Free Gang of One: One Man's Incredible Battle to Find His Missing by Gary Mulgrew Page A

noticed that most of the office furniture and equipment was old and in need of repair. It seemed a grim place to work – as if the staff were being punished as much as the inmates.
    The interview with the psychiatrist only lasted about two minutes. She was a white, middle-aged woman, in a cramped office, with an old bleeping computer terminal and papers scattered everywhere; under-invested and tired, like everything else I’d seen. And yet the US managed to present itself to the outside world as cutting edge and dynamic, the greatest nation on earth.
    My shrink didn’t look up, just kept her face down, writing furiously.
    ‘Take a seat,’ she barked. A shrink with anger issues, I noted. ‘Mulgrew, right?’ she asked, still without looking at me.
    ‘He’s the Enron guy,’ Malone put in, trying to fit his large frame into the small office. Now she looked up.
    ‘Malone, you know you’re not supposed to be in here. Wait out in the corridor!’ He shuffled off dejectedly. ‘Mulgrew, right?’ she asked again, this time looking right at me. She had layers of poorly applied make-up, enhancing, rather than disguising the terminal tiredness of her face. Imagine living in a town like Big Spring, I thought, then coming here every day to work. Didn’t she hope for something better?
    ‘Yes, ma’am,’ I responded, wondering whatever happened to her American dream. I switched into a perfunctory mode, anxious to get all the formalities done with, and get myself tucked up in a solitary cell, which I’d read was the usual process for your first few days. To be honest, I liked the sound of that – a bit of time alone to get used to things and prepare myself.
    ‘You ever felt like harming yourself, Mulgrew?’ she asked, head down, pen at the ready as she returned to her form. This was speed psychiatry.
    ‘No, ma’am.’
    ‘Ever felt suicidal?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Ever wanted to commit self-harm?’
    ‘No, ma’am.’
    ‘Ever been sexually assaulted?’
    ‘Nope.’
    ‘Physically assaulted?’
    ‘Nope.’
    She sighed, clearly bored by the questions or my answers, or both.
    ‘Have you ever attacked or sexually assaulted anyone?’ she continued.
    ‘Nope.’
    ‘When did you last cry?’
    Celtic’s UEFA Cup Final defeat in Seville in 2003 sprang to mind . . .
    ‘Can’t remember.’
    ‘Do you cry often?’
    Like a baby that day.
    ‘Nope.’
    ‘Do you feel like harming yourself now?’
    If you keep asking me all these stupid questions . . .
    ‘Nope.’
    ‘Are you a member of any of these gangs?’ she asked, handing me an extensive laminated menu covering such luminaries as the Paises, Sorenos, Crips, Bloods, Aryan Brotherhood and a whole host of others I had encountered on the Internet, and was soon to meet more directly. Just reading about them had made me scared enough.
    ‘No, ma’am,’ I answered, as I handed the card back. Her eyes narrowed, as if I couldn’t be telling her the truth. She paused, before playing her trump card.
    ‘Have you ever been associated with or had an affiliation with any other gang or gang members?’
    Now this was a tricky one. Technically, having been brought up in Pollok, Glasgow’s equivalent of Beirut, and more specifically within its epicentre, Dormanside Road, I was ‘affiliated’ with the 50 Krew. These were named, unglamorously, after the Number 50 bus terminus that sat at the bottom of our street, and their activities ran to glue-sniffing, boot polish inhalation, a wee bit of breaking and entering and the occasional GBH when they had drank too much – which was most days. They were altogether less sophisticated than the Latin Kings, West Texas Mafia and the like, and in any case, I’d spent the better part of fourteen years trying to avoid the 50 Krew, so I knew what my answer had to be.
    ‘Nope.’
    ‘OK, Mulgrew,’ she said, ripping a piece of paper clear of her notebook, ‘you’re cleared for general population. Give this to Malone, on your way out.’