f*******n Flights

Chapter 2

Chapter 2Dio got up to put the kettle on. He spooned a dose of "Nescaf" into his glass and added a lump of sugar. For several days now he had been alone in the cell, his last companion having just been released after eighteen months inside for possessing coke. The kettle whistled shrilly and he filled his glass with scalding water. The soluble coffee granules danced a jig before dissolving, rather like a newly-arrived first-timer. At first he "hits out" at every wall of the administration: the warders, the searches, the doors, the corridors…, every part of the daily routine. Then gradually, as time goes by, he dissolves into the formless mass of the other prisoners slouching around slowly and bleakly and, just like the coffee granules, joins the apparently homogeneous, multicolored mass. This bunch of individuals only manages to survive by dint of swapping, dealing, and thieving in a world where the rule is the absence of trust. Prison is a world filled with tension, forever fretted by pettiness, thrilling to some and nerve-wracking to others. The warder who "forgets" to inform an inmate of an activity he could go to, or cigarettes that are ordered late, meaning a fortnight with no tobacco. These petty daily acts of retaliation keep the atmosphere poisonous, sometimes taking an inmate straight to the cooler, on top of adding to his stretch. Throughout the history of prison-life, it has always been the screws who win out in the end, as the word to the wise would have it...

After drinking his coffee in small sips, Dio had a wash at the sink. A shower every day is for the clinks of the future, perhaps in 2100. For now it was just three times a week and after doing sport. Dio took especial care over shaving today, because he was being “extracted" to go and give an account of himself before the judges at the criminal court of Bobigny. For it had been almost a year now since he had been initially remanded in custody: since then, the system – the magistrates, the police and the prison authorities – had taken malicious pleasure in letting the proceedings drag out. All because he’d been nicked for a stupid b****y mistake of his which had been the only thing the cops had been able to nail him for! After they’d been chasing him for over twenty years!

This time they had been relentless in trying to pin as much as they possibly could on him. They had combed through his bank accounts and obtained warrants to search every possible place, including his family’s homes. But in vain: they did not find a thing, because there was not a thing to find. So, by default, he was going up before an ordinary criminal court, whereas the judiciary would have liked to see him appear before the Assises court, as an accessory to murders committed during robberies which had gone wrong. But his expertise in logistics – not in acting – had saved him from that sort of mess. No evidence, no conviction!

The cell door opened.

‘Come on Dio, let’s go!’

‘OK guv, I’m coming!’

Dio put on a no-nonsense navy blue jacket, over a white shirt with a dark tie. With his imperturbable face and cropped grey hair, he was a picture of austerity. His firm, slightly hollow cheeks were the result of intense daily sporting activity. This sports culture had not been part of his background, but when he took up diving, it had turned into something essential for him: particularly when the diver was caught up in strong currents and had to really struggle to get back to the boat.

He missed those maritime escapades like hell. Just like everyone else from Marseilles, he saw the sea as an integral part of his environment. As a little kid with his grandfather, he used to take their "pointu" – the traditional Mediterranean fishing boat – to go out for a trip to their hut in the Morgiou calanque, one of those deep rocky creeks on the coast just to the east of Marseilles. Sometimes they would catch a few sea bream or sars that his grandmother would grill for breakfast, and which they would eat outdoors, with a view over the Mediterranean. Within the space of a few years, the traditional residents of those enchanting places had been requested to pack their bags, to be replaced by hordes of tourists with scant respect for anything.

Ever since, Dio had loved to go to Les Goudes, a former traditional fishing village on the calanques, to dive with his friend Georges who owned the Scaphandre, a small diving club which had not always been there. The start of that had been when Georges bought up a restaurant on the verge of bankruptcy which was ideally located on the seafront, with direct access to the port. At the time, there had been rumours of certain sorts of pressure being exerted on the restaurant-owner: it was rumoured that he had been “persuaded” to make over the property to Georges and his Belle-de-Mai friends for a "fair price".

With the help of a few modifications, it had been transformed into a spartan auberge, with dormitory-style bunk-beds. Meals were taken canteen-style, with everyone sitting around the same table to consume the single menu prepared by George's wife, Monique. For sea trips, the club had an old fishing boat converted for use by the divers. But it was also pressed into service to convey certain "friends" who were in trouble with the Customs, the police and all those bent on spoiling their trafficking fun.

This was where Dio learned to dive and where he passed all the grades that enabled him to flirt with the sixty-metre-depth mark without too much danger. There was no question of risking a control, or even worse, an accident, and getting his friend into trouble. Because at the slightest glitch, you have the whole administration down on you like a ton of bricks, with firemen to the rescue, the judiciary looking for culprits, and so on and so on. Even a possible false alarm is bad for business. Dio defined himself as an "architectural" diver, meaning that he admired the great submarine arches and the tunnels sculpted in the rock, everything that has been built by nature. He was no fan of "commando-style" diving, with frantic flopping of flippers to see as many things as possible. No, what he preferred was to let himself be carried along with the current, following schools of fish in a state of weightlessness, like a baby in its mother’s womb.

The Scaphandre also belonged to him a little, because George was a childhood friend who had grown up like him in the Belle-de-Mai district. And, like all the neighbourhood kids, he had had a number of setbacks in business. A bistro opened then closed. Ditto a restaurant. A shop sold at a loss ... The list of Georges’ failures was long. But he had managed the feat of never once being convicted: a real feat for a kid from that district!

In the eighties, after all these failures, he had decided to leave Marseilles for sunnier skies, where he could look after his "bizness" without being bothered. He sailed off for Egypt, more specifically to the south of Hurghada, to Safaga, where a Belgian friend had opened up a diving club for tourists in search of adventure in the Red Sea.

There Georges launched his first campaign to acquire the diving instructor qualifications which were necessary to ply the profession. He proudly framed them and hung them up on the wall of his office. For this son of an illiterate Polish labourer, those qualifications were his way of getting his own back.

When he moved back to France, Georges had acquired a skill but had no money. Unlike Dio. Their fellowship could only be mutually beneficial and it had stood firm for over twenty years. Despite the unrelenting efforts made by the police to try to nab George, with raids, searches and inspections by both the fiscal and the national insurance cover authorities, nothing worked. The business set-up devised by Dio prevented any possible discovery of the secret funding of the Scaphandre. The honest, honorable business catered for over five hundred divers a year.

The friendship between the two men made them unassailable; they knew what they were for each other. And if Dio was able to buy extras at the prison shop, it was thanks to George, who sent him the necessary money to ease his life in prison. Where did the money come from? Perhaps Georges also served as a "laundry" for his Belle-de-Mai friends...

Dio left his cell and walked along the first corridor; then came the first door, the slamming of the large electromechanical lock. Followed the whole time by the warder, Dio went along other corridors and then through the double exit door, out to the transfer van. At each control-point, he repeated his lock number, like a magic password, which only served to go round in circles or to go to court.

‘Get in!’ ordered the police officer.

Dio sat down and was handcuffed to the vehicle. It drove slowly out of the prison. Dio looked out of the window; it had been some months since he had last seen the outside. Today, the sun was out for him. The bus was waiting, as usual. The van left the car-park, turned left, then right and joined the motorway. It was something like countryside, near Roissy Airport and its aircrafts, where houses were rare. What with the cars and the planes, the decibels were guaranteed.

In the distance, Dio could see the huge parking area of the Aulnay PSA car factory: it was half empty, as the cars were not selling too well just then. There were few cars on the motorway. A sign indicated the Bobigny exit. Already there. Sounds of doors opening and closing.

The van stopped, the officer beside him leaned over and detached him. During the trip they had not exchanged a word.

‘We’ve here, get out!’

He was flanked by two policemen. Together, they entered the court through a back door. Dio thought fleetingly of Chaïn and his hidden door in the Strasbourg Post Office. They went up the stairs. A policeman walked ahead of him, and then he entered the glass cage.

‘Sit down!’

Dio sat down and looked around the courtroom; it looked nothing like the one he had known in his youth. This one was modern and well-lit. Facing him were the plaintiffs and the Procureur – the public prosecutor; and to his left the public benches, which were sparsely occupied. It must be said that trials for d**g trafficking offenses were commonplace in the Seine-Saint-Denis département. Especially with Roissy and its international airport nearby. As a stopping-off point for mules – d**g couriers – from South America or Africa, it is the start of a well-marked trail: the disembarkation, the Customs, the X-ray for those who had ingested the drugs, the sentence handed down by the Bobigny court and the imprisonment in the gaol of Villepinte.

Maître Brasil, his lawyer, turned and came over to shake his hand.

‘How are you?’ he asked.

‘Well, we'll see later!’

‘Don’t worry, it should be okay, they haven’t got much to go on!’

‘I know, but their default setting is as much as they can give me!’ Dio answered, a little tensely.

The lawyer tapped him gently on the hand and gave him a knowing smile, then went to sit back down again.

A few people entered the courtroom to listen to the judgments being handed down; often out of simple curiosity, but were they one-timers or regulars? Dio knew none of them. Anyway, his family was in Marseilles and, depending on the verdict, he would ask either to be transferred there or to finish doing his time here.

‘Ladies and Gentlemen, please stand for the Court!’ enjoined the clerk of the court on duty.

Everyone stood up. "A chick as Head Judge…, Madame la Présidente! Things are really moving in the justice system," thought Dio to himself as he stood up.

‘Please sit. Clerk, go ahead.’

‘Sergio Nardi, born October 30th, 1954 in the third district of Marseilles. Unemployed…’

Dio was no longer listening. Now he was here, he hoped things would go fast. He was tired of waiting. He was eager to be able to start working on the idea that had germinated in his brain while watching a TV show about Navy commandos.

While the facts of the case were being read out, Dio was at Les Goudes. Thinking about diving helped him to relax; since what was going to be said was right anyway, what could he do about it? That’s what his lawyer was there for.

‘Monsieur le Procureur, you have the floor!’

‘Madame la Présidente, the individual appearing before us today is one of the obscure but far from low-ranking members of organised crime. He is extremely intelligent and has decided to use his capabilities in the service of evil. It is true that today, we are trying him for acts which are certainly serious but still relatively benign: 500 grammes of cocaine found in a car boot, that’s nothing in comparison with his past deeds and his associations...’

"He's dead right there”, Dio thought. “If I hadn’t borrowed that car because I was in a hurry, they would never have nabbed me. But it has to be said that, that night, I had to get back to the hotel real fast and there was no taxi in sight. So when Jacky the Science offered me that car, I agreed without a moment’s hesitation. I’d been driving for five minutes when two unmarked cars blocked me. Armed cops were pointing their guns at me. They hauled me out of the car, hands on the bonnet, body-search. A cop opened the boot.

‘A nice package for Dio, eh?’ sneered the cop from the open boot.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ The cop came to me and stuck a white package wrapped in plastic under my nose.

‘And that's flour, I suppose?’

‘If you say so!’

I quickly realized that that was the end of my freedom for a few months. I’ll never know if that coke was in the boot by accident, an "oversight" as it were, which is something really rare in the profession. Or if it had been put there on purpose, to frame me. Had some bastard grassed on me? Probably, because I don’t believe in chance. But why? I was always legit with the Parisians, especially with the Montreuil gypsies. Unless the fuzz had managed to bribe one of the hordes of small-fry dealer-addicts. But I didn’t believe that: half a kilo of coke, they never had that much to sell. On the other hand, that the d**g squad might have slipped it into the boot, that was certainly possible. Anyway, when I get out, the truth will also come out."

‘In consequence of which, Madame la Présidente, I demand the maximum penalty provided for by the law, that is to say, five years' imprisonment, of which two years suspended.’

‘Thank you, Prosecutor, the floor is yours, Maître Brasil.’

‘Madame la Présidente…’

"f*****g hell! Five years! He’s really laying it on! Well, let’s do the maths: if I get three years firm, I’ve already done one; with the standard remissions, that’ll make it at the very least seven months less, and with the extra remissions four more, so that makes it eleven in all, almost one year. So at most, I’ll be out in a year."

‘And that, Madame la Présidente, is why I ask for my client’s time in custody to be commuted to a one-year sentence,’ concluded the lawyer.

‘Thank you, Maître. Mr. Nardi, do you have anything to say to us?’

‘No, Madame la Présidente.’

‘Very well, we shall withdraw to deliberate.’

‘Please stand!’ ordered the clerk of the court.

Dio rose and followed the policeman. Behind the door was a bench with rings set in the wall.

‘Sit down!’ The man in blue’s order called for no comment.

The policeman took his wrist and handcuffed it to the ring.

‘Can I smoke?

‘No, it's prohibited!’ The curt tone was final.

"Not too chummy, is he, this cop; yeah, guess it’s normal, escorting a guy isn’t that much fun: it appears that soon it won’t be up to the pigs any more, it’ll be the screws that’ll be doing the babysitting. They must be thrilled!"

The policeman, who had gone outside for a smoke, came back in.

‘You can go if you want.’

‘It’s okay, I'll stay here, they shouldn’t be long, the case is pretty simple, said the policeman, looking at Dio.

‘I agree’ replied the latter, with a slight smile on his lips.

‘Come on, lets' go.’ The cop stood up and detached Dio. They entered the glass cage together.

‘Ladies and Gentlemen, please stand for the Court!’

"Well now we’ll know!" thought Dio, making to sit down.

‘Kindly remain standing, Mr. Nardi!’

‘I’m sorry’, he managed to stammer.

‘In view of the charge …’

"Pretty cute, that judge”, thought Dio to himself. “Probably in her early fifties… And what if I slip her my phone number when I leave, who knows?” – he laughed to himself – “But right now I don’t have that much spare time, business you know …"

‘… In consequence of which, the Court sentences you to three years in prison, of which two years firm and to a fine of € 50,000.’

‘That means I’ll be out really soon!’

‘It’s great, isn’t it!’ exclaimed the lawyer heartily.

Dio was dazed, he couldn’t believe that the court had not sentenced him to more.

‘Yeah, sure, but why?’

‘Because they couldn’t give you any more, you haven’t got a record!’

‘But what about the little problems I had as a kid?’

‘They couldn’t take those into account; even if they had wanted to stick even more time on you, it just wasn’t possible!’

The lawyer picked up his things while Dio followed the police.

‘I’ll come and see you next…’

Dio did not hear the end of the sentence, he was elsewhere.

‘Some people have the devil’s luck!’ muttered the police officer taking him back to the van.

‘You can say that again!’ echoed his colleague.

"Not happy are they, the pigs, but in their shoes I’d be pissed off too, because with all the remissions, in a month I'll be out."

‘Come on, let’s go home!’ said his one-day attendant.

The return trip was more cheerful for Dio, he had a smile on his face. He almost felt like having a good laugh with his guardian angel. But he sensed that he would not necessarily appreciate the joke.

After the usual administrative formalities and rigorous body search, Dio regained his cell. The warder locked the door. After waiting for a few moment in case he came back, Dio opened a large book from which he extracted a slim mobile.

He switched it on and typed a brief text message: "I'll be out in a month so no more messages because I’m selling the phone. We’ll be in official contact. Dio", and sent it. The message was for George, who would see to informing "the family". He always avoided speaking because sometimes walls have ears. A text message is just as effective, it forces you to collect your thoughts and go straight to the point. And it makes no noise.

He switched off the phone and put it back in its hideout: this was no time to get caught, just before he was about to leave. He was at last able to concentrate on his project.