The Freedom Trap

THREE

I suppose a man can get used to anything. They tell me the Jews even got used to living – and dying – in Belsen and Dachau. Well, this was no Dachau, crummy though it was.

At the end of the first week I no longer had my meals in the cell but joined with the others in eating in the Hall. It was then I discovered that I was a personality. There’s a very strong caste system in a prison largely based on criminal achievement and, oddly enough, on the lack of achievement which results in a long sentence. Roughly speaking, the long-term prisoners, such as myself, were at the top of the heap with the high-risk boys as the élite. They’re looked up to and respected; they hold their little courts and can command the favour of many parasites and hangers-on.

That is one classification. Another is by type of crime. The brainy boys – the con men and professional frauds – are on top with safe breakers running them close. At the bottom of this heap are the sex criminals whom nobody likes. The honest burglar is a much respected man, more for his workmanlike and unassuming ways than anything else.

I was in a position to command a lot of respect, had I so wished it. My status stemmed from the fact that not only was I a long-term man but that I’d diddled the johns and hadn’t grassed on my mysterious pal. You can’t keep a secret in prison and everyone knew the facts of my case. Because I kept my mouth shut about the diamonds and because everyone knew what pressure Forbes was exerting I was reckoned to be one of the all right boys; an oddity, but one to be respected.

But I steered clear of all entanglements and alliances. I was being a good boy because I didn’t want my high-risk status to continue for any longer than it had to. The time would come when I was going to escape and I had to get rid of the constant surveillance – the singling out of attention on Rearden. Not that I was the only high-risk prisoner – there were others – about half a dozen in all. I steered clear of the lot of them.

Because I was high risk they gave me the job of looking after the tidiness of ‘C’ Hall where I was under the eye of the Hall screw permanently on duty. Otherwise they would have had to provide a warder to escort me to the workshops instead of going with the others in a gang supervised by a trusty. They were short-staffed and this was a convenient arrangement. I didn’t object; I mopped the floors and scrubbed the tables and worked with a will. Anything to be a good boy.

Homosexuals are the bane of prison life. One of them rather fancied me and pursued me to the extent that the only possible way of dissuading him was to give him a thump on the nose which I didn’t want to do because that would have been a black mark on my record sheet. It was Smeaton, my landing screw, who got me out of that predicament. He saw what was happening and warned off the queer with a few choice and blasphemous threats, for which I was thankful.

Smeaton was typical of the majority of prison officers. He hadn’t interfered because he particularly wanted to prevent my corruption. He’d done it for the sake of a quiet life. The screws looked upon us neutrally for the most part and to them we were just a part of the job. Over the years they had learned a technique – stop it before it starts; keep the temperature down; don’t let trouble spread. It was a very effective technique.

So I kept to myself and out of trouble. Not that I didn’t mix with the others at all; if I drew attention as a loner then the prison psychiatrist would fix his beady eye on me. So, during the free association periods, I played a few games of cards and improved my chess considerably.

There were others to talk to besides one’s fellow criminals. There were the unofficial visitors. Why these were called unofficial I never found out because they had to be authorized by the Governor. They were the prison visitors, the do-gooders and penal reform crowd, and a mixed bag they were. Some of them thought the way to reform a criminal was to moralize at him solemnly by the hour as though a steady drip of predigested religious pap would wash away the canker of the soul. Others were better than that.

Fortunately they weren’t obligatory and one could pick and choose to some extent. I discarded a couple before finding a good one. He used to come and chat with me about all sorts of things without ever once trying to fill me up with a lot of guff or trying to convert me. He, also, had lived in South Africa and so we had something in common. Of course, since I was a high-risk prisoner, all these conversations were under the watchful eye and listening ear of a screw. Once I popped in a sentence in Afrikaans to which my visitor replied in the same language. The screw soon put a stop to that and we were both reprimanded by the Governor. But no black mark for Rearden, thank God.

Clark, the Prison Chaplain, also came to see me occasionally. He, also, was no toffee-nose and we got on together quite well. Basically, he was a very religious man and so found himself in a dilemma. He found it hard to reconcile the Christian precept of ‘Love thy enemies’ with the task of ministering to his flock who were locked up in a big cage. I think it was wearing him down a bit.

The best of the lot was Anderson, the Welfare Officer. He did quite a lot for me and I think his reports to the Governor were encouraging. It was through him that I got the radio, something for which I had worked assiduously. I had been going to the library once a week, as per regulations, and each visit needed the supervision of a screw. I asked Anderson why I couldn’t take out a double ration of books and halve the number of library visits, thus taking a bit of strain off the overworked staff.

He saw the point and quickly agreed. I think I managed successfully to give him the notion that I was playing along and trying to help. When I applied for permission to have a radio there was no opposition and, soon after that, I was given permission to start correspondence courses through the prison educational system. After all, if you are doing twenty years’ bird you have to fill in the time somehow.

I chose English Literature and Russian. There was a bit of doubt about the Russian but it went through all right in the end. I had no intention of finishing either course if I could help it; it was all a bit of wool-pulling to make them think Rearden was reconciled to his fate. Still, I buckled down and worked hard. It had to look good and, besides, it was something to do.

The only other prisoner I got close to at this time was Johnny Swift who was doing a ‘cut’ for burglary. In prison jargon a ‘sleep’ is a sentence of from six months to two years; a ‘cut’ is from two to four years, and a ‘stretch’ is anything over four years. Johnny had been sent up for three years for having been found on business premises after closing time, so he was doing a cut and I was doing a stretch.

More shrewd than intelligent, he gave me lots of tips about the minor rackets that go on in prison and the best ways of keeping out of trouble. Once, when I had changed cells for the umpteenth time, I was a bit grouchy about it. He laughed. ‘The penalty of being famous,’ he said. ‘I know one cell you’ll never be put in.’

‘Which is that?’

‘That one over there in the corner. Snooky’s cell.’

Snooky was an odd little man with a permanent smile; he also was in for burglary. ‘And why shouldn’t I go in there?’

Johnny grinned. ‘Because the main sewer runs under there – right across the corner of the Hall. It’s big enough to crawl through if you could dig down to it.’

‘I see,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘But they’ll trust your burglar mate, Snooky.’

‘Burglar!’ said Johnny in disgust. ‘He’s no more a burglar than my Aunt Fanny. He’s nick-struck – that’s what he is. Every time he’s discharged tears roll down his cheeks as they push him through the gate. Then he goes and does a job and bungles it so he can get back in here.’

‘He likes it here!’

‘If you’d been brought up like Snooky you’d find this place a home from home,’ said Johnny soberly. ‘But I agree he’s not all there.’

Another time Johnny said, ‘Be careful who you talk to in here. I wouldn’t trust a bloody soul myself.’

‘Even you?’

He chuckled. ‘Especially me, mate. But seriously, watch out for Simpson – he’s a proper arse-creeper. If you find him hanging around, clip his bloody earhole.’

He pointed out others I should beware of, and some of them surprised me. ‘That gang would peach on anyone if they thought it would get them in good with the Governor so he’ll put in a good word to the Review Board. But they’re wasting their time; he’s too fly for them. He knows what goes on in here without those narks helping him.’

Johnny was philosophical about doing time. To him, his work was his profession and prison an occupational hazard. ‘I’ve done two sleeps and a cut,’ he said. ‘Next time it’ll be a stretch.’

‘Aren’t you worried about that?’

‘A bit,’ he admitted. Like an economist discussing the effect of government legislation on industrial activity he began to analyse the situation. ‘It’s these bloody do-gooders,’ he said. ‘They’ve knocked out capital punishment and they’ve got to put something in its place. So you get long terms for murderers. But a bloke serving a long term doesn’t like it and wants to get out, so they class him as a high risk.’

He grinned. ‘And they’ve got to find a special place to put him. Nicks like this are no good – you could get out of here with a bent pin – so they’re building high-risk nicks special like. But when you’ve got a place like that there aren’t enough killers to fill it – there’s a bit of space going to waste – so they begin to get a bit harder on the sentences. That’s where you felt the draught, chum.’

I said, ‘But why put me in here to do my bird if it isn’t safe?’

‘Because the special nicks aren’t ready yet. You wait until they’ve built those places on the Isle of Wight that Mount-batten’s been going for. You’ll be whizzed out of here in no time. In the meantime they spread you high-risk blokes around thin, a few in each nick, so you can be watched easy.’

I looked around ‘C’ Hall. ‘If this place is so easy to get out of why haven’t you tried?’

He looked at me incredulously. ‘Think I’m a mug, mate? I’m only doing a cut, and that means I’m out of here in just over two years from start to finish – if I don’t lose me temper and clobber that bastard, Hudson. You got no idea what it’s like when you go over the wall and you know that every bluebottle in England is looking for you. It ain’t worth it, chum; not with all those bloody dogs. They use helicopters, too, and radio. It’s like a bloody army exercise.’

He tapped my arm. ‘Could be different for you, though. You ain’t got as much to lose. But it wouldn’t be as easy for you to go over the wall as it would be for me, ‘cause they’re watching you all the time. They’re on to you, mate. And if you did get over the wall you’d get nowhere without an organization.’

That sounded interesting. ‘Organization! What organization?’

‘You got to have planning on the outside,’ said Johnny. ‘You don’t want to be like those mugs who find themselves on the Moor running in circles and eating raw turnip and listening for the dogs.’ He shuddered slightly. ‘Those bloody dogs! No, you got to have an organization that’ll get you clean away. How do you suppose Wilson, Biggs, and the others did it?’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll buy it. How did they get away?’

He rubbed the side of his nose. ‘Like I said – organization and outside planning. But it takes the shekels; you got to have a lot of money.’ He looked around to see if there was anyone within earshot, and lowered his voice. ‘You ever hear of the Scarperers?’

‘Scarperers?’ I shook my head. ‘Never heard of them.’

‘Well, it’s only a rumour and I could be wrong, but the griff is that there’s a mob specially set up for it – helping you long-term blokes.’ He chuckled. ‘Could call it a new kind of crime. But you got to have the bees.’

That didn’t need much working out; the bees and honey – the money. ‘How do I contact them?’

‘You don’t,’ said Johnny bluntly. ‘They contact you. This is a very exclusive mob; very picky and choosy. But I hear on the grapevine that they do a guaranteed job – you get clear away or no pay – barring expenses. Course, they don’t bother about blokes like me because they know it ain’t worth me while, but you could be different.’

I hesitated. ‘Johnny, this isn’t my country and I don’t know the ropes. I was in England for less than a week before I was picked up. But if you put it out on the grapevine that there’s a bloke in this nick who could do with a bit of help it might do me some good. No names, mind!’

‘Think I’m a mug?’ he asked. ‘No names it is.’ He looked at me speculatively. ‘Can’t say that I blame you, chum. Twenty years’ bird would send me round the twist. Trouble with you is that you didn’t cough up nicely when asked; you slapped ’em in the face with it and they didn’t like it.’

He sighed heavily. ‘As I said, next time I’m up before the beak it’ll be a stretch. Time was when I could reckon on five or seven years, but that was before the beaks got bloody-minded. Now I don’t know what they’ll do – could be ten, twelve or even fifteen years’ bird. I don’t know if I could do fifteen years. It unsettles a man, it really does, not having a dependable stretch to rely on.’

I said, ‘Maybe you’d better call it a day when you get out of here.’

‘What else can I do?’ he said despondently. ‘I’m not brass-faced enough to go on the con; besides, I ain’t got the voice – you need to be la-di-da for that. And I’m too old to learn how to dip. And I hates the protection bit – too softhearted to beat anybody up. No, I’m an inside man – up the old drainpipe, that’s me.’

‘You could turn honest,’ I suggested.

He looked at me incredulously. ‘That’s for peasants. Can you see me as a nine-to-five? Can you see me working in the corner garage getting me hands black?’ He was silent for a while. ‘Not that I’m relying