A Friend in Deed

by G D Harper

  ‘I fucking knew it,’ the inmate said, after waiting a few seconds for me to speak. ‘You fucking hoity-toity fucking D-cat fucking old farts are only ever here for one thing. Hope you enjoyed playing with the family jewels last night. You won’t be hanging on to them for long.’

  I looked around and saw most of the other inmates engaged in desultory conversations with their neighbours, like the awkward small talk you get at social gatherings you never wanted to attend in the first place. Some level of interaction was apparently allowed. I looked along the line to see how the roll call was progressing. Slowly. If I stood here in silence while this guy projected a more and more depraved image of me, it could be all around the jail that I was a monster.

  ‘No, not a nonce. I’m a journalist. Richard Foxe. I broke a gagging order so I’ve been sent here for six months.’

  The inmate laughed. ‘That’s a shit-and-a-shave. You’ll be out in no time.’ He looked over, sized me up again. ‘You a storyteller, man? You’ll fit right in. Everyone’s got a fucking story why they shouldn’t be in here.’ Then he looked serious again. ‘Richard Foxe? I’ll check you out, man. You better not be shitting me. I take exception to nonces shitting me. Very grave exception.’

  I kept silent for the rest of the roll call; I’d said enough. The guy asked me a few other questions and when he saw I wasn’t going to say anything, he spat on the floor in disgust.

  ‘Mister high-and-mighty fucking journo. You’ll get taken down a peg or two in here; you and you fucking airs and graces.’

  I was relieved to be locked up in my cell again. Breakfast was on a tray, eaten in my cell: small plastic bag of cornflakes, warm milk, stale bread roll. Then nothing. The start of endless hours of mind-numbing boredom. I spent most of that day languishing in my cell, with a few spells of association, ‘sosh’ it was called, seemingly at random to alleviate the monotony.

  At the first one, I went up to the inmate who had spoken to me earlier.

  ‘I’m not being rude or standoffish. I want to be low-key in here. Keep myself to myself. Hope you understand.’ He grunted; he didn’t seem to care.

  A guard came to my cell in the late afternoon.

  ‘Jones. Induction. Follow me.’

  Glad of some activity, I followed the guard up three flights of iron steps and was taken into a room with a desk and chair on one side, a single chair on the other. I was told about getting clean sheets and clothes, how to find the library, given a meal slip to fill in for the week. I looked at the choices. Chicken pie, cauliflower curry, bacon chop – there were a few things I thought could be okay.

  ‘Choose carefully, Jones, it’s the same every week while you are here,’ said the guard.

  At the end of my first week, the inmate I’d spoken to me on the first day sidled up to me at our mid-morning sosh.

  ‘You’re famous, mate,’ he told me. ‘Some geezer was on the telly last night, talking about prison reform, and the conversation turned to talking about you and your Act Now! stories. The bloke said he knew you, and fuck me if he didn’t go and blurt out that they were holding you here for breaching some terrorist order. And didn’t just blurt it out, went into all the details, made a big bad-ass fucking speech about how what was happening to you was totally out of order. The shit hit the fan, and the whole story was on the front page of one of the newspapers this morning. The Chronicle.’

  He had just used one of the blue-box phones that allow prisoners to make calls to approved numbers in the outside world and his girlfriend had told him I was on the news. She remembered my name because he had her check me out after our first conversation. I had shied away from the payphones. I’d made a few calls the first couple of days I was there but found it more distressing than helpful, so I’d turned instead to writing long letters to the people who I thought cared about me. Now I needed to call Tristian, to see if he knew what this was all about.

  But at that moment the end of sosh was called and I was escorted back to my cell, told to make my call next time. I lay in my cell, staring at the ceiling, trying to work out what this could all mean. It didn’t make any sense. I’d never written about penal reform and didn’t know anybody working in that area who would know me well enough to risk outing my story in public. And even if they did, the interview would have been pulled off air and there would be a gagging order on the channel reporting it. For the rest of the morning my mind was a whirl, as I waited to find out what on earth was going on.

  The seconds had never passed slower. I yelled as guards went past my cell door, asking them for news, but they ignored me. When my lunch tray was dropped off, I pleaded with the officer to tell me if he knew anything; but he shrugged his shoulders, didn’t say a word. I tried to read a book I’d borrowed from the library but couldn’t focus on the words on the page. In the end, I did press-ups, jumping jacks, anything to keep me occupied. We had sosh with our evening meal; I could make my call then. Only a few hours of this uncertainty to endure.

  At three o’clock I was informed I had a visitor and was escorted to the empty visiting room. There was Tristian Hawtrey, a big grin on his face.

  ‘Developments, my dear boy, developments,’ he said, as we sat across from one another at a formica-topped table. A single officer stood in the corner, keeping his distance.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I asked. ‘I heard that there was something on TV last night and my name came up. I was told the whole programme suddenly got hijacked by revelations about gagging orders and me being in custody. The gagging order means that no one’s supposed to talk about my case. So how come someone’s done just exactly that?’

  ‘It’s incredible. They had this guest on News Today to talk about the rising number of people in prisons in the UK and what can be done about it. He campaigns on wrongful imprisonment, and suddenly he went on about how one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in the UK was happening now, right under our noses. That’s when he started talking about you.’

  ‘And they let him? They didn’t pull the interview?’

  ‘Obviously not. Apparently the editor had been told to stop the interview by the station’s lawyer, but she refused. By the time the station’s bosses were alerted, the story had been broadcast. The station put out a statement, regretting the incident and saying the news editor, Alex Richards, had been fired. Then this morning, the Chronicle put the story on the front page with a hard-hitting editorial about Act Now! being a threat to liberty and the UK way of life, and the editor there was arrested.’

  I felt overwhelmed, like the room was closing in on me.

  Tristian glanced over at the guard and then looked back at me.

  ‘Now that there have been two high profile news events about your case, the rest of the media feels free to talk about what’s going to happen to News Today and the Chronicle, while steering clear of the specifics of your case. Press freedom, and in fact free speech generally, are the story. But that doesn’t matter. People are talking about it, finding out in their millions what’s happened to you. Act Now! can’t lock everyone up.’

  I couldn’t help myself; I broke down in tears, then pressed my palms into my eyes. I held them there for twenty, maybe thirty seconds as I blacked out everything around me, forcing myself to bring my emotions under control. The risk that Alex and Sam had taken to break the story. They saw what had happened to me and were prepared to see the same happen to them for what they believed in. And this guy who did the interview – I owed him even more.

  ‘Who was it being interviewed that sparked all this off? Do I know him?’

  My solicitor shifted uneasily in his seat.

  ‘Yes, I do believe you do.’ He took a deep breath. ‘It was Michael Mitchell, Duncan. He was the one calling for you to be released. You can see why it’s had so much impact.’

  Michael Mitchell. The guy who was put in jail in the 1980s because of the book I wrote. Michael Mitchell, the guy who ha
d his thugs terrorise me and beat me up, while he tried to track down Bobbie as she tried to hide from him. Michael Mitchell, my saviour.

  My heart froze, then pounded.

  ‘Him? He’s the one behind this? That’s unbelievable.’

  ‘Quite. There has been frenetic activity all morning, as you can imagine. This is all very positive, but don’t get your hopes up. The court’s ratification of the Attorney General’s order still stands, and you remain in custody. I’m asking the clerk of court to bring forward my appeal against it. I hope I’ll be successful, but there are no guarantees.’

  We talked for another ten minutes, then I was escorted back to my cell. I had been trying to come to terms with being in jail three months, maybe more. Now I could be out in a few days, a week at the most. I thought back to what I was doing the day before my hearing. The memories were still fresh in my mind. That was the time I had left.

  I called Tristian the next morning, and he gave me the good news that the appeal against the order would be heard after the weekend and that the debate about my treatment was continuing unabated.

  ‘Try to stay positive through the weekend,’ he told me. ‘I don’t want to get your hopes up, but if I were a betting man, I’d be placing a wager that you’ll be out of here Monday afternoon.’

  First thing on Monday morning, as I was escorted to the sweatbox to be driven back to central London, I felt my identity return. I’d been given my bag of belongings to take with me, as seconds after the hearing concluded I could be a free man again. I clutched it close to my chest like a talisman.

  I was escorted into the court. Tristian and Jeremy were already there, along with the usual formidable team from the government’s side. The public gallery was empty, as the hearing would again be held in camera under the terms of the Dissemination of Terrorism Act. No matter, I could tell the story on the steps of the court afterwards.

  Jeremy was more focused than I’d ever seen him before.

  ‘My client has been incarcerated for simply telling the truth,’ he told the judge. ‘And the public outcry that this could be happening in Britain today is testament to the heinous unfairness of the manner in which this piece of anti-terrorist legislation has been applied. I would hope that prosecuting counsel is here today to tell the Court that the Attorney General has rescinded his order and that my client can go free. But if he is not, I would seek to right this terrible wrong by asking Your Lordship to strike down the order as an affront to natural justice. I will now quote the precedents for such a decision to aid Your Lordship’s deliberations.’

  Jeremy recited case after case of precedents for the judge to overturn an unjust law. Finally, I could see how he earned his money.

  The prosecuting counsel decided to go on the offensive.

  ‘Jones flagrantly and knowingly flouted an order amply justified by current events and permitted under terrorism legislation. Contrary to what he would have us all believe, we live in a fair and civilised society, where any grounds for appeal against the court’s decision will be fairly and judiciously decided upon. But once again, Jones has decided that such rules do not extend to him. Rather than follow the correct course of action, he has conspired with his friends in the media to try to whip up a public frenzy to publish tendentious and frankly illegal accounts of his banning order and subsequent incarceration, in the hope that the pressure of misguided public opinion will force the government to order his release. For Your Lordship to legitimise these actions by striking down a lawful order obtained after due process, would be to give in to the principle of mob rule and allow the court of public opinion to take precedence over the courts of the land.’

  I gulped. This didn’t sound like it was going to plan.

  The prosecuting counsel raised his voice as he concluded his remarks, his stentorian words echoing around the room.

  ‘Given that the original order seems insufficient to temper Jones’s contempt for this court, the Attorney General has issued a new order, extending Jones incarceration for another six months and has further ordered that the media outlets involved in this breach of the injunction, News Today and the Chronicle, appear before this court to answer for their actions.’

  The judge agreed.

  I don’t think the look of shock on the faces of Jeremy and Tristian was for my benefit; I detected real human emotion breaking through their professional veneer. The numbness and devastation I was feeling paradoxically acted as a kind of buffer, shielding me from the incipient madness I could easily have descended into.

  I made the now familiar journey down the stairs to the prison cells below and back into the sweatbox.

  To return to hell.

  chapter seventeen

  There was no sympathy from the guards as I was processed back into the system – they asked the same questions and I gave the same answers.

  I was sharing a cell this time, with a career criminal in his seventies who lay in his bed, said nothing, and farted all day. It was fine. I didn’t want to talk to anyone.

  Tristian came to see me the next morning, told me that the perceived wisdom was that it had been a political calculation from Act Now! to resist any pressure to release me, weighing the hit they would take in the opinion polls against the risk of me being freed to be a nuisance to them again. Under the law as it stood, any judge had no choice but to support them. Their drop in popularity would be minimal, they calculated, and it looked as if they were right.

  My predicament, what was known of it, mattered to some people, but not enough to make a difference. Act Now! was still doing well in the polls, the public willing to forgive anything from a party that seemed to be on the side of the people rather than the establishment.

  News Today was fined £50,000, the Chronicle £200,000 because they led with the story, and that had effectively put paid to them making any further comment on my case. At least there were no new prison sentences. Sam and Alex had their liberty, and that was some comfort.

  Tristian said that Bobbie had called him, saying she was heading down to London to visit me, but I asked him to tell her not to. I needed time to reflect. An emotional reunion with Bobbie, no matter how well-intentioned, was something I didn’t think I could cope with. I needed time out from the human race.

  I spent the next day going over and over in my head what had happened. With my sentence now twice as long, I tried to forget my earlier calculations and focus on defining in my mind what the new date of my release was, now probably six months away. Six months. The length of time since I had gone to Moscow; aeons ago. I focused instead on my birthday and Christmas: they were six months apart, and it never felt long. It was little comfort.

  A few days later, I was told I was being transferred to an open prison. A slip of paper was posted under the door of my cell, telling me I’d be moved the next morning. There were an hour or so of transfer formalities to go through, then I was driven with two other prisoners to a prison in the Kent countryside.

  The new regime was considerably more relaxed. I was amazed to find that I even had a key to my cell. I was in a D-cat jail, where the inmates were assessed as low risk. That suited me just fine. I vowed that I would stop trying to fight the system, serve out my time and then pick up the pieces of my life when I got out. After a flurry of activity following my appeal hearing, communication with Tristian had dried up. That was the legal process finished with me, until my first parole hearing.

  I kept up to speed with the news and political events, but had no contact with Alex and Sam after their punishments were handed down. Michael Mitchell’s intervention had made my cause into a news story, but any mention of it always had to include the words, ‘We are unable to go into the details of the case for legal reasons’. It was difficult to maintain the public’s interest when the facts were so nebulous and nothing new was happening. It had caused some people to question Act Now!’s integrity, including a few of the more id
ealistic members from within their own party, but not enough to build a groundswell of opinion to keep up any pressure to demand my release.

  I never did find out the first name of my flatulent cellmate in Belmarsh, so I decided to be a bit more sociable in my new surroundings. I found the newspaper orderly, the inmate who dealt with all the newspaper and magazine orders, and asked him who the Chronicle readers were in the jail. That found me a few like-minded souls I could converse with, and I spent the rest of my time writing letters. Lots of friends came out of the woodwork, but not Tanya. I still wasn’t keen on personal visitors. A few of my London friends came to see me, but the pain of catching a glimpse of my outside life left me more upset than the chance to chat with familiar faces. I was glad I had asked Bobbie not to come. After the first couple of weeks, I let everyone know it was best to write.

  The thing that had the most significant impact on making life bearable was my decision to stop feeling sorry for myself. The prison was a modern one; every inmate had a cell to themselves. It had a farm, a market garden, even a gym. I had plenty of time to think, to contemplate where my life would go on my release. I learned to navigate my way around the byzantine labyrinth of petty and sometimes contradictory regulations that governed everyday life, and even managed to discipline myself to stop overthinking every soundbite and media comment I could find about what was said about me on the outside.

  Then Act Now! lost a by-election. The pundits said the polls had underplayed the significance of the scandal on people’s voting intentions: the people who were opposed to Act Now! were much more likely to vote as a result and some of their supporters had become lukewarm to the party and had stayed at home on polling day. I had been bigger trouble to them than they thought.

  I had a small crumb of comfort seeing Damien Zane trying to put a positive spin on it. Every government has a few mid-term losses, he said, voters enjoy keeping us on our toes, and so on. But the real bombshell happened a few days later. There was a small group of Act Now! MPs who seemed to have genuine principles and libertarian beliefs. They must have become selected as candidates when Act Now! was getting started – they would never have been allowed to stand now.