Gang of One: One Man's Incredible Battle to Find His Missing (35 page)

There was silence for a moment as Adam, Amadeo and the Aryan Brother just gazed at me, at first sceptical, then finally dumbfounded.

‘Wow,’ said Adam eventually, with genuine admiration. ‘How do you know so much stuff?’

I shrugged my shoulders then lay back on my bunk and sighed. What the hell was I doing here? I was considering having another go at the letter to Calum when New York bounded into the room, full of the joys of life, calling over to me as he strode towards his bunk halfway down the Range. ‘Hey Scottie. Scottie?’

‘Yo!’ I responded, my paltry attempt at jail-speak raising a wry smile and a shake of the head from the ever-observant Chief in the corner. It was a constant battle to seem outwardly positive when inside my spirits were flagging so badly.

‘I thought you’d be out there, man,’ exclaimed an excitable New York as he ripped off his clothing, getting ready to go to the shower. He had clearly been working out again.

‘Yeah?’ I queried, having no idea what he was talking about. ‘Out where?’

‘In the Yard, man! It’s raining!’ New York replied as he reached for his toiletries from his locker. I didn’t even wait for him to finish – just leapt right off my bunk, grabbed my T-shirt and was heading for the door.

‘Hey, Scotty,’ a serious-sounding Chief shouted after me.

Raining! It hadn’t rained in over four months, and before that only twice at night – soaking the floors, but not giving us any relief.

‘Scotty, hold up . . .’ I briefly heard Chief shout again as I left the Range, determined to get out into the rain before it stopped, and completely overlooking the concern in his voice.

I paused at the front of Sunset and looked out into the gap between the two buildings, seeing an almost imperceptible light mist of rain falling steadily. I had read once that there were forty-seven different terms for rain in the Scottish vernacular, something I could well believe, having been drenched, drowned and sodden all too often growing up in dreach Glasgow, but I’d never seen rain like this. I’d often wondered why we hadn’t just switched to the German word for weather – ‘
Wetter
’. It seemed a far more appropriate word for the west coast of Scotland – we don’t have weather there, we just have wetter.

I put my top on and started to walk up to the Yard, positively revelling in the fine, misty spray that passed for rain in Big Spring, Texas, my spirits suddenly soaring. Texas mist, not Scotch mist, but it would do for me. It had a cleansing, serene quality and I stopped for a moment just under the bird house and turned my face to the air, letting the tiny droplets fall gently onto my face. I felt almost free and completely refreshed. There was a slight breeze, another first for Big Spring, yet it was still warm and the overall combination was intoxicating. I felt elated; I felt connected to home; I felt blessed to experience this simple pleasure in such a dire place.

I walked quickly towards the gateposts separating the main housing blocks from the path, up past the church to the Yard. I had been relatively oblivious to anyone else, although it had occurred to me that everyone seemed to be heading back in, even though the move wouldn’t be called for a while yet.

‘Bunch of pussies,’ I thought. ‘It’s just a wee bit of mist. It’s barely even raining.’

I held my hand in front of my face. The rain was so light it was drifting, giving the whole moment a surreal quality. Still people passed me.

‘Scotland, you’d better done not go up there,’ an unrecognisable voice called as its owner hurried by me.

The place was emptying fast. Some of them were covering their heads as they ran, a sight which fuelled my disdain further, and by the time I reached the running track there were only a few people ahead of me.

I hadn’t seen them initially because they were standing at the one covered spot that abutted the running track. The running track was on the top of a gradual incline, so since the covered section was slightly hidden from the main Yard, it was a regular gathering place for gang meetings and retributions. I could tell immediately, from the way the two chief protagonists were standing facing each other, surrounded by a ring of a dozen or so gang-bangers, that violence was in the air. My mood immediately changed, and my heart started to race. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I was already only fifty feet away, but at that moment, I had a chance, a brief chance, to turn around and walk away without anyone being the wiser. But I hesitated, not in movement, but in thought – the wrong combination, because by the time I had decided to turn around my legs had carried me further on, level with the little crowd, but just to their left on the running track.

I saw sunlight glinting on a bald head. Aryan Brotherhood, my favourite guys. There were around ten of them, encircling some poor guy who was facing up to my old pal SlumDawg, the AB’s enforcer. He dwarfed his victim, and I noticed how relaxed his arms were and how large his hands seemed as they dangled loosely by his side. Always fear the man who looks relaxed prior to combat.

SlumDawg had a face wracked with pockmarks, a mind ravaged by crystal meth. What he lacked in teeth he now made up for in hair, blonde hair, masses of it covering his head and face, but more in patchwork than in any consistent fashion. Pasty white and very thin, he looked like a mutation of his beloved white gene pool, fucked up by centuries of inbreeding in the Tennessee Blue Mountains. I’d barely heard him speaking since he visited me on my first day in Big Spring, but had seen him on the same ‘stoop’ at the side of the Yard most days, sitting idly and growing new bits of blonde hair. New York, unaware that we had ‘history’, had furtively pointed him out to me and told me he was one to steer clear of – the Aryan Brotherhood’s weapon of choice when retribution was called for. I’d often thought he and I would end up having more dealings with each other. But not like this.

I was anxious to walk on round the track before I drew any attention to myself. I looked ahead and kept moving. I was just slightly ahead of them now, but temptation got the better of me and I turned to glance over my shoulder. With perfect timing, I saw SlumDawg swing a haymaker – round and wide and clean into the face of his victim, who had made no attempt to defend himself. I caught a clear view of the man’s face as he began to fall to the concrete floor. The first punch had knocked him out cold. His head cracked onto the solid surface, the sound unusual but unmistakeable.

I recognised him, but I didn’t know his name. He was a good handball player, and I’d often seen him on the courts there. I’d never even realised he was an AB – he didn’t seem the type – even though he was white, tall and angular. I remember him as always smiling. He wasn’t smiling now. I realised I had stopped and was standing staring, mesmerised by what I had just seen. Everything seemed to have slowed down and I knew from the mechanical, precise movements of SlumDawg and the other ABs that this retribution had only just begun. I couldn’t move, as if my feet were set in concrete, and I knew then that I was going to stand there and watch; that I wouldn’t move now even if I could. A thought entered my head that I wouldn’t initially acknowledge, but which forced itself to the fore. ‘They are going to kill him.’ I nodded; maybe I nodded, I don’t know. My mind was spinning and I continued to stand spellbound, useless, as SlumDawg surveyed his victim. He was lying peacefully as if asleep, on the concrete floor of the shelter. As SlumDawg walked around him, it registered with me that he was already bleeding from the head. I say registered, because I remember clearly seeing the blood flow off the concrete and onto the dust that preceded the running track where I stood, but I don’t know what I thought about it; what my view of this was. It felt like I was watching a TV show. But I had no way of changing channels.

SlumDawg was circling his victim and, having received some words of advice from the other gang members, he quickly and confidently crouched down over his victim and peered closely into his face. Then, with a gentleness both surprising and chilling, he held his victim’s chin lightly in his left hand, turning his face smoothly one way then another. Kneeling over the flaccid body, and having adjusted his position so he was now crouched above the chest, he scrutinised the man’s face once more, as if considering how to best maximise the damage he could inflict on his unconscious victim.

I felt chained to that spot. Mouth open, I glanced away from SlumDawg for a second and saw the looks of relish on the other gang members’ faces. Still I stood there helplessly. This was breaking the rules of humanity, but still I couldn’t move.

The second blow was as sickening as it was sudden, the third and fourth rammed into this nameless soul’s unprotected face with such force it felt as if they must burst through to the concrete below. A fifth, maybe a sixth, maybe a seventh, I don’t know, maybe even a tenth blow fell onto his unprotected face and head, interspersed all the while with the occasional gentle adjustment from SlumDawg as he repositioned the head in order to target any undamaged features. And there I stood, too shocked to speak. Too horrified to run away. Too beaten to intervene.

There was nothing but silence, punctuated by the sound of SlumDawg’s blows and a man’s face breaking. No sound from the other ABs, just silence for seconds; maybe minutes, maybe someone’s lifetime; until suddenly and violently a scream emerged. An agonised, frenzied scream.

‘FUR FUCK’S SAKE!’

They all turned and looked at me. SlumDawg, still perched over his unconscious victim – a body now with no recognisable face – looked up at me, his fist still bloodied and at the ready. He turned and looked at the shot-caller for guidance, but he was too busy staring at me too. I recognised him from our meeting a few months back, my hairy biker friend. After a second or two, he sneered at me and motioned to SlumDawg to leave. Carefully extricating himself from the lifeless body below him, the enforcer stood up to his full height, smiling as he surveyed the wreckage of his work; his pride sickeningly obvious at the probable termination of another man’s life. I didn’t wait for them to leave. I turned around and started to walk away around the running track, my body trembling and my legs almost failing me.

‘Fuck these people!’ I said out loud, my breath rasping and my heart pounding. I was walking even quicker now but turned my head to view the scene behind me. The man had not moved, not one inch, while the rest of the ABs were dispersing rapidly. I was walking the wrong way, deeper into the running track and further from the safety of the Yard. I walked faster still in the wrong direction – just desperate to walk away. ‘Fuck that guy!’ I thought. ‘It’s not my issue; it’s not my fucking concern.’ I was scared; I was sickened; I was disgusted. Disgusted with myself. Here I was walking away again. Being a coward; just like I had done with the rat in the Range, just like I had done all those years ago with my brothers, when I hid with the girls behind the storm doors from DumbDumb and Finn. In here for fraud. And rightly too. I was a wanker, a complete fraud.

But this wasn’t my fault. It was the other guy’s fault – whoever he was, and for whatever he had done. I was going home. I had to go home. I had to get to Cara and had to help my son. I looked back. The guy still hadn’t moved. ‘Shit, move you dumb arsehole. Fucking move!’ I said under my breath. I stopped walking and turned and stared at him. I could feel my heart pounding. No movement. ‘Move, you dumb fuck!’ I shouted. I was still completely alone. Everyone else had known what was going down; everyone else had made sure they saw nothing. Chief had even fucking warned me.

‘Well, fuck him. Fuck them all!’ I turned away again and started to walk further around the track. I’d made my promises; I’d told Calum I would come home. Promised every night to do whatever it took to find Cara. I was getting transferred out of this hellhole. Leaving. Going. Now.

I was repeating these points over and over again, trying to drown everything else out. I stopped once again and looked back the hundred metres or so. It occurred to me that in my haste to get away from SlumDawg, to get away from the body, I was still moving the wrong way. I needed to walk back down past the body. Fuck, he still hadn’t moved. Worse, a voice inside me was saying over and over again that there was something wrong with his position, with the way he was lying. His head was right back – the prime position in which to swallow your tongue or choke on your own blood or vomit. ‘At least move your fucking head!’ I shouted. I looked around to see if anyone was coming near but there was no sign of anyone, other than the inmates milling around down the hill towards the main yard. The ABs were long gone. No cops, no anyone. Just me alone on the top of this running track and this . . . this dying man.

I stood still for a further second. ‘Fuck him. Forget him. Fuck him!!’ I chanted, tears welling up in my eyes. I walked determinedly away. Two steps later I stopped. ‘He might be dying!’ a voice inside pleaded. I turned again, not knowing what to do – to walk or stay; to help or to run away? He still wasn’t moving. What could I do anyway? I was just an idiot from Glasgow. I was out of my depth in the Texas desert; a danger to myself, a danger to others.

Without even consciously making the decision, I found that I’d started back towards him, moving quickly. I had no choice, I realised – I just had to help him. If I didn’t, then I would have lost my basic humanity; I would be lost myself. There would be no point in my going home then; the person I had been would be gone forever. It had a sudden inevitability about it and as I continued to think it through I realised I was moving rapidly towards the body on the ground.

He still hadn’t moved, so I ran the last few yards to the prostrate and bloodied figure. I quickly crouched beside him but then recoiled as I went to touch him. I saw he was breathing but his face was horribly misshapen and tilted at an alarming angle. The area around his eyes was badly swollen and the bottom half of his face had collapsed, his chin effectively missing. I tried not to look at him, sickened at the sudden, ludicrous thought that part of him might come off in my hand. I looked around again, anxiously checking that no one could see me and that there were no cops around. There was blood everywhere. My eyes took snapshots that would haunt me for years to come. They haunt me still.