Last year I finally got co-funding from a prison charity to finance my first solo project. It’s now coming together after years of research and planning: my very own feature-length documentary. I’ve managed to get all the research and preproduction done while taking freelance projects along the way, and I’m due to start filming the face-to-face interviews in nine days. I’ve put so much of myself into this production and I hope, more than anything, that it all comes together. There’s only so far planning can take you, then you just have to wait and see what happens. It’s a big year. For me. For us. The film, the wedding—everything seems to be happening all at once. But I honestly think I’m at that magical point in my life where all the plans I set in motion in my twenties are finally coming together, all in unison, as if somehow I’d deliberately orchestrated it that way, though I don’t remember consciously doing that. I guess that’s the way life works, isn’t it—nothing, and then everything at once.
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.
“Hello, sweetheart. Nice to hear from you. Locke, is it? Not a Roberts yet then? When’s the big day?” He asks it cheerily, off the cuff.
I can hear a smile in his voice. It would be a nice thing to ask someone under any other circumstances and I almost smile back into the phone, but something makes me stop. Because there is no way Eddie could possibly know about my approaching wedding, or name change, or Mark, unless he’s been looking into me. And he’s in prison, which means he must have had me looked into. And looking into me is a more involved process than a quick online search. I’m not on social media. I don’t do Facebook. All good documentarians know what you can do with a healthy dose of social media information, so we keep off it. So, in one simple sentence, Eddie Bishop has just told me he’s been having me professionally looked into. He’s had me vetted. He is in charge and he knows all about me. And Mark. And our life.
I take a moment before answering. He’s testing me. I don’t want to make a misstep so early in the game.
“I gather we’ve both done our research, Mr. Bishop. Did you find out anything interesting?”
There’s nothing too controversial in my past, no dancing skeletons in my closet. I know this, of course, but still I feel exposed, under threat. This is his show of power, a verbal line in the sand. Eddie may have been behind bars for seven years, but he wants me to know he’s still got his hands on all the ropes. If he wasn’t being so up front about it, right now I’d be terrified.
“Very reassuring, I’d say. Put my mind to rest, sweetheart. You can never be too careful,” he says. Eddie’s decided I’m safe, but he wants me to know he’s watching.
I move on, stand and try to unravel the phone cord, slipping into work spiel. “Thank you for agreeing to take part in this. I really appreciate you agreeing and I want you to know I’m going to handle the interviews in as unbiased and straightforward a way as I can. I’m not in the business of creating straw dogs; I’m just going to tell your story. Or rather, I’m going to let you tell your story. The way you want.” I hope he knows that I mean that. I’m sure he’s had plenty of people try to sell him snake oil in the past.
“I know, sweetheart. Why do you think I said yes to you? You’re a rarity. Just don’t let me down, aye?” He lets that sink in for a second before shaking off the intensity, lightening the tone. “Anyway, when’s all this kick off then?” His tone is bright, industrious.
“Well, our face-to-face interview is scheduled for September 24, which is about two and a half months away. And then your release is sometime in early December. So we can arrange nearer the time when we’ll do your post-release filming. Would you be happy with us shadowing you on release day itself?” I ask. I’m in my element now; this is where all my planning is coming into its own. If we can film Eddie’s actual release fly-on-the-wall style, that would really be something.
His voice comes back, warm but clear. “I’ll be honest, love, it’s not ideal for me. I’ll have a bit on that day, if you know what I mean. Maybe give me a day or two, aye? That work for you?” We’re negotiating. He wants to give me something—that’s definitely a good sign.
“Of course. We’ll iron it out as we go along. You have my number, so we’ll just keep in touch on those dates. Not a problem.” I watch the cat outside creep back along the fence, its back hunched, its head low.
Eddie clears his throat.
“Is there anything else about the interviews or schedule you’d like to ask about at this stage, Mr. Bishop?” I ask.
He laughs. “No, I think we’re done for today, sweetheart, apart from you calling me Eddie. Nice to talk to you finally though, Erin, after hearing so much about you.”
“You too, Eddie. It’s been a pleasure.”
“Oh and give my regards to Mark, won’t you, darling? Seems like a nice fella.” It’s a throwaway remark but my breath catches in my chest. He’s been looking into Mark too. My Mark. I don’t know what to say. The little pause I’ve left grows into a silence on the line. He fills it.
“So how did you two meet then?” He leaves the question hanging in the air. Shit. This isn’t and shouldn’t be about me.
“That’s none of your business, Eddie, now is it?” I say it with a forced smile in my voice. The words come out smooth and confident and, weirdly, with a hint of sexuality. Entirely inappropriate but somehow perfectly appropriate.
“Ha! No. Quite right, sweetheart. None of my business at all.” Eddie roars with laughter. I hear it echo along the prison hallway at the other end of the line. “Very good, love, very good.”
And there we go. We’re back on track. It seems to be going well. We seem to be getting on. Me and Eddie Bishop.
I smile down the phone, a genuine grin this time. I smile in my empty living room, by myself, bathed in sunlight.