The idea for the film is simple, really; it came to me one evening when I was telling Mark about what it was like at boarding school. At night after lights-out we girls would spend hours in the darkness talking about what we would do when we finally got home. What we would eat when we could choose our own food. We’d fantasize endlessly about those imagined meals. We’d obsess over Yorkshire puddings in gravy or cocktail sausages on sticks. We’d imagine what we would wear when we could choose our own clothes, where we would go, what we would do when we had our freedom. And then Mark said it sounded like prison. That we’d dreamt of home in the same way prisoners dream of home.
So came the idea for the documentary. Its format is simple. It will follow three different prisoners during and after incarceration, through interviews and fly-on-the-wall coverage: two women and one man charting their hopes and dreams about their freedom before and after release. Today I’m doing my last introductory telephone conversation with my final prisoner, then I’ll be conducting face-to-face interviews with each of the subjects in prison before their release. So far I’ve spoken several times to the two female candidates, but it’s been much harder to secure access to my male candidate. Today we’ve finally got our hard-won phone call. Today I am waiting for a phone call from Eddie Bishop. The Eddie Bishop, one of the last remaining East End London gangsters. One hundred percent authentic, chop-you-up-with-a-hatchet, nightclub-casino, cockney-rhyming gangster. An original Richardson Gang member and, more recently, the center of the largest criminal gang in London operating south of the river.
I stare down at the house phone. It’s not ringing. It’s supposed to be ringing. It’s 1:12 and I’ve been waiting for an incoming call from Pentonville Prison for twelve—no, now thirteen—minutes. My other subjects’, Alexa’s and Holli’s, calls came through exactly on time. I wonder what the problem is, and pray that Eddie hasn’t pulled out, changed his mind. I pray the prison board hasn’t changed theirs.
It was hard to get approval from the prison board on anything, so I’ll be conducting the face-to-face interview portions on my own. Just me and a locked-off fixed-position camera. It’ll be raw footage at that stage, but then that fits the content, so I’m happy. During the second stage, once my candidates are out of prison, Phil and Duncan are joining me.
Phil is a cameraman I know and trust implicitly—he’s got a great eye and we share a very similar aesthetic, which I know sounds a bit pretentious but I promise it’s important. And Duncan and I have worked together a couple of times before. He’s fun, but more importantly he’s much better than I can afford. Duncan and Phil will both be taking a hit on the money front for this; the funding’s good but it’s not great. Thankfully, they love the concept as much as I do and they’ve got faith in the project.
I look through the plastic wallets containing my hard-won permissions papers from the Ministry of Justice and Her Majesty’s Prison Service. More than anything, I want the documentary to overcome the conventional representation of prisoners by trying to show these three people as individuals separate from their convictions. Both Holli and Eddie have sentences between four and seven years for nonfatal crimes. Alexa has a sentence of “life with parole,” so fourteen years. But do those sentences say anything about who they are as people? Does that tell you who is more dangerous? Who is a better person? Who you can trust? We’ll see.
I pull the phone, cord and all, over to the sofa and sit down with it in a patch of sunlight under the window. Leafy North London sun instantly warms my shoulders and the back of my neck. Somehow the British summer is lingering. We usually only get a couple of days of proper summer but the sunshine is still going strong. We’ve had three weeks of it already. They’re saying it won’t last, but it has so far. Mark’s out at work and the house is silent. Only the muffled rumble of lorries and the buzz of scooters reach me from distant Stoke Newington High Street. I look out of the Georgian sash windows into our back garden; a cat wanders along the back wall, black with white paws.
* * *
—
I’ve had to call in favors from everyone to get this far. Fred Davey, the film director who gave me my first job, vouched for me in a letter to the Minister for Justice. I’m pretty sure Fred’s two BAFTAs and the Oscar nomination helped my cause a damn sight better than the synopsis I wrote for the film proposal. ITV has already expressed an interest in picking up the doc after general release, and Channel 4 vouched for my work in another letter—they’ve already aired two of my shorts. My film school backed me, of course. The White Cube gave me a reference, for what that’s worth to the Ministry of Justice. So did all the production companies I’ve freelanced for and Creative England, which has helped so much with funding and support throughout the process so far.
And then of course I have Eddie Bishop. He’s the real coup, an absolute dream for a documentarian. This interview is why I got my funding. So this phone call is kind of a big deal. Eddie is kind of a big deal.
You might not know it, but Eddie’s story is British crime history. He joined the Richardson Gang at the age of eighteen when the gang was at the height of its power, just before its fall in 1966. It was the year England won the World Cup and the year it all kicked off with the Krays.
Eddie had an aptitude for crime. He was reliable, he was straightforward, he got things done. Whatever the job was. No muss, no fuss. He quickly became indispensable to the Richardson brothers, so much so that when the Richardsons were finally arrested that summer in 1966, Eddie Bishop was there to keep everything running smoothly while the brothers, and the rest of the gang, were behind bars.
Eddie allegedly rebuilt the whole syndicate in South London and ran it for forty-two years, until his arrest for money laundering seven years ago. Four decades Eddie ran South London, murdered, slashed, and extorted his way across the city, and all they could give him was seven years for money laundering.
Ring, ring.
The phone pierces the silence. Shrill, insistent, and all at once I’m nervous.
Ring, ring. Ring, ring.
I tell myself it’s fine. I’ve done this before with the other subjects. It’s fine. I take a shaky breath and lift the receiver to my ear, to my mouth.
“Hello?”
“Hello, is that Erin Locke?” The voice is female, curt, mid-forties. Not what I was expecting. Clearly not Eddie Bishop.
“Yes, this is Erin Locke.”
“This is Diane Ford, from Pentonville Prison. I have a call from a Mr. Eddie Bishop for you. Can I connect you, Ms. Locke?” Diane Ford sounds bored. She doesn’t care who I am, or who he is. To her, this is just another call.
“Er, yes, thank you, Diane. Thanks.” And she’s gone. The faint click of a disconnect and a hold tone.
Eddie’s never given an interview. He’s never said a word to anyone about any of it. Ever. I don’t for a second believe I’ll be the one to crack the case wide open. And I’m not sure I’d want to. Eddie has been a professional criminal longer than I’ve been alive. I don’t know why on earth he’s agreed to be part of my documentary, but here we are. He strikes me as the kind of man who does things for a reason, so I guess I’ll figure out what that reason is soon enough.
I take another shaky breath.
Then the line connects.
“This is Eddie.” The voice is deep, warm. A rich cockney glottal stop of a voice. Strange to finally hear it.
“Hello, Mr. Bishop. It’s nice to finally speak to you. This is Erin Locke. How are you doing today?” A good start. Very professional. I hear him shuffle at the other end of the line, settling in.