Hell (18 page)

Paul doesn’t
know what he would do if he were ever to come face to face with his uncle.

At no time in
his exposition does he offer this as an excuse for his crime, but he points out
that child abuse is a common symptom among those serving long-term sentences. I
find this quite difficult to come to terms with, having had such a relaxed and
carefree upbringing myself. But I decide to ask Fletch if Paul is a) telling
the truth, b) correct in his overall assessment.

When I did
eventually ask Fletch, I was
shocked by his reply.*

After I’ve read
through Paul’s piece a second time, I turn to the latest bunch of letters –
just over a hundred – which keep my spirits up, until I switch on the nine
o’clock news on Radio 4, to discover that there are still no plans to move me
from this hellhole.

I start to read
John Grisham’s
The Partner
,
and manage seven chapters before
turning the light off just after midnight. I can’t believe it, no rap music.

Woke up before the Alsatians this morning.

I’ve finally
worked out why they make so much noise. It’s because they are being fed on the
same food as the prisoners. Write for two hours.

I finish the
box of cornflakes and the last drop of UHT milk, hopeful that my canteen order
will materialize at some time later today. I get dressed. I can move another
notch up on my belt – I must have lost several pounds, but have no other way of
confirming this.

When my cell
door is opened, I don’t join the other prisoners to go to the workshop as I
have an appointment with the Education Assessor, Judy
Fitt
,
known amongst the prisoners as ‘Misfit’ – a joke she must be heartily sick of.

When
Ms
Fitt
arrives, the officer on the front desk calls for me, or to be more accurate,
bellows out my name, as I’m on the top landing, and they never move from the
ground floor unless they have to.
I go down to meet her. Judy is a short
– could lose a few pounds – blonde, of about forty with a happy, optimistic
smile. I pick up two chairs from the pile by the TV and place them under the
window at the end of the room. I think she’s surprised that I insist on
carrying her chair. Once seated, she takes me through all the education
curriculum has to offer, from teaching reading and writing skills, through to
taking a degree. Her enthusiasm leaves me in no doubt that Judy is another
public servant dedicated to her job. She also suggests that in my case I could
learn to cook, draw, or even, after all these years of avoiding it, discover
how to use a computer.

That would
impress Mary.

I remind Judy
that I’m only expecting to be at
Belmarsh
for a few
more days, and would like to use my time to teach other prisoners to read and
write. Judy considers this suggestion, but would prefer I gave a
creative-writing course, as there are several inmates working on books, poems
and essays who will have dozens of unanswered questions. I agree to her request
and, aware of my escape plan, Judy suggests I ought to give my first lesson
tomorrow morning. She pauses, looking a little embarrassed. ‘But first I have
to
enrol
you in the education department.’

She passes me
over yet more forms. ‘Can you complete these tests and let me have them back
later today so that I can process them in a matter of hours?’

‘I’ll try to
have them completed by the end of the morning.’

She laughs. ‘It
won’t take you that long.’

I return to my
cell, and as I have nothing to do for the thirty minutes before lunch, begin to
fill in the little boxes headed Education Test. I’ve selected some random
examples:

1) English –
spell these words correctly:
wos
,
befor
,
wer
,
gril
,
migt
,
siad
,
affer
.

2)
Maths
– a) 13+34, 125+386? b)
how
much change do you get from £5 if you spend £1.20?

3)
what
is 7.15pm on a twenty-four hour clock?

4)
how
much time is there between 4.30 and 6.15?

5)
what
is 25% of 300?

6)
if
1 biscuit costs 25p, 6 are £1.38, 12 are £2.64, and 24
are £6, which is the better buy?

I complete the
six pages of questions and return them to
Ms
Fitt
, via Billy Little (murder), who has an education class
this afternoon.

12
noon
Lunch.
Provisions have not yet arrived from the canteen.
Half a
portion of macaroni cheese and a mug of Highland Spring.
Have you
noticed I’m beginning to eat prison food?

My cell door is
opened, and I’m told
Ms
Roberts wants to see me. I am
accompanied to the Governor’s office by
Mr
Weedon
. I don’t bother to ask him why, because he won’t
know, and even if he does, he wouldn’t tell me. Only moments later I discover
that
Ms
Roberts has nothing but bad news to impart
and none of it caused by the staff at
Belmarsh
. My
Category D status has been raised to C because the police say they have been
left with no choice but to follow up Baroness Nicholson’s allegations, and open
a full inquiry into what happened to the money raised for the Kurds. As if that
wasn’t enough, the C-cat prison I’ve been allocated to is on the Isle of Wight.
How much further away do they want me to be from my family?

The raising of
my status,
Ms
Roberts explains, is based on the fear
that while a further inquiry is going on I might try to escape.

Scotland Yard
obviously has a sense of
humour
. How far do they
imagine I could get before someone spotted me?

Ms
Roberts informs me that I can appeal against both
decisions, and if I do, the authorities have agreed to make an assessment by
Thursday. She points out that the Isle of Wight is a long way from my residence
in Cambridge, and it’s the responsibility of the Home Office to house a
prisoner as close to his home as possible. If that’s the case, I’m only
surprised they’re not sending me to the Shetland Isles. She promises to have a
word with my solicitor and explain my rights to them. If it were not for
Ms
Roberts and Ramona Mehta, I would probably be locked up
in perpetual solitary confinement.

I cannot
express forcibly enough my anger at Emma Nicholson, especially after my years
of work for the Kurds. One call to Sir Nicholas Young at the Red Cross and all
her questions as to the role I played in the Simple Truth campaign could have
been answered. She preferred to contact the press.

Ms
Roberts
points out that as my
lawyers are due to visit me at two o’clock, perhaps I should be making a move.
I thank her.

Baroness
Nicholson could learn a great deal from this twenty-six-year-old woman.

I join Alex
Cameron and Ramona Mehta in the visitors’ area. This time we’ve been allocated
a room not much bigger than my cell.

But there is a
difference – on three sides it has large windows. When you’re behind bars day
and night, you notice windows.

Before they go
on to my appeal against conviction and sentence, I raise three other subjects
on which I require legal advice.

First, whether the Baroness has stepped over the mark.
The
lawyers fear she may have worded everything so carefully as to guarantee
maximum publicity for herself, without actually accusing me of anything in
particular. I point out that I am only too happy to cooperate with any police
inquiry,
and the sooner the better. The Simple Truth
campaign was organized by the Red Cross, and the Treasurer at the time will
confirm that I had no involvement whatsoever with the collecting or
distributing of any monies.

Ramona points
out that several Red Cross officials, past and present, have already come out
publicly confirming this.

I then tell my
lawyers the story of Ali (£28,000 stolen and returned, but now doing an
eighteen-month sentence for breach of trust). I ask that the police be reminded
that
Mrs
Peppiatt
admitted
in the witness box to double-billing, stealing a car, taking her children on a
free holiday to Corfu, buying presents for mistresses that didn’t exist and
claiming expenses for meals with phantom individuals. Can I hope that the CPS
will treat her to the same rigorous inspection as Ali and I have been put
through?

Third, I remind
them that Ted Francis, the man who sold his story to the
News of the World
for fourteen thousand pounds, still owes me
twelve thousand. I’d like it back.

The lawyers
promise to follow up all these matters. However, they consider the
reinstatement of my D-cat and making sure I don’t have to go to the Isle of
Wight their first priorities.

I ask Ramona to
take the next five days of what I’ve written and hand the script over to Alison
for typing up. Ramona leaves our little room to ask the duty officer if he will
allow this. He turns down her request. Alex suggests I hold onto the script until
I’ve been transferred to a less security-conscious prison. He also advises me
that it would be unwise to think of publishing anything until after my appeal
has been considered. I warn them that if I lose my appeal and continue to keep
up my present output for the entire sentence, I’ll end up writing a million
words.

On the hour, an
officer appears to warn us that our time is up. Ramona leaves, promising to
deal with the problems of my D-cat and the Isle of Wight immediately.

While I’m
waiting to be escorted back to Block One, I get into conversation with a Greek
Cypriot called
Nazraf
who is on remand awaiting
trial. He’s been charged with ‘detaining his wife in a motorcar’ – I had no
idea there was such a charge. I repeat his story here with the usual government
health warning.
Nazraf
tells me that he locked his
wife in the car for her own safety because he was at the time transferring a
large sum of cash from his place of work to a local bank.

He’s in the
restaurant business and for several years has been very successful, making an
annual profit of around £200,000. He adds with some considerable passion that
he still loves his wife, and would prefer
a reconciliation
,
but she has already filed for divorce.

Nazraf
comes across as a bright, intelligent man, so I have
to ask him why he isn’t out on bail. He explains that the court demanded a sum
of £40,000 to be put up by at least four different people, and he didn’t want
his friends or business associates to know that he was in any trouble. He had
always assumed that the moment he was sent to jail, his wife would come to her
senses and drop the charges. That was five weeks ago and she hasn’t budged. The
trial takes place in mid...

September…

This is all I
could find out before we were released from the waiting room to continue on our
separate paths – I to Block One,
Nazraf
to Block
Four. His final destination also puzzles me, because Block Four usually houses
terrorists or extremely high-security risks. I’d like to meet
Nazraf
again, but I have a feeling I never will.

Supper.
Provisions have arrived from the canteen and been
left in a plastic bag on the end of my bed. I settle down to a plate of tinned
Spam, a bar of Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut, two
McVitie’s
digestive biscuits and finally a mug of blackcurrant juice, topped up with
Evian water. What more could a man ask for.

Association.
I am asked to join a group of ‘more mature’
prisoners – at sixty-one I am by far the oldest, if not the most mature – for
their weekly committee meeting in
Fletch’s
cell.

Other attendees
include Tony (marijuana only), Billy (murder), Colin (GBH) and Paul (murder).

Like any
well-run board meeting, we have a chairman, Fletch, and an agenda. First we
discuss the hours we are permitted to be out of our cells, and how
Mr
Marsland
has made conditions
more bearable since he became the senior officer. Fletch considers that
relations between the two parties who live on different sides of ‘the iron
barrier’ are far more tenable – even amicable – than at any time in the past.
Colin is still complaining about a particular warder, who I haven’t yet come
across. According to Colin, he treats the prisoners like scum, and will put you
on report if you as much as blink in front of him. He’s evidently proud of the
fact that he’s put more people on report than any other officer, and that tells
you all you need to know about him, Colin suggests.

I decide to
observe this man from a distance and see if Colin’s complaint is justified.

Most of the
officers make an effort ‘to keep a lid on things’, preferring a calm
atmosphere, only too aware that lifers’ moods swing from despair to hope and
back to despair again in moments.
This can, in the hands of
an unthinking officer, lead to violence.
Colin, I fear, is quick to
wrath, and doesn’t need to take another step backwards, just as things are
going a little better for him.