To Catch A Storm (13 page)

As he was taken down and stuffed into the back of an armoured transit van, he decided he was not going to be a victim during his time in prison. The next 10 years (hopefully significantly fewer) were going to be tough. A Category B prison and that meant lifers who could handle themselves and lots of people who would want to get one over on Carl. He didn’t have much experience of fighting and violence (yet), but he was strong and on the odd occasion he’d had to, he’d been able to handle himself.

He was sharing a cell with someone else who was in for violent robbery - Dan Witt. They got on well and Dan, who would end up doing the robbery with Carl in Manchester, gave him the lowdown on prison existence and how things went down on their wing. Apparently, the hard men of the prison were Wilf Lamb and
a man called Reaper by inmates or Terry Reaps by screws
. Both were in for murder. Lamb and Reaper surrounded themselves with three other murderers. Together they looked like a bunch of rabid, whipped dogs. All gaunt faces, tattoos, dark eyes and stubble. Hungry for fresh inmate meat. They liked to target lads that were new to prison and especially those that were new to prison life such as Carl. They played mind games with them for amusement.

“Nice group of lads.” Dan joked ironically. “It’s best to keep your head down around that lot. I seen one of ‘em kick the shit out of a lad in here. Literally.” he gestured subtly to the right of the group. “Think he’s called Dean, the one on the right. Greasy hair, tattoo of a knife through a heart on his cheek. Charmer. Dunno what had gone on, but I heard something going down in the cell next to ours. I knew not to get involved, you just don’t, you don’t see anything, you don’t say anything, but I got up and walked past the cell door which was closed but I could see in the window. Clarky, my neighbour back then, was on the floor, he was unconscious but he was still getting his head kicked. Was horrid. He was in his undies and he’d shit and pissed himself, I think in his unconscious state, but it carried on. I walked away ‘cos I couldn’t just stand there.” he held up his right hand and stuck his thumb out. “A. ‘Cos I’d get seen by them. Not good.” then stuck his forefinger out. “B. ‘Cos I’d alert a screw to what was going on and that would be much worse. I walked past again slow and looked in and they’d stopped and were going through his stuff. Was probably about drugs. Usually is in ‘ere. As it happened, he was alright. His face took about 6 months to get back to normal, but he changed after that. He wouldn’t speak to a soul. He looked terrible ‘cos they had to take his eyebrows off to stitch ‘em up. Poor bastard. I’m no threat to anyone in here, apart from I might help myself to someone’s smokes if they’re careless and leave ‘em knocking about, but he wouldn’t speak to me after that. Went into his own little world.”

“Unlucky.” Carl said shaking his head.

“No, not unlucky mate, he wasn’t smart enough. He somehow got involved with ‘em. Just don’t do or say anything that would involve you in any way into their fucked up lives.” Carl listened and nodded. Thankful for the advice.

“You do drugs?” Dan asked, but Carl shook his head. “Good, keep it that way in ‘ere ‘cos it’ll end in tears. Have a smoke. Enjoy a smoke, but keep it at that. I loved a smoke and I used to do drugs. Whatever I could get my hands on. Speed, charlie, Es, Skunk. But I’m smart. I left that behind once I came in here. Drugs in here is bad news man.”

Dan had come through the ‘care system’ and the care system had well and truly let Dan down. His parents had been serial physical abusers. They also threw a fair bit of verbal and psychological abuse Dan’s way, and for the rest of the time they compounded it with neglect. This was all before Dan was school age.

It was a neighbour who blew the whistle for him. The family was paid several visits by social services. He remained true to his parents and would not speak out against them. He knew they were very bad to him on a regular basis, but he loved them all the same, he had no one else to cling to in his lonely young life. No siblings, few friends. It was unsurprising therefore, he attempted to protect them. But even as he kept his mouth shut, the bruising and scratches told their own story. Especially the circular bruising which gave away the biting that was his mother’s particular speciality. Usually if Dan broke anything. Another favourite was the cupboard. Where parents might normally send their children to bed early, Dan was pushed into a cupboard under the stairs. There were three cupboards under their stairs and they pushed him into the smallest that was nearest the foot of the stairs. He would spend the night there. When the door opened in the morning, he would crawl tentatively out. He had no choice but to crawl slowly as he would have no feeling in his legs. He would usually be exhausted. The times he went into the cupboard always coincided with his parents drinking and that meant arguing. Arguments were generally about money they owed each other. Money one had stolen off the other. About his lazy father not providing for them. Their arguments could last until 3 or 4 in the morning. Sometimes the police knocked on the door, sometimes their neighbours would bang on the wall. Generally, it was a grim, exhausting environment for a child. On the occasions he ended up in the cupboard, Dan would be upset and cry for a while. Crying was not too bad. The first few times, it had been screaming. Screaming meant the shouting at him continued and that things were thrown at the cupboard door. Once he had cried himself out of tears, Dan would carefully push the door a few millimetres outwards, it would just give him a tiny amount of diffused light, but it was enough so that he could occupy himself. He had some trinkets in the cupboard. A pocket guide to cars and a pack of superheroes Top Trumps. He knew them almost off by heart. He’d test himself on his knowledge of them. It was a simple game, but it took him off into other worlds. Worlds without screeching and screaming and banging doors and smashing glasses. A world where he could fly. Soaring through the sky, he could look down on his town and be free. His other world was his driving world. He was obsessed with cars and driving. Especially fast cars. Ferraris, Porsches, Aston Martins, Lamborghinis and Bugattis. Anything from Germany or Italy with an exotic name and a high top speed. The fastest cars in his book were a Ferrari F40 and a Porsche 959. They could both do 200mph or damn close to it. He would flip flop between which he would have. It usually came down to the Porsche. He would imagine being behind the wheel and accelerating so fast he was pinned to the driving seat. Then he would just keep going red lining the car’s engine in each gear until he closed in on 200mph. Other cars and trees and buildings flashing past him faster and faster. Leaving everything behind him. He’d get himself almost into a trance. It would help him to drift off and snatch a little sleep. Come the morning, he’d hide his trinkets away under the junk that was in the cupboard and creep out. His sore eyes blinking and watering.

Dan was placed in a children’s home which was better to him than his young, uneducated parents had been, but not by much. He had food and warmth and no one shouted at him or pushed him into a cupboard, but there was little in the way of guidance and certainly none of the love he craved. Just to have someone to hug him. Read him a story before the lights went out. He was taken under the wing of others within the care system, but this only resulted in him learning how to smoke, drink and steal from a very young age. Unsurprisingly, it was usually booze and cigarettes that he would steal. His education suffered. No one set him any targets or gave him any goals to try and achieve. After he turned ten, he was fostered with several families but by this time, he was a challenging boy and it never lasted longer than four or five months. Then he’d be back in the home. It was a familiar routine.

The system’s biggest failure however came when Dan was 16, there was no longer a place for him in a home. In the system. He was seen as an adult and therefore spat rudely out into society. It was time to stand up on his own two feet. Sink or swim. He managed to just about tread water. Living in squalor initially with some others who had outgrown the system, crashing on sofas for months at a time until he had a little money. He had no qualifications and finding work was something he couldn’t seem to do and no one around him seemed able to help with. As with many in his situation, he found ways to put a little money in his pocket, but it was all illegal. Petty theft was what he mainly seemed cut out for. Something, finally, in which he excelled. His life as a petty criminal gave him the other thing he craved in his previously lonely life besides money; it gave him friends. Good friends. Friends that would ultimately lead him down the wrong path, to prison (and an early death), but for now good friends. And now, Dan’s new friend was Carl. A spark lit between them. They became the brother for each other that neither had previously had.

Dan had been in prison twice before, so he knew the ropes. Carl had come to a life of crime late and consequently only went to prison for the first time at thirty two. Up until he was thirty, he’d held down pretty average office jobs for a few different companies. He found he was pretty good at holding down a job. The only problem was there seemed to be a ceiling to his salary and he had hit it. Pay rises still happened, but a pay rise of two or three percent per year made so little difference to your monthly take home pay that they may as well not bother. He wanted more. It started quite innocuously with just taking the odd bit here and there from the warehouse at the import company he worked for. They imported designer accessories like bags and shoes, usually stuff that was out of season. He found that he could top up his monthly salary by a few hundred quid by selling stuff on Ebay or at the pub. Selling stuff at the pub made him very popular and led him to hang out with the wrong crowd. They were the ones who eventually talked him into the bank robbery that got him into prison. As much as he hated prison, he knew this was his path now. He would not be going back to his office jobs with their management hierarchies and glass salary ceilings.

As happens in prison, there was little guidance for Carl from the officials of the prison apart from being told where he would eat, sleep and shower, but lucky for him, he had Dan to put him right, tell him how things worked.
Within that first year, Dan would become a life saver for Carl and cement their lifelong friendship.

Both Carl and Dan had thought they were straight until they met in prison. Or was it just that they had convinced themselves of that? Carl had always gone out with girls, but once he ended up in a cell with Dan. He started to have feelings that he’d not had before. Perhaps it was just Dan or perhaps it would have happened with any bloke he’d ended up locked away with. As they talked, he would look at Dan’s lips and want to reach out and touch them and kiss them. Their first few months were July and August and it was unusually hot. There was no air conditioning and Dan would sit in the cell without his top on and sometimes just in his boxer shorts. Carl would look at Dan’s scrawny, lean body and yearn to hold him in his arms. Through their conversations, it transpired that Dan was pretty confused about his sexuality, he’d rarely been with girls and when he had, he’d not seemed to enjoy it. He didn’t talk about girls in the same misogynistic way that most blokes inside did.

They went for months in this way; their friendship getting closer. They opened up more and more about their lives. It was the best therapy for Dan. It was the only therapy he’d ever had. He’d never really spoken properly to people about his childhood. About how let down he felt by his mother. He had almost expected it from his father who was a drunken, foul-tempered rat through and through. His mother wasn’t like that all along but gradually acted more and more like him. One night in the dark as Dan talked; recounting a particular incident in which he had been beaten by his father on his childhood’s solitary family holiday, Carl went to hold him. Their embrace turned to a kiss. Their kiss turned to a caress. The caress turned into a fumble. Very quiet fumbling. Even though they were in their own cell, the walls were known to tell their secrets. It was a first for both of them. They had both fumbled a little at school but nothing serious and nothing since.

After that night, there was no turning back. There was no embarrassment, it was mutual and they both said as much to one another. It turned into a very mature relationship. A relationship with a hint of daddy / son role play occasionally. Not for kinky reasons but because those were the roles they found themselves in. Dan was very much the emotionally immature one of the two. Considering it was the first gay relationship for both of them, it was very stable.
They had been extremely close ever since.
During their time in prison, they rarely spoke outside the walls of their cell. If they had given away what was going on to other inmates, they’d be made to suffer. On the outside, none of the other members of the gang had known about them. And they wanted to keep it that way with their one remaining member - Charlie.

Their relationship was strengthened when Carl found himself in a prison fight over some disputed rules in a game of pool. His opponent had fouled and left Carl snookered. Carl said he should have a free shot. His opponent disagreed. Then Reaper got involved in the argument. Carl should have just backed down, but he got stubborn instead. Carl said he was going to hit his opponent’s ball and then he would have another shot. When he went to take his second shot, he was hit around the head with a pool cue by his opponent. As Carl hit the deck, stunned and semi conscious, Reaper jumped in and started in on him. Swinging punches that threw Carl’s head from one side to the other. That was until Reaper found three of four inches of a pen knife plunged into his left buttock by Dan. The blade sank right in the middle of a tattoo of the Grim Reaper which he had had since he was twenty one.

It put Dan in a huge amount of danger because he did it in front of Reaper’s buddies but he panicked and felt Carl was going to die if he had not acted. He ended up in solitary for a week and his parole was probably delayed by about six months. The act would mean that the two would be life long friends as well as lovers. Reaper was discharged from the prison’s hospital after one night and tended to sleep on his front after that. He also walked with a slight limp from pain the deep scar tissue caused him. Carl spent two nights in hospital. He had concussion, a broken nose and a huge bump on the back of his head. He looked a sight when the nurse discharged him. He had two deep purple bruises under his eyes. It was more painful than it looked. The pain was much more focussed on the back of his head which throbbed for about a week. It made him dizzy and sometimes he had to just go and lie down with a cold towel on the back of his head. It wasn’t just physically that Carl suffered. He seemed to be quite sensitive emotionally during his recovery and could easily burst into tears for little or no reason. Luckily this didn’t happen outside of the cell he shared with Dan, but several times, he found himself sobbing quietly at night into his pillow. On the times that Dan heard him, he went to Carl to comfort him, rubbing his back and soothing him back to sleep.