The Mammoth Book of Hard Bastards (Mammoth Books) (9 page)

I managed to finish second, about half an hour later. Only Mum and Gillian clapped. I think the third kid drowned, in the dark.

“Never mind, John, God loves the little dodo bird as much as the golden eagle.”

“Yeah, thanks for that, Mum.” She had a wonderful way of putting things, Mum.

Two detectives stood in the club’s doorway. Being “the little fella” I was standing on the second stair going up, again. The older one had a torch in his hand and shone it on my trousers and shoes.

“Well, what have we got here?”

“Er … I painted a friend’s fence before I came here tonight.”

“Come out here with me, son.”

He shone the torch in the alleyway – there was blood everywhere.

“Been ‘painting’ here as well, have you? What’s your name, Jackson Pollock or something?”

“No, sir, who’s he?”

“What do you do – karate or something?

“No, no. I’m just minding the door for the night – the bouncer’s sick.” Jimmy slipped away upstairs.

“Who had the nunchaku?”

“What’s that?”

“So you don’t know these martial arts, eh?”

“Nope,” shaking my head in wide-eyed innocence.

“YES YOU DO!” he screamed in my face.

My bodyweight dropped into stance, eyes came out of my head with adrenaline. One hand went for his larynx. I was nearly inside his shirt before I realized it.

He took one look at me, snorted a laugh and said, “Yeah, right,” as he walked back down the alleyway.

I came back up, defeated, put my hands out ready for the cuffs.

“Come over here, son,” the wizened detective encouraged with his hand. I walked over to him.

“Do you know who that was tonight?”

I shook my head, “Not really.”

“That was two of the Bainnets, one of the three worst organized crime families in Liverpool.”

“Oh!”

“Yeah, ‘Oh!’ Welcome to the underbelly world of Liverpool, son. Lad, if you don’t want to wind up in pieces in the Mersey, I would strongly suggest that you cease employment here tonight and go somewhere where nobody knows you because these people
will
find you if you stay here. They’ve got their fingers in nightclubs, pubs, prostitutes, taxis and I’m ashamed to say a certain couple of police officers. They are the vermin of society – they’re from the sewers and they won’t stop looking for you, for what you’ve done here the last couple of nights. We heard what happened last night, so we sat across the street in an unmarked car. We saw everything, and we saw nothing. You understand?”

I nodded.

“That gobshite that you put down is only just out of jail for stabbing one of ‘Ours’. All he did was eight years, so we’re very happy with your evening’s work. So we’ll cover this for you, up to this point, but that’s all – right? We’ve got the nunchakus. You won’t be needing them because you don’t know what they are – right?”

“Thank you. Thanks a lot.”

“Take my advice, son. Leave before it escalates. This garbage won’t stop. You’re known now. You’ve shown everyone they’re not as hard as they think they are. Leave while you’re still a winner.”

As we walked away from each other he turned and said, “Hey! You know you guys had all that stitched up in about two minutes flat?”

“Yeah?”

“Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen. Wished I had a movie-camera, wouldn’t mind seeing that again.”

“Not me – once’ll do me, I think. See ya.”

‘I hope not, son, I hope not.”

My only real regret those last four years of high-school was that Gillian – the love of my life, the girl I’d known and the only one I wanted – well, she went and rose right out of my league. She’d been a duckling when I fell in love with her and now she’d gone and turned into this beautiful swan.

You could always tell the boys from our school: they all had the indents of two lines running down their faces from being pressed against the school railings as she passed by.

I had mine for the rest of my life.

T
AGGED BY THE
British press as Britain’s most violent prisoner, in contrast to triple murderer Thomas Silverstein, Charles (Charlie) Bronson has actually never murdered anyone. Neither is he a rapist or paedophile. However, because of his relentless and continual violence towards prison staff and other prisoners, like Silverstein, Bronson has managed to keep himself locked away in solitary confinement for most of his adult life.

Bronson was born Michael Gordon Peterson on the 6 December 1952 and grew up in the working-class town of Luton. His aunt, Eileen Parry, was once quoted as saying, “As a boy he was a lovely lad. He was obviously bright and always good with children. He was gentle and mild-mannered, never a bully – he would defend the weak.”

Peterson first started getting into trouble when his family moved up to Ellesmere Port in northwest England and in 1974, aged twenty-two, he was first imprisoned for seven years for a bungled armed robbery attempt at a post office in Little Sutton, a suburb of Ellesmere Port, during which he stole just £26.18 (US$45). After having his sentence continually increased for bad behaviour, he was eventually released on 30 October 1988, changed his name to Charles Bronson and started a short-lived career as a bare-knuckle fighter in the East End of London, where he became an associate of another notorious hard man, Lenny McLean. However, Bronson only spent sixty-nine days as a free man before being arrested and imprisoned again for robbery. Released again on 9 November 1992, this time he spent only fifty-three days as a free man before being arrested once more for conspiracy to rob.

Since 1974 Bronson has spent a total of just four months and nine days out of custody and his sentences have been repeatedly extended for crimes committed while inside, including: grievous bodily harm, criminal damage, wounding with intent, wounding, false
imprisonment,
blackmail and threatening to kill. Bronson has also been involved in a large number of hostage-taking situations dating back to the early 1980s including a forty-seven-hour rooftop protest at Broadmoor in 1983, causing damage estimated at £750,000 (US$1.2 million). In 1994, whilst holding a guard hostage he is alleged to have demanded an inflatable doll, a helicopter and a cup of tea as ransom. Two months later he held Deputy Governor Adrian Wallace hostage for five hours at Hull prison, injuring him so badly he was off work for five weeks. In 1998, Bronson took three inmates hostage at Belmarsh Prison in London and told negotiators he would eat one of his victims unless his demands were met. On that occasion he demanded a plane to take him to Cuba, two Uzi sub-machine guns, 5,000 rounds of ammunition and a cup of beans. He told staff:“I’m going to start snapping necks, I’m the number-one hostage taker.” In court, he said he was “as guilty as Adolf Hitler”.

Another seven years were added to his sentence.

His violent and dangerous behaviour has meant that he is
continually
moved and has spent time in over 120 different prisons,
including
Broadmoor high security psychiatric hospital. All but four of his years in prison have been in solitary confinement.

Bronson is currently in HMP Wakefield where he remains a Category A prisoner. For the past ten years has occupied himself by writing poetry, for which he has won numerous international awards, and producing pieces of art which are collected worldwide. He has also written a large number of books, one of which is called
Solitary Fitness
, detailing his extreme fitness regime involving over 3,000 press-ups and hundreds of sit-ups each and every day.

Both feared and respected by almost everyone, Bronson is
definitely
one of the toughest and hardest men in the UK, and he was once one of the most violent. However, Bronson’s intentions are now to serve the rest of his time as peacefully and quietly as he can in the hope of spending his last few years as a free man. This
distinctive
contribution from his book
Loonology
highlights the violence of his life behind bars, coupled with the anger and sexual
frustrations
of being locked away on his own for so many years.

It’s been said that I’m Britain’s most violent prisoner. Am I? Am I bollocks! How can I be? It’s just a label. So how did it come about? Why? I’ll tell you. I was naughty. A little bit naughty. I’ve done things most only ever dream of doing. I do your dreams. I live out your fantasies. My dreams I turn to reality. If I don’t like somebody they sure know about it, and I don’t give a flying fuck about it. Just stay out of my space. Live and let live I say. But some prats don’t know how to keep out of your face.

I remember one time I was being escorted over to the hospital wing to see a dentist in Wandsworth. Ten screws were taking me “cuffed up”. As we got to E Wing I clocked a con cleaning the stairs. It was a filthy grass I’d known in Scrubs. I just acted on impulse. I legged it over to him with the ten screws chasing me, blowing a whistle and shouting. I made it to the cleaner and kicked him at least six or seven times before I was restrained. Not bad, eh,
considering
I was cuffed up?! Eat your heart out, Rambo!

Who remembers the Cambridge Rapist, going back to the early 1970s? That little toe-rag raped a dozen women. He used to creep around Cambridge with a leather zip-up mask with “rapist” written on it. He was only five feet nothing; a horrible scumbag that looked like a little rat. He was into wearing women’s clothes. He had also done a spell in Broadmoor.

I remember when he turned up at Parkhurst in the 1970s. He was a cocky little fucker; arrogant. He started poncing around in women’s clothes. I thought to myself, of all the jails to send him to they put him in Parkhurst. This jail at the time was the No. 1 jail, full of proper villains, real cons. Is it any wonder I wrapped a steel mop bucket around his fucking crust? Little bastard. I’ll teach him to walk down the landings in his see-through panties and silly pink shirt. Crack! Cop a hold of that. He would’ve got more but some prat rang the alarm bell.

And who remembers the “Guernsey Beast” Beasley. Sounds a lot like beast. It’s probably why I remember the toe-rag. He got thirty years for sodomizing little boys. A right ugly fat bastard. Sadly I only got to see him through a fence in Albany and a couple of times through a window in Parkhurst. He served his time on Rule 43 with all the other nonces. He actually served twenty years (that’s one good thing) but, believe me, when these monsters all get together on a little unit, or wing, they party. They get through pots of KY Jelly. They all have a funny walk. Their arses must be red raw.

I used to stick razor blades in bars of white Windsor soap and throw them over the fence where they walked by, hoping maybe one would find its way into one of their pockets and a nice little accident would happen in the shower (one can wish). I also used to throw sweets in wrappers over the fence after I’d contaminated them with shit. I wonder how many were ever eaten? If only one, then it was a result. Personally, I’d sooner punch them up.

I just can’t be having a serious nonce around me. Can you? Could you live next door to a nonce, let’s say a paedophile or child killer? Well could you? No you couldn’t. Well why should we in prison live with them? I’m just not happy with them monsters near me. They should be in “special jails”, away from the proper cons. Let me say now, I’m a believer in punishment. I actually believe in the birch. I think prison should be hard. It’s all we deserve. I’m not into a soft regime. But why should some get it easy and some hard? Let’s all get it hard. Let’s stop playing silly games. All this psychological crap, it don’t work, it’s a joke. Prison is for punishment; to teach us a lesson, not to treat us like a load of muppets.

I just read in the paper that Ian Huntley has just bought a bed rug as the prison rug is too rough. He should be sleeping in a black hole with the rats. It all makes me feel sick. But that’s how it is today. It’s all crazy and if you don’t go along with it then you become like me: the dangerous one. You end up in a solitary cage. Yeah, for real. You end up in a fucking big hole that sucks away your light. This is the end of the line. The crematorium awaits. Mine’s a bacon roll with mushrooms. Fuck the Rice Krispies. Give mine to the muppets. In fact … sling it in the bin. Don’t spoil the fuckers. 

Hey, did you know that bulletproof vests, laser printers and windscreen wipers were all invented by women? I thought you might like to know that. Fuck knows why, but it’s just historical facts.

“
Tostum
” is the Latin word for scorched or burning, thus cometh toast. Hey, I love cheese and tomato and spring onion on toast with a nice mug of tea! It’s years since I had a treat like that. I’m fucking hungry just thinking about it. I can almost smell it. Why do I have to torture myself with these beautiful memories? Maybe I’m just a masochist! I probably am.

In the early 1970s the toughest jails were places like Winson Green, Strangeways, Armley and Wandsworth. These were known as the POA (Prison Officers’ Association) Power Houses.
Troublemakers
were sent to these seg. (segregation) blocks for a good kicking. Make no mistake about it, it was brutal and you got fuck all. My life, my world, was in these blocks. I was kicked around from pillar to post. I would arrive naked in a body belt and the treatment would kick off from day one. These blocks were run by a fist of steel, always by the biggest and ugliest screws in the jail, not one of them under six feet. All were ex-military; men you would be proud of on a rugby field. They loved nothing more than a good old-fashioned ruck. Some – most – were vicious, vindictive bullies. They loved the power and used it to the full. The black cons got it the worst in Wandsworth block, as at this time there were a lot of National Front screws, all proud to display their member badges. Also the Irish got it bad. As for me, they just loved me every time I turned up there. On my first spell in Wandsworth block back in 1975 I attacked three screws within a week. My life was forever in the strongbox in restraints. I used to do anything and everything to fuck up their regime. Regularly I used to walk across the infamous steel-rimmed centre. It’s sacrilege to step on that centre. Every time I did that I was jumped on and carted off back to the box black and blue.

That’s how it was. You either behaved or you suffered. I was labelled a prison activist. I would climb the roof, smash the place up, shit on it all. Shit up. Nobody knew what I would do next – not even me.

Incidentally, the only two other cons I knew of who used to walk across Wandsworth centre were Frank Frazer and Frank Mitchell. Apart from them I don’t know of any more. For 99 per cent of cons it’s just basically head down, do your bird peacefully and get out fast.

Every jail has nasty screws; evil fuckers who are set to make your stay a bad one. In the 1970s the two worst screws I knew there were Ryan and Beasley. Beasley was a giant of a man with a seriously nasty streak and he would nick you for a button undone. I chinned him and told him, “Next time I’ll cut your throat.” That cost me 120 days’ remission, 56 days’ punishment and a £5 fine. Five quid was a lot in the 1970s – about two months’ wages for me. But that’s what you get when you attack authority. You have to take the consequences.

Strange enough, Beasley wasn’t so bad to me after that. I think he respected me. Bear in mind that I was only a young man of
twenty-three
at the time and he was well into his forties. But he was a giant of a man; a hard man. Rumour had it he’d been out in the Middle East snapping necks in some special force. That could be shit, but with him I wouldn’t doubt it.

Ryan was a different kettle. He was a little vindictive fucker. Even the screws despised him, as he was always causing unnecessary trouble. He worked on D Wing, the long-term wing. D Wing was a little easier owing to the sorts of cons it held: lifers Cat A and Cat E; all sorts of high-risk inmates. Most had just got their sentence, so it was very tense in there. The screws sort of kept a back step. But Ryan was a total cunt. I mean it – a cunt. Slamming doors, shouting abuse, pushing it all the time. Like all Irishmen he loved a drink. You could always smell it on them. Him and me just had to get it on. He was in my face all the time. It happened in the mail bag shop on the end of D Wing. I just felt that’s it, I’ve had my lot of him, so I hit him with a right hook (that’s all, I swear). The alarm went and in rushed the mob to take me off to the block for a good kicking. I could hardly walk for a week afterwards as one of my balls had swollen to the size of an orange, but that’s showbiz.

There was one old screw there who told me privately, “You done us all a favour there. It got rid of the Irish prick for a spell.” There was an old screw there in his sixties. I used to chat with him coz I liked his style. He was one of those screws that just did his job, and he treated the cons with respect. All the cons respected him. He used to stop a lot of trouble by using his own ways of dealing with problems. “Come on, son. Cool down. Go behind your door. You don’t need this shit. Come on, do yourself a favour. Think of your family.” Nine times out of ten his way worked. When he was on duty it was always a treat to see him. Other screws did not react like him. Incidentally, he was a screw in the hanging days. The stories he told me were amazing. He actually witnessed them. He spent time in the death cell with the condemned prisoner. I told him that when he retired he should write a book.

By the way, did you know that most hangings literally shit
themselves?
The bowels just burst open and that was it. Piss and shit just pours out. I bet that’s put you off lunch.

I met all the faces in Wandsworth: anyone who was anyone. It was a breeding ground for criminals over the years. Real villains come out of Wandsworth: men like the Krays, Richardsons, Freddie Foreman, Frank Frazer – all the legends; good old-fashioned armed robbers like Danny Alpress, Terry Smith, Ronnie Easterbrook, Wayne Hurren, Roy Shaw and Ronnie Brown. They all passed through Wanno. Wanno was the stepping stone for Parkhurst or Dartmoor. It’s like an apprenticeship of crime. You have to get the experience. That’s what it’s all about. To be a criminal you will one day get porridge. You will fall eventually. So expect what you get and plenty of it.

My true advice would be: don’t do what I’ve done. Do your bird easy and get out fast. You only win by walking out or going over the wall. Freedom is the ultimate goal in life inside unless you are a complete institutionalized moron. After all my years inside I still hate prison life and prison life hates me. I can never become
institutionalized.
It’s against my philosophy.

Some of my best years were in Wandsworth – crazy years, but memorable. I was just born to rock the boat and rock it I did. I almost escaped from there, I cut people there, I chinned people there, I got on the roof there, I shit up there, I met some of my best buddies there, I slept in the cell next to the condemned cell there, I taught myself to play chess and bridge there (out of books), I spent a good four years in solitary there, I was on hunger strike there, I chinned a doctor there, I chinned several governors there, I attacked a good dozen screws there, I smashed up dozens of cells there, I attacked many nonces there and I met some decent screws there. They weren’t all bad. There’s always some good everywhere. One in particular was a gentleman. He’d done a lot for me over the years. Over the last thirty-four years I’ve probably been back there twenty times, if not more, and he was always there. I watched his hair go grey. He watched mine fall out. That’s how life is inside – a fucking journey of madness. I’ll leave you with a funny story on Wanno. You’ll love this one …

Lord Longford – Frank to me – used to visit me all over England from as far away as Durham all the way to Parkhurst, the Isle of Wight. He was one of my favourite regular visitors and we had some bloody good laughs. He also helped me a lot with advice, etc.

My first visit with Frank was in the block in Wanno years back. He came to see me over my long years in solitary and he wanted to
interview
me for the book he was writing called
Prisoner or Patient.
Our visit had to be held in the Governor’s Office in the block (the Adjudication Room) as I was considered too unpredictable to be escorted over to the visiting area. Plus, going to the visiting area would mean passing the centre, and they didn’t want me walking over it. So the visit would be in the block. The Adjudication Room was quite large with a portrait of the Queen on the wall. So, ten screws unlocked me and marched me to the room. Frank had been told it was not safe to see me alone, but he responded, “Charlie won’t attack me. I wish to see him alone.” I walked in to see an old man with bottletop specs. I gave him a hug before we sat down to chat. The door had a plastic glass in it so they could look in on us. I said to Frank, “Look at them nosy fuckers.” He smiled and said, “They’re only doing a job.” So we had a good chat. He was a really nice fella to talk with: very clever; very helpful. He asked me what I did all day in my cell. I told him press-ups. How many, he asked. So I told him: between two and three thousand. As we spoke about my press-ups I said, “Look, watch this.” I got on the floor and told him to sit on my back while I did a quick hundred. To my amazement he did, but he fell off. As I went to help him up, the screws rushed in. They thought I’d hit him! It was so bloody funny. Then Frank showed me his
pressups.
He managed about five, which for an old man is great. He put all this in a wicked book he did called
Longford Diaries.
He was a brilliant old fella and I really liked him a lot, although we did have some heated arguments about Brady and Hindley, as my thoughts were anti and always will be. A lovely man. He’s another one I’ll not be having a pint with, but he remains in my heart – respect.

My prison records date from 1974 to 2008 (I was inside 1969, 1970 and 1971 for short spells – a shit and shave as they call it):