The Jump (66 page)

But it was always the same on the violent wings: these were men who would kill their own grannies if they annoyed them enough, and they were men it was hard to police. You could only watch and wait and see what was going to happen, and hope against hope that you weren’t going to be caught in the crossfire. Most of the warders were in the pay of Lewis anyway. They had a job to do for him as well as the Home Office.

The screw in charge today was a Mr Hollingsworth. He had been

deliberately chosen because he was quiet and on the verge of

retirement - exactly what Lewis needed on a day when the Wing was

to be pulled apart.

Hollingsworth called the two screws out of the rec room at one minute to ten exactly.

It was what Lewis had told him to do, and Mr Hollingsworth, being used to taking orders, did precisely what he was asked of him.

Chapter Forty-Three

Donna parked the Astra van outside the lock-up garages in Pitsea and turned off the engine. She looked at Carol, who was watching the road to see if Davey had arrived before her, and was maybe waiting for them. At the moment the two women trusted no one. If Paddy had been found, and the chances were that he hadn’t, then the men could arrive at any minute. ‘Do you think we’re doing the right thing, Carol?’ She shrugged, helplessly. ‘I really don’t know, Donna. All I do know is that we have to get out the merchandise and burn it. Burn the bloody lot. If that arsehole of an old man of mine thinks I’m going to sit back and let him carry on with this lot, he’s got another think coming!’

She slipped out of the van and Donna watched her with apprehension as she approached the garage doors.

What she was supposed to do if Big Paddy or-Davey jumped on them, she wasn’t sure. Donna picked up her mobile and turned it on in case she had to phone for help.

Carol unlocked two padlocks and two mortice locks on the wooden door of the garage. The door opened fully to allow access for a vehicle, and it also had a small inset doorway. Carol opened the doorway first and Donna watched as she stepped inside, her heart in her mouth.

Carol popped her head out and gestured to Donna to back the van up.

Five minutes later the two women had opened the door fully and were packing the boxes of books and discs into the back of the Astra.

‘Oh, please hurry up, Donna, for fuck’s sake. If we get caught by the Old Bill it’ll be bad enough, but if Paddy comes we’ll be in deep shit.’

Donna was moving the last of the boxes from the back of the lock-up. The Astra van was nearly full and the last few boxes would be difficult to cram inside it. As she moved them she called out, ‘Carol, come and look at this!’

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Carol walked over to her and frowned. The concrete had been taken up at some time and now, after the removal of all the boxes, they could clearly see that a hole had been dug in the floor of the lockup.

‘What do you reckon this is then?

‘I don’t know,’ Donna said. ‘Maybe something’s buried here.’

Carol stepped back in fright.

‘You don’t think it’s a grave, do you?’ Her voice was hesitant, fearful.

Donna laughed nervously. ‘Well, if it is, then the person was buried standing up! Look at the size of it.’

Carol lit a cigarette and pulled on it deeply.

‘That’s what I’m frightened of. Maybe it’s a little kid. After what we’ve found out the last few days, I wouldn’t put nothing past that lot.’

Donna felt her face blanch. ‘Oh, leave it out, Carol, that’s stupid.’

The other woman shook her head.

‘Listen, Donna, that lot are capable of anything, especially your Georgio. I ain’t being funny but I wouldn’t put fuck all past him. I mean, would you have believed that Big Paddy, that nice bloke, could rough up old Dolly, eh? Maybe they branched out into British kids, who can tell? For all we know, Georgio and Davey could have been nonceing.’

Donna shook her head impatiently. ‘I can’t believe that, Carol.’

She pulled Donna round to face her.

‘Well, they were peddling all this filth, weren’t they? What makes you so sure they weren’t getting their rocks off on it? They must have had contacts or they’d never sell the stuff, would they? They had to know men who wanted this stuff. This ain’t a bit of ordinary porn, love, a bit of old bluey. This is babies, little kids.’

Donna acknowledged the truth of what Carol was saying, but everything inside her rebelled at the thought of Georgio, even knowing what she knew about him, actually touching the children. His baby son came to mind, and she felt a wave of pure hatred rush over her body. Then she heard Candy’s voice talking about Georgio in Thailand with the twelve-and thirteen-year-old girls. ‘The three headed blow job’ she had called it.

‘Pack the last few boxes into the car, Carol, and I’ll start digging this lot up.’

Carol stared at her as if she were mad.

‘You’re going to dig this place up? Are you out of your mind! Paddy, Davey, anyone could turn up!’

‘At this moment in time, Carol,’ Donna told her, ‘I couldn’t give a flying fuck, as you would say. I will never sleep again unless I know what the hell is under this floor.’

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them Carol was stunned. She shook her head in distress, her flattened, bleached hair waving with the motion. ‘Oh Donna, please. I don’t think I want to know.’ ‘That’s the trouble, love. That’s why people can buy all this stuff because no one wants to know. No one likes to think about it. It’s too horrible to contemplate. Well, if you want, you go ahead and take the books and discs. Go on home. I’ll stay here alone and sort this lot out.’

‘You’re mad, Donna, stark staring mad. Get the Old Bill. Let them sort it out.’

Donna wiped her hand across her face.

‘And what if there’s nothing here? What then? They will question you, me, the lot of us. We’ll be in it up to our necks, and I-hate to remind you but you and I are as guilty as the men in this. Or at least, that’s how it will look. We’ll be arrested, your kids will be without you and Davey. Think about it, Carol. Until we know what’s under this floor we can’t decide anything.’ Carol blanched with fright.

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Donna. How the hell did this happen to us?’ She shook her head sadly. ‘It happened, Carol, because we let it. My mother used to say, “People only do to you what you let them,” and that’s true. Now pass me that crowbar and let’s get started. You shut the van up and lock it, then close the main doors. I’ll start pulling up the concrete.’

Carol passed her the crowbar and walked from the lock-up, her heart in her mouth.

Whatever they found, even if it was nothing, Carol knew it would be the final nail in her marriage to Davey, because she would never, ever forgive him for putting her through all this.

As she shut the door of the lock-up, all her fear of Paddy and Davey evaporated … overshadowed by the fear of finding the remains of a child.

Georgio watched the minute hand of the clock reach ten. Then Big Ricky went to the camera in the corner of the room and, standing on a chair, he placed a sweatshirt over the lens.

Georgio watched and then Lewis walked towards him and he smiled. Lewis didn’t smile back.

All eyes were on Denning and Hall, and the two men sensed that their lives were in grave danger. The rec room was ominously quiet as the men waited for the first blow to fall.

Ricky took out of the waistband of his trousers a long-handled knife. It was made from the remains of a broom-handle, and fixed

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into the end of it was the blade of a steak knife stolen from the kitchens. He waved it in front of his face with a deep laugh.

Denning grabbed Hall’s hand as if the action could save them and the men in the room sniggered.

Ricky and Georgio walked towards them. Georgio pulled out his own blade, a smaller, scaled-down version of Big Ricky’s.

‘Thought we didn’t know who you were, didn’t you?’ Georgio’s voice was low.

Then Ricky stabbed Hall in his stomach, pulling the blade across the beer belly, a deep red gash appearing as if by magic. Hall grabbed his stomach in both hands, mortal fear on his face. Denning watched in fascinated silence as did the rest of the men in the rec room. First blood had been drawn, and it seemed as if that caused the men watching to go mad.

Chopper picked up a chair and smashed it against the pool table. Grasping a chair leg, he began to lay into Denning, putting all his considerable strength into the blows he rained down on the man’s body. Denning dropped to the floor at the first assault and then the men were all over him and Hall.

Lewis walked calmly over to Georgio, who was watching the spectacle, fascinated.

‘Aren’t you going to help your friends out?’ Lewis said. The words were lost in the shouts and the screams of the two men being attacked.

Georgio stared into Lewis’s face and then, smiling, he pushed the knife he held into Lewis’s chest until it was buried right up to its crudely-fashioned handle. He watched Lewis’s eyes widen with shock and pain, and as Lewis’s minder came towards him, he tried to pull the knife free. But Lewis was falling to the ground and this made it difficult. As the minder reached him with upraised fist, Georgio watched with pleasure as Big Ricky dragged the man backwards by putting his arm across his throat, and then he watched the man’s throat being cut, slowly and deliberately, with the long-bladed knife. Georgio pulled the knife out of Lewis and smiled at Ricky, who was pleased to see his enemy on the floor, writhing in agony. Georgio wiped the blade of the knife across Lewis’s throat, as if cutting through butter, and the blood pumped up into the air, catching Georgio’s denim shut and trousers.

Turning from Lewis, Georgio and Ricky joined in the fray around the beasts.

The language was ripe, the men frenzied in their attack. The rec room was demolished within minutes. Looking around at the carnage, Georgio laughed in delight. It

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them couldn’t have gone better. Everything was exactly as he wanted it.

Standing back, he wiped his face and was surprised to find he was sweating. He watched in shocked silence as Hall’s head was hacked from his body. The men were going wild with bloodlust and hatred. He saw the head being thrown around the room, from man to man, saw it kicked across the floor and thanked God he wasn’t on the receiving end of it. Denning was still alive. Georgio watched as he tried to crawl under the pool table. ‘Oi! Watch out, Denning’s trying to get away!’ Georgio’s voice was jovial, loud. He ran across the room and dragged the man out from under the table by his legs. Denning was unrecognisable, his face just a bloody pulp. In the distance, Georgio could hear the alarm bells going off all over the prison - the noise he had been waiting for. Throwing Denning’s legs back to the ground, he watched as the man began jumping on the nonce’s body, on his chest, head and legs; falling over and picking themselves up once more to attack the men again. All laughing hysterically, eyes bright, some with bloodlust, some with the buzz of cocaine or heroin.

Georgio looked around him and felt an urge to roar with laughter. All his life he had manipulated people and this, to him, was proof of what he could achieve if he wanted to.

Eros, still singing, had somehow picked up on the atmosphere in the room and Georgio watched as he lifted Hall’s decapitated head and cradled it in his arms. Singing to it in a loud voice, an old hymn that seemed to make the scene more surreal as his voice rose over the other men’s, who all stopped what they were doing and watched him in a fascinated, spent silence. It was as if only now were they fully aware of what they had done.

The men looked around them at the four mutilated bodies and the blood everywhere, and most felt as if they were awakening from a nightmare.

Fifteen minutes after the first blood had been drawn, the guards came into the rec room and what they saw astounded them. All the man were standing around in silence, drenched in blood, and in the centre of the room was Eros, a man’s head in his arms, singing ‘Jerusalem’.

Mr Hollingsworth took in the scene - Lewis’s body mangled and twisted, and said in a shocked voice: ‘Get the fuck out of here, men.’

Two minutes later the wardens were on the other side of the Wing doors, and Mr Hollingsworth was on the blower to the Governor’s office. One of the younger screws was shocked to hear him shouting: ‘Get the fuck down here, man, they’ve all gone fucking barmy!’

Slamming down the phone the older screw said sadly, ‘I thought

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I’d seen everything in this job, son, everything.’ ?y..

The younger man spoke for all the screws when he said, ‘What do we do now, Mr Hollingsworth?’

The older man lit himself a cigarette and said in a tired voice, ‘We have a cup of tea and wait for Dopey Bollocks to get here. Now you’ll find out why the Governor gets paid such a hefty wedge. This is his baby, Sunny Jim, nothing to do with us. Let him sort it out.’

Donna was sweating and tired. The concrete had been easy to prise up, it was the dirt underneath that was giving her the trouble. With only a piece of wood to dig with, it was a slow and laborious job.

‘Come on, Donna. Get a move on, will you?’ Carol was keeping lookout at the garage doors.

“I’m nearly there. Will you stop keeping on at me!’ Donna’s voice was loud and irritable in the empty garage. Tugging at the dirt now with her bare hands, she said, There’s something down here, Carol. Give me a hand.’

Carol walked over to her on wobbly legs.

‘What is it?’

Donna was too tired now and too involved with what she was doing to be frightened any more.

‘How the hell do I know? Give me a hand, girl, there’s something solid under the earth.’

Carol looked into the hole that Donna had dug. It was about eighteen inches deep, and as Donna went on, tossing more dirt out with her bare hands, Carol saw pieces of a red blanket.

Donna heaved at the blanket, putting all her weight behind her arms. The blanket started to come free from the dirt around it and both women realised that it contained something. Putting her hand over her mouth, Carol ran to the garage door, bile rising up inside her as she retched outside in the thin daylight.

Holding her stomach she heard Donna give a high-pitched laugh, then she heard: ‘Oh my good God!’

Taking her courage into her hands, Carol stepped back inside the doorway and walked towards Donna.

Davey Jackson and Big Paddy pulled into the garage block just as Carol walked across the garage floor.

Mr Justice Hanningfield, Acting Governor of Parkhurst while a permanent Governor was being chosen, walked on to the SSB unit with his two assistants.

‘What is going on here?’

Mr Hollingsworth said quietly, ‘There’s been a bit of trouble, Mr

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them Hanningfield. It seems the men got wind of Hall and Denning’s identity. They slaughtered them just before morning tea was served. They also slaughtered Donald Lewis and one of his cronies. At this particular moment the men are in post-attack trauma, quiet but still dangerous. I’ve seen it before. There’s been something brewing here for months and today is the upshot. I don’t like to cause trouble, sir, but I did advise against putting two sex-offenders in with the blaggers. I told you they wouldn’t swallow it.’