The Wicked Mr Hall (12 page)

A
t that time, Hull was a long-termer’s prison. A couple of the Great Train Robbers were there, one of whom, Jimmy Hussey, became my friend. The Lambrianou brothers, the Kray twins’ henchmen, were also on the wing. The Governor was a man called Bill Perry, big in stature and big in every other kind of way. A fair and just man, the prison reflected his own personality. There was an attitude of give and take between the inmates and staff. The day after my arrival I was taken to see him. He told me that what was past was past. There was no discernible corruption in his prison, and the beating of prisoners wasn’t allowed. After the memory of that morning, lying on the blanketed floor, waiting for hell, I breathed a sigh of relief. Never has the old saying ‘What a difference a day makes’ had more meaning.

The other cons on the wing were good types. None of us
courted trouble and none came our way. A small group of us would sit together at lunchtime. We would share the cost of sauces and small luxuries that make institutionalised food more palatable. When one of our group was to be discharged, the warder asked us who we would like to join us. Ours was a well-run wing.

A few day’s previously, a young man had arrived at the prison. He was high-risk like myself, doing eighteen years for armed robberies and shooting a policeman in London. We sensed we would like him. He was invited on to our wing and on to our table. His name was David Barnard. His introduction into my life would cause me much joy and, eventually, incredible heartbreak.

Dave had the cell next to mine and, with the free time that we had, more and more of it was spent together. For a young man serving such a sentence, his attitude was very mature. Almost immediately, we felt a sense of ease with each other that can sometimes take years to achieve. We liked the same kinds of music. I would write, he would read. If there was silence, it was a relaxed, comfortable quiet. What had initially been a liking developed into a strong affection. It felt good to have this close human contact. At times, a prison can be the loneliest place on earth. My cell almost became like our little home. In the evening Dave would cook us a nice chicken or suchlike, and we would have a couple of glasses of wine together before lock-up. That was something else the prosecution at Winchester Crown Court would have had trouble believing.

As time went by, his feelings and mine sought fuller expression. It was he who spoke. We were sitting alone in
my cell one evening when he awkwardly broached the subject. He told me that he had formed a great affection for someone inside the prison, but he was frightened to speak as the affection that he spoke of went beyond the realms of ordinary friendship. I asked him who it was. He said that he didn’t want to say, that if he was truthful about his feelings, it might destroy the relationship. I replied that if one person spoke honestly to another, how could it destroy anything? If it did, then it was nothing in the first place. I urged him to tell me: ‘If you can’t speak to him, let me.’ In my heart of hearts, I dreaded hearing any other name but my own. After a short silence he said: ‘The man I’m speaking of is the man I’m speaking to.’ I looked at him. I felt more love for this human being than I had for any other, before or since. I told him to close the door. We made love. In the past, the sex that I’d had with men was purely lust. The feelings and the sensations with Dave Barnard were on a different plane. I would have laid down my life for this man. Just to be with him, just to look at him, made me feel whole. After that, we were an ‘item’. At the age of forty-six, I finally understood what it was to be in love.

John Wooton continued to be the true friend that he had always been. He made sure that I was never short of money. I managed to get myself a canary that mated with another con’s bird. I gave the chick to Dave. Then I transformed my cell into a place where a man could live with some dignity. Red curtains, red carpet, red bedspread – colour gives warmth and hope. I hung a picture of the boy King Tutankhamun on one wall.

I can be a cynical man. In my life I have experienced broken promises and dashed expectations. When this happens, you build a wall, a protective shield. When hungry you eat, when lustful you gratify yourself. The base emotions are easy to deal with, but what of love? It is natural to question. There were times when I questioned. Did Dave love me? Did I love him? Was this feeling real or would it vanish into the ether like a child’s dream? I was given the answer when Dave argued with, and then threatened, a screw. He was put on a charge and moved to the punishment block. The core of my life had been taken from me. First, I just missed him. Each second, each minute, each hour, seemed to stretch into an eternity. After the yearning, the longing just to see him and hear his voice, came the anger. I started to seethe inside. Because of some screw, I no longer felt complete, I was no longer whole. There is a side of me, when aroused, that is cold and completely heartless. That uniformed bastard had crossed the line. He was on dangerously thin ice.

The next day, I saw him. I was carrying a scalding hot pot of tea up a staircase. He was there, smiling. His life was intact. I wanted to see him scream, I wanted his face to burn. I removed the lid from the pot then, positioning myself, readied to sling it into his face. A con, a friend, slapped my arm as the scalding brown liquid started its journey from metal container to flesh. The tea sprayed harmlessly on to the concrete floor. There was no injury, but the intent was clear. Now I was on a charge and I joined Dave in the punishment block. As I was taken down, I heard one screw say to another: ‘I told you it
wouldn’t be long till Roy got here.’ The warders compassionately allowed Dave and myself to exercise at the same time. One hour out of every twenty-four could be spent with him. It was worth the loss of privileges. I would have walked through fire for David Barnard. After that, there was no more questioning. I loved him. There is no emotion so powerful.

For the first time in my life, I considered going straight. My release date would come first. I would gather the necessary capital and, when Dave walked out of prison, we would go legit. We would open a club or restaurant or something along those lines. This was a completely new way of thinking for me. It was also a nice feeling – a future, without the police chasing me, and without the threat of being locked up again. The change in our attitude was noticed. A warder commented on how much calmer Dave seemed nowadays. I was taken off the ‘E’ list.

Prison life continued to roll along its weary course. The weeks turned into months and, one Wednesday morning, the Governor sent for me. My first parole date was in the near future. He was going to recommend me for release. He didn’t see me as any choirboy, but he thought that I was a man of some principle, who, if he wanted it bad enough, was capable of leading a worthwhile and
law-abiding
life. I assured him that, at my age, I had had enough. I was thoroughly sick of going from prison term to prison term. I told him of my plans for a future with Dave. He was pleased that the years had mellowed me and that my days of being a menace to society were, at last, coming to an end.

I set about increasing my chances in front of the parole board. If you take educational courses in prison, the information goes into your file. If you apply for jobs on the outside, it goes into your file. The more moves you make, the better it looks. I made ninety-four moves, ninety-four letters to different companies and establishments. None of them as a butler. I wrote to Sir John Cohen, head of Tesco. I wrote to Hugh Frazer, the man who gambled and lost control of Harrods. The secretary to Lord Rank, the film magnate, wrote back to me, saying that if I could give him a definite date of release, he would do all he could to help me. I went about the idea of building a new life with all the fervour that I had previously put into thieving. I made phonecalls, I did my research and not only did I write to company premises, I wrote to people’s home addresses. My efforts were duly noted by the prison authorities and in the winter of 1970 I was given my parole date, subject to spending eight months in a prison hostel in Preston, Lancashire.

The first thing you want to do when you enter a prison is leave. All of my working life, this had been a constant. I had jumped from a moving train to avoid prison, I had crawled over roofs, scaled barbed wire fences, I had almost frozen to death, I had rolled out of a first-floor hospital window, I had sat in my own piss.

All for freedom!

And now, just as it was being given to me, I no longer knew that I wanted it. Of course, I did want it, but, I wanted it with Dave. There are many kinds of freedom. There is freedom to walk the streets, freedom to shape
your own destiny, freedom to die, if that is your wish. Dave Barnard had already given me a type of freedom. It was freedom from loneliness. Wherever I was, inside or out, if he wasn’t there that freedom was taken away. This was a quandary like no other. We talked and talked and talked. Other prisoners urged me to take the parole, saying I could do more for Dave on the outside. None of them truly understood. For Dave, it was truly awful. He loved me, he wanted me to be free, but he didn’t want to lose me. In the end, his love proved to be unconditional – if I went, I could start to lay the first bricks of our future. At 8.00am one Saturday, I stepped free of the prison gates of Hull. It was with a mixture of relief and heartbreak that I got onto the Preston-bound train.

On arrival in Preston, I hailed a taxi and asked him to take me to the nearest newsagents. I looked through his stock and bought every magazine that I thought Dave might like. From there I went to a record shop and bought him some of his favourite music. With the taxi fare still ticking, we drove to the Post Office where I parcelled it all up and sent if off to Hull. I did all this, even before reporting to the hostel. From now on gifts and letters would be my only link with him. It gave me great satisfaction.

Prison hostels are not nice places. One is much like the other. You are allowed out from eight in the morning till ten at night. You must attend whichever job they find for you, and you share a room with two or three other men. Preston was, it must be said, quite well run. This was largely due to a Mr Burser, a Polish man, who was the
principal warder. Burser was intelligent and orderly. We got on rather well and he was kind to me in many ways and, because of him, my stay there was tolerable. I had little time for contact with my roommates. They were a very poor type whose main source of interest was visits to the pub. They seemed to lack intelligence and ambition. This didn’t bother me, the only thing I did there was sleep.

The morning after my arrival, a prison officer took me on a short tour of the town. Notorious pubs, which I was told to avoid, were pointed out to me. We stopped at the police station car park, where I was asked to get out of the car. Looking at the blue lamps and notices that said ‘Police’, I was told: ‘This is the police station, we don’t want you to give them any reason to talk to you.’ In the second storey windows, I saw detectives’ faces peering through the glass. This was the reason I was standing here, the local plain clothes had requested a look at me. After this most unusual identification parade, I was taken to what was to be my new place of work.

Whittingham Hospital was an institution for the insane, a couple of miles outside the town. The hospital had a policy of employing two hostel men each year. After being interviewed by the catering manager, I was told that I was to work as a kitchen porter. The wages and work were menial and abysmal. It didn’t matter, I still had access to money and I still had my wits. I would turn this situation around. One thing that had turned to my advantage was that John Wooton and my mother had left Stafford, and settled in nearby Lytham St Annes. My old partner was only twelve miles away.

On my first day at work, a 33-year-old Irish waitress from Belfast came over and introduced herself to me. The fact that I had just been released from prison seemed to make me all the more attractive to her. She liked criminals. That afternoon, I had sex with her in one of the rooms. This was my first meeting with Mary Coggles.

Opposite the prison was a pub called The Crown. I soon established a habit of calling in there at about 9.45pm for my last brandy of the day. I became friendly with the landlord, who got to know of my situation. Under hostel rules, I wasn’t allowed to have a car, but, without a vehicle I felt completely lost, and I hated using public transport. I had talked to John on the phone and, using some funds of mine that he was holding, he bought me a Rover. I explained the hostel rules to the pub landlord, and he gave me permission to use his car park. Slowly, things were looking up.

From the first time that I’d slept with Mary Coggles, I knew what I wanted from her. In the right clothes, and after a visit to the hairdresser, her cheerful personality would make her the perfect prison visitor for Dave. At that time, ex-convicts were not allowed to visit the prison from which they had just been released. After buying her some nice outfits and covering all expenses, I started using Mary as a go-between. She would smuggle him letters, presents and my love. Considering that I was sleeping with her, I thought this quite broad-minded of her.

As Dave’s family had completely abandoned him, I encouraged John, my mother, Mary and other friends to write him regular letters. If people went on holiday, I urged
them to send him postcards. Besides living in the hostel and working at the mental hospital, another parole condition was that every two weeks I had to report to a probation officer. This man was very easy to manipulate. As soon as I felt I had gained his trust, I started bringing him presents of bottles of whisky, which he gratefully recieved. I persuaded him to write letters supporting Dave’s case for early release. Although my working days were busy and my social life improving, the energy and drive behind everything was still Dave Barnard. I wanted him free.

Spending any more time in the hostel than I needed to was unthinkable. John and my mother made regular visits, always taking me to nice restaurants and clubs. The unoccupied nights were soon filled by the RAF club a stone’s throw from the prison gates. The clientele there was slightly more upmarket, and it was here that I first met Hazel Paterson. Loud, large and blonde, she sat on a stool at the bar. I was already on nodding terms with her, as she owned the general store/newsagents where I bought my morning paper. I introduced myself, and immediately sensed that she was interested. The person I loved, I couldn’t see. Mary was just someone to have sex with, who I used to pass messages to Dave. This shopowner seemed to be a woman of some wealth. She was also lonely, and I was ready for some diversification.