10.30 am
Once surgery is over, Dr Walling joins me for a coffee on the ward. ‘One of them was a nightmare,’ he says, as if I wasn’t ‘one of them’. He doesn’t tell me which of the twenty patients he was referring to, and I don’t enquire. However, his next sentence did take me by surprise. ‘I needed to take a blood sample and couldn’t find a vein in his arms or legs, so I ended up injecting his penis. He’s not even half your age, Jeffrey, but you’ll outlive him.’
2.00 pm
The new vacuum cleaner has arrived. This is a big event in my life.
4.00 pm
I call Mary at Grantchester. She has several pieces of news; Brian Mawhinney has received a reply to his letter to Sir John Stevens, the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, asking why I lost my D-cat and was sent to Wayland. A report on the circumstances surrounding that decision has been requested, and will be forwarded to Brian as soon as the commissioner receives it.
Mary’s next piece of news is devastating.
Back in 1999, Julian Mallins had kindly sent a note he had retained in his files (see overleaf), sent to him by Geoffrey Shaw, junior to Michael Hill for the defence in the libel trial. In the note, Shaw asks Julian for my two diaries for 1986 (an A4 diary and an Economist diary) ‘in case Michael asks to look at them’. Julian passed the diaries to Shaw and Hill for inspection, and told Mary he is pretty sure that they would have gone through them thoroughly – and clearly found nothing worthy of comment in them, since they were not an issue in the libel trial. Julian added that it would be ‘absolute rubbish’ to suggest that the Star’s lawyers could not have examined these two diaries (which Angela Peppiatt had claimed in the criminal trial were almost entirely blank) in court for other entries.
Later Julian wrote to Mary: ‘English law in 1986 was not an ass. If it had been Michael Hill’s suggestion that the alibi evidence was all true, except for the date, neither Lord Archer in the witness box nor the judge, still less Lord Alexander nor I, could have objected to Michael Hill going through the rest of the diary to find the same dinner date with the same companion at the same restaurant but on another date.’
None of us had known anything of Peppiatt’s pocket diary for 1986, in which she noted both her own and my engagements, kept as her own property for over ten years, but produced in court as my ‘true’ diary for that year.
Mary also tells me that she has written to Godfrey Barker about his earlier reference to dining with Mr Justice Potts some time before the trial, when the judge might have made disparaging remarks about me. She now fears Godfrey will disappear the moment the date of the appeal is announced.
DAY 192
SATURDAY 26 JANUARY 2002
10.00 am
I weigh myself. Yuk. I’m fourteen stone two pounds. Yuk. I lost eleven pounds during my three weeks at Belmarsh, falling to twelve stone seven pounds. At Wayland I put that eleven pounds back on in ten weeks, despite being in the gym every day. At NSC the food is better, but because of my job I don’t have time to go to the gym (poor excuse). On Monday I must stop eating chocolate and return to the gym. I am determined to leave the prison, whenever, around twelve stone eight pounds.
1.00 pm
I have a visit from an inmate who was sentenced to three months, which means he’ll serve around five or six weeks. His crime? The theft of £120 while in a position of trust. He was a policeman. I am not going into much detail about his crime, as I’m more interested in the problems a police officer faces when being sent to jail. He’s remarkably frank.
On his arrival, he was placed in the north block, and within minutes recognized a drug dealer he’d arrested in the past. He reported this to Mr Hughes, the unit officer, and was immediately placed in segregation overnight. The duty governor had to make a decision the following morning as to which one to ship out. He chose the drug dealer, as he had recently proved positive for an MDT. The policeman was put back on the north block, given a job in the kitchen and told to keep his head down. That was a week ago. So far no one else has recognized him, but he still has two weeks to serve.
Incidentally, he was originally charged with stealing £1,000, which, by the time the case came to court, had dwindled to £120. However, that was three years ago, and during that time he was suspended on full pay (a little over £60,000).
The police and Prison Service don’t seem to care how much taxpayers’ money they spend. If either service were a private company, they would be declared bankrupt within a year. I’m not suggesting he shouldn’t have been charged, but I am saying it ought not to have cost over £100,000 and taken three years to discover if he’d stolen £120.
2.00 pm
I stand in the drizzle watching the prison football team do a little better than last week. However, one of our best strikers, Jean-Noel, is called off when Mr Masters (our coach) receives a call over the intercom to say that Jean-Noel has a young lady waiting for him in the visits hall. He runs off the pitch, quickly showers and changes, and joins his girlfriend.
At the time we are 1-0 in the lead. We lose 5-1.
5.00 pm
At tea I felt I had to chastise Jean-Noel for getting his priorities wrong and letting the team down. After all, surely the match was more important than seeing his girlfriend, and in any case, how could he forget that she was coming? He laughed, and explained that they’d had a row during the week, and she told him she wouldn’t be turning up. She did, and we lost.
6.00 pm
Another pile of letters awaits me in the hospital, including a long handwritten missive from John Major, who among other things mentions that he’s heard that I’m writing a prison diary. He suggests that reporting the facts will be both interesting and informative, but he also wants to hear about my personal feelings on the issues and the people involved. He adds that he’s not surprised that the public have been so supportive; he says he got far more sympathy and backing when he lost an election than when he won one.
DAY 193
SUNDAY 27 JANUARY 2002
4.00 pm
The members of Club Hospital meet for tea and biscuits. However, as Brian (ostrich farm), Keith (knowingly, etc.) and John (fraud) were released this week, and David (fraud) and Malcolm (fraud) are on town leave, our little band of miscreants has dwindled to five. We discuss whether we should ask anyone else to join the club, as if we were all attending a Conservative committee meeting; and let’s face it the Conservative party seem to be suffering from a similar problem. Some of them have been released, and several more are on temporary leave. But just like prison, one must wonder just how many will in time return.
6.00 pm
I spend a quiet evening reading and bringing the diary up to date.
DAY 194
MONDAY 28 JANUARY 2002
12.45 am
The duty night officer wakes me and asks for an ice pack. I take one out of the fridge and ask if he needs any help.
‘No,’ he says without explanation, and dashes off.
2.15 am
The same officer wakes me again when he returns accompanied by a prisoner called Davis who has a large swelling on his forehead and cuts over his face. Mr Hayes explains that the inmate has been in a fight, and the window in his door has shattered, leaving glass all over the floor. The prisoner can’t remain in his room, because if he were to be injured by a piece of broken glass he could sue the Prison Service for negligence (can you believe it?).
While we make up his bed Davis tells me that the other prisoner involved in the fight was his cell-mate Smith (one of eleven Smiths currently at NSC), who has now been moved to the south block. They have shared a pad for eight months, a sort of forced marriage. Smith, who works in education, often needs to borrow cigarettes. Davis got sick of this and refused to hand over his tobacco, so Smith took a swipe at him. Davis claims he didn’t retaliate, as he’d recently been up on a charge of taking marijuana and didn’t need to be ‘nicked’ again. Once Smith had calmed down, Davis decided to leave the room. As he o
pened the door, Smith picked up a table leg that had broken off during the fight, and took a swipe at Davis – hence the shattered glass and the cuts and bruises.
It doesn’t add up, and I feel sure Davis will have refined his story by the time he comes up in front of the governor. Mind you, I’d like to hear Smith’s version of what took place.
9.00 am
Both prisoners involved in last night’s fracas have to be passed as fit before they come up for adjudication at ten o’clock. They sit chatting to each other like bosom buddies in the corner of the waiting room.
12 noon
Over lunch I learn that the two fighting inmates have both had a fortnight’s wages deducted from their pay packets to cover the damage they caused to the furniture and the broken window in their room. They also have had seven days added to their sentence. This is significant for Smith, because he was due to be released in two weeks’ time. I’m told the reason they didn’t get a tougher punishment was because both apologized to the governor and then to each other. They left almost holding hands.
7.00 pm
I go off to the canteen to buy some Oxo cubes, Evian water, two phonecards and a tin of Princes ham. No chocolate.
Mr Blackman (the officer on duty) asks me if I want a Valentine card and produces a large selection for me to consider. They are all about a foot high in size and contain some of the worst rhyming couplets I have ever come across; more interesting is that there are just as many cards for men as for women. I obviously don’t mask my surprise because Mr Blackman sighs and says, ‘If I didn’t supply them in equal numbers, I’d be accused of discrimination.’
DAY 195
TUESDAY 29 JANUARY 2002
9.00 am
Ten new prisoners who arrived from Leicester last night are waiting to see the doctor. While they sit around, one of them boasts that he can always beat any drugs test, even fool the breathalyser. Although Lee is well aware I’m writing a diary, he’s still quite willing to reveal his secrets. Lee is in his mid-twenties, good looking and well built. However, after one look at the inside of his arm, there’s no doubt that he’s on drugs, and heaven knows what state he’ll be in in ten years’ time.
‘How can you beat an MDT?’ I ask.
‘Easy,’ he says, and produces a tiny bar of soap from his jeans pocket – the kind you find in the washbasin of any small hotel. He breaks the soap in half, puts it in his mouth and begins to suck it as if it were a hard-boiled sweet.
‘What difference does that make?’ I enquire.
‘If I’m tested in the next few hours, my urine sample will be so cloudy that they won’t be able to charge me, and they’re not allowed to test me again for another twenty-eight days. By then I will have had enough time to wash everything out of my system. I can even go on taking heroin up until the twenty-fourth day; it’s only cannabis that takes a month to clear out of the blood stream.’
‘But that can’t apply to the breathalyser?’
‘No,’ he says, laughing, ‘but I’ve got two ways of beating the breathalyser.’ He produces three pennies from another pocket and begins to suck them. After a few moments he removes them and claims that the copper neutralizes the alcohol, and it therefore won’t register.
‘But what happens if the police don’t give you enough time to put the coins in your mouth?’
‘I can still beat them,’ says Lee, ‘using my special breathing technique.’ Every prisoner in the waiting room is now hanging on his every word, and when the next patient is called in to see the doctor, he doesn’t move, for fear of missing the final instalment.
‘When the police hand you the machine to blow into,’ Lee continues, aware of his captive audience, ‘you pump out your chest, but you don’t take a deep breath. For the next four seconds you blow in very little air, until the machine registers orange. You hand back the machine and gasp as if you’ve given everything. You’ll get away with it because green is negative and orange is still clear. It’s only the red you have to worry about, and they can’t charge you once you’ve registered orange. And,’ he goes on, ‘if your eyes are blurred or vacant, I also have a way of getting over that problem. There’s a product you can buy over the counter from any chemist called Z1 which was developed for clubbers to stop their eyes getting irritated by smoke. A combination of the copper, careful breathing and Z1, and you’ll never be charged.’
11.00 am
One of the inmates has been put on suicide watch. He’s a lad of twenty-one, five foot five, seven and a half stone and terrified of his own shadow. He’s in for driving while disqualified, and will be released in two weeks’ time.
He turns up at eleven to collect two new sheets and hands over two in a plastic bag because he wet them last night. While I go off to the cupboard to collect new sheets, he walks around in small circles, muttering to himself.
Gail can’t be sure if it’s all an act, because he’s currently working on the farm and some prisoners will go to any lengths to get themselves off that detail. In fact, when he learns that he will be granted a change of job, he smiles for the first time. However, Gail can’t afford to take any risks so she writes out a detailed report for the unit officer.
Suicide watch in this particular case means that an officer (Mr Jones) will have to check on the inmate every hour until all concerned are confident he is back to normal. This usually takes two to three days. I’ll keep you informed.
7.00 pm
Doug has the flu and Carl is at singing practice with the ‘cons and pros,’ so I’m on my own for the evening.
I read a paper on the effects of heroin on children, written by Dr Simon Wills. I never imagined that Dr Wills would replace Freddie Forsyth as my bedtime reading.
DAY 196
WEDNESDAY 30 JANUARY 2002
9.00 am
Two new inductees arrive from Nottingham (A-cat). A young man serving four months for a driving offence tells me that on his block at Nottingham they had three suicides in three weeks, and all of them prisoners who had not yet been convicted.
The other inmate nods and tells me that he was made to share a cell with a man who was injecting himself with vinegar because he couldn’t afford heroin.
DAY 197
THURSDAY 31 JANUARY 2002
10.00 am
Mr Lewis drops in to see Linda, as it’s his last official day as governor. He’s handed in his keys, handcuffs, whistle, torch, identity card and everything else that denoted his position of authority. An experience he obviously didn’t enjoy. He jokes about suddenly becoming aware of afternoon television, and endless advertisements for comfortable chairs that move with the press of a button, beds that change shape when you turn over and baths that you can easily get out of.
Mr Lewis smiles, says goodbye and we shake hands. I suspect that we will never meet again as we both head towards the world of zimmer frames.
11.00 am
Mr McQuity, the National Health inspector, pays a visit to NSC, and leaves Linda in no doubt that he’s well satisfied with the way she is running the prison hospital.
2.30 pm
The press is full of stories about the problems the Prison Service is facing because of overcrowding. There are currently a maximum of 71,000 bed spaces, and just over 70,000 of them are taken up. The Home Secretary David Blunkett has the choice of releasing people early or building more prisons. He’s just announced that tagging will be extended from two months to three, with effect from 1 April. This would get me out three months early if, on appeal, my sentence is lowered by even a day.
4.00 pm
Among this afternoon’s inductees is a prisoner from Lincoln who has only three weeks left to serve. He hasn’t stopped complaining since the moment he arrived. He’s demanding a single room with a TV, and a bed-board because he suffers from a bad back. All prisoners start life at NSC in a double room, and there are several inmates who have been around for some months and still don’t have a TV. And as for the bed-board, all four are out at the moment.
/> Within an hour of leaving the hospital, the inmate was discovered lying on his back in the car park next to the governor’s car. When Mr Leighton was called to deal with the problem, he said he could see no reason why the prisoner shouldn’t sleep in the car park and drove away. The inmate returned to his allocated room within the hour. He’s been no trouble since.
DAY 198
FRIDAY 1 FEBRUARY 2002
9.00 am
Among those on the paper chase today is a young man who has not yet celebrated his thirtieth birthday, but has been to jail eighteen times. He’s a small-time burglar, who has – and this is the important point – no fear of prison. For him it’s a temporary inconvenience in his chosen career. Because he has no record of violence or involvement with drugs, he’s rarely sentenced to more than six months. He spends a few days in an A-cat, before being transferred to a D-cat, open prison. NSC provides him with three meals a day, a room and the company of fellow professionals. When he leaves, he will go on stealing until he is caught again. He will then be arrested, sentenced and return to NSC, the nearest D-cat to his home in Boston.20 He earns between fifty and a hundred thousand a year (no taxes), according to how many months he spends ‘on the out’ in any particular year.