Lindholme, my winter retreat or (for readers not familiar with this column) new prison, is a converted RAF base somewhere out in the windy flat wilderness of south Yorkshire. Here, capacious abandoned aircraft hangars hem me in on one side, treacherous marshland flats on the other. In a flaking H-planned living block, I am ensconced in a pleasant enough little room with a bed screwed to the floor and a seven bar window. My neighbours hail from Sheffield, Halifax, Barnsley and Birmingham. We are on an eight week drug awareness course. For its duration we live communally.
There was one other on our "spur"-an obnoxious, greedy, emptily boastful, forever whining north London cockney. For a month he regaled us with far fetched tales of his life as a frontline enforcer, a professional hitman who would receive ?5,000 per contract. The ridiculous thing about him was his physical appearance. He was wan, weak, willowy and wet, yet he seemed convinced that we all believed everything he told us.
One day he strolled into my room, arms gesticulating, pelvis thrust forward, head cocked back. "You 'eard about this free strikes an' out rulin'? Next time I go in to take some cunt's kneecaps off, I'll finish 'im off good and proper. If I'm going to get lifed off anyway, I stand a better chance wivout any witnesses."
This was the sort of person he was. Hubert had apparently just sold his house for "a six figured sum-close on a quarter of a mill." But then someone caught him filling in the forms for a discharge clothing grant, which did not do his credibility any good. On his noticeboard he had pinned a photograph of his hero, Frankie Fraser. He wore a fake Armani sweatshirt, hated northerners, lent out tobacco for double back and talked incessantly out of the corner of his mouth.
Last Saturday he returned from a visit "codgelled up" with a parcel of illicit drugs. We were sitting watching Cilla Black pairing off unlikely couples on Blind Date. Hubert, doped up to the eyeballs, slouched down beside us, a bowl of steaming hot Koka noodles balanced precariously on his knee. Every so often he swallowed a handful of tiny blue pills. Then suddenly, apropos nothing in particular, he spasmed. The noodles went flying and, as he tried to steady himself against the television, he knocked a potted philodendron for six. Unconcerned, Hubert stood like a lily in a breeze, blocking the screen, swaying gently from side to side, staring glazed-eyed into space.
"What the fuck are you on?' Barnsley asked. "Can't remember," Hubert slurred incoherently before stumbling off without the slightest regard for the mess he had left behind. This was the last we saw of him for an hour. Sheffield went to the toilet and returned with a devilish grin on his face. "'Ubert's out for the count. 'E's on 'is bed an' 'e's left the door open. Why don't we stitch 'im up? I've got a great idea."
The gang surrounded Hubert's bed like anatomy students waiting for the first incision. Sheffield produced a red biro he had cut in half and let a globule of the glutinous ink drop on to our victim's forehead. In the half light, he looked like a caste-marked Indian widow prepared for suttee. "Wait till 'e puts 'is 'and to 'is face," Sheffield whispered. "E'll smear it everywhere."
We let him be. Some time later, a great bang preceded an ear-shattering scream. I jumped up from my chair in time to see Hubert, with a widespread blotch of a strawberry birthmark now covering the whole of his face, sliding slowly down the wall. He had a mirror in his hand into which he kept looking with hazy disbelief. On closer inspection I noticed a real wound (self-inflicted to save embarrassment perhaps), out of which gushed real blood. "My face! My face!" he cried, then began to shake visibly. "My ep'lepsy!"
It was beginning to look as if our little joke had somehow provoked a fit. "Recovery position!" I shouted. "Get on the bell!" But the rest of our community were not in any mood to take his condition seriously. When I instructed Barnsley to clear his airways, he rolled up a wedge of tissue paper and stuffed it into Hubert's mouth. When the screws arrived, all they could see was the real blood. Within minutes, they had him wrapped in a woollen blanket, strapped into a wheelchair, awaiting the arrival of the ambulance. "'Urry up boss," Birmingham called from his seat in front of the television. "The film's due to start in a minute."
Hubert, semiconscious and maudlin, kept pointing to his open cell door. "Burn! Phone cards!" he remembered despite his "epileptic" state. When the screw went in to get them, there wasn't a roll up or unit in sight.
We all shook our heads and sighed when the senior officer began his investigation the following morning. All anybody knew was that Hubert was a compulsive liar and a fantasist. No one had ever seen him with the two and a half ounces of tobacco and four phonecards he claimed had gone astray. God only knew how he had managed to get himself into such a wretched state. As for the mysterious red blotch, which had bamboozled them at the hospital-well, that was anybody's guess.
It was eventually decided that Hubert would have to go, for the greater good of the community. Life has been a lot more bearable since his departure. And do you know? Not one of us had to recycle a single dog end for a whole week afterwards.
