Hell

by Jeffrey Archer

  7.00 pm

  I’m washing my plastic plate in the basin when there’s a knock on the door. The cell door is pulled open by an officer to reveal the massive frame of Fletch standing in the doorway. I had quite forgotten he was coming to read something to me.

  I smile. ‘Welcome,’ I say, like the spider to the fly. The first thing I notice is that he’s clutching a small green notebook, not unlike the type we used to write our essays in at school. After a brief chat about which prison I’m likely to be sent to, and his opinion of Mr Leader, the Deputy Governor, he turns to the real purpose of his visit.

  ‘I wonder if I might be allowed to read something to you?’ he asks.

  ‘Of course,’ I reply, not sure if it’s to be an essay, a poem, or even the first chapter of a novel. I settle on the bed while Fletch sits in the plastic chair (prisoners are only allowed one chair per cell). He places the little lined book on my desk, opens it at the first page, and begins to read.

  If I had the descriptive powers of Greene and the narrative drive of Hemingway, I still could not do justice to the emotions I went through during the next twenty minutes; revulsion, anger, sympathy, incredulity, and finally inadequacy. Fletch turns another page, tears welling up in his eyes, as he forces himself to resurrect the demons of his past. By the time he comes to the last page, this giant of a man is a quivering wreck, and of all the emotions I can summon up to express my true feelings, anger prevails. When Fletch closes the little green book, we both remain silent for some time.

  Once I’m calm enough to speak, I thank him for the confidence he has shown in allowing me to share such a terrible secret.

  ‘I’ve never allowed anyone in Belmarsh to read this,’ he says, tapping the little green book. ‘But perhaps now you can appreciate why I won’t be appealing against my sentence. I don’t need the whole world to know what I’ve been through,’ he adds in a whisper, ‘so it will go with me to my grave.’ I nod my understanding and promise to keep his confidence.

  10.00 pm

  I can’t sleep. What Fletch has read to me could not have been made up. It’s so dreadful that it has to be true. I sleep for a few minutes and then wake again. Fletch has tried to put the past behind him by devoting his time and energy to being a Listener, helping others, by sharing his room with a bullied prisoner, a drug addict, or someone likely to be a victim of sexual abuse.

  I fall asleep. I wake again. It’s pitch black outside my little cell window and I begin to feel that Fletch could give an even greater service if his story were more widely known, and the truth exposed. Then people like me who have led such naive and sheltered lives could surely have the blinkers lifted from their eyes.

  I decide as soon as they let me out of my cell, that I will tell him that I’ve changed my mind. I’m going to suggest that he could do far more good by revealing what actually happened to him than by remaining silent. In all, I think I’ve woken five or six times during the night, my thoughts always returning to Fletch. But one comment he made above all others burns in my mind, Fifty per cent of prisoners in Belmarsh can tell you variations of the same story. Jeffrey, my case is not unique.

  I decide I must use whatever persuasive powers I possess to get him to agree to publish, without reservation, everything in that little green book.

  Day 19

  Monday 6 August 2001

  5.17 am

  I’ve spent a sleepless night. I rise early and write for two hours. When I’ve finished, I pace around my cell, aware that if only I had held onto Fletch’s little green notebook I could have spent the time considering his words in greater detail.

  8.00 am

  I know I’ve eaten a bowl of Corn Pops from my Variety pack, because I can see the little empty box in the waste-paper bin, but I can’t remember when. I go on pacing.

  9.00 am

  An officer opens the cell door. I rush down to the ground floor, only to discover that Fletch is always let out at eight so that he can go straight to the workshops and have everything set up and ready before the other prisoners arrive. Because of the length of his sentence, it’s a real job for him. He’s the works manager, and can earn up to forty pounds a week. I could go along to the workshops, but with seventy or eighty other prisoners hanging around, I wouldn’t be able to hold a private conversation with him. Tony tells me Fletch will be back for dinner at twelve, when he’ll have an hour off before returning to the workshops at one. I’ll have to wait.

  When I return to my cell, I find a letter has been pushed under my door. It’s from Billy Little (murder). He apologizes for being offhand with me during Association the previous evening. August is always a bad month for him, he explains, and he’s not very good company for a number of reasons:

  I last saw my son in August 1998, my favourite gran died in August, the heinous act of murder that I committed took place on August 22, 1998. As you can imagine, I have a lot on my mind.

  I can’t begin to imagine, which I admit when I reply to his letter. He continues…

  During this period, I tend to spend a long time inside myself. This could give an impression to those who don’t know me of being ignorant and unapproachable. For this I apologise.

  By this time tomorrow, you’ll be sunning it up by the pool, or that’s how Springhill will feel in comparison to Hellmarsh. In a way, you’ve been lucky to have spent only a short period here, a period in which you’ve brought the normal inertia of prison to life.

  Over the last three weeks you will have felt the resentment of other prisoners who feel strongly that equality should be practised even in prisons. You no doubt recall the Gilbert and Sullivan quote from The Gondoliers – when everybody is somebody, then nobody is anybody.

  I think what I’m trying to say is that your status, friendliness and willingness to help and advise others has not gone unnoticed by those who are destined to spend a great deal longer incarcerated.

  For this I thank you, and for your inspiration to press me to think more seriously about my writing. I would like to take you up on your offer to keep in touch, and in particular to check over my first novel.

  I’ll be resident here for another month or two, or three, before they move me onto a first stage lifer main centre [Billy has been at Belmarsh for two years and seven months] I’ll let you know my address once I’ve settled. My number is at the bottom of this letter.

  You are Primus Inter Pares

  Yours,

  Billy (BX7974)

  I sit down at my table and reply immediately.

  12 noon

  When Fletch arrives back from the workshops, he finds me waiting by his cell door. He steps inside and invites me to join him.* I ask if I might be allowed to borrow his notebook so that I can consider more carefully the piece he read to me the previous evening. He hesitates for a moment, then goes to a shelf above his bed, burrows around and extracts the little green notebook. He hands it over without comment.

  I grab an apple for lunch and return to my cell. Reading Fletch’s story is no less painful. I go over it three times before pacing up and down. My problem will be getting him to agree to publish his words in this diary.

  3.37 pm

  Mr Bentley opens my cell door to let me know that the Deputy Governor wishes to see me. As I am escorted to Mr Leader’s office, I can only wonder what bad news he will have to impart this time. Am I to be sent to Parkhurst or Brixton, or have they settled on Dartmoor? When the Deputy Governor’s door is opened, I am greeted with a warm smile. Mr Leader’s demeanour and manner are completely different from our last meeting. He is welcoming and friendly, which leads me to hope that he is the bearer of better news.

  He tells me that he has just heard from the Home Office that I will not be going to Camphill on the Isle of Wight or Elmer in Kent, but Wayland. I frown. I’ve never heard of Wayland.

  ‘It’s in Norfolk,’ he tells me. ‘C-cat and very relaxed. I’ve already spoken to the Governor,’ he adds, ‘and only one other member of my staff is aware of your destinati
on.’ I take this as a broad hint that it might be wise not to tell anyone else on the spur of my destination, unless I want to be accompanied throughout the entire journey by the national press. I nod and realize why he has taken the unusual step of seeing me alone. I’m about to ask him a question, when he answers it.

  ‘We plan to move you on Thursday.’

  Only three more days at Hellmarsh, is my first reaction, and, after asking him several more questions, I thank him and return to my cell unescorted. I spend the next hour considering every word Mr Leader has said. I recall asking him which he would rather be going to, Wayland or the Isle of Wight. ‘Wayland,’ he’d replied without hesitation.

  In prison it’s necessary to fight each battle day by day if you’re eventually going to win the war. First it was getting off the medical centre and onto Block Three. Then was escaping Block Three (Beirut) and being moved to Block One to live among a more mature group of prisoners. Next was being transferred from Belmarsh to a C-cat prison. Now I shall be pressing to regain my D-cat status, so that I can leave Wayland as quickly as possible for an open prison. But that’s tomorrow’s battle. Several prisoners have ‘Take each day as it comes’ scrawled on their walls.

  4.00 pm

  I try to write, but so much has already happened today that I find it hard to concentrate. I munch a bar of Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut (32p), and drink a mug of Evian (49p) topped up with Robinson’s blackcurrant juice (97p).

  6.00 pm

  Supper. I catch Fletch in the queue for the hotplate, and he agrees to join me in my cell at seven. ‘Miah [murder] is cutting my hair at seven,’ I tell him, ‘so could we make it seven fifteen? I can’t afford to miss the appointment, as I’m still hoping for a visit from my wife on Thursday.’

  7.00 pm

  Association. I sit patiently in a chair on number 2 landing waiting for Miah. He doesn’t turn up on time to cut my hair, so I return to my cell and wait for Fletch. He does arrive on time and takes a seat on the end of the bed. He doesn’t bother with any preamble.

  ‘You can include my piece in your book if you want to,’ he says, ‘and if you do, let’s hope it does some good.’

  I tell him that if a national newspaper serializes the diary, then his words will be read by millions of people, and the politicians will have to finally stop pretending that it isn’t happening or they will simply be guilty by association.

  We begin to go through the script line by line, filling in details such as names, times and places so that the casual reader can properly follow the sequence of events. Tony (marijuana only) joins us a few minutes later. It turns out that he’s the only other person to have read the piece, and it also becomes clear that it was on his advice that Fletch decided not only to write about his experiences, but to allow a wider audience to read them.

  There’s a knock on the door. It’s Miah (murder). He apologizes about missing his appointment to cut my hair, but he’s only just finished his spell on the hotplate. He explains that he can’t fit me in tomorrow, because of his work schedule, but he could cut my hair during Association on Wednesday. I warn him that if he fails to keep the appointment on Wednesday, I’ll kill him, as my wife is coming to visit me on Thursday and I must look my best. Miah laughs, bows and leaves us. I’ll kill him. I said it without thinking, and to a convicted murderer. Miah is 5ft 4in, and I doubt if he weighs ten stone; the man he murdered was 6ft 2in and weighed 220 pounds. Strange world I’m living in.

  Fletch, Tony and I continue to go over the script, and when we’ve completed the task, Fletch stands up and shakes me by the hand to show the deal has been agreed.

  8.00 pm

  For the next two hours, I transcribe out Fletch’s words, adding to the script only when he has given me specific details, background or names. By the time I’ve completed the last sentence, I’m even more angry than I was when he read the piece to me last night.

  10.00 pm

  I lie awake in my thin, hard prison bed, my head resting on my thinner, harder prison pillow, and wonder how decent normal people will react to Fletch’s story. For here is a man of whom any one of us might say, there but for the grace of God go I.

  These are the words of the prisoner known as Fletch (murder, life imprisonment, minimum sentence twenty-two years).

  My name is…* I am thirty-eight years old and serving a life sentence for a murder I did not commit, but I only wish I had.

  My whole life has been a fuck-up from the start I was born in Morriston in Wales and although I loved my family, I have only had six real relationships in my life, or as real as I felt they could be. The sort of relationship you want to rush home to, and regret leaving in the morning when you return to work.

  I met my wife when I was seventeen, and even today would happily die for her. We had a twenty-year relationship, though both of us had other lovers during that time. Of the six relationships I’ve had, two have been with men, which is where the complication begins. Because of years of sexual abuse I suffered during my childhood, I have never really enjoyed sex, whether it be with a man or a woman.

  Even today, I detest sexual contact and accept that it is what has caused the break-up of my relationships. I was always able to perform, and perform it was, but in truth it was nothing more than a chore, and I gained no gratification from it.

  I never felt able to tell my wife the truth about my past, despite the twenty years we’d shared together. It’s so easy to claim you’ve been abused, and shift the blame onto someone else. It’s so easy to claim you couldn’t prevent it, and it’s also virtually impossible to prove it.

  The truth is that I had no idea that what I was experiencing wasn’t the norm. Wasn’t every child going through this? My childhood ended at the age of nine when I was sent to a home.

  Overnight I became a plaything for those who were employed to care for me, those in power. They even managed to secure a place of safety order from a court so I couldn’t be moved and they could carry on abusing me.

  During the 1970s corporal punishment was common in children’s homes. For some of the staff it was simply the way they got their kicks. First they caned little boys until they screamed, and then they buggered us until we were senseless; not until then did they stop. Nine other children from that home can confirm this statement; two are married with children of their own, two are gay, five are in jail.

  Two of the five in jail are serving life sentences for murder.

  After a time, the abuse becomes a form of love and affection, because if you didn’t want to be caned, or belted with a strap, you give in and quickly accept the alternative, sexual abuse. By the age of twelve, I knew more about perversion and violence than any one of you reading this have ever read about, or even seen in films, let alone experienced.

  By the age of twelve, I had been abused by the staff at my home in—, local social workers, care staff and a probation officer. All of these professions attract paedophiles, and although they are in the minority (20%), they are well aware of each other, and they network together, and most frightening of all, they protect each other.

  I know a child who was articulate enough by the age of fourteen to tell the authorities what he was being put through, so they just moved him around the country from home to home before anyone could begin an investigation, while other paedophiles carried on abusing him.

  At the age of thirteen I ran away and made my way to—When I reached—, I began sleeping rough in—. It was there that I first met a man called*****, who offered me somewhere to sleep. That night he got me drunk, not too difficult when you’re only thirteen. He raped me, and after that began renting me out to like-minded men. Whenever you read in the tabloid press about rent boys for sale, don’t assume that they do it by choice, or even that they’re paid. They are often locked up, and controlled like any other prostitute, and have little or no say in what happens to their life.

  ***** controlled me for about six months, bringing to the flat judges, schoolmasters, police officers, politicians and o
ther upstanding citizens who are the back-bone of our country (I can tell you of birthmarks, wounds and peculiarities for almost every one of these men).

  One night in the West End when I was still thirteen, I was arrested by the police while ***** was trying to sell me to a customer. I was collected from the nick by a social worker, who took me to a children’s home in—. The home was run by a magistrate, *****. For the next fourteen days, [he] buggered me night and day before issuing a court order that I should be returned to [my original children’s home], where it was back to caning and systematic abuse.

  After a couple of months, I was transferred to—, a hospital for emotionally disturbed children. Once again, the staff abused me and this time they had a more effective weapon than caning. They threatened to apply EST, electric shock treatment should I try to resist. I ran away again, returning to—, and have lived there ever since. I was only fourteen at the time, and ***** soon caught up with me. This time he installed me in the flat of a friend where seven or eight men would bugger me on a daily basis. One or two liked to whip me with a belt, while others punched me, this could be before, during or after having sex. When they eventually stopped, they occasionally left a small present (money or gift) on my pillow. This wasn’t much use, because I never got out of the flat, unless I was accompanied by *****.

  By the age of fifteen, I was sniffing glue, regularly getting drunk, and having sex with countless men. But it didn’t hurt any more. I felt nothing, it was all just part of my daily life.

  This life, if that’s what you can call it, continued for another four years, during which time I was photographed for porn magazines, and appeared in porn films.

  By the age of eighteen, I no longer served any purpose for these men, so I was thrown out onto the street and left to fend for myself. That was when I committed my first crime. Burglary of a department store, Lillywhites. I was arrested and sent to Borstal for six months. When I was released, I continued with a life of crime, I wasn’t exactly trained for anything else.