The staff entrance was a far less glamorous side door. I wasn’t expecting the welcome committee but a bit of acknowledgement would have been nice.
‘It’s senior officer Frake reporting for duty,’ I announced as we rocked up at the gate. I handed them my ID.
The bloke behind the glass checked his paperwork and looked up. ‘We don’t have anything to say you’re coming in.’ Off to a good start then. I looked around me. Less than impressed. Bite your tongue, Vanessa.
‘Wait here a minute.’ He picked up the phone. I was hardly going to go anywhere. My sarcasm was running rife. I slid my gaze across to Sarah who looked equally hacked off. I didn’t believe in omens but was this someone’s way of trying to tell us it was all downhill from here? Seriously, Vanessa, just calm yourself down.
I don’t know how long it took, but eventually the head of HR came down to get us. I’d spent that time chewing the fat, working myself up. Notching up my levels of dread ten rungs higher, if that was even possible. So when the woman from HR greeted us with a huge welcoming smile, I was taken aback.
‘Right, you two,’ she said, pointing. ‘Come up to my office, I’m going to make you a cup of tea.’
That was music to my ears. Tea and fags. My two favourite things.
We were escorted to a 1960s prefab building on the other side of the entrance, so nothing like the historic buildings we were yet to encounter. Sarah and I took a seat opposite the HR lady on the other side of the desk; she chatted away while I nursed my cuppa. The woman was lovely and welcoming but I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind for banter.
‘How do you feel about being here?’ she finally asked.
I shrugged. Speaking for the both of us I replied: ‘How do you think we feel!’
‘This is a fresh start for you here. The Scrubs will be what you make of it.’
I made a small shrug. ‘Okay.’
She smiled kindly.
Draining my mug, I placed it down on the edge of the desk. ‘So where are we going then?’ I said. Despite her hospitality, I really wasn’t in the mood for small talk. I just wanted to get on with my job, do what I’d been paid to do. No more dilly-dallying.
Sarah was sent to work at the security office. I was allocated D wing. That’s where the ‘lifers’ were locked up. Lifers, i.e. criminals who were serving a life sentence because their crime was that heinous. The worst of the worst.
I’d never worked with lifers before. Of course I’d come into contact with them at Holloway, but I’d not been responsible for them on a day-to-day basis. As the senior officer on the wing, I’d be in charge of 244 of them.
‘Someone will take you there,’ the HR woman reassured me.
‘No.’ I shook my head defiantly, or some might say stubbornly. ‘Just point me to where the wing is and I’ll make my own way there.’
She looked at me closely, trying to read my eyes, and then nodded. ‘Okay, as you prefer. We’ll get your keys sorted and let you make your own way there.’
‘Thanks,’ I replied, standing up. Preparing to slip out of the office and to my new posting without any more fuss or bother.
My footsteps echoed as I made my way along the bleak corridors. The brand new Scrubs epaulettes sparkling on my shoulders were going to scream ‘fresh fish’ to the prisoners. Apart from the duty staff walking to and fro, the place was desolate. The only time prisoners walk between wings is on ‘free flow’ when they’re escorted to their jobs or education. Clearly neither was happening right now.
First impressions? It was huge, three times the size of Holloway. Dirty. Rundown. And it stank of men. Of stale BO, musty unwashed clothes and urine, to be specific. It was so pungent it made me want to gag.
But despite the stench there was something unusual about this prison. You could really feel the history as you walked through it. It’s hard to put into words what it felt like; it was a kind of vibration. As if the walls were alive, humming with the ghosts of prisoners past.
I reckon, back in the day before it was torn down and rebuilt in the 1970s, Holloway would have given off the same sort of vibe. But when I worked there it felt more like a hospital with giant communal wings that resembled wards in a mental asylum.
The Scrubs couldn’t have been more different in layout. Five wings, marked A to E, five imposing red-brick buildings, huge long wings with three or four landings, joined together by a canal of corridors. They were all separate entities. I wondered what delightful character traits my wing would have. Miraculously, I’d managed to navigate my way without stopping to ask for directions. I’d been handed my own set of keys and all that now stood in the way of me and those serving life imprisonment were a double set of iron-clad doors.
The key turning in a lock in a prison, that’s a sound and a half. Metal on metal. A dragging, scraping noise that can send a chill right through you. It becomes part of you when you work in the nick though. That and the sound of keys in your pocket, jangling with every step. When I worked in Holloway I could tell who was about to appear around the corner just by the clink of their walk. It would only be a matter of time until I knew who was who here. It’s not for nothing jails are nicknamed ‘the clink’.
As the first set of gates slammed behind me, I gave myself a talking-to. Whatever I was feeling inside – nerves, trepidation – under no circumstances could I let that show. As senior officer on the wing, I needed to project an image of being in charge. To the other officers and, most importantly, to the prisoners.
Prisoners can smell fear a mile off. I once heard from a psychologist that a woman who has been raped walks differently. She takes quicker steps and has a less confident stride. They’re such slight differences you or I wouldn’t detect them. Prisoners are looking out for these weaknesses though; they search for chips in your armour, for ways to get under your skin so they can dominate. I learnt a long time ago that in order to survive working in a prison you had to wear a ‘game face’. A neutral expression no matter what. I could never let on what I was really thinking, because if they know they’ve got to you, with the insults they hurl or the violence they threaten you with, they’ve won.
The second and final door clanged shut, juddering at my heels.
My breath escaped me. Bloody hell, this place was enormous. It was the stuff of movies. Four storeys high with metal staircases taking you up the landings. Netting was strung up between the floors to stop prisoners jumping to their death. Suicides, a big part of prison life.
Because the ceiling was so high, the noise was deafening. BANG! BANG! BANG! The sound of fists on doors rung in my ears. It was almost noon, their lunch break, or association hour as we call it, and the inmates wanted letting out.
A friendly older officer approached me. He was what I would call ‘old school’, impeccable manners, no-nonsense, probably ex-army. ‘And who are you, ma’am?’ he asked politely.
I took in a deep breath. ‘I’m your new SO.’
‘Ah, right.’ He looked a little taken aback. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’
‘Yes, thank you. And then I’ll have a tour of the wing and you can show me what’s what.’
I was right about the epaulettes. They attracted the prisoners like bees to a honeypot. Amazing really considering how small they were, a single diamond with the crown HMP on either shoulder to show I was a senior officer. But the prisoners’ beady eyes don’t miss a trick. Because the epaulettes were shiny, because they hadn’t seen me before – all of them assumed I was new to the job. Wet behind the ears. Someone they could take the piss out of, which is exactly what they did, or at least tried to do.
The