Hell

by Jeffrey Archer

  ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ he claims. ‘It was the police’s decision to instigate an inquiry.’

  4.00 pm

  Association. David (life imprisonment, possession of a gun) is the only person watching the cricket on television. I pull up a chair and join him. It’s raining, so they’re showing the highlights of the first two innings. I almost forget my worries, despite the fact that if I was ‘on the out’, I wouldn’t be watching the replay, I would be at the ground, sitting under an umbrella.

  6.00 pm

  I skip supper and continue writing, which causes a riot, or near riot. I didn’t realize that Paul has to tick off every name from the four spurs, and if the ticks don’t tally with the number of prisoners, the authorities assume someone has escaped. The truth is that I’ve only tried to escape supper.

  Mr Weedon arrives outside my cell. I look up from my desk and put down my pen.

  ‘You haven’t had any supper, Archer,’ he says.

  ‘No, I just couldn’t face it.’

  ‘That’s a reportable offence.’

  ‘What, not eating?’ I ask in disbelief.

  ‘Yes, the Governor will want to know if you’re on hunger strike.’

  ‘I never thought of that,’ I said. ‘Will it get me out of here?’

  ‘No, it will get you back on the hospital wing.’

  ‘Anything but that. What do I have to do?’

  ‘Eat something.’

  I pick up my plastic plate and go downstairs. Paul and the whole hotplate team are waiting, and greet me with a round of applause with added cries of, ‘Good evening, my Lord, your usual table.’ I select one boiled potato, have my name ticked off, and return to my cell. The system feels safe again. The rebel has conformed.

  7.00 pm

  I have a visit from Tony (marijuana only, escaped to France) and he asks if I’d like to join him in his cell on the second floor, as if he were inviting a colleague to pop into his office for a chat about the latest sales figures.

  When you enter a prisoner’s cell, you immediately gain an impression of the type of person they are. Fletch has books and pamphlets strewn all over the place that will assist new prisoners to get through their first few days. Del Boy has tobacco, phonecards and food, and only he knows what else under the bed, as he’s the spur’s ‘insider dealer’. Billy’s shelves are packed with academic books and files relating to his degree course. Paul has a wall covered in nude pictures, mostly Chinese, and Michael only has photos of his family, mainly of his wife and six-month-old child.

  Tony is a mature man, fifty-four, and his shelves are littered with books on quantum mechanics, a lifelong hobby. On his bed is a copy of today’s Times, which, when he has read it, will be passed on to Billy; reading a paper a day late when you have an eighteen-year sentence is somehow not that important. In a corner of the room is a large stack of old copies of the Financial Times. I already have a feeling Tony’s story is going to be a little different.

  He tells me that he comes from a middle-class family, had a good upbringing, and a happy childhood. His father was a senior manager with a top life-assurance fund, and his mother a housewife. He attended the local grammar school, where he obtained twelve O-levels, four A-levels and an S-level, and was offered a place at London University, but his father wanted him to be an actuary. Within a year of qualifying he knew that wasn’t how he wanted to spend his life, and decided to open a butcher’s shop with an old school friend. He married his friend’s sister, and they have two children (a daughter who recently took a first-class honours degree at Bristol, and a son who is sixteen and, as I write, boarding at a well-known public school).

  By the age of thirty, Tony had become fed up with the hours a butcher has to endure; at the slaughterhouse by three every morning, and then not closing the shop until six at night. He sold out at the age of thirty-five and, having more than enough money, decided to retire. Within weeks he was bored, so he invested in a Jaguar dealership, and proceeded to make a second fortune during the Thatcher years. Once again, he sold out, once again determined to retire, because he was seeing so little of his family, and his wife was threatening to leave him. But it wasn’t too long before he needed to find something to occupy his time, so he bought a rundown pub in the East End. Tony thought this would be a distracting hobby until he ended up with fourteen pubs, and a wife whom he hardly saw.

  He sold out once more. Having parted from his wife, he found himself a new partner, a woman of thirty-seven who ran her own family business. Tony was forty-five at the time. He moved in with her and quickly discovered that the family business was drugs. The family concentrated on marijuana and wouldn’t touch anything hard. There’s more than a large enough market out there not to bother with hard drugs, he assures me. Tony made it clear from the start that he had no interest in drugs, and was wealthy enough not to have anything to do with the family business.

  The problem of living with this lady, he explained, was that he quickly discovered how incompetently the family firm was being run, so he began to pass on to his partner some simple business maxims. As the months went by he found that he was becoming more and more embroiled, until he ended up as titular MD. The following year they tripled their profits.

  ‘Meat, cars, pubs, Jeffrey,’ he said, ‘marijuana is no different. For me it was just another business that needed to be run properly. I shouldn’t have become involved,’ he admits, ‘but I was bored, and annoyed by how incompetent her and her family were and to be fair, she was good in bed.’

  Now here is the real rub. Tony was sentenced to twelve years for a crime he didn’t commit. But he does admit quite openly that they could have nailed him for a similar crime several times over. He was apparently visiting a house he owned to collect the rent from a tenant who had failed to pay a penny for the past six months when the police burst in. They found a fifty-kilo package of marijuana hidden in a cupboard under the stairs, and charged him with being a supplier. He actually knew nothing about that particular stash, and was innocent of the charges laid against him, but guilty of several other similar offences. So he doesn’t complain, and accepts his punishment. Very British.

  After Tony had served three and a half years, they moved him to Ford Open, a D-cat prison, from where he visited Paris, as already recorded in this diary. He then moved on to Mijas in Spain, and found a job as an engineer, but a friend shafted him – a sort of Ted Francis, he says – ‘so I was arrested and spent sixteen months in a Spanish jail, while my extradition papers were being sorted out. They finally sent me back to Belmarsh, where I will remain until I’ve completed my sentence.’ He reminds me that no one has ever escaped from Belmarsh.

  ‘But what happened to the girl?’ I ask.

  ‘She got the house, all my money and has never been charged with any offence.’ He smiles, and doesn’t appear to be bitter about it. ‘I can always make money again,’ he says. ‘That won’t be a problem, and I feel sure there will be other women.’

  Tony is being considered for parole at the present time, but doesn’t get on well with his probation officer. He claims she doesn’t appreciate his sense of humour. He warns me to make sure I treat whoever they allocate to my case with respect, because this single individual can be the deciding factor as to whether you should be released or remain locked up in prison.

  ‘So what will you do once you are released?’ I ask.

  He smiles and extracts a file secreted at the back of his cupboard. ‘I’m going to sell agricultural equipment to the Senegalese.’ He produces sheet after sheet of financial forecasts on Senegal’s agricultural requirements, along with grants the British government will advance to help subsidize that particular industry.

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if you make a fourth fortune,’ I tell him after studying the papers.

  ‘Only women will stop me,’ he says. ‘I do love them so.’

  ‘Lock-up,’ is bellowed from the ground floor. I thank Tony for his company, leave his office, and return to my cell. />
  8.00 pm

  I check over my script for the day and then spend a couple of hours reading my mail. If people go on sending me Bibles and prayer books, I’ll be able to open a religious bookshop.

  I try to find out the close-of-play cricket score, but have to settle for Any Questions. Ken Clarke is very forthright about the iniquity of my sentence, which is brave, remembering he’s standing for the leadership of the Tory Party.

  10.00 pm

  Still no rap music, so for two nights running I sleep soundly.

  Day 17

  Saturday 4 August 2001

  6.18 am

  Woke several times during the night, not caused by any noise, but simply because I drank too much water yesterday. Cup a Soup (chicken, 22p), Oxo (9p) and a bottle of Highland Spring (69p). Still, I don’t have to go that far for the lavatory.

  The Alsatians wake me again just after six. Write for two hours.

  8.30 am

  On a Saturday morning, you are not only allowed to leave your cell, but you also get a cooked breakfast. Egg, beans and chips. I still avoid the chips. Tony selects two fried eggs and the most recently heated beans for me. They taste good.

  9.00 am

  Association. I seek out Fletch to check over the script I wrote yesterday on drugs. He verifies everything William Keane has told me, and then adds, ‘Have you heard of China White?’

  ‘No,’ I reply, wondering if it’s Wedgwood or Royal Doulton.

  ‘China White was a shipment of pure heroin from the Golden Triangle that turned up in Glasgow a couple of years ago. It was so pure [97 per cent] that fifteen registered addicts died within days of injecting it, and then the stuff began to spread, south killing users right across the country. All prison governors sent out official warnings to inmates, telling them to weaken any dosage of heroin they had recently been supplied with. Come to my cell and I’ll show you some literature on the subject.’

  Back in his cell, Fletch checks through some papers in a file marked DRUGS. He then hands over several pamphlets and postcards that are given to all suspected drug takers the day they enter prison. It was the first time I’d seen any of this material. They include The Detox Handbook, A User’s Guide to Getting off Opiates (second edition), The Methadone Handbook (fifth edition), Cannabis (ninth edition), a pamphlet on HIV, Hepatitis B and C, along with six coloured cards: Injecting and Infections (illustrated):

  1) Cannabis – marijuana, puff, blow, draw, weed, shit, hash, spliff, tackle, wacky, ganja.

  2) Acid and magic mushrooms – mushies, shrooms (LSD).

  3) Amphetamines – speed, wizz, uppers, billy, amph, sulphate.

  4) Ecstasy – E. doves, disco biscuits, echoes, hug drug, burgers, fantasy.

  5) Cocaine – coke, charlie, snow, C.

  6) Heroin – smack, gear, brown, horse, junk, scag, jack.

  There are several slang names for each drug according to which part of the country you live in. The Misuse of Drugs Act divides illegal drugs into three classes, and provides for maximum penalties of between two and fourteen years.

  Fletch tells me that we have our own heroin dealer on the spur, and he knows exactly who his customers are. There are fifty-eight prisoners on our spur and eleven of them are, or have been, on heroin and forty-one of them are currently taking drugs.

  HMP BELMARSH

  GOVERNOR’S NOTICE TO INMATES NO: 64/2001

  POSSIBLE BATCH OF CONTAMINATED HEROIN

  AT RISK OF CAUSING SEVERE SYSTEMIC SEPSIS

  IN INJECTING DRUG USERS

  All inmates will be aware that possession, or use, of any controlled drug is an offence against prison discipline. However, any inmate who chooses to ignore this should be aware of possible health risks associated with injecting drugs.

  It is possible that parts of a batch of heroin, which may have been responsible for a number of deaths in Scotland, Ireland and various parts of England last year, may be circulating on the drugs market again.

  Any inmate who injects drugs is therefore placing himself at extreme risk.

  I’m about to leave when I see five roses on his window sill. Fletch is obviously a man who likes to have flowers in his room. I look at the little bunch more closely. He makes the petals out of bread, and the raindrop effect on the red petals are grains of sugar. He paints them with a brush made up of hairs that have fallen out of a shaving brush. They are attached to the end of a pencil with the aid of a rubber band. He finally produces the colour by using a wet brush and applying it to the end of a red crayon. He’s made six of these bread roses and planted them in a bread roll, as he’s not allowed a flower pot because when broken it could be used as a weapon.

  ‘Why won’t they let you have a paintbox?’ I ask.

  ‘No boxes or tins are allowed in Belmarsh,’ he explains, ‘because they can also be turned into a weapon and weapons are a massive problem for the screws. They have to allow you a new Bic razor every day, otherwise all the cons would be unshaven. Last month a con glued two Bic razor blades to the end of a toothbrush, caught someone in the shower and left him with a scar across his face that no plastic surgeon will be able to disguise. Whenever you open a can of anything,’ Fletch continues, ‘you have to tip the contents out onto a plate, and pass the empty can back to an officer, as you could cut someone’s throat with the serrated edge of the lid. However,’ Fletch adds, ‘there are still many other ways a determined prisoner can make himself a weapon.’ I don’t interrupt his flow.

  ‘For example,’ he continues, ‘you could hit someone over the head with your steel Thermos flask You could pour the hot water from your Thermos over another prisoner; you could remove one of the iron struts from under your bed and you’d have a crude knife; I’ve even seen someone’s throat cut with a sharpened phonecard. Fletch picks up his plastic lavatory brush. ‘One prisoner quite recently used his razor supply to shave down the handle [nine inches in length] so that he turned his bog brush into a sword, and then in the middle of the night stabbed his cell-mate to death.’

  ‘But that would only ensure that he remained in prison for the rest of his life,’ I reminded him.

  ‘He already had a life sentence,’ said Fletch without emotion. ‘If a prisoner is determined to kill his cell-mate or even another prisoner, it’s all too easy, because once you’re banged up, the screws can’t spend all night checking what’s taking place on the other side of the iron door.’

  Only two weeks ago I would have been appalled, horrified, disgusted by this matter-of-fact conversation. Am I already becoming anaesthetized, numbed by anything other than the most horrific?

  When I leave Fletch’s cell, Colin (football hooligan) is waiting to see me. He hands me a copy of his rewritten critique on Frank McCourt’s latest book, ’Tis, as well as a poem that he’s written. Colin offers me a banana, not my usual fee for editing, but a fair exchange in the circumstances.

  I return to my cell and immediately commit to paper everything Fletch has told me.

  12 noon

  Lunch. Tony has selected a jacket potato covered in grated cheese. I eat his offering slowly while listening to the cricket on the radio. England have already collapsed, and were all out for 161 in their second innings, leaving Australia to chase a total of 156 to win the match and retain the Ashes. I leave the radio on, kidding myself that if Gough and Caddick make an early breakthrough, we could be in with a chance. Wrong again.

  3.00 pm

  Exercise. I haven’t been out of the building for three days, and decide I must get some fresh air. After being searched, I step out into the yard, and immediately spot the two tearaways who threatened me the last time I took some exercise. They’re perched up against the wire at the far end of the yard, skulking. I glance behind to find Billy and Colin are tracking me. Billy adds the helpful comment, ‘You need a haircut, Jeffrey.’ He’s right.

  I’m joined on the walk by Peter Fabri, who is all smiles. He’s out on Monday, to be reunited with his wife and six-week-old child. As I have been wr
iting about him this morning, I check over my facts. ‘You were offered a thousand pounds to beat up a witness, in a trial due to be heard at the Bailey in the near future?’

  ‘Even that’s changed since I last saw you,’ said Peter. ‘He’s now offering me forty thousand to bump off the witness. He told me that he’s made a profit of two hundred thousand on the crime for which he’s been charged, so he reckons it’s worth forty to have the only witness snuffed out. You know,’ says Peter, ‘I think if I was in this place for another fortnight, he’d be offering me a hundred grand.’

  Home Secretary, I hope you’re still paying attention.

  Peter remains with me for three more circuits of the yard before he returns to his friends – three other prisoners with sentences of six weeks or less. I continue walking and notice that Billy and Colin have been replaced by Paul and Del Boy. I spot Fletch standing in the far corner. He likes corners, because from such a vantage point he can view his private domain. It becomes clear he has a protection rota working on my behalf, and I feel sure the officers loitering on the far side of the yard are only too aware of what he’s up to.

  I pass William Keane leaning against the wire fence chatting to his brother. He jumps up and runs across to join me. Paul and Del Boy immediately take a pace forward, and only relax when I put my arm round William’s shoulder. After all, I haven’t let anyone know which one of those sitting round the perimeter is the cause of problem.

  Once again, I use the time to check the facts that William told me in the workshop. He corrects a couple of errors on the price of cocaine and once again explains how pure heroin is diluted/cut before becoming a joey or bags. When he has completed this explanation, I ask him what he intends to do when he’s released in twelve weeks’ time.

  ‘Salvage,’ he says.

  ‘Salvage?’ I repeat, thinking this must have something to do with shipping.