Find Them Dead

38 Friday 10 May

For some inmates, spartan though it was, prison was home, a way of life. They had their friends, three meals a day, television and their board and lodging all found — and jobs within the prison where they earned pin money. Many of those persistent reoffenders considered the times when they were released on licence to be their holiday. Freedom to do drugs, sell drugs and shag. Then back inside again until the next time.

A smaller minority — much smaller — used their time to learn a trade or craft, or even to read and write — with the intention of going straight once they were released. And an even smaller — depressingly small — percentage would succeed in doing just that.

But many lived in morose silence, relieving the boredom by working out, body-building, doing drugs, or just drifting around, sometimes in the library, sometimes anywhere. Thinking. Sometimes daydreaming.

The common factor for most of them was the numbing tedium. Doing time was the right expression. Waiting for time to pass. Welcoming any distraction, however small — a phone call, a visit, a work-out, when they weren’t confined to their cell for days on end because of a shortage of prison officers.

Mickey Starr, in Lewes Prison, was in his third consecutive day of being locked in his cell this week, due to staff shortages, and was literally going up the wall with frustration, most of all because this prevented him from making his daily phone call to Stuie. And neither he nor his cellmate had been able to have a shower or a change of clothes for three days.

The previous occasion he had been in prison was eighteen years ago, after being arrested and convicted for possession and dealing cannabis on Brighton’s seafront, down under the Arches. His then solicitor had turned up one day and told him about an associate, Terence Gready, whom he had never met, who ‘knew people inside the police’.

Gready had offered him a deal. He could get him acquitted on appeal with the help of a bent detective who would testify that the chain of evidence was unsafe. This happened and Starr walked free. He developed a relationship with Gready over the next eighteen months and one day Gready told him he wanted to make him an offer. Partly in return, but also because he needed someone he could trust, Starr would work for Gready as his trusted confidant in the various drug operations that he was looking to set up.

It had been the start of a friendship — and bond — between the two men. Starr had trusted Gready implicitly ever since. And despite his current predicament, he still had faith that the legal team would pull some kind of a rabbit from a hat and get him out of this shit.

But he had been here now six months and there was no sign of it yet. Gready was himself in the dock and Mickey knew that part of Gready’s defence was that there was no connection at all between the two of them and that they did not know each other.

It was both Nick Fox’s team and the barrister he had got him, who had advised him — out of kindness to him and Stuie — that if he pleaded guilty, he would get a lesser sentence and be reunited with Stuie sooner. So long as Mickey kept up his story that there was no connection between him and Gready, it would be fine.

Mickey knew how stressed his brother always was when he was away, and couldn’t imagine quite how Stuie was feeling with him being absent for this length of time. He was desperate to get out and carry on doing what he had done before his arrest, giving his little brother the best life he could.

And prison was even more shit since the smoking ban had come into effect. In the daytime, anyhow. After evening lockdown he shared cigarettes, which he got on the prison black market, with his cellmate.

Mickey had always been a good listener and was helping the poor sod, Charles Nelson — a posh guy of twenty-nine, an insurance broker who’d been privately educated and never in trouble with the law before — to cope with the nightmare he was currently living through. Nelson was in bits, facing a potential life sentence for one stupid, drunken moment.

Six months previously, Nelson had been with his girlfriend in a bar in Brighton, late night, after a dinner out to celebrate a bonus much bigger than he had been expecting, when another drunken guy had hit on her. Nelson had remonstrated and received a punch for his troubles, which somehow, according to him, had been missed on the bar’s CCTV. In return he’d decked the guy, who had struck the back of his head on a table on the way down. And died.

Charles Nelson, facing a manslaughter charge, was now on remand in prison and was looking at probably four to six years’ imprisonment, and he wasn’t even sure that his girlfriend, whose honour he’d been trying to defend, was still there for him. Her visits were becoming less and less frequent.

The two of them smoked and talked every night in the semi-darkness. With frequent interruptions while his friend just sobbed. They also talked about Stuie. Mickey told Nelson of his plans to open a fish and chip shop, with his brother working in the back room, mostly preparing the fish and slicing the potatoes. It turned out, to Mickey’s surprise, that Charles Nelson had recently inherited a property on Brighton seafront, close to the Palace Pier, with three shops on the ground floor. One of them was vacant — if Mickey wanted it after his release, he was sure they could agree a deal.

Finally, today, the days of lockdown came to an end. Just as he’d returned to his cell having eaten breakfast and was about to head off to his current job in the prison laundry, one of the more pleasant screws appeared in the doorway. ‘The Governor wants to see you,’ he said. ‘She’s free now.’

Mickey’s hopes rose. Throughout his time here he’d been careful to behave, to be, as much as he was able, a model prisoner. So he could get home to Stuie as soon as possible. Maybe the Governor had good news for him? That perhaps, as he had requested, he was going to be allowed to have a special visit from Stuie accompanied by an appropriate adult.

Ten minutes later, accompanied by the screw and trying to look as dignified as his ill-fitting, prison-issue tracksuit and crap plimsolls would allow, he entered the Governor’s small, surprisingly cluttered office.

The Governor, Susan Ansell, held out her hand and shook Mickey’s, then pointed at two chairs in front of her desk.

‘Please have a seat, Mr Starr. Mickey, yes — or is it Michael?’

‘Mickey.’

He sat and the screw left the room, closing the door.

Ansell’s demeanour changed and she suddenly looked very serious. ‘Mickey, thank you for coming to see me.’

Like I had any option, he thought. And hey, this was a better gig than doing laundry. He shrugged.

‘Your brother, Stuie — I understand you have been his carer for some years?’

‘It was a promise I made to our mum when she was dying.’ Alarm bells were ringing.

She nodded. ‘Mickey, I’m sorry but there is no easy way to tell you this. I’m afraid your brother is dead.’

‘Dead?’ He stared at the woman, the word not fully sinking in. ‘Dead?’

Ansell looked back at him with genuine sympathy in her face.

‘What — what do you mean? He’s only thirty-eight. He...’ His voice tailed off. He felt gutted. ‘What — what’s — what’s happened?’

‘From the police report, it looks like he was murdered.’

‘Murdered?’ Mickey rose from his chair then sank back down into it and lowered his head into his hands. ‘No, please tell me — please tell me it’s — it’s not true.’

‘I’m so very sorry,’ the Governor said.

Mickey stayed for some while, head in his hands, crying uncontrollably. ‘It’s not true. It can’t be.’ Finally, when he had composed himself a little, he looked back up, dabbing his eyes with a corner of his top. ‘What do you know — about — what happened? Who did it? How?’

‘I don’t have much information, Mickey. Do you — or your brother — have any enemies?’

‘How the hell could Stuie have any enemies? He’s the sweetest person. He wouldn’t harm a fly. He loves everyone. He makes people smile. It’s not possible. Please tell me — there must be a mistake.’

‘From what I’ve been told he seems to have put up a spirited fight. His room was wrecked.’

Mickey Starr sat still, in silence. Trying to absorb what he had been told. Trying to make sense of it. He shook his head, then dabbed his eyes again. ‘Who? I mean, why? Was it burglars? Did some bastards know I was in prison and decide to burgle my house — and Stuie disturbed them?’

‘The police told me that there is evidence of property having been stolen and there are some signs of ransacking. It’s also possible your brother may have been the target. Could he have upset anyone?’

‘With respect, ma’am, that’s bloody ridiculous. As I said, Stuie loves — loved — everyone.’

‘I will, of course, give you leave to attend his funeral, after his body is released — accompanied by officers from here. And we will respect, if we can, any wishes you have regarding the funeral.’

‘That’s very big of you,’ he replied, bitterly. ‘What do you mean, he was the target?’

‘I understand he was beaten up pretty badly.’

Starr buried his face in his hands again.

‘Do you have any idea at all who might have done this?’ the Governor asked.

Starr shook his head.

‘We’ve contacted your solicitors, and I understand someone will be coming to see you later today. If there is anything we can do for you at this difficult time, please ask one of the officers to let me know.’

Mickey sat in silence for a long while. Finally, he answered, ‘There is something.’

‘Yes?’

‘Find the bastards who did this.’