Hell (14 page)

I once again
settle for the vegetarian option, although Paul (murder and stamps), who ticks
off each name on a clipboard at the hotplate, tells me that the chicken is
passable. I risk it. He’s wrong again. I won’t give him a third chance.

During
Association I spend half an hour with Billy Little (murder) in his cell, going
over his work. He tells me he has at least another twenty years to serve as his
tariff is open-ended, so I advise him to start writing a novel, even a trilogy.
He looks doubtful.

He’s not a man
who’s ever put much faith in the word of a Conservative.

There’s a knock
on the cell door and a massive giant of a man ambles into the room looking like
a second-row forward in search of a scrum. I noticed him on the first day as he
stood alone in the far corner of the room, staring silently through me. He was
hard to miss at over six foot, weighing around twenty-one stone. He’s never
said a word to me since my arrival on the spur, and I confess to being a little
apprehensive about him, even frightened. He’s known as Fletch.

He’s come to
‘let me know’ that Terry is no longer complaining about my being moved into a
single cell because he accepts that by phoning the
Sun
he was ‘out of order’, but he has since been warned that one of
the Sunday papers is going to run a story about him hitting a woman over the
head with a snooker ball wrapped in a sock. One of the many things prisoners
will not tolerate is anyone attacking a woman. Terry has told Fletch that he’s
terrified that some of the inmates will beat him up once the story is pub
lished.*
Fletch is letting it be known that he doesn’t want any trouble, ‘even
though he accepts that the lad was stupid to have talked to the press in the
first place’. Fletch looks at me and says, ‘I must be the only person on the
spur who hasn’t spoken to you, but then I hate everything you stand for. Don’t
take it personally,’ he adds and then leaves without another word.

Billy tells me
that Fletch is one of the most respected prisoners on the spur and, to my
surprise, a Listener. ‘Don’t worry about him,’ he adds, ‘because I can tell you
that one of the reasons we have so little trouble on this wing is because he
was a bouncer for a London nightclub before he ended up in here.

Last year he
single-handedly stopped a riot over the state of the food. The screws could
never have contained the problem on their own, and they know it.’

I leave Billy
and return to Association to play a couple of hands of
Kaluki
with Del Boy (murder), Colin (GBH) and Paul (murder – seventy-five years
between them). I win the first hand and lose the second by 124 points.

It’s been that
sort of a day.

Just as I’m
about to return to my cell for lock-up,
Ms
Roberts
appears on the floor.

Terry rushes
across to her and begins an animated conversation. She does her best to calm
him down. When he is placated enough to move on, I ask her if she’s had a call
from my solicitor.

‘Yes,’ she
replies, ‘and I’ll have a word with you first thing in the morning. I hope you’ll
feel
it’s
good news.’ I don’t press her for any
details because several other prisoners have formed a queue as they also wish
to speak to the Deputy Governor before lock-up.

It has, as I
have already stated, been an up and down sort of day, but I feel a little
better after
Ms
Roberts’ comments. What will she have
to tell me tomorrow?

For the next
couple of hours I go through another hundred letters that the censor has left
on my bed. The pattern is now firmly set, but there is one letter in particular
that amuses me –
I am writing to give you
my full support, as I suspect that no one else is bothering to do so at the
present time
. I smile because
Ms
Buxton of
Northants
reminds me just how fortunate I am to have so
many people willing to fight my corner. I only have to think about Terry’s
phantom visitor to realize just how lucky I am.

I wake in a
cold sweat, having had the strangest dream. I’m back at Oxford in the sixties,
where I win the University
crosscountry
trials, which
would automatically ensure that I was awarded a Blue and a place in the team
against Cambridge. As I ran the one hundred yards in my youth, this scenario
seems somewhat unlikely. But it gets worse.

I’m
disqualified, and the race is awarded to the man who came second. When the cup
is presented to him I lose my temper with the judges. The judges are David
Coleman and the late Ron Pickering – two of the most decent men God ever put on
Earth. They tell me they had to disqualify me because they just didn’t believe
I could possibly have won.

No doubt the
prison psychiatrist will have a theory.

I don’t begin
writing immediately as I consider the task I have set myself over the past few
days: a close study of lifers.

On spur one,
there are fifty-two men serving life sentences.
*
I’ve now held long
conversations with about twenty of them, and have come to the conclusion that
they fall roughly into two categories. This is of course an
over-simplification, as each individual is both complex and unique. The first
group consist
of those who insist, ‘It wasn’t me, guv, it
was all a stitch up. They didn’t even find the murder weapon, but because of my
previous record I fitted neatly into the required police profile.’

The other
group hold
their hands in the air and admit to a moment of
madness, which they will eternally regret, and accept they must pay the penalty
the law demands. One or two even add, ‘It’s no more than I deserve.’

My natural
sense of justice makes me worry about the first group; are they all liars, or
is there anyone on this spur serving a life sentence
who
is in fact innocent?
But more of that later.

Saturdays
differ from every other day of the week because you’re not supplied with a
plastic bag containing breakfast the night before when you queue for supper. At
9 am your cell door is opened and you go down to the canteen for a cooked
breakfast – egg, beans and chips. I accept the egg and beans, and wonder how
many Saturdays it will be before I’m willing to add the chips.

I’m given the
choice of taking exercise in the yard, or remaining banged-up in my cell. I
sign up for exercise.

On the first
two circuits of the yard I’m joined by a group of drug dealers who ask me if I
need anything, from marijuana to crack cocaine to heroin. It takes them some
time to accept that I’ve never taken a drug in my life, and don’t intend to
start now.

‘We do a lot of
business with your lot,’ one of them adds casually.

I would like to
have replied, ‘And I hope you rot in jail for the rest of your life,’ but
didn’t have the guts.

The next inmate
to join me is a hot-
gospeller
who hopes that while
I’m in
Belmarsh
I’ll discover Christ. I explain that
I consider one’s religion to be a personal and private matter, but thank him
for his concern. He isn’t quite that easy to shake off and sticks with me for
five more circuits: unlike a visit from a Jehovah’s Witness, there’s no way of
slamming the front door.

I hope to
manage a few circuits on my own so I can think for a moment, but no such luck
because I’m joined by a couple of East End
tearaways
who want my opinion on their upcoming court case. I warn them that my knowledge
of the law is fairly sketchy, so perhaps I’m the wrong person to approach. One
of them becomes abusive, and for the first time since arriving at
Belmarsh
, I’m frightened and fearful for my own safety.

Paul has
already warned me that there might well be the odd prisoner who would stick a
knife in me just to get himself on the front pages and impress his girlfriend.

Within moments,
Billy
Little
and Fletch are strolling a pace behind
me, obviously having sensed the possible danger, and although the two young
hooligans are not from our spur, one look at Fletch and they are unlikely to
try anything. The
tearaways
peel off, but I have a feeling
they will hang around and bide their time. Perhaps it would be wise for me to
avoid the exercise yard for a couple of days.

I’m finally
joined by a charming young black prisoner, who wants to tell me about his
drumming problem. It takes another couple of circuits before I realize that he
doesn’t play in a rock band; drumming is simply slang for burglary. I consider
this particular experience a bit of a watershed. If you didn’t know what
‘drumming’ was before you began reading this diary, you’re probably as naive as
I am. If you did, these
scribblings
may well be
commonplace.

12
noon
Lunch.
I am now a
fully fledged
vegetarian.

Outside of
prison I founded a club known as VAF and VOP, which many of my friends have
become members of after sending a donation to the
Brompton
Hospital.
*
VAF is ‘vegetarian at functions’. I have long believed that
it is impossible, even in the best-run
establishments,
to prepare three hundred steaks as each customer would wish them cooked, so I
always order the vegetarian alternative because I know it will have been
individually prepared. VOP stands for ‘vegetarian on planes’. I suspect many of
you are already members of this club, and if you are, pay up and send your five
pounds to the
Brompton
Hospital immediately. I am now
adding VIP to my list, and can only hope that none of you ever qualify for
membership.

The cell door
is opened and I am told that
Ms
Roberts wants to see
me. I feel my heart pounding as I try to recall her exact words the previous
evening.

When I join her
in a room just off the bubble, she immediately confirms that my solicitors have
been in touch, and she has told them that she wants me out of
Belmarsh
as quickly as possible. She adds that they moved
Barry George (murder of Jill
Dando
) this morning, and
I’m due out next.

However, she
has just received a phone call from a chief inspector in the Metropolitan
Police, to warn her that they have received a letter from the Baroness Emma
Nicholson, demanding an inquiry into what happened to the £57 million I raised
for the Kurds.

I assure
Ms
Roberts that I was in no way involved with the receiving
or distribution of any monies for the Kurds, as that was entirely the
responsibility of the Red Cross. She nods.

‘If the police
confirm that they will not be following up
Ms
Nicholson’s inquiry, then we should have you out of
Belmarsh
and off to a D-cat by the end of the week.’

As I have
always in the past believed in justice, I assume that the police will quickly
confirm that I was not involved in any way.

Ms
Roberts goes on to confirm that Ford, my first choice,
is unwilling to take me because of the publicity problem, but she hopes to
discuss some alternatives with me on Monday.

Ms
Roberts suggests that as my next lecture is coming up on
Thursday, I should be released from my cell from nine in the morning until five
in the afternoon, so I can prepare for the talk in the library where I will
have access to reference books. She knows only too well that I can give this
talk without a moment’s preparation but, unlike the Baroness Nicholson, she is
concerned about what I’m going through.

Association.
During the Saturday afternoon break, I go down
to the ground floor, hoping to watch some cricket on the TV, but I have to
settle for horse racing as a large number of prisoners are already sitting
round the set intent on following the King George and Queen Elizabeth Stakes at
Epsom. The sport of kings has never been one of those pastimes that I’ve taken
a great deal of interest in. I’ve long accepted George Bernard Shaw’s maxim on
horse racing, that
it’s nothing more than
a plot between the upper classes and the lower classes to fleece the middle
classes
. I turn away from the television and see a slight, rather
anaemic
-looking young man standing alone in the corner. He’s
wearing a raspberry-
coloured
tracksuit, the official
garb of prisoners who do not have their own clothes. I’ve not come across him
before, but he looks a most unlikely murderer. I stroll across to join Fletch,
who I feel confident will know exactly who he is.

‘He’s got
twenty-one days for shoplifting,’

Fletch tells
me, ‘and has a mental age of about eleven’ He pauses. ‘They should never have
sent him to
Belmarsh
in the first place.’

‘Then why put
him on the lifers’ wing?’ I ask.

‘For his own
protection,’ says Fletch. ‘He was attacked in the yard during exercise this
afternoon, and some other cons continued to bully him when he returned to Block
Two.

He’s only got
nine more days left to serve so they’ve put him in my cell.’ Now I understand
why there are two beds in
Fletch’s
cell, as I suspect
this is not an unusual solution for someone in distress.

One of the
phones becomes free – a rare occurrence – so I take advantage of it and call
Mary in
Grantchester
. She’s full of news, including
the fact that the former head of the prison service, Sir David
Ramsbotham
, has written to
The Times
saying it was inappropriate to send me to prison –
community service would have been far more worthwhile. She tells me she also
has a
sackful
of letters talking about the iniquity
of the judge’s summing-up – not to mention the sentence – and she’s beginning
to wonder if there might be the possibility of a retrial. I think not.
Mr
Justice Potts has retired, and the last thing the
establishment would want to do is embarrass him.