Peterhead (13 page)

As already noted he was soon to take the road north out of Glasgow back to the North-East. The reason is interesting. As he prowled lonely landings in Barlinnie, his Category A status meant he was denied the companionship of his fellow villains and had to exercise on his own and suffer additional restrictive punishments. He ate his meals by himself in his cell, the door of which was decorated with a large letter A in case anyone in the prison was not aware that here was where one of the hardest of hard tickets laid his head. He certainly had plenty of time to ponder a favourite bee in his bonnet. He had long felt that there was unfairness in the way society seemed, to him, to put a higher value on property and money rather than human life. Was stealing cash more evil than crimes like rape, sexual assault and murder? It looked that way to the Godfather. And this second journey to Peterhead confirmed it to him.

In this instance, in the Bar-L before his second stint in Peterhead, he had, at least, the consolation of sharing the jail with old companions from his previous long stint in the North-East for the attempted murder of Mick Gibson. He recalls two men in particular, Tony Smith and Billy Fullerton. Fullerton was an offspring of “King Billy” Fullerton who had led the Brigton Billy Boys in sectarian gang rumbles with the Catholic gang the Norman Conks, led by Bull Bowman in the Glasgow of the 1930s. The Billy Boys also had innumerable battles with the Untouchables, the hard-man cops led by the scourge of the Glasgow gangs, Sir Percy Sillitoe. These low-life friends, Tony and Billy, managed, despite Walter’s pariah status, to slip the odd morning tabloid under his cell door and even on occasion to arrange an illicit cup of tea. Walter told me that Tony and Billy were, “A hundred per cent genuine cons. The screws would shout at them to get away from my door but the lads would just tell them to fuck off as they were talking to a friend!”

The change in Walter’s A category status came about when a visiting dignitary to the prison noticed his exclusion from normal prison life, as he exercised alone, and the VIP took his case up with the authorities. The result was the decision to send him to Peterhead. It was another example of the need for visiting committees and good access to what was going on inside jails for concerned people outside the penal community. The journey north did nothing to disillusion Walter about his theories on the disparity in the treatment of offenders jailed for crimes of violence and sexual misconduct and that of what he considered “old-time” criminals who indulged in thieving and extorting. As he waited in Barlinnie for transfer to the north, Walter was able to mingle with such old lags as Barney Noon from Maryhill and Billy and Vinnie Manson, who had done time with him in Scotland’s jails in the past.

But it was not long before an early-morning knock on Walter’s cell door informed him that he was to have a wash sharpish and meet the Serious Crime Squad waiting at prison reception to speed him by car to a new place of incarceration. Always a cool customer, he shouted his goodbyes to his mates in the long lines of cells. “I’m going up north, lads,” he exclaimed jauntily.

Two cars headed out that cold grey Glasgow morning, both heading north – destination either Perth, Craiginches in Aberdeen or the feared Peterhead. In one car was a man convicted of rape and murder, in the other the infamous bank robber and Godfather. Huddled and huckled in the back seats of the police limos the prisoners saw the River Tay approaching and then disappear in the rear mirrors. Perth was not the destination. This gave Walter the certainty that he was bound for Craiginches rather than the heavy-duty Peterhead. He should have remembered the court appearance when he got fourteen years for bank robbery while a man in a nearby court got seven for killing a three-year-old girl. Had he done so he would not have been so surprised when Jim Frazer, as mentioned earlier, knocked on his dog box that day and told him he was going to Peterhead.

On the last few miles as he watched the rich farmlands speed past, Walter remembered his first approach to PH. Then there was not the comfort of a police limo – he was in a rickety prison bus. As it rattled along, one of the passengers, an old con with the ironic nickname “Sheriff,” leaned over and pointed out to the Glaswegians new to the area the prominent local landmark that was the lighthouse on Buchan Ness. On this journey back to the old jail Walter could remember night after night lying abed listening to the Boddam Coo as if it was yesterday. It was not a pleasant memory. The nearness of the huge red-and-white-striped tower of the lighthouse was a wake-up call to the fact that soon the huge gates of PH would swing open, the car would drive through, and the gates swing shut with a thud that said goodbye to freedom.

Throughout his long prison life Walter Norval eschewed any forelock touching or overdone deference to authority. That was not his style. He liked to be called Wattie and he called governors or warders alike by their first names, he was Wattie, they were Sam or Agnes or whatever. It was a technique that made him memorable inside. He retained this informality for this new incarceration. He found the prison routine little changed from his previous visit. Each morning the cons assembled in the main yard and were marched down what they called “The Burma Road” to the work sheds. The Category A men never left the yard till the others were away and they were last up at lunch and teatime. They were searched on leaving the main hall and when they entered and left the yard. And again on entering and leaving their work shed. On average they were searched eight times a day. Telling me this over a coffee Walter remarked wryly and accurately, “I don’t think they trusted us.”

The layman, knowing that many of these cons had the skill to control large numbers of men and carefully plot and plan bank raids, might be forgiven for thinking such a regime of search after search was, maybe, just a wise precaution, especially in a prison where the cons had a tendency to use improvised weapons against officers or to take any opportunity they could to break out on to the roof to spend a happy hour or two throwing slates at their captors. Or maybe even making an attempt to burn the place down.

Once a Godfather always a Godfather and Walter found his sage advice much in demand in his second stint. He admired the attitude of one of the youngsters who asked for his help. John Steele, or “Johnnyboy” as they called him, had a happy-go-lucky style about him. Walter says, “You would have thought it was twelve hours not twelve years he was facing.” Mind you, prison officers of the time remember young Steele as a handful. Most of the hard tickets in Peterhead at that time had no compassion for their victims, no concern for those they had hurt. Remorse was not in plentiful supply.

But there is the exception, and even the toughest of the tough can have a compassionate side. At one stage of his second Peterhead stay a visitor happened to show Walter a picture of a baby dying of kidney disease in Glasgow’s internationally renowned Yorkhill children’s hospital. The Godfather showed the touching snap to some fellow cons and they decided to do something to help the hospital. At that time wee woolly rabbits and floppy big-eared elephants and soft toys of any kind were not normally found in Peterhead. But the cons used prison wages to buy material and set about the unlikely task of making some. It must have been a bizarre sight – the hard tickets surrounded by felt and stuffing, working at creating toys for the Yorkhill kids. Walter’s mistress, Jean McKinnon, along with the grandmother of the baby in the photograph headed north on a visit and returned home with sacks of soft toys for distribution in the wards of the great hospital on the banks of the Clyde. It certainly gives a different impression of the hard men locked up in Peterhead.

Letters from home were particularly important to prisoners fifty or sixty years ago before mobiles and emails, and especially in a place like Peterhead many miles from the slums of Glasgow. Jean McKinnon was a leggy eye-catcher with some style, a real looker, as they say. But she found time to be a diligent letter writer, penning a note every day or so to her “man” held up north. She seldom missed a day and took every opportunity to visit him, an arduous journey especially in the winter. But Walter still paid the bills for his wife Ina and sent Christmas gifts and other “wee mindings” to her on a regular basis. Cash was sent by his handlers, as he called them, on the outside, for a wee break at Glasgow Fair. And the kids got their Easter eggs and birthday cards.

Having two women in his life was no problem to Walter, always a bit of a ladies’ man. But the arrangement on occasion caused some laughter in the prison among the warders. Walter remembers the day Jean turned up a few hours after Ina had made a visit. The warder, trying hard to keep a straight face, told him, “Your wife is here to see you. And this one is a blonde!”

But relations between the screws and cons could also be edgy. Many of the screws arrived at work with neat packages of sandwiches or other morsels to see them through a tough day of supervising the awkward squad of cons. One particular day Norval and his pals noticed that one guy, instead of the usual gammon on white or whatever, had brought in a couple of duck eggs. He had bought them as a treat before going on shift as his wife had not had the time to make up the sannies that day. When the screw went about his business Walter slipped into the kitchen and nicked a couple of hen eggs, which he used to promptly replace the duck ones, which he was partial to. The screw’s eggs boiled and eaten, the cons had a lot of fun listening to the officer and his pals trying to find out what had happened to miraculously change the nature of his much-looked-forward-to little treat. It was an unsolved mystery that helped pass the time for the crims and their keepers for many an hour.

This sentence was a long haul for Norval. And after two and a half years, not long if you say it quickly, there was still years to wait till his feet again walked the pavements of Possilpark. But at this point there was a welcomed improvement in his conditions – his security status was reassessed and he was allowed to take a cushy job in the storeroom. He acknowledged the irony of a one-time armed bank robber now spending his life behind a counter, for all the world like a shopkeeper. It was, too, a change to be one of the “good lads” behind bars rather than a feared outsider. Now he had a bit more freedom to move around the jail and a bit of responsibility. On a monthly basis he ordered clothing and stores and decided what material needed replacing.

This job helped him work out the remaining long years of his time in Peterhead in a relatively quiet life with the most taxing questions being who to leave in and out of his hall’s football team. Always a leader, this remarkable criminal was a success on the sports field. When it was coming close to the time his sentence would be over he was transferred south to Dungavel prison near Strathaven in Lanarkshire to complete his sentence. At last the gates were opened for him. He was free to go back on to the streets of Glasgow. He had served his time up north and “escaped” legally. Unlike a man he knew well in the prison, a certain Gentle Johnny Ramensky.

Guards, jailers, warders, prison officers – those whose task it is to keep violent and dangerous men locked away and to make sure they pose no danger to the public – have down the years had a succession of names and name changes. The preferred description these days is “prison officer” and much of their training has changed from the old days when they were “jailors.” The job in the twenty-first century entails more than just making sure the cell doors are locked. Training for release is an important part of the job – as is the difficult task of tackling the problem of reoffending. The training and educational standards are high. But it can still be a dangerous occupation, as the wife of one Peterhead prison officer told me: “You are always prepared for the worst, hostage taking, physical attacks and such like.” It is a pleasant moment when your husband turns up back at the front door safe and sound after yet another demanding shift working with the hard men who are caged in a top-security jail. Mind you, there can on occasion be a touch of humour and this lady laughed as she remembered her man coming home, his shirt and uniform slashed with red – but it was not blood, simply beetroot juice poured over him at mealtime by a disgruntled con!

Incidents are not always so harmless. Folk on the outside are generally unaware how the odds can stack up against an officer. The daily routine has officers moving large groups of prisoners to exercise in the yards or to work in places like the tailors’ shop or the quarry in the case of Peterhead and, of course, the officers are heavily outnumbered and immediately in difficulties if a large group gangs up on them. Hence the fact that in the early days, guns and cutlasses were a vital part of the uniform, as has been noted. The shooting in the quarry before the Second World War demonstrated that. But even as late as 1959 some officers had rifles at hand and one told me of a dangerous incident with a work party in the Admiralty yard.

The cons, around forty of them, were at work making concrete blocks. At each end of the work line an officer stood with his weapon at the ready. Normally there was no trouble, as the majority of the prisoners were conditioned to respond to officers’ orders and move around as directed without much fuss. The conditioning, of course, coming from years of following a rigid routine. But you cannot always be completely sure that the men you are supervising will be docile and compliant.

This day prisoners were using spades – always a potentially dangerous weapon – as they went about their work. One guy, presumably nursing a grievance, suddenly lifted his spade to threaten an officer and the other officer responded with a shot in textbook fashion. The training was always to shoot to disable rather than kill and the shoulders were a preferred target. This guy neatly sent a bullet into the arm of the threatening prisoner. It was a nice piece of sharpshooting, but the bullet ricocheted around the concrete blocks and there was much ducking and diving. Clean underwear was needed for both prisoners and guards. Shortly after this incident the guns were finally removed from prison officers, despite in this case preventing a dangerous attack.