Hell (9 page)

‘You’ll find
it’s the most settled wing in the prison, as most of the inmates have sentences
ranging between twelve and
twentyfive
years, and all they
want is an easy life.

Otherwise
they’ll never be considered for transfer to a B- or C-cat, let alone parole.’
Yet again, exactly the opposite of what one might imagine. ‘And we also have a
request,’ says
Mr
Marsland
looking down at a sheet of paper. ‘
Mrs
Williamson is
running a
creativewriting
course, and wonders if you
would be willing to address her class?’

‘Of course I
will,’ I said. ‘How many normally attend?’

‘Because it’s
you, we think they’ll be record numbers,’ says
Mrs
Williamson, ‘so it could be as many as twelve.’ I haven’t addressed an audience
of twelve since I was the GLC candidate for
Romford
thirty years ago.

‘One problem
has arisen,’ continues
Mr
Marsland
,
‘I’m afraid there are no single cells available on the lifers’ spur at the
moment, so you’ll have to share.’ My heart sinks. Will I end up with a
murderer, a rapist or a drug addict, or a combination of all three? ‘But we’ll
try to find you a sensible cell-mate,’ he concludes before standing to signal
that the interview is over.

I return to the
waiting room and only have to hang around for a few more minutes before we are
taken off to our new cells. Once again I’ve been put on the top floor – I think
this must be for security reasons. Cell 40 is a little larger than Cell 29,
where I last resided, but far from double the size, remembering that it has to
accommodate two prisoners. It measures seven paces by four, rather than five by
three, and up against the far wall, directly in front of the lavatory, is a
small bunk bed, which one would more normally associate with a nursery.

My room-mate
turns out to be Terry.
Terry the writer.
He is the one
who approached me in the yard and asked if I would read his manuscript. He’s
been selected to join me because he doesn’t smoke, a rarity amongst inmates,
and it’s a prison regulation that if you don’t smoke, they can’t make you share
a cell with someone who does. The authorities assumed I would be aware of this
rule. I wasn’t.

Terry, as I
have already mentioned, is halfway through writing a novel and seems pleased to
discover who his cell-mate will be.

I find out
later why, and it’s not because he wants me to help him with his syntax.

Terry is
outwardly courteous and friendly, and despite my continually asking him to call
me Jeffrey, he goes on addressing me as
Mr
Archer. We
agree that he will have the top bunk and I the bottom, on account of my
advanced years. I quickly discover that he’s very tidy, happy to make both
beds, sweep the floor and regularly empty our little plastic bucket.

I begin to
unpack my cellophane bag and store my possessions in the tiny cupboard above my
bed. Once we’ve both finished unpacking, I explain to Terry that I write for
six hours a day, and hope he will understand if I don’t speak to him during
those set two-hour periods. He seems delighted with this arrangement,
explaining that he wants to get on with his own novel. I’m about to ask how
it’s progressing, when the door is opened and we’re joined by a prison officer
who has intercepted my freshly ironed white shirt. The officer begins by
apologizing, before explaining that he will have to confiscate my white shirt,
because if I were to wear it, I might be mistaken for a member of the prison
staff.

This is the
white shirt that I’d had washed and ironed by Peter the press so that I could
look smart for Will and James’s visit. I’m now down to one blue shirt, and one
T-shirt (borrowed). He places my white shirt in yet another plastic bag for
which I have to sign yet another form. He assures me that it will be returned
as soon as I have completed my sentence.

12 noon
After
a second session of writing, the cell door is opened and we are let out for
Association. I join the lifers on the ground floor, which has an identical
layout to House Block Three. The lifers (23 murderers plus a handful of ABH and
GBH*
to make up the numbers) range in age from nineteen to fifty, and
view me with considerable suspicion. Not only because I’m a Conservative
millionaire, but far worse, I will only be with them for a few days before I’m
dispatched to an open prison. Something they won’t experience for at least
another ten years. It will take a far greater effort to break down the barriers
with this particular group than the young
fledgeling
criminals of House Block Three.

As I stroll around,
I stop to glance at the TV. A man of about my age is watching Errol Flynn and
David
Niven
in the black-
andwhite
version of
The Charge of the Light
Brigade
. I take a seat next to him.

‘I’m David,’ he
says. ‘You haven’t shaved today.’

I confess my sin,
and explain that I was in the process of doing so when an officer told me I
would be moving.

‘Understood,’
said David. ‘But I have to tell you, Jeffrey, you’re too old for designer
stubble. All the lifers shave,’ he tells me.

‘You’ve got to
cling on to whatever dignity you can in a hellhole like this,’ he adds, ‘and a
warm shower and a good shave are probably the best way to start the day.’ David
goes on chatting during the film as if it was nothing more than background
muzak
. He apologizes for not having read any of my novels,
assuring me that his wife has enjoyed all of them, but he only finds time to
read whenever he’s in jail. I resist asking the obvious question.

‘What are you
reading at the moment?’ I enquire.

‘
Ackroyd’s
Life of
Dickens
,’ he replies.

And, as if he senses my incredulity, adds, ‘
Mr
Micawber
, what a character, bit like my father to be
honest, always in debt.
Now remind me, what was his Christian name?’

‘Wilkins,’ I
reply.

‘Just testing, Jeffrey, just testing.
Actually I tried to
get one of your books out of the library the other day, but they’ve removed
them all from the shelves. A diabolical liberty, that’s what I’d call it. I
told them I wanted to read it, not steal the bloody thing.’ I begin to notice
how few prisoners use bad language in front of me. One of the other inmates,
who
has
been watching the TV, leans across and asks me
if the story’s true. I can just about recall Tennyson’s poem of the gallant six
hundred, and I’m fairly certain Errol Flynn didn’t ride through the enemy lines,
and thrust a sword into the heart of their leader.

‘Of course he
did,’ says David, ‘it was in his contract.’

On this
occasion we do get to see the closing titles, because the duty officer has
checked what time the film finishes. He prefers not to have thirty or forty
disenchanted lifers on his hands.

At five we’re
invited to return to our cells for lock-up. This invitation takes the form of
an officer bellowing at the top of his voice.

On arrival, I
find another 200 letters waiting for me on the bottom bunk. All of them have
been opened, as per prison regulations, to check they do not contain any drugs,
razor blades or money. Reading every one of them kills another couple of hours
while you’re ‘banged up’. I’m beginning to think in prison jargon.

The public
seems genuinely concerned about my plight. Many of them comment on the judge’s
summing-up and the harshness of the sentence, while others point out that bank
robbers,
paedophiles
and even those charged with
manslaughter often get off with a two- or three-year sentence. The recurring
theme is ‘What does
Mr
Justice Potts have against
you?’ I confess I don’t know the answer to that question, but what cannot be
denied is that I asked my barrister, Nick
Purnell
, on
the third, fourth and seventh days of the trial to speak to the judge privately
in chambers about his obvious prejudice, and request a retrial. However, my
silk advised against this approach, on the grounds that it would only turn the
whole trial into an
allout
battle between the two of
us. Lest you might think I am making this all up conveniently after the event,
I also confided my fears to the
Honourable
Michael
Beloff
QC, Gilbert Gray QC and Johnnie Nutting QC during
the trial.

It wasn’t until
the second hour that I came across a letter demanding that I should apologize
to all those I had let down. The next letter in the pile is from Mary. I read
it again and again. She begins by remarking that she couldn’t remember when she
had last written to me. She reminds me that she is off to
Strathclyde
University this morning to chair the summer school on solar energy, accompanied
by the world’s press and my son Will.

Thank God for
Will. He’s been a tower of strength. At the end of the week, she flies to
Dresden to attend another conference, and is hoping to be back in time to visit
me at
Belmarsh
on Sunday morning. I miss her and the
children, of course I do, but above anything I hope it won’t be too long before
the press become bored with me and allow Mary to carry on with her life.

When I come to
the end of the letters, Terry helps me put them into four large brown envelopes
so they can be sent on to Alison, my PA, in order that everyone who has taken
the trouble to write receives a reply. While Terry is helping me, he begins to
tell me his life story and how he ended up being in jail. He’s not a lifer,
which is perhaps another reason they asked him if he was willing to share a
cell with me.

Terry has been
in prison twice, graduating via
Borstal
and a remand
centre
. He began sniffing solvents as a child, before
moving on to cannabis by the age of twelve. His first offence was robbing a
local newsagent because he needed money for his drug habit. He was sentenced to
two years and served one. His second charge was for robbing a
jeweller’s
in Margate of £3,000 worth of goods for which he
hoped to make around £800 from a London fence. The police caught him red-handed
(his words), and he was sentenced to five years. He was twenty-two at the time,
and served three and a half years of that sentence before being released.

Terry had only
been out for seven months when he robbed an optician’s – designer goods,
Cartier, Calvin Klein and Christian Dior, stolen to order. This time he was
paid £900 in cash, but arrested a week later. The fingerprints on the shop
window he put his fist through matched his, leaving the police with only one
suspect. The judge sentenced him to another five years.

Terry hopes to
be released in December of this year. Prison, he claims, has weaned him off
drugs and he’s only thankful that he’s never tried heroin. Terry is nobody’s
fool, and I only hope that when he gets out he will not return for a third
time. He swears he won’t, but a prison officer tells me that
twothirds
of repeat offenders are back inside within twelve
months.

‘We have our
regulars just like any
Blackpool
hotel, except we
don’t charge for bed and breakfast.’

Terry is
telling me about his mother, when suddenly there is a wild commotion of
screaming and shouting that reverberates throughout the entire block. It’s the
first time I’m glad that my cell door is locked. The prisoners in Block One are
yelling at a man who is being escorted to the medical
centre
on the far side of the yard. I remember it well.

‘What’s all
that about?’ I ask as I stare out of our cell window.

‘He’s a nonce,’
Terry explains.

‘Nonce?’

‘Prison slang
for a nonsense merchant, a
paedophile
. If he’d been
on this block we would have jugged him long ago.’

‘Jugged him?’

‘A jug of
boiling hot water,’ Terry explains, ‘mixed with a bag of sugar to form
a syrup
.

Two cons would
hold him down while the liquid is poured slowly over his face.’

‘My God, that
must be horrific.’

‘First the skin
peels off your face and then the sugar dissolves, so you end up disfigured for
the rest of your life – no more than he deserves,’ Terry adds.

‘Have you ever
witnessed that?’ I ask.

‘Three times,’
he replies matter-of-factly.

‘One nonce, one
drug dealer, and once over an argument about someone who hadn’t returned a
two-pound
phonecard
.’ He pauses before adding, ‘If
they were to put him on this block, he’d be dead within twenty-four hours.’

I’m terrified,
so I can only wonder what sort of fear they live in. The moment the prisoner
disappears into the medical
centre
, the shouting and
yelling stops.

The cell door
is at last unlocked and we are allowed out into the exercise yard. On my first
circuit, about two hundred yards, I’m joined by a young prisoner – come to
think of it, everyone is young except for me and David. His name is Nick, and
if it weren’t for his crooked front teeth and broken nose, he would be a
good-looking man. He’s been in prison for the past fourteen years, and he’s
only thirty-three, but he hopes to be out in four years’ time as long as he can
beat his latest rap.

‘Your latest rap?’
I repeat.

‘Yeah, they’ve
been trying to pin arson on me after what I got up to in Durham, but they’ve
got no proof that I set fire to my cell, so they’ll have to drop the charge.’
He’s joined by another lifer who has just completed four of his eighteen years.