So how was he caught? A secretary mistakenly opened a random file on her computer, and was surprised by what she found – how could 127 people living at the same address all require a refund for 127 different pieces of furniture they’d ordered over the past year?
The accounts executive pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years. He is now the chapel orderly at NSC.
DAY 278
MONDAY 22 APRIL 2002
As part of his rehabilitation into society, one of the lifers (Malcolm, armed robbery) has just started an outside job as a cleaner at Haven High School.
The first day turned out to be a bit of a culture shock when he discovered how mature and self-confident modern young women have become. He repeated a conversation he’d had this morning with a fourteen-year-old who approached him in the corridor.
‘Are you a convict?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘What are you in for?’
‘Armed robbery.’
‘How many years have you served?’
‘Fourteen.’
‘Fourteen years without sex?’ the girl said in mock disbelief.
‘Yes,’ he repeated, to which the girl lifted up her skirt, and said, ‘Well you must be up for it.’
Malcolm ran out of the building. Had she reported him for even talking about sex, he probably would have been transferred back to a B-cat the same day.
DAY 287
WEDNESDAY 1 MAY 2002
10.30 am
Strange goings-on in the camp today. Tony, a well-known drug dealer, has collapsed after taking an overdose only hours before he’s due to be released. What kind of problems can he have on the outside, that he considers suicide a better way out than the front gate?
Tony has been a regular at the hospital over the past few weeks, so there’s no way of knowing if he’s been storing up pills, and how many he swallowed today. Rather than wait for an ambulance, Tony’s been rushed into the Pilgrim Hospital in the prison mini-bus, accompanied by two officers. I’ll know more tonight.
6.00 pm
Tony has just returned to the camp to spend his final night in jail. They pumped out his stomach, so he’ll still leave us at 8 am tomorrow. But how long will he survive on the outside?
7.08 pm
I have just returned from an hour’s walk around the playing field with the intention of watching Hendry vs. Doherty in the quarter-final of the World Championship snooker,29 when there’s a knock on my door.
It’s Tony clutching a letter that he wants me to hand to sister, but he asks me to read it first. It’s a two-sided handwritten missive, apologizing for his behaviour over the past few weeks, and thanking sister for her kindness and understanding. I promise to give it to her tomorrow morning. Tony is just about to leave when I ask him if he’d be willing to answer a few questions about drugs. I quite expect him to tell me what I can do with myself, using the usual prison vernacular, but to my surprise he takes a seat in the waiting room and says, ‘Ask me anything you want, Jeff. I don’t give a fuck, I’m out of here first thing in the morning.’
During the next hour, I ask him question after question, all of which he answers with a brutal frankness.
‘Did you try to commit suicide?’
‘No, I just OD’d.’
‘How often do you take heroin?’
‘While I’ve been here, usually four times a day. When I wake in the morning, just after dinner, then again after tea and just before I go to bed.’
‘Do you inject it, sniff it or smoke it?’
‘Smoke it,’ Tony replies. ‘Only fuckin’ morons inject it. I’ve seen too many crack-heads get HIV or hepatitis B by injecting themselves with someone else’s needle. While I’ve been in jail, I’ve seen needles used by a hundred different inmates. Don’t forget, Jeff, 235,000 people in Britain are regular heroin users, and if you consider their families, over a million people must be involved. Heroin costs the NHS three billion a year.’
‘How do you get the heroin into prison?’
‘There are several ways, but the most common is to pick it up from a dealer when you’re out on a weekend leave, and then pack a couple of ounces in a condom and stuff it up your rectum. No officer enjoys checking up there.’
‘A couple of ounces?’
‘That was all I could afford this time. My record “on the out” was coming back from Holland with seven ounces of marijuana.’
‘How much would that be worth?’
‘If it’s pure, the best, you could be talking around a hundred grand.’
‘So when you bring the drugs back into the prison, are they just for you?’
‘No, no, no, I have to pay my supplier “on the out”. I’m only a dealer. Dealers are either kings or pawns. I’m a pawn. A king rarely takes drugs, just brings them in from abroad and distributes them among his pawns, most of whom only deal so they can satisfy their own craving.’
‘So how many of the two hundred inmates at NSC are on heroin?’
He pauses to consider the question. ‘Thirty-nine that I’m aware of,’ he says.
‘But that’s around twenty-five per cent.’
‘Yeah,’ he replies, matter-of-factly.
‘How do you pay back the king dealer while you’re on the inside?’
‘Easy,’ says Tony. ‘I only sell to those inmates who have someone on the outside who will hand over cash direct to my dealer. I never supply until the money has been received.’
‘But that could take days, and if you’re in the grip of a craving …’
‘It only takes one phone call, and an hour later I check with the dealer and if he’s received the cash, then I supply.’
‘If you were on the outside and not a dealer, how much would you need to cover your own addiction?’
‘Three hundred quid a day.’
‘But that’s a hundred thousand pounds a year – cash.’
‘Yeah, but as a dealer I can earn twice that, and still get my fix four times a day.’
Tony goes on to talk about his fears after he’s released tomorrow morning. His parents will come to pick him up at eight o‘clock. They believe he’s kicked the habit following a spell in special prison in Devon, where they weaned him off heroin for fifteen months. But, once he was considered cured, they transferred him to a D-cat, in this case NSC, where it was ‘in his face’, and within weeks he was addicted again.
‘I won’t live to see fifty,’ Tony says. ‘I’ll have been in jail for over half my life.’ He pauses. ‘I wish I’d never taken that first freebie when I was fifteen. You’ll pass ten of us in the street every day, Jeff, and you won’t have been aware. Perhaps you will from now on.’
Tony left the hospital at 7.28 pm.
I handed his letter to sister the following morning.
DAY 294
WEDNESDAY 8 MAY 2002
9.00 am
Today’s list of new inductees to see the doctor includes Patel, Patel, Patel and Patel. It’s hard to believe that there isn’t a story there somewhere. When the prisoners appear, it soon becomes clear we are dealing with a father and three sons. I later discover that the mother is also in jail at Holloway; all five were charged with the same offence.
The Patels are Sikhs, and have very strong family values, so that when they discovered that their daughter/sister was earning her living as a prostitute, they formed a plan to kidnap her (the law’s views)/ rescue her (the Patel family’s value). The first part of this plan was not too difficult to carry out for a bright, reasonably determined team of Sikhs – they simply bundled the girl into a car and whisked her off to the family home. However the pimp/ lover/friend-I can’t be sure which – set out to rescue her, so that she could be put back to work. Unfortunately for him, he had not taken into account the resolution of the Patel family, so he ended up with a broken arm and nose after being beaten up.
The pimp reported the incident to the police, which resulted in the father and three brothers being sentenced to two years for kidnapping and
ABH, and the mother to eighteen months as an accomplice. All five went to jail, while the daughter was set free to continue to ply her trade. As a novelist, I can come up with a dozen scenarios as to what might happen when the Patel family are all released in 2003.
10.30 am
Among the prisoners who will be released today is Daryl, who is serving twelve months for burglary. He has been a model prisoner, no sign of any drugs, never on report, and whenever he visits the hospital, he’s always courteous and considerate, so I was not surprised he had been granted his tag and would be leaving us after only four months. Once the doctor has checked him out and signed him off, Daryl thanks sister and shakes hands with me.
‘Good luck,’ I offer, and add, ‘I hope we never meet again,’ – the traditional goodbye to those you consider unlikely to reoffend. Imagine my surprise when I learned this evening that Daryl was back in jail. It happened thus.
He was driven to Boston station on the prison bus, where he was handed a rail voucher for Manchester and £40 in cash. Every prisoner who is not picked up at the front gate is a travel voucher and £40 if they have a known address to go to. If they are of no fixed abode (NFA) they are handed £90, and the address of a hostel in the area they are heading for. After fourteen days, if they have been unable to find a job they can go on the social service register and collect unemployment benefit. Back to Daryl.
He boarded the train at Boston, but had to change at Birmingham to catch another train to Manchester. During the stopover at Birmingham, he picked up some fish and chips before making his way over to platform six. But as the train was not due to arrive for a few minutes he popped into W. H. Smith and picked up a magazine to read on the journey. The magazine rack is situated next to the bookshelf, and his eye lighted on the A section. He left a few moments later with a magazine and three paperbacks by the same author. He was about to board the train when a station policeman arrested him for shoplifting.
When the police learned that Daryl had been released from jail that morning on a tag, he was immediately taken to Gartree Prison in Birmingham, where he will spend the next two months completing his sentence, and whatever period of time is added because of the shoplifting.
Daryl, however, does not hold the record for being back in custody the quickest following his release. Mr Belford assures me that that distinction belongs to Fingers Danny of Pentonville.
Danny was released from Pentonville at 8 am on a cold November morning. Clutching his £90, he headed off on foot to Islington, not in search of the nearest hostel, but the nearest Sainsbury’s. He arrived just as they were opening the front doors. He proceeded to fill a trolley with products, and then walked slowly out of the shop without making any attempt to pay. When the store detective approached him on the pavement, Danny made a dash for it, but not too quickly.
Danny was arrested, and appeared in front of the magistrate at ten o’clock that morning. He pleaded guilty. Before sentence was passed, Danny threw in a few choice observations concerning the magistrate’s bald head, his lack of charisma and his doubtful parentage, ensuring that he was back in his cell at Pentonville by midday.
However, the difference between Danny and Daryl is that the Irishman had planned the whole operation weeks before he was released. After all, it was November, and where else could Danny be guaranteed a bed in a warm cell, three meals a day and the companionship of his friends during the festive season?
He put his £90 release money in his canteen account.
DAY 311
SATURDAY 25 MAY 2002
Three inmates absconded yesterday; it’s an hour to Boston on foot, about an hour and a half to Skegness. The first, Slater (GBH) had a six-year sentence and had only been at NSC for four days. Even more inexplicable is the fact that he was due for parole in September, and having been transferred to a D-cat, could expect to have been released. Slater was rearrested four hours after departing and taken off to HMP Lincoln, a B-cat, where he will spend the rest of his sentence – two more years plus twenty-eight days for absconding. Madness.
I am informed by an officer that the second inmate, Benson (ABH), was anticipating a positive MDT back from the Home Office, and as it was his second offence in three months, the governor would have been left with little choice but to ship him out to a B-cat. So he shipped himself out. He was picked up in Boston early this morning, and is now on his way to Nottingham (A-cat) with twenty-eight days added to his sentence.
The third inmate, Blagdon (pub stabbing), is a more interesting case. He was due out in July, having already served nine years. He walked into a police station this morning, and gave himself up after being on the run for only seven hours. He is also now safely locked up in an A-cat. However, in Blagdon’s case, he never intended to make good his escape. His cell-mate tells me that he didn’t think he could handle the outside world after nine years in jail – eight of them in closed conditions (banged up for twenty-two hours a day) – so now he’ll return to those conditions for at least a further five years, at the end of which he will have to come up with another way of making sure he isn’t set free, because he’ll never return to a D-cat.
10.00 am
Every day this week, an inmate called Jenkins has been popping into hospital to ask me how many new inductees we were expecting that day, and added ‘Are any of them from HMP Lincoln?’ I assumed Jenkins was hoping that one of his mates was being transferred to NSC. On the contrary, he is fearful of the imminent arrival of an old enemy.
Yesterday morning the hospital manifest showed that six prisoners were due in from Lincoln, and when Jenkins studied the list of names, he visibly paled before quickly leaving the hospital. That was the last I saw of him, because he missed the 11.45 am roll-call. Three hours later he gave himself up at a local police station. He was arrested and shipped off to Lincoln.
I sat next to Jenkins’s room-mate at lunch, who was only too happy to tell me that Jenkins had been sleeping with the wife of another prisoner called Owen whenever he was out on a fortnightly town leave. He went on to tell me that Owen (manslaughter) had recently found out that his wife was being unfaithful, and she had even told him the name of her lover. Owen, who had just been given D-cat status after eight years in jail, immediately applied to be sent to NSC and is due to arrive this afternoon. Now I understand why Jenkins absconded.
2.00 pm
A group of five prisoners arrive from Lincoln, but Owen is not among them. When they walk through the door, I report to sister that we seem to have lost one.
‘Oh yes, Owen,’ she says, looking down at her list. ‘He committed some minor offence this morning and had his D-cat status taken away. So he’ll be remaining at Lincoln for the foreseeable future.’
DAY 313
MONDAY 27 MAY 2002
9.07 am
A letter from the High Court informs me that my appeal date is set for Monday 22 July – in eight weeks’ time.
10.07 am
A prisoner called Morris arrived this morning. He is thirty-six years old and serving a four-year sentence for credit-card fraud. Morris has stolen over £500,000 since leaving school, and shows no remorse. He tells me with considerable pride that he still has just under £100,000 in cash safely stashed away, and that he and his co-defendant lead ‘the good life’. They share a large flat in London, drive a Mercedes, enjoy a wardrobe full of designer clothes and only stay at the best hotels. They fly first class, and work even while on holiday. He is a career criminal for whom prison is a temporary inconvenience, and as the authorities always transfer him to a D-cat within three weeks of being sent down, not that much of an inconvenience.
Morris has been found guilty of fraud four times in the last ten years, and received sentences of six months, eight months, twelve months and four years. However, he will have served less than three years in all by the time he’s released next January.
In 2003, he anticipates that he and his partner will have cleared over a million pounds in cash, and if they are caught, he will be happy
to return to NSC.
In Dickens’s time Morris would have been known as ‘a dip’. While the artful dodger stole handkerchiefs and fob watches, Morris purloins credit cards. His usual method is to book into a four-star hotel which is holding a large weekend conference. He then works the bars at night when many of the customers have had a little too much to drink. After a good weekend, he can leave the hotel in possession of a dozen or more credit cards. By Sunday evening, he’s sitting in first class on a plane to Vienna (one card gone) where he books into a five-star hotel (second card). He then hires a car, not with a credit card, but with cash, because he needs to travel across Europe without being apprehended. He will then drive from Vienna to Rome, spending all the way, before returning to England in a car loaded with goods. He and his partner then take a short rest, before repeating the whole exercise.
Morris has several pseudonyms, and tells me that he can pick up a false passport for as little as a thousand pounds. He intends to spend another ten years rising to the top of his profession before he retires to warmer climes.
‘It’s a beautiful way of life,’ he says. ‘I can tell you more, Jeffrey.’