A Perfect Crime

I told him the truth about how I had come to be there. He believed me. The only person I felt ever did truly believe my version of events. In return he told me all about himself. How he was an orphan, never knew either of his parents or anything about them. Never even knew his real name- he had been called Archie Squires after the man who had found him and handed him in to the police when he was an abandoned baby. As a baby, then a young child, Archie had been brought up in several Barnardos orphanages as he was moved around the country during the war. Never settling, never making friends he could call mates. He never even knew when his birthday was. Someone had told him his age once but they were unable to confirm his date of birth so he had picked the 21^st of June as his birthday- the longest day of the year- wanting his birthday to last as long as possible whenever he celebrated it.

Gradually, with Archie's help, I managed to start sleeping at night as I became more used to my environment.

* * *

It was through Archie that I found out in advance that some sort of attack on me was being planned in retaliation for what I'd done to Karl Simpson. Turned out the bloke I'd accidentally killed was a small-time low-life who unfortunately was related to one of the main drug gangs in the city where I lived. I don't know if my ex-wife was into the drugs or whether she was with him because of his money and bad-boy reputation, either way it would appear I had deprived the bitch of her meal ticket and that possibly went some way to explain her hatred of me at my trial. Maybe it even went some way to explain why she lied in court as she did. Revenge for what she reckoned she had lost I suppose...

Archie pointed out that I would have to defend myself wholeheartedly when the attack came. I would be unable to placate whoever it would be that came after me. They wouldn't listen if I tried to talk them out of it the way my martial arts training had taught me to do. It would be me or them. No half measures. If I didn't finish them, they would finish me.

A few days later, several weeks into my sentence, the attack came. My path was blocked as I was leaving the shower block by two huge men, as tall as my 6'4, but much wider, together with another shorter bloke who looked as mean as a starving rottweiler. The two big guys circled either side of me, whilst the ugly bloke blocked my path and pulled a home-made shiv from his sleeve- a knife fashioned from a shard of glass. Weapons like that are much more dangerous than an ordinary knife. The intention being that they are stuck into the victim and then snapped off so even if the medics do get there before the victim dies, the glass is almost impossible to extract before he bleeds to death internally.

I knew instantly that I was not meant to walk out of there. The screws had conveniently disappeared leaving me to my fate, not caring one iota what was about to occur- it would just mean one less villain for them to look after in their jaundiced view. My three intended assailants were certainly trying their best to frighten and intimidate me, telling me in great detail what they were going to do, how they were going to carve my chicken-shit body into little pieces. It worked, to a certain extent anyway. Their confidence in their numerical advantage had turned into blind arrogance as they surrounded me and cut off any means of escape I may have had, whilst the adrenaline surging through my body was making me a very nervous prey.

I had only maybe two small things in my favour. Firstly, they had no idea I possessed the defensive capabilities I did. For a highly-trained fighter, the fear for your life and the adrenaline surging through your body turns a mere man into a deadly war machine. Everything seems crystal clear- your concentration is at its peak and you have an enormous increase in your body strength too. But they didn't know that did they? Secondly, and the one true advantage I really had, the one that could give me an edge, was the fact that I knew I would be fighting for my life whilst they were just doing a job.

Archie's words came into my head as we squared up to each other: "It's you or them my young friend," he'd warned me. With that in mind, all thoughts of avoiding a fight went out of the window. The bloke to my right was taken out with a kick to his leg with the heel of my shoe that agonisingly dislocated his kneecap and left him writhing on the floor. The one on the left received a 'roundhouse' kick to the face that broke his nose and a few teeth, leaving him spitting blood and snot as he sat back dazed onto his fat backside.

The ugly one was much more wary after his mates had been incapacitated so quickly, not quite as confident. He still had the advantage of having the weapon though. All the hours and hours of Karate training came to the fore automatically as I spun and gave him a backward kick to the head causing him to drop his weapon and fall to his knees holding his shattered jaw. I could have walked out then. I could have left them to their agony. But again, Archie's warning went through my brain. I had to finish it. I had to make a statement to any other of the prison lags who fancied their chances of ending my days...

I jumped behind the moaning shorter man, his weapon now useless on the floor as he held his broken face. Grabbing him around the neck, I hesitated only slightly as I gripped his newly deformed jaw and wrenched it sideways with all the force I could muster. All my pent-up anger came out at that moment. The hatred I felt, the despair, the revenge I needed- it was him who suffered for it. His body went limp. Instant death overcoming him as his neck snapped with a loud crack. I stood and glared at the other two, unblinking as I looked them alternately in the eyes.

"Tell whoever ordered this to come for me themselves if they want to finish me. Understand?" I growled quietly, making it quite obvious I was completely in charge of my emotions and there would be more to come if anyone wanted it. With that I calmly walked out of the shower block and went back to my cell to await whatever was to follow...

* * *

In prison, the worst offence for anyone to commit is to grass a fellow inmate up. It ranks up there with paedophilia and wife-beating in the eyes of the true criminal fraternity - the real hard-cases. Consequently, when my three assailants were discovered by the screws, all the two survivors would say was that they had all slipped on the soap and collided with one another.

The prison rumour-mill being what it was, every other person in the jail claimed to know what had actually happened in the shower block that day. Archie knew the truth, but I'm damn sure he never let on, so anything else was just rumour and conjecture as far as the rest of the inmates were concerned. What it did mean however, was that I was treated with a new-found fear, even respect by the rest of the prison community and given a wide-berth whenever I was out of my cell.

Of course a major inquiry into the incident by the police ensued. They never found out anything though, just what they were told by the two injured men as they repeatedly denied any wrong-doing. The investigating officers eventually gave up and settled for the fact that a highly dangerous and violent man was no longer part of the judicial system, and that it would save the tax-payer a small fortune in not having to keep him incarcerated for the rest of his sentence. The prison hierarchy was different though. I don't mean the governor or the rest of the prison officers, I mean the men who actually did run things in there.

All prisons have 'The Man'. Someone who the rest of the inmates are frightened of. Someone who runs everything. Every little scam that is going on. Even the screws know who is really in charge and go along with it if they know what's good for them. Our main man was a psychopathic killer called Billy McVie- a London gangster who reputedly had an IQ of over 160 to add to his homicidal and criminal tendencies. He was the oldest of three brothers who apparently ran the biggest and nastiest of the major crime gangs in the country. They had their hands in everything: drugs, prostitution, protection rackets, you name it, they controlled it. All this had added up to have made him number one on the police's most wanted list before they finally got their man.

The boss of one of the country's biggest crime gangs, he had been almost untouchable by the law on the outside, the fear of terrifying reprisals preventing anyone from testifying against him. He had finally been convicted of several counts of murder and been sentenced to life imprisonment with no chance of parole for 30 years. That was the maximum punishment allowed in the UK at that time and anyone who received that sentence was inevitably regarded as a master criminal by the country's press and judiciary. More importantly, as far as prison was concerned, the rest of the inmates treated them with the fear and respect that reputation demanded.

McVie had been betrayed by his second-in-command on the outside. A life-long and trusted friend of the gang boss who had turned super-grass on his fellow villain in return for immunity from prosecution for himself. No-one seemed to know what had happened to the Judas after the trial, he had disappeared somewhere into witness protection. What everyone did know however, was that the super-grass' parents and siblings had all died in suspicious circumstances within 6 months of McVie being locked up. Car accidents, house fires, drownings- all causes of death for various members of his family. All traces of his nearest and dearest wiped out except for the actual man who'd grassed Billy up. If he was still alive, he would know he was responsible for the death of all his loved ones. Something even the most hardened criminal would find difficult to live with.

* * *

A few days after the police enquiry into the prison death had been wrapped up, I was laying on my bunk talking to Archie when four of the biggest screws at the prison came to the door and ordered me to go with them. I thought I was being summoned to the Governor's office for some sort of punishment. Maybe he had heard the rumours and suspected the truth? Maybe I was being moved for my own safety? I had no idea. I sensed something was amiss though, when, instead of turning right toward the governor's office, I was led the other way and up a further two flights to the top balcony of the cell-block.

I was marched along the top corridor to an open cell door and ushered inside. Nervously trying to watch all four screws at once in case they were intent on tossing me off the balcony as some kind of reprisal, it took me a few seconds to realise that this was not an ordinary prison cell like mine. This was more akin to someone's comfortable living room. A single bed in one corner, pictures on the wall, a radio softly playing the Jimmy Young show on BBC radio, a couple of comfortable armchairs, and a desk across the other corner, behind which sat a smart, well-groomed, middle-aged man dressed casually in jeans and an expensive looking sweater instead of the usual bright orange overalls the rest of us prisoners had to wear.

I instinctively knew immediately whose cell I had been taken to. Billy McVie. The boss. The main man. All those descriptions flew through my brain as I looked toward the man smiling coldly at me from behind his desk.

"Thank you gentlemen, that will be all for now. Just wait outside and close the door will you." McVie said softly, addressing my escorts.

As the door clanged shut behind them, I nervously stood in front of the seated man who was staring intently into my eyes.

Billy McVie wasn't particularly big, probably just short of six feet. He looked powerful enough though. Strong muscular forearms and broad shoulders. A relatively unmarked face though for someone with his terrifying reputation for violence. What he did have though, what made him so uniquely frightening, were the most piercing, cold and unemotional eyes I had ever looked into. They seemed to stare directly into my soul as he looked up at me, making me feel as scared as I had ever felt in my life before...

He looked me up and down for a few moments before addressing me in his soft, commanding voice.

"Sit down please, Mr. Grant," he said quietly, indicating one of the armchairs situated in front of the desk, "You and I have a problem to discuss I believe."

I did as requested. I parked my backside, complete with its nervously twitching sphincter, on the most comfortable chair it had been on since I had entered prison. I was trying my best not to shake. Not to give any indication of just how terrified I actually was of that man. The man who I knew held my immediate future in his well-manicured hands. I was 29 and a car mechanic, not a hardened gangster like him, so how the fuck was I meant to cope with that situation?

"I'll call you John, if that's OK," he went on after I had sat down, "You may call me Mr. McVie."

There wasn't a hint of superiority in his words, just an unspoken indication to me of that's how things were. He was Mr. McVie and I was whatever he fucking wanted me to be.

"It seems you are a very dangerous man, John Grant. What went on the other day was very impressive, I must say." He spoke the words softly. That meant they had much more effect and were even more threatening than if he had shouted them. "The men concerned belonged to me. You do know that don't you?"

My heart sank. I was in too deep to get out of this now. I had killed one and seriously injured two more of the prison boss' men and he wanted revenge. I was not religious in any way, but if I had have been, I would have been praying to any God who might just so happen to have been listening at that moment.

"That has left me with a problem, and consequently, left you with a problem too. I am now a man short from my staff and I will need to replace him."

His voice was showing no anger or emotion of any kind. He was talking about the death of one of his men as though he had mislaid a pen or something equally as trivial. It confirmed his reputation. Human life meant nothing to him. No more than any other of his possessions.

I kept my mouth shut, not trusting myself to reply in any sort of coherent manner as the maelstrom that was my brain tried to think of a way out of the obvious danger to my life.

"It would appear that you upset some acquaintances of mine before you came in here. They requested that I help them out and exact their revenge, and, as return for a favour I owed them, I agreed to help them do just that. Now you will notice I said acquaintances and not friends. If they were friends of mine, and you'd better believe me when I say this, you would not be here having this conversation with me."

There were no histrionics. No violent threats. Just the clear message that I owed my continued life to him and that he held my whole future existence in his hands.

"So... This is what is going to happen," he continued, his expression barely changing as he tapped his fingers in time with a song playing on the radio, "You will replace the man you killed. You will become my enforcer in here. You belong to me now. Am I clear?"

I felt dizzy. What the fuck did he mean? I wasn't an 'enforcer'. I wasn't a gangster. I was just an ordinary bloke caught up in a disastrous downward spiral of unfortunate circumstances. How the fuck was I supposed to be his 'enforcer'?

"What you did to those three fools has established you as a man not to be messed with John. Everyone in here knows this now. Everyone fears you. They were three so-called hard men. The dead man was here on three murder counts and you took him out in a matter of seconds." His soft, almost musically rhythmic voice continued as I tried to get my head round what he was saying, "We will make use of that fear. It will make my life much more simple having the threat of you hanging over anyone who dares to question my authority. Do you understand?"

I nodded, the realization of what was happening starting to dawn in my confused brain. "And what if I don't want to? What if I just want to serve my time and live a quiet life in here?" I managed to get out of my mouth without sounding too terrified.

Not fooled at all by my false bravado, McVie smiled coldly and replied, "Not going to happen John. If you refuse, your parents will pass away fairly quickly followed by your sisters, and then your nieces and nephew. I know where they all live, I can give you their addresses if you'd like. We both know you can look after yourself, but you will have to sleep sometime. Do we understand one another John?"

The chilling threat, although softly spoken was quite obviously real. It wasn't implied. It was a promise from a cold-blooded killer that If I didn't do as I was being instructed, the consequences for me and my family were too dire to even contemplate. That is what his reputation said had happened to the relatives of other people who had crossed him. I knew, if I turned down his offer, I would live long enough to hear about the deaths of all my family before I died myself in my cell one night. I felt a raging anger welling up inside me at the terrifying prospect for my family. Anger at the psycho in front of me. Anger at my ex-wife for causing the disaster that my life had turned into. Anger at myself...

Inevitably my path became clear. I had already killed two men, one accidentally, the other quite deliberately, no way could I still put myself morally above anyone else locked up in that hell-hole. I couldn't think of any sound reason not to agree. I was to be there for at least the next 20 years so why not make the best of it.

I slowly raised myself to my feet. Reaching out and offering my hand to my new boss, I answered his question, "I understand Mr. McVie. You have a new employee."

"Glad to hear it John. Now go back to your cell and I'll be in touch when you are needed. Although I should imagine once the word is out that you now work for me, your expertise will not be needed too often." He rose too, shook my hand and for the first time showed his teeth in a smile. Not those eyes though. Those eyes just continued to stare right into my soul...

* * *

Chapter 9

He was right. I wasn't needed as an enforcer too often. Like all rumours, the story of my decimation of the three hard-cases sent to kill me was totally exaggerated. Most of the things that were supposed to have happened were complete fabrications, made to sound more and more ridiculous every time they were passed on. The two injured men were transferred to other nicks as soon as they were fit enough, so no-one was able to contradict the story apart from myself. And as Billy had suggested, it was in our interest to keep up the myth. Also at his suggestion, I took to training in the exercise yard when it was full of other lags. That of course put my expertise on full view and helped perpetuate the idea that I was a killing machine.

Much further into my sentence, the first Lethal Weapon film would come out in the cinemas and I would be saddled with the nickname of 'Riggs' after the Mel Gibson character. It was a name that stuck with me for the rest of my stay in jail, passed on through generations of new prisoners as they came and went. A nickname that would feature much, much later in my life.

It turned out that the three men who attacked me were acting at the request of the drug gang that Karl Simpson had belonged to. Happily, once they found out I was working for Billy, they made no further attempt to end my stay on earth, and I was more or less untroubled for the next few years. Working for Billy turned out to have many benefits. I was left alone by the screws. I was avoided at all costs by the other lags apart from Archie, and my food in the canteen always seemed to be better and more plentiful than anything my fellow prisoners received. I also had an unlimited supply of soft toilet paper, something that was actually used as currency by some of the lesser lags.