"All right, Chalky?" he said.
"I'm fine, apart from being in prison," I said.
Magic settled on the bed, opened one of his enormous hands and showed me a joint, the end neatly twisted.
I smiled and handed him my Zippo. "Spark up," I said. I pulled my door over and opened the two windows set between concrete bars. As long as we didn't start roaring we could smoke our heads off and the day screws wouldn't come near us.
Magic lit the end and handed me the joint. I took a pull, and began to count. At ten I exhaled, puffing the smoke at the window, where it was caught by the breeze and carried away. Only one hit and already I felt calm and cheerful and humorous.
"Good gear," I said, passing it back.
After we finished the first, Magic took a lump of hash from inside his cheek and skinned up again. This second joint was stronger than the first. When it was done we split a Mars bar and I made tea and Magic began to reminisce. Over the year and more we'd been socialising and smoking, I'd had bits and pieces of his story but I got it in order now. That was the dope: it made him talkative and fluent.
James Johnson, known on the wings as Magic, after Magic Johnson, the American basketball player, was the only child of clean living Methodists who didn't smoke, drink or dance. His Dad ran a garage along the coast from Coleraine.
He spent the rest of his adolescence either stealing or locked away. At 20 he went to sea with the Merchant Navy but didn't like it. When he was 24 he was arrested near the Bull Ring in Birmingham at the wheel of a car with a boot full of heroin. His defence was he had borrowed the car from a friend and didn't know what was in the boot. He got 12 and was sent to Durham. Here, in the kitchen, where he was sent to peel spuds, he met Danish Pete. He and Danish became friends and after they both got out they met up in Copenhagen. Danish let Magic poke his wife, or so Magic said, and then, because Magic had been at sea, Danish asked him to sail six tons of hash from Morocco to an island off the north of Denmark for a fee of a quarter of a million, sterling. Magic said yes and after many adventures he got his ship to the rendezvous where he was met not by Danish Pete but by the Danish police. He copped another 12 and was sent to jail in Copenhagen. On the wings he learnt, from talking to other prisoners, he'd been had. There'd been a second ship with fourteen tons of hash and it had shadowed Magic's vessel and then, once Magic had been nicked and the police had gone away thinking they'd done well, Danish Pete's second and much bigger haul was brought ashore. As he served his sentence, Magic fantasised about killing Danish Pete but in the event he was deported when he'd half his time served and he never got a chance.
Back home, Magic began to ferry narcotics, mostly heroin, around the British Isles. He could take seven ounces up the anus. That was about the same as a bowl of sugar, he explained to me, adding he didn't know another man with the balls to take that much up the back passage. He was always reckless and usually drunk when he did his runs. On his last he was so pissed he'd fallen asleep on the plane to Belfast and after it landed he hadn't woken. The passengers filed off. The stewardess failed to rouse him. The police were called and he was arrested. When they ran his name through the computer his record showed. He was searched. They found heroin where you'd expect. He got four years and at the time we were speaking he was nearly half way through his sentence, at which point, providing he didn't muck up and lose remission, he'd be let out on license.
"I get my first parole weekend after next," he said. "I just heard." Paroles were given prior to release to enable a prisoner to adjust to the world outside.
"Where are you going?" I asked. "Hostel?"
He shook his head. "I'm 38. I can't go on like I have, can I?"
"No," I agreed.
"I'm going home to the parents," he said. "We've been in touch. We're reconciled."
"You never mentioned any of this," I said, which was true, he hadn't.
"Didn't want to speak out of turn," he said. I understood. Prisoners don't like talking things up in case by talking they cause them not to come about—in the same way some writers apparently won't discuss what they're writing in case, by over-talking, the muse deserts them.
"Probation have been to see them and its all been sorted," he said. "This is only in the last week or two. I have my paroles with them and when I get out, I'm going back to them. That's the deal. I'll work in the garage, get my head together, and maybe get some qualifications, AA three evenings a week, and no drink. Now obviously I'll have to have the odd spliff now and again, I mean if I don't have some way of relaxing I'll go completely mad, stuck indoors with the parents all the time, but that'll be my only wee vice. Henceforth, no more crime, no more hard drugs, Magic Johnson's going clear, he's turning his life around."
The next evening I didn't go to see Magic, in case he thought I was after more dope, but I went down the evening after. When I ducked into the cell I was surprised to see Tiny and Red Ken, the wing's resident drug barons, sitting on Magic's bed. They and Magic were drinking tea and there was a half-eaten Jamaica ginger on Magic's little table. That would have been Tiny I guessed. He had a sweet tooth and liked his cake.
"Chalky," said Red, a big bloke with a pointed nose, "bit of privacy, if you don't mind."
"Sure," I said. I wasn't going to tangle with this pair.
"We won't be long," said Tiny. "Come back in half-an-hour and then you and Magic can get on with your knitting or whatever it is you do together."
I went back to my cell and I didn't go back. I loathed Tiny and Red Ken and even meeting them coming out of Magic's cell was an appalling thought. I called to Magic's cell the next night but Tiny and Red Ken were there again so I didn't bother going in. I saw him in the queue in the dinner hall over the weekend, and we had a chat, and the following Wednesday I did his laundry. I'm the cleaning orderly. I do everyone's. When it was dry, I bagged it up and brought it to him. I found him on the landing outside his cell, ironing his jeans.
"Your washing," I said. "I'll throw it on your bed."
I ducked into his cell, left it down and came out again.
"Thanks," he said. He sounded wary.
"When's your parole start?"
"Friday lunchtime," he said. "My Dad's picking me up."
"Two days?"
"No, four," he said. "Back Tuesday lunchtime."
"Excited?"
"Not really." Then suddenly he smiled in his typical expansive way. "I'm absolutely shitting myself," he said.
Magic didn't reappear the following Tuesday and the next morning, which was Wednesday, making the breakfasts in the officer's pod, I listened to the screws talking. Magic had done a runner, gone south, gone to England, they said, which was just what you'd expect of an untrustworthy druggie. He should never have got parole. They were agreed on that point.
They brought Magic back on the wing the following Sunday morning. I was in the little room off the circle where the washing machine and the drier are and I saw four screws carry him past. He was shouting and roaring and he looked terrible, unshaven, bloated, his clothes dirty. He was thrown in his cell and put on 24-hour lock up because he'd come back from his parole drunk, which was in violation of the contract he'd had to sign to get on the parole in the first place. He slept for two days. Then on Tuesday I noticed a screw, Hayes, with a plate of dinner, outside Magic's cell and fumbling for the key. I saw my chance. Hayes unlocked the door and pulled it open.
"Your dinner," said Hayes.
"How are you, Magic?" I said, looking over Hayes shoulder. Magic had shaved and changed his clothes but his face was covered with nicks and cuts and he'd a terrible black eye I hadn't noticed when he'd been carted in. Obviously he hadn't been able to stick the bungalow with the parents and had gone on a bender.
"What happened?" I said.
Magic rolled his eyes and shook his huge head. I'd never seen him look so sad.
"It's a long story," he said.
"And a tragic one," said Hayes. "Right, that's enough chatting."
Hayes closed the door, turned the key and walked off.
"I'll see you Magic," I called.
"I doubt it," he said morosely.
The next morning, making the breakfasts, I tuned in to the screws talk. The Governor had ruled at his adjudication that Magic was to have a fortnight's cellular confinement, plus no television, less tuck, and limited association. Magic hadn't grumbled when the punishment was handed out but instead asked if he could be a rule 28 prisoner. This would mean he'd only come out to use the showers or to get hot water from the circle when everyone else was locked. Apart from that he would be in his cell 24/7. The only prisoners who opted for rule 28 were the sex offenders, which Magic wasn't. He must have annoyed someone very powerful, I guessed. I would get to the bottom of this, I decided, but I'd need to patient.
I waited a few days. Then it was Saturday and Hayes unlocked me at eight as usual (which was the unlock time at the weekend and an hour later than in weekdays) so I could get the breakfasts. I was up already, shaved and dressed.
"You're eager," he said.
"Mr Keen, that's me," I said.
"Ha, ha, what do you want?" said Hayes. "If it's a fry the answer is no. Not this morning. There isn't enough. It'll have to be tomorrow."
The principal perk of the orderly's job was a fry which I usually got on Saturday and which I usually sold. Prisoners were desperate for bacon, sausage and black pudding and the going rate for my breakfast was a fiver. The officers didn't mind so long as I was discreet and it didn't come to any governor's attention. It was strictly against the rules, of course, to sell food you'd been given by staff to other prisoners.
"This isn't about the fry," I said, "I want to go and have a word with Magic."
"Maybe you can find out what's going on and why he's a rule 28 suddenly," said Hayes, "and tell us."
"You know I can't do that," I said.
Hayes nodded. He understood. Of course he did. You never told a screw what another prisoner told you, whatever it was. That would be touting and prisoners never touted, never. It was an iron rule.
"All right, just a couple of minutes," said Hayes. "Then come and get the grub on. We're starving."
I slipped along the wing to Magic's cell and put my ear to the door. I could hear water splashing in the sink inside. I tapped on the door.
"Magic," I hissed. "Magic."
"Is that you Chalky?"
"Who else? Everyone's locked, it's all right," I said. "We can talk."
I lifted the flap and put my face to the glass in the Judas slit.
"I'm on my own," I said.
On the other side of the thick glass I saw Magic peering out at me. He still looked rough but he looked better than the last time. He had his finger to his lips and he was shaking his other hand as if to say, No talking.
"What's the problem?" I whispered.
He'd know that at this time on Saturday morning everyone was locked and probably asleep.
"Hang on," he said.
Magic went to his rickety table and began to write on a piece of paper. I waited. Then he came back to the Judas slit and held the paper in front of the glass where I could read it. In careful slanting print he'd written the following:
Promised Tiny and Red I'd meet their contact outside on my parole, pick up three thousand quid's worth and bring it in when I came back from my parole. But I fell off wagon, sold their stuff, and went on bender. Now they want me dead.
At the bottom he'd drawn a man dangling from a gallows.
"Holy fuck," I said.
The next time I was alone with Hayes I did what normally I'd never have done. I squealed. I told him.
"You'd better get him off side," I said. "They're going to get him."
A week later, when Hayes unlocked me, he whispered, "Your friend was moved over to the hospital last night. He'll do the rest of his sentence over there. He should be all right."
The next day I passed Red coming up the stairs as I was going down. "Your friend will never work again, Chalky," he said,
"we're going to fuck him."
"What are you talking about?" I said. "What friend? You're not making sense, Red."
"Magic."
"What about him?" I said. "He's gone, hardly worth thinking about."
"You're priceless," he said and went up the stairs.
Time passed. I didn't think about Magic. I'd liked him. I'd enjoyed his company. I'd enjoyed his dope. He was all right. But he was gone and there was no point thinking about him or worrying about him. I was probably never going to see him again. He'd do his whack, go home to the bungalow and his Methodist mum and dad and that would be it. That's what I thought.
Christmas came and went, then January and February, March and April. Occasionally I heard from other lads on the wing who'd been over to the hospital or the doctor or the dentist that they'd see Magic and he'd got very thin and gaunt but he was all right.
Then it was early May. The morning was bright and there was already sunlight slanting through the bars of my cell when Hayes unlocked me. I saw it straight away. It was on his face. He didn't look cheerful.
"I've got some news," he said. "It's not good."
I waited, my face impassive but my heart racing.
"Magic," he said. "They took him to the hospital a couple of days ago, shitting blood, vomiting blood, terrible state. Ground glass apparently. He was full of it. It must have been in his food. He died last night."
The next time I passed Tiny and Red Ken nothing showed on their faces. They'd organised this, they had to have done so, but were too clever too gloat. I wasn't going to let them away with thinking they'd got away with it.
"Good work," I said, "well done. You must feel proud."
"What's he on about?" said Tiny.
"Haven't a fucking clue," said Red Ken. "He's always burbling on about nothing."
"Irony," I said, "is when you say something but mean the reverse. But you're too stupid to understand, I suppose."
"Watch your mouth, Chalky," said Red Ken, looking down his huge sharp nose at me. Then the Evil Twins went on their way down the wing and I went back to my cell. It was at least a week before I felt right again.
