No Nonsense Read online

  There were no guarantees. I was still an easy mark for someone seeking to make a name for himself. I had no way of knowing how black inmates would deal with my link to such a high-profile, racially influenced murder as that of Anthony Walker. A desperado’s arsenal ranged from razor blades to infected syringes. In my favour, familiarity offered some security.

  Walton doubled as the St John’s branch of Friends Reunited. I met at least a dozen former schoolmates in the first couple of days, and Dad’s pals made a point of introducing themselves, but there were some people I wanted nothing to do with, at any price. One was Kevin Corke, my second cousin, who was serving life for the murder of Tommy Harrison, stabbed fatally through the heart in the street following an 18th birthday party in Huyton. Tommy was the cousin of Mash, Matthew McElhinney, one of my best mates. Corke’s accomplice Carl Taylor, brother of Paul, Anthony Walker’s killer, was in for manslaughter. When they tried to ingratiate themselves with me, I told them to do one.

  A friend of a friend, Michael Kinney, ran the gym. He saw to it that I made the inmates’ select team, which played with and against the screws a couple of times a week, in addition to having a runout for a team cobbled together from the recovering addicts on my wing. That ensured time off from my job in the metalwork shop.

  Another warder, a keen badminton player, picked up a whisper that I had been Knowsley Under-14 champion. He needed a practice partner of suitable quality, so that long-forgotten claim to sporting fame earned me the priceless privilege of being released from my cell, my pad to use prison slang, when everyone else had been banged up.

  My first cellmate, a speed freak called Chopper, was a chainsmoker. My second, a lad named Billy, secured my transfer to his non-smoking pad by threatening to put his companion in the prison hospital if he did not apply to move elsewhere. His hyperactivity was best explained by his professional speciality, stealing from drug dealers.

  Unsurprisingly, he had been battered, burned, stabbed and shot. He was a warm and funny guy, a cross between Fagin and Arthur Daley, but his psychotic streak was soon revealed, when I had to pull him off an innocent inmate he suspected of being involved in a drink-driving case which led to the death of a six-year-old girl, Demi Leigh Royle. It was a hugely distressing case, which caused an outcry on Merseyside. The van driver, who narrowly missed Demi Leigh’s mother, Hannah, and a pram containing her nine-month-old sister Izabella, fled the scene. He was sentenced to nine years for causing death by dangerous driving.

  Billy read reports of the trial with unconcealed rage. He had been consumed by hate for drink-drivers ever since his five-year-old sister had been severely paralysed by one, who ran her down outside the family home, and was convinced the driver would serve his time in Walton. The hunt was on.

  Billy made it his duty to interrogate any new inmate on our wing, until word reached him that one arrival’s story didn’t seem to stack up. He sprinted along the landing, unconcerned by the possibility of mistaken identity, and was laying into a terrified kid before I managed to intervene. He was initially too scared to speak, but it soon became clear he was in for an unrelated piece of petty criminality.

  Billy attempted to make amends by giving him a cache of chocolate. That was in keeping with his unorthodox entrepreneurial spirit, since he taught me how to reinvest my weekly wage of £7.50 in Sunday church services, when all manner of illicit deals were done. Chocolate and cigarettes were purchased, legitimately, for use as currency in a black economy where people bartered for drugs, drink and DVDs. The going rate for a smuggled iPhone was £1,500, paid by associates on the outside. An inventive inmate spotted a gap in the market for phone chargers, cannibalised from stolen electrical plugs.

  I didn’t need a phone, because I took a conscious decision to isolate myself, and didn’t want to risk having my sentence extended if I was caught with one. I took out a subscription to The Times, and found alternative entertainment in Billy’s tall tales and football theories. He shared his greatest luxury, tinned hot dogs, which he boiled after blocking the cell sink with toilet paper. Given the stodge of prison food, and believable stories about rats in the kitchen, they were delicious.

  He urged me to find my place in the system, which I duly discovered scanning the racing page. I had a eureka moment studying the form, and realised the prison lacked a bookie. I borrowed Billy’s chocolate stash to establish a float, gave us insurance by skimming the original odds, and recorded all bets in a notebook. Before long we were an illegitimate version of Cadbury World.

  I diversified, using my inside knowledge to create a range of markets for that summer’s European Championships in Austria and Switzerland. It didn’t matter that England had failed to qualify. I offered odds on opening goalscorer, number of cards, timing of goals and the final result. When confectionery supplies ran low, we accepted toiletries, bedding and food privileges as stakes.

  The screws inevitably discovered our scam, but were sanguine about its success, since they trusted us to prevent inmates getting too deep into debt. In hindsight, I should have been more aware of the probability of jealousy. I was stripped of my gym privileges for eight days when someone posted a photograph of me working out on social media. It was quickly picked up by the papers.

  I had my suspicions, since I saw someone with a mobile in there, but wasn’t about to grass him up. The publicity, together with my refusal to co-operate with internal inquiries, went down badly. Word clearly went out that I was to be put in my place. As a result, my cell was ‘spun’, smashed up during a search for an illegal phone, twice in a week. I knew the score: avoid confrontation, clean up the mess, and move on.

  I missed fragments of normality, such as Nan’s Sunday dinners and the smell of a freshly mown training ground, but it was easy to see why so many inmates become institutionalised. The rituals of prison life became deeply ingrained, from the 7.30am turnout to the regular meals and evening association at 6.45pm before lockup at 8pm.

  Each wing at Walton had its own unwritten rules, its distinctive personalities, perils and pressures. Disputes were usually settled in the showers. Yet it was a Category B prison, ‘a 21st Century Community Prison’, to quote the blue sign on the approach to the entrance. I assumed I would return there after being ferried to Crown Court in Manchester, where I was given a four-month suspended sentence in the Dabo case.

  If only. I was taken to Strangeways, high on security and low on creature comforts, because it was the jail closest to the court. The name of Manchester’s Category A prison, and its association with such infamous alumni as Ian Brady, the Moors murderer, and Harold Shipman, the GP convicted of killing 15 of his patients, was enough to chill me to the bone. Opened in 1868 and wrecked during the 1990 riots, it had a notoriously high suicide rate and more than 200 lifers in a population of 1,300, spread over nine wings.

  They had nothing to lose. I had been deposited at the far end of the criminal spectrum, where an additional 10 years for attacking someone like me with a primitive blade, or napalm in the form of boiling oil derived from stolen butter, was an irrelevance. The welcoming committee, shouting through barred windows as I was walked through the yard to my cell, was sinister in its uniformity.

  ‘You’re getting slashed in the morning, Barton.’

  ‘You’re getting cut.’

  ‘You’re going to die, you maggot.’

  Was I scared? Too fucking right I was. I had endured death threats before, and logic told me that someone who intends to stab you doesn’t have too much to gain from warning you beforehand, yet this was a war zone. Everyone and everything was a potential threat. I knew I could not back down, and also knew the likely consequences of defiance. I was in no position to appreciate the irony that the skill set of violence and truculence which put me in prison in the first place offered the best chance of protection.

  I was allowed only a small bag of possessions, and assigned to the main wing, the so-called council estate. This was the animal kingdom in extremis, a place that operated an exce
ssive form of natural justice. Alarms would sound regularly during the day, as fights sparked intermittent lockdowns. But first I had to survive the longest night of my life.

  It was late when I was ushered into my cell. A lad of similar age, but built like a brick shithouse, was in pole position on the bottom bunk. The top bunk is dangerous, since the mattress can be kicked off from below by the dominant prisoner. Fall to the floor, and you are likely to be jumped on and beaten, or raped.

  Everyone jostles for position in those first few minutes, hours and days. Fear leads to some pretty strange behaviour. ‘All right, mate?’ I said in a desperate, transparent attempt to break the ice. He didn’t reply, and continued to watch TV as if he was in a trance. I struggled to suppress a mounting sense of panic. He was black, which set my mind whirring madly.

  He was obviously not the most upstanding member of society, since Strangeways wasn’t built for life’s innocents. He was awaiting his chance. He knew of me through the ‘Joey Barton murder’ and would seek revenge. I elicited a grunt when I repeated my opening gambit half an hour later. He was in his own little world. My palms were damp with perspiration, though the cell was cold and claustrophobic.

  I was convinced that it would all go off, probably in pitch darkness. Maybe he was one of those who had issued bawled promises to slash and scar me. Maybe he was constructing a warped fantasy of beating me to a pulp, or shagging me into submission. I immediately resolved to lie on top of the bed-sheet, to give me better self-control if he decided to kick me out of bed.

  Sleep was impossible. I listened to his breathing and monitored his every movement. My mind was like a tumble dryer, endlessly processing different scenarios. I clutched a can of beans, one of my few permissible rations, to my chest; he was getting smashed as hard as possible in the face with it if he decided to come for me. We would see where we were after that. I was prepared to do anything to survive.

  The first rays of light, which I guessed shone through at around 5am, felt like molten gold. The dawn chorus at Strangeways is not a barrage of birdsong, but the impatient yelping of Alsatians and the heavy boots of their handlers, patrolling the landings. It was a reminder of the need to remain alert. Sure enough, when the cell door was opened at 7.30am, my cellmate walked out without a word.

  Football had taught me to examine the angles, determine the danger posed by those around me. I was exhausted; my eyes stung and my limbs ached. I catnapped for an hour, then tried to formulate a plan. When I was taken out of my pad to complete the paperwork, I got to work on the screw who accompanied me. ‘Lock me back up in that cell tonight and it is all kicking off,’ I warned him. ‘The atmosphere is horrible. Someone is going to get hurt. It is either going to be me, or the other lad.’

  This warder evidently didn’t need a badminton partner, or an insight into his favourite footballer. He was sour, indifferent to my anxiety. I gabbled on about wanting to see the governor to arrange a transfer, but he dismissed me as just another scrote with ideas above his station. ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘You’re doing what you’re told.’

  I had no option but to confront my fate. My taciturn cellmate was still out when I returned, so I sat in a chair, opposite the door, and waited. I had retrieved a can of pineapple chunks from my bag. It had more heft than Heinz, but still my imagination ran riot. Matey Boy would arrive, tooled up by unseen accomplices. This was his chance to be The Man, to impose a little fear and loathing of his own.

  The door opened.

  ‘All right, mate?’ he said. That had to be a bluff, to put me off guard.

  ‘Yeah,’ I replied. ‘You?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Sorry about last night. My bird had been on the phone, and she’d been giving me grief. My head was scrambled. So when you let on to me I was just worrying about what was going on at home. I didn’t want to speak to anyone.’

  My imaginary assailant, my murderous juicehead, turned out to be a decent lad from Chapeltown in Leeds. He came armed only with the best wishes of Micah Richards, his mate and my former team-mate at City. We talked football and mutual acquaintances for one of the weirdest hours I have ever spent. The crisis wasn’t over, but it suddenly appeared more manageable.

  All sorts of things went on in the wing, so I had to be on perpetual guard against head-bangers. One particular screw’s obsession with a local Premier League club gave me the chance to duck and dive. He could no longer afford a season ticket, so once I had him hooked, I offered to arrange a pair for him, plus some pocket money.

  Unsettled by the seemingly endless silence, I wondered if I had overplayed my hand. He exhaled before asking me in a stage whisper what I needed from him. ‘Get me shipped out to the drugs-free wing,’ I suggested. Within 24 hours he had been as good as his word. I had a job as a gym orderly, with responsibility for cleaning equipment and organising sessions. He could retrieve his club scarf from the wardrobe.

  My new cellmate was a farmer who had taken out a burglar with an unlicensed shotgun. It was difficult to work out what he had done to deserve to be in prison, other than be a convenient target for societal revenge. His punishment for doing the wrong thing, at the wrong time, in the wrong setting, seemed harsh and counterproductive.

  Billy, my mentor at Walton, would have been proud of the way I played the system. I extended certain gym sessions in return for a bit of extra food, or something else with which to barter. I developed my options by taking a second job at the serving hatch in the kitchen, doing the dishes and picking up gossip.

  It’s mad how people adapt to their surroundings. I was taught to play backgammon by Johnny, an American expatriate who had lived in Monaco for most of his life. A financial advisor, he was serving eight years for embezzlement; up to $40m had apparently gone missing. He claimed the only culture shock was a lack of cold, crisp French white wine.

  His friend, housed in the pad facing his at the end of the landing, was Marius, a softly spoken Czech who weighed in excess of 20 stone and had more tattoos than Lemmy from Motorhead. He was held in the highest esteem, and not simply because of his uncanny dexterity on a short-tennis court. He was an assassin, extradited back to the UK when CCTV footage linked him to a gangland hit.

  He was at the head of the prison hierarchy, a man to be feared, since he had a perilous degree of pride in his status as short-tennis champion. The game is played with smaller rackets, softer balls and lower nets on a court that is around half the traditional size. Serves are underarm, volleys are not permitted, and the ball must bounce once before it can be returned. The winner is the first to reach 17 points.

  Marius moved well for a man of his bulk. He had an instinctive feel for the pace of the ball, and the depth of the angle. I picked the game up pretty quickly, but he was far too good for me in our first match. As if to prove the managerial lament that I had rabbit droppings for brains, I challenged him again, and beat him.

  This did not go down well. Marius started shouting and banging his racket against the wall. Not for the first time in my life, I had overestimated the limits of self-preservation. He calmed down pretty quickly, but I was still wary several days later when he asked me to pop into his cell to sign something he wanted to send back to his family.

  I tried to style it out, and suggested I’d be honoured to welcome him into my pad. Nothing doing. It was precious cargo, a special book he held close to his heart. He was serving 28 years, and I wasn’t keen on him rubbing me out as a professional courtesy, so I asked a couple of guys to watch my back, just in case the door to his cell slammed shut behind me.

  It was dark, eerie, almost a literal interpretation of a man cave. Marius wasn’t daft: he could read my mind, even in the half-light. I think it amused him. I signed his book, made small talk for as short a time as possible without implying disrespect, and got the hell out of Dodge. The lads on the landing saw my face as I emerged and pissed themselves laughing.

  My farmer friend had been reassigned, and I scuttled to see my new cellmate Mick, a Huyton lad who’d had the misfortu
ne to be apprehended with a car boot stacked with AK47s he was running for a Lithuanian gang. He controlled the prison laundry, a coveted role which gave him great scope to operate a grace-and-favour network. His little luxuries included a wide-screen TV that could have done service in the local multiplex.

  A tabloid invention had him bullying me until I broke down in tears. Another red-top freak show proclaimed Georgia as ‘the bravest WAG in Britain’. The article used saccharine language but implied she was a potential victim of domestic abuse by quoting an unnamed ‘pal’ as saying: ‘She wants her head looking at, shacking up with that thug. Blokes like him never change.’

  The usual suspects were mobilising. A third tabloid used a rent-a-quote Tory MP to condemn my release after 74 days. Funnily enough, he stopped short of suggesting the other 24,999 prisoners allowed out early due to the end of the government’s custody licence scheme should have served their sentences, in full.

  The cardboard warriors at the FA re-emerged to charge me with violent conduct for the Dabo incident. By the time they banned me for six matches, with another six suspended for a season, Newcastle United were in meltdown. Keegan resigned the day before the result of the FA hearing was announced.

  Society was never going to provide an unequivocal welcome for the young man with a pudding-bowl haircut and a black bag slung over his shoulder, who emerged from the gates of Strangeways prison on the morning of 27 July 2008. No one really wanted to pose the question whether incarceration had done its job.

  I had, in effect, been rehabilitated during those first six days on remand in Walton. I resolved, there and then, never to return to jail once my dues had been paid. Only a fool or an amateur dramatist would describe prison as a positive, life-affirming experience, but it gave me an invaluable insight into the human condition. Adversity was an ever-reliable tutor.