The Loose Screw (22 page)

He is a good man who has survived some of the most horrendous treatment in an archaic Victorian prison system, but after all he has been through he holds no grudge or any bitterness. He has grown old in prison and the system now owes him the chance to prove that he can go home and live the reminder of his life with his friends and family. A Prison Service code states that it has a duty to care for people in its custody and help them to lead law-abiding lives upon their release. They have failed to give Charlie this chance up till now and it is time they give him his chance and disregard what I believe is a personal grudge the system has with this man.

Give him a chance and he will not let you, me, himself or, more importantly, his family, down."

11

DAVE COURTNEY OBE

What can I say about this man that you have not already heard or read about. Well, all I can say is that it is all true, however unbelievable you may think the stories are.

I first met Dave in the high-secure Cat A unit at Belmarsh in 1996 when he was brought in on remand for a charge of importation. He had a fearsome reputation as one of the top London gangsters at the time, and the general feeling was that he was going to be a right handful.

It had only been a few days since we had taken delivery of Charlie and everyone's nerves were shot at the prospect of having him on the unit, so you can imagine how most of the screws took the news that 'Big Dave' was coming for tea. I will tell you how they took it -they all went fucking sick, that's how they took it. You see, your average screws strut about the landings and wings of our prisons as if they are the hardest men to ever walk the earth, but, as I have maintained all along, most are bullies who act by preying on the weak and always ensure they outnumber their intended victims before they strike.

Well there is certainly one thing Dave Courtney cannot be accused of and believe me he has been accused of a great many things by some very dodgy coppers over the years -and that is that he is weak. In fact the staffing levels dropped to such a desperate level when Dave arrived -due to a strange outbreak of 'Davecourtneyitis' that spread through the officers -that I began to think we would have to make Dave the honorary governor of the unit. Imagine that -'dodgy' Dave in charge of forty-eight of the most dangerous men in the prison system! How funny would that be? Still, one thing's for sure, he couldn't do any worse than the fat idiot who was currently filling that position.

The difference in the screws on the unit at that time was that they not only had to worry about dealing with the consequences of their actions at work -that was easy to do, as they could always rely on a fellow officer to back them up with false witness statements to incriminate inmates, they also had the worry of possible reprisals on them outside work. Due to the reputation of men like Dave and a good few other big names on the unit at the time, the fear of reprisals outside the walls was continually drummed into us by intelligence briefings given by the security department.

We were told, for example, that we should not use our full names in front of the inmates and should certainly not discuss things such as where we lived or socialized. All these briefings succeeded in doing, however, was spread fear and paranoia through the ranks of the bad apples amongst us and give them just cause (or so they thought) to attack inmates at every opportunity. My belief was, and still is, that so long as you didn't behave in a way that led to fear of reprisals you didn't have anything to worry about. Most of the guys I came across doing bird, including the top boys like Dave, had enough on their plates without worrying about getting people to follow screws home, and they would deal with the bully-boy element in their own way.

One of the ways Dave dealt with the sneaky-beaky way in which the screws went to great lengths to disguise their identities was as he dealt with most things -by applying a little bit of forward planning and combining it with a little bit of his famous cheeky wit. He was so amazed at the paranoia, which was rife and plainly obvious to anyone observing from the outside, that he devised a cunning plan that still makes me giggle today when I think about it.

Dave was, and still is, very well connected with the London club scene and he noticed that a lot of the staff on the unit at the time were fairly young and many were single. So, over the space of a few weeks, he began dropping into conversation with the more paranoid members of staff snippets about his connections with this club and that club. It didn't take long for the screws to start taking the bait and they began to quiz Dave on where were the best places to go and what nights were the good ones, etc. Dave turned round and said he would have a word and get a crowd of them free VIP entry into one of these clubs. Of course many members of staff jumped at this opportunity to gain free access into a top club, with the chance of rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous.

When they arrived at the club, however, Dave's kicked into action and, having briefed the door staff about the party's arrival, they were all given star treatment and ushered to the front of the queue. Once inside, they were offered exclusive gold membership for free, courtesy of Mr Dave Courtney, which being slightly stupid they all eagerly accepted.

Of course you know what's coming -in order to register for gold membership you are required to fill out a form, giving your full name address and contact details. How easy was that after they had spent months painstakingly trying to conceal their names from the inmates on the unit? In one night, Dave had succeeded in compiling a dossier of the full names and addresses of about half the unit's workforce!

Can you imagine the panic that this little caper caused amongst the ranks of the already paranoid Prison Service? The Home Office actually issued an official memorandum forbidding any member of staff from attending any establishment with links to Dave Courtney or his associates, which was pretty much everywhere in south London at the time. Dave did not escape reprisal from the Prison Service officials, who were obviously greatly embarrassed by the whole issue. As a consequence, he was placed in solitary on a trumped-up charge of attempting to condition staff, which we all know is bollocks -he was just being nice. Of course a little bit of solitary is not going to bother someone like Dave, despite the fact that in a further attempt to wind him up they only allowed him to exercise handcuffed to 'Dingus' Magee, who at the time was in the middle of the longest dirty protest ever held in a mainland British prison and was permanently covered in shit. Imagine having to walk round the cage next to that stench for an hour a day, but, as always, Dave stuck two fingers up at the authorities and took it all in his stride.

As I said, when Dave first arrived at the unit nerves were on edge, so when the staff who were strip-searching him discovered that he was in possession of two Rolex watches, one of them couldn't wait to use that information to do a bit of stirring up. He was not part of the regular team assigned permanently to look after Charlie, but he used to come in to assist us with serving Charlie's meals. To try to impress Charlie and make conversation, he couldn't wait to tell him about the right flash bastard who had just come in wearing two gold Rolex watches. Well Charlie and Dave had never met before, though both were aware of the other's reputation, and in the enclosed world of a high-secure unit this comment from an insecure officer was just enough to cause a bit of verbal conflict between them for a few days.

Evidently Charlie didn't like flash jack-the-lad characters and, due to the officer's description, this was the picture he had painted of Dave, so he began issuing threats to him out of the window. Dave, not being a man to back down from anyone regardless of their reputation, of course replied with his own shouts of retaliation. This went on for a few days and the tension at one time got pretty tense, so we had to be particularly careful that these two didn't meet whilst moving to and from the gym or visits. There was even talk of setting up an unlicensed bout on the exercise yard at one time and some officers began opening books. Talk about the clash of the fucking titans -what a row that would have been to watch.

Thankfully this stand-off didn't last for long. Both men soon realized that the screws were deliberately antagonizing the situation, as not many had any love for either Charlie or Dave. In fact the two men became firm friends and have remained so to this day, so once again the system failed to break two of the highest-risk inmates they had had in the unit at any one time.

The truth about why Dave had arrived on the unit wearing two gold Rolexes was far less sinister than the authorities would have liked. He had been asked by a friend, who needed to raise a bit of cash, if he could sell the watch legitimately and he still had it in his possession at the time of his arrest. Of course the authorities didn't have any of that story, so they confiscated the watches with the intention of proving they were in fact the proceeds of some dodgy drug deal or robbery, as if they didn't have enough on Dave as it was. They were obviously worried about the fragile charges they already had him on, so felt they should formulate a plan B. Nevertheless, despite an extremely conscious effort to prove the watch was not legitimate, all their investigations proved futile and once again the authorities had to eat humble pie and were forced to return the watch eventually.

Dave quickly settled into his own unique way of handling the monotonous routine on the unit with his own brand of humour. He quickly realized that everything that had to be done for the inmates on the unit involved a great deal of effort from various members of staff. One exercise, which you may think is a simple one but for a Cat A prisoner is in fact one of the most drawn-out processes, is a simple trip to the prison hospital.

Whilst still in solitary, Dave made a basic request one morning to see a prison doctor. The officer was persistent in his demands to know the reason for this request, and Dave insisted that it was personal and he would rather just tell the doctor. However, when the officer eventually said he could not authorize the appointment unless he knew what was the problem, Dave told him that he just needed a doctor to look up his arse.

Well, you can imagine how the rumour that Dave Courtney had piles spread through the ranks of the officers -everyone thought it was hilarious. A few days later the day of the appointment arrived and preparations began to move Dave from the unit across the three-hundredyard sterile area from the unit to the main prison building and into the hospital wing.

I had been attached to the six-strong team of officers detailed to accompany Dave to the hospital. Now, to move a Cat A inmate from the unit is no mean feat. They were deemed such a risk that before any move could take place the rest of the unit and the main prison had to be locked down and secured. We then had to ensure we had two dog handlers to accompany us across the sterile area from the unit to the hospital, as well as notify the control room by radio exactly when we were leaving the unit and when we had arrived and were secure in the hospital wing. All the way across to the hospital, during the visit and until we were securely back on the unit, Dave was to be handcuffed to an officer and the control room would track our every movement through the dozens of closed-circuit television cameras that covered every square inch of the unit and prison grounds.

Well, after all these preparations we finally began to move out of the unit and across the open space between the unit and the main prison. As I said, it was only about three hundred yards or so, but to Dave, who had not focused on anything further than about four feet away or seen any greenery for the past six weeks, it was like crossing Siberia. He played along with the novelty of it all the way across, performing his 'kid in a sweetshop' routine and staring at the trees and the sky.

We made our way into the main prison and up the stairs to the hospital and then secured ourselves in the examination room, which was located at the front of the prison and overlooked the road towards Thamesmead. When the doc arrived he asked Dave to bend over and drop his trousers so he could carry out his examination. Dave obliged, propping himself up on the window sill and looking out of the window whilst pulling his arse cheeks apart to assist the doc. Whilst in this position he kept commenting on the cars and people he could see through the window -a sight he had not seen for some time. In no time at all a bewildered doctor commented from the rear that he could see nothing wrong with Dave's behind and asked again what the problem was.

"Problem?" Dave replied. "There is no problem, doc. I just said I wanted someone to look up my arse and, now that you have, I will be off, thank you very much."

Well I nearly pissed myself there and then at the comment and also the sight of the senior officer, who had taken the original request from Dave to see a doctor and whose face had gone purple and looked as though it was going to explode.

"You fucking told me you had piles, Courtney, you twat! Do you think I am some sort of mug or something?"

"Gov, I never told you I had piles -you came to that conclusion all by yourself. I just told you I wanted a doctor to look up my arse and now he has done we can go, thank you very much."

The senior officer was fuming and, had he not been such a spineless twat, he would likely have jumped all over Dave there and then. I was too busy laughing to have been of any help if it had all kicked off, so I was glad when we got clearance to make the move back to the unit. All the way back the senior officer was having a dig at Dave, telling him how he thought he was the daddy of the unit, that no one had ever left the unit with less than eighteen years served in the four years it had been open, and that he would go all out to have him at every opportunity.

Of course these were just idle threats in Dave's case, but that's not to say that these threats were not carried out on other, shall we say, less well-connected prisoners, even in the unit where it appeared that every inch of floor space and every blind spot was covered by closed-circuit television cameras.

I witnessed countless attacks by staff on inmates for no apparent reason other than that they could and had been getting away with it for years. Don't forget that we knew the position of every camera, we had seen the monitors in the control room and we had been told where the blind spots were and who to contact if we wanted a certain camera to 'malfunction' for a few minutes. Believe me, this went on day in, day out, and all the stories you have read from people's accounts of the time they spent as an inmate in one of our prisons and having suffered brutality or psychological torture at the hands of power-crazy screws are true. I can confirm that, as I saw it with my own eyes, and it was witnessing on a daily basis this behaviour by my fellow prison officers that disgusted me so much that I felt I had no choice but to turn my back on the Service. I was ashamed to be associated with such cowards. I detest people with no backbone who hide behind authority in order to inflict such pain and suffering on others.