Warhol's Prophecy

Confrontation

DAVID LAYTON FELT the sweat running down the side of his face. A combination of the heat inside the large kitchen and also of his current exertions.

The boxes each held twenty-four tins of baked beans, and by anybody’s reckoning that was fucking heavy. He’d been humping them for most of the morning, from the back of the lorry in the prison yard into the kitchen, then beyond to the storeroom.

Beans, tinned spaghetti, Smash, tinned fruit . . .

Boxes and boxes of tins, all of them heavy.

He’d been allowed a fag break only once since he had started, and that felt like hours ago.

The man helping him, a small thin-faced individual whose name he didn’t know, seemed to be having even more trouble than Layton. He was pale and looked undernourished, and hadn’t said much during the time they’d been working together. Hadn’t said much during the entire time he’d been working in the kitchen. He looked frightened, nervous.

Layton had come to the conclusion this must be his first time inside.

Shit-scared, forever looking over his shoulder. Silent. Whatever he’d been dubbed up for couldn’t have amounted to much, or he wouldn’t have got kitchen detail. Layton thought maybe burglary, or receiving – some bullshit charge that had got him probably six months. He looked the sort who cried himself to sleep every night.

But what did he care. He was out in a couple of days. This pasty-faced little cunt could rot as far as he was concerned.

He set down the latest box of beans and headed back to the lorry outside.

The driver was sitting in his cab, talking with a warder. Another uniformed man stood at the rear of the lorry, watching the two prisoners as they unloaded the goods.

Layton recognized him: a screw called Collinwood.

Big-built, scrub-headed cunt who used to be a security guard for a firm of stockbrokers in the City, before he started locking other men up for a living.

He snapped orders at them, telling them to move quicker.

Layton cursed under his breath as he lifted another box and headed back inside with it.

He felt the bottom of the box beginning to give. Realized he was going to drop it.

‘Shit,’ he snarled, trying to slide his hands beneath the torn cardboard.

It was no use.

The tins burst through the bottom of the box and landed with a loud clang on the kitchen floor.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’

The voice that boomed through the kitchen was Scots: a Glaswegian bellow that caused the other men working in the room to look round.

‘Pick them up, you dozy cunt,’ roared the voice.

Layton looked up to see James Gorton advancing towards him.

‘Get them picked up, you fucking prick,’ Gorton snarled, standing over Layton as he struggled to gather up the scattered tins.

The uniformed officer in the kitchen stood back, allowing Gorton to handle this situation. The Scot had been in charge of the kitchen for the past seven months. His temper was legendary amongst the other inmates. He was doing a nine stretch for assault, Layton had heard. He’d blinded some bloke with a piece of broken glass, during an argument about money. But he knew the system inside out and he’d conned his way into the kitchen job by convincing the Governor he’d once worked in a restaurant.

That much was almost true. He’d worked the door at a club in Birmingham and, according to the prison grapevine, smashed a man’s hand to pulp with a meat-tenderizing hammer. So he knew how to handle at least one kitchen utensil. It was one more than most of the other men who worked in there.

Layton continued to gather up the fallen tins, carrying them through to the stockroom as best he could.

Gorton followed him through, slamming the door behind him.

‘You get out of here soon, don’t you, son?’ the Scot growled menacingly.

Layton nodded.

‘Good,’ Gorton said. ‘Because I don’t want you fucking up my kitchen again, you understand?’

‘I understand,’ Layton told him.

‘I think you should say sorry.’

Gorton took a step towards him.

Layton didn’t speak.

‘I didn’t hear you,’ Gorton persisted.

Silence.

‘I said, you should say sorry. So, say it, you little cunt.’

Gorton was standing so close now he was breathing his rancid breath into Layton’s face.

‘Sorry,’ Layton said flatly.

‘That’s better,’ Gorton told him.

‘Sorry, you sheep-shagging Scotch cunt.’

Gorton’s face darkened. He brought his knee up into Layton’s groin so hard, he felt it connect with the pelvic bone.

Layton dropped to his knees, or at least he would have done had Gorton not grabbed him by the lapels, lifted him up and held him like a rag doll.

He stared into Layton’s watering eyes for a second, then drove his head forward, slamming his forehead into Layton’s face.

The headbutt caught him on the left eyebrow.

‘Pick those fucking tins up.’ Gorton released his grip, allowing Layton to fall to the floor, opened the stockroom door and walked away.

Layton slumped against some large bags of salt, unsure which pain was worse, the one in his groin or the one in his head.

He sucked in a couple of deep breaths and pulled himself upright.

‘Fucking bastard,’ he groaned under his breath.

He steadied himself for a second, then limped slowly back out into the kitchen.

Gorton smiled as he saw him, then turned his attention back to the large pots of soup that were bubbling on the range nearest to him.

As he drew nearer, Layton noticed that the handle of one was sticking outwards.

Gorton was no more than a foot away.

The movement was so fast no one, including Gorton, saw it.

Layton brought his hand down with great force onto the outstretched saucepan handle, causing the entire thing to flip up.

He couldn’t have planned the trajectory better if he’d worked it out with a slide-rule and protractor.

An immense geyser of boiling soup shot into the air, most of it hitting Gorton straight in the chest and face.

As Layton went down, pretending he’d slipped, he heard the Scot scream in agony as the searing fluid struck him.

Where it touched his skin, the flesh immediately turned red.

Layton was aware of footsteps rushing towards them. Collinwood was there.

Other hands were hauling him to his feet.

Figures were gathered around Gorton, who was now rolling about on the kitchen floor shrieking, his suffering intolerable.

‘I slipped,’ Layton said. Then those same hands that had picked him up pushed him aside.

He heard one of the screws shout for a doctor.

Layton backed away, looking down at Gorton, who was still screaming. Blisters were already forming on his seared flesh. Layton thought how excruciating the pain must be.

He smiled faintly.