The Big Breach (41 page)

`Oi, new-boy,' a close-cropped head thrust around the door after unlock the next morning, `when I tell yer to pass sommit doon, yer jump, right?' he ordered.

`Sorry, I'm new in jail, I didn't know,' I apologised.

He stared at me hard, suspicious at my educated, middle class accent. `What you in for then?' he asked. I explained my crime. `I heard about you on the radio last night!' he exclaimed, his toughlooking face breaking into admiration. `Mind if I come in for a chat?' Sitting on my bed, he introduced himself as Paul Dobson and explained that he had been remanded in custody for allegedly shooting a rival gang leader during the `bootleg' liquor-smuggling wars in Dover. We discovered that we had been schooled almost together. He had been at the Deerbolt Young Offenders unit just a mile or so away from Barnard Castle School. He'd previously done a few years in Durham prison, so the six months waiting on remand were a stroll to him. `I'll get natural life if they convict me, but I'm not guilty,' he claimed optimistically.

My other neighbour emerged from his cell, blinking and red-eyed, to collect a mug of hot water at the lunch unlock. He stuck his shaven, scarred head around my door as I prepared a cup of tea. `Oi, next door, I'm sorry about all the noise last night. I was off me fuckin' head.' He rubbed his bleary eyes. `I'm Craggsy,' he said, extending a hand in friendly greeting. But his eyes narrowed as I introduced myself. `Oi, yer not a nonce, are yer?'

`I don't think so,' I replied, not knowing what he meant but guessing that it was not a good idea to be one.

`Well that's alright then,' he grinned, exposing a row of broken teeth. Craggs had been serving a 12-year sentence for armed robbery, but during a transfer to another prison he and three others had escaped from the van after coshing the driver and guards. He had been on the run for two weeks but was now awaiting another sentencing for the assault, and his escape attempt had earned him his E-list `stripes', a denim uniform with prominent yellow bands down each side.

Normally new inmates to Belmarsh spend the first week of their sentence on the induction wing, spur 2 of houseblock 1, to learn the prison rules with `short, sharp shock' tactics. Nicknamed `Beirut' by the prisoners, the conditions were so dirty, petty and harsh that transferring to another spur was a move into comparative luxury. I had missed the privilege because it was considered insecure for A-cat prisoners. Whilst not a problem for other A-cats, who usually had plenty of prior experience in prison, for me it meant learning the Belmarsh rules by trial and error.

Every morning after first unlock we had 20 minutes before breakfast in which to collect our mail, put our names down for gym and phonecalls or to see the duty doctor, and I used the opportunity to grab a shower in the blocks on the top landing. My second morning dawned heavily overcast and a weak, diffuse light struggled through the shower block's grimy barred window. Needing more light to avoid the worst of the filth and swamp flies, I jabbed the push-button switch by the door. Immediately there was a loud klaxon and a sudden burst of commotion from the screws on the landing below as their belt-alarms wailed. `Where is it? What's happening?' they shouted, sprinting up the stairs on to the landings. The heavy doors leading from the central atrium sprung open and reinforcements from the neighbouring spurs invaded, their batons drawn. Rushing down the landings they bellowed orders - `OK lads, back in your cells, NOW' - at the few other prisoners who were out and about, slamming their doors shut. I watched bemused for a second, then hurried back to my cell. Through the door-flap I watched the agitated screws scurry around, anxiously looking for something. Having no idea what was going on, I made a mental note to ask Dobson.

We were re-released ten minutes or so later and life re-started as normal. Back at the shower blocks, with my towel over my shoulder, I looked more carefully at the light-switch. Engraved just under the button were the words `General Alarm'.

`You daft cunt,' Dobson grinned broadly at me in the lunch queue and explained, `them buttons is only for when a scrap breaks out or sommit. You'll get a week in the segregation block if they catch you meddlin' with them. On yer own in an empty cell, no mattress except at night, exercise on yer own so no cunt to talk to the whole day, nowt te read `cept the effin bible, does yer fuckin' head in.'

Every day we were entitled by prison regulations to an hour of `association' which alternated according to the day between mornings or evenings. Our cell doors had to be locked behind us to prevent prisoners congregating out of sight of the screws and the upper landings were closed down, so all 100 prisoners on the spur crowded on to the tiny lower floor. We could take it in turns to play pool or table-football, queue to use the telephone or sit around on the floor and chat over a cup of tea. There were ten or so comfy chairs in front of the television, so there was a scramble to get a seat and then a fierce debate about which channel to watch. Popular programmes were police dramas such as
The Bill
(called `training videos' by Craggs) and BBC's
Crimewatch
, watched eagerly to see if any friends were featured. The undisputed favourite, however, was
Top of the Pops
, transmitted on Friday evening, though we could only watch it every second-week when the association times coincided with the programme.

On weekends we had the luxury of four hours of association each day, two in the morning and two in the evening. We were entitled to an hour of exercise a day in the bare concrete exercise yard, as long as it was not raining, and on Sundays we got a double-session if the screws were feeling generous. But there were few other opportunities for A-cat prisoners to get out of their cells. Being banged up in a cell for up to 22 hours a day was tedious and unrelenting. Even with a good book it was difficult to forget that even the most basic liberties, such as being able to get up and make a cup of tea, had been taken away. A-cats were restricted even when unlocked from our cells. Every move out of our door, whether to take exercise in the yard, queue for a meal or make a phone call, was noted in a small black book held by Mr Richards, the evercheerful senior officer in charge of our spur. We had to put in formal, written requests for trivial things. A haircut, or growing a moustache, required written permission from the Governor. Even trimming toenails required an application for the nail clippers and supervision by a screw. My status as an A-cat prisoner was a mystery and a joke to the other prisoners. Even Mr Richards couldn't understand the logic. `They're taking the bleedin' piss puttin' you on the book,' he laughed. `You've never been in jail, no previous record, a white-collar crime and they make you A-cat! Somebody's got it in for you up on high, I reckon.'

The morning of 10 November had been set as the date for my second bail hearing at Bow Street Magistrates court. Two screws woke me at 6 a.m., strip-searched me in the cell, escorted me to reception, ordered me to strip again while they x-rayed my clothes, led me in handcuffs to the prison van and locked me into one of the cubicles. `We're a bit early for the police escort so you'll have to wait,' the screw said through the grill, belting himself into his seat to watch over me. `And if you piss in there, you'll do a week in the block when you get back.' The cubicle reeked of urine, so the previous occupant must have been desperate.

I'd only been in the holding-cell at Bow Street Magistrates court for a few minutes before the flap slapped open and a set of eyes peered in. This time, however, they were intelligent and friendly. `The Crown Prosecution Service want you to appear in the dock handcuffed again,' Davies explained. `I'm going up to argue that you should appear unshackled.' He won the skirmish again and half an hour later the prison service guards led me to the door of the court in handcuffs, then released me to allow me to make my own way to the dock. Davies presented my case for bail first. A barrister friend had volunteered his flat as surety, so in addition to my own flat and my father's house, he offered property of over œ500,000 as a bail condition. After a week in Belmarsh, I was far keener to win it. The CPS barrister, Colin Gibbs, announced that he had an expert witness who would support his case that bail should be denied and asked the magistrate for permission for the hearing to go
in camera
. The request was granted and court ushers cleared the public and press galleries so that only myself, Davies and Wadham, Gibbs for the CPS, his assistant and the presiding magistrate were present. My hearing was now in exactly the same circumstances that MI6 had argued were `not secure enough' for me to take them to court for unfair dismissal. The expert witness turned out to be the second `Mr Halliday' who had recruited me. He launched into a gratuitous personal attack on me, inventing fictitious reasons for my dismissal and giving me no opportunity to defend myself. I held my tongue with difficulty, but I knew that there was little chance of getting bail, as any sympathy the magistrate may have had for my situation was gone. And so it proved when he stood up to give his verdict a few minutes later.

Davies and Wadham came down to the court cells to commiserate with me, their eyes gleaming through the tiny-door hatch. `They're determined that you don't get bail, not because they are afraid that you will abscond but because they want you to plead guilty,' explained Wadham. `They know that by remanding you in custody, you'll have to spend at least a year awaiting trial because of the backlog of cases. But if you plead guilty you'll get a sentencing hearing after a few weeks because it can be fitted into the court schedule more easily. You'll get a shorter sentence and you'll be down-graded from A-cat.'

`I see,' I replied. `They've got the Governor of Belmarsh to make me an A-cat and denied me bail so I'll have to waste a year in tough conditions if I want to plead not guilty.'

`Exactly,' Davies chipped in. `They want to avoid the embarrassment of a jury trial, which you would probably win, so they're making that option as unpalatable as possible. And even if you lost, it would still be embarrassing for them as you would stand out because you would have spent longer on remand than your likely sentence.' The maximum sentence if convicted would be two years, which would be automatically halved to 12 months as long as I behaved myself in jail. I would therefore probably walk out on conviction, as I would already have done the time on remand. `They're blatantly knobbling the system to persuade you to plead guilty because they know that any jury of right-thinking Englishmen would be sympathetic to you and acquit you,' added Davies.

I had plenty of time to reflect on my choice that afternoon. There were no A-cat prison vans available, meaning a five-hour wait in the spartan court cell, with only a wooden bench to sit on and nothing to read. The thought of spending a year in Belmarsh awaiting my day of glory at a jury trial was not pleasant, as the week I had already done had seemed more like a month. On the other hand, if I were to plead guilty, the judge would automatically cut a third off my sentence, so the most I could spend in jail would be eight months - probably as a lower-category prisoner in an easier jail than Belmarsh. The thought of capitulating to MI6's game was galling, but it would be more pragmatic. Reluctantly, as I returned to now familiar surroundings at Belmarsh with its crew of crooks and lunatics, I concluded that pleading guilty was the most sensible option.

One of the consequences of Mrs Thatcher's decision in the late 1980s to dismantle Britain's mental hospital system was that the country's jails filled up rapidly with former mental patients. Booted out of their long-term health-care centres, many could not cope and turned to crime to survive. In prison there were no mental health-care facilities, so their health worsened. Because other jails used Belmarsh as a dumping ground for troublesome prisoners, we had more than our share of `fraggles'. Most were harmless and amusing, such as Eric Mockalenny, a chunky young Nigerian whose story was typical. He had been convicted of assaulting a police officer while being arrested for exposing himself outside Buckingham Palace. In prison, his mental health degenerated. After lunch one day he came into my cell to introduce himself. `Good morning, Mr Tomlinson, I am Mr. Eric Mockalenny. Would you please give me a stamp? I must write to Princess Anne,' he said, showing a row of large white teeth. His request was so polite that I felt obliged to help him out. Mockalenny thanked me graciously and scuttled out, beaming gratefully.

Shortly afterwards, the young screw assigned to keep an eye on him collared me. `Tomlinson, don't give Mockalenny any more stamps. He's been writing three letters a day to Princess Anne, asking her to go into a joint venture of prawn-farming in Nigeria and sending her visit application forms.'

Most of Mockalenny's antics were tolerated by the prisoners and screws alike, but some of the other `fraggles' were more trying. Stonley had spent nine years in a psychiatric hospital before being released on to the streets in the `care in community' initiative. He had no home and ended up in Belmarsh for a series of minor burglaries. He spoke to nobody, never washed or shaved, and never changed his clothes. He spent associations pacing furiously in a small circle on the landing, clutching his beard and muttering to himself. Because he stank so vilely nobody approached him and he was immune from bullying or intimidation.

As for many of the other prisoners, visits to the prison gym were a highlight. On days when there were enough screws to escort A-cats off the spur, those of us who queued at Mr Richard's desk quickly enough at morning unlock to get on the list could go to the gym instead of the yard. In the well-equipped sports hall we could weight-train, play badminton, five-a-side soccer or soft-ball tennis. There was also a Concept-II rowing machine and I embarked on a manic fitness program, alternating 5,000m and 10,000m per session - and 20km on Sunday if we got double-gym. Whittling down my times was the best antidote to my otherwise futile and pointless existence in prison.