The Governor by Vanessa Frake

Author:Vanessa Frake [Frake, Vanessa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2021-02-01T23:18:52+00:00

Chapter 17

The boy that cried wolf

HMP Wormwood Scrubs: 8 January 2007

Something didn’t feel right.

My hairs were standing on end. My gut was screaming this could be a trap. But what could I do? My hands were tied. If I didn’t say yes and the prisoner died I could be done for corporate manslaughter. This was one of the toughest decisions I’d had to make in my new job as governor.

It was creeping up to lunchtime. The windows in the office were fogged up with condensation from the bitter cold outside. The sky was concrete grey, pressing down on us, threatening snow. I was fed up with winter already.

The phone ringing broke my gloomy thoughts. It was Andy, the principal officer on E wing. From his first word he sounded harassed and worried.

‘Boss, we’ve got a prisoner down here who urgently needs to go to hospital.’

Prisoners being rushed to hospital wasn’t out of the ordinary in a place where suicide attempts, self-harm and drug overdoses were a fairly frequent occurrence. Some of these prisoners had serious health conditions that could erupt at any given moment despite their treatment care plan with our medical team. Sometimes you just get sick and there’s no way to prepare for it.

But every time I heard those words, a wave of stress steamrolled through me.

‘Can you tell me more? What’s wrong with him?’

‘I dunno. The doc doesn’t know yet. He says it’s serious. He’s rolling around screaming he’s in pain.’

‘Who is it?’

‘Ryan Faulkner.’

The name didn’t ring a bell.

‘Okay,’ I replied. ‘I’ll get back to you.’

It was my job now to risk access the situation before we gave it the all-clear. I asked one of the officers in my team to have a look into Faulkner’s file. Why? Because escorting a prisoner to hospital was a big deal. It instantly thrust us into a vulnerable position – we were no longer working from a controlled environment. Now there were hundreds of risk factors involved. As deputy head of security the things at the forefront of my mind were: a) Could this prisoner harm a member of the public? b) Could this prisoner try to escape? Hopefully his file would shed some light.

The officer didn’t have to say anything as he carried the bulging Manila file towards my desk. His eyes said it all.

I licked my forefinger and thumb and got stuck in.

‘What the …?’ You’re having a giraffe.

Possession of firearms, which he was serving a minimum of five years for, was a red flag for starters. I winced as I read on. There were a seismic number of security breach reports. He’d been abusive to staff. He’d been caught with mobiles, with drugs, and …

My breath caught in my throat.

We’d had some fresh intel that Faulkner had been planning a prison break. What’s more, he had previous – he’d escaped custody, not once but twice before, including breaking out from a prison van. In May 2000, following an appearance at Tower Bridge Magistrates’ Court for armed robbery, Faulkner had somehow managed to get out of the van while it stopped in traffic on Tower Bridge Road.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.