Hell (A Prison Diary 1)

After a second session of writing, the cell door is opened and we are let out for Association. I join the lifers on the ground floor, which has an identical layout to House Block Three. The lifers (23 murderers plus a handful of ABH and GBH* to make up the numbers) range in age from nineteen to fifty, and view me with considerable suspicion. Not only because I’m a Conservative millionaire, but far worse, I will only be with them for a few days before I’m dispatched to an open prison. Something they won’t experience for at least another ten years. It will take a far greater effort to break down the barriers with this particular group than the young fledgeling criminals of House Block Three.

As I stroll around, I stop to glance at the TV. A man of about my age is watching Errol Flynn and David Niven in the black-and-white version of The Charge of the Light Brigade. I take a seat next to him.

‘I’m David,’ he says. ‘You haven’t shaved today.’

I confess my sin, and explain that I was in the process of doing so when an officer told me I would be moving.

‘Understood,’ said David. ‘But I have to tell you, Jeffrey, you’re too old for designer stubble. All the lifers shave,’ he tells me. ‘You’ve got to cling on to whatever dignity you can in a hellhole like this,’ he adds, ‘and a warm shower and a good shave are probably the best way to start the day.’ David goes on chatting during the film as if it was nothing more than background muzak. He apologizes for not having read any of my novels, assuring me that his wife has enjoyed all of them, but he only finds time to read whenever he’s in jail. I resist asking the obvious question.

‘What are you reading at the moment?’ I enquire.

‘Ackroyd’s Life of Dickens,’ he replies. And, as if he senses my incredulity, adds, ‘Mr Micawber, what a character, bit like my father to be honest, always in debt. Now remind me, what was his Christian name?’

‘Wilkins,’ I reply.

‘Just testing, Jeffrey, just testing. Actually I tried to get one of your books out of the library the other day, but they’ve removed them all from the shelves. A diabolical liberty, that’s what I’d call it. I told them I wanted to read it, not steal the bloody thing.’ I begin to notice how few prisoners use bad language in front of me. One of the other inmates, who has been watching the TV, leans across and asks me if the story’s true. I can just about recall Tennyson’s poem of the gallant six hundred, and I’m fairly certain Errol Flynn didn’t ride through the enemy lines, and thrust a sword into the heart of their leader.

‘Of course he did,’ says David, ‘it was in his contract.’

On this occasion we do get to see the closing titles, because the duty officer has checked what time the film finishes. He prefers not to have thirty or forty disenchanted lifers on his hands.

At five we’re invited to return to our cells for lock-up. This invitation takes the form of an officer bellowing at the top of his voice. On arrival, I find another 200 letters waiting for me on the bottom bunk. All of them have been opened, as per prison regulations, to check they do not contain any drugs, razor blades or money. Reading every one of them kills another couple of hours while you’re ‘banged up’. I’m beginning to think in prison jargon.

The public seems genuinely concerned about my plight. Many of them comment on the judge’s summing-up and the harshness of the sentence, while others point out that bank robbers, paedophiles and even those charged with manslaughter often get off with a two- or three-year sentence. The recurring theme is ‘What does Mr Justice Potts have against you?’ I confess I don’t know the answer to that question, but what cannot be denied is that I asked my barrister, Nick Purnell, on the third, fourth and seventh days of the trial to speak to the judge privately in chambers about his obvious prejudice, and request a retrial. However, my silk advised against this approach, on the grounds that it would only turn the whole trial into an all-out battle between the two of us. Lest you might think I am making this all up conveniently after the event, I also confided my fears to the Honourable Michael Beloff QC, Gilbert Gray QC and Johnnie Nutting QC during the trial.

It wasn’t until the second hour that I came across a letter demanding that I should apologize to all those I had let down. The next letter in the pile is from Mary. I read it again and again. She begins by remarking that she couldn’t remember when she had last written to me. She reminds me that she is off to Strathclyde University this morning to chair the summer school on solar energy, accompanied by the world’s press and my son Will. Thank God for Will. He’s been a tower of strength. At the end of the week, she flies to Dresden to attend another conference, and is hoping to be back in time to visit me at Belmarsh on Sunday morning. I miss her and the children, of course I do, but above anything I hope it won’t be too long before the press become bored with me and allow Mary to carry on with her life.

When I come to the end of the letters, Terry helps me put them into four large brown envelopes so they can be sent on to Alison, my PA, in order that everyone who has taken the trouble to write receives a reply. While Terry is helping me, he begins to tell me his life story and how he ended up being in jail. He’s not a lifer, which is perhaps another reason they asked him if he was willing to share a cell with me.

Terry has been in prison twice, graduating via Borstal and a remand centre. He began sniffing solvents as a child, before moving on to cannabis by the age of twelve. His first offence was robbing a local newsagent because he needed money for his drug habit. He was sentenced to two years and served one. His second charge was for robbing a jeweller’s in Margate of £3,000 worth of goods for which he hoped to make around £800 from a London fence. The police caught him red-handed (his words), and he was sentenced to five years. He was twenty-two at the time, and served three and a half years of that sentence before being released.

Terry had only been out for seven months when he robbed an optician’s – designer goods, Cartier, Calvin Klein and Christian Dior, stolen to order. This time he was paid £900 in cash, but arrested a week later. The fingerprints on the shop window he put his fist through matched his, leaving the police with only one suspect. The judge sentenced him to another five years.

Terry hopes to be released in December of this year. Prison, he claims, has weaned him off drugs and he’s only thankful that he’s never tried heroin. Terry is nobody’s fool, and I only hope that when he gets out he will not return for a third time. He swears he won’t, but a prison officer tells me that two-thirds of repeat offenders are back inside within twelve months.

‘We have our regulars just like any Blackpool hotel, except we don’t charge for bed and breakfast.’

Terry is telling me about his mother, when suddenly there is a wild commotion of screaming and shouting that reverberates throughout the entire block. It’s the first time I’m glad that my cell door is locked. The prisoners in Block One are yelling at a man who is being escorted to the medical centre on the far side of the yard. I remember it well.

‘What’s all that about?’ I ask as I stare out of our cell window.

‘He’s a nonce,’ Terry explains.

‘Nonce?’

‘Prison slang for a nonsense merchant, a paedophile. If he’d been on this block we would have jugged him long ago.’

‘Jugged him?’

‘A jug of boiling hot water,’ Terry explains, ‘mixed with a bag of sugar to form a syrup. Two cons would hold him down while the liquid is poured slowly over his face.’

‘My God, that must be horrific.’

‘First the skin peels off your face and then the sugar dissolves, so you end up disfigured for the rest of your life – no more than he deserves,’ Terry adds.

‘Have you ever witnessed that?’ I ask.