A Prison Diary

by Jeffrey Archer

  9.00 am

  When my cell door is opened, I don’t join the other prisoners to go to the workshop as I have an appointment with the Education Assessor, Judy Fitt, known amongst the prisoners as ‘Misfit’ – a joke she must be heartily sick of.

  When Ms Fitt arrives, the officer on the front desk calls for me, or to be more accurate, bellows out my name, as I’m on the top landing, and they never move from the ground floor unless they have to. I go down to meet her. Judy is a short – could lose a few pounds – blonde, of about forty with a happy, optimistic smile. I pick up two chairs from the pile by the TV and place them under the window at the end of the room. I think she’s surprised that I insist on carrying her chair. Once seated, she takes me through all the education curriculum has to offer, from teaching reading and writing skills, through to taking a degree. Her enthusiasm leaves me in no doubt that Judy is another public servant dedicated to her job. She also suggests that in my case I could learn to cook, draw, or even, after all these years of avoiding it, discover how to use a computer. That would impress Mary.

  I remind Judy that I’m only expecting to be at Belmarsh for a few more days, and would like to use my time to teach other prisoners to read and write. Judy considers this suggestion, but would prefer I gave a creative-writing course, as there are several inmates working on books, poems and essays who will have dozens of unanswered questions. I agree to her request and, aware of my escape plan, Judy suggests I ought to give my first lesson tomorrow morning. She pauses, looking a little embarrassed. ‘But first I have to enrol you in the education department.’ She passes me over yet more forms. ‘Can you complete these tests and let me have them back later today so that I can process them in a matter of hours?’

  ‘I’ll try to have them completed by the end of the morning.’

  She laughs. ‘It won’t take you that long.’

  I return to my cell, and as I have nothing to do for the thirty minutes before lunch, begin to fill in the little boxes headed Education Test. I’ve selected some random examples:

  1) English – spell these words correctly: wos, befor, wer, gril, migt, siad, affer.

  2) Maths –

  a) 13+34, 125+386?

  b) how much change do you get from £5 if you spend £1.20?

  3) what is 7.15pm on a twenty-four hour clock?

  4) how much time is there between 4.30 and 6.15?

  5) what is 25% of 300?

  6) if 1 biscuit costs 25p, 6 are £1.38, 12 are £2.64, and 24 are £6, which is the better buy?

  I complete the six pages of questions and return them to Ms Fitt, via Billy Little (murder), who has an education class this afternoon.

  12 noon

  Lunch. Provisions have not yet arrived from the canteen. Half a portion of macaroni cheese and a mug of Highland Spring. Have you noticed I’m beginning to eat prison food?

  1.40 pm

  My cell door is opened, and I’m told Ms Roberts wants to see me. I am accompanied to the Governor’s office by Mr Weedon. I don’t bother to ask him why, because he won’t know, and even if he does, he wouldn’t tell me. Only moments later I discover that Ms Roberts has nothing but bad news to impart and none of it caused by the staff at Belmarsh. My Category D status has been raised to C because the police say they have been left with no choice but to follow up Baroness Nicholson’s allegations, and open a full inquiry into what happened to the money raised for the Kurds. As if that wasn’t enough, the C-cat prison I’ve been allocated to is on the Isle of Wight. How much further away do they want me to be from my family?

  The raising of my status, Ms Roberts explains, is based on the fear that while a further inquiry is going on I might try to escape. Scotland Yard obviously has a sense of humour. How far do they imagine I could get before someone spotted me?

  Ms Roberts informs me that I can appeal against both decisions, and if I do, the authorities have agreed to make an assessment by Thursday. She points out that the Isle of Wight is a long way from my residence in Cambridge, and it’s the responsibility of the Home Office to house a prisoner as close to his home as possible. If that’s the case, I’m only surprised they’re not sending me to the Shetland Isles. She promises to have a word with my solicitor and explain my rights to them. If it were not for Ms Roberts and Ramona Mehta, I would probably be locked up in perpetual solitary confinement.

  I cannot express forcibly enough my anger at Emma Nicholson, especially after my years of work for the Kurds. One call to Sir Nicholas Young at the Red Cross and all her questions as to the role I played in the Simple Truth campaign could have been answered. She preferred to contact the press.

  Ms Roberts points out that as my lawyers are due to visit me at two o’clock, perhaps I should be making a move. I thank her. Baroness Nicholson could learn a great deal from this twenty-six-year-old woman.

  2.00 pm

  I join Alex Cameron and Ramona Mehta in the visitors’ area. This time we’ve been allocated a room not much bigger than my cell. But there is a difference – on three sides it has large windows. When you’re behind bars day and night, you notice windows.

  Before they go on to my appeal against conviction and sentence, I raise three other subjects on which I require legal advice. First, whether the Baroness has stepped over the mark. The lawyers fear she may have worded everything so carefully as to guarantee maximum publicity for herself, without actually accusing me of anything in particular. I point out that I am only too happy to cooperate with any police inquiry, and the sooner the better. The Simple Truth campaign was organized by the Red Cross, and the Treasurer at the time will confirm that I had no involvement whatsoever with the collecting or distributing of any monies. Ramona points out that several Red Cross officials, past and present, have already come out publicly confirming this.

  I then tell my lawyers the story of Ali (£28,000 stolen and returned, but now doing an eighteen-month sentence for breach of trust). I ask that the police be reminded that Mrs Peppiatt admitted in the witness box to double-billing, stealing a car, taking her children on a free holiday to Corfu, buying presents for mistresses that didn’t exist and claiming expenses for meals with phantom individuals. Can I hope that the CPS will treat her to the same rigorous inspection as Ali and I have been put through?

  Third, I remind them that Ted Francis, the man who sold his story to the News of the World for fourteen thousand pounds, still owes me twelve thousand. I’d like it back.

  The lawyers promise to follow up all these matters. However, they consider the reinstatement of my D-cat and making sure I don’t have to go to the Isle of Wight their first priorities.

  I ask Ramona to take the next five days of what I’ve written and hand the script over to Alison for typing up. Ramona leaves our little room to ask the duty officer if he will allow this. He turns down her request. Alex suggests I hold onto the script until I’ve been transferred to a less security-conscious prison. He also advises me that it would be unwise to think of publishing anything until after my appeal has been considered. I warn them that if I lose my appeal and continue to keep up my present output for the entire sentence, I’ll end up writing a million words.

  On the hour, an officer appears to warn us that our time is up. Ramona leaves, promising to deal with the problems of my D-cat and the Isle of Wight immediately.

  While I’m waiting to be escorted back to Block One, I get into conversation with a Greek Cypriot called Nazraf who is on remand awaiting trial. He’s been charged with ‘detaining his wife in a motorcar’ – I had no idea there was such a charge. I repeat his story here with the usual government health warning. Nazraf tells me that he locked his wife in the car for her own safety because he was at the time transferring a large sum of cash from his place of work to a local bank. He’s in the restaurant business and for several years has been very successful, making an annual profit of around £200,000. He adds with some considerable passion that he still loves his wife, and would prefer a reconciliation, but she has already filed for
divorce.

  Nazraf comes across as a bright, intelligent man, so I have to ask him why he isn’t out on bail. He explains that the court demanded a sum of £40,000 to be put up by at least four different people, and he didn’t want his friends or business associates to know that he was in any trouble. He had always assumed that the moment he was sent to jail, his wife would come to her senses and drop the charges. That was five weeks ago and she hasn’t budged. The trial takes place in mid-September…

  This is all I could find out before we were released from the waiting room to continue on our separate paths – I to Block One, Nazraf to Block Four. His final destination also puzzles me, because Block Four usually houses terrorists or extremely high-security risks. I’d like to meet Nazraf again, but I have a feeling I never will.

  6.00 pm

  Supper. Provisions have arrived from the canteen and been left in a plastic bag on the end of my bed. I settle down to a plate of tinned Spam, a bar of Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut, two McVitie’s digestive biscuits and finally a mug of blackcurrant juice, topped up with Evian water. What more could a man ask for.

  8.00 pm

  Association. I am asked to join a group of ‘more mature’ prisoners – at sixty-one I am by far the oldest, if not the most mature – for their weekly committee meeting in Fletch’s cell. Other attendees include Tony (marijuana only), Billy (murder), Colin (GBH) and Paul (murder).

  Like any well-run board meeting, we have a chairman, Fletch, and an agenda. First we discuss the hours we are permitted to be out of our cells, and how Mr Marsland has made conditions more bearable since he became the senior officer. Fletch considers that relations between the two parties who live on different sides of ‘the iron barrier’ are far more tenable – even amicable – than at any time in the past. Colin is still complaining about a particular warder, who I haven’t yet come across. According to Colin, he treats the prisoners like scum, and will put you on report if you as much as blink in front of him. He’s evidently proud of the fact that he’s put more people on report than any other officer, and that tells you all you need to know about him, Colin suggests.

  I decide to observe this man from a distance and see if Colin’s complaint is justified. Most of the officers make an effort ‘to keep a lid on things’, preferring a calm atmosphere, only too aware that lifers’ moods swing from despair to hope and back to despair again in moments. This can, in the hands of an unthinking officer, lead to violence. Colin, I fear, is quick to wrath, and doesn’t need to take another step backwards, just as things are going a little better for him.

  The next subject the committee discuss is prison finance. Tony reports that the Governor, Hazel Banks, has been given a bonus of £24,000 for bringing Belmarsh Prison costs down by four hundred thousand. Hardly something a free enterprise merchant like myself could grumble about. However, Paul feels the money would have been better spent on inmates’ education and putting electricity into the cells. I have no idea if these figures are accurate, but Tony confirms that he checked them in Sir David Ramsbotham’s (head of the prison service) annual review.

  When the meeting breaks up, Derek Del Boy Bicknell (murder) – interesting that he has not been invited to join the committee meeting – asks if he could have a private word with me. ‘I’ve got something for you to read,’ he says. I walk across the ground floor from Cell 9 to Cell 6. After he’s offered me a selection of paperbacks, I discover the real reason he wishes to see me.

  He wants to discuss his appeal, and produces a letter from his solicitor. The main grounds for his appeal appear to be that his former solicitor advised him not to go into the witness box when he wanted to. He subsequently sacked the solicitor and his QC. He has since appointed a new legal team to advise him, but he’s not yet chosen a QC. Imagine my surprise when I discover one of his grounds for appeal is that he is unable to read or write, and therefore never properly understood what his rights were. I look up at a shelf full of books above his bed.

  ‘You can’t read?’

  ‘No, but don’t tell anyone. You see, I’ve never really needed to as a car salesman.’

  This is a prisoner who carries a great deal of responsibility on the spur. He’s a Listener and number one on the hotplate. I earlier described him as a man who could run a private company and I have not changed my mind. Del Boy brings to mind Somerset Maugham’s moving short story, ‘The Bell Ringer’. However, it’s still going to be a disadvantage for him not to be able to study his legal papers. I begin to wonder how many other prisoners fall into the same category, and worse, just won’t admit it. I go over the grounds of appeal with Del Boy line by line. He listens intently, but can’t make any notes.

  8.45 pm

  Lock-up is called so I return to my cell to face – delighted to face – another pile of letters left on my bed by Ray the censor. I realize the stack will be even greater tomorrow when the papers inform their readers that I will not be going to an open prison, after Emma Nicholson has dropped her ‘I was only doing my duty’ barb into an already boiling cauldron.

  I’ve now fallen into a routine, much as I had in the outside world. The big difference is that I have little or no control over when I can and cannot write, so I fit my hours round the prison timetable. Immediately after evening lock-up is designated for reading letters, break, followed by going over my manuscript, break, reading the book of the week, break, undress, go to bed, break, try to ignore the inevitable rap music. Impossible.

  Every time I finish the day’s script, I wonder if there will be anything new to say tomorrow. However, I’m still on such a steep learning curve, I’ve nowhere near reached that dizzy height. But I confess I now want to leave Belmarsh for pastures new, and pastures is the key word. I long to walk in green fields and taste fresh air.

  Billy (lifer, writer, scholar) tells me it will be better once I’ve settled somewhere, and don’t have to spend my energy wondering when and where I will be for the rest of my sentence. He’s been at Belmarsh for two years and seven months, and still doesn’t know where he’s destined for. Tony (marijuana only, escaped from open prison) warns me that, wherever I go, I’ll be quickly bored if I don’t have a project to work on. Thankfully, writing these diaries has solved that problem. But for how long?

  Day 14

  Wednesday 1 August 2001

  6.21 am

  A long, hot, sleepless night. The rap music went on until about four in the morning, so I was only able to doze off for the odd few minutes. When it finally ceased, a row broke out between someone called Mitchell, who I think was in the cell above the music, and another prisoner called Vaz, who owned the stereo below. It didn’t take long to learn what Mitchell planned to do to Vaz just as soon as his cell door was opened. Their language bore a faint resemblance to the dialogue in a Martin Amis novel, but without any of his style or panache.

  8.37 am

  Breakfast. Among my canteen selections is a packet of cereal called Variety, eight different cereals in little boxes. I start off with something called Coco Pops. Not bad, but it’s still almost impossible to beat good old Kellogg’s Cornflakes.

  9.31 am

  The morning papers are delivered to the duty officer. They’re full of stories confirming that my status has been changed from D-cat to C-cat because of Emma Nicholson’s accusations.

  9.50 am

  Ms Labersham arrives and actually knocks politely on my cell door, as if I were capable of opening it. She unlocks ‘the iron barrier’ and tells me that she has come to escort me to my creative-writing class.

  I’m taken to a smoke-filled waiting room with no chairs, just a table. Well, that’s one way of guaranteeing a standing ovation. Moments later a trickle of prisoners appear, each carrying his own plastic chair. Once the nine of them are settled, Ms Labersham reminds everyone that it’s a two-hour session. She suggests that I should speak for about an hour and then open it up for a general discussion.

  I’ve never spoken for an hour in my life; it’s usually thirty minutes
, forty at the most before I take questions. On this occasion I speak for just over forty minutes, explaining how I took up writing at the age of thirty-four after leaving Parliament, with debts of £427,000 and facing bankruptcy. The last time I gave this speech was at a conference in Las Vegas as the principal guest of a US hotel group. They flew me over first class, gave me a suite of rooms and sent me home with a cheque for $50,000.

  Today, I’m addressing nine Belmarsh inmates, and Ms Labersham has confirmed that my prison account will be credited with £2 (a bottle of Highland Spring and a tube of toothpaste).

  When I’ve finished my talk, I am surprised how lively the discussion is that follows. One of the prisoners, Michael (aged twenty-one, murder), wants to talk about becoming a song writer, a subject about which I know very little. I don’t feel I can tell him that a lyricist is as different to a novelist as a brain surgeon is from a gynaecologist. Michael wants me to read out his latest effort. It’s already forty verses in length. I offer you one:

  No room, but to leave

  You call out, calling for me

  to come back

  but all you can hear is the sound of your own voice

  calling out my name

  Michael heard yesterday that the judge had given him a tariff of eighteen years.