Heaven

will be released on 19 July 2003. However, I am appealing against sentence and conviction, and if my conviction is overturned, then I’ll be released the same day. If not, all will depend on my sentence being reduced. If the three appeal judges were to lower my sentence from four years to three, I would no longer be subject to the parole board, and would be eligible for automatic release in eighteen months. If my record remains unblemished, I will be released on a tag two months before that, after sixteen months – on 17 November 2002. Ten months’ time. If the appeal court judges reduce my sentence to two years, I will be released on 17 May, which is only another four months. If my sentence is reduced to the common length for perjury, i.e. eighteen months, I will be released on 17 March – in six weeks’ time.

Perhaps now you can understand why I am so anxious about my appeal, and wait daily to hear from the courts when I will appear before them.

10.00 am

A trainee nurse joins us. Simon will spend three weeks at NSC on secondment from the Pilgrim Hospital. He will quickly discover that prisoners are treated far better than the general public. At seven, you can pick up your paracetamol, aspirins, lozenges, mouthwash and prescribed medication. At nine, you can see the doctor, and you never have to wait for more than twenty minutes. At eleven, if you are stressed or want to give up smoking or come off drugs, you can attend an acupuncture course. At twelve, you can come back and get some more medication. At two-thirty you can attend a talk on giving up smoking; nicotine patches are handed out when the talk is over. At four-thirty you can come back for more medication. After 5 pm, the orderly can supply aspirin or paracetamol to any prisoner who has a slip from an officer. If you are seriously ill, an ambulance will have you tucked up in the Pilgrim Hospital within the hour.

In any one day, a determined prisoner can spend hundreds of pounds of taxpayers’ money, whereas in truth, I doubt if 10 per cent of them would visit a doctor ‘on the out’ and certainly wouldn’t go to a chemist if it meant parting with a penny of their own cash. So what, our new intern will learn is that if you are ill, it’s better to be in prison than an infirm old-age pensioner or a sick child.

DAY 176 THURSDAY 10 JANUARY 2002

1.15 pm

Although the fire alarm is tested every day at one o’clock, today it sounds for a second time at one-fifteen. Security are carrying out a full-scale fire drill.

All staff, prison officers and inmates have to report to the farmyard, where we line up in separate pens. I go to the one marked hospital, and join Linda, Gail and Simon. On my left is north block one, on my right the lifers’ unit – a score of murderers gathered together.

Everyone from the governor to the most recently arrived inmate is on parade. We wait to be checked off by Mr Hocking, the senior security officer. It’s the first time I’ve seen the whole community in one place, and it highlights how disproportionate the numbers of staff are to prisoners. This is fine in a D-cat where everything is based on trust, but would be impossible in closed conditions. If you had a fire drill in an A- or B-cat, you could only hope to carry it out spur by spur, in a C-cat perhaps block by block, unless you wanted a riot on your hands or a mass escape.

1.45 pm

Two hundred and eleven prisoners, and thirty-eight staff (including clerical) return to work.

8.00 pm

I watch Raiders of the Lost Ark. The last time I saw this film was with my two sons – Will was then nine and James seven. It was produced by one of my oldest friends, Frank Marshall. [18]

DAY 177 FRIDAY 11 JANUARY 2002

6.03 am

I’d like to bring you up to date on a couple of matters you may wish to have resolved.

Six prisoners have absconded in the past ten days, and I have already accounted for five of them. But not McGeekin. McGeekin had a town visit, which allowed him to leave the prison at eight in the morning, as long as he reported back to the gate by seven the same night. He did not return, so the matter was placed in police hands. ‘He’s already back in custody,’ the gate officer was informed by the local desk sergeant. He’d reported to his nearest police station and told them he wanted to be sent back to HMP Wayland in Norfolk, rather than return to North Sea Camp.

It’s not uncommon for an inmate to want to return to the more regulated life of a closed prison. Some will even tell you they feel safer with a wall around them. Lifers in particular often find the regime of an open prison impossible to come to terms with. After fifteen years of being banged up, often for twenty-two hours a day, they just can’t handle so much freedom. Within hours of arriving, they will apply to be sent back, but are told to give it a month, and if they then still feel the same way, to put in a transfer application.

Frankly they’d have to drag me back to Wayland and I’d abscond rather than return to Belmarsh.

DAY 178 SATURDAY 12 JANUARY 2002

10.00 am

The hospital bath plug has been stolen which is a bit of a mystery, because it’s the only bath in the prison available to inmates, so the plug can’t be of much use to anyone else. However, I have a reserve one, which makes me king, because I am now ‘controller of the bath plug’. I will still have to make an application for a new one, which will mean filling in three forms and probably waiting three months.

2.00 pm

The camp is playing football against the local league leaders. When our team runs out onto the pitch, I hardly recognize any of them. Mr Masters, gym officer and coach, points out that the rapid turnover of inmates has meant he’s put fifty-four players on the pitch since the opening match of the season. That’s something even Man United couldn’t handle. Added to this is the fact that our star goalkeeper, Bell, has been suspended for one match after using foul and abusive language when the referee awarded a penalty to the opposition. He was a little unlucky that an FA official was assessing the referee that afternoon, and therefore the ref couldn’t pretend not to have heard Bell. Indeed they could have heard, ‘Get some glasses, you fuckin’ muppet,’ in the centre of Boston.

Our reserve goalkeeper is Carl (fraud), the SMU orderly who took over from me and comes over most evenings to watch TV in the hospital. He gamely agreed to stand in for the one fixture, while Bell watches from the sidelines.

I felt it nothing less than my duty to turn up and support the team in such dire circumstances. I left at half time, when we were trailing 7-1, just after our prison reporter, Major Willis (stabbed his wife with a kitchen knife – two years), told me that the Boston Standard had given him so little space to report the match that he would only be able to list the names of the scorers. I was also amused by his chivvying from the touchline: ‘Well played, Harry,’ ‘Good tackle, David,’ and ‘Super shot, Reg,’ as if he were a house master addressing the 3rd XI of a minor public school.

5.00 pm

I join Carl for supper, but he doesn’t look too happy.

‘What was the final score?’ I ask.

‘We had a better second half,’ he offers.

‘So what was the final score?’ I repeat.

‘15-3.’