Inseparable Bond (33 page)

The van drove
through the gates and into the prison yard. The driver shouted out
of the window to a guard who opened the gates to the main door.

He was
escorted out of the van by two guards who led him through a side
door. John looked up at the tall building, charred with decades of
grime. The building is segregated from the main yard by both
distance and its own razor-wired fence enclosing the main gate.

‘You’ve been
inside before, Bell, so you know the drill,’ the officer said
sternly. ‘Go through that door and take a shower, then pick up your
prison issue and wait there and proceed next door for intake
processing,’ he said, pushing him through the door.

‘Stop right
there, Bell… strip and shower,’ another screw shouted.

He could hear
bedlam and shouts coming from the locked cells. A couple of screws
opened the row of cells as the inmates spill out and assemble in
front of a long steel table set up against the wall adjacent to the
showers.

Two screws
pull out boxes from underneath and place them on the table. They
made piles of grey blankets, towels, sheets, soap bars and small
bottles of hair shampoo to each separate pile with a tube of
toothpaste, and a toothbrush dropped into the plastic mugs.

He was
suddenly standing in a puddle of piss as the inmates stripped and
joined him in the row of showers before collecting the sheets and
towels from the table. The showers produced only lukewarm water,
but given the suffocating heat of the block, he was grateful for
it.

A senior screw
with a shaved head and grey stubble stood at the end of the table
with a clipboard, ticking off the inmate numbers as they collected
their rations.

Freshly
showered and deloused by the disinfectant shampoo he had been
ordered to use, he was marched through a metal door and told to
stand by a small desk as a pock marked faced screw took his photo-I
D and fingerprints.

‘Right, Bell,
you know the rules, no stealing, no drug taking, no drug selling,
no fucking and no sucking. If you must get some cock action, let
the other guy suck you,’ the screw said sternly, as he consulted
his clipboard with obvious distaste. Looking up he glared again at
John and said, ‘Stick your dick up the arse of one of those HIV
homos and get Aids – which you will – and you’ll spend your time in
the prison hospital wing with all the other dying faggots and cock
suckers, so its up to you, Bell.’

Bell knew the
form, he was aware that the prison housed a large majority of
homosexuals and prostitutes and was also aware that the prison had
a combination HIV and hepatitis ‘C’ infection rate of sixty
percent. He had heard from the guys in Strangeways that this place
had a high HIV rate and was a far harder place to do your bird. The
intake processing had certainly been a more punishing ordeal than
he had experienced when he first entered his other two penal
institutions.

He was taken
back to the metal table to collect his pile of belongings for his
cell. Being assigned to cell 58 on the upper floor, he was marched
along the corridor to the chanting of inmates peering through their
door as he entered his cell in the centre of the landing.

He put his
pile on the vacant lower bunk. Nick Bradshaw had taken the top
bunk, but he was in the exercise yard with most of the others.

He looked
around his bleak eight by six foot cell with a twelve-foot high
ceiling containing a fluorescent tube protected by a wire mesh
screen. An integrated stainless-steel toilet and sink unit, cinder
block walls stained brown and yellow from decades of cigarette
smoke and lots of graffiti.

It was worse
that the old wings in Strangeways before he was transferred to the
newly-built wing and the open prison in Berkshire had been like a
five-star hotel in comparison. The beds were jutting out three feet
from the wall; only one man at a time could comfortably stand
up.

He had never
been subject to prison overcrowding in Stangeways, but this place
was full to capacity.

They had taken
his wallet and belt but he had been allowed to keep his wristwatch.
He lay on his bed studying the patterns of mould and wall sweat on
the ceiling beyond the rusted springs on the top bunk.

It was a
category ‘A’ wing, as were his others. Child molesters,
paedophiles, rapists and murderers, from as young as 22 up to
90.

He went to his
open door to look at the commotion he heard from the corridor. A
group of screws raced past as two others had pinned down a guy
during a psychotic rage. Other inmates banged their metal cups on
their walls, adding to the already din.

Bell didn’t
sleep that night. He lay awake listening to the moans, groans,
crying and occasional screams from his surrounding neighbours,
remembering the many nights he had heard the same nightly calls
throughout his previous prison term.

He thought of
the quietness of his bedroom next to Jennifer’s, listening to the
lashing of the sea on those windy nights, the white crisp linen
sheets and the seagulls diving low over his garden.

Nick Bradshaw,
his cellmate had arrived there five years ago. He was a child
molester and had been tried and convicted for raping his son,
starting when the child was 3 years old and continuing until the
boy was 14, when he drowned him in the bath.

He was a
strange guy. He would lie on the floor and make animal sounds
through the six-inch gap under the door.

Some of the
inmates were barely in their teens and given extra protection by
the screws when they showered, as they listened to the avalanche of
shouts, hoots and whistles cascading down on them from the guys
peering over the iron fence. Nick Bradshaw always made sure he had
the best view of the young lads.

Bell went to
the food hall, the noise was overpowering. He stood in line to
collect his breakfast and carried it back to his cell, avoiding a
scuffle which had broken out along the corridor.

The philosophy
of most of the prison officers is that inmates should work out
their disputes among themselves where the screws wouldn’t need to
get involved.

Fights between
inmates were constant, as the overcrowding caused tension in and
out of the cells. The population was double the occupancy, often
housing three to a cell designed for two, which always resulted in
an outbreak of unpleasantness.

Bell didn’t go
far from his cell, apart from the mandatory one hour exercise in
the yard, spending most of the day reading in the small room at the
end of the corridor while he waited for news of a work detail.

Nick Bradshaw
was hanging over the rails looking down at the guys in the shower
block as Bell sat hunched over his breakfast tray. He walks back
into the cell, takes Bell’s banana off his tray and squats on the
toilet in front of him, squeezing and grunting like he’s in labour.
The stench is overpowering in the sweltering heat of the wing.

Bell goes over
to the small window, looking at a few snowflakes fluttering in the
wind as Bradshaw continues his arduous labours on the toilet. Once
he had finished, his washing routine was to hang his head inside
the small stainless steel basin, wipes his hands on his huge
skinned head, then dries them on his long, dark goatee beard.

Bell had
palled up with the guy in the next cell, number 60. He was known on
the wing as ‘Big Bear’ due to his enormous size and hair covered
body. He came over as a quiet and harmless sort of bloke, keeping
himself to himself. He’d been held indefinitely, pending
investigation for assault, rape and extortion. Not the type of
neighbour you would choose but far safer than most of the others on
the wing.

Bell laid on
his bunk, looking through the open door to the corridor, listening
to the usual screaming, laughing and occasional sobbing from the
other cells as Nick Bradshaw mutters something in his sleep from
the top bunk.

While the
others were at work detail, Bell and Big Bear would amble around
the exercise yard. It was normally the quietest place to be. It was
cold and the dirt would swirl around their feet as they walked
around the enclosed area, a few metal benches scattered around the
sides of the eighty-foot wall topped with twisted barbed wire.

Big Bear
wouldn’t need an excuse to remove his shirt to proudly display his
variety of tattoos extending from his wrists to his shoulders and
the massive eagle covering his entire back. A piece of string
secured his ponytail as he walked around in the freezing cold
weather.

He’d only been
back in his cell for half an hour, when the screws walked along the
corridor closing and locking all the cell doors.

Bradshaw laid
flat on the floor of the cell, barking and screaming under the
door. He is quickly joined by a dozens of other inmates returning
the sounds.

Bell lay on
his bed with the palms of his hands over his ears to muffle the
sounds until animal sounds, clanging, pounding and screaming
subside to a normal and tolerating level.

He had not
experienced this type of noise or these types of inmates in all his
years of his time in Strangeways. He had been segregated with an
older set of lifers, where here he had been thrown onto a wing of
any ages and any crime, due to overcrowding.

Drugs,
violence, sex and gang warfare were rife here. The screws turned a
blind eye to most it, letting them sort out their own differences
and take sex from whoever they fancied. The young skinheads were
the most vulnerable.

It’s the usual
din which wakes Bell. The inmates were banging on the cells,
wanting to be let out as the jangle of keys could be heard getting
closer as the screws opened the cells one-by-one, the inmates
spilling out onto the corridor, making their way to the food
hall.

They are given
twenty minutes to pick up their breakfast trays and return to the
cells. Towels, soap and toilet paper had been stolen form Bell’s
and Bradshaw’s cell when they returned. ‘Bastard mother fuckers,’
Bradshaw shouted, banging his fist on the stained wall. The towels
and soap were no big deal, but they were only issued with two rolls
of toilet paper per cell per week, with no exceptions. The streaks
of hard shit on the walls proved it wasn’t the first time Bradshaw
had been without toilet paper.

Across the
corridor in cell 61, Lester the molester starts screaming and
banging his head on his cell wall. Two screws and a nervous looking
male nurse arrive and carried him off, his feet dragging on the
steel staircase, still screaming as they pull him along.

Big Bear
shared his cell with a kid of 19, but he looked 12, so thin his
ribs poked out through his bony chest. His name was Robbie
Appleton, but Big Bear called him ‘little bitch’ as he fucked him
regularly as soon as light were out.

Bell was
washing his socks and shorts in the sink while Bradshaw sits on the
pan tearing pages out of a hardback library book he had nicked, to
wipe his arse.

‘Who needs
fucking shit paper?’ Bradshaw says, bending forward groaning.

Two long-term
inmates and a screw wheeled a trolley along the cells, opening two
at a time to replace bed sheets and towels, all bleached and
ironed.

As the inmates
threw their dirty sheets in the trolley, two prisoners were
standing naked outside their cell as two screws ransacked the cell
after finding some illegal substance behind the toilet bowl.
Towels, sheets, clothes and furniture were being thrown through the
door onto the corridor. The screws came out to the waiting
occupants lined-up outside the cell, naked. Bell and the others
watched over the railing as the screws ordered them to bend and
spread their cheeks while a screw inserted a gloved finger up their
arse, determined to find more contraband.

More inmates
gathered along the corridor as they chanted and shouted at the
screws while they watched the little drama.

They all go
back into their cells and the screws walk along locking the doors
as the food cart rumbles down the corridor, supervised by the meal
porter.

The cart moves
from cell to cell as trays are shoved through the slots. Bell’s
slot opens and a tray comes sliding through. Cold ham and salad
with a plastic container of chocolate sponge.

After fifteen
minutes, he was ordered to push the empty tray back through the
slot, empty or not.

The cell doors
are open again. The screws seem to open and close the cells
whenever they feel like it, not only when a disturbance arises as
they had in Strangeways.

Bell’s door is
unlocked as he watched Lester the molester trying to drag a new
arrival into his cell.

‘Get your
sweet fucking arse in here, you cum sucker,’ he shouts, as he pulls
the young skinhead into his cell. The screws do not respond to the
lad’s cries.

Bell laid on
his bed with wet pieces of paper over his eyes to shield the glare
from the fluorescent light on the ceiling and small knots of wet
toilet paper in his ears to muffle the sound of the new young lads
cries and moans as Lester violently fucked him, encouraged by the
chanting of the group who had gathered at the open door to
watch.

Bell was
drifting off to sleep when his cell door opens.

‘Shower time,
you two,’ the screw at the door shouts, ‘you know the fucking
drill.’ He opened four cells at a time where you had to leave fully
dressed and holding only your towel and soap.

Bell and
Bradshaw join the other six and head for the shower stalls at the
end of the corridor on the lower floor. There is a metal bench
bolted to the floor outside the showers for their clothes and
towels. Bell quickly stripped and stepped into the stall. Peter
Forester took the next stall, a good looking 26-year-old who had
got twelve years for murdering a punter while he worked as an
escort and prostitute.