‘I was with the vicar,’ I tell him.
DAY 133
WEDNESDAY 28 NOVEMBER 2001
9.50 am
Leon is sitting in the waiting room at SMU ready for his HDC ajudication with Mr Berlyn (deputy governor) and Mr Simpson (resident probation officer).
Leon called his fiancée again last night. The three suitors have arrived from India, and once Sunita has made her choice (and if she doesn’t, her parents will decide for her) she will then be flown back to India to meet the man’s parents. The couple will then return to England to prepare for a wedding on 6 December, the day before Leon will be released.
Sunita’s plan is to take only hand luggage on the flight, so that when she returns, she will walk straight through customs while her parents wait to pick up their luggage from the baggage hall. Leon’s brother will be waiting in the arrivals hall and drive her straight to Birmingham, where she and Leon will be married later that day.
If the board grants Leon his tagging, he will leave NSC at eight o’clock on the Saturday, and drive straight to Birmingham, and they will be man and wife before the family can work out where she’s disappeared. Everything is riding on the result of Leon’s interview with the board in a few minutes’ time. Mr Berlyn calls for Leon at ten-eleven and I escort him up to the interview room.
Carl and I run around the kitchen pretending to be busy. SMU is on full alert because Martin Narey, the director-general, arrived a few minutes ago.
10.32 am
Leon appears, almost in tears. The board have turned down his application. I fear he may abscond tonight and take the law into his own hands.
11.30 am
The Rev Derek Johnson drops in to tell us that he’s met with the governor, who does not have the authority to sanction a wedding in the chapel. A prisoner must have at least nine months to serve before he can apply for such a privilege. He adds that no one has ever come across such an unusual set of circumstances.
Leon now can’t do anything until seven o’clock this evening when he’s arranged to phone his fiancée on her mobile. Before he leaves us, he adds two more pieces of information. First, his father, an extremely wealthy man, has offered a dowry of £500,000 to Sunita’s family. Leon’s mother is a Brahmini, but because his father is Irish, their son is unacceptable. One can only wonder how much the three suitors from India are offering as a dowry for this girl they have yet to meet. Second, Sunita’s sister was subjected to the same drama two years ago, and is now going through a messy divorce. Carl and I agree to meet in Leon’s room at 7.30 pm and plan his next move.
11.45 am
I leave for lunch a few minutes before the director-general is due to arrive at SMU. By the time I’ve finished my cauliflower cheese and gone back to the south block to make a couple of phone calls, Mr Narey has moved on to visit the lifers’ quarters. I return to work at one o’clock.
5.00 pm
I drop in to see Doug, who confirms that Exotic Foods have agreed to interview him on Friday morning, and he is hoping to begin work with them on Monday week, so I could become hospital orderly in two weeks’ time.
7.30 pm
Leon opens the door of his room to greet us with a warm smile. Sunita has escaped from Sheffield and has driven down to Portsmouth to stay with his brother and sister-in-law. She has purchased a new phone, as she is worried that her parents will hire a detective to trace her through the mobile Leon bought for her.
Leon removes a thick bundle of letters from his shelf.
‘She writes twice a day,’ he says.
I am delighted by the news, but suggest to Carl after we’ve left that it won’t take a particularly bright private detective to work out Sunita might be staying with Leon’s brother.
I have a feeling this saga is not yet over.
DAY 134
THURSDAY 29 NOVEMBER 2001
I have mentioned the worthwhile role played by the Samaritans who train selected prisoners as Listeners. At NSC they have taken this trust one stage further and set aside a room where a pre-programmed mobile phone has been provided for inmates who need to call the Samaritans.
This service has become very popular, as more and more prisoners claim to be in need of succour from the Samaritans; so much so that Mr New recently became suspicious. After one particularly long call, which was interspersed with laughter, he confiscated the phone and quickly discovered what the inmates had been up to. They had been removing the Sim card from inside the phone and replacing it with one of their own that had been smuggled in.
As of today, there will no longer be a dedicated room for the Samaritans, or a mobile phone.
11.00 am
This will be my last labour board if I am to join Doug in the hospital next week. I therefore suggest to Carl that he should take charge as if I wasn’t there. During the rest of the morning, whenever a prisoner calls in with some problem, Carl handles it. My only worry is that as Carl has another fifteen months to serve before he’ll be eligible for a tag, he may become bored long before his sentence is up.
2.30 pm
Mr New calls Spring Hill to ask Mr Payne why my transfer is taking so long. He’s told that Spring Hill is about to face a public enquiry as a consequence of something that happened before he became governor. Mr Payne fears that the press will be swarming all over the place and although he is quite willing to have me, he can’t let me know his decision for at least another couple of weeks. I press Mr New for the details of what could possibly cause so much public interest but he refuses to discuss it. I wonder if it’s simply a ploy to keep me from being transferred.12
7.00 pm
I visit Leon in the north block. He has just come off the phone to his fiancée, still safely ensconced in Portsmouth with Leon’s brother. Sunita’s three Indian suitors have returned home accompanied by her mother, leaving her father in Bradford. Sunita has rung her father who has agreed to meet Leon. But he still doesn’t know that Leon is in jail and won’t be released for another three weeks.
DAY 135
FRIDAY 30 NOVEMBER 2001
9.30 am
The best laid plans of mice and convicts.
I am making tea for Mr Simpson at SMU when the duty officer asks me to report to the hospital for a suicide watch. Doug has gone to Boston for his Exotic Foods interview, so they are short of an orderly.
Suicide watch is quite common in prison, and this is the second I’ve covered in three weeks. Linda and Gail have to judge whether the prisoner is genuinely considering taking his own life, or simply looking for tea and sympathy and a chance to sit and watch television.
I turn up at the hospital a few minutes later to find my charge is a man of about forty-five, squat, thick set, covered in tattoos, with several teeth missing. David is serving a six-year sentence for GBH. What puzzles me is that he is due to be released on 14 January, so he only has a few more weeks of his sentence to complete. All I’m expected to do is to keep an eye on him while Gail gets on with her other duties, which today include taking care of a prisoner who was injured after being thrown through a window at his previous jail.
David’s first request is for a glass of water, which is no problem. He then disappears into the lavatory, and doesn’t reappear again for some time, when he requests another glass of water. No sooner has he gulped that down than the vicar arrives. He sits down next to David and asks if he can help. I ask David if he wants me to leave.
‘No,’ he says, but he would like another glass of water.
He then tells the vicar about the demons that visit him during the night, insisting that he must commit more crimes, and as he wants to go straight, he doesn’t know what to do.
‘Are you a practising member of any faith?’ asks the Reverend.
‘Yeah,’ replies David, ‘I believe in God and life after death, but I’ve never been sure which religion would be best for me.’
A long and thoughtful discussion follows after which David decides he’s Church of England. The only thing of interes
t that comes out of the talk is that David wants to return to Nottingham jail, because he feels safer from the demons there, and more importantly they have a full-time psychiatrist who understands his problem. This also puzzles me. We have our own psychiatrist, Val, who is on duty at SMU this morning. Why would anyone want to leave NSC to return to a hell-hole like Nottingham?
Once the vicar has left, David disappears back into the lavatory and after another long period of time, returns and requests another glass of water.
Gail pops her head round the door to inform David that the governor has decided he can return to Nottingham, so he should go back to his room and pack his belongings. David looks happy for the first time. He drains the glass of water and gets up to leave. Are you also puzzled?
12 noon
Over lunch Dave (lifer), who after eighteen years has seen it all, tells me what David was really up to. Last night David was rumoured to be high on heroin, and feared having to take an MDT today. Had he failed that test, he would have had twenty-eight days added to his sentence and then been sent back to Nottingham. So we were treated to his little performance with the demons. Drinking gallons of water can flush heroin out of the system in twenty-four hours, and although David’s still off to Nottingham, he avoided the added twenty-eight days. I’m so dim. I should have spotted it.
12.30 pm
Mr Lewis (the governing governor) has received a letter from the Shadow Home Secretary, Sir Brian Mawhinney, requesting to visit me.
1.15 pm
Disaster. Doug returns from his interview with Exotic Foods and tells me that they don’t need him to start work until the middle of January. As he will be eligible for resettlement in February, and able to return to work with his own company, why should he bother? So he’s decided to stay on as hospital orderly for the next couple of months.
My only hope now is the governor of Spring Hill.
DAY 136
SATURDAY 1 DECEMBER 2001
4.19 am
I lie awake for hours, plotting. Although I’m currently revising the sixth draft of Sons of Fortune, I’ve come up with a new idea for the ending, which will require some medical research. I will have to seek advice from Dr Walling.
10.40 am
It’s just been officially announced that Mr Lewis will retire as governing governor on 1 January. I go over to the unit office and pick up a labour board change of job application form. If I’m not going to be hospital orderly I’ve decided to apply for his job. (See opposite).
12 noon
Doug tells me that he’s going to try another ploy to get outside work. He has a friend in March who runs a small haulage company (three lorries), who will offer him a job as a driver. The only problem is that he doesn’t work out of Boston, which is one of the current specifications for anyone who wishes to take up outside employment. However, Doug’s wife Wendy will meet the potential employer today and get him to send a fax offering Doug a job of driving loads from Boston back to March. We will have to wait and see if Mr Berlyn will sanction this. I refuse to get excited.
2.00 pm
I walk down to the football field and watch NSC play Witherton. We lose 5-0 so there’s not a lot more to report, other than it was very cold standing on the touch line; the wind was blowing in off the next landmass to the east, which happens to be Russia.
7.00 pm
I sit in my room reading This Week, an excellent journal if you want an overall view of the week’s events. It gives me a chance to bring myself up to date with the situation in Afghanistan, America and even NSC.
Under the heading, ‘A Bad Week’, it seems that a Jeffrey Archer look-alike is complaining about being regularly stopped by the police to make sure I haven’t escaped. ‘It’s most unfair,’ he protests, ‘it’s ruined my life.’ The paper felt his protests would have been more convincing if he hadn’t travelled down to NSC accompanied by a tabloid to have his photograph taken outside the prison.
9.00 pm
I visit Leon in his room on the north block. His fiancée has told her father that he is in Norway on business, and won’t be returning to England until 21 December, the day he’s released from prison.
DAY 137
SUNDAY 2 DECEMBER 2001
10.30 am
Leon’s fiancée is visiting him today, and they’ll use the ninety minutes to plan their wedding.
11.30 am
I join Doug at the hospital to read the morning papers. The People devote half a page to telling their readers that I am distraught because a prisoner has stolen my diary and I’ll have to start again. I wouldn’t be distraught. After 137 days and over 300,000 words, I’d be suicidal.
3.00 pm
Doug has just come off the phone with his wife and tells me that his friend is going to place an advertisement in the Boston Target this Wednesday, stating that he needs a driver to transport goods from Boston to March. Doug will apply for the job, and a fax will then be sent to Mr Berlyn the same day offering Doug an interview. If Mr Berlyn agrees, Doug will be offered the position the following day.
DAY 138
MONDAY 3 DECEMBER 2001
9.40 am
Mr New comes in cursing. It seems the prison is overcrowded and there are applicants from Nottingham, Lincoln, Wayland, Birmingham and Leicester who will have to be turned away because every bed is occupied. Apparently it’s all my fault.
This would not be a problem for Spring Hill, because they always have a long waiting list, and can be very selective. At NSC it now means that if any inmate even bends the rules, he’ll be sent back to the prison he came from, as three inmates discovered to their cost last week. This was not the case when there were dozens of empty beds.
10.50 am
I see Leon walking back from the gatehouse to the stores where he works, and leave the office to have a word with him. Yesterday’s visit went well. ‘But I have a feeling,’ he adds, ‘there’s something she isn’t telling me.’
I press him as to what this might be, but he says he doesn’t know, or has he become wary about how much of his story will appear in this diary? He then asks me to change all the names. I agree and have done so.
2.15 pm
Doug gives me some good news. Mrs Tempest (principal officer in charge of resettlement) has assured him that if he gets an interview with another haulage company, she will accompany him, assuming they fulfil all the usual police and prison criteria. If they then offer him a job, she will recommend he starts immediately, and by that she means next Monday.
It’s becoming clear to me that there are several officers (not all) who are determined that NSC will be given resettlement status, and not just remain a D-cat open prison. Should the Home Office agree to this, then several of the inmates will be allowed out during the day on CSV work and eventually progress to full-time jobs. It’s clear that Doug is a test case, because he’s an obvious candidate for outside work, and if they can get him started, the floodgates might well open and this prison’s future would no longer be in doubt. So suddenly my fortunes could be reversed. Once again I envy the reader who can simply turn the pages to discover what happens next in my life.
4.00 pm
Mr Simpson (senior probation officer) has completed his interviews with the three inmates who are on sentence planning. He comes down to the kitchen for a glass of water.
Over the past six weeks, I’ve come to know Graham Simpson quite well, despite the fact that he’s fairly reserved. I suppose it goes with the territory. He is a consummate professional, and wouldn’t dream of discussing another prisoner, however good or bad their record. But he will answer general questions on the penal system, and after thirty years in the profession he has views that are worth listening to. I suspect that the majority of people reading this diary would, in the case of lifers, lock them up and throw away the key, and in some cases, hang them. However …
All murderers are sentenced to ninety-nine years, but the judge will then set a tariff that can range from eight years to life. At NSC w
e have an inmate who is serving his thirty-second year in jail. There are over 1,800 prisoners in the UK doing life sentences, of whom only a tiny percentage ever reach a D-cat open prison. There are twenty-two lifers currently at NSC. After being sentenced, they begin their life in an A-cat and progress through to B and C, and finally arrive at a D-cat with the expectation of release. At NSC, of the twenty-two resident lifers, these tariffs are set from twelve years to Her Majesty’s pleasure, and Mr Simpson confirms that although some will become eligible for release, they will never make it. The Home Office simply won’t take the risk.
Mr Simpson explains that it’s his responsibility to assess which of these prisoners should be considered for release, but he will always err on the side of caution because, however many successes you have ‘on the out’, it only takes one failure to hit the front pages.
Mr Simpson admits to one such failure – a man with no previous convictions, who had, until murdering his unfaithful wife, led a perfectly normal existence. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a tariff of twelve years. Once in prison, his model behaviour saw him progress quickly (by lifers’ standards) from A, to B, to C, to NSC in under eight years. While at NSC his record remained unblemished, until he fell in love with a member of staff who had to resign her position, and look for another job. After twelve years he was released, and they were married shortly afterwards. The man found a good job, and settled down into the community. Three years later, on the anniversary of his first wife’s murder, he killed his new spouse and then took his own life.