Inseparable Bond (3 page)

Two officers
hold him as a group of others prepare the paperwork at the small
desk in the corridor. Bell stood handcuffed in blue overalls,
looking forward at the officers until he was escorted to the
desk.

The chief
officer picked up a clip-board and in a loud and husky voice read
out the rules and regulations to Bell, ‘O.K. Bell, listen and
listen only once, this is how we do things here, 7am your cell will
be unlocked and you will ‘slop-out’ in the lavatory at the end of
the landing, 7.30am you will be locked back in your cell, 8am you
will go down for breakfast, 8.45am you will exercise in the yard,
9am you will start work where details will be given to you later,
12pm you will go for lunch, 1pm you will be banged up in your cell,
2.15pm you will exercise for one hour, 3.15pm back in your cell. At
5pm you will go for tea. 6pm you will go back to your cell, 8pm,
lights out.’

Bell stared at
the officer as he read this out to him, while the guards released
the handcuffs from his wrists.

As Bell looked
up, he realised he was being watched and not just by the staff in
the central control room with short-circuit televisions, but by
herds of prisoners who were chanting while he stood motionless in
the centre of a large area with various tall and gloomy sections,
which radiated out like the spokes of a wheel.

There is tier
upon tier of cells in each direction with metal stairs joining them
and going up to the top. The whole prison would in this way be
easily supervised from the central vantage point. As Bell was
marched to a room at the end of the corridor, prisoners in their
cells turned their shaven heads to face the wall which was
compulsory when staff or prisoners approached, the only words
spoken were orders.

Part of this
wing had been slicked-up where the old echoing floors had been
covered by vinyl, some doors had been painted in bright colours but
the dark green brick walls remained the same, underlining the
institutional appearance.

Bell and the
prison officers enter the room at the end of the corridor where a
small thin man wearing a large white coat stands behind a metal
table.

‘Bring him
over here,’ he orders the two officers as he watches Bell approach
the desk, looking disapprovingly at the latest inmate. ‘Right Bell,
strip down, everything off and pass your clothes to the officer.’
Bell took off his blue overalls and stood naked in front of the
thin man whilst the officers grinned as they looked at his hairless
thin body and his well-endowed manhood. The doctor struggled
putting on a pair of surgical gloves while glaring at Bell. ‘Bend
down and touch your toes, lad,’ as the two officers placed a hand
on his shoulders to bend him forward.

The doctor
came from the other side of the table and placed his hands on each
cheek of his arse to widen the rectum where he inserted his finger
in search of any illegal substance. Bell flinched as the finger
penetrated his rectum when one of the officers laughed and said,
‘Twenty years inside here Bell, you’ll get more than a finger up
there once this lot get their hands on you.’ The doctor retracted
his finger with another flinch from Bell and told him to stand up
straight, ‘Clothes back on now,’ he sternly said as the officer
threw his overalls back to him. He quickly dressed and was again
marched out of the room.

By this time,
Bell was experiencing a feeling of low self-esteem as he was led
along the dark green corridor, passing other cells containing
silent inmates facing the walls.

He entered an
open cell, the closely defined world in which he was to spend his
term where everything is exaggerated; rumours, tension, the power
of one individual over others who cannot get away. He looked at his
bed where he was to lay staring at the walls with a lack of
identity, being a number, one amongst hundreds of other prisoners
and all dressed the same. The boredom, resentment and rebellion
would grind him to his lowest ebb as he would reflect on a failed
life. The only excitement for him to break the daily routine would
be the occasional visit from his mother and elder sister.

The cell was
cold, a blanket and sheet had been placed at the end of the bed,
being the top of a bunk of two, and at the other side was a single
bed with an uncovered mattress and a stained pillow. A small barred
window gave a small stream of sunlight on to the steel latrine in
the corner of the cell. A dull light bulb centred the ceiling,
encased in wire netting.

The two prison
officers left the cell with the door open, one turned to him as he
left saying, ‘At 12 o’clock, Bell, downstairs for lunch, then to
the desk for your work details, but first take a bath in the room
at the end of the corridor.’ Sitting on his bed, he gazed at the
window, inwardly struggling at the thought of his new role, with
anxieties about his acceptance from his fellow cellmates who were
on work detail for the morning, then grabbed a towel and made his
way to the bathroom.

The room was
colder than the cell, housing six baths and a row of twelve open
showers opposite a row of doorless toilets.

A screw opened
the bathroom door and told him to run a bath while he stood next to
the bath watching me all the time. The heavy atmosphere and the
screws presence is deliberate, it’s designed to have a
psychological effect of intimidation on potentially troublesome
inmates.

After his bath
he went back to his cell, listening to the clanking of keys and
shutting of cell doors. He entered his cell to find a black guy
lying on the lower mattress of the bunk bed. He didn’t speak as he
turned to face the wall.

‘Hi, I’m John
Bell,’ he said.

‘Ye’ I know
who you are, just keep your dick in your pants and you’ll live
through it,’ the black guy replied.

Bell placed
his wet towel on his bed and left his cell for his lunch. As Bell
walked past the row of open cells, realising the important inmates
on this high security wing, those involved in a daring bank robbery
or skilled safe breakers. On the other hand, child molesters like
Bell are despised and may be given a rough time. The prison
department classifies inmates into security categories and this
too, can reinforce criminal prestige. If you need to be a category
‘A’ which means you are a top security risk, then you are likely to
be somebody who matters and to be respected. Although Bell was
considered an ‘A’ category, he had a long way to go before he
gained any respect, due to the severity of his crimes against young
children.

He entered the
row of inmates waiting with their tin trays moving slowly down to
the counter, the noise in the food hall was deafening with about
two hundred mean looking guys, all dressed the same and sitting in
rows on large bench-style tables, sitting on red plastic chairs
slumped over their meals. No one looked up as Bell searched for a
quiet seat away from the crowds, in desperation to hide his
identity.

Bell was aware
that prisoners were particularly prone to split people up in their
own minds into black and white, good or bad. The reality is that
everyone is some shade of grey. As he sat with his lunch of stew
and mash, he looked at each side of his table and the other
inmates, wondering what colour he was to be branded once they
realised the extent of his torture and murderous lifestyle.

After his
meal, he left the food hall to go to the desk for instructions into
his work details. He approached the desk to a waiting screw looking
through files behind a netted hatch, ‘I’m Bell, been sent for work
detail,’ he told the screw.

‘Ah, Bell,
right, you’re starting off in the laundry, down that corridor turn
right and right again and you see it at the end,’ he firmly
instructed Bell.

The prison
laundry was a better job than making road signs, although he was
hoping for a job in the garden. He entered the hot laundry room
where a dozen other inmates were folding sheets and towels, watched
over by a handful of screws lazing around on the industrial
machines. The laundry room was well-equipped to introduce modern
industrial techniques with the adjoining room being a modern
workshop, which produced goods comparable to those in the outside
world.

Bell was taken
over to an industrial dryer and commenced loading a trolley of wet
sheets through the open glass door.

Bell realized
looking back, that his reputation would soon be out with the
publicity surrounding the case and that he was bound to be the one
the others were looking for, even the screws given half a chance
but in Strangeways, nothing ever goes unnoticed so it was only a
matter of time and he had plenty of that ahead of him.

After his
first two hours of laundry labour, the bell sounded and he followed
everyone else out to the corridor. He went straight to his cell
where the screws were opening all the doors for the waiting
inmates. He entered his cell and climbed on to his bed, staring at
the ceiling.

His cellmate
arrived a few minutes later but didn’t speak a word to Bell, just a
disapproving glance as he removed his shoes

He started to
get undressed and Bell lay with his hand supporting his head,
watching him as the late afternoon sun streamed rays of light on
his black perspiring naked body. He paraded around the cell before
doing a succession of press-ups with his thick, black, heavy penis
folding on the cold slate floor as he lowered his body.

Bell watched
the firm cheeks of his arse tighten as he raised his body, which
slowly dragged his long, thick penis along the floor tiles. Bell
watched as he went over to the small metal toilet bowl and turned
his back as he pissed in the bowl. Looking at his back, torso and
firm arse, his penis and large black balls could be seen from his
open legs where a powerful stream of urine loudly splashed on the
water in the toilet.

He turned to
Bell, showing a full frontal view of the muscle rippled torso with
a few remaining drop of urine dripping from his half erect
penis.

Bell had a
tendency for a ‘bit of black’ but it had previously been with young
lads who had drifted into Blackpool from Birmingham and
Liverpool.

Although his
speechless cellmate was an attractive 35-year-old, he would most
certainly be the controller of any sexual encounter, where for Bell
he had never been the submissive type.

Bell’s eyes
followed him as he went over to a pile of books displayed on the
only shelf and removed a glossy magazine of naked women.

Bell lay on
his back, staring at the dimly lit ceiling, listening to the
clanking of keys from the corridor and the heavy breathing of the
guy below as he rapidly invigorated his erect penis, masturbating
over the pictures of naked women in his magazine.

Bell listened
to his groaning as he ejaculated and threw the magazine from his
bed. His rapid panting slowed to a normal level before he jumped
off the bed to reach for a towel by the small wash basin, where
Bell got a quick glance of the white sperm tricking down the black
skin of his flat stomach into a mass of bristly black pubic hair.
He wiped the towel down his stomach and pulled back the rolls of
flesh from his thick sagging penis to wipe the sperm from
underneath his foreskin.

Throwing the
towel to the corner of the room, he threw himself heavily onto his
bed. The lights went out with only a small stream of the late sun’s
rays making silhouettes on the stained wall.

John’s
cellmate was Rick Smith, a tall handsome, charming and
well-educated black man but his gentle polite manner, along with
the looks to make any girl swoon, and the old fashioned courtesy to
appeal to their parents and anyone who met him, was later consigned
to a twenty-year life sentence.

His crime
spree had span over three counties, Greater Manchester, Yorkshire
and Humberside, where on conviction the authorities in those
counties were convinced that beneath his disarming appearance
lurked a Jekyll and Hyde character.

His victims
were raped, clubbed, strangled and finally beaten to death.

His first
crime at the age of 21, was the kidnapping and battering of an
18-year-old girl out shopping in the Trafford Centre. Yet the
college graduate, who had planned to become a lawyer, always
maintained his innocence.

The bloody
trail of attacks followed Smith around for many years as six other
girls in the Manchester and Leeds area disappeared, all with
strikingly similar and attractive appearance as the young women in
the Trafford Centre.

In January the
first girl vanished from her bedroom in Starbeck near Harrogate,
the only hint of her fate was a bloodstain on her pillow. Then in
March, a 19-year-old chemist’s assistant left her shop in Wetherby,
she was never seen again.

A month later,
the third girl left her college in Headlingly, near Leeds, to go to
the cinema, she too, never returned.

All the girls
were shapely brunettes; the other common factor was that a young,
handsome man had approached other girls on the beach in Scarborough
during that summer, which was Smith. There were no other clues to
their disappearances until some forestry workers strolling in the
countryside found a jawbone and other bones in the cluster of
branches which had fallen from trees in a wood near Malton near
Scarborough.

The discovery
of these bones sent shockwaves through the town and they later
linked the murders with the disappearance of two other girls in
Ripon, North Yorkshire, where they were reported missing after a
picnic in a local park. Again witnesses talked of the mysterious
and charming tall black man who had been seen talking to the girls
shortly before they vanished.

Smith had the
means of long distant travel through his job as a lorry driver for
Tesco and would regularly deliver to these outlets throughout the
North of the country.