UK’s Biggest Prison Drug Smuggling Gang Smashed
Original Story: BBC News
This is a fictional story based on a real news article. I don’t want your money, but it would be cool if you subscribed. Read the piece, and there’s a button at the end if you want to support my work.
Here’s how it goes.
It starts in the lounge — the second lounge — of Ronan’s place. It’s the sort of place with the little glass windows in the doors — but the doors are ancient, and you have to give ’em a good yank, and the glass makes this great big, banging sound. Now, you don’t want to make noise around drug dealers, because they’re always on guard. You should really know that about us, we’re always on guard. Like all those little wild animals who never let you close enough to touch them. Making noise is no good around us; we scamper. Which is why I always found that front door to Ronan’s an odd one. Hell of a bang.
Then you’ll go into the lounge — the second one, because the first one has a great big window facing onto the road. They’ve pressed a big telly up against it, but you can still see in around the edges of their attempted flatscreen barricade. This means business is conducted in the second lounge — which is actually just a corridor — that they’ve converted by adding some armchairs and a long table up against the wall. The light slumps down onto soggy carpets and stained sofa-cushions. They’re always playing some bassy kind of tunes, and the noise fiddles its way into the weed-smoke, flashing up the illusion that their boxy little sweat-room could be, if you really tried to believe it, more than just a damp corridor. Trust me — it’s best to get the drugs, pay the money, and leave. Don’t make conversation with wild animals.
The next place is the car park, a fenced-in concrete square, with a good chunk of people’s lives parked in it. People do seem to care about their cars, even the guards here. There are a lot of new number plates parked just beyond the prison gates. The glossy finish of the paint makes the fences seem especially dull. Especially on days when it’s that grey-white-grey colour. Which it so often is here. But don’t get too distracted, you need to focus — rummage in your handbag and make sure everything is in order. Nothing suspicious can stand out. Obviously. You can make noise here but you cannot do anything that might alert peoples’ eyes. Behind these crissy-cross fences that chop off freedom, there is no need to listen for threats. The game changes. People here look for trouble. And then they drive home in their fancy cars.
Then you’re into the screening room, which gets worse the closer you actually get to the prison. At first it’s tiled, and heated, and the lights are good enough so that you don’t notice them. But the further in you walk, the dirtier the ground becomes, the colder it begins to feel, and the light takes on a funny colour — until you start to look up at the ceiling, trying to spot a broken bulb. The outside world falls apart the closer you get to the centre. It is like time accelerates as you walk, as if the inmates themselves radiate an unstoppable force of physical decay. By the time you make it through security, your job is done, but you are standing in a cold corridor that is empty, and playing no music.
The fact is, nobody here has a second lounge. A lot of them are, actually, drug-dealers, and you should hear the way those guards slam their cells shut at night. It’s the stuff of nightmares, for us. The people here are broken and getting more broken, day after day, like hinges on a too-heavy door. They do not have fancy cars and they are always, always aware of the cold. I notice it, too, when I’m inside. And I cannot stop myself. You will probably not understand me. Probably, you will not come close to touching the way that I feel (you have no idea how quiet it can be). Bad things, bad people, and a bad place. I walk beneath the fences with chemical hope in my hand-bag. You may not like it. You may find me evil. But for you I have nothing to sell. I told you as much at the start.
This is just how it goes.
read the original story (BBC News):
HMP Lindholme: UK’s biggest prison drug-smuggling gang smashed — BBC News
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