The Loose Screw (24 page)

This incident caused tension to rise within the unit, as Ronnie was such a well-respected man, but yet again it was Dave who came to the rescue with his latest morale booster. He received an audio tape through the post, put it in his tape recorder in his cell and cranked up the volume, and for the next few days all you could hear from pretty much anywhere in the unit was the sound of the 'Laughing Policeman' booming out from his cell. It certainly had the desired effect! I am sure some of you will remember those little laughing bags we used to get, and how much fun they were -well, Dave's prank caused the same sort of infectious laughter.

The senior management on the unit did not appreciate the benefits of Dave's piped laughter, as they were under the impression that everyone staff and inmates -had to be as miserable as they were. However, every time an officer was detailed to go and turn off the tape, it just came back on louder than ever, so eventually they gave up and the 'Laughing Policeman' became a permanent feature on the unit for a good few weeks. It was rather like that elevator music you get in posh hotels.

All the inmates' correspondence on the unit at that time was closely scrutinized by both the security department and the police if they found or heard anything suspicious. This included all mail and conversations either on the wing, on the telephone or on visits. To that end, one of the busiest men on the unit was the Cat A censor, who was responsible for reading all the incoming mail and deciding whether any of it should be passed on to the relevant authorities.

Dave realized this and, being a man who always liked to put a bit of extra work your way, he devised a plan to keep the censor's office busy. He was at that time involved with some men's magazines such as Front, so when he was asked to judge a readers' wives competition he saw two opportunities. Not only could he partake in his favourite pastime (wanking), he also saw it as a great chance to provide the censor with plenty of work. He got his wife to forward all the correspondence relating to the competition to his new address, and before long he was receiving two or three bags of mail a week.

Whilst Dave had almost dislocated both wrists giving each photo and letter his personal attention in his official role as judge, the censor had slipped two discs in his back and had lost about six stone in weight carting the bags over from his office in the main prison two or three times a day. He had, I heard, also almost paid off his mortgage with all the overtime Dave was putting his way. In an attempt to help him become mortgage-free even quicker, Dave stepped up his campaign a notch and began ordering all sorts of stuff via the mail-order pages of the newspapers and Sunday magazines.

Fairly soon the Home Office heard about Dave's sudden popularity, probably when they realized the censor could no longer get into his office due to the huge backlog of mail that was stacking up behind his door. They were then forced to publish their second official memorandum in as many months relating to Dave. It warned all staff and inmates that no prisoner must be allowed to enter any competitions or order any mail-order item to be delivered to the prison during their stay at any of Her Majesty's establishments. It became apparent that they had also received a rather large bill from various publications, as most of the stuff Dave had ordered was on a 'send no money now' deal and, as the Cat A unit was the delivery address, the Home Office was automatically responsible for payment.

Shortly after the mail scandal, Dave's bail hearing finally came to court and, in line with the reputation he had built up whilst on the unit, it was to prove to be the final two fingers up at the establishment. The judge set bail at a ridiculous one million pounds cash, obviously thinking that this would be a totally unreasonable amount for anyone to produce and would therefore ensure that Dave remained incarcerated until the trial date. He had, however, underestimated the high regard in which Dave was held by many of his well-connected contacts, and he was to stun them all in court a week later when he returned for a second hearing. I would have loved to have seen that judge's face when one of Dave's pals arrived in court clutching a holdall containing one million pounds in cash for his bail bond. This was raised by, among others, Peter Stringfellow and Nigel Benn, both very good friends of Dave who were willing to help him out in his time of need.

This was the final smack in the face for the Prison Service and a very fitting end to his extremely humorous and eventful stay in the unit. Dave went on to get a 'not guilty' verdict on the charges for which he was originally brought in and he made history not only by being the first man in the unit to produce one million pounds in cash for his bail but also by being released with a 'not guilty' on all counts. He also made the headlines by appearing in court dressed as a court jester complete with bells on his hat and everything.

This was good news for Dave, not only because it meant he was a free man again but also he had been able to get out of the Category A unit, I believe, just in time. Dave's antics during his stay with us, while providing all the other prisoners with a great deal of entertainment and being a great moral booster, had also earned him the utmost respect from the other chaps. It soon became common knowledge in the tea room that his growing popularity with the other prisoners was really antagonizing a lot of the staff at all levels, and I was aware that sinister plans were afoot to set Dave up with some similar treatment to what was served up to the fruit and veg man, only it was said that it was going to have to be a much more ferocious attack as most knew that Dave was going to be much more of a handful than the previous victim.

A few years after Dave's release without charge from the unit, a little story hit the headlines that I am sure most of you will remember seeing in the media. Dave was travelling along a stretch of the M25 motorway in his Range Rover when he was involved in a near fatal crash. Dave's recollections of the incident are obviously vague, but the one thing he does remember just prior to the crash is that the road was surprisingly quiet when he noticed a car approaching him from the rear at speed. The next thing he remembers is the Range Rover cartwheeling not sideways but bonnet to boot over and over again. Each time the car turned, another piece of the bodywork was torn off the vehicle, and within seconds the still conscious Dave began to register the extreme pain from his shattered pelvis and legs. He told me that at one point the sunroof was ripped off and he could see the tarmac just inches from his head each time the vehicle landed on the roof. I asked him what was going through his head, apart from bits of the M25, and he said he was just hoping that he would get a crack on the head to knock him out as the pain from his injuries was becoming unbearable. He thought the car would never stop and at one point had resigned himself to the fact that his time was up and he would not walk away from this one.

Eventually the car came to a stop some 200 yards away and a semiconscious Dave recalls being astonished that he had been aware of the CD player playing all the way through the incident, despite about 80 per cent of the car being torn apart by the impact, and as he lay there drifting into unconsciousness he was amazed to hear Elvis still singing away through the car's undamaged stereo. 'All Shook Up' would have been an appropriate Elvis number to have been playing at this point.

I am mentioning this incident because, although not related directly to a prison incident, there are a number points that don't add up to me regarding the circumstances of the crash, which when compared to what I witnessed in prison makes mentioning it worthwhile I think.

Firstly, there was no other car involved in the accident or indeed on the road at the time, and I am sure those of you who have been unfortunate enough to witness or be directly involved in a high-speed crash on a motorway will agree that such a crash will almost inevitably involve at least a couple of other vehicles due to the natural reaction times of the human brain in such situations. Apparently this stroke of luck was due to the fact that travelling just behind Dave that night was a plain-clothes police car. It was those officers' lightning reactions that enabled them to stop their vehicle and set up a roadblock in time to prevent any other vehicle becoming involved as the Range Rover hurtled down the carriageway.

Speaking from experience of being involved in countless incidents where you are required to react fast, not least in Northern Ireland while patrolling in vehicles around built-up areas, I have always found that if you do not know the exact time and place something is going to happen your human instinct initially is one of shock, which can slow your reaction time down by valuable seconds no matter how highly trained you are. So my conclusions are that it would be highly unlikely that a car travelling at speed and so close behind such a high-speed crash would be able to react so quickly as to prevent any further knock-on incidents, unless of course they knew exactly what was going to happen, if you know what I mean.

The second thing I find strange relating to the incident is that initially the air ambulance was scrambled to attend the scene, which I am sure is the usual method of extracting a seriously injured road traffic accident casualty with multiple fractures and internal injuries such as Dave received. The air ambulance was, however, recalled minutes after getting airborne by an unknown party, and even before any medical assessment of the extent or seriousness of Dave's injuries had been carried out, and instead a road ambulance was dispatched to the scene. Who knows perhaps someone somewhere was hoping Dave wouldn't last long enough for the slower road ambulance to arrive?!

Eventually Dave was transferred to hospital where he remained in a coma for several weeks and the first request by the police was to take blood for an alcohol test, which proved negative. When Dave eventually came round, the first sight was his mate Brendan, who had with many other good mates kept a vigil at his bedside throughout. Just before Dave regained consciousness, Brendan had been talking out loud to his comatose friend, stating, "You should see the state of the car -it's a complete write-off! You've made a hell of a mess of it!" Unknown to Brendan, Dave had been able at that stage to hear the whole statement and they both still wind each other up today about Brendan's apparently greater concern over the state of the Range Rover rather than Dave's condition.

Following the incident all subsequent inquiries made by Dave's legal team hit a dead end. For example, when they requested the CCTV footage for that night they were informed that at that particular time all the CCTV monitors for that specific stretch of the M25 had for the first time in their history all been shut down for maintenance work. Doesn't that sound familiar, going back to the cameras in the Cat A unit? Also, when an interview was requested with the two plain-clothes policemen who were conveniently driving behind Dave that night, the excuse for not being able to oblige was that they had been transferred to another force and it was force policy that they were no longer allowed to comment on incidents that had occurred prior to transfer.

I can only draw my own conclusions based on my experiences and knowledge of how easy it is to erase CCTV footage or attain false statements or give official-sounding excuses as to why officers can't comment, but I know what I think about the whole incident. You, of course, will have to make up your own minds. I just can't help thinking of another similarly controversial incident that occurred in Paris some years ago. All a bit funny, don't you think?

I am privileged to have remained in contact with Dave over the years, and he always welcomes me into his house and to the numerous shows he does around the country. He has been a great help and support in writing this book and for that I am grateful. Some people love him, some people hate him, but that's the way of the world. I think he is a great guy who will help anyone out if he possibly can. The inscription on the gravestone that stands outside his front door sums him up perfectly. It reads:

DAVE COURTNEY OBE A RIGHT FLASH BASTARD BUT A NICE FLASH BASTARD.

12

EXTERNALS

Back at Belmarsh I returned to normal duties on the Category A unit, although I didn't have long left before I would be deployed to another area within the prison. My final days on spur three were to see me witness one more incident, which was to remain in my mind forever.

One of the inmates on the spur at the time was an old boy called John who, although convicted of playing a role in the Warrington bombing, had always protested his innocence. I began the normal routine one morning by unlocking the cell doors on the spur. I had unlocked John's door and moved on to the next, when something told me that all was not right. I returned to his cell, pushed the door open fully and nearly threw up at the sight that greeted me. The whole of the cell was covered in blood, even the ceiling, and John's lifeless body lay in his bed with a jagged gash on his neck from ear to ear. The stench was almost unbearable, so, after turning to my colleague and advising him to lock up the rest of the spur and call for assistance, I entered the cell to open the window. As I carefully trod around the pools of blood, I put on some surgical gloves and picked up the tin lid that he had used to cut his own throat.

As I turned to go back out of the cell, I was greeted with about three other Irish prisoners staring in disbelief into the cell. You can imagine what this looked like -there I was, standing in the cell with a man whose throat was cut, holding the bloodied tin lid in my hands. My delicate situation was not helped by the ever witty big Ronnie, who had also arrived and began making comments like, "Oh, Mr Dawkins, what have you done? I always knew you were working for MI5." In a final bid to shatter my delicate nerves, the lifeless body of John groaned from behind me, "It's all right, I'm not dead. I can't even get that right."

I knew at this point that I had to move fast if we were going to stand a chance of saving him. The wound in his neck began spurting blood again and I was not sure what damage he had done to his jugular vein. I called for urgent medical assistance on my radio, as I appeared to have been left on the spur on my own. I then explained to the other inmates that they would have to get back behind their doors while we treated John. Luckily I had a fairly good relationship with them and they realized the urgency of the situation so returned to their cells with no problem.