The Jump

by Cole, Martina

  Alan nodded. ‘I’ve done it myself, Donna. You save your big jobs up for a week, until it’s nice and watery, and then you offload the bucketful over the Governor when he comes to visit the Wing. If we can get Georgio to cause a disturbance, he can be the main culprit and can do the business on the old man, and they’ll have him out as soon as possible.’

  ‘If he does the dirty before lunchtime,’ Eric went on, ‘then they’ll move him in the afternoon. All we’ll need is a joey on a mobile at the ferry terminal to say whether or not the sweatbox goes on it. If it does, we’re off.’

  Donna frowned. ‘What if they don’t move him until the night, though?’

  Eric shrugged. ‘Same thing. I’d prefer the daylight obviously, but it don’t really make that much difference. As long as he hasn’t got the big entourage. Also the local police will not be able to get too organised.’

  Donna was confused. ‘But why would they move Georgio out so quick if he’s A Grade?’

  ‘Think about it, love,’ Anthony told her. ‘They want the ringleader out to defuse the situation. While he’s there the men he’s got behind him will want to carry on, won’t they? He’s got to wind them up, ain’t he? Be the big man. The prison authorities won’t want him there, and if he wasn’t going on the trot they’d take him from the laydown to another nick and segregate him for a few months. There’s nothing like three or four months on the block - solitary to you, love - to get people to crack up.’

  Eric poured out more vodka for everyone except Donna.

  ‘Are there any nonces on his Wing, do you know? Only that’s a good scam. Everyone wants to do the nonces; it’s part and parcel of prison life. If Georgio can get a weapon, he can quite happily do all the nonces over. Beat the fuck out of them and then cause uproar. They’ll want him out all right, they always do. They don’t give a fuck how they’re tortured on a daily basis, but a big one with three or four mashed up at once scares them. The Sun would be climbing all over their backs for a start. Especially if we make sure they know all about it. Then we nab your man as they trundle him off the laydown.

  ‘That’s where the GOAD comes in,’ he finished off. ‘Good order and discipline. It’s an old antiquated rule but it can work for us in this. The GOAD is brought in when you’re classed as a disruptive influence, or in the case of nonces, for your own protection.’

  ‘So they could take the nonces with him then?’

  Alan shook his head. ‘Not until they’re out of the hospital, love. Georgio’s got to hammer the fuck out of them, and knowing Georgio he’ll enjoy doing that. No one likes the nonces. No one. Not even the screws. That’s why he has to shit up the Governor as well. It’ll be the icing on the cake, see. Once he’s been humiliated in front of the Wing, the Governor will want Georgio out of his sight.’

  Anthony nodded slowly. ‘He’ll probably get a hammering himself before he goes but it’ll be worth it. This plan’s brilliant. We knew we’d have to get him from the outside, but finding out the laydowns is nigh on impossible and the information is not always reliable, see. But this way, we have a ninety percent chance of being on schedule. I’ve never known a Governor yet swallow a shitting, have you?’ He looked around him for confirmation, and both Alan and Eric shook their heads.

  Anthony grinned. ‘I done it myself at Durham, years ago though. It was such a fucking laugh! If you’d seen his face! I’m going back years now. There was a right loon on our Wing, a black bloke. Nice enough, a laugh, you know. But he was really erratic. Anyway, the screws used to bait him something chronic, and he’d throw a right paddy. Knocked the fuck out of them a few times. Well, at times like that they used to inject him with Valium or something, it was in the seventies and that was the scam then. Drug you up and knock you out, like. Well, whatever they gave him killed him. He was found in his cell . . .’

  ‘It was Librium.’ Alan’s voice was low. ‘The man was Karol Denoy. He had more drugs in his system than fucking Jimmy Hendrix and they forced more inside him. He was a mate.’

  Anthony paused. ‘Well, after a week, the Governor came down on the Wing to have his usual constitutional around the nick and I caught him lovely. I went, “Sir?” And as he turned around I let him have a bucketful right in his mush. He went fucking mental! The screws was running round like scalded whores and I laughed my fucking head off.’

  ‘What happened then?’ Donna’s voice was frightened and all three men picked up on that.

  Anthony smiled at her amiably. ‘They put me in a straitjacket and kicked the shit out of me on the block. But it was worth it. I spent eight months in solitary. They spat in my food, pissed in me tea. You name it, they did it, and I didn’t give a flying fuck. It was worth it.’

  Donna’s face was devoid of colour but she nodded at him in acceptance of what he said.

  ‘Surely they can’t get away with all that now?’ Alan laughed out loud. ‘Don’t you read the papers, Donna? The Guildford Four, the Birmingham Six? I’ve had more than my fair share of hidings over the years. Now when I killed Won Tang it was a different ballgame. The Old Bill treated me like visiting royalty. Getting me tea, fags, magazines. They knew the score with him and I’d done them a right favour. With him off the street they knew their job was a lot easier.’

  Eric smiled at Donna, sorry for her but also slightly annoyed with her at the same time.

  ‘You’ll learn the rules to live by when you’re on the trot with your old man, love. It really is a different ballgame. You’ll spend your whole life looking over your shoulder, wondering what the next day will bring. Whether you’ll be caught, and charged as an accessory. Whether the filth will be waiting when you get home, whether you’ll be banged up or allowed bail. You’ve got it all to come. Do you think you can handle it? Only this could get a bit rough, you know. This isn’t TV, my dear, this is real life.’

  Donna realised that all three men were watching her intently. The easy camaraderie was gone. Alan and Anthony really wanted to know the answer to their question. Taking a deep breath, she finally and irrevocably put herself on the line.

  ‘I can handle it, Eric. The point is, can you?’

  The three laughed, and Donna felt the tension leave the room. She laughed with them, while inside her bowels felt as if they were turning to iced water and her heart beat so loud she wondered how the three of them didn’t remark on the sound.

  ‘Oh, I can handle it, my dear. That is my job.’

  Donna looked around the dingy room, at the well-used furniture with cigarette burns and greasy marks, at the cold fireplace with the cracked tiles on the hearth, and the faded flock wallpaper.

  All she could think as she sat there, cold, friendless and frightened, was that it would all be worth it once Georgio was back with her.

  Everything would be worth it.

  She needed to believe that more than anything else in the world.

  Georgio lay in his bunk thinking about the off. He had to find out something concrete soon or he would go mad. Lewis would be back on the Wing within the next forty-eight hours. That meant going back to living on a daily basis, minding his back and listening out for footsteps, watching for hidden weapons.

  Lewis never let anyone feel they were entirely safe from him. It was the edge he had over people. He could smile at you, and joke, and put his arm around your shoulders, oblivious of the fact he had ordered your beating, or worse. It was the ‘worse’ that bothered Georgio. Lewis’s forte was scarring people. Cutting them up and watching them weep. Georgio knew that he had his creds, he was a known villain, respected because he didn’t get caught - not until now anyway. But no one was a match for a psychopath like Lewis.

  He turned on his bunk, willing the night away and also willing it to stay. He concentrated on his wife. A small smile was playing around his lips. In the dimness he could make out Donna’s photograph alongside the others on the cell wall by his bunk. He frowned as he saw the line of her cheekbones emphasised by the half-light.

  Donna wouldn’t do the di
rty on him, Sadie was right in that respect. After all those years of being his wife she wouldn’t turn on him now. He had prison paranoia, that’s all. All the men went through it at some time. It was the pressure getting to him. If he could have done his time without Lewis hanging around his neck, he would have been all right. But all the stress had got to him.

  Anyway, he concluded, she wouldn’t dare do it to him. Not Donna. She wouldn’t have the guts. He’d run around on her all through their married life and she hadn’t even had the guts to question it. Knowing in her heart of hearts he would have given her the answer she didn’t want to hear. In reality, he mused, he should have unloaded her years before for someone more like himself. But he didn’t want to be lumbered with a Carol Jackson, and the life he had lived would have guaranteed someone like her. A decent woman wouldn’t have anything to do with him, not unless she was ruthless, and decency and ruthlessness did not go hand in hand.

  He liked the way Donna lived her life. She was quiet, contained, and loyal. Too loyal really. Over the years he had despised her in some ways for her easy acceptance of what he could do to her. She allowed him anything to keep him, and Georgio knew that being the kind of person he was, he couldn’t, wouldn’t plump for a life like that any longer. Maybe if they’d had children he might have felt different. But he could have children, he knew that for a fact. He smiled into the darkness.

  If only Donna knew what had really transpired over the years, she would faint. She was a brick though. What she was doing went against the grain with her, and he knew that. In effect he was using her, but he preferred to look on it as payment for all the easy years she’d had, spending his money and living her luxurious lifestyle. He knew she loved him, and the knowledge pleased him. He loved Donna, but he had not been in love with her for years. Not since the boy died. Something had died inside him, too, that night. She had failed him, as she had since the day he married her. She had refused him sex beforehand, and eventually he had married her for it. And the sex wasn’t worth it, not really.

  Yet he had cherished her, outwardly anyway. Donna never really knew the extent of his feelings for her but he had known hers. They enveloped him as he walked into a room with her. Sometimes the feeling had been like a balm to his spirit; at other times like a suffocating blanket. But she had class, he couldn’t take that away from her. He knew men looked at her, wanted her, and he enjoyed the knowledge.

  Not like Vida. She was a different proposition altogether. Vida was young, vibrant and beautiful. Tall, willowy and blonde, she had a mouth like a sewer and a mind to match. But she was exciting. She knew what he wanted and she supplied it. She was aware of his weaknesses and his strengths. She gave her body as Donna gave her love, without thought or care or even the smallest amount of embarrassment. She opened to him at any time, gave him thrills of pleasure and also peace of mind. He could mould her into what he wanted before she became like Carol Jackson, the clichéd villain’s bird, with heavy make-up, the regulation sexy clothes and the too-knowing mouth. He could turn Vida into a young Donna, into a woman. His woman. And Vida could have a child, she had already proved that. He saw himself living in a palatial villa in the sun with Vida beside him, strong and bronzed. Her willowy figure without clothes or inhibitions. That was the woman he wanted, deep in his guts.

  But Donna pushed into his thoughts again. Donna and Alan Cox. He smiled. Alan’s idea of a woman was a prostitute like his Lally. Alan didn’t want commitment. He didn’t want to be tied. Georgio should have had more sense than to think Donna and Alan were getting it on together. In a rare moment of honesty, Georgio realised he was more upset at the thought of Alan fanning the flames in Donna. The flames he had never managed to light properly . . . not since the night the boy died. It was as if after that trauma, sex to Donna became only an act of love. He didn’t want sex with love, not all the time, he wanted to fuck her sometimes. All the time. He wanted her on her knees in front of him, abandoned, taking him into her for the pure joy of fucking. He was sickened by her constant declarations of love. Sex was ninety-nine percent in the head, not the body.

  Sex to Georgio over the years had become visual; he liked to enact blue movie sequences with women, liked to see them enjoy themselves as much as he was. Not make love like Donna wanted, with the mattress under her back and words of love whispered constantly. Sex to Donna was a reassurance of his love for her. He had known that for a long time. He had climbed from his bed some mornings with a raging hard-on and had left her there, wanting him, because he enjoyed the power he had over her. Now, though, Donna had the power. The power to get him out, the power to get his money and the power to call the shots. Until he was out of here, that was. Once he was free he could do what he wanted, and he would. He needed Donna to get his money because she was the only person in the world he could really trust.

  His Donna, the most trustworthy of wives.

  But Georgio, being a realist, knew he could never, ever trust himself. And Donna wanted him to want only her, and after all this was over she would demand his allegiance, feel she had earned it even, and Georgio knew he could never promise that to anyone. Not even Vida.

  Not even to himself.

  Donna couldn’t sleep; the day’s events had thrown her off balance. She sat in Georgio’s office, a cigarette and a glass of whisky her only companions. She sipped the burning liquid, enjoying the bite as it hit her throat and belly.

  Meeting Eric had really shown her what she had let herself in for. She had looked at Alan and Anthony, listened to their easy talk, their easy acceptance of what was to happen, and real fear had enveloped her. Eric was right. Could she live with the constant thought of a knock on the door? Of a police raid? Could she live as a fugitive? She knew instinctively that Georgio could, she had few illusions left about her husband. All that was left, all that was certain, was her deep-seated love for him, a love he had ensnared long ago and which had grown over the years.

  She stood up and walked to the window. Glimpsing the car parked to the left of the driveway, she knew that she was still being watched and the knowledge depressed her even more. Once the house was sold and they were off, would this become a way of life? Would they be watched constantly, would they ever know peace? Would Georgio be able to sleep easy in bed only because he knew hired help was watching his house for him? Would she be able to sleep knowing that? Would Donald Lewis find them or the police? Had Georgio told her everything or were there other people he had to watch out for, as if Donald Lewis and the police weren’t enough?

  Donna knew she shouldn’t question herself too much; brooding like this was a bad thing, especially in the night, and with only a cigarette, a glass of scotch and her own active imagination for company. But it all seemed so real now; Eric had made it real. Once she had left Scotland and Liverpool it had ceased to seem real to her, but Eric was real. Too real. He spoke about the jump as if it was a game and she was sure that to him it was, a lucrative game that earned him a considerable amount of money and gave him the opportunity to get one in the eye of the establishment.

  Donna stared out of the window and sighed gently. It was all set now. Even if she wanted to pull out, she couldn’t, she was in over her head. Georgio knew it, and she knew it. The knowledge upset her. She had envisioned herself keeping apart from it all somehow, being part of it but not actually taking a part. She now knew that she was wrong. She could be arrested at any time; if anyone got the slightest inkling of what was about to go down, she could be hauled into a police station and questioned. She could be charged with conspiracy, and God knew what else. Once Georgio was out she could be put behind bars for a long time if they were caught.

  Although these thoughts had floated in and out of her consciousness at different times over the last few months, she hadn’t really let them take substance, because she knew if she thought about them too much she would have backed out, proved a coward. Now, after meeting Eric, she knew exactly what she had done and she also had an inkling of what she could end up havin
g thrown at her.

  When Maeve had accused her of becoming like Georgio she had realised just how astute her mother-in-law was. Donna had felt a rage inside her at the thought of Lewis’s henchmen coming to the restaurant. Had the rage always been there or had it developed over the past months? The question frightened her. All she had wanted was her husband. Home. Her husband whom she had been convinced was as pure as the driven snow. She smiled as she thought of her naivety. Had she really thought that over the years - really, deep down? Had she honestly thought Georgio was such a perfect man?

  She couldn’t answer that. Georgio was Georgio, and whatever he was, she had wanted him . . . still wanted him. And the only way to get him was to fight for him.

  She knocked back the scotch and poured herself another. Sleep was beyond her, getting drunk was beyond her. She was at a pitch of nerves that would let her neither rest nor sleep. She had become good at fighting, and Georgio had sat up and taken notice, that was the main thing.

  The sharp ringing of a phone broke into her thoughts and she automatically picked up the receiver by her side. Nothing, just a dialling tone. It took her a moment to realise it was the fax on the desk. She went to it and listened in the eerie light as the strange sound emanated from it, stretching her overwrought nerves. As the paper began to spew on to the desk she laughed with relief. She had given herself the heebie-jeebies over nothing. Quickly, she swallowed down more scotch.

  Picking up the piece of paper she scanned the page, turning on the desk lamp to see it more clearly. It was written by hand, a scrawling hand. She screwed her eyes up to read it better.