Picture You Dead

22

Friday, 27 September

Bail security had been set at £50,000, which Archie Goff did not have. So he was resigned to staying in prison until his trial. There were two big changes since he had last been inside, neither of which he was happy about. The first was the non-smoking rule; the other was that meals were no longer served in the canteen but had to be eaten in the cells. He’d been told it was to stop the violence that frequently erupted in the canteen. All very well, but he missed sitting at a table with his mates. His double-bunk cell hardly cut the mustard for a great dining experience.

After his arrest, he found himself back again in his second home, the remand wing of Lewes Prison. Although, with the amount of his life he’d spent in here, it was pretty much his primary home, with his time away from it more of a holiday.

To his amazement, Isabella had accepted his story that he’d been fitted up by the police, and came to visit him regularly. He still hadn’t yet figured out how he was going to explain things to her when it came to his trial, but hey, that was some months away yet. Bless her, she’d done her best to raise the money for his bail, but all she had been able to come up with was just under ten thousand quid.

His brief had told him that although he’d been nicked red-handed in Hope Manor, he hadn’t actually taken anything from the premises, since he’d only got as far as the swimming pool. Therefore he would only be charged with burglary with intent to steal. If he was lucky, he’d get away with a couple of years, unless he came up in front of a particularly mean judge. The potential downside was that, so far throughout his life, he’d not yet come up in front of a judge who wasn’t mean – in his humble opinion.

At 5 p.m. on this Friday afternoon he left his cell and walked along the corridor to the meal trolley, collected his pre-ordered dinner of tuna bake and spotted dick with custard, and carried the cartons back to his cell. The telly was on, cricket, which had never interested him – he had no idea how the scoring worked – but his cellmate, three decades his junior, who reminded him uncannily of a former home secretary, Sajid Javid, was addicted to the game. Archie enjoyed ribbing him by calling him Home Secretary.

And right now, Mr Home Secretary was perched on the bottom bunk, forking vegetarian pasta into his mouth, watching a bowler hurl the ball at a helmeted batsman, who blocked it. Archie hadn’t yet asked him what he was in for, knowing it could be a sensitive subject for many prisoners.

He sat down on the toilet, a few feet from Sajid – the only other place to sit in the tiny cell. Placing his dessert on the floor, he removed the foil from his warm tuna bake, on his lap. His body hunched over his food, he dug his plastic fork in, blew on it to make sure it didn’t scald his tongue, then ate a mouthful. It was OK, it tasted like it might, once upon a time in its distant past, actually have been from a fish swimming free in the sea – albeit one filled with plastic waste – and the pasta might have come from something that had been grown in a field, rather than cultured in a lab.

Averting his eyes from the screen during an ad break, Sajid asked, ‘How you doing, man?’

‘Living the dream,’ Archie replied.

Sajid smiled.

‘Eating my meal on a toilet – what’s not to like, eh, Home Secretary?’

Sajid smiled again. ‘This is my first time – you told me last night you’re not new to all this, right?’

‘You could say that.’

‘House burglaries? That’s your thing?’

Archie nodded and ate some more. ‘And yours is?’

‘I was fitted up by the police. Isn’t that what everyone here says?’ He shrugged. ‘You make good money burgling?’

‘Yeah. Good enough, yeah.’

‘How much is good enough?’

‘Five to ten grand.’

‘A day – or a week?’

‘Yeah, a week, maybe, if I get lucky.’

‘If I was to do what they think I did, know how much I could make in a day? Twenty grand, sometimes a lot more. Hypothetically, of course. Ever thought about doing something different? The world’s moved on, mate. The internet and drugs, that’s where the real money is today. Scams and dealing. Burgling’s shit, isn’t it? You’re out in horrible weather, got to deal with dogs, lights, alarms and always the risk of getting caught. Seems to me that burglars are extinct.’

Archie bristled. ‘You’re calling me out of touch?’ Sajid was a muscular hunk who worked out in the gym every day. It wouldn’t be a smart idea to pick a fight with him, but his cocky arrogance was sure pissing him off.

‘Just saying.’

‘Saying I’m old?’

‘Know what they say about new technology, Archie?’

Archie shook his head.

‘Technology’s like a steamroller. If you’re not riding in the cab you’re part of the road.’ Sajid ate another mouthful of his food.

Archie stared at him. Maybe he was right, and he was just part of the road. Not even a motorway, just some sodding, crappy old B-road.

‘How many times have you been inside, Archie?’ he asked.

‘A few,’ he replied defensively.

‘Like three times? Five? Ten?’

Archie realized he’d actually lost count. ‘Maybe ten, maybe more,’ he said, and ate some more of his own food in silence, as the cricket came back on, distracting his cellmate.

Sajid didn’t speak again until the next commercial break, when Archie was scraping the last of the custard from the edges of the foil dish. ‘You’re how old?’

‘Sixty-four,’ Goff replied.

‘You’ve been inside ten times, or even more, right?’

‘Uh huh.’ He licked the last sweet drops from his plastic spoon.

‘You’ve got six kids with three different wives, you told me last night, right? You don’t see any of your exes and you’ve only got one kid who speaks to you, your daughter who’s studying to be a vet?’

‘So?’

‘Do you own a property?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Not yet? What does that mean?’

Archie shrugged. ‘I’m waiting for the big one.’

‘The big one? A burglary that’s going to earn you enough to buy a property for cash, because you wouldn’t get a mortgage in a million years.’

‘What of it?’

‘You don’t strike me as being an idiot, mate. But you’re gonna need two hundred K minimum to buy anything other than a shithole. What kind of burglary’s going to net you that kind of dough?’

Archie stared into the empty aluminium carton. It was a good question, he knew.

With a kinder tone now, Sajid said, ‘It’s not too late. You’re not an old man – yet. Why’ve you stayed with burglary, when you know you’ll keep getting caught? Haven’t you ever thought about nothing else? You’re not a bad-looking bloke, you’re in shape, there’s plenty of wealthy widows out there who could be rich pickings for you.’

Archie shook his head. ‘If you’re so smart, how come you’re in prison?’

He smiled. ‘My first time and my last. Like I said, I was fitted up.’

‘I thought the same, forty-five years ago, Home Secretary.’

‘And you never once reconsidered what you were doing?’

Archie put his tray on the floor then sat bolt upright and a smile set his face alight. ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘Not once. It’s the adrenaline, you see, the rush, the buzz. When it goes right, there’s no feeling like it.’

‘And when it goes wrong, you’re banged up in here with a bunch of mostly losers. How does that make you feel?’

Archie shrugged. ‘You know what, Home Secretary, I actually like it here. I’ve got television, the electricity’s paid for, the grub’s decent, and I’ve got my mates. And I don’t have to do my head in filling in tax forms. What’s not to like?’

He wasn’t about to share how much he missed Isabella.