Heaven

by Jeffrey Archer

  Linda tells him firmly that his plan is neither legal or practical, nor of much value to his son.

  6.00 pm

  Blossom has been granted two days compassionate leave. He is such a strange mixture of high moral values and low life. He’s quite happy to steal caravans and cars, which has been the reason for several of his family ending up in prison, but is devastated when he discovers his son is on heroin. This is a man who has been married for thirty-six years, has eleven children and countless grandchildren, and until now, none of his offspring has ever been involved in drugs.

  DAY 235

  SUNDAY 10 MARCH 2002

  2.00 pm

  My visitors today are Ed Streator, the former US minister to the Court of St James’s and later American ambassador to NATO, and Quentin Davies MP, who is currently Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. The ninety minutes fly by, as both men have so much to tell me about what’s happening where you all are.

  I had forgotten that Quentin was PPS to Kenneth Baker when he was Home Secretary. During that period, he developed strong views on the reform of our penal system after becoming aware of the drug problem both inside and outside of prison. He talks with refreshing frankness and honesty about both subjects.

  Ed adds a view from the other side of the Atlantic, and when we debate smoking cannabis he reminds me that California has recently passed a law to prevent anyone under the age of twenty-one purchasing tobacco, let alone cannabis. In fact, he adds, in California it’s virtually illegal to smoke anywhere except in your own home. Quentin suggests that if tobacco was discovered today, cigarettes would be illegal – possession two years, tobacconists five years.

  4.00 pm

  Stephen is the latest member to join Club Hospital (Sundays, 4 pm to 6 pm). He’s currently serving a two-year sentence for theft, perverting the course of justice and false accounting. But there are several twists.

  He is a former captain in the Adjutant General’s Corps, and after being court-martialled, was sent to Colchester Prison (an army establishment) for the first month. But because his sentence was more than twenty-eight days, he was automatically transferred into the prison system to complete his term.

  And now for the second twist. A European Court ruling has recently determined that the armed forces disciplinary system is invalid, and all prisoners serving a sentence resulting from a court martial must be released.

  Not only might Stephen be set free, but he will also be entitled to £60,000 in compensation, as well as being reinstated as a captain. Our masters in The Hague have decided that you should not be arrested, charged, tried and convicted by your peers.

  Stephen tells me that there are 600 such prisoners currently in British jails, and he hopes to learn the outcome of this ruling in the next few weeks.

  The final twist – just before he was arrested, Stephen received a letter from his commanding officer to tell him that he was being considered for promotion to major.

  DAY 236

  MONDAY 11 MARCH 2002

  9.00 am

  A man comes into surgery whom I despise.

  Drink drivers are the staple diet of NSC. Of the 220 prisoners currently resident, around 20 per cent have been sentenced with driving offences. Sadly, Tony is not untypical.

  Tony is in his early fifties, the father of five children by four women. He currently lives with another woman on a caravan park in Scunthorpe. He pleaded guilty to his latest charge, of driving whilst being disqualified and uninsured (surely the time has come for all motorists to display – as they do in France – an insurance disc, as well as a road fund licence). For this, his latest offence, Tony was sentenced to twelve months, which in real terms means that if he is granted a tagging facility, he will be released after four. Now here is the rub: during the past twenty years, he has been charged with twelve similar offences, and sent to jail on seven separate occasions. He’s been banned from driving for four years, and happily tells anyone who will listen that as soon as they release him he’ll be back behind the wheel.

  It gets worse. He’s currently employed by a local garage as a second-hand car dealer, and therefore has access to a variety of vehicles, and admits he likes to get ‘tanked-up’ at the pub across the road once he’s closed a sale. He displays no remorse, and has no fear of returning to prison. He considers NSC to provide a slightly higher standard of living than the one he currently enjoys on a Scunthorpe caravan park.

  Perhaps the time has come to change the offence for those who are regularly convicted of drink driving to one of ‘potential manslaughter’, carrying with it a custodial sentence of four years in a closed prison, and treat such people like any other violent criminals.

  12 noon

  Alison tells me that the BBC has been in touch about a programme on best-selling authors called Reading the Decades. While accepting the fact that I can’t appear on camera, they ask if I could do a telephone interview. They already have contributions from King, Grisham, Le Carre, Forsyth, Cooper and Rowling. I ask Governor Leighton for a view, and he says that he’ll seek advice from the Home Office.27

  4.00 pm

  Mr Beaumont sent a circular to all the officers at NSC a few days before he arrived which I obtained recently. It gives you a flavour of the man. (See opposite.) I can’t believe his secretary ever checked the piece for grammatical mistakes. Even an eleven-year-old would have spotted the error in the last line. I can’t wait to meet him.

  DAY 238

  WEDNESDAY 13 MARCH 2002

  7.22 am

  Gail rushes in, slightly flushed. She’s been door-stepped by a woman from the News of the World who has discovered (from an inmate) that she’s leaving NSC to take up another post. The journalist is looking for stories and asked, ‘Are you leaving because of Archer?’

  Gail replied that I am working as a hospital orderly, and that I take the job very seriously, am popular with both the officers and the other prisoners and am learning about drugs and their relevance in prison. Gail innocently asked how much they would pay for a story, to which the journalist replied a couple of thousand pounds – more if it was a big story that would show Archer in a bad light.

  10.11 am

  I am called in for a voluntary drugs test. You can refuse, but should you do so your privileges – town visits, canteen cash and weekend leave – are likely to be rescinded. I discover that two prisoners have come up positive, one for amphetamines, the other for cannabis.

  By the end of the morning, that number had risen to five; all will appear in front of the governor for adjudication tomorrow.

  12 noon

  An officer comes into the hospital and tells me that he once worked on the sex offenders’ unit at Whitemoor Prison and he could tell me enough stories to fill another volume.

  ‘Give me an example,’ I ask, topping up his coffee.

  He pauses for a moment. ‘We once had a young prisoner on B block who used to keep a budgerigar in his cell, and the little bird became the most important thing in his life. Another prisoner living on the same wing, sensing the lad’s vulnerability, threatened to kill the budgie unless he gave him a blow job. The prisoner reluctantly agreed. Within days, the first prisoner had become a prostitute, and the second his pimp. The pimp would charge two phonecards for the prisoner to give a blow job and three to be buggered. The pimp ended up making a hundred pounds a week, and the budgie survived. That was until an inmate grassed on him in the hope that the pimp would be transferred to another prison and he could take over his lucrative position. Both prisoners were moved to separate establishments the following day.

  That morning the budgie was strangled.’

  DAY 247

  FRIDAY 22 MARCH 2002

  Governor Berlyn comes to the hospital this morning and tells me that despite his efforts, I will not be allowed to accompany Mark Le Sage whenever he addesses school on the problem of drugs. The governor of HMP Stocken has told Mr Le Sage that he will not permit such excursions even if an NSC security officer accompa
nies me.

  The nation is currently in the grip of a massive drug epidemic, with children of twelve being offered heroin in our playgrounds. As part of my rehabilitation, I have volunteered to visit schools in the Lincolnshire area and talk to them about the problem. To date I have had assistance from the local police drug squad, the Lincolnshire education authority and the medical team at NSC, lead by Dr Walling. So I can only wonder why the governor of Stocken would want to stop such a worthwhile project.

  Perhaps the Home Office knows the answer?

  DAY 249

  SUNDAY 24 MARCH 2002

  4.00 pm

  It’s been a week for visitors: last Sunday, Henry Togna and David Watson, Monday, Gilly Gray QC, Wednesday, Lords Hayhoe and Denham – Bertie, my old Chief Whip.

  So now I’m up to date on the Lords reform bill, foxhunting and the state of Margaret Thatcher’s health. Not to mention the euro, and when the planned referendum might or might not be.

  I put an idea to Bertie on the Lords reform bill, when to my horror he withdrew from an inside pocket, a small memo recorder. I glance over to the desk to see the duty officers chatting to each other. I was relieved when Bertie put the recorder back in his pocket. We don’t need another member of the House of Lords as a resident of North Sea Camp.

  DAY 250

  MONDAY 25 MARCH 2002

  10.00 am

  The papers are full of stories about the model Naomi Campbell, who has been awarded £3,500 against the Daily Mirror and its then editor, Piers Morgan, for breaching her privacy. However, the judge also states that she had deliberately lied when in the witness box.

  Norman Tebbitt has asked through the press if she will be tried for perjury, or do these laws only apply to Conservative politicians?

  4.00 pm

  Mr Belford comes to the hospital clutching the results of my MDT. (See opposite.)

  6.00 pm

  Peter (arson, set fire to a police station) has so far served thirty-one years; you may recall that I earlier reported his first town visit. This morning, two officers arrived outside his room and took him down to the segregation cells, which can only mean one thing: he’s going to be shipped out to a closed prison today.

  I suspect that one trip to Boston will be the last time he ever sees the outside world.

  When I first came to NSC some months ago, Peter swept the main road that runs from the gate through to the office block; some 300 yards away. With a six-foot-four-inch frame, Peter had a presence you could not easily avoid, but zero social skills, and thirty-one years in prison (twenty-eight of them behind bars) ensured that it was never going to be easy for him to settle.

  Every morning he would break away from his sweeping and open car doors for members of the female staff. He would then engage them in long conversations. Harmless enough, you may say, but several of the younger girls felt harassed and didn’t complain for fear it might harm Peter’s parole prospects. Unfortunately, these episodes continued, despite several warnings from officers. Governor Berlyn, who is in charge of the lifers, was left with little choice but to take action to allay the staff’s fears.

  He took Peter off his job as a road sweeper and asked him to be a reception orderly. Peter made the tea and helped officers with minor tasks. It was beyond him. He lasted a fortnight. They next moved Peter to the officers’ mess, to assist with cleaning and occasional serving. He lasted ten days before being transferred to the farm as a shepherd, where he survived less than a week before being sent to the kitchen. This was no more successful, and he has ended up in segregation prior to being moved back to the B-cat.

  Peter is in his sixties, and has no hope of returning to a D-cat in under five years, if ever. This case highlights a bigger issue. Don’t we have some duty to a human being other than to lock him up for the rest of his life? Peter failed to come to terms with the system, so the system has failed him.

  When I am eventually released, I am going to be asked so many questions to which I do not know the answer.

  DAY 257

  MONDAY 1 APRIL 2002

  10.30 am

  I listen to an announcement over the tannoy.

  ‘Anyone wanting to assist with the special needs group trip to Skegness, please report to the bus at the front gate.’ The word ‘please’ should have given it away. Prison officers rarely, if ever, say please. However, two inmates still report to the gate in the hope of boarding the non-existent bus to Skegness.

  The April Fool prank played on me took a different form. Mr Hewitt, the head of the works department, purchased a jigsaw puzzle of the House of Lords at a car-boot sale, and told me he expected me to finish it by the end of the week as part of my anger management programme.

  It took me two hours just to finish the border. I intend to draft in all the members of Club Hospital to assist me with this 1,000-piece monster.

  DAY 262

  SATURDAY 6 APRIL 2002

  Dr Susan Edwards, Reader of Law at Buckingham University, has completed her independent study showing the harshness of my four-year sentence.28

  Jeffrey Archer, former deputy chairman of the Conservative party and best-selling author, was convicted of perjury and perverting the course of justice arising from a libel action over whether he spent a particular night with a Monica Coghlan, for which, following a ‘not guilty’ plea, he received a prison sentence of four years. As Jeffrey Archer’s prison sentence is the longest passed in any case of civil perjury and the sentence length is comparable to prison sentences passed in the gravest cases of criminal perjury including murder and police corruption it requires some rather more detailed consideration.

  Gilbert Gray QC has already warned Mary that he’ll be able to predict the outcome of my appeal as soon as he knows the make-up of the three-judge panel. What a dreadful condemnation of British justice – that my future will not be decided on whether I’m innocent or guilty, but on who judges me.

  DAY 205

  TUESDAY 9 APRIL 2002

  NSC, like most prisons in Britain, is badly understaffed. We have over 200 inmates, and only 27 full-time officers, meaning that there are never more than 12 officers on duty at any one time. The following advertisement appears in several local papers every week, and elicits few replies. (See overleaf.)

  I’m told it’s no different for any of the other 137 prisons in Britain. It’s hardly an appealing career, other than for the truly dedicated believers in justice – or someone not quite tall enough to get into the police force.

  DAY 268

  FRIDAY 12 APRIL 2002

  9.07 am

  Dr Walling arrives a few minutes late. When Stephen Sherbourne (Margaret Thatcher’s former political secretary) visited me, I told him that if you reported sick between 7.30 and 8 am any morning, Monday to Friday, you were guaranteed to see a doctor at nine o’clock the same day.

  Stephen asked if I could think of a crime for which he would be sentenced to two weeks, so he could get all his medical problems sorted out.

  11.11 am

  MURDERER WEDS PRISON PSYCHIATRIST is the sort of headline one might expect to read in the Sun.

  Today Andy, a lifer who has served twelve years, has been granted a week’s leave. He has been a model prisoner and expects to be released some time next year. While he was in his previous prison, Ashwell, part of his rehabilitation course included regular meetings with the prison psychiatrist, and as the months passed, they struck up a relationship. I think it right to point out at this stage that Andy is thirty-five, six foot one, with the dark swarthy looks of an Italian film star. When he was transferred to NSC, the psychiatrist visited him regularly. A report of her visit was passed back to her own prison, and she subsequently had to resign from the service. She found a new job in Loughborough and her relationship with Andy continued to blossom. Today they were married at a ceremony in Boston attended by five officers and nine prisoners.

  NSC currently has twenty-three resident murderers, and I think I’ve met every one of them. Three of them, includin
g Andy, are among the gentlest people I have ever come across.

  3.30 pm

  One of the inmates is refusing to take an MDT. It’s well known that he’s a heroin addict, and has found yet another way to beat the system. If he refuses to take the test, the governor can only add twenty-eight days to his sentence, whereas if he agrees to take it and then proves positive for heroin, he could be sentenced to fifty-six extra days and even be shipped out to a B-cat. However, Mr Vessey points out that should he refuse a second time, they can ship him out the same day.

  DAY 269

  SATURDAY 13 APRIL 2002

  The new chapel orderly committed an unusual crime. ‘On the out’ he was an accounts executive for a well-known furniture company. He became head of the complaints department, whose responsibility it was to ensure that when customers returned goods they received a refund and the article was returned to the store’s seconds department.

  One Christmas, the chapel orderly purchased a sofa for his mother, but she didn’t like it. He returned the sofa and applied for a refund, giving his own name and address. The money was refunded quite legally. It was then that the man realized that only he and the computer were aware of the transaction. Using a false name but his own address, he authorized and presented a bogus claim and the computer happily credited his account. By changing the name every time, he could make a claim once a week, and during the following year, he supplemented his income by over £200,000. The chapel orderly and his girlfriend (she unwittingly) lived in comfort, as he became more and more confident, upping the sums on a weekly basis, and even giving himself a bonus over the Christmas rush.