Interrupted Lives

By Danny McAllister

This is the story of three former soldiers who meet when serving lengthy prison sentences in a high security prison. Billy, Sam and Toby’s friendship is forged at the table where they spend their days destroying CDs in the prison workshop and in the cell block they now call home. Over the years they spend inside, they come to know real tragedy and despair, but also find hope and, occasionally, see the humour and comedy that somehow manage to find their way into prison.
Thrown together by the unhappiest of circumstances, and united only by their status as convicts, Billy, Sam and Toby become great friends, although only one of them will make it out of prison at the end of his sentence. Theirs is a story of lives interrupted by the sentences imposed by a red robed judge, of other lives destroyed by their violence and selfishness and of the life that goes on behind the walls of a high security prison. It is also, though, a story of hope, a story of love and of the indefatigable human spirit found in the most unlikely places.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Aug 31, 2021
• ISBN: 9781528973694

Danny McAllister

Danny McAllister was born in Glasgow and served in the British Army, retiring as a Major in 1984. After leaving the army, he joined the prison service where he spent 27 years in roles including Governor of Whitemoor High Security Prison and Director of High Security Prisons for England and Wales. Upon his retirement from the prison service in 2011, he worked as an international consultant, advising foreign governments on prison matters. Danny was awarded a CBE in the 2009 New Year’s Honours List. He lives in a small village in Leicestershire.

Book preview

About the Author

Danny McAllister was born in Glasgow and served in the British Army, retiring with the rank of Major in 1984. He then joined the Prison Service, where he spent 27 years, serving in roles including as Governor of Brinsford Young Offenders Institution and Whitemoor, a high security prison. Danny’s final post was as Director of High Security Prisons. Upon his retirement in 2011, he worked as a Consultant in Libya and The Philippines, advising governments on prisons and counter terrorism. Danny was awarded a CBE in 2009. He lives in Leicestershire with his wife, and two adult children.

Dedication

To Max

Copyright Information ©

Danny McAllister (2021)

The right of Danny McAllister to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781528973670 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781528973694 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published (2021)

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd

25 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5LQ

Acknowledgement

To everyone who helped and everyone who didn’t.

The End of Life

Billy

He didn’t have much, but he had a hard on. It was a stonker. The first for a long time and he was as pleased as a thirteen-year-old boy alone in his bedroom with his parents out of the house. Trouble was, he was a twenty-six-year-old man in prison, skint and friendless. Still, a hard on was something on the plus side.

He was twenty-six, but by the time he got out, if he got out, he would be nearer fifty. That’s if he was lucky, and he hadn’t been lucky so far. He just about remembered the times when he was regularly the proud owner, and user, of a hard on, before the drinking and before the drugs. Before the thieving and mayhem that had brought him to Whitemoor Prison. Grievous Bodily Harm (GBH), Section 18, carried a maximum of life imprisonment; he had got a twenty-year tariff and with good luck, and behaviour, he would be out by his fiftieth birthday. He didn’t expect his hard on to last until then.

He stood just over six foot and was built like a brick cludgie. His hair was red, but nobody ever mentioned his hair colour as to do so was to invite a punch in the mouth. His face was covered in very light freckles, only noticeable when he was exposed to bright sunlight. There was no sunlight in his home town of Glasgow; hence, his freckles only became obvious when he served in sunny places with the Army. Nobody ever commented on his freckles, at least, not more than once. He was not discriminating; he would punch anyone.

He had, of course, been pissed when he hit the twat, well hit was a mild description; he had twatted the twat. When he sobered up, it was in a police cell and he couldn’t really remember that much. Just another night on the pop, following a day on the pop. Some sort of argument, fuck knows what it was about, some sort of fight, which he had won, he always won because he was nastier than any bastard he knew when he was in drink, which was pretty much all the time. So he was, pretty much, nastier than any bloke most of the time. Not a great basis for friendship, so he didn’t have any friends. Most of the other heavy drinkers in most of the pubs he drank in were wary of him with his violence just, only just, below the surface. He was bound to go too far one day and he had.

From the police cell to court, remanded in custody, to Scrubs. Eight weeks sweating on the twat dying, he must have given him a right kicking but couldn’t remember. He couldn’t even remember the name of the twat until the police told him and didn’t recognise the name then. The charge was changed from attempted murder to GBH, Section 18, when the twat didn’t die: so what. After the drying out period in Scrubs, he had found remand time easy. He missed the drink but that was all he missed. He had no trouble from the other cons; why would they want to fuck about with a six-foot ex-para, not completely gone to fat? There were easier targets for the bullies so they left him alone. If they hadn’t left him alone, he would have maimed them; they might have killed him, but he would have maimed them in the process. So the bullies went after the weak, or those with something to lose, those who would not maim them, and he was left alone.

He had been alone most of his life, son of a piss head da and a useless maw. Billy McGill, of the heid the baw McGills, Easterhouse’s finest. As soon as he could, he left and joined the Army. He was a wild, hard bastard, but by the age of sixteen, he had not been formally labelled by the courts as a wild, hard, criminal bastard, so the Army had him. He had enjoyed the Junior Leaders, though showed no signs of leadership. It was better than school, which he had hated, and Easterhouse schools had hated him right back. That he could read and write was a credit to several heroic teachers who had handled him, baton like in a relay, to literacy if not much numeracy. That was before he had grown big enough to intimidate them and had discovered dogging it truancy. The Army saved him, at least for a while. He was hard but the Army was harder, so he learned to play the game. The game rules were that you did whatever they told you, they gave you money for the drink and the women and, later, the drugs; that was it. That was it until they found out about the drugs and then it was the red card. Fair enough.

From the Junior Leaders, he had gone to P Company at Aldershot to try for the Paras; nae bother. He was as fit as fuck and had passed through P Company in the middle of a cohort of equally fit soldiers who did what they were told. Then para training, piece of piss when you don’t give a shit, jump out of a perfectly serviceable aeroplane, why not; here we go. Posted to 4 Parachute Regiment with his wings; Aldershot, Iraq, Afghanistan, all places that sold beer if you had the money. He did what the Army told him to do, they gave him money, and he bought beer, everyone a winner. He got to travel the world, meet interesting people and do them harm.

It couldn’t go on, of course, he was just too fucked up, even for the Army, even for the paras. Controlled aggression against foreigners was prized. Drink fuelled aggression against civilians was not prized. There were episodes of trouble, but not too much until the drugs. He hadn’t really been addicted to any specific drug any more than he was addicted to any specific alcoholic drink. If he had money, he could get mood-changing chemicals, whether in liquid form or any other form. They never found him out in Iraq or Afghanistan, but they did in Aldershot. Routine drug testing, randomly selected, he was told. End of military career. The Army wasn’t sorry he failed the drug test. He was just too loose a cannon, useful in tight spots but not suitable for peacetime soldiering. The aggression that was useful in Helmand was less welcome in Hampshire. They had slung him out and the era of regular money ended.

The years of regular pay had ended but the days of increasingly drink fuelled mayhem did not. He chucked the drugs, they were too dear, and gave his sole and earnest attention to the drink. He never drove, never learned, but if he had been breathalysed at any time in the years following the Army, he would have failed spectacularly. He was semi-pissed when he wasn’t fully pissed. He funded his drinking by doing, well, anything. Just like in the Army, he did whatever he was told, or sometimes asked, and was paid in beer vouchers. He was violent for pay and he was violent when pissed; he was always pissed and he was always violent. It was only a matter of time before he went too far.

Remanded in Scrubs, tried, found guilty, given a twenty-year tariff, into the high security estate, Whitemoor. The place was full of hard, violent men, but not stupid violent hard men. They left him alone and in his drink-deprived state, he started to settle down into himself.

So, at the age of twenty-six, Billy McGill found himself in a high security prison, HMP Whitemoor with twenty years in front of him and an erection. If he had been a deep thinker, he would have known that the erection was a sign that his drink clean body was taking an interest in life, but he wasn’t a deep thinker.

Wee Billy McGill

He was called Wee Billy as his father had already bagged Big Billy. Even when he grew taller and bigger than his father, at about fourteen, he was still Wee Billy.

The McGills had lived in Easterhouse, on the outskirts of Glasgow, all of Wee Billy’s life. He had been pushed in his pram around the streets of Easterhouse. He had gone to school, or sometimes not gone to school, although he should have, in Easterhouse. He knocked about the streets of Easterhouse with his pals, up to no good but unable to do any real harm. The worst thing they could think to do, now and again, was to kick over dustbins and, at all times, to be cheeky to adults. That is until he had discovered the electric soup. The electric soup was a fortified wine made by some monks in England. If it was made by monks, Wee Billy thought, it must be alright. It was exported from the benign monks in England to the benighted drinkers of Easterhouse.

Big Billy McGill did not hold with all this work nonsense as it tended to eat into his drinking time. The problem was, Big Billy needed to get money to give to the barman in The Clansman in exchange for drink. Big Billy McGill solved this problem by stealing anything that was not nailed down. This was a trial to the, mostly, decent citizens of Easterhouse and, specifically, to Big Billy’s neighbours. Now and again, an aggrieved neighbour, with a few mates, would give Big Billy a tanking to teach Big Billy to keep his hands off what wasn’t his; it didn’t work. Sometimes, in desperation, the neighbours involved the police, the courts had their say and Big Billy went away to Barlinnie. The absence of Big Billy, whilst he paid his debt to society, was welcomed by his neighbours. The absence of Big Billy, whilst he paid his debt to society, was also welcomed in the McGill household. His maw got some peace from the old bugger (he was thirty-five) and Wee Billy got to be Big Billy for a while. His maw was a wee wummin, even by Glasgow standards. A wee wummin with a tongue that could strip paint. Billy and his maw got on fine. She rarely hit him, only hitting him when he was within range, safe in the knowledge that Wee Billy would not retaliate as ‘it’s no right tae hit wimmen,’ as she had always told him. She had married Big Billy when she was sixteen and two months off having what was to be Wee Billy. When Big Billy was away in Barlinnie, there were three effects on the social life of Easterhouse. Firstly, anything not nailed down had a chance of not being lifted. Second, the takings in The Clansman went down and third, Soft Shughie, who lived four doors down with his own maw, spent a lot of his time round at Maw McGill’s. Soft Shughie always came with a couple of bottles of electric soup. Billy’s maw and Soft Shughie would partake of a few scoops of electric soup and then retire to another part of the house to, as his maw told Billy, ‘Have a private chat.’ Wee Billy liked it when his maw and Soft Shughie went to have a private chat, as it left him in the front room with the electric soup. Wee Billy developed a taste for the electric soup.

Wee Billy McGill told his pals about the wonder of the electric soup and that it could be purchased, or lifted, from Patel’s shop up the road. Wee Billy and his pals got round the money problem thing in the time-honoured way of the McGills. That Billy never got caught at the lifting thing was down to pure luck and the fact that he wasn’t as daft as Big Billy. He was close a few times but Glasgow’s finest never laid a hand on him. So, by the age of fifteen, Wee Billy, who was now bigger than Big Billy, had developed a taste for the stuff that monks made in England. If Wee Billy needed any encouragement to consume the electric soup (he didn’t, but if he did), it was the discovery that the application of the stuff to lassies let lassies gie ye it. This was, truly, a wonderful elixir and Wee Billy became a devotee of the fruits of the labour of the English monks. It wasn’t all good, as, sometimes, the electric soup gave him a headache the next day as he surfaced about noon, but the headache could be driven away by having more electric soup.

When Big Billy came back from Barlinnie, there were some predictable changes to the social life in Easterhouse. Things started to go missing on the estate, takings went up at The Clansman and Soft Shughie didn’t call round any more. Billy, now Wee Billy again, deepened his admiration for the end product of the work of the English monks. Wee Billy and Big Billy got on just the same, that is to say, they ignored each other. Oh, there was the occasional shouting match, but any attempt at parental control by violence had ceased when Wee Billy had got bigger than Big Billy. His maw didn’t seem to mind whether Big Billy was away in Barlinnie or back home. It didn’t really impact upon her, generally, miserable view of the world. Unlike Big Billy, his maw still adhered to favouring violence as a tool of parenting and she wasn’t averse to giving Wee Billy a skelp when he was in range.

Education ceased to be a problem for him when he stopped going to school. He could read and he could count money; what else was there to learn? If he could get enough money, anyhow, to give to Mr Patel, Mr Patel would give him the stuff the monks made. When the mood took him, he would share the electric soup with a lassie and she would gie him it. Wee Billy was a happy soul, but there were shadows. Eck McIver was his best pal. They often shared a bottle, and, sometimes, a lassie. Tragedy struck when Eck was apprehended by Glasgow’s finest in possession of stuff that wasn’t, technically, his, in fact, wasn’t his at all. Eck went away to Polmont for a year. Wee Billy’s second-best pal, Tam White, filled the gap left by Eck while Eck was away in Polmont YOI. Then, is there nae God, Tam fell foul of Glasgow’s finest in a scenario not dissimilar to Eck’s downfall. Tam went to join Eck in Polmont and Wee Billy paused for thought. He took stock of his life. At that time, his father was having a rest in Barlinnie, Soft Shughie was back on the scene, the barman in The Clansman was morose, his maw still gave him a skelp if he was in range and he was itchy from that lassie. He decided there must be more to life than this. So he did what any wrong thinking, drink dependent young man with a social disease would do; he went to the doctors, got some medicine to clear up the rash and gave the lassie a body swerve. He also thought about joining the Army. He told his maw he would be well out of the way if she would fill in the approval form and he went to see the army man. The army man said, ‘Yes.’ Billy signed, his maw signed and Billy McGill became Junior Leader W McGill 23850048. Numbers are important and this became one of the two numbers by which Billy McGill would be known for all the rest of his life. The other number was his prison number but that was years away yet.

Sam

He had not just wanted him dead. He had wanted to kill him, slowly and painfully, wanted him to suffer, wanted to watch him suffer, that’s what he had wanted. He had only partly succeeded. The bastard hadn’t died but he had suffered. Suffered as he booted him repeatedly, suffered as his guts were kicked into a pulp. The bastard had pleaded for it to stop, but it hadn’t stopped. Only when he thought he was no longer suffering did he stop kicking and punching him. Only when his pathetic pleading stopped, due to loss of consciousness, did the pummelling stop. He thought he was dead and hoped he had died painfully, but the paramedics did a good job on stopping the blood and getting a line in, and that saved his life. He did not feel any relief when the police told him later that he would be charged with attempted murder, not murder. The police told him that his victim would never be the same again and he said, ‘Good.’

They had been together forever; Paula and Sam seemed always to have been together. School together, work together, play together. They were seen, always together, all around their home town of Bolton. He had loved her, if he thought about it, all of his life. She had loved him, and she did think about it, all of her life. When they left school at sixteen, they had moved in together, into a poxy little one roomed flat above the Co-op; it was great. She worked in a shop and he looked for work. The looking came to nothing; not a lot about.

Paula was pretty but not beautiful, except to Sam. Sam was an unremarkable, working class, northern male. Just over six foot, dark haired and with an open face which always told you what was in his head.

He had always fancied the Army, she had always fancied him, and so the Army it was. The recruiting officer had welcomed him as the potential fodder he was. The Sixth Lancashire Regiment had welcomed him as the county regiments did their recruits, that is with a smile and a boot up the arse when it was needed. He flourished in those early years, flew through recruit training and volunteered for every course and cadre going and when he got his first stripe, they had got married, she had given up her job and they had moved in to married quarters in Preston. Absolute luxury after the poxy little flat. Two bedrooms, a bit of garden and lots of families in the same boat. The Davies’s, Sam and Paula, in their married quarter, with just enough money to see through the month and enough left over for nights out in the corporals’ mess. It was as good as it could get, good as it ever got.

The breakthrough was when he was picked for the Senior NCOs’ Selection Cadre, one of eight aspirants, all mustard keen, all chasing the two possible sergeants’ vacancies. The cadre was six weeks long, six weeks of being inspected, poked, prodded, kicked up the arse, six weeks of testing and being under the microscope. The other seven candidates on the cadre were good and wanted it, but he was good and had to have it. Through the whole cadre, she