The Loose Screw
black fire-protective riot overalls. My head was pulsating painfully and felt as though it had swollen to twice its normal size and was about to explode from the tight confines of my riot helmet. I wearily surveyed the wreckage, which had until about two hours earlier been the contents of spur three on the high-security Category A unit at London's notorious Belmarsh Prison, through the visor of my helmet. Not that I could see much, as my vision was almost totally obscured by the moisture that had collected on it from my erratic breathing, and it was still in the down position as I could not muster the energy or the motivation even to raise it up. There seemed little point, as there was nothing worth looking at through the Perspex glass that screened me from the scene of destruction on the spur. I had originally left my helmet on to muffle the sounds of protests being shouted from the now full segregation unit, but even they had ceased, as the prisoners who now occupied the strip cells within were probably as fatigued as I felt following the battle we had just fought. They knew the drill only too well and would by now have realised that their shouts would be to no avail as no one would go to answer them for hours yet. It was standard practice just to leave them to tire themselves out in a cooling-off process and they would by now be huddled in the corner of their bare cells, naked apart from the canvas strip suit they would have found on the floor of the cell, disoriented and licking the wounds that most would have received during their transit from the spur to the segregation unit.
    Everything seemed eerily quiet after the din of the events of the past few hours: the calm after the storm. Such eruptions happen to often in our prison, usually due to poor management of a situation that has evolved from a petty matter that could so easily have been dealt with in a professional manner in order to avoid the type of destruction I now surveyed, as well as possible injury to both staff and inmates. As I sat alone in the spur observation office desperately trying to reset my breathing to a rate of normality (I had chosen not to join the others in their ego-boosting victory celebrations in the officers' mess), I thought back to the events of the day that had resulted in this latest unnecessary confrontation.
    The day had begun in exactly the same way as every other Saturday had done when I was on duty. I had dragged myself out of bed at 0600 hours with a serious lack of motivation as I looked forward to another ten-hour shift on spur three, and prolonged the journey from home to Thamesmead for as long as possible, eventually arriving at the prison car park at 0715 hours. I passed through the main gate and the mandatory search area before picking up my keys and trudging through the depressing surroundings of the main prison towards the high-security unit. Once there, I passed through the two electronically operated gates and yet another search area, and with my body in autopilot I went upstairs to the tearoom to grab a cup to take with me to my place of duty.
    By just after 0800 hours, I and my colleague had unlocked the twelve inmates on the spur, passed out the breakfast meals and taken, from those that had them, various applications or requests, such as booking phone calls, arranging to change bedding or simply handling mail to be posted out via the Cat A censor's office. This was typical of the Saturday morning routine on the unit and, looking around at the inmates going about their usual business, there was no indication that this would be any different to any other day. The rest of the morning dragged past slowly, interrupted only by the comings and goings of a couple of inmates who had visits, numerous breaks to visit the tea room and the odd walk round the spur to chat to some of the guys.
    My partner for the day was a fella called Stu, a Yorkshire man, who was about fifty-odd years old but looked about ninety and had the

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