The Governor. Vanessa Frake

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СКАЧАТЬ opened up. It was like watching something move in slow motion. There was no blood at first, the skin simply parted to reveal pinky-white flesh and thread veins.

      Jane touched her face. ‘What’s that?’

      Before I had time to answer, the blood rose to the surface – gushing. There was claret everywhere.

She stared at her red fingers, her body began to tremble, her eyes were bulging with fear and shock. I thought she was going to pass out.

      ‘What’s happening?’ It came out as more of a whisper. The unharmed side of her face had turned as white as ash. Blood was spraying across the hot plate, splattering the baguettes.

      ‘Oh my God!’ She found her voice. ‘Arrrrrrgh.’ She erupted into an ear-piercing scream.

      One of the officers punched the alarm on the wall while me and another prison officer jumped on Carrie Webber.

      Carrie Webber – one of the most violent female prisoners I’d ever encountered. Prisoners, officers, she wasn’t fussed who she attacked. She spent her days making weapons out of whatever she could get her hands on. Every night we’d search her cell and without fail we’d find something deadly she’d made or adapted out of prison materials. Shanks. Knives welded together from plastic and razor blades. Every morning we’d go in again and there’d be the garrotte woven from toilet paper, as strong as any rope. She slept with it all night long hidden under her pillow, plotting who to hurt next.

      The officer held Carrie down while I removed today’s weapon of choice. A toothbrush with two razor blades melted into the plastic. Deadly, deliberately so. Carrie had designed it to cause maximum damage. She’d known full well that two slices across the skin, close together, would be much harder for the nurse to stitch back up than a single gash. Jane’s face would be disfigured for ever.

We’d warned Jane not to tell anyone what she was in for, but she clearly chose to ignore our advice. Anyone who hurts children is seen as the lowest of the low in prison and Jane’s crime was particularly sickening. She held down her own children while her husband raped them. Carrie must have found out and thought Jane deserved her special kind of punishment.

      The alarm rang like a drill through my ears while Jane continued to scream. The noise was unbearable.

      ‘Get her out of here!’ I ordered. Carrie stared daggers at me with those dark piercing eyes of hers. She was a big woman, thickset, and she looked mean – you know the way some people can? There was no expression in her eyes, they were cold and penetrating.

      She wriggled and raged as they carted her off to the segregation unit for solitary confinement punishment, furious at me for cutting her vigilantism short. Meanwhile, Jane was sobbing her eyes out as she was taken off by the nurses to get stitched up, leaving a trail of blood in her wake.

      I feel my stomach make an unpleasant somersault as I remember the gruesome sight. The smell. Everything about that horrific memory hitting me hard. I’m a nightmare around blood; just the smallest drop makes me feel queasy. I put down my spoon and grip the edge of the counter, taking a deep breath in and a long exhale out, blowing away the past.

Most days it feels like a lifetime ago. But sometimes, often in the most innocuous of moments, my past creeps up on me. Dragging me back behind those twelve-foot-high walls. It’s inevitable really, considering I spent twenty-seven years in the prison service. Most of the time I’m Vanessa, but occasionally I’m Frake again. Or Frakey, or simply gov.

      Today, I bake cakes and pastries to rival Mary Berry’s, if I do say so myself. I say that with a twinkle in my eye of course. Back in the day, I was Governor of Security and Operations for HMP Wormwood Scrubs. Ahead of you lies the story of my journey from A to B. If you’re easily shocked or offended, you best look away now.

Chapter 1

       New kid on the block

      HMP Wormwood Scrubs: March 2002

      I guess it would be fair to say I started my first day at one of Britain’s most notorious men’s prisons feeling bitter.

      There was a staff shortage, so me and another female senior officer had been transferred. That’s the way things went in the prison service and there was nothing I could do about it. We’d had just the weekend to prepare after someone from HMP Holloway turned up on my doorstep with a letter. A bit like what you see in the movies, when someone gets ‘served’ with their court papers.

      The woman thrust the envelope at me with an outstretched hand and I just glared at her, knowing full well it was bad news. I have a sixth sense for knowing what’s coming. You’ll get to know that about me the more you hear of my story.

      ‘Just tell me what it says,’ I said, not wanting to bother with the ceremony of opening it.

      ‘You’re moving to Wormwood Scrubs.’

My stomach clenched. ‘Alright. Fine.’ I drew on all my strength to hide my emotions. ‘When?’

      ‘Monday.’

       Monday?! You’re having a giraffe!

      ‘Great, thanks,’ I replied, tight-lipped. I closed the door, my heart sinking, my resolve melting to form pure undiluted anger.

      I never did open the letter. I binned it. Like I say, bitter. I’d given that women’s prison sixteen years of my life and, just like that, they wrenched me from everything I’d known and shoved me into a world I’d deliberately avoided. A men’s prison.

      I barely said a word to Sarah as she drove us through London rush-hour traffic to our new life. My thoughts were churning, mainly with dread.

      HMP Wormwood Scrubs’ reputation preceded it. Built in the Victoria era it was one of the oldest prisons in the UK. Dirty, rat-infested, rundown, with a serious drug problem. You get to hear all the stories working in the industry. ‘A prison that continues to fall short of expected standards,’ if you prefer the more diplomatic description used by the chief inspector of prisons. On the tier system, it was ranked three, teetering on two. Four being the best. One being the worst. You get the idea.

Aside from being grubby, it was also one of the largest prisons in the UK, locking up 1,237 prisoners compared to the 400 to 500 we had at Holloway. ‘The Scrubs’, as it was better known, was just as famous for its list of well-known convicts. From Moors murderer Ian Brady to the Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe; Leslie Grantham, better known as Dirty Den off EastEnders, Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards, ‘Britain’s most violent prisoner’ Charles Bronson; George Blake, the British spy who betrayed M16 agents to the KGB. They’d all done time there. Rather fittingly, Wormwood Scrubs meant ‘snake-infested woodland’ in Old English.

      Being in central London, right next to Wormwood Scrubs Common in Shepherd’s Bush, it was situated in spitting distance of the city’s magistrates and crown courts, which is why it was mainly used as a remand prison. In fact, as many as 80 per cent of the prisoners in the Scrubs were awaiting sentencing. Remand prisoners bring a whole set of problems on their own compared to convicted criminals, but more of that later.

      In a nutshell, I’d been sent to an absolute hole full of lairy men who’d been accused of everything from murder to rape to plotting to blow up our country. It was a category B prison, so some of the most serious of crimes.

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