Prisoner

by Ross Greenwood

  Gronkowski’s name is second on the healthcare list. I step from the office and lock the door. I walk forward, looking up to the top landing, mouth open to tell Peasbody not to unlock Gronkowski, but it’s too late. Gronkowski towers over a cowering Peasbody with an angry but confused expression.

  ‘Get away from him,’ I shout.

  The order is directed at Peasbody, not the prisoner. Gronkowski registers the yell, leans over the railings and glowers at me. My mouth opens wider as I stare up into a face of madness. Both eyes half retreat into Gronkowski’s head, then flicker back down. It happens again.

  ‘Run!’ I shout to Peasbody, but he’s frozen to the spot.

  Gronkowski shoots out a hand, grabs Peasbody’s tie and collar, and pulls him close. He clamps each hand on one of Peasbody’s biceps, then lifts him a foot off the floor. Gronkowski turns to me and leers. I run towards them, while pressing the personal alarm button on my radio. When I’m underneath them, I open my arms to catch a ten-stone man, knowing my chances of success are zero.

  6

  I hear the guy in Comms talking in my ear as Gronkowski’s eyes go completely white and he stands like a statue. There’s no panic in the clinical voice over the airwaves.

  ‘Personal alarm, personal alarm. Officer Dalton, last known location, Delta 1 wing. First Response, please attend.’

  I press my talk button.

  ‘QP, request Officer Domingo attend Delta 1 immediately.’

  There’s a pause of a few seconds and the world stops spinning.

  ‘Delta Eight, that’s confirmed. Officer Domingo en route to your location.’

  Gronkowski’s pupils roll back into view. He’s confused again. Instead of throwing Peasbody over the bannister, he strides to the top of the landing with the officer in his vice-like grip. When he reaches the stairs, he releases a pained roar, and launches Peasbody backwards into the air. For a moment, I think Peasbody will land on me, but gravity takes hold. He lands arse first on the third last stair. His head flies back and I cringe at the sickening impact as the back of Peasbody’s head thuds into the wing floor.

  The men in their cells realise that there’s a distraction to their boring lives. They kick their doors and cheer. I know who they want to win.

  Gronkowski steps gingerly down the stairs. Half drunk on chemicals, he resembles a terrifying beast from a fantasy film. His pectoral muscles flex menacingly on his bare chest. Small men on spice often need four men to restrain them. Sometimes just a touch on the arm sends them ballistic. With a gulp, I put my hands under Peasbody’s armpits and drag him around the pool table and backwards towards the gate.

  Two officers from First Response arrive. One is the officer, Sheraton, who came over with Peasbody. He halts on the spot as he sees Gronkowski, and his face whitens. Fair play though, he takes a protective stance and looks to me for guidance.

  ‘Don’t touch him, skirt around him until we have more people.’

  The other officer, Taufel, has got too close to Gronkowski. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard an open-handed slap sound like a punch. Taufel flies sideways and is almost cut in two by the leg of the pool table. Gronkowski stands over his inert form and raises a foot. I open my mouth, but Lennox, who is next to arrive with SO Bowell, beats me to it.

  ‘Stop!’ she roars.

  Gronkowski pauses as he focusses on the female officer, as if seeing one has jumbled his brain further. His eyes flicker again, but his jaw bunches and he places his foot back down next to the injured officer’s head. Then he marches towards us. Bowell and Lennox are edging away around the pool table when Fats arrives. I drag Peasbody behind him. Fats slowly walks to stand in front of the freely sweating ogre.

  They stand toe-to-toe. Two leviathans, matched in battle. The Polish prisoner has the advantage of nearly a foot in height, but Fats’s face shows no emotion. Lennox and I edge behind Gronkowski, who swings a wild fist at Fats’s head with incredible speed. If it hits, it takes Fats’s head clean off. Instead, Fats leans back just out of the way, then steps forward and grabs the unbalanced prisoner’s head.

  It’s called dropping someone and is a case of simple physics. If you grab the head and pull it towards the ground, the body comes too. If you weigh twenty stone plus and your centre of gravity is between your ankles, as in Fats’s case, it doesn’t matter if your opponent has a neck like Mike Tyson’s. Gronkowski hits the deck face down. I leap on Gronkowski’s right arm, clamp a hand around the wrist, and hold the arm straight out while Lennox does the same on the left. That way, the bulging biceps have no power. Bowell lays his belly over the thrashing legs, so the inmate can’t get to his knees and use his huge thigh muscles. Then the rodeo begins.

  He’s incredibly strong and writhes like a python. Lennox and I both struggle with our respective arms. I glance up at Fats. With him holding the head, the prisoner is going nowhere fast, but if Gronkowski gets up, he’ll be hard to drop again. Fats can lean forward and put a hand and all of his weight on the inmate’s back, but it’s dangerous. That will compress Gronkowski’s ribcage and could stop him breathing. Even though the inmate wants to kill us, his safety is our primary concern. That pretty much sums up prison life.

  Just as we are losing control, two more officers arrive and kneel on the backs of Gronkowski’s biceps. Gronkowski must be off his rocker not to scream in agony, but he stops struggling. Big men are extremely powerful, but they use up their energy fast. We relax a little. The banging and shouting from the inmates stops. The only sound is the heavy breathing of my colleagues.

  There is a sequence of moves that officers go through that gets a prisoner to his feet but still keeps him secure. Gronkowski has his head and back bent forwards, arms held tight, hands twisted with thumbs pointing out, like a stooping, geriatric Fonz. We’re different from the police because handcuffs are only ever a last resort. In prison, they tend to escalate the problem and can cause serious injuries. Raging men who can’t use their hands tend to use their heads, or teeth.

  Sweating, we shuffle and nudge him to the block. The officers there are ready. I stay as they strip-search Gronkowski while he remains restrained. Ten minutes later, Gronkowski is lying on his bed asleep. As I leave his new cell, I wonder what, if anything, he’ll remember. A nurse waits nervously outside to check his pulse.

  I make my way back to the wing office, passing a groggy Taufel, who’s staggering to Healthcare. I hear Comms asking for the gatehouse to prepare the route for the ambulance. When I reach the wing, two nurses are leaning over Peasbody, who won’t be walking off the wing after all.

  I glance at my watch. It’s not even half-past nine. I put two fingers over my wrist and check my pulse. It’s barely changed. An experienced officer who was retiring when I first started told me that when this place stops shocking you, it’s time to leave.

  7

  It’s an easier time for everyone in a jail after a shocking violent act has occurred. The prisoners’ bloodlust has been sated and they are calm, as if they’ve had a heavy meal. I open the windows at the end of the wing and the cool breeze seems to blow any remaining tension away. Of course, inexorably it will build again until it boils over once more. That’s just the way things are.

  Peasbody’s replacement is a fifty-five-year-old woman called Trudy Tyler, who usually works on the Mother and Baby Unit. At 6.30 p.m., she and I lock up and count the inmates. There isn’t even any dawdling to get behind their doors. Perhaps Trudy, who we call Tex on account of her love of line dancing, has something to do with it.

  She speaks to the inmates as if they’re cheeky children. The hardened thirty-year-olds receive the same treatment as naughty toddlers, despite her being barely seven stone. Actually, she talks to me in the same manner, and all of us can tell she cares.

  After the prisoners are banged up, I return to Scranton’s cell and open it, knowing he’ll be waiting at the window. We exchange cold looks for a few moments.

  ‘Night, guv. Sweet dreams.’

  ‘That wa
s stupid, even for you.’

  ‘No idea what you’re talking about,’ he says, failing to hide a smirk.

  Scranton gave Gronkowski the spice, and Scranton knows I know. I’m also sure that Scranton deliberately gave him too much.

  ‘Karma can be a bitch,’ I say, pulling the door shut again and locking it. I nod to Tex, who came up to stand behind me just in case it kicked off, and slam the bolt into place. It’s often at this point in the day that the energy drains from my legs. A peace settles over me with the shift finished and everyone put away. We have a roll count of seventy-eight, one in the block. As I saunter back to the hub in time for roll call, a familiar voice shouts out to me.

  ‘Yo, bruvva! Jimbo. Howzit?’

  I blink tired eyes at the young face pressed against the bars of Bravo 1, the detox wing. It takes a few seconds before I recognise my brother-in-law, Wyatt.

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding me. Wyatt, what the hell are you doing here?’

  ‘It was a rumble. The whole crew’s here, innit. No sweat, though. We’ll bust case. And call me Colt in here, man. Wyatt’s dead, bro.’

  With that, he lowers his tracksuit bottoms at the side and lifts his T-shirt. He’s only gone and had a tattoo of a pistol pointing at his groin done. I walk towards him at the gates, shaking my head. I stare at the gun. It looks like something that shoots caps, not the deadly possession of a Detroit gangster, which is how Wyatt, I mean Colt, now likes to think of himself. I’m sure one of the hardened cons will point that fact out to him. I must be getting old because I thought Wyatt was a cool name.

  He was about nine when I first started dating Abi. There are sixteen years between them. He had too much energy, even then, but was generally lippy rather than naughty. I used to call him Wyatt Earp, and he’d shoot me with his fingers.

  His dad didn’t expect another child so long after Abi’s birth and suggested an abortion, which explains the glacier between him and his wife. Wyatt’s father chose golf over any involvement with his new child. Maybe he and I are both to blame in some way for how Wyatt turned out.

  Wyatt drifted towards crime and there was no one around to notice and pull him away. I used to joke that he was a little scrapper, but now he’s turned into a little fucker. We had to stop him coming around because he’d be looking for money to buy drugs. When his hair was longer, he looked a bit like a young Johnny Depp, but he shaves his head now. There’s another tattoo on his neck, a gecko or lizard of some kind, and he has the faraway gaze of a dedicated stoner.

  ‘Take it easy in there, Colt.’

  ‘Forget that, man. Smack rats don’t vex me.’

  I sense an edge in him from how he was a few years ago. He also has a long scar in his hairline that wasn’t there before.

  ’Keep your head down. When are you at court?’

  ‘Two weeks. Slap on the wrist. No sweat. Some stuff got nicked from a house, they fronted, man got hurt, and the judge panicked because nobody grassed.’

  Officer Lennox stands behind Colt.

  ‘Come on, son. Behind your door,’ she says.

  Colt’s eyes finally focus on me and there is fear in them. He’s not been inside before. It’s a new world, a man’s world, and he understands it’s a dangerous one.

  ‘Tell my sister not to worry, yeah? And it’d be great if you can find me a few extra sachets of sugar, please.’

  It seems little Wyatt’s back. I nod at him. He is a scumbag, but he’s just a boy. One who’s going to learn the hard way. The youngsters arrive as children, but they don’t leave as kids, however long they’ve been in. I watch Lennox give him a few kind words as she gently closes the door. Bowell pops his head out of the hub.

  ‘We haven’t got all night, Dalton. Roll?’

  ‘Seventy-eight, just Gronkowski off this morning.’

  I let out a deep exhale, enter the hub and ring Security to tell them I have a family member here. It’s a heightened risk having a relative in the prison. The temptation to help would be too much for many, never mind the psychological aspect of locking your own family away. I suspect they’ll transfer him out in the morning.

  I finish the call and wait for the roll to clear. There’s a part of me that wants to leave him rattling in his cell, gurning and sweating as the drugs vacate his system, but I’ve been here long enough to know that doesn’t work. He’d suffer for no benefit and he’s angry enough at the world as it is. Lennox smiles at me.

  ‘Well done today. You hold this place together.’

  The rest of the officers nod and a couple clap, and even Bowell drags his gaze temporarily from his computer to join in.

  ‘Brother-in-law?’ asks Lennox. ‘He told me when he arrived.’

  ‘Yeah. Got any choccy?’

  She always has chocolate and passes me a KitKat before giving me a stern you-owe-me expression. I leave the hub and walk into the Bravo 1 wing office where I grab ten sachets of sugar, which will make his comedown easier. You aren’t supposed to open the doors once the roll has gone in, but no one will mention it. They know I’m straight as can be. When I open his door, Colt jumps out of his seat, fists raised to fight. His face and eyes are red, his cheeks moist. I throw the bar and sugar onto his bed. There’s no need for words. I lock him in and return to the hub. The radio crackles in my ear.

  ‘The roll has cleared, male side. I repeat, the roll is correct, male side only.’

  Everyone in the hub cheers and all of us except for the night OSO file out of the houseblock. Clearing first means we’ll get to the front of the queue at the gatehouse to hand our keys in before the female side officers. We pass the entrance to Separation and Care, where Gronkowski now lives. A big officer leaving from their entrance wipes his forehead. He looks relieved to be heading home, too, but his relief will be temporary. He’ll have to come back tomorrow when Gronkowski will be awake. He’s their problem now. And I’ll sleep better tonight knowing that.

  8

  After we drop our keys and radios off and exit through the security scanners, Fats retrieves his mobile from the gatehouse lockers, looks at the screen and taps it for a little while. Outside, with us back on our bikes, I follow him out of the car park. I usually say goodbye because he’s pretty slow on the way home. He’ll be mentally and physically exhausted, as I am. I often push myself to get back to my family, but, when I arrive, I sometimes wonder what the rush was for. We cycle in silence until we reach the path next to the rowing lake, and then I move alongside him.

  ‘Hey, Fats. I just wanted to thank you for responding today.’

  ‘No worries. You’d do it for me.’

  I smile but consider the respect I received in the hub after the incident. I couldn’t have done it so fast without Fats. We always win because more and more officers arrive until it’s over, but a lot of people can get hurt if situations aren’t controlled fast. I’m not sure how to express my gratitude, but he’s smiling at me. He understands. That’s what I like about him.

  ‘Fats, do you enjoy bring a prison officer?’

  ‘No, not really. Do you?’

  ‘I like it when I leave, but I don’t like going in, if that makes any sense. I think I’m doing something that most people couldn’t do, and that makes me feel good about myself.’

  ‘That’s kind of how I feel. I worked for years in our family’s abattoir and I was great at it because of my strength, but I couldn’t do it any more. It was the way they brought the animals in through pens and corridors, and they’d be scared. The cows’ huge eyes eventually got to me. I don’t think they knew we were going to kill them, but they were anxious after the journey. The new surroundings, the smell of strange cows and all the different humans unsettled them.’

  ‘So, you left and became a prison officer?’

  ‘No, I worked in a warehouse first. But that was depressing, and every day was the same. My mum was angry at me for leaving and, apart from my sister, the whole family stopped speaking to me. Then I saw the prison position advertised, and the money was go
od. It’s more or less the same thing as my family’s business. We take them out of the transport vehicles, process them, herd them along corridors and into the place where they need to be. They are scared as well and can lash out. It’s just we don’t stun their brains and let them bleed to death.’

  It’s the most he’s ever said to me.

  ‘We could have done with one of those bolt guns this morning.’

  ‘That’s right, sir. Maybe more than one for a big guy like that.’

  We’ve reached the path where we go our separate ways. Fats surprises me by stopping. He looks around and then down at the ground.

  ‘Do you want to come in for that beer?’ he finally asks.

  I decide not to mention he told me before that he doesn’t drink.

  ‘Yeah, sure. I haven’t got to get back for anything.’

  I follow him to his home and I’m surprised. He’s not the type to live in a tired bungalow, yet that’s what it is. He takes me up a ramp and opens the door. Inside, the décor is modern, but there’s very little furniture. A big woman with a bigger grin and twinkling eyes scoots towards us in a wheelchair.

  ‘You boys look like you could drink something cool?’ she asks.

  ‘That’s right, sir,’ I say to her, and she tips her head back and laughs.

  So that’s why Fats takes his phone. The woman gets us each a bottle of cold Budweiser. There’s frost on them, so I suspect they’ve been in the freezer. Fats must have texted her before we rode home. We sit around the table and chat. Physically, she’s similar to him. She’s got the same wide shape as Fats and the same nose and mouth, but her eyes and smile are his polar opposite. Her grin is fast to his sleepy one and her eyes are quick and engaging compared to his dopey expression. They’re affectionate to each other in a way that Abi and I aren’t any more.