Hell (21 page)

No one on the
spur understands why you’re being sent there.’ I panic, desert the queue for
the gym, run upstairs, grab my
phonecard
, rush back
down and call Alison.

First I warn
her (no time for pleasantries when you only have twenty units on your weekly
card) that the next five days of the script are on their way, and to let Ramona
know when they have arrived so she can confirm this on her next legal visit. I
then ask to be put through to James. My younger son has assumed the role of
joint head of the household in charge of finance, while William’s
responsibility is to take care of his mother. I don’t lose a moment’s sleep
wondering if they’re up to it. I quickly tell Jamie about the Isle of Wight and
the loss of my D... cat status.

‘Calm down,
Dad,’ he says. ‘We’ve been working on little else for the past forty-eight
hours. I know how you must feel being so out of touch, but we’re on the case.
Ramona spoke to the Home Office last night, and they’re hinting that it’s
unlikely that there will even be an inquiry into the Kurdish matter. No one is
taking Nicholson’s accusations
seriously,
even the
tabloids have ignored her.’

‘Yes, but these
things still take time; meanwhile I’ve been issued with a movement order.’

‘The same
source,’ James continues, ‘is hinting that you’re more likely to end up in the
home counties
, but they’re still working on it.’

I check my
phonecard
; I’ve already used six units.
‘Anything
else?’
I ask. I want to save as many units as possible for Mary on
Sunday.

‘Yes, I need
your authority to transfer some dollars into your sterling account. The pound
has been off for the past couple of days.’

‘That’s fine by
me,’ I tell him.

‘By the way,’
he says, ‘lots of people are talking about the judge’s summing-up, so chin up.
Bye, Dad.’

I put the phone
down to find I have used seven of my twenty units. I leave James to worry about
the currency market while I concentrate on trying to get my hands on a bottle
of Highland Spring.

I check my
watch. No point in returning to the gym queue, so I settle for a shower. You
forget how dirty you are, until you discover how clean you can be.

The officer on the front desk bellows out, ‘Exercise,’ which once
again I avoid.
It’s 92° out there in the yard, with no shade. I elect to
sit in my cell, writing, with the tiny window as wide open as I can force it.
When I’ve completed ten pages of script, I switch on the Test Match. The game
is only an hour old, and England
are
47 for 2.

12
noon
Lunch.
I pick up my tray and walk down to the hotplate, but can’t find a single item I
would offer an emaciated dog. I leave with a piece of buttered bread and an
apple. Back in my cell I tuck into the other half of my tin of Prince’s ham,
two more
McVitie’s
digestive biscuits, and a mug of
water. I try to convince myself that Del Boy is the man, and he will deliver –
in the nick of time – because there’s only two inches left in the bottle.

Have you ever
had to measure how much water is left in a bottle?

An officer
appears outside my cell door and orders me to report to the workshop, which I’m
not enthusiastic about. After all, my application for education must surely
have been processed by now. When I arrive at the bubble on the
centre
floor to join the other prisoners, I’m searched
before having my name ticked off. We are then escorted down a long corridor to
our different destinations – workshop and education. When we reach the end of
the corridor, prisoners destined for the workshop turn left, those with higher
things on their mind, right. I turn right.

When I arrive
at education, I walk past a set of classrooms with about six or seven prisoners
in each; a couple of prison officers are lounging around in one corner, while a
lady sitting behind a desk on the landing crosses off the names of inmates
before allocating them to different classrooms. I come to a halt in front of
her.

‘Archer,’ I
tell her.

She checks down
the list, but can’t find my name. She looks puzzled, picks up a phone and
quickly discovers that I ought to be in the workshop.

‘But
Ms
Fitt
told me I would be
processed for education immediately.’

‘Strange word,
immediately,’ she says. ‘I don’t think anyone at
Belmarsh
has looked up its meaning in the dictionary, and until they do I’m afraid
you’ll have to report to the workshops.’ I can’t imagine what the words ‘until
they do’ mean. I retrace my steps, walking as slowly as I can in the direction
of the workshops, and find I am the last to arrive.

This time I’m
put on the end of the chain gang – a punishment for being the last to turn up.
My new, intellectually challenging job is to place two small packets of
margarine, one sachet of raspberry jam, and one of coffee into a plastic bag
before it’s sealed up and taken away for use in another prison.

The young man
opposite me who is sealing up the bags and then dropping them into a large
cardboard box looks like a wrestler.

He’s about five
foot ten, early twenties, wears a spotless white T-shirt and smart designer
jeans. His heavily muscled arms are bronzed, so it’s not difficult to work out
that he hasn’t been in
Belmarsh
that long. The answer
to that question turns out to be three weeks. He tells me that his name is
Peter. He’s married with one child and runs his own company.

‘What do you
do?’ I ask.

‘I’m a
builder.’ When a prisoner say’s ‘I’m’ something, and not ‘I used to be’
something, then you can almost be certain that their sentence is short or
they’re on remand. Peter goes on to tell me that he and his brother run a small
building company that specializes in buying dilapidated houses in up-and-coming
areas of Essex. They renovate the houses and then sell them on. Last year,
between them, they were able to earn around two thousand pounds a week. But
that was before Peter was arrested. He comes across as a hardworking, decent
sort of man. So what’s he doing in
Belmarsh
? I ask
myself. Who can he possibly have murdered?
His brother,
perhaps?
He answers that question without my having to enquire.

‘I was caught
driving my brother’s van without a
licence
. My
brother usually does the driving, but he was off sick for the day, so I took
his building tools from the work site to my home and for that the judge
sentenced me to six weeks in jail.’

Let me make it
clear. I have no objection to the sentence, but it’s madness to have sent this
man to
Belmarsh
. I do hope that the Home Secretary,
Mr
Blunkett
– who I know from
personal dealings when John Major was Prime Minister to be a decent, caring man
– will read the next page carefully.

‘Are you in a
cell on your own?’ I enquire.

‘No, I’m locked
up with two other prisoners.’

‘What are they
in for?’

‘One’s on a
charge of murder awaiting his trial, the other’s a convicted drug dealer.’

‘That can’t be
much fun,’ I say, trying to make light of it.

Are you still with me, Home Secretary?

‘It’s hell,’
Peter replies. ‘I haven’t slept for more than a few minutes since the night
they sent me here. I just can’t be sure what either of them might get up to. I
can handle myself, but the two men I’m sharing a cell with are professional
criminals.’

Are you still paying attention, Home
Secretary?

‘And worse,’ he
adds. ‘One of them offered me a thousand pounds to beat up a witness before his
trial begins.’

‘Oh, my God,’ I
hear myself say.

‘And he’s
putting more and more pressure on me each day. Of course I wouldn’t consider
such an idea, but I’ve still got another three weeks to go, and I’m beginning
to fear that I might not be safe even when I get out.’

Home Secretary, this hard-working family man
is fearful for his own safety. Is that what you’re hoping to achieve for
someone who’s been caught driving without a
licence
?

I’ve received
over a thousand letters of support since I
arrived
a
Belmarsh
and even at sixty-one I have found prison a
difficult experience to come to terms with. Peter is twenty-three, with his
whole life ahead of him. Hundreds of people are being sent to this Category
A
top-security prison who should never be here.

But what can I do about it? I can hear the
Home Secretary asking one of his officials
.

Classify anyone
who is arrested as A, B, C or D before their trial begins, not after. Then, if
they’re D-cat – first-time offenders with no record of violence – they can, if
convicted, be sent direct to an open prison. That way they won’t have to share
cells with murderers, drug dealers or professional criminals. And don’t listen
to officials when they tell you it can’t be done. Sack them, and do it. I was
allocated D-cat status within twenty-four hours because of my mother’s funeral,
so I know it can be done.

Home Secretary, you are doing irreparable
damage to decent people’s lives and you have no right to do so
.

While I’m
trying to take in Peter’s plight, the pile of plastic bags has grown into a
mountain in front of me. Another prisoner who I hadn’t noticed before,
obviously an old lag, slots quickly into the one position that ensures the
chain moves back into full swing.

‘This place is
more about retribution than rehabilitation, wouldn’t you say, Jeffrey?’

What is it
about the Irish that always makes you relax and feel you’ve known them all your
life? I nod my agreement. He smiles, and introduces himself as William Keane.

Before I repeat
what William told me during the next couple of hours, I must warn you that I
haven’t a clue how much of his tale can be authenticated, but if only half of
it is true, God help the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary, the Secretary of
State for Health and the Education Secretary.

William was
born in Limerick, the home of the Blarney Stone, son of a prize fighter
(Ireland must be the last country on earth that still has prize fighters) and a
local beauty –

William is a handsome
man.
Mrs
Keane produced seven sons and five
daughters.

Now William’s
accent is quite difficult to follow, so I often have to ask him to repeat whole
sentences. His present home is a few hundred yards from the prison, so family
visits are not a problem. It’s the family that’s the problem. One of them, the
youngster, as William describes him, is on the far bench – marmalade and jam
sachets – and at some point, William tells me, all seven brothers and one
sister were in jail at the same time, serving sentences between them of one
hundred and twelve years. I can only feel sorry for their mother.

William is
completing a ten-year sentence for drug dealing, and has only twelve weeks left
to serve. You notice he doesn’t say three months, because three months would
mean thirteen weeks.

He’s actually
quite fearful about how the world will have changed when in October he steps
out of prison for the first time in a decade. He flatters me, a natural pastime
for the Irish, by saying he’s read all my books, as it seems half the leading
criminals in England have.

During his time
in six prisons (he’s a postgraduate on such establishments), William has taken
a degree, and read over four hundred books – I only point this out to make you
aware that we are not dealing with a fool.

He adds his
condolences over my mother’s death, and asks how the police and prison staff
dealt with me when it came to the funeral. I tell him that they couldn’t have
been more thoughtful and considerate.

‘Not like my
brother’s funeral,’ he says.

‘Not only were
the whole family in handcuffs, but they had helicopters circling overhead.

There were more
police by the graveside than mourners.’

‘But in my
case,’ I pointed out, ‘no one thought I would try to escape.’

‘Houdini
couldn’t have escaped from that bunch,’ William retorts.

What puzzles me
about William is that if the rest of the
family are
as
bright and charismatic as he is, why don’t they combine their talents and
energy and do something worthwhile, rather than settling for a life of crime?

‘Drugs,’ he
replies, matter-of-factly. ‘Once you’re hooked, you can never earn enough to
satisfy the craving, so you end up becoming either a thief or a pusher. And I
have to admit,’ William adds, ‘I’m lazy.’

I’ve watched
him carefully since he’s joined the chain, and the one thing he is not, is
lazy. He has filled more plastic bags than Peter and
me
put together. I point this out to him.

‘Well, when I
say lazy, Jeffrey, I mean lazy about settling down to a nine-to-five job, when
you can pick up a couple of grand a week selling drugs.’

‘So will you go
back to the drug scene once you’re released?’

‘I don’t want
to,’ he says. ‘I’m thirty-five, and one thing’s for certain, I don’t need to
come back inside.’ He hesitates. ‘But I just don’t know if I’m strong-willed
enough to stay away from drugs or the quick rewards that are guaranteed when
you sell them.’

‘How much are
we talking about,’ I ask, ‘and which drugs in particular?’

‘Heroin,’ he
says, ‘is the biggest
moneyspinner
. A joey’ – even
after an explanation, I’m still not quite sure what a joey is – ‘has come down
in price from one hundred pounds to forty since I’ve been in prison [ten
years], which is a clear indication how the market has grown. And some people
need as many as ten joeys a day. When I first came into prison,’ William
continues, ‘cocaine was the designer drug Today it’s heroin, and it’s often
your lot who are on it,’ he says, looking directly at me.