The process of justice from arrest to conviction and sentencing can take years in some complex cases. Prisoners are moved, often on a daily basis from cell to cell, from police station to court, prison to court and sometimes to the relative freedom of bail. A busy and stressful time of 'hurry up and wait' with hearings, interviews with legal representatives and/or officers of the justice system and procedural postponements. Some prisoners face the threat of extradition overseas or into different state jurisdiction. During this period, prisoners may be locked up with different people every night. There is no choice in the matter. One of the key privileges lost with freedom of association. Where prison populations are small, and conditions carefully controlled to meet the human needs of prisoners, the possibility of single occupancy cells exists. This is a luxury that most societies are unable or unwilling to fund.
Ellis had only been on the lifer wing for a few minutes before the more outgoing prisoners had realised he was not a man given to casual conversation. The scavengers, the sharks, the barons and the just plain nosey will have what they want to know about a newly arrived prisoner within minutes. We could waste time with examples of these failures to scrutinise the man and discuss what didn't happen, or pass onto what actually did. Ellis was acquiring nicknames by turns from everyone, by those he had ignored or those he'd brusquely dismissed. Thanks to his protracted remand imprisonment, Ellis had been around in the system long enough to know that the less anyone knew about a person the less vulnerable they were to exploitation. All anyone got out of Doug was his name and number. Consequently, though the man was big, the myth was already bigger.
Doug was accommodated in 317 with Goodall, a man less like himself they could hardly have found. Only twenty four, Goodall had been an arsonist and was now doing life principally at the insistence of insurance company lawyers who press for long sentences. Like many of the boys, his was not a first offence and a second conviction for setting a serious fire usually means life. He was one of the smaller men on the wing at only five feet seven. He'd never used a gym so had the body of a typical college drop out, though Phillip Goodall had never been a college boy. He was plain, mousey and had been profoundly deaf since birth. With his hearing apparatus he could hold a conversation but his speech was inflected with that special voice of someone who learned to speak not hearing himself. For this reason, Goodall usually chose to not speak if possible even when spoken to, and would elect to hear only when it was really necessary, however, his lip reading was startlingly good, lightening fast, effective over surprising distance and his interpretation of body language a similarly intensely focused survival tool. To Ellis, this combination of quiet internalisation could not be bettered. Goodall lay on his bunk and read much of the time, he plodded around the exercise cage in his turn. Their eyes met, at Ellis' insistence when they were first introduced, very briefly. Goodall, fearful, wishing to avoid the big man's gaze. However, in that momentary eye to eye contact the arsonist recognised far more than anyone else since Ellis' arrival. Most importantly, his fear was forgotten. A strange kind of common ground, the mutual unwillingness to communicate, but anyone expecting to learn something about the one man from the other would be disappointed.
In the noisy queue for their evening meal, Ellis ahead, Goodall fixedly staring at the landscape of white cotton tee between Doug's shoulder blades, he was suddenly pushed from his place by Higson, a man who wore his violent past on his battered face, jumping into the line. Not a word said but Doug felt the motion right enough. Turning slowly, Ellis caught the eye of the flustered Goodall who knew instinctively from the look to move into the space beyond Doug, ahead one place in the queue. Ellis then looked at Higson, who's altered features wore a succession of conflicted expressions while Ellis displayed none, he then turned his back on the incident and on the bewildered Higson to jeers of complaint from behind about people pushing in.
