Hell

Day 9 Friday 27 July 2001

2.11 am

I am woken in the middle of the night by rap music blasting out from a cell on the other side of the block. I can’t imagine what it must be like if you’re trying to sleep in the next cell, or even worse in the bunk below. I’m told that rap music is the biggest single cause of fights breaking out in prison. I’m not surprised. I had to wait until it was turned off before I could get back to sleep. I didn’t wake again until eight minutes past six. Amazingly, Terry can sleep through anything.

6.08 am

I write for two hours, and as soon as I’ve completed the first draft of what happened yesterday, I strip down to my underpants, put a towel round my waist, and place another one on the end of the bed with a bar of soap and a bottle of shampoo next to it.

My cell door is opened at eight twenty-three. I’m out of the starting gate like a thoroughbred, sprint along the corridor and into the shower room. Three of the four showers are already occupied by faster men than I. However, I still manage to capture the fourth stall, and once I’ve taken a long press-button shower, I feel clean for the first time in days.

When I return to my cell, Terry is still fast asleep, and even a prison officer unlocking the door doesn’t disturb him. The new officer introduces himself as Ray Marcus, and explains that he works in the censor’s department and is the other half of June Stelfox, who took care of my correspondence on House Block Three. His job is to check every item of mail a prisoner is sent, to make sure that they’re not receiving anything that is against the regulations: razor blades, drugs, money – or even food. To be fair, although the censors open every letter, they don’t read them. Ray is carrying a registered package which he slits open in front of me, and extracts a Bible. The eleventh in nine days. Like the others, I donate it to the chapel. He then asks if he can help in any way with my mail problem. Ray, as he prefers to be called, is courteous and seems almost embarrassed by the fact that I’m not allowed to open my own post. I tell him not to worry, because I haven’t opened my own post for years.

I hand over three large brown envelopes containing all the letters I’ve received the day before, plus the first week (70 pages) of my handwritten script, together with twelve first-class stamps. I ask if they can all be sent back to my PA, Alison, so that she can carry on as if I was on holiday or abroad. He readily agrees, but points out that as senior censor, he is entitled to read anything that I am sending out.

‘That’s fine by me,’ I tell him.

‘I’d rather wait until it’s published,’ he says with a grin. ‘After all, I’ve read everything else you’ve written.’

When he leaves he doesn’t close my door, as if he knows what a difference this simple gesture makes to a man who will be locked up for twenty-two hours every day. This privilege lasts only for a few minutes before another officer strolling by slams it shut, but I am grateful nevertheless.

9.00 am

Breakfast. A bowl of cornflakes with UHT milk from a carton that has been open, and not seen a fridge, for the past twenty-four hours. Wonderful.

10.09 am

Another officer arrives to announce that the Chaplain would like to see me. Glorious escape. He escorts me to the chapel – no search this time – where David Powe is waiting for me. He is wearing the same pale beige jacket, grey flannel trousers and probably the same dog collar as he did when he conducted the service on Sunday. He is literally down at heel. We chat about how I’m settling in – doesn’t everyone? – and then go on to discuss the fact that his sermon on Cain and Abel made it into Private Eye. He chuckles, obviously enjoying the notoriety.

David then talks about his wife, who’s the headmistress of a local primary school, and has written two books for HarperCollins on religion. They have two children, one aged thirteen and the other sixteen. When he talks about his parish – the other prisoners – it doesn’t take me long to realize that he’s a deeply committed Christian, despite his doubting and doubtful flock of murderers, rapists and drug addicts. However, he is delighted to hear that my cell-mate Terry reads the Bible every day. I confess to having never read Hebrews.

David asks me about my own religious commitment and I tell him that when I was the Conservative candidate for Mayor of London, I became aware of how many religions were being practised in the capital, and if there was a God, he had a lot of disparate groups representing him on Earth. He points out that in Belmarsh there are over a hundred Muslims, another hundred Roman Catholics, but that the majority of inmates are still C of E.

‘What about the Jews?’ I ask him.

‘Only one or two that I know of,’ he replies. ‘Their family upbringing and sense of community is so strong that they rarely end up in the courts or prison.’

When the hour is up – everything seems to have an allocated time – he blesses me, and tells me that he hopes to see me back in church on Sunday.

As it’s the biggest cell in the prison, he most certainly will.

11.10 am

Mr Weedon is waiting at the chapel door – sorry, barred gate – to escort me back to my cell. He says that Mr Marsland wants to see me again. Does this mean that they know when I’ll be leaving Belmarsh and where I’ll be going? I ask Mr Weedon but receive no response. When I arrive at Mr Marsland’s office, Mr Loughnane and Mr Gates are also present. They all look grim. My heart sinks and I now understand why Mr Weedon felt unable to answer my question.

Mr Marsland says that Ford Open Prison have turned down my application because they feel they can’t handle the press interest, so the whole matter has been moved to a higher level. For a moment I wonder if I will ever get out of this hellhole. He adds, hoping it will act as a sweetener, that he plans to move me into a single cell because Fossett (Terry) was caught phoning the Sun.

‘I can see that you’re disappointed about Ford,’ he adds, ‘but we’ll let you know where you’ll be going, and when, just as soon as they tell us.’ I get up to leave.

‘I wonder if you’d be willing to give another talk on creative writing?’ asks Mr Marsland. ‘After your last effort, several other prisoners have told us that they want to hear you speak.’

‘Why don’t I just do an eight-week course,’ I reply, ‘as it seems we’re going to be stuck with each other for the foreseeable future?’ I immediately feel guilty about my sarcasm. After all, it isn’t their fault that the Governor of Ford hasn’t got the guts to try and handle a tricky problem. Perhaps he or she should read the Human Rights Act, and learn that this is not a fair reason to turn down my request.

2.00 pm

A woman officer unlocks the cell door, a cigarette hanging from her mouth, [22] and tells Terry he has a visitor. Terry can’t believe it and tries to think who it could be. His father rarely speaks to him, his mother is dead, his brother is dying of Aids, he’s lost touch with his sister and his cousin’s in jail for murder. He climbs down from the top bunk, smiles for the first time in days, and happily troops out into the corridor, while I’m locked back in. I take advantage of Terry’s absence and begin writing the second draft of yesterday’s diary.

3.07 pm

Terry returns to the cell an hour later, dejected. A mistake must have been made because there turned out to be no visitor. They left him in the waiting room for over an hour while the other prisoners enjoyed the company of their family or friends.

I sometimes forget how lucky I am.

4.00 pm

Association. As I leave my cell and walk along the top landing, Derek Jones, a young double-strike prisoner, says he wants to show me something, and invites me back to his cell. He is one of those inmates whose tariff is open-ended, and although his case comes up for review by the Parole Board in 2005, he isn’t confident that they will release him.

‘I hear you’re writing a book,’ he says. ‘But are you interested in things they don’t know about out there?’ he asks, staring through his barred window. I nod. ‘Then I’ll tell you something they don’t even know about in here.’ He points to a large stereo in the corner of the room – probably the one that kept me awake last night. It resembles a spaceship. ‘That’s my most valuable possession in the world,’ he says. I don’t interrupt. ‘But I’ve got a problem.’ I still say nothing. ‘It runs on batteries, ‘cause I haven’t got any ice.’

‘Ice? Why would you need ice for a ghetto blaster?’

‘In Cell Electricity,’ he says laughing.

‘Ah, I see.’

‘Have you any idea how much batteries cost?’

‘No,’ I tell him.

‘£6.40 a time, and then they’re only good for twelve hours, so I wouldn’t be able to afford any tobacco if I had to buy new batteries every week.’ I still haven’t worked out where all this is leading. ‘But I never have to buy any batteries, do I?’

‘Don’t you?’ I say.

‘No,’ he replies, and then goes to a shelf behind his bed, and extracts a biro. He flicks off the little cap on the bottom and pulls out the refill, which has a coil of thin wire wrapped around it. He continues. ‘First, I make an earth by scraping off a little paint from the water pipe behind my bed, then I take off the plastic cover from the strip light on the ceiling and attach the other end of the wire to the little box inside the light.’ Derek can tell that I’m just about following this cunning subterfuge, when he adds, ‘Don’t worry about the details, Jeff, I’ve drawn you a diagram. That way,’ he says, ‘I get an uninterrupted supply of electricity at Her Majesty’s expense.’

My immediate reaction is, why isn’t he on the outside doing a proper job? I thank him and assure Derek the story will get a mention in my story.

‘What do I get out of it?’ he asks. ‘Because when I leave this place, all I have to my name other than that stereo is the ninety quid discharge money they give you.’ [23]

I assure Derek that my publishers will pay him a fee for the use of the diagram if it appears in the book. We shake on it.

5.05 pm

Mr Weedon returns to tell me that I am being moved to a single cell. Terry immediately becomes petulant and starts shouting that he’d been promised a single cell even before I’d arrived.

‘And you would have got one, Fossett,’ Mr Weedon replies, ‘if you hadn’t phoned the press and grassed on your cell-mate for a few quid.’

Terry continues to harangue the officer and I can only wonder how long he will last with such a short fuse once he returns to the outside world.

I gather up my possessions and move across from Cell 40 to 30 on the other side of the corridor. My fourth move in nine days. Taal, a six-foot four-inch Ghanaian who was convicted of murdering a man in Peckham despite claiming that he was in Brighton with his girlfriend at the time, returns to his old bunk in Cell 40. I feel bad about depriving Taal of his private cell, and it becomes yet another reason I want to move to a D-cat prison as soon as possible, so that he can have his single cell back.

I spend an hour filling up my cellophane bag, carrying it across the corridor, emptying it, then rearranging my belongings in Cell 30. I have just completed this task when my new cell door is opened, and I’m ordered to go down to the hotplate for supper.

6.00 pm

I once again settle for the vegetarian option, although Paul (murder and stamps), who ticks off each name on a clipboard at the hotplate, tells me that the chicken is passable. I risk it. He’s wrong again. I won’t give him a third chance.

During Association I spend half an hour with Billy Little (murder) in his cell, going over his work. He tells me he has at least another twenty years to serve as his tariff is open-ended, so I advise him to start writing a novel, even a trilogy. He looks doubtful. He’s not a man who’s ever put much faith in the word of a Conservative.

There’s a knock on the cell door and a massive giant of a man ambles into the room looking like a second-row forward in search of a scrum. I noticed him on the first day as he stood alone in the far corner of the room, staring silently through me. He was hard to miss at over six foot, weighing around twenty-one stone. He’s never said a word to me since my arrival on the spur, and I confess to being a little apprehensive about him, even frightened. He’s known as Fletch.

He’s come to ‘let me know’ that Terry is no longer complaining about my being moved into a single cell because he accepts that by phoning the Sun he was ‘out of order’, but he has since been warned that one of the Sunday papers is going to run a story about him hitting a woman over the head with a snooker ball wrapped in a sock. One of the many things prisoners will not tolerate is anyone attacking a woman. Terry has told Fletch that he’s terrified that some of the inmates will beat him up once the story is published. [24]^{Jeffrey Archer – %5bA Prison Diary 01%5d – Hell (v5.0) (html)/A_Prison_Diary.html – filepos494470} Fletch is letting it be known that he doesn’t want any trouble, ‘even though he accepts that the lad was stupid to have talked to the press in the first place’. Fletch looks at me and says, ‘I must be the only person on the spur who hasn’t spoken to you, but then I hate everything you stand for. Don’t take it personally,’ he adds and then leaves without another word.

Billy tells me that Fletch is one of the most respected prisoners on the spur and, to my surprise, a Listener. ‘Don’t worry about him,’ he adds, ‘because I can tell you that one of the reasons we have so little trouble on this wing is because he was a bouncer for a London nightclub before he ended up in here. Last year he single-handedly stopped a riot over the state of the food. The screws could never have contained the problem on their own, and they know it.’

I leave Billy and return to Association to play a couple of hands of Kaluki with Del Boy (murder), Colin (GBH) and Paul (murder – seventy-five years between them). I win the first hand and lose the second by 124 points. It’s been that sort of a day.

Just as I’m about to return to my cell for lock-up, Ms Roberts appears on the floor. Terry rushes across to her and begins an animated conversation. She does her best to calm him down. When he is placated enough to move on, I ask her if she’s had a call from my solicitor.

‘Yes,’ she replies, ‘and I’ll have a word with you first thing in the morning. I hope you’ll feel it’s good news.’ I don’t press her for any details because several other prisoners have formed a queue as they also wish to speak to the Deputy Governor before lock-up.

9.00 pm

It has, as I have already stated, been an up and down sort of day, but I feel a little better after Ms Roberts’ comments. What will she have to tell me tomorrow?

For the next couple of hours I go through another hundred letters that the censor has left on my bed. The pattern is now firmly set, but there is one letter in particular that amuses me – I am writing to give you my full support, as I suspect that no one else is bothering to do so at the present time. I smile because Ms Buxton of Northants reminds me just how fortunate I am to have so many people willing to fight my corner. I only have to think about Terry’s phantom visitor to realize just how lucky I am.