Hell (11 page)

‘You will be by
the time the Sunday editions come out,’ I promise him.

Another officer
opens the door to tell us that our afternoon Association will be cut short
because the prison
staff are
holding a meeting. Terry
tells the officer who passes on this information that any staff meeting should
be held when we are banged up, not during Association. He makes a fair point,
but all the officer says is, ‘It’s not my decision,’ and slams the door.

What is almost
impossible to describe in its full horror is the time you spend
banged up
.

So please do
not consider this diary to be a running commentary, because I would only ask
you to think about the endless hours in between. Heaven knows what that does to
lifers who can see no end to their incarceration, and do not have the privilege
of being able to occupy their time writing. In my particular case, there is
Hope, a word you hear prisoners using all the time. They hope that they’ll win
their case, have their sentence cut, be let out on parole, or just be moved to
a single cell. For me, as a Category D prisoner, I simply hope to be
transferred to Ford Open Prison as soon as possible. But God knows what a lifer
hopes for, and I resolve to try and find out during the next few days.

Association.
At last the cell door is opened for an extended
period of time – forty-five minutes. When I walk down to join the other inmates
on the ground floor, Paul (murder) hands me a book of first-class stamps, and
asks for nothing in return. He either has no one to write to, or perhaps can’t
write. ‘I hear you’re having a postage problem,’ is all he says, and walks
away. I do not explain that my PA is dealing with all my letters, and therefore
I have no postage problem, because it would only belittle such a thoughtful
gesture.

During
Association I notice that the high barred gates at the end of the room lead
onto a larger outer area which has its own television, pool table, and more
comfortable chairs. But I’m not permitted to enter this hallowed territory as
you can only leave the restricted area if you’re an
enhanced
prisoner.

There are three
levels of prisoner: basic, standard and enhanced. Every inmate begins their
sentence as standard – in the middle.

This leaves you
the chance to go up or down, and that decision depends solely on your
behaviour
. Someone who wishes to take on more
responsibility, like being a Listener, a tea-boy or a cleaner, will quickly be
promoted to enhanced status and enjoy the privileges that go with it. However,
anyone who attacks a prison officer or is caught taking drugs will be
downgraded to basic. And these things matter when it comes to your standard of
living in prison, and later when the authorities consider your parole, and
possible early release.

Terry, my
cell-mate, hates authority and refuses to go along with the system, so spends
his life bobbing up and down between basic and standard. Derek ‘Del Boy’

Bicknell, on
the other hand, took advantage of the system and quickly became enhanced.

But then he is
bright, and well capable of taking on responsibility. He already has the free
run of the ground floor and in fact never seems to be in his cell. I hope by now
you have a picture in your mind of Del Boy, because he’s a six-foot,
twenty-stone West Indian who wears a thin gold chain around his neck, a thicker
one around his right wrist, and sports the latest designer watch. He also wears
a fashionable tracksuit and Nike shoes. Come to think of it, I’m the only
prisoner who still wears a shirt, but if I were to remain here for any length
of time, I would also end up wearing a tracksuit.

Supper, called
tea, is being served, so I return to my cell to collect my plastic tray and
plate. Tonight
it’s
egg and bacon and I’m just too
hungry to say no. The egg has a solid yolk and the greasy bacon is fatty,
curling and inedible. I drink a mug of Highland Spring water (a trade for two
autographs on birthday cards) and finish the meal with a bowl of Cup a Soup
(minestrone, 24p). At the next election no one will be able to accuse me of not
knowing the price of goods in the supermarket, not to mention their true value.

Terry cleans
our utensils before we return to Association on the ground floor, where I find
Del Boy running a card school at the other end of the room. Why
am I
not surprised? He beckons me to join them. The game is
made up of four lifers who are playing
Kaluki
. I
watch a couple of hands while trying to keep an eye on the phone queue, as I’m
hoping to speak to Mary. She should have returned from her day at
Strathclyde
University and be back in her hotel. By now you
will have realized that she can’t call me.

Paul (murder
and stamps) announces he needs to phone his girlfriend and suggests I take over
his hand while he joins the queue.

‘Jeff’s got to
be an improvement on you,’ says Derek as Paul rises to depart.

I lose the
first hand badly, survive the second, and win the third. Thankfully, before Del
Boy starts dealing the fourth, Paul returns.

‘His Lordship’s
not bad,’ says Derek, ‘not bad at all.’ I’m slowly being accepted.

The queue for
the two phones doesn’t seem to diminish, so I spend some time talking to a
young lifer called Michael (murder).

He’s very pale-skinned,
extremely thin, and covered in tattoos, with needle tracks up and down his
arms. He invites me into his cell, and shows me a picture of his wife and
child.

By the time
Michael is released from prison, his eight-month-old daughter will have left
school, probably be married and have children of her own. In fact this twenty-
twoyear
-old boy may well be a grandfather by the time he’s
released.

When I leave
Michael’s cell to rejoin the others I spot
Ms
Roberts, the Deputy Governor, who came to visit me when I was on the medical
wing. She is surrounded by lifers.
Ms
Roberts has a
real gift for putting these desperate men at ease.

I finally give
up and join the phone queue, aware that we are fast approaching lock-up.

When at last I make the one spare phone out of two a lifer who is
on the other line leans over to warn me that any conversations made on these
phones are tape-recorded by the police.
I thank him, but can’t imagine
what they would find of interest eavesdropping on a chat with my wife. A hotel operator
answers the call and puts me through to her room. The phone rings and rings.

I return to my
cell to be faced with another mountain of mail. Terry helps by taking them out
of their envelopes before placing them in piles, cards on one side, letters on
the other, while I continue to go over the script I’ve written that day. Terry
asks if he can keep one or two of the cards as a memento. ‘Only if they
hve
no address,’ I tell him, ‘as it’s still my intention to
reply to every one of them.’

Once I’ve
finished correcting my daily script, I turn my attention to the letters. Like
my life, they are falling into a pattern of their own, some offering
condolences on my mother’s death, others kindness and support. Many continue to
comment on
Mr
Justice Potts’s summing-up, and the
harshness of the sentence. I am bound to admit they bring back one’s faith in
one’s fellow men…and women.

Alison, my PA,
has written to say that I am receiving even more correspondence by every post
at home, and she confirms that they are also running at three hundred to one in
support. I hand one of the letters up to Terry. It’s from his cousin who’s read
in the papers that we’re sharing a cell. Terry tells me that he’s serving a
life sentence in
Parkhurst
for murder. My cellmate adds
they haven’t spoken to each other for years. And it was only a couple of hours
ago I was feeling low because I haven’t managed to speak to Mary today.

I’ve slept for
seven hours. When I wake, I begin to think about my first week in prison.

The longest week of my life.
For the first time, I consider
the future and what it holds for me. Will I have to follow the path of two of
my heroes, Emma Hamilton and Oscar Wilde, and choose to live a secluded life
abroad, unable to enjoy the society that has been so much a part of my very
existence?

Will I be able
to visit old haunts – the National Theatre, Lord’s, Le Caprice, the Tate
Gallery, the UGC Cinema in
Fulham
Road – or even walk
down the street without people’s only thought being ‘There’s the man who went
to jail for perjury’? I can’t explain to every one of them that I didn’t get a
fair trial. It’s so unlike me to be introspective or pessimistic, but when
you’re locked up in a cell seven paces by four for hour upon hour every day,
you begin to wonder if anyone out there even knows you’re still alive.

Mr
Highland, a young officer, unlocks my cell door and
tells me I have a legal visit at ten thirty. I ask if I might be allowed to
take a shower and wash my hair.

‘No,’ he says.
‘Use the washbasin.’
Only the second officer to be offhand
since I’ve arrived.
I explain that it’s quite hard to have a shower in a
washbasin. He tells me that I’ve got an ‘attitude’ problem, and says that if I
go on like this, he’ll have to put me on report. It feels like being back at
school at the wrong end of your life.

I shave and
clean myself up as best I can before being escorted to yet another part of the
building so that I can meet up with my lawyers. I am deposited in a room about
eight
foot
by eight, with windows in all four walls;
even lawyers have been known to bring in drugs for their clients. There’s a
large oblong table in the
centre
of the room, with
six chairs around it. A few moments later I’m joined by Nick
Purnell
QC and his junior Alex Cameron, who are accompanied
by my solicitor, Ramona Mehta. Nick takes me slowly through the process of
appeal against conviction and sentence. He’s fairly pessimistic about
conviction, despite there being a considerable amount of evidence of the
judge’s bias when summing up, but he says only those in the court room will
remember the emphasis and exaggeration Potts put on certain words when he
addressed the jury. The judge continually reminded the jurors that I hadn’t
given evidence, and, holding up
Mrs
Peppiatt’s
small diary not my large office diary,
repeatedly remarked that ‘no one has denied this is a real diary’. He didn’t
point out to the jury, however, that even if that diary had appeared in the
original trial, it wouldn’t have made any material difference.

On the subject
of sentence, Nick
Purnell
is more confident, as
several leading members of the Bar have made it clear that they consider four
years to be not only harsh, but unjust. And the public seem to be universally
in agreement with the professionals. Reduction of sentence can make a great
difference, because any conviction of four years or more requires a decision by
the Parole Board before you can be set free. Any sentence of less than four
years, even by one day, means you are automatically released after serving half
your sentence, assuming you’ve been a model prisoner. You’re also eligible for
tagging, which knocks off another two months, when you are restricted to your
‘chosen place of residence’ between the hours of seven pm and seven am the
following morning.
*

We go on to
discuss whether this is the right time to issue a writ against Emma Nicholson
for hinting that the millions of pounds I helped raise for the Kurds didn’t
reach them, with the twisted implication that some of the money must therefore
have ended up in my pocket. Nick points out that Sir Nicholas Young, the Chief
Executive of the Red Cross, has come to my
defence
,
and even the
Evening Standard
is saying I have no
case to answer. Alex tells me that several articles are now being written in
support of my position, including one by Trevor Kavanagh in the
Sun
. He also points out that the
Daily Telegraph
had a tilt at Max
Hastings.

I tell Nick
that I want to issue a writ against Ted Francis to recover the £12,000 I loaned
him, and for claiming that over twenty years ago he’d seen a Nigerian
prostitute climbing out of my bedroom window.

This is quite
an achievement as Francis and I stayed at different hotels and my room was on
the top floor. I do hope the poor girl was a member of the Lagos mountain
rescue team.

My legal
team understand
my anger, but want to wait until the dust
has settled. I reluctantly agree, but remain unconvinced. I can’t help
remembering that when I complained to Nick about
Mr
Justice Potts’s prejudiced attitude during the pre-trial hearings and the trial
itself, he advised me against raising the matter with the judge in chambers,
saying it would only exacerbate the problem.

On the hour I
leave them to return to their world, while I am escorted back to mine.

12 noon
I take one look at what they’re
offering at the hotplate for lunch, and return to my cell with an empty plastic
plate. I add a packet of crisps to my opened tin of Spam, before pouring myself
a mug of cranberry juice topped up with Highland Spring. My supplies are
already running low.