Angel on the Inside (26 page)

It was only me who was looking not at the free show, but at the two yellow hairbands on the floor.

Me and the two girls in micro-skirts further down the line, who had worn them on their wrists when they were in the Visitor Centre.

Me, them, and the dog, who had quietly gone and sat right next to them, his tail wagging and his nose twitching.

There's a good doggy.

 

The Visits Room proper looked like the conference suite of a hotel or a polytechnic lecture room, apart from the fact that the rows of plastic chairs were bolted to the floor. There were tables with individual chairs, all also bolted to the floor, near the entrance, each with a number card on it, and there were two desks, one by the door we were using and one on the other side of the room, serving an entrance we couldn't see. There were no more than six officers in the room, although if they were expecting a full house, I reckoned that around 200 visitors could be accommodated.

I waited in line for the desk, and then my VO was checked, I signed in and one of the officers used a rubber stamp to ink a purple square on the back of my left hand. I guessed it would show up under ultra-violet light and could well have got me into any Friday night disco in Plumstead, but I didn't say anything, as I suspected the officers may have heard that one before.

They told me I would be Table 7 and to take a seat in one of the rows of chairs until they called me. I picked an empty row and sat quietly, avoiding all the other visitors, especially the two micro-skirt girls, who were sitting right at the back, eyes to the floor, dejected.

It gave me a chance to get my bearings, though, and to note that there were black-dome CCTV cameras in the ceiling – the black plastic domes meant you couldn't see which way the cameras were pointing, but they could probably see you. There was also a small canteen where you could buy tea, coffee and jugs of fruit squash, although Spider had warned me that sales of orange squash were monitored closely. (An inordinate amount to drink during a visit would suggest the exchange and swallowing of smuggled wraps of drugs.)

It also became clear that the second desk across the room was where the prisoners entered, and the first few had already done so without me noticing. They wore casual clothes and were distinguished from the temporary visitors only by the fact that they all had fluorescent sashes across their chests, of the sort cyclists wear after dark.

The man who was shown to Table 7 was wearing one. He was small, balding, aged anywhere between 50 and 60 and had a barrel chest that strained the neon sash to its limit. He didn't look like any cyclist I'd ever seen.

‘Table 7,' said the prison officer at my side for the second or third time.

‘Oh, yeah. Right. Thanks,' I said and got shakily to my feet, hoping my legs didn't give way before I got to the table.

Then again, I could have broken into a run and gone straight by Mr Creosote, heading for the doors at a rate of knots. But I didn't rate my chances.

They were probably used to people doing that in here.

 

‘Roy! So good of you to come, boyo!'

For a moment I almost looked around to see if there was someone behind me.

‘Mr Fisher. Good of you to see me.'

I took his outstretched hand and he squeezed mine hard.

‘Just keep smiling and sit the fuck down,' said Mr Creosote, the Welsh accent evaporating. ‘We're on camera but they don't have sound, so we can talk.'

‘They don't have sound mikes?' I said stupidly.

My immediate thought was that no-one was going to hear me scream for help. It would also be impossible to prove what we had talked about, should I have to do so later.

‘Some European Court of Justice shit,' he said. ‘They can't read our mail and they can't listen in on our conversations. So, no microphones, so we can have a nice chat. In a funny sort of way –' I noticed a Welsh lilt creeping back in ‘– we have complete privacy sitting here. There's not many places you can say that about, is there?'

He sat back and intertwined his fingers, resting his hands on the edge of the table. His face was circular and weather-beaten, although a white prison pallor was beginning to take effect. He was stocky, not large, and didn't exude menace, but he wasn't the sort of guy you'd push out of the way to get to the bar.

‘You're not chatting, Mr Angel,' he said.

‘It was you wanted to see me,' I said, finding my voice.

‘No, you don't understand. You've got to play their game. I told you they could see you – no, don't look up, you prat – but they couldn't hear you. But if
you
just sit there like a lemon and
I
do all the talking, then it looks on the cameras like I've called you in here for something, and that'll make them suspicious.'

‘But you did send for me. I don't really know why I'm here at all.'

‘Keep talking for a bit,' he said, without moving his lips.

‘All right then, if you want to be a captive audience, that's fine with me. After all, you've had plenty of practice.'

Seeing that he wasn't taking offence, I leaned my elbows on the table and wagged a finger at him as if I was laying down the law. I hoped somebody in the control room was appreciating my performance.

‘And I am the injured party here. I'd never heard of you until last week but as soon as I do hear about you, I start to hear a lot of other things as well. Things involving an ex-con called Keith Flowers, who served time in this very nick. Coincidence? I think not.' I was getting into my stride now. ‘And then I run into a very nice family called Turner.'

I watched his face closely, but he was giving nothing away.

‘Tell the truth, they're not very nice; but, interestingly, they're Welsh, and so, I would hazard a guess, are you. And then there's another character who keeps cropping up. A solicitor called Haydn Rees, and he's Welsh too. Is there a welcome in the valleys for me or what?'

I paused for a beat, but he came in.

‘Don't lean too far forward, Mr Angel. They'll think you're trying to pass me something.'

I pulled back my elbows and resisted the temptation to look up to see if one of the cameras was watching me, not that there was any way I could have told. In doing so, I lost any initiative I might have had.

‘Right then,' said Fisher/Creosote, ‘let me put you straight on a few things. First and foremost is that whatever dealings you've had with the Turner clan, I reckon they've been unpleasant. Am I right?'

‘I don't want to repeat them,' I said, nodding for the cameras, as if he was asking me if Aunty Vera had recovered from the operation, or similar.

‘Thought not. But bear in mind that even though they're out there and I'm in here, I'm the one you really should be frightened of.'

‘Hey look, I don't want my lounge creosoted.'

‘Stop flapping your hands like that,' he said. ‘It looks like I'm threatening you.'

He hadn't moved, his fingers still linked in front of him.

‘I thought you were,' I said, stuffing my hands in my jacket pockets.

‘Not yet I'm not, just telling you what's what. You'll know when I'm threatening you.' He allowed himself a brief smile. ‘You've heard about the creosote job, then?'

‘Spider told me.'

‘Thought he would. Sad case, that Spider. Anyway, we're here to talk about you, Mr Angel, so let's do that, shall we?'

‘Me? What have I done?'

‘What have you done? You've put my old and distinguished friend Keith Flowers in a mental hospital where even I can't get a message to him. Well, haven't you?'

‘It was probably me,' I said reluctantly, ‘but I didn't know he was your friend. He was your
friend
?'

‘No, not really,' he said calmly. ‘More a business associate.'

‘That's funny. That's what Len Turner called him.'

I watched him closely for a reaction to that, and I got one; but not the one I expected.

‘I know,' he said, grinning like a loon.

 

Malcolm Fisher summed it all up beautifully.

‘Let me pose a question, Mr Angel. What interests do prisoners share?

‘Think about it. You're banged up with people you'd normally cross the road to avoid, but in here you can't avoid them. You eat with them, you shower with them, you shit with them, you share a cell with them so they fart in your face when you're asleep. What do you do to break the monotony? They've taken your wife away, your mates, your kids. You can't nip out for a pint or to put a bet on. They won't even let you buy a Lottery ticket.

‘Okay, so you can't vote and you don't get calls from double-glazing salesmen, but those are the
only
advantages of being inside.

‘And it is so boring you could scream.

‘Boredom is the one thing everybody in here has in common. So what do they do to kill the boredom? Do they swap stamp collections? Do they sit around discussing books they've just read or make model airplanes or do Open University degrees? Do they bollocks.

‘They plot, that's what they do. They plot revenge on whoever put them inside, because most of them firmly believe they're only in here because somebody stitched them up, or grassed them up or dropped them in it.

‘Not the police, mind you – not unless a bent copper's involved. Mostly the cops are just doing their job.

‘No, it has to be somebody they know who let them down. Somebody who deserves a good slapping when they get out. And they while away the long nights and the even longer days by plotting exactly how they're going to give them that slapping.

‘Biggest single leisure activity in prison is plotting. Sod learning a language or metalworking or sociology or creative writing classes. Revenge is the one and only self-improvement course they all sign up for.'

 

And that was what it was all about.

A chance assignment of cell space in the overcrowded prison system had thrown Keith Flowers and Malcolm Fisher together for six months. Six long months of plotting, as it turned out.

For reasons I didn't need to know (and certainly wasn't going to ask about), Fisher had issues, bones to pick, topics to debate – whatever – with a rival ‘businessman' called Len Turner. It had something to do with Turner being an upstart from Port Talbot and not fit to wipe the boots of the real hard men of Cardiff, but there are some things you are better off not knowing.

Keith Flowers probably felt the same, at first.

Then bells started ringing. Len Turner had a solicitor, didn't he? Bit of a wiseguy called Haydn Rees? And Flowers had issues/bones to pick/topics to debate and so forth, so fifth, with that very same Haydn Rees. Not only had Rees been spectacularly inefficient as a solicitor (Flowers was inside, after all, wasn't he?) but he'd be co-responding with Flowers' wife on the side.

If they could get at Len Turner
through
Rees, causing maximum grief to both, it would be a job well done. Two straw voodoo dolls and two sharp needles for the price of one. Buy one, get one free.

But how to set them both up? What was to be, as Hitchcock would have said, their McGuffin?

 

‘When you put Keith in hospital,' Malcolm Fisher asked casually, ‘had he pulled a gun on you?'

‘Oh yes,' I said, keen to tell him anything he wanted to know. ‘And he used it, several times. That's why I had to do what I did.'

As if even I would have had to trash a brand new BMW if he'd been using only harsh language.

‘Any idea what sort of a gun he was using?' Fisher said vaguely, like he wasn't really interested.

‘Oh yes,' I said again, anxious to be of assistance. ‘It was a Brocock.'

‘Oh fuck!'

A normal person would have kicked the cat, smashed his fist into the table, slapped his forehead and yelled ‘Doh!'. Malcolm Fisher just sat in silence.

It was scary. If I had been a census taker, I would have served him my own liver and opened a nice bottle of Chianti for him, right there and then.

He said nothing. Neither did I, and I estimated that we wasted about five percent of the allocated visiting time sitting in silence not looking at each other. Then again, looking around the room, everyone else seemed to have run out of conversation. Why should two complete strangers have any more to say than family members? I wasn't sure who I felt more sorry for, the prisoners or the visitors.

‘So, you know what a Brocock is, then, do you?'

Fisher's voice, with the Welsh accent fully engaged again, snapped me out of my reverie.

‘It's an air pistol,' I said, hoping he was right about there being cameras but no microphones, ‘that fires a lead pellet, but it uses a self-contained gas cylinder system, so your pellet comes in a mini gas cartridge, just like a bullet. In my day, you had to compress the air by pushing the barrel against a brick or breaking a lever open to charge it. Of course, in my day – when I was a kid – air pistols looked like air pistols. Nowadays they look like proper guns.'