Heaven (A Prison Diary 3)

Matthew and I have lunch in the canteen with the other orderlies, and are joined by Roger (lifer, murdered his wife), who berated me about England losing to Ireland on Saturday.

‘But you sound Welsh?’ I venture.

‘I am,’ he replies, ‘but I don’t care who beats the English. It’s one of the few pleasures I get in here.’

1.00 pm

Mr New arrives in the office, having spent the morning in court on a domestic matter. One has a tendency to forget that prison officers have problems of their own.

Matthew and I discuss how to improve office efficiency. I’d like to clear out every drawer and cupboard and start again. He agrees. We’re about to begin, when the door opens and the governing governor walks in. Mr Lewis greets me with a warm, jovial smile. He asks Matthew to leave us and wastes no time with small talk.

‘The press,’ he tells me, ‘are still camped at both ends of the prison.’ And he adds that a prisoner has been caught with an expensive camera and long lens in his room. Mr Lewis has no idea which paper smuggled it in, or how much money was involved. The inmate concerned is already on his way to a C-cat, and will not be allowed to return to an open prison. Apparently several prisoners have complained about the press invading their privacy, and the governor has given his assurance that if a photograph of them appears in a national newspaper, they have legal recourse — a rule that doesn’t seem to apply to me. We then discuss my move to Spring Hill before the governor calls Matthew back in. Mr Lewis grants him a further two days compassionate leave, which will allow Matthew to spend five days with his father. Mr Lewis appears to have combined compassion and common sense, while remaining inside the Home Office guidelines.

4.00 pm

Mr New arrives back in the office, anxious to know what the governor wanted to see me about. I don’t mention the camera as Mr Lewis specifically asked me not to. I tell him that Mr Lewis intends to speak to the governor of Spring Hill, but he’s leaving all the paperwork to him.

‘It’s been dealt with,’ Mr New replies. ‘I’ve already sent all the documents to my opposite number.’

4.30 pm

I ask Matthew, on a visit to his room in the south block, if he could redo the ‘officers list of needs’ presently listed on the back of the kitchen cabinet, so that it’s as smart as the one Doug displays in the hospital. I glance up at Matthew’s bookshelf: Pliny the Younger and Augustus Caesar. He asks me if I’ve read Herodotes.

‘No,’ I confess, ‘I’m still circa 1774, currently reading about John Adams and the first Congress. I’ll need a little longer sentence if I’m ever to get back to 484 BC.’

5.00 pm

I return to my room. I hate the north block. It’s noisy, dirty and smelly (we’re opposite the pig farm). I lock myself in and write for a couple of hours.

7.00 pm

I stroll across to Doug (tax avoidance) in the hospital. He allows me the use of his bathroom. Once I’ve had a bath and put on clean clothes, I feel almost human.

Clive (fraud) joins us after his day job in the fruit factory. He tells me that his fellow workers believe what they read about me in the Sun and the Mirror. I despair.

8.15 pm

I leave the hospital and return for roll-call before going back to my room to write for a couple hours. The tannoy keeps demanding that Jackson should report for roll-call. He’s probably halfway to Boston by now.

10.00 pm

Final roll-call. Mr Hughes waves from the other end of the corridor to show my name has been ticked off. He’s already worked out that I will be the last person to abscond. I certainly wouldn’t get halfway to Boston before being spotted.

DAY 97

TUESDAY 23 OCTOBER 2001

6.03 am

All the lifers at NSC are coming to the end of their sentence and are being prepared to re-enter the outside world. The very fact that they have progressed from an A-cat, through B, C to D over a period of twenty years, is proof that they want a second chance.

One of the fascinating things about murderers — and we have a dozen or more at NSC — is that you cannot generalize about them. However, I have found that they roughly fall into two categories: those who are first offenders and unlikely to commit another crime, especially after twenty years in jail, and those who are evil and should be locked away in an A-cat for the rest of their lives.

Almost all the lifers at NSC fall into the former category; otherwise they would never have made it to an open prison. Bob, Chris, Mike and Roger are all now middle aged and harmless. This might seem strange to those reading this diary, but I feel none of the fear when I’m with them that I do with some of the young tearaways who only have a few weeks left to serve.

8.30 am

Matthew starts cleaning out the cupboard and drawers, while I concentrate on the new inductees. There are fifteen of them, and it’s lunchtime before the last one has all his questions answered.