A Prison Diary

by Jeffrey Archer

  ‘And it all began with Cain and Abel,’ he tells us, ‘because Cain was the first murderer. Envious of his brother’s success, he gained revenge by killing him. But God saw him do it and punished him for the rest of his life.’

  His next chosen example of a murderer was Moses, who, he told us, killed an Egyptian and also thought he’d got away with it, but he hadn’t because God had seen him, so he too was punished for the rest of his life. I don’t remember that bit, because I thought Moses died peacefully in his bed aged 130.

  ‘Now I want you to turn to the Second Book of Samuel,’ declares the Chaplain. ‘Not the first book, the second book, where you’ll find a king who was a murderer. King David. He killed Uriah the Hittite, because he fancied his wife Bathsheba. He had Uriah placed in the front line of the next battle to make sure he was killed so he could end up marrying Bathsheba. However, God also saw what he was up to, and punished him accordingly. Because God witnesses every murder, and will punish anyone who breaks his commandments.’

  ‘Alleluia,’ shout several of the congregation in the front three rows.

  I later learnt from the Deputy Governor that at least half the congregation were murderers, so the Chaplain was well aware of the audience he was playing to.

  After the sermon is over the Gospel singers sing a quiet reprise while the Chaplain asks if all those who are willing to put their trust in God might like to come forward and sign the pledge. A queue begins to form in front of David, and he blesses them one by one. Once they are back in their seats, we sing the last hymn before receiving the Chaplain’s final blessing. As we file out, I thank the Reverend before being searched – but what could possibly change hands during the service, when they’ve already searched us before we came in? I find out a week later. We are then escorted back to our cells and locked up once again.

  12 noon

  At midday we’re let out for Sunday lunch. There are four different dishes on offer – turkey, beef, ham and stew. As I am unable to tell which is which, I settle for some grated cheese and two slices of un-margarined bread, before returning to my cell to sit at my little table and slowly nibble my cheese sandwich.

  Once I’ve finished lunch, which takes all of five minutes, I start writing again. I continue uninterrupted for a couple of hours until Kevin returns clutching a plastic bag of goodies – two Weetabix, a carton of milk, two small green apples, a bar of soap and – his biggest triumph to date – two packets of Cup a Soup, minestrone and mushroom. I don’t leave him in any doubt how grateful I am before settling down to a plastic bowl of Weetabix soaked in milk. The same bowl I’d used to shave in earlier this morning.

  4.20 pm

  It’s not until after four has struck that I am allowed to leave the cell again and join the other prisoners for forty-five minutes in the exercise yard. I quickly learn that you take any and every opportunity – from religion to work to exercise – to make sure you get out of your cell. Once again, we’re searched before being allowed to go into the yard.

  Most of the inmates don’t bother to walk, but simply congregate in groups and sunbathe while lounging up against the fence. Just a few of us stride purposefully round. I walk briskly because I’m already missing my daily visit to the gym. I notice that several prisoners are wearing the latest Nike or Reebok trainers. It’s the one fashion statement they are allowed to make. One of the inmates joins me and shyly offers ten pages of a manuscript and asks if I would be willing to read them. He tells me that he writes three pages a day and hopes to finish the work by the time he’s released in December.

  I read the ten pages as I walk. He is clearly quite well educated as the sentences are grammatically correct and he has a good command of language. I congratulate him on the piece, wish him well, and even admit that I am carrying out the same exercise myself. One or two others join me to discuss their legal problems, but as I have little knowledge of the law, I am unable to answer any of their questions. I hear my name called out on the tannoy, and return to the officer at the gate.

  ‘Mr Peel wants to see you,’ the officer says without explanation, and this time doesn’t bother to search me as I am escorted to a little office in the centre of the spur. Another form needs to be filled in, as James had phoned asking if he can visit me on Friday.

  ‘Do you want to see him?’ he asks.

  ‘Of course I do,’ I reply.

  ‘They don’t all want to,’ Mr Peel remarks as he fills out the form. When he has completed the task, he asks how I am settling in.

  ‘Not well,’ I admit. ‘Being locked up for seventeen hours…but I’m sure you’ve heard it all before.’

  Mr Peel begins to talk about his job and the problems the prison service is going through. He’s been a prison officer for ten years, and his basic pay is still only £24,000, which with overtime at £13.20 an hour (maximum allowed, nine hours a week) he can push up to £31,000. I didn’t tell him that it’s less than I pay my secretary. He then explains that his partner is also a prison officer and she carries out her full overtime stint, which means they end up with £60,000 a year between them, but don’t see a lot of each other. After getting his message across, he changes the subject back to Belmarsh.

  ‘This is only a reception prison,’ he explains. ‘If you’re convicted and not on remand, we move you to another prison as quickly as possible. But I’m sorry to say we see the same old faces returning again and again. They aren’t all bad, you know, in fact if it wasn’t for drugs, particularly heroin, sixty per cent of them wouldn’t even be here.’

  ‘Sixty per cent?’ I repeat.

  ‘Yes, most of them are in for petty theft to pay for their drug habit or are part of the drug culture.’

  ‘And can they still get hold of drugs in prison?’

  ‘Oh yes, you’ll have noticed how rudimentary the searches are. That’s because prison regulations don’t permit us to do any more. We know where they’re hiding the drugs and every method they use to bring them in, but because of the Human Rights Act we’re not always allowed to carry out a thorough enough search. Some of them are even willing to swallow plastic packets full of heroin, they’re so desperate.’

  ‘But if the packet were to burst?’

  ‘They’ll die within hours,’ he says. ‘One prisoner died that way last month, but you’d be surprised how many of them are still willing to risk it. Did you hear the fire alarm go off last night?’

  ‘Yes, it woke me,’ I told him.

  ‘It was a heroin addict who’d set fire to his cell. By the time I got there he was cutting his wrist with a razor, because he wanted to suffer even more pain to help take his mind off the craving. We whisked him off to the medical wing, but there wasn’t much they could do except patch him up. He’ll go through exactly the same trauma again tonight, so we’ll just have to mount a suicide watch and check his cell every fifteen minutes.’

  A horn sounds to announce that the exercise period is over. ‘I suppose you’d better get back to your cell,’ he says. ‘If you weren’t writing a book, I can’t imagine what the authorities imagine will be gained by sending you here.’

  5.00 pm

  I return to my cell and continue writing until supper. When my door is unlocked again I go down to the hotplate on the ground floor. I settle for a Thermos of hot water, an apple and a plastic bag containing tomorrow’s breakfast. Back in my cell I munch a packet of crisps and with the aid of half the hot water in the Thermos make a Cup a Soup – mushroom. The cell door is slammed shut at five thirty, and will not be opened again until nine thirty tomorrow morning, by which time I will have used the other half of the water from the Thermos to take a shave, in the same bowl as I eat the soup.

  I spend the next couple of hours following the Open Golf on Radio 5 Live. David Duval, an American, wins his first Open, to see his name inscribed on the silver claret jug. Colin Montgomery and Ian Woosnam put up a spirited fight, but are not around at the seventy-second hole.

  I flick over to Radio 4 to hear Steve Norris (
Vice-Chairman of the Conservative Party in charge of women’s affairs) telling the world he always knew I was a bad man. In the election among Party members for candidate for Mayor of London, I defeated Mr Norris by 71 per cent to 29 per cent.

  I turn the radio off and read a couple of chapters of The Moon’s a Balloon, which takes Mr Niven to Sandhurst before being commissioned into the King’s Own Highlanders. I rest my head on the rock-hard pillow, and, despite the prisoners shouting from cell to cell and loud rap music coming from every corner of the block, I somehow fall asleep.

  Day 5

  Monday 23 July 2001

  5.53 am

  The sun is shining through the bars of my window on what must be a glorious summer day. I’ve been incarcerated in a cell five paces by three for twelve and a half hours, and will not be let out again until midday; eighteen and a half hours of solitary confinement. There is a child of seventeen in the cell below me who has been charged with shoplifting – his first offence, not even convicted – and he is being locked up for eighteen and a half hours, unable to speak to anyone. This is Great Britain in the twenty-first century, not Turkey, not Nigeria, not Kosovo, but Britain.

  I can hear the right-wingers assuring us that it will be character-building and teach the lad a lesson. What stupidity. It’s far more likely that he will become antagonistic towards authority and once he’s released, turn to a life of crime. This same young man will now be spending at least a fortnight with murderers, rapists, burglars and drug addicts. Are these the best tutors he can learn from?

  12 noon

  I am visited by a charming lady who spotted me sitting in church on Sunday. I end up asking her more questions than she asks me. It turns out that she visits every prisoner who signs the pledge – I fear I didn’t – and any inmate who attends chapel for the first time. She gives each prisoner a Bible and will sit and listen to their problems for hours. She kindly answers all my questions. When she leaves, I pick up my plastic tray, plastic bowl, plastic plate, plastic knife, fork and spoon, leave my cell to walk down to the hotplate for lunch.*

  One look at what’s on offer and once again I return to my cell empty-handed. An old lag on his way back to the top floor tells me that Belmarsh has the worst grub of any jail in Britain. As he’s been a resident of seven prisons during the past twenty years, I take his word for it. An officer slams my cell door closed. It will not open again until four o’clock. I’ve had precisely twelve minutes of freedom during the last twenty-two and a half hours.

  4.00 pm

  After another four hours, I’m let out for Association. During this blessed release, I stop to glance at the TV in the centre of the room that’s surrounded by a dozen prisoners. They’re watching a cowboy film starring Ray Milland, who plays the sheriff. Normally I would flick to another channel but today it’s the selection of the majority so I hang in there for ten minutes before finally giving up and moving on to the dominoes table.

  An Irishman joins me and asks if I can spare him a minute. He’s about five feet eight, with two scars etched across his face – one above his left eyebrow, short, the stitches still showing, and another down his right cheek, long and red. The latter I suspect is the more recent. Despite this disfigurement, he has that soft lilt of his countrymen that I can never resist.

  ‘I’m up in court next week,’ he says.

  ‘What for?’ I ask.

  ‘You’d rather not know,’ he replies, ‘but all I want to find out is, once I’m in court, am I allowed to defend myself?’

  ‘Yes,’ I tell him.

  ‘But would it be better to give my side of the story to a barrister and then let him brief the jury?’

  I consider this for a moment because during my seven-week trial I gained some experience of the legal profession. ‘On balance,’ I tell him, ‘I would take advantage of any legal expertise on offer, rather than rely on your own cunning.’ He nods and slips away. I dread meeting up with this sharp, intelligent Irishman at some later date to be told that his barrister was a fool.

  I stroll back across the room to see how the film is progressing. Being a western, a gunfight to end all gunfights is just about to take place when the officer on duty shouts, ‘Back to your cells.’ A groan goes up, but to be fair to the duty officer, he’s seated at the far end of the room and has no idea that the film only has another five minutes to run.

  ‘The good guys win, Ray Milland gets the girl, and the baddies are all blown away,’ I tell the audience assembled round the TV.

  ‘You’ve seen it before?’ asks one of the inmates.

  ‘No, you stupid fucker,’ says another. ‘We always lose. Have you ever known it end any other way?’

  Once locked back in my cell after the forty-five-minute break, I pour myself a glass of Buxton water, eat a packet of Smith’s crisps and nibble away at an apple. Having finished my five-minute non-prison meal, I clean my teeth and settle down to another two hours of writing.

  I’ve written about a thousand words when I hear a key turning in the lock, always a welcome distraction because, as I’ve mentioned before, an open door gives you a feeling of freedom and the possibility that you might even be allowed to escape for a few minutes.

  I’m greeted by a lady in civilian clothes who wears the inevitable badge – in her case, Librarian. ‘Good afternoon,’ I say as I rise from my place and smile. She looks surprised.

  ‘If a prisoner asks you to sign a book, could you in future say no,’ she says without bothering to introduce herself. I look puzzled; after all, I’ve been asked to sign books for the past twenty-five years. ‘It’s just that they are all library books,’ she continues, ‘and they’re being stolen. They’ve now become like tobacco and phonecards, a trading item for drugs, and are worth double with your signature.’

  I assure her I will not sign another library book. She nods and slams the door closed.

  I continue writing, aware that the next opportunity for a break will come when we have the allocated forty-five minutes for afternoon exercise. I’m already becoming used to the routine of the door opening, lining up to be searched, and then being released into the yard. I’ve written about another two thousand words before the door opens again.

  Having gone through the ritual, I stroll around the large square accompanied by Vincent (burglary) and another man called Mark (driving offence), who supports Arsenal. One circuit, and I discover that the only way to stop Mark boring me to death about his favourite football team is to agree with him that Arsenal, despite Manchester United’s recent record, is the best team in England.

  Desperate for a change of subject, I point to a sad figure walking in front of us, the only prisoner in the yard who looks older than me.

  ‘Poor old thing,’ says Vincent. ‘He shouldn’t be here, but he’s what’s known as a bag man – nowhere to go, so he ends up in prison.’

  ‘But what was his crime?’ I ask.

  ‘Nothing, if the truth be known. Every few weeks he throws a brick through a shop window and then hangs around until the police turn up to arrest him.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’ I ask.

  ‘Because he’s got nowhere to go and at least while he’s inside the poor old sod is guaranteed a bed and three meals a day.’

  ‘But surely the police have worked that out by now?’ I suggest.

  ‘Yes, of course they have, so they advise the magistrate to bind him over. But he’s even found a way round that, because the moment the magistrate fails to sentence him, he shouts out at the top of his voice, “You’re a stupid old fucker, and I’m going to throw a brick through your window tonight, so see you again tomorrow.” That assures him at least another six weeks inside, which is exactly what he was hoping for in the first place. He’s been sentenced seventy-three times in the past thirty years, but never for more than three months. The problem is that the system doesn’t know what to do with him.’

  A young black man runs past me, to the jeers of those lolling up against the perimeter fence. He is not
put off, and if anything runs a little faster. He’s lean and fit, and looks like a quartermiler. I watch him, only to be reminded that my planned summer holiday at the World Athletics Championships in Edmonton with Michael Beloff has been exchanged for three weeks in Belmarsh.

  ‘Let’s get moving,’ whispers Vincent. ‘We want to avoid that one at any cost,’ he adds, pointing to a lone prisoner walking a few paces ahead of us. Vincent doesn’t speak again until we’ve overtaken him, and are out of earshot. He then answers my unasked question. ‘He’s a double murderer – his wife and her boyfriend.’ Vincent goes on to describe how he killed them both. I found the details so horrific that I must confess I didn’t feel able to include Vincent’s words in this diary until six months after I’d left Belmarsh. If you’re at all squeamish, avoid reading the next three paragraphs.

  This is Vincent’s verbatim description.

  That bastard returned home unexpectedly in the middle of the day, to find his wife making love to another man. The man tried to escape out of the bedroom window, but was knocked out with one punch. He then tied the two of them next to each other on the bed, before going down to the kitchen. He returned a few minutes later holding a serrated carving knife with a seven-inch blade. During the next hour, he stabbed the lover eleven times making sure he was still alive before finally cutting off his balls.

  Once the man had died, he climbed on the bed and raped his wife, who was still tied up next to her dead lover. At the last moment he came all over the dead man’s face. He then climbed off the bed, and stared at his hysterical wife. He waited for some time before inserting the carving knife deep into her vagina. He then pulled the blade slowly up through her body.