Heaven: A Prison Diary (36 page)

Mr Berlyn
drives me over to Lincoln for an interview with Chris Moreno and Chris Colby,
the owner and director of the Theatre Royal Lincoln.

Both men could
not have been more welcoming and kind. They make it clear to Mr Berlyn that
they need ‘volunteers’ and would welcome other prisoners to join me. Mr Berlyn
seems satisfied that a real job of work exists, and that I could be of some
service to the community. He says he will recommend that I start work on
Monday.

A prisoner
called Hugh attacks an officer in the north block. She arrives in hospital with
a broken cheekbone. Hugh is immediately transferred to Lincoln Prison and will
be charged with assault. The officer tells Linda that she will be claiming
compensation, and expects to be off work for at least four months.

‘Lucky Ball’
arrives at NSC – the man who claimed to have won the lottery and proceeded to
spend his non-existent winnings.

It’s my last
day as hospital orderly. Stephen (two years, VAT fraud,
£
160,000)
takes my place. I will continue as Saturday orderly so I can keep my daily bath
privileges, when Stephen will have the day off.

Jim (gym
orderly) drives me to Cambridge so I can spend the day at home with James.

Mary is still
in Japan. James and I buy four new koi carp from the local garden centre.

Freedom is
underrated.

I drive Mary’s
car back to the camp and leave it in the prison car park. This will be the
vehicle I use to get myself to Lincoln and back each day. I decided not to
drive my BMW 720 as it would cause all sorts of problems, with the press, the prison
staff and the other prisoners. While I’m driving, I feel a little like Toad in
his motor on the open road.

I began work at
the Theatre Royal Lincoln today and enjoy wearing a shirt and tie for the first
time in a year. Couldn’t find a parking place and arrived a few minutes late.

Over a hundred
journalists, photographers and cameramen are waiting for me.

The first thing
I notice is that my little office has bars on the window.

When I walk in
the street during my lunch break, the public are kind and considerate.

Find it hard to
leave at five, grab a meal and be back by seven.

I reach NSC
with three minutes to spare. If I’d failed to make it on time, I would have
lost all my privileges on the first day, and probably been put to work on the
farm.

I can now leave
the prison every Sunday and travel to Grantchester to be with Mary and the
family for the day.

Today, my
fourth Sunday, Mary and I have been invited to lunch with Gillian and Tom
Shephard and a few of their friends at their home in Thetford. As Thetford is
on the way back to NSC, and within the fifty-five-mile radius of NSC, we decide
to take separate cars so I can return to prison after lunch.
33

We leave the
Old Vicarage at 12.15 pm.
34

Five idyllic weeks working at the Theatre Royal.
Annie
goes into rehearsal with Su Pollard,
Mark Wynter and Louise English. I’ve been in charge of the children and in
particular their accommodation needs, as they go on tour around the country.
After the terrible events in Soham, Mr Moreno is adamant that their safety must
be paramount. I spend hours organizing where the young girls and their
chaperones will stay in each town.

Today, I attend
the 2.30 pm dress rehearsal of
Annie
at
the Liberal Club and leave the cast after Chris Colby has run through his
notes.
35
I wish them all luck and depart a few minutes before six. I
now feel not only part of the team, but that I’m doing a worthwhile job.

I arrive back
in Boston at six and go to the Eagles restaurant for what I didn’t then know
was to be my last steak and kidney pie.

On my arrival
back at the camp, Mr Elsen, a senior officer, asks me to accompany him to the
governor’s office. I am desperately trying to think what I can possibly have
done wrong. Mr Beaumont, the governor, and Mr Berlyn, the deputy governor, are
sitting waiting for me. The governor wastes no time and asks me if, on Sunday
15th, I stopped on the way back to the camp to have lunch with Gillian Shephard
MP.

‘Yes,’ I reply
without hesitation, as I don’t consider Gillian or any of her other guests to
be criminals.

Mr Beaumont
tells me that I have breached my licence by leaving my home in Cambridge. This,
despite the fact that I remained within the permitted radius of the prison, had
been with my wife, hadn’t drunk anything stronger than apple juice and returned
to NSC well in time.

Without
offering me the chance to give an explanation, I am marched to the segregation
block, and not even allowed to make a phone call.

The cold, bleak
room, five paces by three, has just a thin mattress on the floor against one
wall, a steel washbasin and an open lavatory.

DAY 435

THURSDAY 26 SEPTEMBER
200
2

I have not
slept for one second of the ten hours I have been locked in this cell.

My first
visitor is Dr Razzak who assures me that she will inform the governor I should
not
be moved on medical grounds.36

I have a visit
from Mr Forman (chairman of the IMB, the prison’s Independent Monitoring
Board), who assures me that I will not be moved if my only offence was having
lunch with Gillian Shephard.

I am escorted
to adjudication. It quickly becomes clear that all decisions are being made in
London by Mr Narey, the director-general of the Prison Service. Once I realize
this, I accept there is no hope of justice.

Mr Beaumont
tells me that as a result of this breach of licence, I am being transferred to
B-cat Lincoln Prison, despite the fact that I have, until now, had an exemplary
record, and have never once been placed on report.

He adds that I
have embarrassed the Prison Service, following a press story. The paper accused
me of drinking champagne at a Tory bash.

‘Which paper?’
I ask innocently.

‘The
Sun
,’ says Mr Beaumont, thus revealing
which paper Mr Narey reads each morning, and which editorials help him make his
decisions.

At North Sea
Camp last week, a prisoner who arrived back late and drunk was stripped of all
privileges for a month; another, who brought vodka into the camp, was grounded
for a month. Only last week, an NSC inmate nicknamed Ginger went on home leave
and returned three days late. His excuse was that his girlfriend had held him
captive (this provoked a mixture of envy and hilarity among other inmates). His
only punishment was confinement to NSC for a short period. Several former
inmates have since contacted my wife pointing out that they regularly visited
friends and in-laws on their home leave days, as well as taking their children
on outings to the park or swimming pool, and it was never once suggested this
was against the regulations.

I was given no
opportunity to appeal.

I learn later
that Dr Walling (the prison’s senior doctor) protested about my being put in
segregation and moved to Lincoln Prison.

Dr Walling told
me that he was warned that if he made his feelings public, his days at NSC
would be numbered.

One officer, Mr
Masters, is so appalled by the judgement that he comes to the side of the Group
4 van to shake my hand.

BACK TO HELL

The Group 4
sweat box drives through the gates of HMP Lincoln just after 4 pm. Lincoln
Prison is less than a mile from the Theatre Royal, but may as well be a
thousand miles away.

I am escorted
into reception to be met by a Mr Fuller. He seems mystified as to what I am
doing here. He checks through my plastic bags and allows me to keep my shaving
kit and a pair of trainers. The rest, he assures me, will be returned when I’m
transferred to another prison, or released. He fills in several forms, a
process that takes over an hour, while I hang around in a dirty smoke-filled
corridor, trying to take in what has happened during the past twenty hours.
When the last form has been completed, another officer escorts me to a double
cell in the notorious
A
wing.

When I enter
the main block, I face the usual jeering and foul language. We come to a halt
outside cell fourteen. The massive iron door is unlocked, and then slammed
behind me. My new cell-mate looks up from his bed, smiles and introduces
himself as Jason.

While I unpack
what’s left of my belongings and make up my bed, Jason tells me that he’s in
for GBH. He found a man in bed with his wife, and thrashed him to within an
inch of his life.

‘I wish I’d
gone the extra inch,’ he adds.

His sentence is
four years.

Jason continues
to chat as I lie on my hard mattress and stare up at the green ceiling.

He tells me
that he’s trying to get back together with his wife. He will be seeing her for
the first time since his conviction (ten weeks ago) at a visit on Saturday. I
also learn that Jason served ten years in the airforce, winning three medals in
the Gulf, and was the RAF’s light heavyweight boxing champion. He left the
forces with an exemplary record, which he feels may have helped to get his
charge reduced from attempted murder to GBH.

I fall asleep,
but only because I haven’t slept for thirty-nine hours.

I wake to the
words, ‘Fuck all screws,’ echoing through the air from the floor above.

I haven’t eaten
for two days, and force down a slice of bread and an out-of-date lemon sorbet.

When they let
me out of the cell (forty-five minutes a day), I phone Mary. An inmate from the
landing above spits on me, and then bursts out laughing.

Despite the
fact that the officers are friendly and sympathetic, I have never been more
depressed in my life. I know that if I had a twenty-five-year sentence I would
kill myself. There have been three attempted suicides at Lincoln this week. One
succeeded – a lad of twenty-two, not yet sentenced.

Jason tells me
that he’s heard I am to be moved to C wing. He says that it’s cleaner and each
cell has a television but, and there’s always a ‘but’ in prison, I’ll have to
work in the kitchen. If that’s the case, I’ll be stuck on
A
wing for however long I’m left in here.

Jason passes
over his newspaper. The Mirror gives a fair report of my lunch with Gillian and
Tom Shephard; no one suggests I drank any alcohol. The Times adds that Martin
Narey has said it will not be long before I’m moved. It cheers me up – a
little, and then I recall the reality of ‘not long’ in prison. The
press in general consider
I’ve been hard done by, and the
Daily Mail
is in no doubt that the Home
Secretary’s fingerprints are all over the decision to take revenge on me. I lie
on my bed for hour after hour, wondering if I will ever be free.

I’m standing in
line for lunch wondering if anything will be edible. I spot an apple. I must
remember to write to Wendy and congratulate her on the standard of the food at
North Sea Camp. A prisoner, three ahead of me in the queue, gruffly asks for
some rice.

The server
slams a ladle-full down on his tin tray.

‘Is that all I
fuckin’ get?’ asks the inmate, to which the server replies, ‘Move along, you
fuckin’ muppet.’ The prisoner drops his tray on the floor, charges round to the
back of the counter and punches the server on the nose.

In the ensuing
fight, the server crashes his heavy ladle over the other prisoner’s head and
blood spurts across the food. The rest of the
queue form
a ring around the two combatants. Prisoners never join in someone else’s
quarrel, only too aware of the consequences, but it doesn’t stop them jeering
and cheering, some even taking bets. The fight continues for over a minute
before an alarm goes off, bringing officers running from every direction.

By the time the
officers arrive, there’s blood everywhere. It takes five of them to drag the
two men apart. The two combatants are then frogmarched off to segregation.
37

I’m not eating
the prison food. Once again, I have to rely on chocolate biscuits and
blackcurrant juice. And once again I have a supply problem, which was taken
care of at Belmarsh by ‘Del Boy’. I quickly discover Lincoln’s equivalent,
Devon.