A Prison Diary Read online

  ‘Of course he did,’ says David, ‘it was in his contract.’

  On this occasion we do get to see the closing titles, because the duty officer has checked what time the film finishes. He prefers not to have thirty or forty disenchanted lifers on his hands.

  At five we’re invited to return to our cells for lock-up. This invitation takes the form of an officer bellowing at the top of his voice. On arrival, I find another 200 letters waiting for me on the bottom bunk. All of them have been opened, as per prison regulations, to check they do not contain any drugs, razor blades or money. Reading every one of them kills another couple of hours while you’re ‘banged up’. I’m beginning to think in prison jargon.

  The public seems genuinely concerned about my plight. Many of them comment on the judge’s summing-up and the harshness of the sentence, while others point out that bank robbers, paedophiles and even those charged with manslaughter often get off with a two- or three-year sentence. The recurring theme is ‘What does Mr Justice Potts have against you?’ I confess I don’t know the answer to that question, but what cannot be denied is that I asked my barrister, Nick Purnell, on the third, fourth and seventh days of the trial to speak to the judge privately in chambers about his obvious prejudice, and request a retrial. However, my silk advised against this approach, on the grounds that it would only turn the whole trial into an all-out battle between the two of us. Lest you might think I am making this all up conveniently after the event, I also confided my fears to the Honourable Michael Beloff QC, Gilbert Gray QC and Johnnie Nutting QC during the trial.

  It wasn’t until the second hour that I came across a letter demanding that I should apologize to all those I had let down. The next letter in the pile is from Mary. I read it again and again. She begins by remarking that she couldn’t remember when she had last written to me. She reminds me that she is off to Strathclyde University this morning to chair the summer school on solar energy, accompanied by the world’s press and my son Will. Thank God for Will. He’s been a tower of strength. At the end of the week, she flies to Dresden to attend another conference, and is hoping to be back in time to visit me at Belmarsh on Sunday morning. I miss her and the children, of course I do, but above anything I hope it won’t be too long before the press become bored with me and allow Mary to carry on with her life.

  When I come to the end of the letters, Terry helps me put them into four large brown envelopes so they can be sent on to Alison, my PA, in order that everyone who has taken the trouble to write receives a reply. While Terry is helping me, he begins to tell me his life story and how he ended up being in jail. He’s not a lifer, which is perhaps another reason they asked him if he was willing to share a cell with me.

  Terry has been in prison twice, graduating via Borstal and a remand centre. He began sniffing solvents as a child, before moving on to cannabis by the age of twelve. His first offence was robbing a local newsagent because he needed money for his drug habit. He was sentenced to two years and served one. His second charge was for robbing a jeweller’s in Margate of £3,000 worth of goods for which he hoped to make around £800 from a London fence. The police caught him red-handed (his words), and he was sentenced to five years. He was twenty-two at the time, and served three and a half years of that sentence before being released.

  Terry had only been out for seven months when he robbed an optician’s – designer goods, Cartier, Calvin Klein and Christian Dior, stolen to order. This time he was paid £900 in cash, but arrested a week later. The fingerprints on the shop window he put his fist through matched his, leaving the police with only one suspect. The judge sentenced him to another five years.

  Terry hopes to be released in December of this year. Prison, he claims, has weaned him off drugs and he’s only thankful that he’s never tried heroin. Terry is nobody’s fool, and I only hope that when he gets out he will not return for a third time. He swears he won’t, but a prison officer tells me that two-thirds of repeat offenders are back inside within twelve months.

  ‘We have our regulars just like any Blackpool hotel, except we don’t charge for bed and breakfast.’

  Terry is telling me about his mother, when suddenly there is a wild commotion of screaming and shouting that reverberates throughout the entire block. It’s the first time I’m glad that my cell door is locked. The prisoners in Block One are yelling at a man who is being escorted to the medical centre on the far side of the yard. I remember it well.

  ‘What’s all that about?’ I ask as I stare out of our cell window.

  ‘He’s a nonce,’ Terry explains.

  ‘Nonce?’

  ‘Prison slang for a nonsense merchant, a paedophile. If he’d been on this block we would have jugged him long ago.’

  ‘Jugged him?’

  ‘A jug of boiling hot water,’ Terry explains, ‘mixed with a bag of sugar to form a syrup. Two cons would hold him down while the liquid is poured slowly over his face.’

  ‘My God, that must be horrific.’

  ‘First the skin peels off your face and then the sugar dissolves, so you end up disfigured for the rest of your life – no more than he deserves,’ Terry adds.

  ‘Have you ever witnessed that?’ I ask.

  ‘Three times,’ he replies matter-of-factly. ‘One nonce, one drug dealer, and once over an argument about someone who hadn’t returned a two-pound phonecard.’ He pauses before adding, ‘If they were to put him on this block, he’d be dead within twenty-four hours.’

  I’m terrified, so I can only wonder what sort of fear they live in. The moment the prisoner disappears into the medical centre, the shouting and yelling stops.

  4.00 pm

  The cell door is at last unlocked and we are allowed out into the exercise yard. On my first circuit, about two hundred yards, I’m joined by a young prisoner – come to think of it, everyone is young except for me and David. His name is Nick, and if it weren’t for his crooked front teeth and broken nose, he would be a good-looking man. He’s been in prison for the past fourteen years, and he’s only thirty-three, but he hopes to be out in four years’ time as long as he can beat his latest rap.

  ‘Your latest rap?’ I repeat.

  ‘Yeah, they’ve been trying to pin arson on me after what I got up to in Durham, but they’ve got no proof that I set fire to my cell, so they’ll have to drop the charge.’ He’s joined by another lifer who has just completed four of his eighteen years.

  There seems to be a completely different attitude among the lifers. They often say, ‘Don’t bother to count the first six years.’ They acknowledge they won’t be out next week, next month, or even next year, and have settled for a long spell of prison life. Most of them treat me with respect and don’t indulge in clever or snide remarks.

  On the next circuit I’m joined by Mike (armed robbery), who tells me that he listened to Ted Francis and Max Clifford on the radio last night, and adds that the boys just can’t wait for one of them to be sent to prison. ‘We don’t like people who stitch up their mates – especially for money.’ I stick assiduously to Nick Purnell’s advice and make no comment.

  When I return to the cell, Terry is about to go down for supper. I tell him I just can’t face it, but he begs me to join him because tonight it’s pineapple upside-down pudding, and that’s his favourite. I join him and go through the ritual of selecting a couple of burnt mushrooms in order to lay my hands on an extra upside-down pudding.

  By the time I get back to the cell, Terry is sweeping the room and cleaning the washbasin. I’ve been lucky to be shacked up with someone who is so tidy, and hates anything to be out of place. Terry sits on the bed munching his meal, while I read through what I’ve penned that day. Once Terry’s finished, he washes his plate, knife, fork and spoon before stacking them neatly on the floor in the corner. I continue reading my script while he picks up a Bible. He turns to the Book of Hebrews, which I confess I have never read, and studies quietly for the next hour.

  Once I’ve completed my work for the day,