The Loose Screw (26 page)

Shortly after my separation I began to go a little off the rails and began to hit the drink a bit too much. I started to become a regular feature at all the functions and you could always rely on me to liven up the party a bit. I added a little too much life to one such party and the consequences could have cost me my job.

At the time a civilian catering firm ran the officers' mess and I was invited to the mess manageress's leaving party, which was held at a pub in Thamesmead. On the day of the party I was not working, so began drinking at lunchtime as I slowly made my way to the venue. By the time I had arrived, I was well on my way to getting the prize for being the most pissed person there. I met up with a group of fellow officers, but shortly after arriving we noticed an unwanted guest in our midst. Wandering around and telling us that we had drunk enough was a certain governor who shall remain nameless, but those of you who have dealt with him will know who he is when I say he had a dicky bow on as usual. Some of our group took great offense to this man's interference with our love of lager, and it was decided that something had to be done. I was nominated as the one to go and tell him to leave, as his presence was no longer required.

I staggered over to him and basically told him that he was upsetting the other guests so we wanted him to piss off. He agreed and stated that he was about to leave anyway as he was ashamed to be seen in our company. Pleased that my task had been carried out with apparent ease, I returned to the group only to hear some alarming news. Scouse informed me that as I had walked away the governor had gestured something behind my back and had not left but in fact had just moved to another position in the pub.

Furious that he had ignored my warning, I went back over to him and asked him why he had not gone. He made some sarcastic remark which, in my inebriated state, I felt left me with only one option. I gave him a cracker of a right-hander, which did not have its usual effect due to the fact that I could see three of him and tried to hit the one in the middle. It was, however, effective enough to make him leave and cause everyone else to stare on in disbelief.

The rest of the evening went well until I had obviously had enough and went outside to throw up in some bushes. Whilst doing so I lost my false tooth and, despite scouring the area on my hands and knees, it appeared that the tooth fairy was too quick for me as I never found it. My memories after that point are a blank and the next thing I remember was waking up in a strange room the following morning.

I awoke wrapped in an army-issue sleeping bag on a top bunk bed, and as I tried to remember where I was I looked around the room for clues. Scattered all over the floor of this strange room was an array of martial arts stretching equipment. In my bewildered state I thought I had been captured by a gang of triads and immediately checked to see if I still had my boxer shorts on. Thankfully I did and they were still on the right way round, so I was fairly confident that my kidnappers had not gang-raped me. It turned out to be 'steady' Eddie's house, who was a fellow Green Jacket as well as an officer at Belmarsh. He had found me asleep outside the pub and had taken me back to his place for the night.

I made my way into work only to discover that I had no uniform other than a spare pair of trousers in my locker. As a result I had to struggle through the day with a bright blue key chain, a belt with 'loan belt' engraved in large letters on the back and wearing a female officer's blouse, which I had borrowed from another friend, Tracy. You can imagine the stick I got from other members of staff, let alone the inmates.

I was still oblivious to what had really gone on the night before, although I had that feeling you get after a night out that something serious had happened. It was the way in which everyone I came across gave me that look while shaking their heads and tutting at me that made me worry more. It was not until I passed the telephone exchange that Kim came out and asked if I was on my way to apologize to the governor for my behaviour the night before. After she had explained what I had done, I spent the next few days waiting for the summons to his office to get the sack. I have got to give the man his due though. He did not take the matter any further, although he did make a meal out of it every time he had to pull me up about anything in the future. That incident occurred right at the end of my time with externals. With the new privatization of all the courts looming, there was only a requirement for about four permanent officers to remain on the externals group. Maybe the governor incident had something to do with the fact that I was not chosen to stay, who knows, but I was once again to be redeployed and this time it was to one of the house blocks.

13

HOUSE BLOCK THREE

By late 1995 I was unable to avoid doing a tour of duty on the house blocks and soon found myself thrown onto the worst one. As I mentioned before, house block three was given the name Beirut due to the chaos that reigned within its landings. The house block's primary role was to act as an induction wing and as a result we took all inmates straight from the courts and police stations. We also seemed to be a dumping ground for any inmate that had problems on the other house blocks. With such a mixture one thing was certain -that amongst its population house block three had some of the worst inmates you could find in a prison. Many were hardened drug users and as a result spent the first few days 'clucking', or withdrawing, from the various drugs that they were hooked on. If anything should be used to educate young people on the pitfalls of drug abuse, then it should be the sight of these pathetic souls sweating and shivering for days unable even to get off their beds.

The house blocks were a rich haven for drug pushers, who were normally the stronger and most well-known inmates. They took every opportunity to prey on newly arrived addicts, knowing that in their desperate state they could sell them any cocktail of drugs, which they mixed with anything from sugar to powdered bleach to increase their supply. Heavy debts would be run up in this way, debts that many inmates were unable to pay when called upon to do so.

The ones that could not pay would normally have to repay the debt by being recruited into the pushers' little empire and carrying out smuggling operations by getting their visitors to bring drugs into the prison. By getting others to do this meant that the pushers themselves rarely risked getting caught and getting time added onto their sentence. Drugs in prison are a major problem and one that most inmates that are against their use will agree is ruining day-to-day life in our prisons.

I think it would be fair to say that no one minded the inmates having the odd joint of cannabis after lock-up, but there are very few that actually encourage the use of harder drugs such as heroin. Apart from the obvious dangers of AIDS through shared needles, a man on heroin is very unpredictable and, if you are locked in a cell with such a person when he goes into one, you have not got much of a chance of defending yourself. There is also the well-known fact that heroin addicts who are desperate for a fix will do or sell anything. This could mean he would steal your personal effects or even be persuaded to seriously injure or kill someone in return for some drugs.

The presence of such addicts not only made life unpleasant for the majority of other inmates and staff; but also they became easy prey for the bullies, amongst both the inmates and staff. It was generally believed that you could easily get away with giving a prisoner high on heroin or crack a good kicking and he would not remember a thing about it when the drugs wore off. Whilst I personally do not agree with drugs, I disagree even more strongly with bullies and do not see that just because a man is on drugs it gives someone else the right to give him a kicking.

I remember one such heroin addict who was suffering so badly from withdrawal symptoms that he was almost unconscious on his bed most of the time. One officer who I worked with at the time thought this man was a great plaything and took me into the cell to show me his new toy. At first I thought he was just amused by the lethargic nature of the inmate when he asked him to get out of bed. When the inmate could not get off his bed the officer told me to watch and then proceeded to do something that I could not believe I was seeing. He got up onto the bed and began to kick the inmate straight in the head several times with the full weight of his heavy boots. The inmate could do nothing in his current state apart from cry out in pain and take the kicks. This officer thought it was a great game and assured me that the inmate would never get an assault allegation to stick because he was a heroin addict.

I was horrified and grabbed the officer, threw him against the back wall of the cell and slapped him right across the head. I warned him that the next time I even heard of him carrying out this sort of behaviour I would kick him in the head a few times. I then told him to piss off and helped the inmate to the treatment room to get his head looked at. I did not mention the officer's actions purely because I do not like to grass people up, so I told the nurse that he had fallen off his bed. I later told the inmate that if any officer ever treated him that way again he should come and find me and I would deal with them my own way.

There were one or two good officers working on the house block. My old pal Brian had started at the same time as me and, as usual, always made me laugh with his anti-management attitude. Unfortunately, like all areas in every prison, there was a large element of the bully boys who loved nothing more than to hear the sound of their own voices as they screamed orders around the landings. I soon discovered why so many members of staff preferred to work on the house blocks rather than the unit.

It was a well-known fact that because the unit housed such high-profile prisoners the staff who worked there never got involved with using the restraint techniques on any of them except in very rare incidents. The general guideline was that any disagreement between the inmates and the management was dealt with, wherever possible, without the use of force. You may think, as I do, that this method should be practised in all situations regardless of who the prisoner is. The reality, however, is that the staff on the house blocks used force at the first opportunity and even went around the landings in groups looking for any excuse to use their restraining methods on a prisoner who might be provoked into an argument with them.

Some staff loved every chance they had to use force and used the opportunity to inflict as much pain on the inmates as possible. The louder an inmate screamed, the more respect the officers involved seemed to get from the large crowd of staff who always quickly gathered on the scene to witness such incidents. It was no secret that many officers carried on in this way not only because they loved the feeling of power but also simply because they knew they could get away with it.

Most of the inmates who received such treatment were hand picked because it was felt that they would not have the chance of proving that they were struck first. The staff would get together and, often with the help of senior management, would draw up a watertight story of the events in which they would always blame the inmate for starting the incident.

This sort of behaviour made the job of a decent officer even more difficult. Not only did these bullies disrupt the regime of the house block and alienate the prisoners from us, when a whistle or alarm bell sounded you were never sure if it was a genuine incident or one set up by a member of staff. Although you knew this went on, there was little or nothing that could be done to stop it. In most cases the prisoner was too fearful of reprisals to contest the officers' version of events, and if another member of staff tried to protest he would receive a lecture on how it may not do his or her career much good to drop fellow officers in it.

Once again, I tried to rise above this way of carrying out your duties and began to try to establish a good working relationship with the good officers and the more permanent inmates such as the cleaners. I began to earn respect from many of the lads on my spur and, as Christmas approached, I was confident that I had established a good regime for both them and myself. However, my methods did not meet the approval of some of the other staff, who would stab me in the back with comments that I was a 'care bear' and too soft. They could not have been further from the truth and all the lads knew that, although I was easy going, they could not take the piss out of me.

I appreciated all the hard work the cleaners and tea boys did and always rewarded them with an extra shower, the chance to get on the phone or even half an ounce of tobacco now and again. They trusted me enough to let me in on the fact that they had begun to brew a batch of hooch for the Christmas period and offered to let me taste it when it was ready. I was not sure whether this was a great honour or if I was just to be their guinea pig, as some of that stuff can stop a man's heart with one mouthful. I declined the offer but then made the decision that as I was working on Christmas Day I would bring in my small hip flask with some brandy to give them a drop in their coffee. I took a serious risk in doing so as not only could I lose my job and be charged with smuggling contraband into the prison, but also there was always the possibility that the inmates would use this gesture to bribe me in the future. I was, however, fully confident that the select few I had chosen to do this for could be trusted one hundred per cent and, true to their word, I never had any comebacks from any of them. I had to laugh later in the day though when they were all staggering around half pissed and the other members of staff were going mad trying to find out where the hooch was stashed, a secret that I also kept to myself.

To be fair, Christmas Day was run on a very relaxed regime and we even organized games and competitions between staff and inmates. Each inmate received a bonus of some extra chocolate bars and tobacco and the kitchen laid on a good turkey dinner. The number one governor even made a brief and rare appearance on the house block to wish the staff and inmates a Merry Christmas.