‘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
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
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, ’
