The New Collected Short Stories (48 page)

‘Am I to understand,’ enquired Mrs Justice Butler, ‘that both parties consider this to be a fair and equitable distribution of all the assets in question?’

‘Yes, m’lady,’ said Mrs Abbott firmly, on behalf of her client.

‘I see,’ said the judge and, turning to Mr Dexter, asked, ‘Does this also meet with your client’s approval?’

Mr Dexter hesitated. ‘Yes, m’lady,’ he eventually managed, unable to mask the irony in his voice.

‘So be it.’ Fiona smiled for the first time since the case had opened. The judge returned her smile. ‘However, before I pass judgement,’ she continued, ‘I still have one question for Mr Radford.’ Bob glanced at his solicitor before rising nervously from his seat. He looked up at the judge.

What more can she want? was my only thought as I sat staring down from the gallery.

‘Mr Radford,’ began the judge, ‘we have all heard your wife tell the court that she considers these two lists to be a fair and equitable division of all your assets.’

Bob bowed his head and remained silent.

‘However, before I pass judgement, I need to be sure that you agree with that assessment.’

Bob raised his head. He seemed to hesitate a moment, but then said, ‘I do, m’lady.’

‘Then I am left with no choice in this matter,’ declared Mrs Justice Butler. She paused, and stared directly down at Fiona, who was still smiling. ‘As I allowed Mrs Radford the opportunity to prepare these two lists,’ continued the judge, ‘which in her judgement are an equitable and fair division of your assets –’ Mrs Justice Butler was pleased to see Fiona nodding her agreement – ‘then it must also be fair and equitable,’ the judge added, turning her attention back to Bob, ‘to allow Mr Radford the opportunity to select which of the two lists he would prefer.’

‘I
F YOU WANNA FIND
out what’s goin’ on in this nick, I’m the man to ’ave a word with,’ said Doug. ‘Know what I mean?’

Every prison has one. At North Sea Camp his name was Doug Haslett. Doug was half an inch under six foot, with thick, black, wavy hair that was going grey at the temples, and a stomach that hung out over his trousers. Doug’s idea of exercise was the walk from the library, where he was the prison orderly, to the canteen a hundred yards away, three times a day. I think he exercised his mind at about the same pace.

It didn’t take me long to discover that he was bright, cunning, manipulative and lazy – traits that are common among recidivists. Within days of arriving at a new prison, Doug could be guaranteed to have procured fresh clothes, the best cell, the highest-paid job, and to have worked out which prisoners, and – more important – which officers he needed to get on the right side of.

As I spent a lot of my free time in the library – and it was rarely overcrowded, despite the prison accommodating over four hundred inmates – Doug quickly made me aware of his case history. Some prisoners, when they discover that you’re a writer, clam up. Others can’t stop talking. Despite the silence notices displayed all around the library, Doug fell into the latter category.

When Doug left school at the age of seventeen, the only exam he passed was his driving test – first time. Four years later he added a heavy goods licence to his qualifications, and at the same time landed his first job as a lorry driver.

Doug quickly became disillusioned with how little he could earn, traipsing backwards and forwards to the south of France with a load of Brussels sprouts and peas, often returning to Sleaford with an empty lorry and therefore no bonus. He regularly fouled up (his words) when it came to EU regulations, and took the view that somehow he was exempt from having to pay tax. He blamed the French for too much unnecessary red tape and a Labour government for punitive taxes. When the courts finally served a debt order on him, everyone was to blame except Doug.

The bailiff took away all his possessions – except the lorry, which Doug was still paying for on a hire-purchase agreement.

Doug was just about to pack in being a lorry driver and join the dole queue – almost as remunerative, and you don’t have to get up in the morning – when he was approached by a man he’d never come across before, while on a stopover in Marseilles. Doug was having breakfast at a dockside cafe when the man slid on to the stool next to him. The stranger didn’t waste any time with introductions, he came straight to the point. Doug listened with interest; after all, he had already dumped his cargo of sprouts and peas on the dock-side, and had been expecting to return home with an empty lorry. All Doug had to do, the stranger assured him, was to deliver a consignment of bananas to Lincolnshire once a week.

I feel I should point out that Doug did have some scruples. He made it clear to his new employer that he would never be willing to transport drugs, and wouldn’t even discuss illegal immigrants. Doug, like so many of my fellow inmates, was very right wing.

When Doug arrived at the drop-off point, a derelict barn deep in the Lincolnshire countryside, he was handed a thick brown envelope containing £25,000 in cash. They didn’t even expect him to help unload the produce.

Overnight, Doug’s lifestyle changed.

After a couple of trips, Doug began to work part-time, making the single journey to Marseilles and back once a week. Despite this, he was now earning more in a week than he was declaring on his tax return for a year.

Doug decided that one of the things he’d do with his new-found wealth was to move out of his basement flat on the Hinton Road and invest in the property market.

Over the next month he was shown around several properties in Sleaford, accompanied by a young lady from one of the local estate agents. Sally McKenzie was puzzled how a lorry driver could possibly afford the type of properties she was offering him.

Doug eventually settled on a little cottage on the outskirts of Sleaford. Sally was even more surprised when he put down the deposit in cash, and shocked when he asked her out on a date.

Six months later Sally moved in with Doug, although it still worried her that she couldn’t work out where all the money was coming from.

Doug’s sudden wealth created other problems that he hadn’t anticipated. What do you do with £25,000 in cash each week, when you can’t open a bank account, or pay a monthly cheque into a building society? The basement flat on Hinton Road had been replaced with a cottage in the country. The second-hand fork-lift truck had been traded in for a sixteen-wheel Mercedes lorry. The annual holiday at a bed and breakfast in Blackpool had been upgraded to a rented villa in the Algarve. The Portuguese seemed quite happy to accept cash, whatever the currency.

On their second visit to the Algarve a year later, Doug fell on one knee, proposed to Sally and presented her with a diamond engagement ring the size of an acorn: traditional sort of chap, Doug.

Several people, not least his young wife, remained puzzled as to how Doug could possibly afford such a lifestyle while only earning £25,000 a year. ‘Cash bonuses for overtime,’ was all he came up with whenever Sally asked. This surprised Mrs Haslett because she knew that her husband only worked a couple of days a week. And she might never have found out the truth if someone else hadn’t taken an interest.

Mark Cainen, an ambitious young assistant officer with HM Customs, decided the time had come to check exactly what Doug was importing, after a nark tipped him off it might not just be bananas.

When Doug was returning from one of his weekly trips to Marseilles, Mr Cainen asked him to pull over and park his lorry in the customs shed. Doug climbed down from the cab and handed over his worksheet to the officer. Bananas were the only entry on the manifest: fifty crates of them. The young customs official set about opening the crates one by one, and by the time he’d reached the thirty-sixth, was beginning to wonder if he had been given a bum steer; that opinion changed when he opened the forty-first crate, which was packed tightly with cigarettes – Marlboro, Benson & Hedges, Silk Cut and Players. By the time Mr Cainen had opened the fiftieth crate, he had placed an estimated street value on the contraband of over £200,000.

‘I had no idea what was in those crates,’ Doug assured his wife, and she believed him. He repeated the same story to his defence team, who wanted to believe him, and for a third time, to the jury, who didn’t. Doug’s defence silk reminded his lordship that this was Mr Haslett’s first offence and his wife was expecting a baby. The judge listened in stony silence, and sent Doug down for four years.

Doug spent his first week in Lincoln high-security prison, but once he’d completed an induction form and was able to place a tick in all the right boxes – no drugs, no violence, no previous offences – he was quickly transferred to an open prison.

At North Sea Camp, Doug, as I’ve already explained, opted to work in the library. The alternatives were the pig farm, the kitchen, the stores or cleaning out the lavatories. Doug quickly discovered that despite there being over four hundred residents in the prison, as librarian he was on to a cushy number. His income fell from £25,000 a week to £12.50, of which he spent £10 on phone cards so that he could keep in touch with his pregnant wife.

Doug rang Sally twice a week – you can only phone out when you’re in prison, no one can call you – to promise his wife repeatedly that once he was released, he would never get into trouble with the law again. Sally was reassured by this news.

In Doug’s absence, and despite being heavily pregnant, Sally was still holding down her job at the estate agent’s, and had even managed to hire out Doug’s lorry for the period of time he would be away. However, Doug wasn’t telling his wife the whole story. While other prisoners were being sent in
Playboy, Readers’ Wives
and the
Sun
, Doug was receiving
Haulage Weekly
and
Exchange & Mart
for his bedside reading.

He was browsing through
Haulage Weekly
when he found exactly what he was looking for: a second-hand, left-hand-drive, forty-ton, American Peterbilt lorry, which was being offered for sale at a knock-down price. Doug took a long time – but then he had a long time – considering the vehicle’s added extras. While he sat alone in the library, he began to draw diagrams on the back of the magazine. He then used a ruler to measure the exact size of a box of Marlboro. He realized that the cash return might be smaller this time, but at least he wouldn’t be caught.