Hell (20 page)

I’ve only been
in my cell for a few minutes when
Mr
Weedon
reappears bearing a slip of paper. It’s a movement
schedule, confirming my worst fears. I will be transferred to the Isle of Wight
sometime during the week of 6

August 2001. It
is as I thought; the Home Office
have
made up their
minds, and are unwilling to take any personal needs into consideration. I sink
onto my bed, depressed. I am helpless, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

I’m writing the
second draft of today’s script, when the alarm bell goes off. I can hear
running feet, raised voices and the scurrying of prison officers. I look out of
my barred window but can see nothing but an empty yard. I gaze through the
four-by-nine-inch slit in my door, and quickly realize that the commotion is
not on our spur. I’ll have to wait for Association before I can find out what
happened.

Association.
Once again, I fail to get on the gym
rota
and suspect it’s the same eight inmates who are
pre-selected every day, and I haven’t been a member of the club long enough to
qualify. Let’s hope they have a bigger gym on the Isle of Wight.

When I reach
the ground floor, I see that Fletch is placed strategically in one corner, as
he is at the beginning of every Association, in case anyone needs to seek his
help or advice. I slip across and have a word.

‘What was all
the noise about?’ I ask.

‘A fight broke
out on Block Two.’

‘Any details?’

‘Yes, some con
called
Vaz
has been playing rap music all night, and
the man in the cell above him hasn’t slept for three days.’

‘He has my
sympathy,’ I tell Fletch.

‘They didn’t come
face to face until this afternoon,’ continues Fletch, ‘when Mitchell, who was
in the cell above, not only laid out
Vaz
with one
punch, but set fire to his cell and ended up jumping on top of his stereo.’

Fletch paused.
‘It was one of those rare occasions when the prison staff took their time to
reach the scene of the crime; after all, they’d received several complaints
during the week from other prisoners concerning ‘the
Vaz
attitude problem”.’

‘What happened
to the other guy?’

‘Mitchell?’
said Fletch. ‘Officially banged up in segregation, but they’ll be moving him to
another wing tomorrow; after all, as I explained to
Mr
Marsland
, he was doing no more than representing the
views of the majority of inmates.’ Another insight into how prison politics
work, with Fletch acting as the residents’ spokesman.

Billy Little
(murder) asks me if I can join him in his cell to discuss a paper he’s writing
on globalization. He wants to discuss the BBC; its role and responsibility as a
public broadcaster. He produces a graph to show how
its
viewing figures dropped by 4 per cent between 1990 and 1995, and another 4 per
cent between 1995 and 2000. I tell Billy that I suspect Greg Dyke, the new
Director General, having spent his working life in commercial television, will
want to reverse that trend. The beneficiaries, Billy goes on to tell me, giving
detailed statistics, are Sky Digital and the other digital TV stations. Their
graphs have a steady upward trend.

I ask Billy
when he will have completed his degree course. He removes a sheet of paper from
a file below the window. ‘September,’ he replies.

‘And then
what?’ I ask.

‘I may take
your advice and write a novel.

I’ve no idea if
I can do it, but the judge certainly gave me enough time to find out.’

I can’t always
pick up every word this Glaswegian utters, but I’m deciphering a few more
syllables each day. I’ve decided to ask Alison to send him a copy of
Vikram
Seth’s
A

Suitable Boy
.
I
consider it’s exactly the type of work Billy would appreciate, especially as it
was
Mr
Seth’s first novel, so he’ll discover what
he’s up against.

When I leave
him, the pool table is occupied, the queue for the two telephones is perpetual,
and the afternoon film is
Carry on
Camping
. I return to my cell, door unlocked, and continue writing.

Supper.
I risk a vegetable fritter and two prison potatoes
(three mistakes). I continue to drink my bottled water as if I have an endless
supply (the temperature today is 91°).

Double-bubble
is fast looming, and I’ll need to see Del Boy fairly soon if I am to survive.

As I move down
the hotplate, Andy (murder) slips two chocolate ice-creams onto my tray.

‘Put one in
your pocket,’ he whispers. Now I discover what the word treat really means.

Del Boy is
standing at the other end of the counter in his role as number one hotplate
man.
An official title.
As I pass the custard pie, I
ask if we could meet up later. He nods.

He can smell
when someone’s in trouble. As a Listener, Derek is allowed to visit any cell if
another inmate needs to discuss a personal problem. And I have a personal
problem. I’m running out of water.

I settle down
to go over my script for the day before turning to the post. The pattern
continues unabated, but to my surprise, few mention the Kurds. Paul
(credit-card fraud) told me when I was queuing up at the canteen that
The Times
had made it clear that I had
no involvement with the collecting or distributing of any monies. That had been
the responsibility of the Red Cross. However, there was one letter in the pile
that didn’t fall into any of the usual slots.

I have now been
locked up in a Category A, high-security prison for two weeks, which I share
with thirty-two murderers, and seventeen other lifers mainly convicted of
attempted murder or manslaughter; I’ve lost my mother, who I adored; I’ve been
incarcerated on the word of a man who colluded with the
News of the World
to set me up, and by a woman who is a
self-confessed thief; and I’m about to be sent to the Isle of Wight, a C-cat
prison, because of the word of Baroness Nicholson. So I confess I had to
chuckle, a rare event recently, when I received the following missive.

Chan’s Optometrist
Mr
J Archer
Belmarsh
House
Belmarsh
South East London
Mr
Kenneth Chan BSc.
MCOptom
.

90 High Street
Lee-on-
Solent
Hampshire PO13 9DA

31/7/2001

Dear Mr. Archer
I am sorry to trouble you. The reason I write to you is because one of my
patients like your spectacles (The rimless pair you wore when you went to the
funeral). I would
 
be most grateful if you can let me know the
brand, the model number, the
colour
and the size of
the frame. All these information should be printed on the sides of the frame.

Your reply will
be appreciated.

Thank you for
your attention!

90 High Street, Lee-on-
Solent
, Hampshire
PO 13 9DA Telephone.
023 92 551919

My cell door is
unlocked by an officer and Del Boy is allowed to join me. His smile is as wide
as ever, as he strolls in looking like a rent collector visiting someone who
doesn’t always pay on time. He takes a seat on the end of the bed. For some time
we discuss his upcoming appeal and the fact that he cannot read or write. It
transpires that he can make out the odd word if he concentrates, but can only
sign his name.

‘I’ve never
needed much more,’ he explains. ‘I’m a barrow boy, not a banker.’

He makes a fair
point, because were you to close your eyes and listen to him speak, although
he’s quite unable to hide his cockney upbringing you certainly wouldn’t know he
was black. He promises to take reading lessons just as soon as I depart for the
Isle of Wight. I’m not convinced he’ll ever find out which floor the education
department is on, until the curriculum includes ‘
doublebubble
’.

‘Now how can I
help?’ he asks.
‘Because I’m the man.’

‘Well, if
you’re the man, Derek, I’m running out of water, among other things.’

‘No problem,’
he replies, ‘and what are the other things?’

‘I’d like three
bottles of Highland Spring, two packets of
McVitie’s
chocolate biscuits and a tube of toothpaste.’

‘No problem,’
he repeats. ‘They’ll be delivered to your cell in the morning, squire.’

‘And no double-bubble?’

‘No
double-bubble.’ He hesitates.
‘As long as you agree never to
say anything because if anyone found out it wouldn’t do my reputation any
good.’

‘No problem,’ I
hear myself saying.

On the outside,
in that world I have vacated, a handful of people can make things happen. The
secret is to know that handful of people. It’s no different on the inside.
Derek ‘Del Boy’ Bicknell is a natural Chief Whip, Fletch, the Leader of the
Opposition, Billy, Secretary of State for Education, Tony, Chancellor of the
Exchequer,
Paul
, Home Secretary, and Colin, Secretary
of State for
Defence
. Wherever you are, in whatever
circumstances, leadership will always emerge.

Block One, spur
one, houses thirty-two murderers, seventeen lifers, and, without realizing it,
has formed an inmates’ Cabinet. Nothing on paper, nothing official, but it
works.

After Derek
departs, I settle down on my bed to finish John Grisham’s
The Partner
.

It’s too long,
but what a storyteller.

I put my head
on the pillow. I can scarcely believe it, no more rap music. Well done,
Mitchell.

A full night’s sleep.
For the first time I can hear the cars
on the road in the distance. I write for two hours, interrupted only by the occasional
bark of an Alsatian.

Breakfast.

Frosties
and long-life milk (second day).

Association.
I remind Derek of my acute water-shortage
problem. Now down to half a bottle. It’s all under control, he claims.

I line up with the
other prisoners for the gym.

Derek Jones
(GBH, artist) spots me on the middle corridor and tells me that he did a spell
at
Camphill
on the Isle of Wight. I quiz him, and
discover that it has a fully equipped gym, one of the best in the country (by
that he means in prisons), but he adds alarmingly that, ‘It’s full of
shit-heads and scum.
Young
tearaways
who think of themselves as gangsters because they’ve robbed some old lady.