Hell

Hell

A Prison Diary

Volume One
Belmarsh

Jeffrey Archer

2001

Out of the night that
covers me,

Black as the Pit from
pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods
may be

For
my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of
circumstance,

I have not winced or
cried aloud;

Under the
bludgeonings
of chance

My head is bloody,
but unbowed.

Beyond this place of
wrath and tears

Looms
but the Horror of the shade.

And yet the menace of
the years

Finds, and shall find
me, unafraid.

It matters not how
strait the gate,

How charged with
punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my
fate:

I
am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley (1849–1903)

‘You are
sentenced to four years.’
Mr
Justice Potts stares
down from the bench, unable to hide his delight. He orders me to be taken down.

A Securicor man who was sitting beside me while the verdict was
read out points towards a door on my left which has not been opened during the
seven-week trial.
I turn and glance at my wife Mary seated at the back
of the court, head bowed, ashen-faced, a son on either side to comfort her.

I’m led
downstairs to be met by a court official, and thus I begin an endless process
of form-filling.

Name?

Archer.

Age?

61.

Weight?
178lbs, I tell him.

‘What’s that in
stones?’ the prison officer demands.

‘12st 10lbs,’ I
reply. I only know because I weighed myself in the gym this morning.

‘Thank you,
sir,’ he says, and asks me to sign on the bottom of the page.

Another
Securicor man – known by the prisoners as water-rats – leads me down a long
bleak cream-painted bricked corridor to I know not where.

‘How long did
he give you?’ he asks, matter-of-factly.

‘Four years,’ I
reply.

‘Oh, not too bad,
you’ll be out in two,’ he responds, as if discussing a fortnight on the Costa
del
Sol.

The officer
comes to a halt, unlocks a vast steel door, and then ushers me into a cell.

The room is
about ten feet by five, the walls are still cream, and there is a wooden bench
running along the far end. No clock, no sense of time, nothing to do except
contemplate, nothing to read, except messages on the walls:

Nick explains
that four years means two, and
Mr
Justice Potts chose
a custodial sentence aware that I would be unable to appeal to the Parole Board
for early release. Of course they will appeal on my behalf, as they feel Potts
has gone way over the top.
Gilly
Gray QC, an old
friend, had warned me the previous evening that as the jury had been out for
five days and I had not entered the witness box to defend myself, an appeal
might not be received too
favourably
. Nick adds that
in any case, my appeal will not be considered before Christmas, as only short
sentences are dealt with quickly.

Nick goes on to
tell me that
Belmarsh
Prison, in Woolwich, will be my
first destination.

‘At least it’s
a modern jail,’ he comments, although he warns me that his abiding memory of
the place was the constant noise, so he feared I wouldn’t sleep for the first
few nights. After a couple of weeks, he feels confident I will be transferred
to a Category D prison – an open prison – probably Ford or the Isle of
Sheppey
.

Nick explains
that he has to leave me and return to Court No. 7 to make an application for
compassionate leave, so that I can attend my mother’s funeral on Saturday. She
died on the day the jury retired to consider their verdict, and I am only
thankful that she never heard me sentenced.

I thank Nick
and Alex for all they have done, and
am
then escorted
back to my cell.

The vast iron
door is slammed shut. The prison officers don’t have to lock it, only unlock
it, as there is no handle on the inside. I sit on the wooden bench, to be
reminded that
Jim Dexter is
inocent
, OK!
My mind is curiously blank as I try to
take in what has happened and what will happen next.

The door is
unlocked again – about fifteen minutes later as far as I can judge – and I’m
taken to a signing-out room to fill in yet another set of forms. A large burly
officer who only grunts takes away my money clip, £120 in cash, my credit card
and a fountain pen.

He places them
in a plastic bag. They are sealed before he asks, ‘Where would you like them
sent?’ I give the
officer
Mary’s name and our home
address. After I’ve signed two more forms in triplicate, I’m handcuffed to an
overweight woman of around five foot three, a cigarette dangling from the
corner of her mouth. They are obviously not anticipating any trouble. She is
wearing the official uniform of the prison service: a white shirt, black tie,
black trousers, black shoes and black socks.

She accompanies
me out of the building and on to an elongated white van, not unlike a single-decker
bus, except that the windows are blacked out. I am placed in what I could only
describe as a cubicle – known to the recidivists as a sweatbox – and although I
can see outside, the waiting press cannot see me; in any case, they have no
idea which cubicle I’m in. Cameras flash pointlessly in front of each window as
we wait to move off. Another long wait, before I hear a prisoner shout, ‘I
think Archer’s in this van.’ Eventually the vehicle jerks forward and moves
slowly out of the Old Bailey courtyard on the first leg of a long circuitous
journey to HMP
Belmarsh
.

As we travel
slowly through the streets of the City, I spot an
Evening Standard
billboard already in place: ARCHER SENT TO JAIL.
It looks as if it was printed some time before the verdict.

I am well
acquainted with the journey the van is taking through London, as Mary and I
follow the same route home to Cambridge on Friday evenings. Except on this
occasion we suddenly turn right off the main road and into a little backstreet,
to be greeted by another bevy of pressmen. But like their colleagues at the Old
Bailey, all they can get is a photograph of a large white van with ten small
black windows. As we draw up to the entrance gate, I see a sign declaring
BELMARSH PRISON. Some wag has put a line through the B and replaced it with an
H.

Not the most
propitious of welcomes.

We drive
through two high-barred gates that are electronically operated before the van
comes to a halt in a courtyard surrounded by a thirty-foot red-brick wall, with
razor wire looped along the top. I once read that this is the only top-security
prison in Britain from which no one has ever escaped. I look up at the wall and
recall that the world record for the pole vault is 20ft 2in.

The door of the
van is opened and we are let out one by one before being led off to a reception
area, and then herded into a large glass cell that holds about twenty people.

The authorities
can’t risk putting that many prisoners in the same room without being able to
see exactly what we’re up to. This will often be the first time co-defendants
have a chance to speak to each other since they were sentenced. I sit on a
bench on the far side of the wall, and am joined by a tall, well-dressed,
good-looking young Pakistani, who explains that he is not a prisoner, but on
remand. I ask him what he’s been charged with.
‘GBH –
grievous bodily harm.
I beat up my wife when I found her in bed with
another man, and now they’ve banged me up in
Belmarsh
because the trial can’t begin until she gets back from Greece, where the two of
them are on holiday.’

I recall Nick
Purnell’s
parting words, ‘Don’t believe anything anyone
tells you in prison, and never discuss your case or your appeal.’

‘Archer,’ yells
a voice. I leave the glass cell and return to reception where I am told to fill
out another form. ‘Name, age, height, weight?’ the prison officer behind the
counter demands.

‘Archer, 61, 5ft 10, 178lbs.’

‘What’s that in
stones?’ he asks.

‘12st 10lbs,’ I
tell him, and he fills in yet another little square box.

‘Right, go next
door, Archer, where you’ll find my colleague waiting for you.’

This time I am
met by two officers.
One standing, one sitting behind a desk.
The one behind the desk asks me to stand under an arc light and strip. The two
officers try to carry out the entire exercise as humanely as possible. First, I
take off my jacket, then my tie, followed by my shirt. ‘Aquascutum,
Hilditch
& Key, and YSL,’ says the officer who is
standing up, while the other writes this information down in the appropriate
box. The first officer then asks me to raise my arms above my head and turn a
complete circle, while a video camera attached to the wall whirrs away in the
background. My shirt is returned, but they hold on to my House of Commons
cufflinks. They hand back my jacket, but not my tie. I am then asked to slip
off my shoes, socks, trousers and pants.

‘Church’s,
Aquascutum and Calvin Klein,’ he announces. I complete another circle, and this
time the officer asks me to lift the soles of my feet for inspection. He
explains that drugs are sometimes concealed under plasters. I tell them I’ve
never taken a drug in my life. He shows no interest. They return my pants,
trousers, socks and shoes but not my leather belt.

‘Is this
yours?’ he asks, pointing to a yellow backpack on the table beside me.

‘No, I’ve never
seen it before,’ I tell him.

He checks the
label. ‘William Archer,’ he says.