Raucous (9 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

The Governor refused an informal meeting.  From his voice Charlotte sensed his anger and superiority.  Roach had called in a favor and the Governor could not turn down the meeting.  But he made his own demands in a futile attempt to balance out the lack of superiority.  Their conversation would take place in his office, in his place of work, when he was free. He made it clear he was granting them a great and unique privilege. Charlotte imagined his chair higher than theirs because low-level psychological manipulation was effective with his general workplace encounters.

They arrived an hour before the scheduled three o’clock meeting.  They parked their car in the visitors area, a vast asphalt square divided into rectangles by white lines.  There were enough places for three hundred cars but theirs was the only one.  It was two p.m. on a non-visiting day.  The staff, Charlotte assumed, had a private secure parking behind the prison. 

The building was a large grey concrete block.  The institution divided in two, the larger compound an area for the highly dangerous criminals who used violence to achieve their goals.  The second, smaller compound, housed extremely dangerous individuals, or those who were in danger of being killed themselves.  Razor wire ran along the tops of the walls that enclosed the large exercise area.  A wire mesh, like an extended pigeon protection net, covered the whole yard.  They were met by a large guard, who without uniform would be seen as a stereotypical doorman.  Shaven head, large muscled neck and shoulders broad enough to require specially tailored suits.  Tattoos poked out from his collar and shirt sleeves, a tribal design, invented by a Londoner for men with a desire to be chiefs.  He asked them to follow him and they did at a slow steady pace.  The main entrance was a small steel door cut into the larger double doors which only opened for prisoner transit vehicles.  Once inside the guard instructed them to walk a corridor of wire fence toward the next steel door one hundred metres in front of them.  They were watched all the way by clones of the first guard who were positioned on high walkways that circumnavigated the courtyard. When they reached the end there was a white line on the floor, they waited this side of it.  A camera zoomed in on them.  A lock clicked, the door opened automatically and a metallic voice told them to step through.  They did and the door closed behind them. 

In all they passed through four steel doors.  Charlotte had the impression that they always turned left and were doing a large circuit of the building.  She had not met the Governor but she imagined this was his way of scaring them, of making them mentally shaky for their meeting.  Charlotte smiled.  It was no different from arriving at a large London airport and making your way outside to a waiting taxi.  The routine the same each time.  Wait, be identified and then pass through.

After the last door they were searched. 

They were instructed to remove their shoes and belts and to place all their belongings in an airport x-ray machine.  A metal detector was passed over their bodies.  They were physically searched.  The soles of their feet, the lining of their clothes and the inside of their mouths were all checked in a routine that told them each guard had done this a thousand times.  There was no speaking only gestures, and Roach and Charlotte complied without resistance

The original guard returned their belongings to them.  Clearly there was a quicker way to arrive here than the one they had taken.  They passed through a single steel door.  A final CCTV camera zoomed in on them as they stood inside a yellow box painted on the floor.  A steel door popped open and they entered a different environment. 

The corridor could have been any office building in London from the 1960s.  The corridor had a faded red carpet.  There were four doors on each side, evenly spaced, each made of wood.  The walls were painted a red only just the darker side of pink, and the door-frames were a bright clean white.

The steel door behind them closed.  And the third red door on the right opened.  They paused not having instruction.  A woman stepped out into the corridor.

“This way please,” she said.

The governor was sat at his desk.  A large mahogany antique that had spent its formative years in a Barclays bank.

“Take a seat,” the Governor said without looking up.

They sat, and Charlotte smiled.  The governor was either six feet seven or his chair was on a platform.  The governor looked up, and then angled his eyes down to stare at his three o’clock appointment.  The governor was pale, bald and had hanging double jowls that made him look like a fat old albino basset hound

“It doesn’t take that long to get out,” he said.  “Unless you are incarcerated.”

Charlotte and Roach smiled at the joke they imagined he had told to every person who had ever visited.

“What would you like to know about the man you know as Raucous?”  The governor asked.

“Everything you can tell us,” Roach said.

The Governor opened the single file on his desk.  It was thick, probably running to 300 individual pages.  There were photographs attached with paper clips.  The file had been read often, the pages were worn from constant turning.

“I don’t usually allow this,” the Governor said.

“But you’ve been told to,” Said Roach.  “And we thank you for your time.”

The Governor smiled without humor. He stopped turning pages in the file.  Charlotte hated this basic need for respect.  He had risen by whatever means to be Governor of an important prison.  A position she imagined paid well.  It takes a certain combination of skills to be successful in this environment.  It takes a specific personality.  The governor wanted his success and power to be acknowledged because why else would he be here if no one congratulated him at every turn.  Charlotte knew the Governor believed that they should be jealous of his success. She had met many like him before.  It was a childish need to be told they had led a productive life.  Charlotte had no problem with playing to his ego.  Roach, it seemed, wanted to cut through.

The Governor’s smile hadn’t held.  His face resembled an expression of pain.  He licked his left index finger and turned a page.  Without looking down he started to speak.

“From the beginning?  OK.  He was incarcerated in 1998.  Double homicide.  A young boy and his girlfriend.  They were eighteen as was Raucous.  The killing of women is not a crime best appreciated inside.  He was a target, but for reasons only my predecessor could explain, he was sent immediately into general population.  The first night, he killed his cell-mate, which, while not negating the fact he killed a young woman, endeared himself to the general population.”

“The reason being?” Charlotte asked.

“His cell mate for the first hours of that night was a man named Charles “Charlie” Brookes.  A rather large man, with bullying tendencies and a voracious sexual appetite.”

“Why was he bedded with that man?” Roach asked.

The Governor opened up his arms and turned his palms to the ceiling.

“I really couldn’t say,” he said.

“A punishment?  A way of breaking him, maybe?”  Charlotte asked.

The Governor placed his hands together like a super slow clap, and rested his hands on the table.  He stared into Charlotte’s eyes with a show of contempt he obviously used with anyone he considered stupid enough to question his words.

“As I said, I really couldn’t say.  I became governor in 2001, and so administration details before that time were not my responsibility.  But beds are scarce.  Prisoners go where there is a bed.  Charlie Brookes was a man who everyone preferred to sleep alone.”

“What happened?” Roach asked.

The Governor moved his small brown eyes from staring at Charlotte and looked down at the page again.

“After lock up, the two prisoners appear to have had a difference of opinion on sleeping arrangements which escalated into a physical conflict.  Much to everyone’s surprise, not least Charles himself, Raucous won that particular debate by inflicting several stab wounds.”

“Several?” Charlotte asked.

The Governor ran his finger down the page pretending to look for a number he already knew.  He flipped a page and with the acting skills of drunk dad, tapped the page where the number was written.  There was a photograph attached of a bloodied body, and the Governor made every effort for Charlotte and Roach to see.

“A hundred and seventeen, all be told, with a sharpened toothbrush.”

“The guards were unable to save him?” Roach asked.

The Governor sat back and produced his superior smug face, which, Charlotte thought, was the reason his double jowl and chin were so pronounced.  He pushed his forehead forward and his jaw in and his neck disappeared into his face.

“The guards became aware of the death the next morning at roll-call.”

“A hundred and seventeen stab wounds in silence?”  Roach asked.

“There is a lot of screaming at night in these places.  Particularly on the first night of a new guest.  An initiation ceremony of sorts.  And I would conjuncture that screams were not uncommon from people who shared a cell with Charlie.”

“So no one checked,” Charlotte said.

The governor gave up smug and his lower jaw reappeared.

“Apparently not,” he said.

“Raucous didn’t shout for assistance?”  Roach asked.

“Raucous went to sleep.  An activity he was continuing with in the morning when his cell was opened.”

“You don’t appear to be reading any of this,” Charlotte said.

The governor’s face flushed red.  He sucked on his upper dentures by rolling his tongue.

“I am very familiar with this file.  It is my job to know my inmates, and Raucous was a man who I needed to know well.  He was, to all intents and purposes, free to do and be who he wanted for the majority of his stay.”

“The majority?” Roach asked.

“For the first seven years, he was an uncontrollable nightmare.  He was left alone mostly.  Occasionally a man would try and take his unofficial title of the prison’s top man, but he was able to hold on to his hard earned place through being incredibly handy in combat situations.  Seven years after his first night, he killed another man.  The same situation, the same result.  Only he got bored quicker this time, and inflicted only fifty-seven wounds.”

The Governor opened his hands again.  He was looking for congratulations on doing such an impossible job well.

“Who was the victim?” Charlotte asked.

The Governor sighed.  He wanted this over.

“An Irish man by the name of O’Conner.  Jeffery O’Conner.  He was billeted with Raucous, who had earned a single cell.  Raucous didn’t like the arrangement it would seem, which was a shame for him, as he had very little time to do at that point.  It were as if he wanted to stay on.  It added six years minimum to his sentence and took away his good behaviour.”

“Served the same way?” Roach asked.

The governor blinked rapidly as if he had experienced a brief dizzy spell.  He leaned forward trying to create a conspiratorial bond with his two guests.

“Well, this, for me, becomes the interesting part.  Something I have always wanted to know more about.  After serving out his solitary, he returned to general population and received his very first visit.  A man named Jim Sharples came to see him.  A man-”

“We know him,” Charlotte said.

“How well?” the governor asked.

“Better than most,” said Roach.

The governor cricked his neck to the left.

“Well, he was an enforcer for a man in the mid-level crime stakes in London.  They spoke for the full Forty-Five minutes permissible.  And from that moment, until Raucous was free to leave, Raucous stayed clean.  As clean as any man who was seen as a prize is likely to be.”

“No more trouble?” Charlotte asked.

“Quite the opposite.  A model prisoner in most respects.  He started to play the game, co-operate in his way.  Not fight against what would be called the system, which is essentially me.  I wish I could take credit for the miraculous turnaround, but I can’t.  I changed nothing, nor did anything that would have triggered the transformation.”

“How did he change?” Roach asked.

“He started to do everything we asked.  He underwent tests and this time he actually put in effort.  When he first arrived, and periodically thereafter, he was required to undergo psychological profiling.  Initially he said everything you would expect a rather unintelligent psychopath to say.”

“But he was never moved to one of those units,” Charlotte said.

The Governor smiled in shock, he seemed genuinely surprised anyone would contemplate such an action.

“Absolutely not.  He was clearly being difficult.  Kids stuff.  Incompatible nonsense.  If we had taken everything he told us and answered at face value, he would be diagnosed with every single serious mental disorder that has so far been named.  Involved in these tests were IQ evaluations.  His test scores were never consistent, but they all drifted within the category of moronic, seventy through eighty-five.  The average in this country is 100, so he was sub-normal.  Only he was clearly too intelligent to be scoring so low.  After his epiphany, his scores become much more consistent.  He averaged, with one or two point differentiation, 134, which defines him as borderline genius.”