Hell (7 page)

‘Not well,’ I
admit. ‘Being locked up for seventeen hours…but I’m sure you’ve heard it all
before.’

Mr
Peel begins to talk about his job and the problems the
prison service is going through. He’s been a prison officer for ten years, and
his basic pay is still only £24,000, which with overtime at £13.20 an hour
(maximum allowed, nine hours a week) he can push up to £31,000. I didn’t tell
him that it’s less than I pay my secretary. He then explains that his partner
is also a prison officer and she carries out her full overtime stint, which
means they end up with £60,000 a year between them, but don’t see a lot of each
other. After getting his message across, he changes the subject back to
Belmarsh
.

‘This is only a
reception prison,’ he explains. ‘If you’re convicted and not on remand, we move
you to another prison as quickly as possible. But I’m sorry to say we see the
same old faces returning again and again. They aren’t all bad, you know, in
fact if it wasn’t for drugs, particularly heroin, sixty per cent of them
wouldn’t even
be
here.’

‘Sixty per cent?’
I repeat.

‘Yes, most of
them are in for petty theft to pay for their drug habit or are part of the drug
culture.’

‘And can they
still get hold of drugs in prison?’

‘Oh yes, you’ll
have noticed how rudimentary the searches are. That’s because prison
regulations don’t permit us to do any more.

We know where
they’re hiding the drugs and every method they use to bring them in, but
because of the Human Rights Act we’re not always allowed to carry out a
thorough enough
search
. Some of them are even willing
to swallow plastic packets full of heroin, they’re so desperate.’

‘But if the
packet were to burst?’

‘They’ll die
within hours,’ he says. ‘One prisoner died that way last month, but you’d be
surprised how many of them are still willing to risk it. Did you hear the fire
alarm go off last night?’

‘Yes, it woke
me,’ I told him.

‘It was a
heroin addict who’d set fire to his cell. By the time I got there he was
cutting his wrist with a razor, because he wanted to suffer even more pain to
help take his mind off the craving. We whisked him off to the medical wing, but
there wasn’t much they could do except
patch
him up. He’ll
go through exactly the same trauma again tonight, so we’ll just have to mount a
suicide watch and check his cell every fifteen minutes.’

A horn sounds
to announce that the exercise period is over. ‘I suppose you’d better get back
to your cell,’ he says. ‘If you weren’t writing a book, I can’t imagine what
the authorities imagine will be gained by sending you here.’

I return to my
cell and continue writing until supper. When my door is unlocked again I go
down to the hotplate on the ground floor. I settle for a Thermos of hot water,
an apple and a plastic bag containing tomorrow’s breakfast. Back in my cell I
munch a packet of crisps and with the aid of half the hot water in the Thermos
make a Cup a Soup – mushroom. The cell door is slammed shut at five thirty, and
will not be opened again until nine thirty tomorrow morning, by which time I
will have used the other half of the water from the Thermos to take a shave, in
the same bowl as I eat the soup.

I spend the
next couple of hours following the Open Golf on Radio 5 Live. David Duval, an
American, wins his first Open, to see his name inscribed on the silver claret
jug. Colin Montgomery and Ian
Woosnam
put up a
spirited fight, but are not around at the seventy-second hole.

I flick over to
Radio 4 to hear Steve Norris (Vice-Chairman of the Conservative Party in charge
of women’s affairs) telling the world he always knew I was a bad man. In the
election among Party members for candidate for Mayor of London, I defeated
Mr
Norris by 71 per cent to 29 per cent.

I turn the
radio off and read a couple of chapters of
The
Moon’s a Balloon
, which takes
Mr
Niven
to
Sandhurst
before being
commissioned into the King’s Own Highlanders. I rest my head on the rock-hard
pillow, and, despite the prisoners shouting from cell to cell and loud rap
music coming from every corner of the block, I somehow fall asleep.

The sun is
shining through the bars of my window on what must be a glorious summer day.
I’ve been incarcerated in a cell five paces by three for twelve and a half
hours, and will not be let out again until midday; eighteen and a half hours of
solitary confinement.

There is a
child of seventeen in the cell below me who has been charged with shoplifting –
his first offence, not even convicted – and he is being locked up for eighteen
and a half hours, unable to speak to anyone. This is Great Britain in the
twenty-first century, not Turkey, not Nigeria, not Kosovo, but Britain.

I can hear the
right-wingers assuring us that it will be character-building and teach the lad
a lesson. What stupidity. It’s far more likely that he will become antagonistic
towards authority and once he’s released, turn to a life of crime. This same
young man will now be spending at least a fortnight with murderers, rapists,
burglars and drug addicts. Are these the best tutors he can learn from?

12 noon
I am visited by a charming lady
who spotted me sitting in church on Sunday. I end up asking her more questions
than she asks me.

It turns out that
she visits every prisoner who signs the pledge – I fear I didn’t – and any
inmate who attends chapel for the first time. She gives each prisoner a Bible
and will sit and listen to their problems for hours.

She kindly
answers all my questions. When she leaves, I pick up my plastic tray, plastic
bowl, plastic plate, plastic knife, fork and spoon, leave my cell to walk down
to the hot
plate for lunch.*

One look at
what’s on offer and once again I return to my cell empty-handed. An old lag on
his way back to the top floor tells me that
Belmarsh
has the worst grub of any jail in Britain. As he’s been a resident of seven
prisons during the past twenty years, I take his word for it. An officer slams
my cell door closed. It will not open again until four o’clock. I’ve had
precisely twelve minutes of freedom during the last twenty-two and a half
hours.

After another
four hours, I’m let out for Association. During this blessed release, I stop to
glance at the TV in the
centre
of the room that’s
surrounded by a dozen prisoners.

They’re
watching a cowboy film starring Ray
Milland
, who
plays the sheriff. Normally I would flick to another channel but today it’s the
selection of the majority so I hang in there for ten minutes before finally
giving up and moving on to the dominoes table.

An Irishman
joins me and asks if I can spare him a minute. He’s about five feet eight, with
two scars etched across his face – one above his left eyebrow, short, the
stitches still showing, and another down his right cheek, long and red. The
latter I suspect is the more recent. Despite this disfigurement, he has that
soft lilt of his countrymen that I can never resist.

‘I’m up in
court next week,’ he says.

‘What for?’
I ask.

‘You’d rather
not know,’ he replies, ‘but all I want to find out is, once I’m in court, am I
allowed
to defend
myself?’

‘Yes,’ I tell
him.

‘But would it
be better to give my side of the story to a barrister and then let him brief
the jury?’

I consider this
for a moment because during my seven-week trial I gained some experience of the
legal profession. ‘On balance,’ I tell him, ‘I would take advantage of any
legal expertise on offer, rather than rely on your own cunning.’ He nods and
slips away. I dread meeting up with this sharp, intelligent Irishman at some later
date to be told that his barrister was a fool.

I stroll back
across the room to see how the film is progressing. Being a western, a gunfight
to end all gunfights is just about to take place when the officer on duty
shouts, ‘Back to your cells.’ A groan goes up, but to be fair to the duty
officer, he’s seated at the far end of the room and has no idea that the film
only has another five minutes to run.

‘The good guys
win, Ray
Milland
gets the girl, and the baddies are
all blown away,’ I tell the audience assembled round the TV.

‘You’ve seen it
before?’ asks one of the inmates.

‘No, you stupid
fucker,’ says another. ‘We always lose. Have you ever known it end any other
way?’

Once locked
back in my cell after the
fortyfive
-minute break, I
pour myself a glass of Buxton water, eat a packet of Smith’s crisps and nibble
away at an apple.
Having finished my five-minute non-prison
meal, I clean my teeth and settle down to another two hours of writing.

I’ve written
about a thousand words when I hear a key turning in the lock, always a welcome
distraction because, as I’ve mentioned before, an open door gives you a feeling
of freedom and the possibility that you might even be allowed to escape for a
few minutes.

I’m greeted by
a lady in civilian clothes who wears the inevitable badge – in her case,
Librarian. ‘Good afternoon,’ I say as I rise from my place and smile. She looks
surprised.

‘If a prisoner
asks you to sign a book, could you in future say no,’ she says without
bothering to introduce
herself
. I look puzzled; after
all, I’ve been asked to sign books for the past twenty-five years. ‘It’s just
that they are all library books,’ she continues, ‘and they’re being stolen.
They’ve now become like tobacco and
phonecards
, a
trading item for drugs, and are worth double with your signature.’

I assure her I
will not sign another library book. She nods and slams the door closed.

I continue
writing, aware that the next opportunity for a break will come when we have the
allocated forty-five minutes for afternoon exercise. I’m already becoming used
to the routine of the door opening, lining up to be searched, and then being
released into the yard. I’ve written about another two thousand words before
the door opens again.

Having gone
through the ritual, I stroll around the large square accompanied by Vincent
(burglary) and another man called Mark (driving offence), who supports Arsenal.
One
circuit,
and I discover that the only way to stop
Mark boring me to death about his
favourite
football
team is to agree with him that Arsenal, despite Manchester United’s recent
record, is the best team in England.

Desperate for a
change of subject, I point to a sad figure walking in front of us, the only
prisoner in the yard who looks older than me.

‘Poor old
thing,’ says Vincent. ‘He shouldn’t be here, but he’s what’s known as a bag man
– nowhere to go, so he ends up in prison.’

‘But what was
his crime?’ I ask.

‘Nothing, if the truth be known.
Every few weeks he throws a
brick through a shop window and then hangs around until the police turn up to
arrest him.’

‘Why would he
do that?’ I ask.

‘Because he’s
got nowhere to go and at least while he’s inside the poor old sod is guaranteed
a bed and three meals a day.’

‘But surely the
police have worked that out by now?’ I suggest.

‘Yes, of course
they have, so they advise the magistrate to bind him over. But he’s even found
a way round that, because the moment the magistrate fails to sentence him, he
shouts out at the top of his voice, “You’re a stupid old fucker, and I’m going
to throw a brick through your window tonight, so see you again tomorrow.” That
assures him at least another six weeks inside, which is exactly what he was
hoping for in the first place. He’s been sentenced seventy-three times in the
past thirty years, but never for more than three months. The problem is that
the system doesn’t know what to do with him.’

A young black
man runs past me, to the jeers of those lolling up against the perimeter fence.
He is not put off, and if anything runs a little faster. He’s lean and fit, and
looks like a
quartermiler
. I watch him, only to be
reminded that my planned summer holiday at the World Athletics Championships in
Edmonton with Michael
Beloff
has been exchanged for
three weeks in
Belmarsh
.

‘Let’s get
moving,’ whispers Vincent. ‘We want to avoid that one at any cost,’ he adds,
pointing to a lone prisoner walking a few paces ahead of us. Vincent doesn’t
speak again until we’ve overtaken him, and are out of earshot. He then answers
my unasked question. ‘He’s a double murderer – his wife and her boyfriend.’
Vincent goes on to describe how he killed them both. I found the details so
horrific that I must confess I didn’t feel able to include Vincent’s words in
this diary until six months after I’d left
Belmarsh
.

If you’re at
all squeamish, avoid reading the next three paragraphs.

This is
Vincent’s verbatim description.

That bastard returned home unexpectedly in
the middle of the day, to find his wife making love to another man. The man
tried to escape out of the bedroom window, but was knocked out with one punch.
He then tied the two of them next to each other on the bed, before going down
to the kitchen. He returned a few minutes later holding a serrated carving
knife with a seven-inch blade.

During the next hour, he stabbed the lover
eleven times making sure he was still alive before finally cutting off his
balls
.