by Jan Needle
In a way, he felt quite sorry for her. He remembered her face after he had mouthed his warning. Fat, pale and pathetic. You had to keep them frightened, though, didn’t you? It was the only way. Far too fucking much at stake to sod about...
*
Bowscar Prison. Michael Masters.
By the time Masters was required to go through the induction procedure at Bowscar, he had had more than thirty hours to absorb the shock of his betrayal. He was in control, and his mind was working rationally again. There was still fury in his heart, but he could contemplate it, hold it up to scrutiny without it exploding, choking him. He tried to keep it from the forefront of his thoughts, to give his brain a rest.
The first half-hour after he’d been bundled from the dock the day before had been the worst. In the holding cells below the court, he had faced Sir Cyril France wild-eyed, like something out of a painting from the Civil War. The barrister, divested of his wig and gown, looked small, and weaselly, and nervous.
‘Michael,’ he had said. ‘What can I say? My dear chap, this is such a terrible, terrible shock to me.’
Masters was still beyond coherence. A shock to him! He, the barrister, Sir Cyril France, QC, had been one of the authors of the deal. He had persuaded Masters just how clever it would be to play it this way, just how easy it would be in Ford.
‘That bastard,’ breathed Masters. He was not trying to keep his voice low, despite the officer who was sitting near him in the windowless room. ‘He was coming to my house. The farewell bash, the fucking—’
The barrister touched his client’s arm, his eyes alive with panic.
‘No,’ he said, quietly but with desperate authority. ‘Michael, I implore you. Don’t say anything. No!’
Masters was breathing shallowly and fast, halfway between rage and disbelief. He remembered the judge’s look of distaste over his half-moon spectacles. But he knew things about Mr Justice Harper that would have brought the public gallery baying to its feet! He crushed his fists into shaking knots. To hell with it. To hell with all of them.
‘Michael,’ said Sir Cyril, watching his face carefully. ‘Something has gone badly wrong. I don’t know why, and I don’t know how. My first job is to find that out. My second—’
Masters shot a hand across the table and gripped the thin, weak wrist. As he squeezed, a dew of sweat broke out on France’s brow. Over a fifteen second period his skin turned sickly yellow, but he suffered in silence. When his wrist was freed, he could no longer move his fingers.
‘Your first job,’ Masters told him, ‘is to get me out of here. You know who I’m protecting, Cyril, and you know what I know. You can tell them all from me, can’t you? I want out.’
The barrister’s sick, frightened eyes slid towards the guard. His face implored his client to say no more.
‘We might appeal,’ he muttered. ‘Perhaps if—’
Masters’ voice was harsh.
‘You can’t appeal against what we’ve already admitted, can you? And you can’t appeal against the sentence until you’ve found out whose idea the sentence was. Geoffrey Harper’s a puppet, and you know it. Now get out of here and ask the fucking questions.’
‘Michael, please. Be careful what you say. You’re still in court. The precincts.’
He stood up, with an ingratiating glance at the officer, a big man in his middle-fifties. Masters spoke to him.
‘Would you be surprised,’ he said, conversationally, ‘if I told you Mr Justice Harper wore women’s underwear and spent his cash on kiddie-porn from Holland?’
The barrister emitted a sound of genuine distress. His face went grey.
‘You,’ said the usher to Michael Masters, ‘have got a nasty mind. I take it you’ve finished with your visitor?’
Masters felt better. His emotions were coming back under control. He knew he’d put the fear of God up France.
‘Get the shitbag out of here,’ he said. ‘I think I’ve made myself clear.’
Sir Cyril France tried to pick his briefcase up in his right hand, but winced. He took it with his left. The officer opened the door and he left with small and rapid steps.
‘And you,’ the officer told the prisoner. ‘This way.’
As Masters passed him, he said: ‘Is it true about Harper? Kiddie-porn?’
‘Nah,’ said Masters. ‘He’s a boring little fart. I doubt if he’s even got one.’
‘Oh,’ replied the guard. ‘A lot of them are bent, though. We’ve got a lady judge sleeps with her alsatian. Straight up.’
‘Straight up? Well, that’s something I suppose!’ They both laughed.
*
Newsroom. Rosanna Nixon.
To her annoyance, the rain in Glasgow made her late for work. She had dearly wanted to be in the newsroom when Maurice Campbell arrived, and she had wanted to present the ultimate picture of the cool, collected newshound putting one over on her curmudgeonly cynic of a boss. Instead, she’d arrived twenty minutes after him, with laddered tights. She also had wet hair, soggy shoulders, and dirty hands.
The news-room was long, airy and modern. Each desk had a computer and television station, and the floors were carpeted. Rosanna left a damp trail in the pale rose as she walked, pulling her coat off on the way. Campbell, in isolated splendour at his desk at the end, watched with amusement. He had a secret.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ said Rosanna. ‘Car wouldn’t start. And the kitchen flooded, and I couldn’t get a taxi.’
‘S’all right by me, hen,’ he said. ‘Nothing’s happening yet awhile, you’re first in except for wee Barry. Whyn’t you go to the ladies and dry off?’
‘No!’ said Rosanna. She shied her coat across the room at a chair, which rotated lazily under the impact, depositing it on the floor. Rosanna grinned at him, her damp face shining.
‘Well,’ said Campbell, carefully. ‘The day in Buckie seems to have done you good. Or did you stay in bed?’
‘I did not. You were right, though. I didn’t find a thing. You were absolutely right.’ Campbell dipped his head.
‘No sign of the diving boy? Well, I thought there wouldn’t be. You seem damn cheerful about it, though. Come on, what’s up your sleeve?’
What’s up yours, Rosanna thought. She knew him well enough to realise there was something. Surely her mystery caller had not...? No, stupid. She stopped beating about the bush.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘I know we nearly fell out about the diving boy, but I wasn’t dreaming it. Buckie was a waste of time, but when I got home last night, this morning – I had a phone call.’
She was a nice wee thing, thought Maurice. Not exactly good-looking, not exactly the world’s best journalist, but she had an open face, and she told the truth, and she was keen. He thought she was going to come a cropper yet again, and it pained him. He dropped the idea of making something of his secret. It would hurt her even more.
‘Before you go on, lassie,’ he said. ‘This phone call wasnae confirmation, was it? That someone died? Because I’m sorry, but I know. It’s been announced. It’s public.’
It was like stealing a baubee from a child. Rosanna flushed brick red.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘But…’
Campbell picked up a piece of PA copy which had been face down in front of him. He handed it across.
‘An overnight. It was in the tray this morning. I doubt it’ll make more than a paragraph.’
The slip said simply: ‘The Scottish Office announced today that a prisoner involved in the recent roof top protest at HM Prison, Buckie, collapsed and died yesterday, apparently from natural causes. His name will not be released until his next of kin have been informed.’
Rosanna stared at the sheet in puzzlement. It was so bald. So meaningless. Campbell’s ruddy face was sympathetic.
‘But I know his name,’ she said. ‘That was what the man on the phone told me. It’s James McGregor. James Malcolm McGregor.’
‘So? So it could be John Two Three for all I care. He died of natural causes, d
idn’t he? And we can’t use it anyway, it’s vetoed.’
Rosanna’s face was burning.
‘But Maurice, for Christ’s sake! It stinks! It bloody stinks! I see someone falling off a roof, the government denies it, then there’s a corpse! A heart attack, whatever! Nothing to do with anything! Natural causes!’
Maurice Campbell looked up and past her. Barry Robins and another reporter had come through the door. They were watching the scene, attracted by Rosanna’s voice.
‘Look, hen,’ said Campbell, soothingly. ‘Get a grip, eh? I’m sick to death of all this nonsense. I’m a reasonable man, but I can’t spend my mornings wiping babies’ bottoms. You’ve been to Buckie, you learned nothing. Someone’s died, you think you know his name, you think he fell. So what? If they picked the poor sod up by his testicles and kicked him over like a football do you think I’d put it in the paper on your say so? Get a grip.’
His voice had become lower and harsher as the other two had approached. Now he waved his hand at her, impatiently.
‘Go away,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to be giving you public bollockings all the time, Rosanna. Go away and dry your hair or something, and dry behind your fucking ears. You can have this morning to yourself, all right? You can try cracking Holyrood on the phone. You can try the fucking Home Office down in London if you’re daft enough. But by dinnertime I want you back on my staff as a fully-functioning reporter with no bee in the bonnet. Do I make myself very bloody clear?’
Rosanna walked away with her lower lip bitten firmly between her teeth. When Barry Robins, sympathetically, handed her her coat from off the floor, she turned away. She might as well have stayed in bed. Period
*
Bowscar. Induction suite.
Even with his brain in neutral, Michael Masters could not entirely ignore the processes he went through on arrival at the jail in Staffordshire. It was at once so similar to scenes he’d watched on film and television, and so completely different. The rooms were the same – drab, cream and green, impersonal – but they had a third dimension. As in the cells he’d stayed in overnight, it was mainly to do with smell, and heat. The air was almost palpable, redolent of boiled food and drains, so thick that he could taste it. Masters was not a particularly fastidious man, there was nothing fey or precious in his tastes, but he found himself reluctant to even breathe it deeply. It felt polluted, dangerous.
Then there were the processes. In the armoured prison van, the men who had travelled with him from London had seemed quite normal, unremarkable. Opposite had been a thin, handsome man with two-toned sculptured hair, who was possibly a homosexual. He had a cut lip and a swollen eye, but appeared quite self-contained. Next to Masters was a youth, a black boy of barely twenty. He said nothing throughout the long journey, merely wringing his hands together and staring at the floor. Two men, white and in their forties, had worn suits, another wore a tracksuit bottom and an anorak, and an older man, Irish, had slept noisily for most of the time. When he had awoken, he had demanded to be allowed to piss, then dozed off again. He smelled of drink.
But when they had disgorged, and been lined up to enter the reception suite, these ordinary, common or garden detainees had apparently been transformed, turned into Martians, aliens, creatures from the Black Lagoon. The prison officers had become fierce and animated. They had shouted, cajoled, pushed.
The apparent homosexual got it worst. Two officers ranged round him, at a distance of four feet, their eyes bulging like music hall comedians’. They pointed at him, pantomiming shock, while the man stared back at them, disconcerted, beginning to be afraid. Masters watched fascinated. His mind was back in gear, but he could hardly believe the spectacle. It was like a comedy routine, like something from a play about conscription. The RSM’s gavotte.
‘Are you a bleeding poof, duckie?’ said the leader of the double-act. ‘Are you one of the stick-it-up-the-bum brigade? We’ll have to get the bleeding tongs to you won’t we, my girl? We’ll have to bung you in the leper colony. I suppose you’re HIV, you dirty little brown-hat bastard?’
Some of the men in line with Masters laughed. The target of the prison officers had gone white.
‘You can’t say that to me,’ he started. His voice was well-educated, but not mannered. The double-act laughed, mockingly.
‘Oh no, you’re right,’ said one. ‘You’re only on remand, aren’t you? What is it? Drugs, assaulting a policeman, bleeding on the pavement outside the House of Commons? We’ve got your measure, Raymond Orchard. Come on, Cherry! Get in there!’
One of the officers moved fast, and pushed the prisoner from behind, slamming him into the door jamb of the reception suite. He gave a cry, and dropped to one knee. Both officers stood back.
‘You’ve got to get them from behind,’ one said, to the queue. ‘It’s what they’re used to.’
There was more laughter, but not full-throated. One or two of the men had lost colour from their faces, and the black boy was beginning to moan beneath his breath. Yeah, thought Masters, you’re next, Sunshine. Pound to a pennyworth of shit.
But he was wrong. All the men were treated equally for a while. They were shoved through the wooden doorway into a changing room and told to strip. Only Raymond Orchard was segregated, and taken to a curtained area. As in changing rooms everywhere, some of the men tried to hide their nakedness, others brazened it out. To Masters’ eyes, it was an unsavoury collection of manhood. Sagging breasts and bellies, hollow chests, fields of scarlet spots on pallid, narrow backs. The criminal classes, he reflected, were an unappetising lot.
The smell was worse when they were naked. God knows when some of them had last washed, let alone had a bath. The stink of feet, as socks were peeled off and dropped, became quite choking. As an overlay to the food and drains it was horrendous. Masters felt himself about to gag.
A third prison officer – tall, broad-shouldered, smiling – noticed his discomfort.
‘Nice, isn’t it, your lordship? It’s what we put up with all the time. The scum, the filth, the lousy stinking dregs. Nice, isn’t it?’
Masters, naked, faced the man. His shirt was crisp, his boots were brilliant, his trousers were immaculate. He exuded self-regard.
Masters said: ‘Why did you call me that? I’m not a lord.’
‘Sir,’ replied the officer. ‘Why did I call you that, sir.’
‘Sir,’ said Masters. That did not worry him. But the edges of the officer’s smile were developing the expected sneer.
‘You think you are though, don’t you?’ he responded. ‘Lord Shitabrick. The man who’s got the judges in his pocket. I’m going to take your clothes away now, and you’re going to get a pair of holey underpants some dirty coon’s shit into. You’re going to get a pair of socks so stiff with sweat they’ll cut your toenails for you. You’re going to have a shower that’s got to last you for a week and I’ll control the water. I’m telling you, Mister Masters, you’d better wash dead quick, an’all. I don’t feel very generous to parasites.’
Masters bent to pick his clothes up, and the polished boot came down onto his fingers. Not hard. When he tried to remove them, the pressure increased.
‘You look a bit of a nerd bent down like that, a bit of a prat. Shall I get that raving poof to slip you one, shall I? An instant Aids injection from young Cherry Orchard?’
Masters said: ‘If I told you what I thought of you, you’d crush my fingers, wouldn’t you? But I won’t forget it. Sir.’
Thus challenged, the warder swung forward onto the ball of his foot. Michael Masters gasped, as he felt the knuckles crush and roll. Nothing broke, though. When the officer removed his boot, Masters straightened up.
‘Well, it hasn’t given you a hard-on,’ sneered the warder. ‘At least you’re not a total pervert. How would you like to share a cell with one? We’ve got some nice ones here. Eh? Who do you fancy as a cell-mate?’
Anger was seated low in Masters’ stomach. Without realising it, he hit on the classic way to anger prison
officers, the old lags’ way. He did not answer. The man’s face became suffused.
‘I’m talking to you, cunt,’ he said. ‘What sort of cell-mate do you want?’
Most of the other men, their clothes collected, had moved into the showers. One or two were looking curiously at the battle. The prisoner seemed calm, the calmer of the two. He did not speak.
‘You!’ shouted the officer. His voice was rising, there was an edge of rage. ‘You fucking answer me, you fucking cunt!’
Suddenly he swung his hand from up beside him, across his body, and smacked Masters hard across the face. As Masters leapt at him two other officers shot across the room and dragged him backwards and threw him on the tiles. He was kicked quickly and efficiently in the balls and stomach, until he rolled up like a hedgehog, retching. Then he was dragged into a cubicle and showered as he lay. It was longer than he had been promised, but it was very cold. To bring him round, presumably.
Twenty minutes later, Prisoner 137059 Masters, M., had been issued with dungarees and shirt, underpants and socks, and a pair of soft-soled shoes that did not fit. He had seen the medical officer and coughed, he had dressed himself, and he had signed for his own clothes and the contents of his pockets. The prison officer who had crushed his hand had unlocked a cell door on M-floor, flanked by two other men. Before he pushed it open, the officer had smiled his friendly smile.
‘D’you like niggers, your lordship?’ he said. ‘Do you like violent men? This man should suit you right down to the ground, then. He killed a copper, didn’t he? Matthew Jerrold’s his name. He’s an insane bastard, honestly. You two should get on.’
Without more ceremony, Michael Masters was pushed into the cell.
*
Kingsborough Gardens. Rosanna.
At 5.30 that evening, as far as she was able to remember, Rosanna Nixon had got herself the sack. Certainly, she pictured very clearly a cataclysmic row with Maurice Campbell, and she remembered storming from the office shouting insults. That in itself was not sufficient reason for thinking she was unemployed, because Maurice liked a slanging match. A stand-up dingdong between him and a reporter usually ended in a drink or two and reconciliations. But Rosanna had not stuck around.
