Daisy in Chains (12 page)

Sex offenders rarely stay healthy and whole in mainstream prison. First to be picked off by the pack are the delicate, precious bits – the eyes, ears, genitals. Then they go for the essentials – kidneys, gut, brain. A lucky nonce doesn’t survive the first major attack on him in a mainstream prison, because if he lives through it he’s likely to be blind, toothless and pissing through a tube for the rest of his life.

Technically, Wolfe isn’t a sex offender. If he were, he’d be ‘on the numbers’, safe in a segregated wing. Nothing has been proven about how his supposed victims died, or what happened to them in the hours leading up to their deaths, but kill three, possibly four women and you’re going to get labelled a sadistic, sexual predator. That’s just the way it goes.

‘Don’t want any trouble, guys.’ Eyes down, palms held outwards, Wolfe takes a couple of steps backwards. There might still be a
chance – slim – that he can make it out of this, but if that isn’t happening, he has a plan:

One – let them think it’s going to be easy.

Make yourself look small, easily threatened, cowardly. Don’t square up. Don’t make eye contact. Let them expect a walk in the park.

‘Murdering scumbag,’ says the murdering scumbag walking towards him. He’s big and strong but he’ll be slow. A fighter who likes to crush. Wolfe backs up further. His eyes still down, he can see just three pairs of legs approaching. A fourth, feet facing the other way, stands guarding the door.

Two – keep calm, keep breathing.

The biggest danger to an inexperienced fighter is that fear takes over. First hint of trouble, you feel anxiety, followed quickly by panic. You stop thinking, hold your breath. You quickly lose energy, you’re a dead man in minutes. So the air has to keep coming in and going out.

Three – assess the situation.

Wolfe has done this already. No windows. One door and that’s being guarded. Three open lavatory cubicles behind him. They’ll want him in one of those, where the chances of avoiding blows will be non-existent. Prison staff will prefer it too – easier to wash away the blood.

Wolfe is two large paces from the edge of the cubicles. No further. This is where he makes his stand. Directly in front, a row of metal washbasins that could work in his favour; and a line of steel mirrors, in which he can see the three men coming for him. Crusher is first, followed by a man of similar size who is wringing and flexing his hands. Bringing up the rear is a younger, slimmer bloke.

Wolfe keeps his eyes on the mirrors. If he doesn’t look directly at his attackers, he can’t give anything away.

Four – don’t let your body betray you.

Most fights are lost because of telegraphing, unconsciously signalling to your opponent the exact move you’re about to make. He’ll see the leap in your eyes when you’re about to throw a punch, the sharply indrawn breath, the backward pull of the shoulder. He’ll see the bounce of a leg before a kick. Be very conscious of what your body is doing and of what his is doing, because he’s going to be telegraphing too.

Right now, Crusher is squared on to Wolfe, keeping his distance, too far away to throw a punch, which is good because:

Five – use your fists as little as possible.

There is a reason why boxers wear padded gloves. Fists are delicate pieces of machinery. Twenty-seven small, fragile bones bound together in a complex structure that, in a street fight, you’re expecting to make contact with the hardest bone in the human body and do some serious damage. It rarely happens. Pit the skull against the fist and the odds are stacked against the fist. Break a fist in the first punch and the fight is over.

Six – stay on your feet.

Most street fights end up on the ground, and Crusher will want him down as soon as possible, because once Wolfe is on the urine-soaked floor, Crusher can bang his head repeatedly down, kick him in the face, stamp on his hands, bring the full force of his weight on to Wolfe’s ribcage. His buddies, Wringer and Slim, can weigh in with their boots. They might only have minutes before the guards feel obliged to step in, but minutes will be enough.

Seven – be ready.

Wolfe can hear the indrawn breath. Crusher has mild asthma. Any second now.

Crusher launches himself at Wolfe. Wolfe hurls himself at Crusher. Crusher must weigh seventeen stone but Wolfe is no lightweight and he’s a hell of a lot fitter. He has speed on his side and, at the point of impact, it is Crusher, not Wolfe, who is driven backwards. They crash into the sinks and from the grunt of pain Wolfe knows he calculated right and that the metal rim has just done significant damage to Crusher’s kidneys.

No fists. The elbow. A sharp, upward stab, right on to the centre of the mandible, sending a shock sensor up into the cerebellum. Done right, this move can cause immediate unconsciousness, but Wolfe doesn’t quite have the momentum. Though Crusher is stunned, he stays upright. Wolfe slams his left hand, side on, into Crusher’s laryngeal prominence, his Adam’s apple. Now the big man is suffering serious pain and he can hardly breathe.

Shin kick. Groin kick.

Seven and a half – never take off your boots. Never.

Wringer and Slim are coming in fast. Wolfe grabs Crusher by both ears, yanking hard.

Eight – go for soft targets.

There are no rules in street fighting. Wolfe swings the big man round by his ears and into the path of the next. Crusher hits Wringer and they both stagger back. Slim is wary now, knowing what he’s up against. He’s also younger, lighter, fitter than the other two. He throws a punch, another, another. Wolfe dodges, skips from one foot to the other, staying just out of reach. A minute of this and Slim will tire – throwing failed punches takes a huge amount of energy – but he doesn’t have a minute. Crusher and Wringer are getting up. This isn’t the movies and the bad guys don’t wait their turn.
Come on, come on, you can’t punch me, you have to – yes!

Nine – get the other guy to kick you.

Kicking is bad news. For the kicker. Kicking throws fighters off balance. Kicking is easy to predict and avoid.

Wolfe grabs Slim’s leg and pulls. Slim loses balance, begins hopping around in a desperate attempt to stay on his feet and it is the easiest thing in the world now to go for his groin. Wolfe kicks hard and Slim is out of the fight.

Ten – it’s not over till it’s over.

Crusher has sneaked around behind and Wolfe finds himself grabbed in a headlock. Wringer is running in. Wolfe jumps, kicking backwards with both feet, and this is his second mistake. Both men pitch forward. They’re going down and Wolfe will be the one underneath. Once a fight goes to the ground, the heavier man nearly always wins.

Hitting the floor almost ends it. Crusher is flat out on top of him. Wolfe can’t draw breath but Crusher has to shift to strike his next blow. He leans away, pulls Wolfe up and turns him over so that he can get at his face. That is his last mistake.

Mountain climbers are always stronger than their build would suggest, they have to be, to haul their own body weight up vertical cliff faces, and much of that strength is in their core. Wolfe’s abdominal muscles are second to none.

Wolfe grabs Crusher’s ears, already sore, and pulls down, simultaneously tensing his oblique muscles and crunching up. His aim is perfect. The ridge of the frontal bone, just below his hairline, strikes down exactly on the bridge of Crusher’s nose. One of the strongest
bones in the human body striking two of the most delicate. Blood spatters across Wolfe’s face as Crusher’s nasal bones fracture. Now, at the end of the fight, he risks his fist. A sharp punch to the point just above Crusher’s ear, where the parietal bone meets the temporal bone. This is one of the weaker points of the skull and a recognized pressure point. Crusher slumps. Wolfe rolls and now he is the one on top.

He grabs Crusher by one ear, raises his fist with the other hand and looks at Wringer. ‘One step closer and your boss is picking teeth out of his shit.’

Wringer gets the message. He doesn’t care that much anyway about a couple of fat birds. He steps back, holds up both hands in a surrender gesture. He’s done.

Wolfe grabs both ears again and bangs Crusher’s head down hard.

‘You so much as look me in the eye again and I will cut off your dick and feed it to you. Do you understand, fat boy?’

No response. Another sharp slam of the head. More blood drips on to the tiles.

‘Do you understand?’

A grunt of assent. Wolfe jumps to his feet, looks from Wringer to Slim. The younger man is on his hands and knees now, bleeding from the lip. ‘Same goes for you two. And you, dickhead in the doorway. Have you got it?’

Eyes down. Grudging nods. It’s the best he can hope for. He turns back to Wringer, the only one relatively unscathed.

‘Give me five minutes, then bring them round. Gavin’s lip is going to need two stitches and I can probably set Terry’s nose for him. It’ll be quicker than waiting to go to hospital. And I can give you all something for the pain.’

Wringer gives a brief nod. ‘Thanks, Doc. I’ll bring them.’

‘And clean this fucking mess up.’ Wolfe leaves the room and heads back to his cell. Nobody stands in his way.

Some say street fights are won with the right attitude. An ability to put aside fear and weigh straight in. Some say they are won by those in the best physical condition. Wolfe knows better. He knows that street fights – specifically those taking place within the close confines of prison walls – are won by a superior knowledge of human anatomy.

Independent on Sunday
, Sunday, 12 October 2008

LOVE’S LABOURS LOSING?

Sandy East goes to meet one of England’s most notorious married couples.

At first glance, Nigel and Carly Upton look like any other recently married pair. She is slender, with sleek, dark hair and an elfin face. He is larger, a strongly built man, albeit unaccustomed to physical exercise in recent years. They sit close together on the sofa, holding hands as they talk to me. Clearly in love, still at the stage where physical contact is regular and important, but mature enough to be self-conscious about being openly and demonstrably affectionate, they could be any couple that have found a fresh lease on love in their middle years.

Until you remember that Nigel Upton has served seven years of a life sentence for the murder of two teenagers. And that the two met, fell in love and married while he was a convicted prisoner in Strangeways.

Upton was arrested in 2001, following the discovery of the bodies of Sam George and Esther Fletcher in their car in a well-known ‘lovers’ lane’ just outside Buxton in Derbyshire. Prior to the double murder, police had received numerous reports of a man loitering in the area, watching the ‘courting’ couples. Investigators believed that Sam and Esther surprised and recognized their Peeping Tom and didn’t live to report him to the police.

Carly Upton, née Gleeson, was an unmarried forty-one-year-old primary school teacher who became interested in Upton’s case, started writing to him, then visiting and eventually campaigning for his release. Her efforts mainly took the form of letters to newspapers and Members of Parliament and minor fundraising until she had the great stroke of luck to secure the
interest, and then the support, of Maggie Rose, a lawyer, author and campaigner who first came into the public eye last year when she secured the release of triple murderer Steve Lampton.

Rose spotted three significant discrepancies in the case against Upton. First, that the primary crime scene, where the two bodies were found, was contaminated by bystanders and the first police officers to attend. Second, that the initial search of Upton’s house was incomplete, necessitating a second search and opening up the possibility of evidence being planted between the two. And third, that crucial evidence suggesting Upton could have been several miles away on the night in question was withheld by police at the original trial.

‘Having Nigel home still feels like a dream,’ Carly tells us. ‘All we want now is to find out who really killed those teenagers and be left in peace.’

Such a happy ending is unlikely to happen any time soon as Derbyshire police are not looking for anyone else in connection with the crime. A source close to the investigating team told us, ‘Upton is guilty as sin. Maggie Rose doesn’t care about justice, just about proving to the world how clever she is. Thanks to her, a killer is back on the streets and he will kill again.’

At their home in Macclesfield, already subjected to vandalism and acts of graffiti, Carly is obstinate in the face of public threats. I ask her how long she would have carried on supporting Upton, had Rose not come to their aid. ‘As long as it took,’ she tells me. ‘Nigel is my lover, my best friend, my husband. If I’d had to spend the rest of my days as a prison wife, I would have done.’

PROPERTY OF AVON AND SOMERSET POLICE. Ref: 544/45.2 Hamish Wolfe.

SNOW CLOUDS. THEY’VE
been gathering all morning, thundering in from the west. They are above Pete Weston now, pregnant with a thick, cold purpose, layer upon layer of damp air in which ice crystals are forming. With every minute that passes, the textured density of the sky seems to be getting closer. It has to break soon, or the world will drown in the freezing mass that is above him.

‘Pete, the boss wants a word.’

Pete takes a long, slow drag and holds out his fag. Sunday is trying to give up but takes it anyway.

‘Any idea what about? And give me that back. I thought you’d quit.’

Sunday nicks a second puff before handing it back. ‘He’s just heard Maggie Rose has requested a visiting order for Hamish Wolfe.’

‘I saw her last night,’ Pete says. ‘She said nothing about going to see him. In fact she said the opposite.’ He takes another drag, wondering how he feels about the news. The warm, stale air of the station hits him as he goes back inside and he still doesn’t know.