The Freedom Trap. Desmond Bagley
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front of a judge and receive a twenty-year sentence with complete equanimity.
Twenty years!
I was thirty-four years old. I’d be fifty-four when I came out; perhaps a bit less if I could persuade them I was a good boy, but that would be bloody difficult in view of what the judge had said. Any Review Board I appeared before would read a transcript of the trial and the judge’s remarks would hit them like a hammer.
Twenty long years!
I stood by apathetically while the police escort read out the details of my case to the receiving officer. ‘All right,’ said the receiving officer. He signed his name in a book and tore out a sheet. ‘Here’s the body receipt.’
So help me – that’s what he said. ‘Body receipt.’ When you’re in prison you cease to be a man; you’re a body, a zombie, a walking statistic. You’re something to be pushed around like the GPO pushed around that little yellow box containing the diamonds; you’re a parcel of blood and guts that needs feeding at regular intervals, and you’re assumed not to have any brains at all.
‘Come on, you,’ said the receiving officer. ‘In here.’ He unlocked a door and stood aside while I walked in. The door slammed behind me and I heard the click of the lock. It was a crowded room filled with men of all types, judging by their clothing. There was everything from blue jeans to a bowler and striped trousers. Nobody was talking – they just stood around and examined the floor minutely as though it was of immense importance. I suppose they all felt like me; they’d had the wind knocked out of them.
We waited in that room for a long time, wondering what was going to happen. Perhaps some of us knew, having been there before. But this was my first time in an English gaol and I felt apprehensive. Maskell’s words about the unpleasant circumstances that attend the high-risk prisoner began to worry me.
At last they began to take us out, one at a time and in strict alphabetical order. Rearden comes a long way down the alphabet so I had to wait longer than most, but my turn came and a warder took me down a passage and into an office.
A prisoner is never asked to sit down. I stood before that desk and answered questions while a prison officer took down the answers like the recording angel. He took down my name, birthplace, father’s name, mother’s maiden name, my age, next-of-kin, occupation. All that time he never looked at me once; to him I wasn’t a man, I was a statistics container – he pressed a button and the statistics poured out.
They told me to empty my pockets and the contents were dumped on to the desk and meticulously recorded before being put into a canvas bag. Then my fingerprints were taken. I looked around for something with which to wipe off the ink but there was nothing. I soon found out why. A warder marched me away and into a hot, steamy room where I was told to strip. It was there I lost my clothes. I wouldn’t see them again for twenty years and I’d be damned lucky if they’d be in fashion.
After the bath, which wasn’t bad, I dressed in the prison clothing – the man in the grey flannel suit. But the cut was terrible and I’d rather have gone to Mackintosh’s tailor.
A march up another corridor led to a medical examination, a bit of bureaucratic stupidity. Why they can’t have a medical examination while a man is stripped after his bath is beyond me. However, I undressed obligingly and dressed again, and was graded for labour. I was top class – fit for anything.
Then a warder took me away again into an immense hall with tiers of cells lining the walls and with iron stairs like fire escapes. ‘I’ll tell you once,’ said the warder. ‘This is “C” Hall.’
We clanked up some stairs and along a landing and he stopped before a cell and unlocked it. ‘This is yours.’
I went inside and the door slammed with a cold sound of finality. I stood for some time, not looking at anything in particular. My brain had seized up – gone on strike. After, maybe, fifteen minutes I lay on the bed and damn near cried my eyes out.
After that I felt better and was able to bring some intelligence to bear on the situation. The cell was about twelve feet by seven, and perhaps eight feet high. The walls were distempered – institutional cream and Borstal green – and in one of them was a small barred window set high. The door looked as though it could withstand artillery fire and there was a Judas hole set in it.
The furnishing was sparse; an iron-framed bed, a wooden table and a chair, a washstand with jug, basin and chamberpot, and a bare shelf. Exploring a prison cell is one of the quickest tasks a man can set himself. Within three minutes I had checked everything there was to find – three blankets, two sheets, a lumpy mattress, another shirt, a pair of felt slippers, a thin non-absorbent towel, a spoon and a mug. Hanging on a nail in the wall by a loop of string was a copy of the Rules and Regulations governing HM Prisons together with an informational pamphlet.
Three minutes and I knew practically everything there was to know about that cell. I wondered what I was going to do for the next twenty years. Right there and then I decided I’d have to ration my curiosity – shut down the dampers on thought. There would be too much time and not enough happening, and every new experience would have to be jealously hoarded.
The walls of that prison suddenly had physical meaning. I felt them looming all about me, thick and strong. It was a claustrophobic quarter-hour before the feeling receded and I was able to stop shivering.
I immediately broke my promise about rationing curiosity by beginning to read the informational pamphlet, but that was absolutely necessary. I was a new boy in this school and the sooner I learned the ropes the better. There were too many tricks that could be played on the newcomer by the old hands and I didn’t want to fall for any of them.
It was an interesting compilation of data. I discovered that the spare shirt in the cell was to be used as a night shirt, that lights-out was ten-thirty, that the waking call was six-thirty in the morning, that I was to be issued with a razor blade to be returned after shaving. There were other helpful hints even to the point of finding a way out of prison.
For instance, I could refer my case to the Court of Criminal Appeal and, if that failed, I could apply to the Attorney-General to put the case before the House of Lords. At any time I could petition the Home Secretary and I was permitted to write to my Member of Parliament.
I couldn’t see myself doing any of those things. I wasn’t pally enough with the Home Secretary to enter into any kind of extended correspondence and my Member of Parliament was a shade too far away to do any good – 6,000 miles away.
I read the booklet through and then started on it again from the beginning. I had nothing else to do so I decided to memorize the whole goddamn thing. I was still reading it when the light went out.
IV
The bell clanged and I opened my eyes and was confused until I remembered where I was. I dressed hurriedly and made the bed, then hoisted it up so that it stood on end in a corner of the cell. I sat on the chair and waited. Presently there was a slight metallic sound from the door and I knew someone was watching through the Judas hole.
There was a sharp snap from the lock and the door opened. I stood up and the warder came in. He looked appraisingly around the cell and then fixed me with a hard eye. ‘You’re new here. You’ve been reading that thing, haven’t you?’ He nodded to the booklet on the table.
‘Yes, I have.’
‘Your bed’s in the wrong corner, and the book should be hanging on the wall where you found it. You’ll learn. Take a tip from me; do just what you’re told and you’ll be all right. Now, pick up your chamber-pot and get ready for slopping out.’
‘I haven’t used it,’ I said.
‘It gets slopped out whether you’ve used it or not,’ he said curtly. ‘Remember what I told you – do as you’re told with no arguments. That’s lesson number one.’
I picked up the chamber-pot and followed him on to the landing which was full