Читать книгу Scottish Hard Bastards - Jimmy Holland & Stephen Richards - Страница 13

James ‘Porkie’ O’Rourke is serving his life sentence down in Kilmarnock’s privately run prison. He had been involved with me in various activities on a few different occasions and has also taken three hostages in his own right while serving out his life sentence.

Sadly, Porkie is still being held in prison. He would have been released back into the community if it wasn’t for the fact that he is one of the most dangerous men in the Scottish prison system. Porkie received a further seventeen years on top of his life sentence for his part in the three incidents of hostage-taking.

When we were in Glenochil together, we were co-accused of having taken a warden and a prison nurse hostage at knifepoint for the contents of her medical bag.

We both had heroin habits of the injecting variety. It was just after New Year, all of our own drugs had run out and we needed to get drugs from somewhere and fast. Most other prisoners would have just given up the chase and accepted the fate of going through ‘cold turkey’. However, we came up with what seemed like the ingenious plan of robbing the civilian doctor as he came on an emergency call with a bag full of drugs. However, nothing ever seems to go to plan; particularly when two desperado junkies have hatched it.

It was a Sunday afternoon. We had asked another one of the prisoners to pretend that he was ill. The nurse from the health centre came down to look at him and told him that she would need to go back up to the health centre to phone the doctor, who no doubt, would have been busy on the golf course or whatever else he did on a Sunday afternoon. One-and-a-half hours passed before the nurse came back down to the hall with her prison warden escort. She entered the cell, carrying her black leather surgery bag; a bag that contained all the drugs that other prisoners in the hall needed that night.

Porkie and I were standing in a cell opposite to the one in which the prisoner, the nurse and the warden were standing. Time was getting on and the last glimpses of daylight were quickly disappearing. It was 4.35pm when we heard the nurse telling the sick boy that the doctor wouldn’t be able to attend on him until at least 5.30pm.

That was fine and dandy for the prisoner, but not for us. The hall was going to be locked up for the night at 4.55pm and we had no other option. We couldn’t wait any longer, as the withdrawal symptoms were starting to take their toll on our bodies. We were pouring buckets of cold sweat, tears were running down our faces and, every time we yawned, the pain was so severe that words do not come close to describing it.

Anyone who has had a drug habit will know exactly what we felt like, but for those of you who have not, I can only try and explain. Imagine you had toothache all over your body, constantly. Added to that you have hot and cold sweats, you can’t stand on the same spot for more than two seconds, you can’t even hold down a cup of water in your belly without being sick, the shits run freely out of your rear end – you never have control of your own bowels – and your head feels as though someone was constantly smashing a cricket bat over it. All of that is happening to you at the same time. That is how Porkie and I felt that day. I am not telling you this to try and get your pity. No fucking way. I am simply trying to highlight the things that drug addicts have to go through every time their smack runs out. Perhaps it will give you a better insight as to why people on drugs do such dangerous and desperate things to get their hands on the money for the next hit that will take away the most horrible feeling in the world. Next time you see a junkie, stop for ten seconds and think back to what I have just told you: it may lead you to a glimmer of understanding about the things we do.

Anyway, Porkie and I agreed there and then to take the warden, the nurse and the prisoner hostage. Once we entered the prisoner’s cell, the warden, who I shall keep nameless, protested that we shouldn’t be there and asked us kindly enough to leave. It was far too late for any pleasantries.

I pulled out the homemade jail knife I had been holding in my hand; Porkie pulled out a very sharp lock-back knife that he had concealed up his sleeve. We told the warden and nurse to sit on the floor and that if they did as they were told them then no one would get hurt.

I will not go into details, but the warden put up some resistance – fair play to him – but we were so desperate for the drugs in the nurse’s medical bag that nothing was going to stop us from getting them. We grabbed the bag of drugs from her hand; we were like two tramps round a bag of chips in a bin.

We hurriedly drank all the Valium and Mogadon juice, then we swallowed anti-psychotics as well, with not one care in the world for our own safety. Some of the psychotic drugs were 500 milligrams at a time, but none of that entered our minds (excuse the pun). Once we had drunk and popped all the pills worth popping in her bag, we sat on the cold cell floor until the highly dangerous cocktail of drugs kicked in.

Thirty minutes later, Porkie and I were rubber men: the screw and the nurse could easily have taken the knife from our hands when we slipped in and out of consciousness but they didn’t; the hostage situation lasted until 11.30am the following morning, by which point Porkie and I were back to square one – rattling, strung out and with nowhere to go: we were trapped in a cell with a screw, a nurse and a prisoner. Outside in the section, there were about fifty riot screws and negotiators.

After coming to some sort of agreement with the screw and the nurse, Porkie and I gave ourselves up. I didn’t see my friend Porkie again until we appeared at Edinburgh High Court, where we both got six years on top of our sentences – all for one night of madness. It just goes to show how drugs can get a grip over your mind.

Porkie went on to the Shotts unit and was doing great until he had a run-in with Billy Lewis, another one of my friends and co-accused. I will go into detail about our adventures together later. Porkie and Billy had been pally for some time in the unit and Billy, because he had a lot of family and friends on the outside who looked after him, kept Porkie’s drug habit going. Porkie, on the other hand, was pretty much alone: his bird had called time on their relationship; his so-called pals didn’t want to know him; and even his own father and sister had moved down to England.

Anyway, Porkie and Billy were really close. After all, they were in the Shotts special unit together. Only the hardest bastards, the worst of the worst prisoners, were placed in that unit; people who were a danger to themselves, to the screws and to the other prisoners alike.

Porkie was on a visit with some bird or other; it wasn’t his own girlfriend as she had ended their affair. The bird got up and brought him some heroin. After he had come back off his visit back, Billy asked his friend if he had got any drugs. Porkie told Billy that he hadn’t received a thing and the rest of the day, 24 December, passed by. When the prisoners in the unit went behind doors that night, Billy didn’t have a clue that Porkie was going to give another prisoner some heroin. Billy got wind of what was happening, came to his window and asked Porkie where his square-up was. Porkie told his friend that there wasn’t anything there for him.

Porkie had received a stash at his visit that he was supposed to share with a different prisoner in the special unit. Billy and Porkie started growling at each other through the windows and Billy ended up telling Porkie that he would sort the argument out the next morning, Christmas Day.

Billy didn’t sleep at all that night: he was rattling, strung out and his mind was racing. When the screws came on shift the next day, they opened Porkie’s cell door before they opened Billy’s. By the time Billy left his cell, Porkie was already sitting up at the TV and video, watching some movie from the night before.

There was a really big, fuck-off steak knife sitting in the kitchen. When Billy was finally let out of his cell, he went into the kitchen, grabbed the knife and marched over to Porkie’s cell. Of course, the cell was empty.

Fuming, Billy placed the knife up his sleeve and left Porkie’s cell. He then spotted Porkie sitting watching the TV and made his way over to him. Two or three screws were also sitting watching the video when Billy pulled out his knife and started stabbing Porkie in a mad, frenzied attack. I don’t think he meant it, but Billy impaled Porkie’s face onto the sofa: the knife had gone straight through Porkie’s cheek, came out the back of his neck and had stuck into the wooden frame of the sofa. That was after Porkie had suffered three other stab wounds.

That, to me, is a really bad Christmas present, but to Porkie’s credit, he never let out any screams or anything like that. He even pulled the knife out of the sofa’s frame himself. Billy was removed to the segregation unit once again. Porkie went to hospital for emergency surgery to remove the kitchen steakie on Christmas Day.

You see, when you end up in the Shotts special unit or in the Peterhead special unit, you have to keep up the appearance of being just as hard as the next boy; if you don’t, it won’t be long until you are found out.

That is exactly what prison is like. When you read all these stories about jail being a holiday camp it makes me laugh out loud. I don’t know one holiday camp in Britain where slashings, stabbings, gang warfare and murder is the norm. Do any of you? If so please get in contact with me, then I can go on holiday there to remind myself of what it was like for me behind bars.

After Porkie left the special unit down in Shotts he went to HMP Aberdeen Craiginchess, where he lasted some five weeks before he and another man took a warden hostage at knifepoint. The siege lasted some seventeen hours before they let the warden out.

Porkie went back to Perth segregation unit where he spent the next thirteen months. He also had another nine years added to his life sentence. I can truthfully say that my friend is a dangerous boy, indeed. Ask yourselves, for one minute, why do you think that boys like us do such nasty things in prison? I will tell you: it is a combination of the sentence, the drugs and the screws’ sick attitudes.