Heaven (A Prison Diary 3)

DAY 437

SATURDAY 28 September 2002

12 noon

I’m standing in line for lunch wondering if anything will be edible. I spot an apple. I must remember to write to Wendy and congratulate her on the standard of the food at North Sea Camp. A prisoner, three ahead of me in the queue, gruffly asks for some rice. The server slams a ladle-full down on his tin tray.

‘Is that all I fuckin’ get?’ asks the inmate, to which the server replies, ‘Move along, you fuckin’ muppet.’ The prisoner drops his tray on the floor, charges round to the back of the counter and punches the server on the nose. In the ensuing fight, the server crashes his heavy ladle over the other prisoner’s head and blood spurts across the food. The rest of the queue form a ring around the two combatants. Prisoners never join in someone else’s quarrel, only too aware of the consequences, but it doesn’t stop them jeering and cheering, some even taking bets. The fight continues for over a minute before an alarm goes off, bringing officers running from every direction.

By the time the officers arrive, there’s blood everywhere. It takes five of them to drag the two men apart. The two combatants are then frogmarched off to segregation.37

5.00 pm

I’m not eating the prison food. Once again, I have to rely on chocolate biscuits and blackcurrant juice. And once again I have a supply problem, which was taken care of at Belmarsh by ‘Del Boy’. I quickly discover Lincoln’s equivalent, Devon.

Devon is the spur’s senior cleaner. He tells me with considerable pride that he is forty-one, has five children by three different women and already has five grandchildren. I tell him my needs. He smiles; the smile of a man who can deliver.

Within the hour, I have a second pillow, a blanket, two bottles of water, a KitKat and a copy of yesterday’s Times. By the way, like Del Boy, Devon is West Indian. As Devon is on remand, he’s allowed far longer out of his cell than a convicted prisoner. He’s been charged with attacking a rival drug dealer with a machete (GBH). He cut off the man’s right arm, so he’s not all that optimistic about the outcome of his forthcoming trial. ‘After all,’ he says, flashing a smile, ‘they’ve still got his arm, haven’t they.’ He pauses. ‘I only wish it had been his head.’ I return to my cell, feeling sick.

6.00 pm

I find it difficult to adjust to being banged up again for twenty-two hours a day, but imagine my surprise when, during association – that forty-five-minute break when you are allowed out of your cell I bump into Clive. Do you remember Clive? He used to come to the hospital in the evening at North Sea Camp and play backgammon with me, and he nearly always won. Well, he’s back on remand, this time charged with money laundering. As we walk around the yard, he tells me what’s been happening in his life since we last met.

It seems that after being released from NSC, Clive formed a company that sold mobile phones to the Arabs, who paid for them with cash. He then distributed the cash to different banks right around the globe, while keeping 10 per cent for himself.

‘Why’s that illegal?’ I ask.

‘There never were any phones in the first place,’ he admits.

Clive seems confident that they won’t be able to prove money laundering, but may get him for failure to pay VAT.38

During association, I phone Mary. While she’s briefing me on Narey’s attempts on radio and television to defend his decision to send me to Lincoln, another fight breaks out. I watch as two more prisoners are dragged away. Mary goes on to tell me that Narey is backtracking as fast as he can, and the Home Office is nowhere to be seen. The commentators seem convinced that I will be transferred back to a D-cat fairly quickly. It can’t be too soon, I tell her, this place is full of violent, drug-addicted thugs. I can only admire the way the officers keep the lid on such a boiling cauldron.39

While I roam around association with Jason, he points at three Lithuanians who are standing alone in the far corner.

‘They’re on remand awaiting trial for murder,’ he tells me. ‘Even the officers are fearful of them.’ Devon joins us, and adds that they are hit men for the Russian mafia and were sent to England to carry out an execution. They have been charged with killing three of their countrymen, chopping them up into little pieces, putting them through a mincer and then feeding them to dogs.

DAY 438

SUNDAY 20 SEPTEMBER 2002

11.00 am

The cell door is opened and an officer escorts me to the chapel: anything to get out of my cell. After all, the chapel is the largest room in the prison. The service is Holy Communion with the added pleasure of singing by choristers from Lincoln Cathedral. They number seventeen, the congregation thirteen.

I sit next to a man who has been on A block for the past ten weeks. He’s fifty-three years old, serving a two-year sentence. It’s his first offence, and he has no history of drugs or violence.

The Home Secretary can have no idea of the damage he’s causing to such people by forcing them to mix in vile conditions with murderers, thugs and drug addicts. Such men should be sent to a D-cat the day they are sentenced.40

12 noon

I go to the library and select three books, the maximum allowed. I spend the next twenty hours in my cell, reading.

10.00 pm

I end the day with Alfred Hitchcock’s Stories To Be Read With The Doors Locked. Somewhat ironic. ,

DAY 439