Purgatory

DAY 67 – SUNDAY 23 SEPTEMBER 2001

12.07 pm

Today is dominated by one incident worth recording in detail, and it all began while I was in my cell reading The Times.

I have already explained that during Association a group of West Indians play dominoes in the main room. The amount of noise that emanates from each move would lead one to believe that a heavyweight boxing contest was taking place, which is why a problem arises when a real incident occurs, because the uproar can hardly reach a higher pitch. However, this time the noise was accompanied by the ringing of bells and officers running from every direction towards the Association room. It was like being back in Belmarsh. By the time I made an entrance, the incident was well under control. However, several of the brothers still wished to give me their version of events.

It seems that one of the brothers had been moved from D to A block recently, ostensibly because he had been bullied. It seems that when he was out on a town visit to Norwich a couple of weeks ago, his mates gathered together a large sum of money so that he could pick up an order of drugs. A problem arose when he returned that night and didn’t have any of the gear with him. His excuse was he didn’t think he’d get the skag past the guards. However, he couldn’t come up with a convincing explanation for not being able to return their cash. When he was found cowering in his cell with a cut below his eye and a broken nose, the unit officer quickly moved him across to our block and, they hoped, out of harm’s way. However, during exercise yesterday the brothers on D block informed the brothers on A block how he’d stitched them up, and passed the responsibility of exacting revenge on to them.

Back to the Sunday afternoon game of dominoes, where a row broke out with the culprit. One of the players left the group, walked across to the snooker table, picked up a ball, turned round and hurled it at him. Amazingly, he hit the right man in the back of the head at thirty paces (there were eleven prisoners seated around the table at the time). The ball must have been propelled at about seventy-miles an hour, because it split the man’s head open. The pitcher ended up in segregation, while the victim is on his way to the local hospital. Both will appear in front of the governor later this week.

The usual punishment would be twenty-eight days added to both men’s sentences, which the governor can mete out without recourse to the courts and, in a case like this, an immediate transfer to different A- or B-cat establishments.

I go into great detail to describe this incident simply because those casually reading this diary might be left with an impression that life at Wayland is almost bearable. It isn’t. You can never be sure from one moment to the next if your life is in danger. On this block alone there are a dozen murderers, countless thugs and drug addicts with whom I have to co-exist every day.

I’m not unhappy to see my door slammed shut tonight.

My meeting with KPMG and that an announcement is likely to be made in the next couple of days. He confirms that they have been ready to move me for some time, and they are only waiting for a call from the police.

I return to my cell aware that when KPMG finally announce their findings, and the police confirm that they have dropped their enquiries, that the press coverage will be about a hundredth of that created by Ms Nicholson the day after she had appeared on Newsnight