on my cheek. I immediately began to wipe it off with the vomit-ridden sleeve. The officers made no reaction; in fact, they stopped asking him questions as if they were happy to let him do as he pleased. I looked towards the one behind the desk and, using facial gestures, expressed my bewilderment at the situation. The officer looked wary. I was completely baffled by what was happening, as it seemed like the man had taken control of the area he was occupying. Just as I finished wiping my face, he spat again, this time towards my feet. He opened his mouth and, with a flick of his tongue, removed his top set of teeth. I stepped back. As I did this, he raised his arm and with a swift movement punched me in the face, causing an immediate popping sensation in my nose. He laughed in my face. I felt a salty taste in the back of my throat and blood started to pour from my nostrils. I stumbled back, too scared to react other than to put my hands in a defensive position over my face. The man laughed again and said something under his breath, I don’t know what, then he turned away and walked off. With no fuss, a prison officer quietly led him away.
I bent over at the waist to prevent the blood getting onto my shirt. It dripped onto the floor and splattered onto my shoes. One of the officers approached me and unceremoniously gave me some toilet roll. My nose was riddled with pain and tears streamed down my face. I daren’t even complain to the prison officers. I hadn’t worked the place out and I didn’t want to make more enemies than I already had in there. There was seemingly little concern, though, and no repercussions for the man who had assaulted me. I saw the custody sheet on the desk. He was in for manslaughter. I wiped my nose and looked for a reaction from the staff. There wasn’t one. The next four months were going to be hell.
‘Right, Bunting. Clothes off !’ came the order from the officer at the desk. His attitude took me aback. I began to get undressed, but I found it rather embarrassing as there was no screen, and I was in full view of all of the officers in the area. There were also two cleaning ladies present, but they didn’t seem to take any notice. I guess they had seen it all before. I carefully placed each item of clothing onto the desk: my tie, my dirty jacket, my shirt, my trousers, my socks and my blooded shoes. In contrast to the care I had taken with my clothes, a prison officer then crammed them into a small box, wearing medical gloves. I wanted to ask him to be more careful with my property, but that might well have been counter-productive. This was prison, and I was an inmate.
‘I thought I said take your fucking clothes off,’ he said again.
‘Sorry?’ I asked. He pointed to my underpants, which I had left on. Surely they would allow me to remove these in private?
‘Off,’ he said. I couldn’t believe it. Another prison officer approached him and whispered something. I don’t know exactly what he said, but it instantly transformed his attitude towards me. ‘Oh, you’ll find a robe in that box,’ he said quietly. His behaviour generated a large amount of sympathy in me towards other prisoners, something which I never thought I would feel.
I placed my underpants into the box with my other clothes. The prison officer gave me a name board with my details and prison number on it: Michael E. Bunting. d.o.b. 7/9/73. DK8639. That number would become my identity for the whole of my sentence. I held the board up to my chest and, with a blinding flash of light, an officer took my photograph. Following this, I had my fingerprints taken. It was a terse task and the officer didn’t speak to me as he grabbed each finger and rolled it into the ink and then onto the paper. When he’d finished with me, I was covered in ink up to my wrists. I felt like a piece of meat. He told me to wash my hands, and I was sent to the supply room where I was given my prison clothing. The boxer shorts I was given were bloodstained. I cringed as I put them on. The T-shirt was so tight it seemed to almost squeeze the air from my lungs, and the jeans were so loose I had to hold them up to prevent them falling to my ankles. I remember there was a large drawing of a penis on the front of the left leg, drawn in ink by a previous inmate. The jumper had HMP ARMLEY written across the front of it. I wasn’t exactly likely to forget where I was, but this served as a constant reminder. One of the inmates working in the storeroom then gave me my bed pack, which comprised two blankets and a pillowcase. I clutched them under one arm, as I held my jeans up with the other. It was hard to accept that just minutes earlier I had been wearing my smart suit. Now I was wearing a degrading prison uniform, which already had splashes of blood on it from my injured nose.
A prison officer then took hold of my shoulder and led me away. He was younger than the others and seemed far less robotic. He spoke to me as we walked through the door to the main prison, telling me I would be placed in a cell in the hospital wing, the wing where inmates with severe health problems were detained. I was being sent here because I was a policeman and therefore posed a security risk to the prison due to inmates’ reaction to me. I wasn’t sure whether this was being done as a result of what had just happened.
Armley Prison is huge and our journey to my cell was a long one. Every corridor was secured with a locked door and the officer would keep reaching for the keys on a chain around his belt to unlock and then re-lock each one. Prisoners stared at me as I walked through each wing. They were all going about their normal business of cleaning out their cells or reading newspapers, nothing much more. I had already been warned by the officer not to look back at them. That, in his words, would result in my first ‘kick in’. I corrected him and said it would be my second. I tried to keep my head down, but this wasn’t easy, as I thought that at any moment someone else would realise who I was and try to hurt me. I got the impression that if that happened, the officer wouldn’t intervene, as this would result in him being attacked, too. I was relying purely on the fact that word had not yet got around that I was a policeman. I didn’t know either way. I was petrified of an immediate attack, but tried to blend in as if I was a normal inmate. I felt my heart thumping in my chest, and I felt breathless.
Several corridors and many hard stares later, we arrived at the hospital wing. I was placed in my cell. It was tiny and mundane. There was a small desk and chair, a bin, a metal sink and, of course, the bed, which was more like a thin mattress on legs. My hopes of a lively ward of caring people faded fast. This cell was as bad as the other two I had been in. The moment I stepped into it, the door slammed shut behind me. ‘You’d better settle down for a bit, mate,’ said the officer, as he peered through my cell hatch. I was still clutching onto my book. I sat on the bed and gazed straight ahead. I knew that once word got around that there was a policeman in the cells, my safety was in jeopardy but I lay back and tried to calm myself down, as the thudding in my chest increased. I had officially started my prison sentence; the next four months were going to be a game of survival for me. I didn’t know what was going to happen. One thing I did know, though, was that it was not a case of if I got my next beating, but a case of when.
I looked up to the ceiling and began my first ever plea to God.
Mum and Dad—You went through hell, and words can never describe my eternal gratitude.
Helen and Stuart, Adam and Oliver, and Nan.
And my girl, Rach—When no one else would listen, you were always there, night and day—I love you, babe x.
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