believed that all the serious firms could form an Italian Mafia-style operation in England.
‘Mustache Pete’ was the name given to members of the Sicilian Mafia who went to America in the early 1900s, and the Krays liked the idea of being the ‘old guard’.
Reggie was in Parkhurst with me and Charlie Richardson, while Ronnie Kray lurked menacingly in Broadmoor.
My first meeting with Charlie Richardson took me by surprise. Gary Wilson, Charlie’s main man, came to see me and said, ‘Charlie wants to speak to you.’
When Charlie Richardson wanted to speak to you, that is what you did.
As I went into his cell, I saw that he was immaculate. His shirt was ironed and his moustache was neatly trimmed. He also had many, many books in his cell, and he had huge piles of newspaper cuttings on his table.
‘I’ve heard a lot about you,’ Charlie said as I walked in. He looked me up and down with his questioning blue eyes. ‘You’re running the money lending in here.’
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘I’m a fixer, really.’
I was maintaining a relaxed front, but inside I knew that I was chatting to the real deal; I was looking at criminal history.
‘Have a cup of tea. Sit down with me.’
I sat down at the large table inside Charlie’s cell and waited to hear what he had to say.
‘You’re too smart to be a thug,’ he told me. ‘You don’t want to be a man with a gun. I’d like to see you again. Come and see me regularly. Come in every two o’ clock and have a cup of tea and a bit of lunch.’
During those meetings, Charlie talked about straight business, which surprised me. He described how a lot of money could be made by staying on the right side of the law. I was all ears during those chats and learned a lot.
Charlie wasn’t into making enemies. He preferred the ‘Old English’ way, where everyone had their own manors and they could all do business. He tried to keep people on his side, to see what they could offer him. If he was talking to another firm, he would check out their business to see if he could have a piece of it. Charlie always looked for the deal. The Krays hated what he was doing because they didn’t have the brains for that. They had plenty of brawn, but that was about it.
In Parkhurst there was a pri
soner, known to be an assassin, who came up to me. He said Ronnie Kray had sent a note down, from Broadmoor, instructing Reggie to sort out Charlie Richardson. Ronnie wanted Charlie whacked. I thought the messenger was having a laugh, because Ronnie Kray was totally off his head.
The letter read something like: ‘I want you to fucking do Charlie.’ The word got out that those who were loyal to Reggie were tooling up and those who were loyal to Charlie were tooling up, too. I realised that this could end up as a bloodbath.
By then I was running many of the businesses in the prison – everything from trading in gold rings to issuing personal loans. Because of all my deals, I had become heavily involved with Reggie and Charlie. I didn’t want to lose either friendship. And I didn’t want to lose my life, at barely thirty years old.
I went into Charlie’s cell: our meetings had become part of my daily routine. He was having a puff, reading his newspaper and sipping a cup of tea. I told him that people were becoming paranoid. He asked me what I was talking about. I asked him if he had set someone up to whack Reggie – I suggested that Ronnie’s letter could have been a pre-emptive strike.
Charlie hadn’t made any moves at all; he said Ronnie was off his head and not to worry about it. I received Charlie’s usual instruction: ‘Fucking sort it out. Good boy, good boy.’
I went in to see Reggie. I told him that it could end up as a bloodbath. A lot of people were loyal to Charlie and, when it came down to it, I could not see Reggie winning.
‘I’m not scared of Charlie,’ Reggie told me.
‘And he’s not scared of you,’ I assured him.
‘Yes, I know that,’ Reggie confirmed.
‘So how about we have a compromise?’ I suggested. ‘The way I’m looking at it, we could have firms cutting each other to pieces. We want to earn our little livings and get home to our families.
‘It’s all right for you. You’ve plenty of bird to do, but a lot of people are looking forward to going home and they can’t be “true to two”. They’re going to have to take sides and you won’t want to take responsibility for that. Many people will back you, but a lot will back Charlie, and you could end up dead here.’
If Charlie was whacked, people would get longer sentences and Reggie’s reputation would go out of the window. The same would apply to Charlie, so there’d be no winners at all.
I said it was best if we sorted things out because we all had things as we wanted them inside. We had steaks coming in, along with whisky and dope. It was all sweet. Enough of the screws knew what was going on for the system to work and were quite happy with me being the prison fixer. They realised that my organisational skills, finely honed in the manor, had been transferred into the prison system. They just stayed away from me.
I went back to Charlie and he came up with a compromise. He said he would meet Reggie downstairs in a little room in the gym. The doors could be blocked off, and it would be sorted out there and then.
I reported back to Reggie with the offer about how the two of them could straighten things out. Reggie knew that he was trapped in a corner. Not only that, he had all his own rackets sewn up, too. Plus, he enjoyed his steaks, and he even had stars of the day, such as Barbara Windsor, visiting him. Ronnie was behind all the problems.
Reggie didn’t take up the offer of a straightener, so I suggested that they should sort it out when they were released. He just said: ‘Yeah.’ I reported back to Charlie and his response was: ‘Any time.’
When it all died down, the prisoner who had tipped me off looked over at me, keen to know the outcome.
I put up a thumb. He came over, gave me a little bottle of Irish whiskey and said, ‘Thank you.’
Prison is a dangerous, dangerous place. It’s even more hazardous when you come to the end of your sentence. People like to put you in a difficult position and they get a bit lippy. So you have the choice of taking them out and getting another big sentence, or just walking away and earning money on the outside. The top guys had the strength to bite their lip, walk away and leave revenge for another day.
I had to put up with the prison politics and a lot of bickering. The ‘p’ in ‘prison’ stands for paranoia. This is an environment where there is jealousy all over the place, especially if you are one of the main men. It’s like a little-girls’ school in that respect. And some of the people in there are pathetic. You have fifty-year-old men strutting around in boxer shots and trainers, trying to look nineteen. There they are, doing a ten-year stretch and trying to look like teenagers and copy the young guys. I’ve never understood why they do that.
Some of the screws had a screw loose, too. I remember a screw who was a chronic alcoholic. He used to give the boys a bit of tobacco, or anything, for a quiet life. He tried to be official but he was the worst screw in the world.
One Christmas Eve, he came into a cell where we were having a drink. We had all the booze out, with a collection of smuggled and homemade brews in buckets. I needed a break from my bitter lemons.
The screw said, ‘Is that booze in there?’
Well, it was obvious that we had an assortment of booze in the buckets and all that, so he said, ‘What does it taste like?’
The next thing we knew, he was sitting down on the bed having the booze with us. We made our own booze at all the prisons. We used to get the yeast and the potato peelings out of the kitchens to make hooch. Plus, we had bent screws in there who brought in bottles of whisky and all that sort of thing.
After a while, he remembered that the chief officer was due on the wing that night and, when we heard the heavy boots clattering along the corridor, we hid him under the bed. We concealed everything, pretended we were having a festive chat, and they didn’t trouble us. He was still drunk in the morning, and the other screws only just managed to smuggle him home.
Well, the same screw was on duty one night when one of the guys had a headache after having a bit of puff. Some of the screws had gone to a local pub and they were well pissed by dinner time. This screw was supposed to call the medical officer and not give any medication, but he was so pissed that he couldn’t be bothered. The screw went to his office and found a couple of tablets. He gave them to the guy, who drank some water and threw them down his neck.
‘Help, help!’ the prisoner said after a few minutes. ‘I’m dying. I’m dying!’
This was serious. The bloke was screaming and trying to knock his door down. His medication had given him more than a headache.
Screws appeared from everywhere and rushed the guy off to hospital. It turned out that he’d been given water-purification tablets for the swimming pool and they had almost burned his gut away. The prisoner sued the authorities and the screw was pensioned off.
Who said prison was a cushy number?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE YORKSHIRE RIPPER AND FRIENDS
I WAS SEEN as such a dangerous prisoner that I was sent from Albany to Lincoln, Leicester, Bedford, Wormwood Scrubs, Wandsworth, Parkhurst, Maidstone, back to Parkhurst, Maidstone again, Birmingham … you name the prison, and I was probably sent there.
A dangerous man such as me, in the Category A bracket, with all my subversive tendencies, couldn’t be allowed to grow roots in the one place.
You do feel unloved when even a jail doesn’t want your company.
At the time, maybe, they had a point. When I had patrolled my manor in North London, though, I hardly expected to be rubbing shoulders with the Kray twins, Charlie Richardson and the Brink’s-MAT robbers.
At Parkhurst and Albany, we were also housed in the same wing as the IRA, UDA and Colonel Gaddafi’s special agent – a top man in the Libyan army – who shot a copper in Regent’s Park. He had velvet curtains in his cell, plus his own butler, and an endless list of comforts sent by the colonel himself. Gaddafi’s people provided him with everything he wanted. His family was flown in, and he even received his salary. One day he vanished out of the system, and then he sent Charlie Richardson a card from Libya. He’d been exchanged
for a prisoner over there.
I could cope with all of the above because they were straightforward people, however brutal, and you knew where you stood with them. We all detested the fact that scum like child-killers were in the same prison as us. They had to be kept in a special unit – the Vulnerable Prisoners’ Unit – for their own safety; believe me, we would have torn them to pieces.
IRA, UDA and other terrorist groups kept very much to themselves; the drug cartels stuck to their own people; and the armed robbers and other criminals also kept themselves to themselves. Domestic killers and oddballs had their own groups.
My old man used to say: ‘If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and is seen in the constant company of ducks, then it is quite obviously a fucking duck.’ His phrase was an ideal description of the various groups of prisoners.
Because of our confined living space, though, we crossed paths and socialised with other factions, apart from the bastards in the VPU. In prison you have nothing, really, apart from your self-respect and the bonds you can form with people. But there is a hierarchy from top to bottom – which comes as a surprise at first.
At Albany, I was walking around the exercise yard with my friend, Eddy (no relation to our mountainous minder), who was serving life for murder.
‘Look at those fucking nonces,’ he growled loudly, staring at two prisoners in the VPU, who were talking through their windows. ‘If I get my hands on the bastards, as God is my witness, I’ll cut off their bollocks.’
‘Harsh but fair,’ I agreed, watching them having a cosy chat through the wire-covered barred windows. The wire was there to prevent us throwing bricks into their cells.
The two targets of Eddy’s abuse looked shocked. One of them, a weedy character with a messy mop of ginger hair, took offence. He grunted and pointed accusingly at the bloke in the other cell. ‘I’m not a nonce,’ he shouted at the top of his voice, still pointing at his mate who had pervy, shifty eyes, that darted from side to side. ‘I’m a grass, but I’ve never been a nonce. He’s a nonce, next door.’
I Am Not A Gangster Page 13
