The Guv'nor (29 page)

Off he went. Ten minutes later he was back and he had the details. ‘Right, Dan, good boy. Now I've got something for you,' and I dug the phone out and let him ring his wife. His eyes opened up like saucers –he couldn't believe what he was seeing. I went to the toilet to give him a bit of privacy and when I came back, he thanked me with tears in his eyes again.

It was early morning again. Crash. In they came, the riot mob. I was beaten up with those fucking sticks and my cell was torn apart. The mobile phone was dug out and I was locked in another cell to wait. Then I was ordered to get ready to be shipped to Belmarsh Prison at Woolwich.

I was just thinking I'd had a bit of bad luck when one of the better screws came in and marked my card. ‘Keep this to yourself, Len, or my job's on the line, but your mate Danny has been a police plant since day one. That's all I can say, but good luck, mate.'

I wanted to smash down the cell door like Roy Shaw did, but I'd never get to that slag Danny before I was stopped so, through one of the cleaners, I managed to get a message to John on C wing, for him to make sure the grass got what was due. Minutes before I was loaded on to the wagon, I got a whisper that it would be taken care of. Knowing that kept me calm on the journey and I didn't cause a ruck.

If I hadn't before, I would have soon found out the rest of the story, because it ended up all over the papers. The doctor was suspended and was waiting to be charged for smuggling in the telephone, but he died of a heart attack before charges could be brought. The poor bastard was effectively killed by that low-life Danny. They found out about the threat on the screw and he was transferred. They also heard that Danny was going to get it but not by who, so he was moved out sharpish. A fortnight later, he found out that there's nowhere to hide in the system.

Belmarsh was a new prison, about six months old when I moved in. Most of the screws were young kids and I don't know if it was
‘new prison, new policy', but prisoners were allowed to wear their own clothes. One visiting day, I watched as one of the cons slipped in amongst the friends and families when they were leaving and walked out with them, cool as a cucumber. They brought him back after a few days, but he had made a mug of the system.

I met a black guy called Gilbert while I was in there. He was brought into my cell, carried by a couple of big Nazi screws, and they dumped him on the bed. He'd had the shit kicked out of him. His hair was matted, he was covered in bruises, bleeding, and he couldn't move his legs. I said ‘Who are you, who's done this?'

‘I'm Gilbert. I've had a bit of agg with some blokes and they kicked me to bits and, while I was on the floor, smashed me in the spine.'

I thought, ‘Fuck me, this is the same system that gives guys like me ten years for GBH.'

He told me that he's friendly with a good family out of North London, so he's got to be sound. I said, ‘Gilbert, mate, this won't happen again. I'm taking you under my wing. I'll mind you, you'll be all right.' He was left in that state for hours and hours, even though I kicked up fuck with the screws. In the end, I said I'd ring somebody outside if they didn't patch him up, and about ten minutes later he was taken to the hospital wing. When he eventually came back, he was in a wheelchair but still game. If a screw said something out of order he'd be there trying to lash out at them from his chair. I've got to hand it to him, they don't come with a bigger heart.

We got to be good pals and we'd sit late at night having salmon sandwiches and Cola, talking about our cases and how we thought they'd go. He was in for being caught with a gun but there was a lot of doubt about whose it was or whether he was being fitted up.

When he went to court, still in a wheelchair, he got a ‘not guilty', and I was happy for him. Before he went out he introduced me to a friend of his doing a nine stretch, and by a strange coincidence this pal turned out to be the actual brother-in-law of the North London family – the guy Danny had pretended to be. I said to him, ‘Pity you didn't turn up in Brixton a few months ago and mark my card. Would've saved bundles of agg.'

Me and Gilbert still meet up today and he's still in that wheelchair. I've got to give him ten out of ten for the way he fights back.

While I was behind the door waiting and waiting for my trial to come up at the Bailey, I couldn't think about anything else. By now, I
know I didn't kill Humphries. I believed I was being fitted up because Old Bill were a bit heavy-handed when restraining him. It doesn't help my nut, though, because I wouldn't be the first who had got lifed off for something he didn't do. That was brought home to me by one of the screws in Wandsworth.

They must have thought Belmarsh was too clean and comfortable for me because I was just getting myself settled in when they moved me out to Wandsworth. It was better, really, because though it was a piss-hole, I felt like I was back with my own.

This old screw in Wandsworth was about retiring age. He'd been in the job all his life so he'd seen a few come and go. He dug me out one day and got me on the work party, but as he wasn't a bad sort of bloke, he got the young cons to do the graft and me and him were having a bit of a walk. On the way back from the stores, he said, ‘Leave the young blokes pulling the barrows, we'll go another way round because I want to show you something.'

Off we went – up here, down there, and ended up in a brick-built building. ‘Look up on the ceiling, Len.'

I looked up and there was a sort of trapdoor in the roof. I said, ‘So what?'

He was grinning and watching to see how I took it. ‘That's the hangman's trapdoor.'

Fuck me, talk about giving me the creeps. I was on a murder charge and he was letting me see where I might have been dropping through 25 years ago. Like most people, I always thought that the hole would be square or round, but it was shaped like a rugby ball. I don't know why, and neither did the screw

Then he took me upstairs to the screws' tearoom and asked me if I knew where I was.

‘Now how the fuck would I know?' I said, and he loved it because he waited a minute before he told me it was the old condemned cell. Was he a comedian or what? If I thought he was taking the piss, I really would have got the hump, but he was an old geezer and I think he just loved giving these little tours now that hanging's a thing of the past. Though it's a big room now, in the old days it used to be three cells, and if you look close you can see where the walls used to be.

‘Stand there and let your mind wander and you can see all those poor sods that sat there waiting.'

I asked him if he'd ever hanged anybody, and he thought I meant with his own hands. ‘No, no, ‘course not. That was down
to Pierpoint, the public hangman, but I sat in on more than I like to remember.'

Then he told me a story that I thought must have been very hard to take. Back in 1962, he had been on the watch before last with Hanratty before he was hanged. Like I said, too many innocent people have been lifed off or topped, and Hanratty's case was a classic. He'd been pulled in for killing Michael Gregson and shooting and raping his girlfriend, Valerie Storie, in what the papers called ‘the A6 murder'. You can read about this case in loads of books, but what was terrible was that Jim didn't do it. Everything pointed away from him, but he was convicted at the Bailey and given a death sentence.

So this screw's on the 12.00am–4.00am shift, and Hanratty's due for hanging at 8.00am. He told me that they'd sat and played cards, talked and listened to the radio. Hanratty was so brave, he knew he was innocent and so did all the screws, but he never kicked up in those last hours. In fact, he showed a lot of concern for those looking after him because they were all so upset.

I said to the screw, ‘How could you sit there knowing that bloke didn't murder anyone and not do anything about it?'

He said, ‘Len, when I left him that morning I had tears in my eyes as we shook hands for the last time, but we was just doing our job. Didn't have no other choice.' Then he told me about Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be sent to the gallows. Guilty, but brave as fuck. I had to pull the plug on him there. His stories were sad and interesting, but in my situation I didn't really want to think about all that.

The next morning I got a parcel. The screw who chucked it on my bed was grinning so I flared up. ‘What you laughing at, you fucking mug?' but he slipped out quick in case I flew at him. The parcel was already open, like everything you got in there was, and when I looked it was from Jack Iandoli and it was the manuscript of the book. Oh yeah, I bet it had been well read by every muggy screw in the place.

I'm not the fastest reader in the world so it took me a fair while to plough my way through all the pages. At the bottom he wrote, ‘
Ring me as soon as you can, Len – love to have your comments
.' Yes, Jack, and I'm going to love giving them to you.

The queue for the phone was a mile long but I kept calm and got there in the end.

‘Hello, Jack.'

‘Lenny, mate, lovely to hear from you. Enjoy the book?'

‘Enjoy the book? What's it all about? What's any of that shit got to do with me?'

He sounded a bit shocked. ‘Lenny, it's what we call fiction. You know, I've stretched it a bit here and there.'

‘Well, Jack, I'd like to stretch you for what you've put down here. You've taken a diabolical liberty. You've got my lovely mum, God rest her, down as a fucking alcoholic; my great-uncle Jimmy Spinks as a gutless little old man; and you show me as a bully nicking chips off other kids and mugging pensioners. You publish this, me and you will seriously fall out.' I chucked the phone down before I really did my nut.

Fucking hell, my film's down the pan, the book's absolute bollocks, and I'm getting closer to the Bailey every day.

There were three of us on the landing on a murder charge. We became quite close. We were joined by a black fella, transferred from the Scrubs, and he was on a murder as well. So we were all sitting there talking about our cases and he said, ‘I didn't do it, you know. I didn't kill those two women.'

We knew the story because it had been all over the papers. They'd said that he'd murdered two women over Hornsey way, rolled them up in carpets and got rid of them.

So he was sitting there all polite and talking posh and saying, ‘I didn't do it.' I gave the other two a look and said, ‘Well, that's a fucking coincidence. I never done mine either. In fact we're all innocent in this nick.' He thought I was digging him out, but I wasn't. I was just having a bit of a joke because he was so posh and serious.

Months later, he had about a week to go before appearing at the Bailey, and he asked me, ‘Len, did you kill that man in the club?'

I said, ‘I honestly don't think I did. I did at first, but according to my brief it looks like Old Bill done it. What about you?'

He jumped up, looked outside the cell, shut the door and sat on the bed making a roll-up. He went sort of grey.

‘Len, you're a pal, you've looked after me. Yeah, I done it. I killed the two women, but I don't think they can prove it.' A week later he came back from the Bailey and was smiling. ‘It's looking very good,' he said. The next night, he wasn't so happy, things had turned and I could hear him crying in his cell.

He didn't come back the next day and one of the screws told me he'd got life. He was still denying it right up to the end, but him and me know different. I didn't judge him, that's not my place, I leave all
that to Him above. I'll tell you what, though – it kept me awake for nights afterwards thinking that I might be following him soon.

Talking about lifing off, an old boy came back from the Bailey and he'd got the full stretch for killing his wife. He was about 70 years old and he looked like he was going to die right there on the spot. I said, ‘I ain't being horrible, but you've had a good life up until now and you probably won't live long enough to finish your time.' OK, looking back I wasn't being very diplomatic, but I was trying to say he was better off than somebody a lot younger.

Another bloke, Dave Matches I called him, came back from court and he was breaking his heart crying like a baby. I put my arm round him and said, ‘What's up, pal?'

He said, ‘Len, I got six years.'

‘Six years? You should be singing and dancing because what you've done should have cost you 20 years.'

It turned out that he'd got well pissed up one night, and when he wasn't thinking straight he'd gone after somebody who owed him money. It didn't occur to him to knock on the door and ask for his money –no, he got a bottle of petrol and threw it through the window. The house burned down and the bloke he was after died. He was nicked because this posh house had external security cameras, and he was caught on video. Lucky for him, what caught him also saved him in a way. Seeing the flames shooting up cleared his nut, so instead of running away, he tried to kick the door down to get the bloke out. Because of that, they slung the murder out and he got a manslaughter. Lucky bastard, really, but right at that moment he didn't see it that way. He would, though, once he'd thought about it.

Months and months were ticking away and, remember, I hadn't been found guilty yet. It makes me laugh when I hear that bollocks about innocent until proven guilty. Tough shit if you do a year on remand, and then they turn round and say, ‘Sorry, you're completely innocent.' Still, while I'm away I'm not forgotten, and this is when I find out how many lovely pals I've got. Val was worn out answering the phone and the door to all the wellwishers. If I single out a few for a mention that doesn't mean I think less of the others. It's just that I would need to fill another book if I thanked everyone.

I've already told you Freddie Starr was there double quick. So was John Nash. He came round to see Val and stuck £5,000 in her hand in case she ran short. She told him she was well covered but he wouldn't take it back. John's from the old school, so whenever he
called he turned up with his wife, because what you never do when a man is away is visit his missus and give people the chance to gossip. Respectful, that is. She got calls from America from people like Gene Hackman and Mickey Rourke, and I even got a message from Sly Stallone saying, ‘We're rooting for the real Rocky,' I thought that was a lovely gee for me.