Inseparable Bond (7 page)

Bell was now
in his fifth year in Strangeways and well accustomed to the sordid
ordeals he constantly witnessed. He had a good friend in a cell at
the end of the corridor, Bill Mason, the 48-year-old illegitimate
son of a prostitute. When he was young his mother was jailed for
beating and robbing the men she picked up.

At 11, he fell
foul of the law and was sent to a reform school in
Buckinghamshire.

He spent the
next twenty-one years in institutions, emerging at 32 without
having slept with a woman or even drinking a glass of beer.

Confused by
freedom, he caught a National bus to Cardigan in West Wales, where
he grew his hair long, wore a beard and played a guitar in the
Carpenters Arms pub.

Soon he had a
circle of admirers, Girls would kneel at his feet as he sat on the
bar stool and played the guitar, He was certainly a magnet to the
small community.

Due to his
upbringing, Mason had little respect for women. He shared a large
house with a commune where the girls outnumbered the men by four to
one.

Mason was head
of the commune, He made the rules, one of the rules being that the
dogs had to be fed before the women, Girls had to submit instantly
to the men, He banned contraceptives and alcohol, but the girls
worshipped him like a god.

Women would
travel from Cenarth, Llechryd and Llandysul to sleep with him. One
woman from Cenarth brought along her 12-year-old daughter, when
Mason told the mother to leave because she was too old and to leave
the daughter, she obeyed.

Mason’s
incredible magnetism gave him an entry to the wilder fringe of the
Cardiganshire area and he got employment in the local mortuary.

When he was
playing his guitar in the pub, he would outrage the customers by
telling them of his interference with corpses, sometimes to steal
rings or gold teeth, but other times simply because he enjoyed
handling their bodies and occasionally masturbating over them when
he wasn’t indulging in full sex with them.

The location
of this remote area was ideal as a hideout as he could return to
Cardigan to lay low after his attacks on women in the city streets
of Swansea.

With his
constant disregard for women, he would prowl the streets looking
for prostitutes, where he would drive them to a remote location
outside the city boundaries and slaughter them with repeated blows
from a blunt instrument and stabbing them with a screwdriver. Many
victims found were mutilated and unrecognisable.

He had been
caught by chance, as he was unaware of the roadblocks the police
had set up on in Newcastle Emlyn, not far from his home.

The police
noticed his blood-stained jacket and took him to the local police
station. He was arrested after confessing to thirteen murders over
a period of eight months. He was jailed for life, where he led a
lonely existence on the wing, only Bell befriended him.

Bill’s older
sister would occasionally visit him but always unaccompanied,
although she was married with two children. There were glass
barriers between the prisoner and the visitor, with officers always
nearby. The screen is placed in fear that a message or an object
might be passed which could help in an attempted escape.

Bill found his
rare visit unpleasant and frustrating waiting for the families to
be allowed in the room, other prisoners showed tension and frayed
tempers before they arrived and at times scuffles would break
out.

Many of the
inmates on the Bell’s high security wing did not get any visitors
at all, some because they never married or because the marriage had
already broken down when they had been sentenced, so many of Bill’s
mates were lonely because they are isolated and difficult
individuals who had found it hard to make a relationship, let alone
sustain one. The only visits many would get would be from their
voluntary prison visitor.

Letters were
also limited, although Bell had few friends to correspond with and
all letters in closed prisons were censored before being
delivered.

Bell’s sister
had little to say and less from him, but she would pass the time
with small talk into the happenings of the outside world.

For the other
lonely souls, only radio and television would at least bring some
general news, although soap operas and comedy shows were often
preferred where inmates could see how people looked and what they
wore. Such a mirror of the world is important to the long sentence
prisoners, whose sheer length of isolation produces special
problems and the possibility of sinking into deep depression and
apathy if their minds and bodies are not kept as active as
possible.

Bill
experienced many periods of depression and sexual frustration,
which was overcome by masturbation after he had witnessed a rape or
a group of inmates performing a group sex act which excited him,
but he rarely intervened.

A rumour was
circulating the wing about the new prison doctor who was prone to
giving an intimate examination on selected inmates assisted by a
prison officer behind the closed doors of the examination room.

Many prisoners
compared stories of being fondled, and at times sexually
humiliated, at the hands of the pair. Bell had his own account of
his experience when he was admitted to the clinic to have a boil
removed from his left buttock.

He had been
told to remove his trousers and climb on the examination table and
rest on his knees with his legs as wide apart as possible. The
doctor held both buttocks while examining and quickly lanced the
infected boil while the attending guard reached between his legs to
fondle his hanging genitals. The warmth of the doctor’s hands
stroking his buttocks and the warm hand around his testicles and
penis soon resulted in him producing a stiff erection to the
delight of the pair who continued to fondle the rest of his
body.

The doctor
rubbed his lubricated finger on the outside of his rectum, which
appeared to open the crevice so as to welcome the insertion of his
finger. Once inside, he felt no pain but further enjoyment as the
doctor rapidly moved his finger up and down inside. The guard was
violently and sadistically pulling on Bell’s penis while firmly
gripping his testicles with his other hand until he ejaculated on
the cold metal surface of the table.

The guard
threw him a cloth and sternly said, ‘Clean up that mess, you dirty
randy bastard.’

It was known
to keep any incident such as that to yourself, as with little
sexual contact apart from your own, it was a pleasurable but
frightening experience.

Some screws
would violate the inmates for their own sexual satisfaction and
often worked in groups. They would select a new young inmate and
march him to the control room at the end of the landing. Waiting
for him were a group of officers revealing their penises from the
open zips of their uniform trousers.

The young
inmate would be forced to give oral sex to each of them, who once
were erect would strip the boy, lay him over the table and rape him
one by one.

They normally
raped a known homosexual who was probably more used to it and any
complaint to a higher body was soon dismissed and blamed on other
inmates.

A common story
was often circulated around the prison when a sadistic screw, a
chief officer on the wing, got more than he bargained for when he
and a couple of junior officers took a homophobic lad into the
control room and stripped him down. Having a hatred for
homosexuals, he strongly objected to being passed from one officer
to another as they each grabbed his oversized penis and held him
against the wall while an officer performed oral sex on him in an
attempt to see the full size of his penis when erect, which was of
no effect until they produced a magazine of naked women and held
his face to the picture while they each masturbated and fondled
him.

After he
reluctantly ejaculated, they forced his mouth over the chief
officer’s penis where he gripped hard with his teeth and severed
his slightly erect penis.

The officer
was taken to hospital bleeding profusely and the boy spent the rest
of his sentence in the psychiatric ward of the prison.

There were
many instances of sexual abuse between screws and inmates but none
as disturbing or repulsive as that.

There was a
homosexual officer who would work the night shift and enter
selected cells while the prisoner slept, his selection was made
from the naked bodies in the shower block he had noted, with his
fetish being oversized penises.

On entering
the cell, he would perform oral sex and masturbation on the
prisoner while he lay under his blanket. No one ever objected to
this due to the harmless pleasure he gave to them, and to himself,
and it was widely spoken about among the inmates, often asking each
other if they had received a late night visit from the ‘Phantom
Gobbler’ as he had come to be known.

Bell had
experienced this many times and on hearing the cell door open, he
would place his hands behind the back of his head, kick the blanket
off his naked body and pretend to sleep, yet in the dim light he
could see the officer quickly remove his false teeth to offer a
more satisfying feeling. Once Bell had ejaculated, the officer
would perform the same act on the inmate in the lower bunk who had
been patiently waiting.

The few prison
officers who took their sexual satisfaction out on the inmates were
blameless of any inside crime, no matter how serious it was.

Although all
people are the same, the officers were the first and most constant
contact the prisoners had, both prisoners and officers are working
class, where both have probably experienced poverty and have
limited education, But one is criminal and the other law abiding
and the prison officers often used aggression to remind the inmates
of this fact. Officers see inmates realistically; nevertheless
their very proximity reinforces the unconscious need to stress
difference. They need to feel superior to someone and the groups
whose inferiority is obvious, and underlined is that of the
prisoners.

Over his years
inside, Bell had seen many changes to the prison system since he
arrived ten years earlier. He was marched to the workshop and
marched back to his cell, where now he freely walks to other cells
and spends more time out of his own.

He had seen
dogs introduced on the wing along with their handlers, when they
would set the dogs upon those who might try a quick get away or
cause violence on the wing.

Bell had not
gained the title of a model prisoner, but he did get the job in the
library after a short stint in the kitchen, which he disliked. He
became studious and interested in the prison service and was on
friendly terms with most of the screws.

In his
solitary cell he often became depressed due to his sense of failure
and worthlessness on the outside. Social and psychological
deprivation combined added to his condition. He had found it
difficult to find self-confidence amongst the other inmates who
were mainly from the bottom of the social heap and from poor and
deprived neighbourhoods.

Bell and his
friends would often sit in the television room talking about
society on the outside and he would listen to the unfortunate tales
of their childhood, usually from the poorer areas and amongst the
least well-educated sections of the community.

On the other
wings, grasses, homosexuals and sex offenders are normally avoided.
If they cause problems they are beaten or cut, but on the category
‘A’ wing you have to accept it no matter how bad an inmate may be,
and no matter how horrendous the crime they have committed. If they
are here it is because they suffer from some sort of psychological
disorder and what they have done is beyond their control, like
Bell.

Bell was up
for his tribunal which was made-up of a doctor, the governor and a
social worker, but he had learnt earlier with other tribunals that
very few people are discharged and the only way this could happen
was if your psychiatrist convinced the panel he was fit for
discharge, and if they were to agree, they had to persuade the Home
Office that they did not pose a risk to the general public. Only
then would an inmate like Bell be released, so he considered this a
waste of time. And like the others, he was still considered a
danger to the public.

The next day,
while exercising in the prison yard, he looked at the surrounding
wall thinking, how do you scale such an enormous obstacle, thirty
feet high at its lowest point when a prison officer behind him
said, ‘Forget it Bell, the thickness of the structure is designed
to make the prisoners feel comfortable and secure, that’s why we
are here.’

As he was led
back into the prison, he looked over his shoulder at the wall and
realised it smothers any desire to escape except in the most
determined of people, besides a new addition to the security system
had been installed, an infrared beam, so sensitive it could be
broken by a small bird.

Bell was moved
to a newly erected wing of the prison along with many others from
the ‘A’ wing. He was impressed with his own cell, built like a
large plastic mould, which he found easier to clean and equipped
with a built-in wardrobe. In the old cold Victorian cell, he had to
hang his clothes on a hook on the back of the door. Here you can
have the curtains and bed covers you wanted, as long as you pay for
them.

Bell’s cell
was brightly coloured and he soon made it very comfortable with
floral curtains and a floral bedspread, although he did not possess
any photographs or ornaments. For the first time in over ten years,
he had a window without bars; they had been replaced by unbreakable
glass. He had more room to move about and the paintwork was bright
and clean. There were two television rooms, one in the new dining
room and a games room with a snooker table, table tennis table, a
games computer and a radio and cassette. The old block was still
occupied, where any misbehaviour would result in being moved back
to it.