My Fellow Prisoners

The Thief

He answers to the name of Rustam, although his ID card says otherwise. However, this too is a lie: he’s in prison under forged documents, something he doesn’t try to hide.

He says that when he told the investigating cop that it wasn’t his real name and that he’d already done time in Russia, the cop just flailed his arms at him and replied: ‘Button it. Don’t even think of telling the judge. They’ll send your case back to me and I won’t be able to go off on holiday…’

‘And what was it to me?’ Rustam shrugs. ‘He didn’t need the hassle, neither did I. So they convicted me as a “first-timer” which is why I ended up in here. If I’d known, I’d never have agreed to it.’

‘What, you mean it’s better in maximum security?’

‘You bet,’ he replies, his eyes half-closing at the pleasant recollection. ‘Doing time in Krasnodar I had everything, I didn’t want to leave. The warden even said as much: “Why take early parole, you’ve got everything you need here? Stay!” And so I stayed…’

Rustam’s nationality is Tadjik; his profession – thief. It’s a ‘profession’ he loves and you get the sense he wouldn’t change it for anything. He’s already nearly forty but this is only his second spell in prison. He got four years. He regards what happened as an acceptable ‘professional risk’.

‘In fact we get nabbed quite often,’ he admits. ‘After all, it’s usually markets and warehouses we go for, the haul is fairly big. The patrol-guard police know where to wait for us. Generally we come to an agreement, but this time – it was my own stupid fault – I didn’t bring any money with me. So I couldn’t buy my way out of it. And they were rookies. If I’d known them I could have paid them off later. It was bad luck…’

Rustam, it seems, likes telling stories. He works next to me in the workshop. His stories relieve the boredom.

‘Then there was the time we got a tip-off about a warehouse – we were told there was money in the safe. So we hire a pick-up and promise the driver we’ll settle up after the job. When we break into the warehouse, what do we find? Eight safes. We load them all in. While we’re at it we toss in a few crates of butter, honey, jam – whatever was in the warehouse. No point going off with a half-empty vehicle, right?’

Rustam gives me a questioning look. I can’t help smiling. He’s satisfied with my reaction.

‘So we get to the destination, unload the safes; the driver’s waiting on the street. We open the safes – there’s no money. Not a brass farthing. Just some bits of paper and a few seals – complete garbage. We’re thinking, how are we going to tell the driver, he’ll never believe us. It has to be done, so I go out to where he’s waiting. I tell him, look, this is how it is, the safes are empty, don’t be mad at us, take the food. The driver nods, looks at me with pity, and says, “Well, you lot have had a tough night of it, take this,” and hands me a few notes from his wallet. I take them and go back to the others. Those few thousand came in pretty handy, as it turned out.’

We both laugh.

‘What will you do afterwards?’

Rustam makes no secret of it: ‘I’ll go back home, change my passport and then either head back to Moscow or make my way through Turkey to France. I know a lot of people there. They’ll help me out.’

‘In your previous “profession”?’

‘What else can I do?’

A month later we say goodbye to each other. Rustam’s getting early parole, he promises to write. And soon after, I do receive a brief letter from him, and a photograph of Rustam, happy with life, a few pounds heavier, some neat little houses behind him. And further beyond – the sea.

There’s no return address, but he writes regularly to the guys and sends his greetings.