Purgatory Read online

  I am first at the gate, because I’ll have to be in and out of the shower fairly quickly if I’m to get to the library before the doors are locked.

  10.21 am

  Jog to my cell, strip, shower, change, jog to the library. Still sweating, but nothing I can do about it. Steve (conspiracy to murder) is on duty behind the desk in his position as chief librarian. Because Steve’s the senior Listener, he’s allowed to wear his own clothes and is often mistaken for a member of staff. I return Famous Trials and take out Twenty-one Short Stories by Graham Greene.

  10.50 am

  Once I’ve left the library I walk straight across the corridor to the chapel and discover there are thirty worshippers in the congregation this week. From their dress, the majority must come from the local village. The black man sitting next to me, who was among the seven prisoners who attended last week, tells me it’s the biggest turnout he’s ever seen. This week a Methodist minister called Mary conducts the service, accompanied by an Anglican vicar called Val. Mary’s sermon is topical.

  She talks about the World Athletics Championships and her feelings for those competitors who did not achieve what they had set out to do, but for many of them there will be another chance. I have now attended four consecutive church services, and the minister always pitches the message at what he or she imagines will be of interest to the inmates. Each time they have failed to treat us as if we might just be normal human beings.

  People who have not been to prison tend to fall into two categories. The majority who treat you as if you’re a ‘convict on the run’ while the minority treat you as if you are in their front room.

  After the blessing, we gather in an ante-room for coffee and biscuits with the locals. No need to describe them as they don’t differ greatly from the kind of parishioners who attend church services up and down the country every Sunday morning. Average age double that of the prisoners. At twelve we are sent back to our cells. No search. Unaccompanied.

  12 noon

  Lunch. I haven’t had a chance to speak to Dale or Sergio yet, so I fix appointments with Dale at 2 pm and Sergio at 3 pm. I leave the hotplate with a portion of macaroni liberally covered in cheese.

  While we are waiting in the long queue, Darren tells me when it used to be almost all macaroni with little sign of any cheese. Nobody thought to comment about this, until it became clear that the allocation of cheese was becoming smaller and smaller as each week passed. Still no one did anything about it, until one week, when there was virtually no cheese, the officer on duty at last began to show some interest. The first thing he discovered was that the same cook had been on for the previous four Saturdays and Sundays, so the following weekend he kept an eye on that particular inmate. He quickly discovered that on Saturday night the prisoner in question was returning to his cell with a lump of cheese the size of a pillow (5kg). It was when three loaves of bread also went missing the same evening that the officer decided to report the incident to the governor. The following Saturday night a team of officers raided the prisoner’s cell hoping to find out what he was up to. They discovered that he was running a very successful business producing Welsh rarebit, which, when toasted, was passed from cell to cell through the bars of his little window.

  ‘And damn good they were,’ adds Jimmy, licking his lips.

  ‘How did he manage to toast them?’ I demanded.

  ‘On every wing there is a communal iron, which always ended up in Mario’s cell on a Saturday evening,’ explained Darren.

  ‘How much did the chef charge?’

  Tor two nights’ supply, a two-pound phonecard.’

  ‘And how did they punish him?’

  The iron was confiscated, and Mario demoted to washer-up, with twenty-one days added to his sentence. But they had to reinstate him after a couple of months because so many inmates complained about the standard of cooking dropping during the weekends. So he was brought back, and after another six months they also forgot about the twenty-one-day added sentence.

  ‘And what is Mario in for?’ I ask.

  Tax evasion - three years - and the fraud squad needed to be just as sharp to discover what he was up to then,’ says Darren as we leave the hotplate. I make a mental note to make sure I meet him.

  2.00 pm

  Dale wants to talk to me about my canteen list for next week and has set an upper limit of PS20. ‘Otherwise the screws will become suspicious,’ he explains. PS20 will be quite enough as I’m still credited each week with PS12.50 from my own account.

  Dale’s also solved my writing pad problem, because he’s somehow got his hands on three A4 pads, for which he charges me PS4 I would happily pay PS10 as I’m down to twenty pages of my last pad, but this new supply should last me a month.

  5.00 pm

  I call Mary at Grantchester, but there is no reply. I try London but only get Alison’s voice on the answer machine. I forgot she’s away on holiday. In any case, it’s Sunday.

  5.45 pm

  Supper. The ham looks good, but I’m down for the vegetarian dish and you can’t change your mind once you’ve signed the weekly menu sheet Dale thinks about giving me a slice, but as my bete noire is on duty behind the hotplate, he doesn’t risk it. Every Sunday you are given a meal sheet which rotates on a four-week cycle (see opposite); you fill in your selection from a list posted outside the main office, giving the kitchen advance notice of how much they will have to order of each item. Can’t complain about that.

  6.00 pm

  Banged up for the next fourteen hours. I begin The Basement Room by Graham Greene. His description of minor characters is breathtaking in its simplicity and the story, although complex, still demands that you turn the page. I consider it a reflection on the Nobel Committee, not Mr Greene, that he has never won the prize for literature.

  DAY 33 - MONDAY 20 AUGUST 2001

  5.54 am

  Wake and wonder how long it will take the police to close their file on the Kurds and allow me to be transferred to an open prison. I heard a story yesterday about a prisoner who wanted to do it the other way round. He put in an application to be transferred from a D-cat open prison to a C-cat - a more secure environment with a tougher regime. His reasons seem strange but, I’m told, are not uncommon.

  He was serving a twenty-two-year sentence for murder. After five years, they moved him from an A-cat to a B-cat, which is a little more relaxed. After a further twelve years they transferred him to Wayland. At Wayland he became an enhanced prisoner with all the privileges that affords. He was also chief gardener, which allowed him to be out of his cell for most of the day and gave him an income of more than PS30 a week. In his own world he wanted for nothing, and the governor considered him to be a model prisoner.

  After twenty years he was granted D-cat status as part of his preparation for returning to the outside world. He was transferred to Ford Open Prison in Sussex to begin his rehabilitation.

  He lasted at Ford for less than a month. One Saturday afternoon he absconded and turned himself in at the local police station a few hours later. He was arrested, charged with attempting to abscond and sent back to Wayland, where he remained until he had completed his sentence.

  The governor at the time couldn’t resist asking him why he’d absconded. He replied that he couldn’t handle the responsibility of making his own decisions. He also missed not having a proper job and the ordered discipline of the Wayland regime. But most of all he missed the high walls that surrounded the prison because they made him feel safe from all those people on the outside.

  With less than six months to go before the end of his sentence, he was found in his cell with a piece of silver paper from a KitKat wrapper, a few grams of heroin and a lighted match. He had even pressed the emergency button inside his cell to make certain that he was caught. The governor wasn’t sure what to do, because he knew only too well that the prisoner had never taken heroin in twenty years. Only six weeks were added to his sentence and he was released a few months later. Within a month of