‘Seems a cool guy,’ James said, crashing on to his bed with a mouthful of chips.
‘Don’t you believe it,’ Dave smiled. ‘Cesar just wants to needle the skinheads.’
‘What do you mean?’ James asked.
‘Sit here.’
James stepped over the partition and sat up close to Dave, so they could talk in confidence.
‘There’s a pissing contest going on between the Latinos at that end and the whites at this end.’
‘Obviously,’ James nodded. ‘It’s not exactly an advert for racial harmony in here, is it?’
Dave grinned. ‘Elwood and Kirch are the top dogs on the white side, and we pose a threat to them. They’ll see BAM washing your T-shirt, they’ll see our baby-soft toilet tissue and you filling your chops with Latino munchies. If Elwood and Kirch think we’re getting support from Cesar, they’re going to start worrying about us undermining their whole power base in this cell.’
‘Couldn’t we just go up to Elwood and Kirch, shake hands and say hello?’
‘If we go over there now, we might look scared,’ Dave explained, shaking his head sharply. ‘Before we can convince Curtis to escape with us, we’ve got to earn his respect. We’ll only manage that if Elwood and Kirch respect us too.’
‘So, what then?’ James asked.
‘Well,’ Dave said slyly, ‘it doesn’t take a tactical genius to work that out. Does it?’
James looked irritated. ‘So I’m not a tactical genius; just tell me.’
‘You put Stanley Duff’s little brother in the prison hospital. You can guarantee that a meathead like Stanley will try to get us back. I doubt Elwood and Kirch will show their hand until they see how well we deal with that.’
‘Got you,’ James grinned. ‘So we’ve got to take out Stanley Duff.’
‘No. Elwood and Kirch might get worried if we’re too aggressive. We’ll wait for Stanley to come after us. He knows we can do him, so he’ll try a surprise attack, probably with a knife.’
‘You reckon he can get hold of a knife?’
Dave nodded. ‘I don’t think he’ll find it hard. You’ve seen how much contraband there is floating around in here.’
‘When do you think he’ll move on us?’ James asked.
‘Tonight most likely, when he thinks we’re both asleep. We’ll have to take turns staying awake. If we take out Stanley tonight, then tomorrow we can straighten things out with Elwood and Kirch in the exercise yard. We’ll make it clear that we’re not in bed with the Latinos and we just want a fair share of the action. Once that’s sorted, you can start chumming up with Curtis.’
‘Always assuming Stanley doesn’t stick a knife in our guts before we get a chance,’ James said, smiling uneasily as he held the Pringles can up in the air and drained the crumbs into his mouth.
‘Just in case,’ Dave said, ‘rub the end of your toothbrush against the concrete floor to sharpen the end. Then sleep with it in your hand.’
16. SLEEPERS
A standing count at 10:30 p.m. was followed by lights-out. The guards needed to be sure that the inmates weren’t digging a tunnel or killing each other, so a line of tubes down the middle of the cell stayed on. It was enough light to read by and most of the TVs and radios kept going too, along with the bragging matches and rowdy dice games.
The noise died back after midnight, but James still felt like he was in hell. He sat on his bed with his back to the wall, studying the beads of sweat rolling down his chest. There always seemed to be at least one winged black speck wandering over his skin, while hundreds of larger insects had decided to spend the night clanking their heads against the fluorescent lights near the ceiling.
James wrestled with his sheet, but it was soggy and hopelessly tangled around his legs, so he threw it away in frustration. He studied the white marks covering the shiny plastic over his mattress. He hadn’t been able to work them out earlier, but now he disgusted himself by solving the riddle: it was crusted salt from the previous occupant’s dried-out sweat.
James looked over the partition. Dave had put a towel over his eyes to shield the light and been asleep by 10:45. James remembered how his mum used to call people like Dave sleepers. Lauren was another sleeper: stick her in the back of a car, or on a couch in some strange house and she’d be out in no time. Unless he was exhausted, or sick, James could never do it. He needed a decent bed, with pillows and the duvet tucked under his chin exactly how he liked it.
‘Dave,’ James said, nudging him awake.
Dave sat up drearily, with a string of drool stretched between his face and his pillow.
‘Keep lookout a minute. I need a slash.’
James tucked the sharpened toothbrush handle into the waistband of his shorts, grabbed his empty cup and wandered towards the bathroom, while Dave rubbed his eyes. It was a clear walk up the aisle, though a few kids were still lying awake, with their tiny TV screens flickering in the half-light. They either ran on headphones or were turned down to a whisper.
It took James’ eyes a while to adjust to the brightly lit bathroom. One of the younger Latinos stood by the middle sink, pushing down the tap head and splashing water over his chest. James thought he heard the kid sob while he stood at the urinal. When he moved to wash his hands, the kid sobbed again.
‘You OK?’ James asked.
James reeled when the kid turned to face him. He had a burn on his chest, surrounded by a black scorch mark in the exact shape of the plastic mug in James’ hand. The skin was all blistered and weeping pus.
‘My baby brother got toothache,’ the kid explained tearfully. ‘Grandma paid the dentist instead of my commissary, which meant Cesar didn’t get what I owed him.’
James felt scared when he realised this horror had happened tonight, while he’d been only a few metres away. With all the noise, you could be screaming in agony and nobody would notice.
‘How?’ James asked.
‘Cesar’s trademark: he makes a hole in the bottom of a cup and fills it up with matches. Then he press it against your skin and sets them alight.’
‘Jesus.’
James remembered that he was deep in Latino territory. If one of Cesar’s guys came in, he’d want to know why James was sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. James pressed on the tap, splashed water all over his body to cool off and then gulped some down, before refilling his mug to take back to bed.
‘I’m sorry,’ James said uneasily, as he backed away.
The kid edged a smile. ‘Not as sorry as me.’
James shuddered, thinking how excruciating the burn must feel, as he walked back to his bed. Something thumped into him. Thick arms wrapped around his stomach as he hit the concrete floor between two empty beds, with Stanley Duff on top of him.
‘For my brother,’ Stanley announced theatrically, as he reached into the waistband of his shorts and pulled out a twenty-centimetre blade made from a strip of sharpened metal.
‘Help,’ James yelled desperately, realising that Dave must have dropped his guard and fallen back to sleep.
The blade would have plunged through James’ neck if he hadn’t found the strength to move at the last second. He got hold of Stanley’s wrist and started trying to twist the weapon out of his grip.
‘Dave. For god’s sake, help me …’
James spotted Abe’s skinny legs cutting across the aisle to Dave’s bed. Stanley was far heavier than James and he was gradually winning the battle to free his wrist and take a second stab. The blade nicked James’ palm as Stanley snatched it free.
Stanley broke into a big grin. James reached to pull out his toothbrush handle, but as Stanley raised the blade into the air, James spotted the kind of opening you dreamed about every time you got thrown to the mat in combat class. He thrust his hand forward, smashing his palm into the base of Stanley’s chin. Stanley’s head whipped back and made a sharp crack as the vertebrae in his neck impacted.
Dave was out of bed and committed to a charging movement. He crash
ed into Stanley, knocking him off James, as the rows of lights over the beds started flickering. This was followed by a popping noise, like the loudest cork bursting out of the biggest champagne bottle you’ve ever seen. It echoed around the cell, as Dave somersaulted on to the bed beside him and screamed out in pain.
A shout came from one of the two guards who’d run on to the gantry. ‘Break it up.’
James caught a glance of the hack holding the huge baton-round gun, as it recoiled from the second plastic shot. It hit Stanley in the arse, making him buck forward and smack head-first into the cell wall. The plastic round deflected off the bed frame and tore into James’ thigh.
‘Stand apart, now.’
Scared that he was going to be the next target, James dragged himself up and stumbled out into the aisle, fighting a dead thigh muscle.
‘Standing count,’ a female guard shouted. ‘Standing count.’
The whole cell had been woken by the shots and everyone started moving to the end of their beds; except Dave and Stanley, who’d each taken a baton round and were in no state to go anywhere. James looked up at the gantry, unsure if he was supposed to move.
The hack with the gun rocked his head and tracked James the four paces back to his bed. James knew a third, excruciatingly painful plastic round would come his way if he stepped a millimetre out of line.
James was expecting the medical team, like earlier, but the guards had pressed the emergency alarm, which brought out the Prison Emergency Response Team, commonly known as PERT. The six-strong team rolled back the cell door and burst through at a run. They looked fearsome, dressed head to toe in black body armour, with gloves, crash helmets and their leader yelling his lungs out:
‘Beds and heads.’
James copied his cellmates, as they jumped on to their beds and sat with backs to the wall and hands on heads. Kirch, who was nearest the door, didn’t have time to move. He was smacked into the aisle with a riot shield and got his ankle crunched under a running boot.
The first to reach Dave and Stanley threw down his shield and ripped a can of incapacitating pepper spray off his belt. Dave screamed out and rolled in a ball, as the PERT leader blasted him with the gooey liquid.
James breathed a hint of the concentrated pepper that had drifted into the air and immediately felt tears in his eyes. It must have been a million times worse for Dave.
Each member of the PERT team had a specific role. While the leader moved in on Stanley with the pepper spray, the second through fifth members dragged Dave into the aisle and grabbed one limb each. When Dave was spread out in an X-position, the final member of the team laid a plastic harness over his back. Strings of pepper spray dangled out of Dave’s long hair as he panicked for breath.
The two men holding Dave’s arms bent them into the harness and pulled them tight under a heavy nylon strap. Once they were secure, Dave’s legs were twisted until his heels almost touched his bum, then strapped into this excruciating position.
The PERT team moved their attention to Stanley, dragging him out into the aisle by his ankles. But the leader screamed out.
‘Break it off … Look at the head.’
Stanley was now unconscious and you only had to look at the way his head was twisted unnaturally backwards to see that something was badly wrong. The smallest on the PERT team, who James now realised was a woman, took off her gloves and helmet and crouched down over Stanley. She flinched as she got a whiff of the pepper spray, then looked up at her team leader.
‘It might be a broken neck. He’s definitely a hospital job.’
The leader looked up at the two guards on the rail. ‘Get us a medical team.’ Then he pointed at Dave. ‘Take that to the hole.’
Two of the PERT team put their hands under Dave’s armpits and picked him up. His eyes and nose were streaming and he had a huge red welt on his ribs where he’d been hit by the plastic bullet.
James trembled as he watched Dave get dragged out of the cell, with his bare knees grazing along the concrete floor. James knew it could as easily have been him who’d ended up being hauled away in agony. Or even worse: what if Stanley had got the knife in?
17. YARD
With Dave locked in the hole, James felt vulnerable. His need for sleep finally overcame his fear at around 4 a.m., an hour after Stanley Duff had been stretchered off to the prison hospital.
The cell door and the gates on to the exercise yard opened at nine, but most kids were still asleep as James limped towards the bathroom, with his bar of soap and toilet roll. He had the sharpened toothbrush handle tucked into his waistband, just in case.
BAM hovered with his mop, while James took a dump. The steel bowls were mounted on the wall, without doors or partitions, so you got zero privacy. The shower was even worse. The water only ran while you held the button down and the lukewarm dribble meant you couldn’t get soap out of your hair.
James dried off quickly, desperate to get out of the rank cell and breathe fresh air. A corridor led past three other cells and up a short ramp. To get to the exercise yard, you stood in line to get padded down by a hack, before passing through a metal detector.
As James’ canvas slipper took its first step into the sand, another inmate passed him a white paper bag containing his breakfast. James got called back before he had a chance to see what he’d got.
‘Rose.’
Superintendent Bob Frey was the pot-bellied, yellow-toothed man who’d crushed James’ foot in the reception room the previous afternoon. Frey took James under a veranda and made him stand with his back pinned to the cellblock wall.
‘Been in my cellblock less than fifteen hours, haven’t you?’
‘About that, sir.’
‘I got two brothers in the hospital. One of ’em’s just a busted nose and concussion, but the other fella’s got neck damage that’s gonna cost this prison tens of thousands in medical bills.’
James shifted awkwardly, not knowing how to answer.
‘Then I got your brother in the hole,’ Frey grinned. ‘You ever been in the hole, boy?’
‘No sir.’
‘You got no light, no ventilation, not a strip of clothes and no toilet. We hose it out once a day, like an animal cage. Any more trouble and that’s where I’ll have you. Understood?’
‘Yes sir,’ James nodded. ‘How long’s Dave in there for?’
‘Long enough,’ Frey grinned. ‘Now get out of my sight.’
James opened up his breakfast bag as he walked on to the sun-bleached yard. The milk was warm, the three pieces of fruit were past their best and the muffin was on the dry side, but it was edible and James was starving. His last decent meal had been the fried chicken two nights earlier.
The yard was oval-shaped and the size of three football pitches. It was scooped out of the desert basin around the back half of the cellblock. The facilities were basic: shelters to keep off the sun, a few basketball hoops and chin-up bars and the small prefabricated building where lunches were served. Beside the perimeter fence was a five-metre stretch of concrete behind a red line, which was known as the shooting gallery. No inmate was allowed on the shooting gallery and to make it clear, the notices dotted along the fence had a little stick man standing inside a gun sight with Lethal Force Authorised written beneath him.
‘Hey,’ Abe said, jogging up behind James with a banana in his hand.
James smiled. ‘You did me a big favour last night. Dave was supposed to be watching my back … I just gotta hope Stanley doesn’t have any pals popping out of the woodwork.’
‘The two big white guys were in the shower when I went for a piss. They asked if I’d seen you.’
‘Which guys?’ James asked anxiously.
‘Elwood, and the one with the German name.’
‘Kirch. What did they want?’
‘They just asked where you were.’
‘Did they sound angry?’
Abe shrugged. ‘All they said was one sentence. Have you seen the little psychopath? I told them I t
hought you were already out on the yard.’
‘They called me a psychopath?’ James said, unsure if this was a bad sign or a mark of respect.
‘I think you broke that guy’s neck.’
‘It was me or him: he was about to slit my throat.’
James threw away the core of his apple and took a slug from his bottle of milk. He was frightened. If Dave had been around, Elwood and Kirch would have been manageable. But with Dave in the hole, he’d be outgunned if things turned heavy.
‘I’ll wait for them to come on the yard,’ James said. ‘At least there’s space to run away out here.’
James and Abe found a spot under a shelter with a view over the whole yard and sat together in the dirt.
Kirch came through the metal detector first. He was a seventeen-year-old skinhead, two metres tall, with massive pectoral muscles inside a sweat-stained vest. Elwood was taller and thinner, shaved bald. A swastika with MOM written underneath it was tattooed on his neck. Curtis came next. He was an average build and the same height as James, but he looked undernourished standing between his massive bodyguards.
The three boys joined up with a bunch of similarly fierce looking skinheads from another cell, who were standing around a set of chin-up bars taking it in turns to do sets. The gang was bigger and meaner than James had expected. He realised they were going to have no problem hurting him if they wanted to.
A couple of minutes later, while Kirch was on the chin-up bar, Elwood spotted a little guy passing by. He tucked the kid’s head under his arm and squeezed until it turned red. After a while, he let go and knocked him down with a savage right hook. The kid was fighting tears and holding on to his face as he walked off.
‘I gotta split,’ Abe said, shocked by what he’d just witnessed.
James knew Abe wasn’t going to be any help in a fight against the Elwoods and Kirches of the world, but he appreciated having a friendly face to talk to.
‘What’s your problem?’ James asked.
‘They already asked me where you are. If they find me with you, they’re not gonna like it.’