Cath Staincliffe - Crying Out Loud

‘How d’you mean?’

She picked up the lighter and tapped it against her palm. ‘He’s his own worst enemy. He lives in some fairy land half the time, innit. Living it large, showing off, giving it the gab, kidding himself that he’s the man and things are fine. People buy into it, then they find out it’s make-believe and they get mad. Next thing he’s a headcase, crying like a baby and it’s the end of the world. He’s got mental problems.’ She glanced across at me. ‘He reckons the drugs help, but they just make it worse.’

I was impressed at the sketch she conjured up. She’d obviously thought about her brother, considered his behaviour and her analysis was unflinching.

‘Why would he confess if he hadn’t done it?’

She rolled the wheel on the lighter; the flint sparked but no flame caught.

‘I don’t…’ She broke off, considering how to explain it to me. ‘It’s just the sort of thing he’d do.’

‘But it must have been plausible for the police, for the judge, to accept his plea.’

She locked eyes with me, an edge of resentment hardening hers. ‘He’s a good liar,’ she said baldly. ‘That’s what I’m sayin’, innit. He mixes it up: what’s true, what’s not.’

‘So you never believed it, not even when he was sentenced?’

‘No way.’ Her mouth flattened a firm line.

‘And since?’

‘I’m the only one who visits,’ she said. ‘The rest, they’ve no time for him. Mostly we talk about other stuff but then one day, he’s been in about a month, he’s all quiet and he says he didn’t kill Mr Carter and it’s a mistake and he only confessed because he was scared and he was rattling…’

‘Rattling?’ What did she mean?

‘Withdrawal. So he said yeah he done it and then it was hard to go back.’

I must have seemed sceptical because she sat back and looked away in a gesture of thinly veiled frustration. ‘Don’t take my word,’ she said, ‘go see him.’

‘I will. Chloe, you wrote to Libby Hill – what about the Carter family?’

‘Yeah, them an’ all. I went to the lawyer but she was no use. Just said I was wasting my time and there was no new evidence.’

‘Did the Carters get in touch?’

‘Nah.’ She shook her head, resignation on her face. ‘Guess they don’t wanna know.’

We swapped details so she could arrange to get me on the list for a prison visit and the toddler wandered into the kitchen and climbed on to Chloe’s lap. The child’s face was flushed, her eyes large and drowsy. She laid her head against her mother’s chest. Chloe picked a soother out of the raffia tray on the table, sucked it clean and slipped it in the little girl’s mouth. ‘There y’are.’

‘Nap time.’ I smiled.

‘Thank God,’ said Chloe. ‘She’s been up since four – teething.’

‘I can see myself out.’ I got to my feet.

She nodded. ‘When you see him, don’t let him muck you about. He’s a bit ADHD, you know.’ Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: unable to concentrate, unable to sit still, disruptive; an increasing diagnosis among both kids and adults, many of whom were tranquilized to settle their behaviour. It was common knowledge that food additives played a part; I wondered what they fed people like Damien in prison.

‘Just don’t let him arse you about,’ she said.

I smiled. ‘OK, I’ll do my best.’

I wondered if Damien Beswick had any idea what Chloe was trying to do for him. Against all the odds, knowing his flaws, she was sticking up for him, believing in him. It seemed she was the only person in the world who did. Whether that belief was justified was a completely different matter. And it was my job to start snooping around and find out.

Strangeways is just north of the city centre, a couple of minutes’ drive from Victoria train station. The tall watchtower is Italianate in style, a landmark I could see as I drove closer. It’s a familiar feature of the city skyline. The building is Victorian Gothic – red and cream brick, and the main entrance boasts two rounded towers and steeply pitched roofs. The prison was designed by Alfred Waterhouse, the same man who had done Manchester’s town hall. Strangeways is a panopticon design: the wings run off from the central vantage point – like spokes from a wheel.

They don’t actually call it Strangeways any more; it was renamed HMP Manchester in the wake of the riots that destroyed most of the original buildings. The worst riots in the history of the penal system. On April Fool’s Day, 1990 it all kicked off. A group of prisoners had decided to accelerate their protest against inhuman conditions: the rotten food, men held three to a cell (cells twelve foot by eight and built for one), the degrading business of slopping out, the lack of visits, of free association, the racism and brutality of many guards. The ringleader, Paul Taylor, spoke after Sunday morning’s chapel service and when guards intervened, the prisoners got hold of some keys. Taylor escorted the chaplain to safety and then declared it was time for some free association. It lasted for twenty-five days. The leaders of the riot spent much of the time up on the high rooftops, communicating with the press and waving clenched fists for the photographers on board the helicopters swooping above them. Iconic images.

I remember the sense of dread and panic as the early reports came in: stories of prisoners being torn apart, of twenty dead, of people burnt alive, of hundreds of inmates breaking into the segregation unit where the paedophiles and informers were held, hauling them into kangaroo courts where summary justice was doled out, victims castrated and dismembered in orgies of operatic violence. The men on the roof had hung out a home-made banner: a sheet with the words No Dead daubed on it. Among the clamour of moral outrage and lurid speculation one or two more measured accounts were heard; the local journalists built up a rapport with the protesters and made every effort to give an accurate account of events. There was great sympathy for the prisoners’ cause in the city and beyond. And the eventual truth was that two men had died. Both in hospital, not in the prison: a prison warder who had suffered a heart attack and a man on remand for sex offences who had been beaten. No one ever stood trial in either case. The prison was effectively destroyed and when it was rebuilt along with the new name there was a change in conditions.

The visitors’ centre is a new building close to the car park up the hill near the old Boddington’s brewery. At the gate I signed in, showing my passport as proof of identity. I left my bag and phone in a locker, put my paper and pen in a tray for examination and went through the metal detectors. A prison officer escorted me through two sets of locked gates and into the centre.

No matter how many times I visit prison, I never get used to the particular atmosphere. It’s a combination of oppressive loneliness and boredom tinged with hopelessness and the threat of violence, all covered in a thin veneer of normality. A third of men inside have serious mental health problems, a quarter are drug dependent, a third alcoholics, illiteracy is rife and most of them come from broken homes. Lock a load of people like that up and the vibe is never going to be great.

As mine was an official rather than a social visit I could meet Damien Beswick in one of the small rooms set aside for such encounters. The prison officer left me there while he went to fetch Damien. When he brought him in, I caught the tail end of a lecture. The guard sounded weary, as if he’d been repeating something incessantly.

‘Any fun and games and you lose your privileges. Governor’s report.’

‘I know,’ Damien replied.