Heaven

DAY 287 WEDNESDAY 1 MAY 2002

10.30 am

Strange goings-on in the camp today. Tony, a well-known drug dealer, has collapsed after taking an overdose only hours before he’s due to be released. What kind of problems can he have on the outside, that he considers suicide a better way out than the front gate?

Tony has been a regular at the hospital over the past few weeks, so there’s no way of knowing if he’s been storing up pills, and how many he swallowed today. Rather than wait for an ambulance, Tony’s been rushed into the Pilgrim Hospital in the prison mini-bus, accompanied by two officers. I’ll know more tonight.

6.00 pm

Tony has just returned to the camp to spend his final night in jail. They pumped out his stomach, so he’ll still leave us at 8 am tomorrow. But how long will he survive on the outside?

7.08 pm

I have just returned from an hour’s walk around the playing field with the intention of watching Hendry vs. Doherty in the quarter-final of the World Championship snooker, [29] when there’s a knock on my door.

It’s Tony clutching a letter that he wants me to hand to sister, but he asks me to read it first. It’s a two-sided handwritten missive, apologizing for his behaviour over the past few weeks, and thanking sister for her kindness and understanding. I promise to give it to her tomorrow morning. Tony is just about to leave when I ask him if he’d be willing to answer a few questions about drugs. I quite expect him to tell me what I can do with myself, using the usual prison vernacular, but to my surprise he takes a seat in the waiting room and says, ‘Ask me anything you want, Jeff. I don’t give a fuck, I’m out of here first thing in the morning.’

During the next hour, I ask him question after question, all of which he answers with a brutal frankness.

‘Did you try to commit suicide?’

‘No, I just OD’d.’

‘How often do you take heroin?’

‘While I’ve been here, usually four times a day. When I wake in the morning, just after dinner, then again after tea and just before I go to bed.’

‘Do you inject it, sniff it or smoke it?’

‘Smoke it,’ Tony replies. ‘Only fuckin’ morons inject it. I’ve seen too many crack-heads get HIV or hepatitis B by injecting themselves with someone else’s needle. While I’ve been in jail, I’ve seen needles used by a hundred different inmates. Don’t forget, Jeff, 235,000 people in Britain are regular heroin users, and if you consider their families, over a million people must be involved. Heroin costs the NHS three billion a year.’

‘How do you get the heroin into prison?’

‘There are several ways, but the most common is to pick it up from a dealer when you’re out on a weekend leave, and then pack a couple of ounces in a condom and stuff it up your rectum. No officer enjoys checking up there.’

‘A couple of ounces?’

‘That was all I could afford this time. My record “on the out” was coming back from Holland with seven ounces of marijuana.’

‘How much would that be worth?’

‘If it’s pure, the best, you could be talking around a hundred grand.’

‘So when you bring the drugs back into the prison, are they just for you?’

‘No, no, no, I have to pay my supplier “on the out”. I’m only a dealer. Dealers are either kings or pawns. I’m a pawn. A king rarely takes drugs, just brings them in from abroad and distributes them among his pawns, most of whom only deal so they can satisfy their own craving.’

‘So how many of the two hundred inmates at NSC are on heroin?’

He pauses to consider the question. ‘Thirty-nine that I’m aware of,’ he says.

‘But that’s around twenty-five per cent.’

‘Yeah,’ he replies, matter-of-factly.

‘How do you pay back the king dealer while you’re on the inside?’

‘Easy,’ says Tony. ‘I only sell to those inmates who have someone on the outside who will hand over cash direct to my dealer. I never supply until the money has been received.’

‘But that could take days, and if you’re in the grip of a craving…’

‘It only takes one phone call, and an hour later I check with the dealer and if he’s received the cash, then I supply.’

‘If you were on the outside and not a dealer, how much would you need to cover your own addiction?’

‘Three hundred quid a day.’

‘But that’s a hundred thousand pounds a year – cash.’

‘Yeah, but as a dealer I can earn twice that, and still get my fix four times a day.’

Tony goes on to talk about his fears after he’s released tomorrow morning. His parents will come to pick him up at eight o‘clock. They believe he’s kicked the habit following a spell in special prison in Devon, where they weaned him off heroin for fifteen months. But, once he was considered cured, they transferred him to a D-cat, in this case NSC, where it was ‘in his face’, and within weeks he was addicted again.

‘I won’t live to see fifty,’ Tony says. ‘I’ll have been in jail for over half my life.’ He pauses. ‘I wish I’d never taken that first freebie when I was fifteen. You’ll pass ten of us in the street every day, Jeff, and you won’t have been aware. Perhaps you will from now on.’

Tony left the hospital at 7.28 pm.

I handed his letter to sister the following morning.