Heaven: A Prison Diary (25 page)

I was hoping to
see Mary, Will and James today, but the authorities have decreed that I’ve used
up all my visits for this month, and therefore can’t see them until the
beginning of February.

This week’s
football match has also been cancelled, so once again I come face to face with
the prisoner’s biggest enemy, boredom.

Mr Hart (an
old-fashioned socialist) visits the hospital to tell me that there’s a
doublepage spread about me in the
News of
the World
. It seems that Eamon (one of the Derby Five) is the latest former
inmate to take his thirty pieces of silver and tell the world what it’s like to
share a room with Jeff.

I am surprised
how many prisoners visit me today to tell me what they think of Eamon. Strange
phrases like ‘broken the code’,

‘
not
the done thing’ come from men who are in for murder and
GBH. After Belmarsh, Fletch, Tony, Del Boy and Billy said nothing, while
Darren, Jimmy, Jules and Sketch from Wayland also kept their counsel. Here at
NSC, I trust Doug, Carl, Jim, Clive and Matthew. And they would have stories to
tell.

I’ve started a
prison tea club as I love to entertain whatever the circumstances. Admittedly
it would have been impossible at Belmarsh or Wayland, but as I now reside in
the hospital, I am even able to send out invitations. Membership is confined to
those over the age of forty.

My guests are
invited to attend ‘Club Hospital’ on Sunday between the hours of 4 pm and 6 pm.
They will be served tea, coffee, biscuits and scones supplied by Linda. The
current membership is around a dozen, and includes David (fraud, schoolmaster),
John (fraud, accountant), John (fraud, businessman), Keith (knowingly in
possession of drugs), Brian (ostrich farm and chapel organist), Doug (importing
cigarettes), the Major (stabbed his wife), the Captain (theft, drummed out of
the regiment), Malcolm (fraud) and Carl (fraud).

The talk is not
of prison life, but what’s going on in the outside world. Whether the IRA
should be given rooms in Parliament, whether Bin Laden is dead or alive, the
state of the NHS and the latest from the Test Match in India. All of my guests
keep to the club rules.

They remove their
shoes and put on slippers as they enter the hospital, and no smoking or
swearing is tolerated. Two of them will be leaving us next week, Keith will
have served five years, and Brian nearly three. We raise a cup to them and wish
them luck. Carl and David stay behind to help me with the washing-up.

I’m becoming
aware of the hospital regulars: five prisoners who turn up every morning
between 7.30 and 8 am to collect their medication. I couldn’t work out why
these five need the same medication for something most of us would recover from
in a few days.

Sister has her
suspicions, but if a prisoner complains of toothache, muscle sprain or
arthritis, they are entitled to medications that are opiate based – for example
codeine, co-codamol or dextropropoxyphene. These will show up as positive on
any drugs test, and if a prisoner has been on them every day for a month, they
can then claim, ‘It’s my medication, guv.’ However, if an inmate tests positive
for heroin, the hospital will take a blood sample and seek medical advice as to
whether his daily medication would have registered that high. Several prisoners
have discovered that such an element of doubt often works in their favour. Doug
tells me that some addicts return to their rooms, flush the pills down the
lavatory and then take their daily dose of heroin.

A lifer called
Bob (twelve years, murder) is due to appear in front of the parole board next
week. He’s coming to the end of his tariff, and the Home Office usually
recommends that the prisoner serves at least another two years before they will
consider release. This decision has recently been taken out of the hands of the
Home Office and passed to the parole board. Bob received a letter from the
board this morning informing him he will be released next Thursday.

Try to imagine
serving twelve years (think what age you were twelve years ago) and now assume
that you will have to do another two years, but then you’re told you will be
released on Thursday.

The man is walking
around in a daze, not least because he fell off a ladder yesterday and now has
his ankle in a cast. What a way to start your re-entry back to Earth.

Andrew Pierce
of
The Times
has got hold of the
story that Libby Purves will be interview-ing Mary tomorrow. The BBC must have
leaked it, but I can’t complain because the piece reads well, even if Mr Pierce
is under the illusion that NSC is in Cambridgeshire. I only wish it were.

Among my
afternoon post is a Valentine’s card, which is a bit like getting a Christmas
card in November, one proposal of marriage, one offer of a film part (Field
Marshall Haig), a request to front a twelve-part television series and an
invitation to give an after-dinner speech in Sydney next September. Do they
know something I don’t?

An officer
drops in from his night rounds for a coffee. He tells me an alarming story
about an event that took place at his last prison.

It’s
universally accepted among prisoners that if one particular officer has got it
in for you, there’s nothing you can do about it. You can go through the
complaints procedure, but even if you’re in the right, officers will always
back each other up if a colleague is in trouble. I could fill a book with such
instances. I have experienced this myself at such a petty level that I have not
considered the incident worth recording. On that occasion, the governor
personally apologized, but still advised me not to put in a complaint.

However, back
to a prisoner from the north block who did have the temerity to put in a
written complaint about a particular officer. On this occasion, I can only
agree with the prisoner that the officer concerned is a bully. Nevertheless,
after a lengthy enquiry (everything in prison is lengthy) the officer was
cleared of any misdemeanour, but that didn’t stop him seeking revenge.

The inmate in
question was serving a fiveyear sentence, and at the time he entered prison was
having an affair that his wife didn’t know about, and to add to the complication,
the affair was with another man.

The prisoner
would have a visit from one of them each fortnight, while writing to both of
them during the week. The rule in closed prisons is that you leave your letters
unsealed in the unit office, so they can be read by the duty officer to check
if you’re still involved in any criminal activity, or asking for drugs to be
sent in. When the prisoner left his two letters in the unit office, the officer
on duty was the same man he had made a complaint about to the governor. The
officer read both the love letters, and yes, you’ve guessed it, switched them
and sealed the envelopes and with it, the fate of the prisoner.

How do I know
this to be true? Because the officer involved has just told me, and is happy to
tell anyone he considers a threat.

Mary is on
Midweek
with Libby Purves.

I call Mary.
She’s off to lunch with Ken Howard RA and other artistic luminaries.

My visitors
today are Michael Portillo and Alan Jones (Australia’s John Humphreys). I must
first make my position clear on Michael’s leadership bid. I would have wanted
him to follow John Major as leader of the party. I would also have voted for
him to follow William Hague, though I would have been torn if Malcolm Rifkind
had won back his Edinburgh seat.

It is a robust
visit, and it serves to remind me how much I miss the cut and thrust of
Westminster, stuck as I am in the coldest and most remote corner of
Lincolnshire. Michael tells us about one or two changes he would have made had
he been elected leader.

We need our own
‘Clause 4’ he suggests, which Tony Blair so brilliantly turned into an
important issue, despite it being of no real significance. Michael also feels
that the party’s parliamentary candidates should be selected from the centre,
taking power away from the constituencies. It also worries him how few women
and member of minority groups end up on the Conservative benches.

He points out
that at the last election, the party only added one new woman to its ranks, at
a time when the Labour party have over fifty.

‘Not much of an
advertisement for the new, all-inclusive, modern party,’ he adds.

‘But how would
you have handled the European issue?’ ask Alan.

Michael is about
to reply when that redhot socialist (local Labour councillor) Officer Hart
tells us that our time is up.

Politics is not
so overburdened with talent that the Conservatives can survive without
Portillo, Rifkind, Hague, Clarke and Redwood, all playing important roles,
especially while we’re in opposition.

When the two
men left I was buzzing. An hour later I wanted to abscond.

I call Mary.
She has just left the chambers of Julian Malins QC, and is going to dinner with
Leo Rothschild.

I’m called out
of breakfast over the tannoy and instructed to return to the hospital
immediately. Five new prisoners came in last night after Gail had gone home.
She needs all the preliminaries carried out (heart rate, weight, height) before
Dr Walling arrives at nine. One of the new
intake
announces with considerable pride that although this is his fifth offence, it’s
his first visit to NSC.

Once surgery is
over, Dr Walling joins me for a coffee on the ward. ‘One of them was a
nightmare,’ he says, as if I wasn’t ‘one of them’. He doesn’t tell me which of
the twenty patients he was referring to, and I don’t enquire. However, his next
sentence did take me by surprise. ‘I needed to take a blood sample and couldn’t
find a vein in his arms or legs, so I ended up injecting his penis.

He’s not even
half your age, Jeffrey, but you’ll outlive him.’

The new vacuum
cleaner has arrived. This is a big event in my life.

I call Mary at
Grantchester. She has several pieces of news; Brian Mawhinney has received a
reply to his letter to Sir John Stevens, the commissioner of the Metropolitan
Police, asking why I lost my D-cat and was sent to Wayland. A report on the
circumstances surrounding that decision has been requested, and will be
forwarded to Brian as soon as the commissioner receives it.

Mary’s next
piece of news is devastating.

Back in 1999,
Julian Mallins had kindly sent a note he had retained in his files (see
overleaf), sent to him by Geoffrey Shaw, junior to Michael Hill for the defence
in the libel trial. In the note, Shaw asks Julian for my two diaries for 1986
(an A4 diary and an Economist diary) ‘in case Michael asks to look at them’.
Julian passed the diaries to Shaw and Hill for inspection, and told Mary he is
pretty sure that they would have gone through them thoroughly – and clearly
found nothing worthy of comment in them, since they were not an issue in the
libel trial.

Julian added
that it would be ‘absolute rubbish’ to suggest that the Star’s lawyers could
not have examined these two diaries (which Angela Peppiatt had claimed in the
criminal trial were almost entirely blank) in court for other entries.

Later Julian
wrote to Mary: ‘English law in 1986 was not an ass. If it had been Michael
Hill’s suggestion that the alibi evidence was all true, except for the date,
neither Lord Archer in the witness box nor the judge, still less Lord Alexander
nor I, could have objected to Michael Hill going through the rest of the diary
to find the same dinner date with the same companion at the same restaurant but
on another date.’

None of us had
known anything of Peppiatt’s pocket diary for 1986, in which she noted both her
own and my engagements, kept as her own property for over ten years, but
produced in court as my ‘true’ diary for that year.

Mary also tells
me that she has written to Godfrey Barker about his earlier reference to dining
with Mr Justice Potts some time before the trial, when the judge might have
made disparaging remarks about me. She now fears Godfrey will disappear the
moment the date of the appeal is announced.

I weigh myself.
Yuk. I’m fourteen stone two pounds. Yuk. I lost eleven pounds during my three
weeks at Belmarsh, falling to twelve stone seven pounds. At Wayland I put
that
eleven pounds back on in ten weeks, despite being in
the gym every day. At NSC the food is better, but because of my job I don’t
have time to go to the gym (poor excuse). On Monday I must stop eating
chocolate and return to the gym. I am determined to leave the prison, whenever,
around twelve stone eight pounds.