………..next minute we’re both marched off down to the block where we’d have to explain ourselves to the Governor…….look, they take fighting seriously in jail, you get shipped out for fighting and moved back to the jail where you came from, which was BRIXTON PRISON!!……oh shit, that’s the last place I want to be sent back to, considering the problems that I had with the Governor there before I was sent up here!!!!
So Delaney and I are both marched off down the block, I think I’ve explained already what the block is but anyway, it’s an empty, lifeless cell with a fixed concrete block to sit on. Obviously Delaney and I were kept in separate cells whilst we waited to see the head honcho. After many hours of waiting the Governor saw us individually, so that he could get each side of the story. At the end of the day I’d done nothing wrong, as far as I was concerned, all I was doing was defending my possessions, as would anyone in the same situation. So in my defense it was justified or so I thought, unfortunately the Prison system doesn’t think in the same way I do.
I stood in front of the Governor, a prison guard either side of me and I got to tell my version of events, which I told quite happily. The Gov then looked at the screw that broke the fight up and said to him – “did you see Pierce hit Delaney?” To which the screw, and I owe him for this, said, “Yes I did Sir, but it looked like Pierce was fighting for his life in self-defense”. I walked out of the Gov’s office and went back to D block, Delaney was shipped out immediately to another prison – and to think I helped that little mug out – drugs, unless you can control them, don’t take them!
To be honest once back on the wing I was expecting to get some reprisals from Delanys gang but there was nothing, no one came after me and when I saw his old gang, well they were as nice as pie. Sometimes when you take the main man out, the gutless followers disperse into obscurity because they have no one to lead them……spineless little fucks that they are!
Finally, I was only a few months away from being released when one day, one of the screws came up to me and said that I’m going to be eligible for day release in a weeks time. Day release is as it sounds, you get released from prison for a day or even a few days. If you have never lost your freedom before then try to imagine this….I feel bad using this as a comparison because I don’t believe that jail is as bad as this….but imagine being on a submarine, you’re locked up 24 hours a day with people who you’d probably not necessarily hang around with by choice. The smell, the same food, the same routine, everything always the same………you see these submarine guys do it by choice……I wouldn’t do it for all the tea in China….. and the other thing that I’m sure they don’t do on Submarines is constantly fight, stab or slash each other on a daily basis, unlike prison!
Anyway, DAY RELEASE, these words are like singing angels, like winning the lottery, I hope you will never know how good those words sound – they give you hope, hope that you’re going to return to civilization soon. You can have things that have been so far out of your reach, like sex, driving, alcohol, even little things like a snickers bar, you just take for granted (obviously I was fortunate, I could get what ever I wanted left on the outside of the prison and smuggle it back inside)…….but I was so looking forward to my day release, anyone would have thought I’d been locked up for years…..but freedom is an amazing thing when you haven’t had it – even a week behind bars can feel like a long time. I must point out that I was the first Prisoner to be allowed out for day release from Wayland jail, so there was a lot resting on my shoulders – if I didn’t come back, that would mean that other prisoners would suffer in the future.
In my cell I had marked some bricks with X’s on my wall for the final 52 weeks before my release. Every week I’d cross another brick off and slowly they were going down – I think I still had 14 weeks left but it was a lot less then when I first started counting but it was also a lot less than most of the other guys in the jail had to go.
So it was Friday, the day before I was going out for the day release on the Saturday, when Tony (the screw) came down and said to me that I didn’t have to work today if I didn’t want to. What he didn’t know was, I’d already arranged with one of my prison pals, to pick up a package for him that his mum was going to leave in the bin outside, in a crisp packet, after the visit. I’d told him where to tell his mother to leave the package so that I could easily retrieve it without being spotted. I said to Tony, don’t worry, no point in me sitting in here twiddling my thumbs all day, I may as well come out and do an honest days work. So off we went and I offered to do some litter picking.
I got to the bin where I’d told my mate to tell his mum to leave the package, I picked the crisp pack up and put it into my rubbish bag. Once I was out of sight I emptied the contents of the pack into the bottom of my shoe – just meant I had a cushion of tobacco, that was wrapped in cellophane, under my feet but it wasn’t too bad. After the days work, we were walking back into the inside of the prison grounds when this little cunt of a screw, Hamburger was his name, approached me. This officer was a miniature Hitler, he was a short arsed little fuck who really didn’t like me and he didn’t like me because……….a few weeks before
……there was a fight going on between these two black guys and when I say fight, I mean a fight. One of them was armed with a chair leg that had a large nail protruding out of it and the other guy was using his bare fists. Now it seemed a little unfair you’d think, a guy with a chair leg with a large nail poking out of it should have the advantage… but the guy with the fists was the size of a small house, he was always down the gym working out and he knew how to street fight. Anyway when the alarm bells started to sound in the wing, the fight stopped and everyone ran off, the chair leg was just discarded on the floor. I picked the bloodied chair leg up and took it out of the area so that he couldn’t get in trouble but this Hamburger saw me pick it up from a distance and shouted “Pierce, STOP”! Now I legged it and ran into my mates cell that was the other side of D Wing, where I threw it out the window, about 20 seconds later in came Hamburger shouting where is it? I was like, where’s what? I was sitting down, looking relaxed and talking to my mate. He said angrily, “Don’t play silly buggers with me Pierce, you know what I’m talking about”. He was too stupid to look out the window, so he snooped around the cell I was in and then we retraced the steps that I’d taken but nothing was found………and there was nothing he could do against me…..but he was out for revenge!!
Now Mr Hamburger was looking to fuck me up one day, he was waiting to pick his moment and today was that day! He decided to do a surprise strip search on me when I came back into the prison. I was taken off to an examination room and told to remove all my clothes, as soon as my shoe was off he was holding it up to his face to see if there was anything in it and sure enough, he spotted the tobacco, obviously 5 ounces of tobacco is quite easy to spot in a shoe! He was like, “oh dear Pierce, what’s this?” so I told him “Tobacco Gov”. He smiled at me and said, where’d you get this then? So I explained to him that, my cell had been robbed not that long ago and I keep my tobacco in my shoes now so that it didn’t get stolen! Hamburger said ‘I don’t believe you Pierce’ – and I replied ‘that’s a shame but that’s the truth’. “We’re going to send this off to be examined, I hope that they don’t find anything in there that they shouldn’t”?
At this point I started to get a little worried. What’s to say that my mates mate hadn’t mixed some class A drugs or weed in with this tobacco? Oh fuck what have I done, I could get more jail time added to my sentence and all because I wanted to act like Mr Big……that’s when the panic started to set in! Now I’m starting to believe that I could have been stitched up……….