After a year at New Zealand's toughest maximum security prison I was back at Rimutaka Prison. By the time I was processed, the rest of the muster was on evening recreation. I carried in my boxes of property and was locked in my cell. The policy in Unit 3 back in those days was that for the first week, you were kept locked up during evening recreation.
Hardly had the echoes of the screws’ footsteps faded away when there was a heavy bang on my door. Two gang members — from their facial tattoos, I could see they were Mongrel Mob members — were kicking it and screaming and yelling.
‘Hey, you! White cunt! Wait for unlock. We’re gonna fuck you up in the morning!’
So much for escaping stress when I left maximum security! I didn’t get a really good look at them through the safety glass, and I didn’t want to study them too closely, anyway, but I was pretty sure I’d never seen either of them before; having had no beef whatsoever with the Mob, I didn’t know what any of this was about.
My heart, which had been positively buoyant, sank again as I made preparations for the morning. I needed to keep my anxiety at bay and increase my odds of survival by focusing on what I could control and what might help me deal with this situation. I looked around to see what tools I could fashion. I settled for a humble ballpoint pen. I could have put together a cosh with the batteries and socks I had, but braining someone on my first day back would be a bad look. Much better to be able to argue I was holding an innocent pen when called upon to defend myself. I decided I would stab whomsoever was first through the door in the morning. Hopefully I would get them in the eye or somewhere equally vital.
I can’t say I slept that well, and I was awake an hour before unlock. As 7.30 am came around, I was waiting. I was hyper-aware, my mouth was dry and my heart was pounding in anticipation of what was to come. I had moved all my gear to the back of my cell where it would be out of the way. I had tied the laces of my shoes up tight, a trick I had learnt from my elder brother, Jon: the tighter your shoes in a fight, the less they’re likely to be an impediment or fly off when delivering kicks. The practicalities of combat.
The moment my cell door was unlocked, I gripped my pen tightly and assumed a sideways posture right inside the doorway. The key in this type of situation is to stop one’s assailants getting into the cell in numbers. In a narrow doorway, a bunch of people will find their numbers count against them, whereas numbers are to their advantage once inside the cell. I was pumped with cortisol and adrenaline, and tensed every time I heard a noise outside in the corridor. But after a couple of minutes, no one had come. Five minutes passed, and still no one came. My respect for the pair who had hammered on my door faded with the adrenaline. Nothing is ever going to happen through a closed door: threats yelled from one side of a locked door amount to nothing.
It had plainly just been a couple of blowhards saying, ‘Welcome to the wing.’
- Extract sent to us by Paul Wood from his new book "How to escape from prison"