Lowdham Grange, my current establishment, is mainly a prison for drug dealers. I have been unable to ascertain the exact proportion, but believe it to be around 66 per cent. They have good conditions, but are serving long sentences and are the sort of men who could lead riots, or deal with Tasers. They are therefore allowed to attend this Oxford of crime—or, as it is sometimes known, Lowdham Strange.
I am particularly fond of one ex-dealer called Karl. He used to be my neighbour at Belmarsh. He is serving 32 years. It was previously 22, but he refused to pay his confiscation order of more than £1m. So they gave him another ten years. He also has a lifetime travel ban and other penalties that I have forgotten.
My nickname for him is Cool Hand Luke. He operated in Spain and when, despite all his precautions, they finally came to get him, he indulged in a spot of pistol whipping. He is tall, superbly muscular, full of northern exuberance and possessed of a ready wit. He left school at 14. If he were not so bald I would quite like to be his wife.
But, like all men so attractive, he is already hitched. His Brazilian partner lives with their two children in Barcelona and the kids are growing up speaking English, Catalan, Spanish and Portuguese. Karl is on the phone to them every day. Meanwhile he enjoys the food prepared by himself and his fellow drug dealers on G-Wing. They send only one female officer there, a young woman known as the Elephant. Karl hopes to join his partner and family one day in a far country.
It was Karl who gave me the cross that I wear. He did a lot for me in Belmarsh. Last Christmas he prepared a plate of chocolates and other goodies for me and quietly left it in my room. The cross, which is a beautiful one of the Virgin of Medjugorje, originated in Colombia and has passed through Spain, and perhaps other countries beside.
I doubt if Karl is a murderer himself. But he is a merchant of death. Almost none of the drug dealers here feel any remorse. They point to the iniquities of the system, mention their difficult childhoods and claim that leading barristers are no better than they are themselves. The difficulty of their situations on release will be such that they will have little alternative but to resume their crimes.
Among the few who is remorseful is a young southern Italian, very lively, eccentric and intelligent, half-crazed by cannabis himself. He is apparently a wonderful singer and I have urged him to concentrate on his music when he gets out. He is obsessed with the fear of Hell. It is a moving sight to watch him punishing himself on the treadmill in the gym. He is a strong character, but whether he will succeed in kicking the weed is another question.
There is also a Protestant prisoner who repents. Like the Italian, he was himself an addict. He took out a contract on someone. He found Jesus in jail. Now he is a favourite of the Protestant authorities at Lowdham Grange. He has also met a woman, who helped him from the outside. She is now his wife.
I think it is possible that my parents were also dealers, although they operated mainly in the 1960s and it may not have been drugs that they were bringing in through the Channel ports. I myself have lived a dodgy life. I have managed to spend umpteen years on the dole. I used to work at two bookshops, from both of which I stole. Like Judas, I cannot be trusted with the money-box. Recently I tried to kill not one person but two.
Nevertheless, I believe that, like Karl, like my parents, like the Italian, like the Protestant, like the barristers, I am not a wholly bad person. It seems important to hold on to the idea of good and evil, even if life sometimes seems to be nothing more than the endless shifting alliances and betrayals between those who inflict and those who suffer; and even if, as Nietzsche believed, good and evil are ideas that entered into our thought in the age of Zarathustra, or Zoroaster as he is now usually known, and had not troubled human beings up until that time.
Meanwhile I wear the cross. This is the symbol of Jesus Christ, who is said to have been the one and only entirely good person, just as our dear God is believed to be good. I believe him to be good. And, if he is good, I believe that his only just response to the drug dealers of Lowdham Grange, and to all of us, would be ultimate pardon.
