LIFE AFTER LIFE

By now Saturday evening was upon us and all we had to show for our trip to Colombia was the interview and photo with :Lucero and scores of photos of the local road-works. Frustrated and depressed, I agreed to join Danny and Trent for a night out on the town. In the ‘Loaded’ article I might have written, ”But when ‘Loaded’ journalists’ backs are against the wall, they only know one way to react. They go out on the piss”, but the truth was far more mundane. I had specifically asked Danny to hold back on the little tin whilst we were working. I didn’t want Trent getting so off his face that he couldn’t take a photo.  Now that I had wasted their time dragging them down to San Vicente I might as well let them go and enjoy themselves for a night. And even though I didn’t drink due to a stomach condition, rather than sit in the hotel room, I might as well go out and get some fresh air.

  As we wandered from bar to bar, Danny explained about the Colombian culture of drinking. There was a local, highly potent drink brewed out of pure cane spirit, called ‘aguadiente, which roughly translated as ‘fire-water’. Each area of the country was proud of the potency of its local ‘aguadiente’ and there was great competition to brew the most potent drink. As was to be expected, San Vicente claimed that their’s was the strongest.

  I had been listening carefully to all this, trying to discern which of my many allergies the ‘aguadiente’ would affect. But whilst the fomented brew would do little to improve my yeast infection, at least it wasn’t made out of anything that would trigger an allergic reaction. Reluctantly at first, I joined them, but soon I was matching them drink for drink.

  Carrying a couple of bottles of the stuff we staggered down a particularly ill-lit street  and came upon a funfair. It was rudimentary in the extreme compared to English funfairs, but in a Colombian jungle town it was a rare treat, only made possible by the fact that today was one of the local fiestas.

  By now the three of us were quite drunk. Not falling-down-drunk or slurring-your-speech-drunk, but sufficiently affected to stagger from time to time and generally talk nonsense. We staggered out of the funfair and into the darkened street again and towards what would be a pivotal moment in our whole trip.

  Suddenly, around the corner of the narrow street, came a sight that was both amazing and incongruous in the extreme. To the accompaniment of whistles and bells ‘El Gusanito’, or ‘The Little Worm’, thundered out of the darkness. ‘El Gusanito’ was a kiddies’ ride in the shape of a giant worm.

  The head or engine that pulled the rest was a green, plastic construction in the shape of a Disney’s worm’s head, complete with large bulbous insect eyes and waving antennae. The construction completely obscured the farm tractor that it was mounted on. Behind it were eight, two-wheeled cars, again covered with bright green plastic, that made up the worm’s body. The whole ride was festooned with multi-coloured, flashing lights and, every so often, a loud, mournful siren would sound over the clamour of the whistles and bells.

  Of all the things we might have expected to encounter in the darkened streets of San Vicente this was in the outer ranges of improbability. The three of us stood there, literally with our mouths open in surprise.

 As it drew close we saw that several of the cars were occupied by young children. Almost before I knew it, Danny and Trent had grabbed me by the arms and pulled me into one of the little cars with them. As we thundered off along the street I suddenly discovered another aspect of the ride. Rounding the many sharp corners of the narrow street, the children would lean out of the cars, wave their arms and scream at the startled passers-by. Other children and the occasional dog ran out of the darkened hovels we passed and howled after us.

  This was something less than dignified behaviour for supposed serious, international journalists. Drunk or not I couldn’t help but feel slightly ridiculous. Danny and Trent were suffering no such qualms. Urging me to join them, they leaned out of the cars as we rounded the bends and screamed enthusiastically at the unsuspecting towns-folk.

  By now I was caught up in the moment too. We rounded one particularly sharp bend and the three of us leaned out and screamed in unison at the three startled pedestrians standing on the corner. It was only as we flashed by that we noticed the jungle fatigues and automatic weapons. It was a three-man FARC patrol. In the event, they were more surprised that we were. I still have a clear picture of their startled faces as we disappeared into the darkness.

  The central square acted as a terminus for the ride and that was enough for me. Danny and Trent expressed their intention to visit the town’s only brothel, somewhere up in the impenetrable blackness of the hills above San Vicente. It wasn’t for me for a whole host of reasons, not the least of them being the almost palpable presence of the vengeful spirit of Marsha. I staggered off towards the hotel and oblivion.

  The following morning, at breakfast outside the Yokomo Café, Danny and Trent regaled me with details of their visit to the brothel. In keeping with the rest of San Vicente, this seemed to be a bizarre establishment too. According to their account it was run by a bearded trans-sexual and had only two whores. Danny and Trent had monopolized these to such an extent that they had provoked a mini-riot, with outraged and impatient fellow customers banging on their room door and demanding access to the whores.

  Sitting bleary-eyed and somewhat the worse for wear in the early morning sun, I was aware of a growing feeling of embarrassment. What would FARC think of us? Every bit of credibility we might have had must surely have vanished. Would they even speak to us now?

  The reality though was completely the opposite. Guerilla after guerilla came up to our table, laughing and slapping us across the backs. Mauricio was effusive and the normally taciturn Nora could be seen laughing behind her hands. Lucero larked about with Danny and he had them all laughing uproariously as he re-enacted events from the night before. It was intimated that they had been very suspicious of us previously and had thought that we might be spies. They had been watching closely everything we did.

  In retrospect, our night out on the piss was probably the smartest move we could have made. No doubt the CIA and MI5 train their operatives to keep a low profile. So for FARC, whatever we were we definitely weren’t spies. The only misgivings I had about that was that they might also conclude that we weren’t serious journalists either.

  However, over the next couple of days we got everything we could ever have hoped for. We were taken inside FARC’s office, a place that had been strictly off limits to us before. There, under a large poster of Che Guevara which would surely have been a cliché in any other circumstances, we had FARC’s ideology fully explained to us. The access-to-the-office-bit was definitely a strategic mistake on FARC’s part, as after that we were hardly ever out of the place.

  We went on river patrol with Mauricio and three heavily armed guerillas in a massive iron canoe. Afterwards we went on township patrol. FARC definitely seemed to be popular. Everywhere we went people rushed out of their shacks to greet them effusively and discuss whatever problems they had, and, considering the degree of poverty, they certainly had plenty of those. It was all a visual feast for Trent, who was snapping away frantically in the background.

  We were introduced to FARC’s graffiti artist, a callow youth who would surely have been a social menace in any other society. It was he who was responsible for the literally hundreds of revolutionary slogans and icons plastered all over San Vicente. Purely as an acknowledgement to whom we were working for we got him to spray ‘LOADED’ in big’ yellow letters on a nearby wall.

  Tuesday saw a major press conference at FARC’s local HQ, just down the road at Los Pozos and we were invited. The Colombian national press had arrived in force. TV crews in vans mounted with satellite dishes thronged the main square and nearby streets.

  The star of the show was Raul Reyes, a small, elderly, bearded guy in jungle fatigues, who was number two in the guerilla High Command. He looked slightly bemused as he was first introduced to, then photographed with, the three English journalists from ‘Loaded’. The copy of the magazine had been deliberately left behind and I had instructed Danny to keep it as vague as possible, but still I saw Comandante Raul mouth the word ‘Loaded’ a couple of times with a quizzical look on his face.

  It was my first real experience of a press conference, but, in the circumstances, I was a quick learner. I watched and listened as the representatives of the national press first introduced themselves and their media group, then asked their question. Comandante Reyes sat at a small table cluttered with microphones as dozens of heavily-armed guerillas scanned the surrounding countryside.

  I just couldn’t resist it. Clutching a piece from ‘The Independent’ of a couple of months previously in which General Jose Serrano, the Colombian Chief of Police said, “The S.A.S have given us great help in recent times”, I framed my question. Or rather, the Colombian TV presenter who had agreed to help us did.

  “Norman Parker, ‘Loaded’”, he said, live on Colombian national TV, as he acknowledged me standing next to him. “Bearing in mind the human rights allegations against the Colombian Army, what evidence does FARC have of the British SAS training the Colombian military?” he continued.

  Comandante Reyes confessed that he didn’t have such information to hand, but promised to seek it out as a priority. I wasn’t disappointed in the slightest. Robin Cook, our current Foreign Secretary, was forever wittering on about an ‘ethical foreign policy’. Sheer and utter hypocrisy, of course. I just welcomed a chance, however small, to embarrass him for a moment.

  I also took full advantage of the close proximity of so many leading Colombian  journalists, as well as several from other South American countries. Speaking off the record, they were a rich source of information. On the subject of who profits from the drugs trade, the overwhelming consensus was that every party does, FARC, ELN, the paramilitaries, the cartels and the Colombian Army.

  One informed me that the former President had resigned amidst claims that his election campaign had been financed with drugs money. Another told me that the wife of Colonel Hiett, the officer in charge of the 200 U.S. troops officially fighting the drugs war in Colombia, had been jailed recently for smuggling cocaine through the diplomatic mail. Another six embassy staff were under investigation.

  All claimed that the U.S. had its own agenda beyond that of drugs. “The last thing the U.S. wants is a Marxist Colombia”, said an Argentinian journalist. “The Panama Canal has just been handed back and there is a nationalist, reformist government in Venezuela.”

  “FARC are incredibly strong”, said another, “they even have Stinger missiles. The Colombian military won’t be able to cope and the U.S. will have to send in troops. That will polarize the whole of South America and could well turn Colombia into another Vietnam.”

  It was all heady stuff, but I didn’t kid myself that ‘Loaded’s’ city-boy readership would pause for a milli-second before doing their next line of Charlie. However, wars are fought with information as well as bullets and I had managed to fire a few shots.

  Everywhere we went now, FARC patrols waved and swapped jokes with us. We were on first name terms with many of the towns-people. However, time was running short. We had to be on the plane for Bogota the following day. And ignore it as I might try, the logistics dictated that I would be back on Marsha’s birthday, but not until about nine in the evening.

  Needless to say, I had neglected to mention that unfortunate fact in the daily phone calls I had made to her. To add insult to injury, her parents had flown in from their home abroad to be with us both on her birthday. Finally I had to confess the awful truth.

  There was a long moment’s silence as I awaited the tirade that I knew must surely come. In the event it was short and succinct. Of all the phone lines in the world to have a private conversation on, the line from the guerilla capital at San Vicente was not the one. The C.I.A., M.I.5 and Colombian military intelligence closely monitored every call. So together with all the other information they had gleaned about me over the past week they now knew that I was a “fucking wanker”, just before Marsha put the phone down on me.

  It was a sad parting between us and FARC. As a token of gratitude we had a cake  made in a local shop. It was a creamy confection with ‘To the FARC  Thanks for all your help  Danny, Trent & Norman, ‘Loaded’”, iced upon it. We presented it to them in their office. It was an emotional moment. Lucero especially looked on the verge of being overcome. She recovered manfully though. Scooping a handful of cream from the top of the cake she slapped it in Danny’s face and a food fight ensued between the pair of them. An enduring memory is of the big blob of cream that ended up right on Che’s nose.

  As we took off from the airport the following morning, FARC patrols waved goodbye from the perimeter. I reflected that not only had it been a successful first foreign assignment, it had also been a great adventure.

  Back in London, ‘Loaded’ were delighted with the results. I was thankful that we had so many photos to back our story up, because at times they looked decidedly skeptical. And I had to confess, if I hadn’t experienced it myself, it would all be hard to believe.

  The article was featured prominently in the August edition and I was relieved to see that they had edited my story only slightly from the original. My final line might have been pure ‘Loaded-ese’, but in the circumstances it was rather apt. It went, “So the next time Sara Tara Whatever snorts a line of Charlie off the bonnet of her daddy’s Roller, she might actually be doing something quite positive. Namely subsidizing civic reconstruction in some Colombian shanty town.” 

                                                       THE END

  The following morning I was up with the lark. If I was going to go down, I might as well go down fighting. If I upset a few guerillas in the process, then so be it, but today I would get a few decent interviews no matter what. Rousting Danny from his room, we headed for the Yokomo Café.

  Danny was like a child sneaking off from under a parents control. “What about Trent”, he said, looking back over his shoulder. “He’s not going to like us going off without him.”

  “Fuck Trent”, I replied. “If he wants to lie in bed whilst there’s work to be done, then that’s his look out. Anyway, I’m beginning to get the hump with his bad attitude.”

  Danny didn’t look convinced. He had a worried look on his face all through eating breakfast. I had brought my own camera with me, as had Danny. Neither of us were photographers but we had taken scores of photos of everything of interest. If Trent really threw a tantrum I was looking at a situation of life without him.

  I had just finished telling Dan that Lucero was top of the interview list when, as if on cue, she appeared. She collected a cup of coffee from inside FARC’s office, then settled down to drink it in one of the chairs on the veranda outside, her AK47 leaning against a nearby wall. Beckoning Dan to accompany me, we sat down in two chairs close by. In quick succession I showed her my National Union of Journalist’s card, a copy of my first book, ‘Parkhurst Tales’ complete with my photo on the back and a copy of February’s issue of ‘Loaded’.

  I was slightly concerned about her reaction to the latter. Whilst being very professional and impressive in it’s layout, with well-written features and stories, there was no getting away from the fact that there were numerous photos of young, scantily-clad women in provocative poses. You didn’t get much more liberated than a female guerilla in FARC. Would Lucero be offended by what she might feel to be such less-than-serious treatment of women?  

  As she leafed through the pages, a broad smile spread across her face, revealing her perfect white teeth. She obviously couldn’t understand the words, but the photos spoke for themselves. For a several minutes she was lost in the magazine. At last she looked up, her eyes sparkling with humour. She pointed to the picture on the cover and asked Danny about it.

  February’s issue had Martin Kemp on the cover and a story inside about his role as one of the Kray brothers in the recently released film. As Danny explained that he was a film- star playing the role of a gangster, she suddenly pulled a .45 automatic from her waistband and held it to the likeness of Martin Kemp. “This is what FARC does with gangsters”, she announced, still smiling broadly.

  It was a great moment and just what I needed for the story. After asking her permission we photographed her in several poses with the ‘Loaded’ cover and the .45. It led nicely into the interview too. On being asked how long she had been in FARC Lucero replied, I was born a revolutionary.” From anyone else it would have sounded trite and smacked of melodrama, but delivered with her beaming smile and sparkling eyes, it sounded just right from Lucero.

  I mentioned the US involvement and asked if she was worried about the Americans and their superior technology. “They are tall, with blue eyes. They will make good targets”, she retorted. When I asked about the reception for the delegation at the airport the previous day, she stopped for a moment and looked at me as if she were weighing me up. “That was FARC’s peace delegation returning from peace talks in Madrid. We were concerned that the Americans would try to assassinate them so we insisted that several Colombian government ministers travel with them on the plane.“

  So perhaps that explained why Mauricio was taking us out to see the road works. Not really knowing who we were, maybe they just wanted us out of the way.

  I asked if being a guerilla in FARC meant that a woman had to give up any hopes of a husband, children and family life. Lucero explained that many of the female guerillas were married, with their children being looked after by relatives.  That was exactly the situation with herself. Her husband was one of the peace negotiators and their seven-year- old child was being looked after by her mother’s family in her home town. 

  At this point, another uniformed guerilla came out of the office and whispered something to Lucero. She quickly made her apologies and said that she had to leave, because she was wanted elsewhere. Without further ado, she mounted one of the several motor-bikes parked outside the office and roared off in a cloud of dust, AK47 strapped across her back.

  In the absence of Lucero, Danny’s thoughts now turned to Trent. “I suppose I’d better go and see where Trent is”, he said, a concerned look on his face.

  “He’ll still be in the bathroom, mate”, I replied with the beginnings of a smile on mine.

  Danny responded with a weak grin and, shaking his head, set off towards the hotel.

  In no time at all he was back. “He’s got the right fucking hump, Norm. I’d better warn you.” Now Dan was clearly worried.

  “Fuck him, Dan. I’m beginning to get a bit fed up with this guy.” The annoyance was clear in my voice. “Who does he think he is anyway. I tell you something. I’ve been very tolerant up to now and tolerance is something I don’t do very well. But I’m supposed to be in journalist mode. So I’ve put up with some of his bull-shit. Back in England, on the street, I’d have steamed into him by now.”

  “I know, Norm. I just don’t want you to fuck up the assignment. To be honest, I’ve had my own fall-outs with Trent in the past. He can be a bit of an arse-hole at times. I know I’ve only known you a couple of days, but we seem to get on well and I’d like to think that we’re mates. I’m not going to take sides, but I’m just trying to avoid any awkwardness.”

  “I understand that, Dan. And, yeah, we do get on well together and I appreciate what you are trying to do. But pride is a bit of a fault with me and I’ll only stand so much.”

  As I finished Trent suddenly appeared, beetling across the plaza, his arms swinging wildly and his face a study in anger. I sat back in my chair quite nonchalantly, not at all concerned. If it came to a punch up I was confident I could handle him. But I didn’t know what the guerillas would make of the two of us, supposed professional journalists, battling away right outside their office. 

  Whilst still thirty feet away, Trent beckoned me to come and meet him away from the front of FARC’s office. I was out of my chair like a shot. Now it was my turn to swing my arms as I rushed towards him, serious violence firmly on my mind. “Yeah, what do you want?”, I said aggressively as I closed on him, my face twisted into a scowl.

  As Trent suddenly realised that I was right on the verge of steaming into him, his attitude abruptly changed. “Hold up, hold up, mate. There’s no need for this.” He stopped and held his hands out in front of him, as if to ward me off.

  “Well what do you want? Coming rushing over here all aggressive, as if you’re looking for a row. If it’s a row you want, well let’s have it.” The anger just flowed out of me. It was a combination of the jungle heat, the failing assignment and Trent’s attitude.

  In the event he turned out to be all bluff and bluster. “No Norm, it’s just that I’m the senior man and you left me in the hotel”, there was a pleading tone to his voice now.

  “Look mate, don’t give me all that shit. It might be my first foreign assignment, but I’m not a fucking idiot. If you want to lie in bed when there’s things going on, well that’s up to you. Just don’t expect me to sit outside your bedroom door waiting for you. And don’t treat me with disrespect, okay, ‘cause I don’t take that from anyone.”

  By now Trent looked thoroughly crest-fallen, his eyes looking at the floor, his shoes, anywhere but at mine. Suddenly I felt sorry for him. I only wanted to put him in his place, not break his heart. “Look Trent”, I said in as conciliatory tone as I could manage, “if we’re going to get this assignment done we’ll have to work together. As far as I’m concerned we’re all equals here, Danny, me, you, because we’re all taking the same chance of getting killed or whatever. So let’s just start again, eh.” As I finished I stuck out my hand. He shook it reluctantly, but I wasn’t going to make an issue out of that. I only wanted to get along with him whilst we were on the assignment and in the jungle. I wasn’t looking to be his pal back in the real world.

  We both went to sit with Dan outside FARC’s office. By now there was only one guerilla sitting inside and he said he was too busy to do an interview. So, left to our own devices, we decided to tour the town on our own.

  Again, this was where Danny’s fluent Colombian was crucial. We wandered from bar to bar: in and out of various cafes and we stopped people in the street. Everyone seemed to know that we were English journalists. In every instance Danny put them at their ease and very quickly had them laughing.

  The story that we were uniformly told about San Vicente came as a surprise. People said that, before FARC came, there were four to five murders a week, which for such a small town was amazingly high. Now there were none and the place was virtually without crime. They pointed out the hospital and the school that FARC had built. The most amazing thing was that, despite being surrounded by coca fields, no one did coke. Neither did they smoke the Colombian grass. They were heavy drinkers, but there was a strong social stigma about taking drugs.

  A skeptic might argue that the towns-people were so terrified of FARC that they only parroted the party line to us. But what was quite apparent was that there was absolutely no climate of fear. Unless they were all naturally consummate actors, they seemed like ordinary Colombians going about their social lives. In fact, many of the people we spoke to were in the advanced stages of inebriation, so their answers to our questions were all the more spontaneous. Further, all three of us were experienced in drug culture and the behaviour that goes with it. In all the bars and cafes we visited we would have seen some sign of it, but there was none.

  Now whilst this might have been revelatory stuff for a piece in the Guardian, it was bad news for ‘Loaded’ readers. Instead of their intrepid reporters filing a gripping article from Bandit City, capital of Bandit County, it seemed that San Vicente was one of the safest, straightest places on earth.

Last part on it's way....

Early next morning saw the three of us back at the, rather inaptly named, El Dorado Airport. This time though it was in the ‘national’ section. Through the large glass windows we could see the massive international jets and, dwarfed by the latter, the tiny, twin-engined planes we were to travel in. As we booked three seats to San Vicente we were immediately confronted by one of the many ironies of the Colombian situation. Satena, the airline that would fly us to the guerilla-held town, was run by the Colombian military. So much for our low profile!

  The next shock came as we were about to board our little twin-engined, 28-seater Fokker. We passed on the German jokes as we saw our luggage, and that of all the other twenty travelers, stacked on the runway around the plane. Each person had to identify his luggage (there were no female travelers) and carry it with him onto the plane. Danny told me that this was to ensure that no one managed to sneak a bomb on board. As I settled into my seat I noticed that every one of the other passengers turned to look at us three foreigners. 

  The take-off seemed to take ages. We didn’t seem to be going fast enough. I remember thinking that I hoped we wouldn’t run out of runway. Just as I was becoming seriously concerned, we bumped into the air and skimmed over the top of the green sward of a forest. The experience of cruising smoothly at 30,000 feet hadn’t prepared me for the roller-coaster ride of flight in a small plane. As we dropped down from the heights of Bogota, the warm updrafts from the jungle below buffeted us unrelentingly. Sometimes we dropped by as much as fifty feet, leaving our stomachs behind to catch up with the rest of us. At the same time, the pitch of the engine would change from a piercing screech to a halting, throbbing sound. Never once were you able to escape the knowledge that you were on a plane.

  Below us , the Amazonian rain-forest stretched out in every direction, with no other distinguishing features whatsoever. There were no roads, no buildings, no electric pylons, no sign of any human presence at all. Occasionally there would be a dark scar where a river intersected the jungle. I reflected that, should we come down, it would take hours, if not days, for help to reach us.  

  We made one stop, at a little jungle town who’s name was as hard to pronounce as it was to find on the map, then it was on to San Vicente. This was the point of no return, there was no going back now. 

  San Vicente Airport was little more than a concrete strip in a jungle clearing. As we taxied after landing we saw a group of about eight guerillas in military fatigues just beyond the perimeter fence. We had been warned that they would be expecting us as they monitored the flight lists closely.

  As we left the plane the heat hit me. It was like being enveloped in an invisible hot mist. Within seconds I was sweating from every pore on my body. My underwear was quickly saturated and I felt rivulets of cooler sweat running down my arms and legs. My love affair with the jungle was off to a very shaky start. I realised that this would be a very uncomfortable place to live, especially for someone used to mild, European climates. 

   The terminal buildings were a collection of half-finished sheds. We stood in a group with several other travelers who we suddenly discovered were Colombian journalists. I had been so busy trying to keep my own identity a secret that it hadn’t occurred to me to find out who else was traveling to San Vicente. “There’s no one here to talk to you, you know”, said the man from El Tiempo. “All the leaders are in Spain at a big peace meeting.”

  It was not a particularly auspicious start. With fledgling feelings of impending doom I climbed into a taxi and set out for nearby San Vicente. I consoled myself that it wasn’t a particularly political piece I would be doing. So whether or not I managed to talk to any guerilla leaders wasn’t crucial. Just so long as I got some good background stuff on the guerillas in general I’d be okay.

  San Vicente was something more than a one-horse town. There were at least six of them standing in the high street. One urinated enthusiastically as we alighted from our taxi outside the hotel. It would have been nice to think that the Hotel Malibu had seen better days, but I feared it had always been a slum. At eight dollars a day it was the best hotel in town. Unfortunately, that was no consolation whatsoever. The small, dilapidated room with adjoining shower/toilet was rudimentary in the extreme. There were two ways of looking at it. It was either the worst hotel room I had ever been in, or the best cell. I decided to adopt the latter approach and set out to make the best of it. 

  With absolutely no incentive at all to sit in our rooms and sweat, the three of us soon congregated on a small veranda that overlooked the street. Unfortunately it also overlooked the urinating horse, which suddenly decided to complete its ablutions by having a crap. As the stench of horse-shit drifted up to the veranda, we decided that this was the cue for us to explore the town.

  Carrying everything of value with us, we set off. The dusty streets surrounded by broken down, two-storied buildings looked like the Mexican towns in the old cowboy films. Higher up on the surrounding hills could be seen the tumble-down clutter of shanty towns. As we walked, swarthy, sinister, suspicious faces seemed to stare out at us from every doorway. It soon became apparent that we were the only gringos in town, and the first for a long while.

  Danny and I had already fallen into an easy familiarity. His irreverent humour complemented mine in many ways. Then there was the rivalry that often springs up between Londoners from different areas of the city. It was especially keen between those from the East, that is the East End and its environs, and the rest. They definitely thought that they were sharper dressers, better money-getters, could pull more women and were cleverer thieves. There was nothing malicious in it. In fact it was all part of the rivalry to be more funny and cleverer with your mouth.

  “Reminds me a bit of the East”, I said out of the corner of my mouth, as if I were afraid of being overheard. “Definitely a touch of Brick Lane over there, so you two boys should be feeling quite at home.”

  Their reply of, “bollocks”, was long and drawn out. “You West London mob ‘ave got a few slums of your own, mate”, rejoined Dan.

  “Yeah, but we aint got all those outside toilets that you lot have still got.” My reply was met with a chorus of “bollocks” from the pair of them.  

  Suddenly, the narrow, dusty streets opened out into a wide, central square that was a riot of colourful graffiti  and banners expressing revolutionary slogans. And there, right in front of us, was a one-storied slum, similarly bedecked with banners and slogans,  that was obviously FARC’s local office. A guerilla in jungle fatigues, his weapon close by, lounged in a chair outside.

  For melodrama, all that was missing were the strains of the theme from ‘High Noon’ as the three of us advanced on the office. I reflected that this would be a crucial encounter. This would determine how much assistance, if any, we would get. In the event, Danny’s fluent Colombian Spanish and ready wit proved invaluable. Soon he had the guerilla laughing. He stood and shook hands and offered us a cup of coffee. Then he explained that there was no one here at the moment to talk to us and could we come back in the morning.

  Right next door to the office was the Yokomo Café. It was clean and the staff were friendly. We decided to make this our centre of operations. Nine am the following morning saw the three of us sitting outside the café eating breakfast. Jungle-fatigued guerillas, with bandoleros of bullets around their chests and carrying automatic weapons, bustled in and out of the office. Strangely, FARC seemed to own few cars, for most came and went on trail bikes or in the yellow town taxis. 

  We soon saw that nine a.m. was quite late by San Vicente standards. The town, and, of course, the guerillas, had been up for hours and many had already gone off on their assignments for the day. We would have been there at least an hour earlier, but we had been held up by Trent. Jungle or no jungle, he clearly felt that there were certain standards to be upheld. His fastidiousness didn’t come without a price either. Danny and I had sat about for over an hour whilst Trent had washed, shaved, done his hair and generally attended to every detail of his toilet. Dan summed it up nicely. “My old woman gets ready quicker than he does”, he muttered sotto voce.

  But now we were ready to get down to business. There were real, live, heavily-armed Marxist guerillas to interview. However, on closer inspection, these guerillas seemed considerably under-whelmed by our interest. It wasn’t so much that they ignored us, just that everything else they had to do had a higher priority. 

  Then Lucero appeared. The Colombian journalists had told us of the beautiful guerilla who held high political and military rank. She was married to a top FARC negotiator and had a seven-year-old daughter who was looked after by her family. Short, with eyes that seemed to flash and sparkle with amusement, Lucero was a veteran of many battles with the Colombian Army and had achieved almost legendary status. She listened while Danny explained what we wanted, but politely declined, saying she had important things to do. She suggested that we speak with Comandante Nora, who was out the back of the office.

  Leaving Trent and myself outside, Danny went in search of Comandante Nora. Within seconds he was back, a pained look on his face. “She’s busy at the moment, we’ll have to wait for a while”, said Dan. But there was something in his attitude that made me curious.

  “What’s she doing then?” I asked querulously. The combination of the stifling jungle heat and the lack of cooperation was making me tetchy.

  “Her fucking ironing”, replied Danny in similar vein.

  There was something in his manner that indicated that he wasn’t joking, but this I had to see. I walked inside and peered through a dusty window. Sure enough, there was Comandante Nora, AK47 propped against a table, ironing her blouse.

  Whilst we were waiting, a portly, heavily-mustachioed guerilla called Comandante Mauricio came up and introduced himself. He had been sent to show us around  the town. You didn’t have to understand Colombian to discern that Mauricio was less than pleased with his assignment. But as far as we were concerned it was the most positive step so far. As Mauricio headed off on foot, we followed in his wake.

  Over the next couple of hours we got an in-depth look at most of San Vicente’s road-works and municipal improvements. We trudged for miles along a network of hot dusty streets, none of which were paved or tarmacked. A few looked absolutely impossible to navigate in anything less than a tractor. Suddenly we came across a road that was precipitously steep and deeply rutted. It might not have been the worst road in the world, but it was certainly in the top ten. Frustration must have made me blasé. Turning to Dan I said, “Definitely a touch of the Mile End Road there, mate.” The three of us laughed. 

  Mauricio might not have understood the language but no doubt sarcasm is internationally recognizable. His face like thunder, he advanced on me. With his finger he beckoned for me to follow him. We had passed hundreds of tumble-down hovels in our progress through San Vicente, but had looked into none of them. Suddenly I was standing inside one. 

  The floor was of bare earth, with a couple of pieces of plastic matting scattered about. The roof was a patchwork of rusty and holed corrugated tin. The walls were made out of an assortment of timber of different sizes, colours and types. The windows were just holes in the walls with torn material in the place of curtains.

  There was one large room, with what must have been a bed in the middle. On this sat a tired-looking woman in her early thirties dressed in rags. At her breast a small infant was feeding. Around her feet sat several other small children. This was abject poverty in the extreme.

   Mauricio spoke to Danny for him to translate, but his words were clearly for me. “The Government have never, ever done anything at all for these people. These are the ones they have given up on.”

  It was meant as a rebuke and it had its desired effect. I was instantly both ashamed and embarrassed for making fun of such a situation. What had I been thinking of? I prided myself on having a social conscience. I wholeheartedly supported revolutionary movements like FARC. I told myself it was the effect of the ‘Loaded’ factor. Their readership wouldn’t be the slightest bit interested in civic reconstruction in rural Colombia. ‘Loaded’ was an irreverent, light-hearted read. Everything had to be a laugh or a put-down.

  So how did I justify my writing for them? The answer to that was that whilst the style of writing might appear to be lighthearted, the message was still there. Because the establishment controlled the media, socialist revolutions never got a fair press. This was an opportunity for me to get the message across to several hundred thousand people, who might normally baulk at the idea of reading a serious political piece about Colombia. Anyway, all ideology aside, I resolved to treat everything much more seriously from here onwards.

   Then a little incident occurred that further defined what I was already discovering to be a difficult relationship with Trent. Danny and I had been strolling ahead, pointing things out to each other and talking, whilst Trent had been hanging back to photograph whatever took his interest. Suddenly he called me over. I thought it was to point out something. “Look Norman”, he said in a very level tone, “this is your first assignment, so I am really the senior man. When we’re out like this you should walk behind me.”

  For a long second I thought he was joking. Neither of us had completely relaxed with the other, so humour would have been difficult anyway. But as I stared into his face it dawned on me that he was serious.

  Perhaps the rebuke from Mauricio had curbed my normally ebullient personality. Perhaps I was still striving to be as professional as possible. Maybe I was temporarily lost for words. As I turned and walked over to Danny, Trent struck out ahead. 

  Danny screwed up his face as I drew near and shook his head, “he can be a bit of an arse-hole at times” he offered. If anything it served to bring Dan and I closer. He was a decent guy who was embarrassed by such behaviour. 

  That evening, tired, uncomfortable in the suffocating evening heat and frustrated by our lack of real progress, we sat in what passed for the lounge of the Hotel Malibu. Occasionally we glanced at the one TV set, high on the wall. Suddenly it had all our attention. There, all over the national evening news, was San Vicente Airport. And at the forefront of the screen, waiting to meet what looked like some sort of official delegation as they descended from the aircraft, was Lucero.

  With Danny translating we learned that this was FARC’s official peace delegation, returning from a peace conference in Spain. Traveling along with FARC’s delegation were top ministers of the Colombian government. We had missed what was probably the biggest news event in the history of San Vicente, out looking at road works with Mauricio. With a growing feeling of impending doom, I retired to my room for the night.

By now I was beginning to see just what a responsibility taking on this assignment had been. It was all very well my progressing one step at a time towards the goal of a successful piece, but there would be no prizes for almost getting there. If at any stage of the journey I fell, then there would be no story and I would have taken ‘Loaded’s money and wasted it. In such circumstances I didn’t expect them to sue me, but I was sure that would be the end of assignments for them. Further, no doubt word traveled quickly in the ‘Lad’s mags’ world, and I wouldn’t get any more work from any of them. Thus, my whole future as a journalist hung on the success or failure of this Colombia trip.

  The flight was uneventful enough, although it was difficult to settle back and get comfortable with my arm still sore from all the injections. Nascent paranoia troubled me as I contemplated my coming encounter with Colombia’s CIA-trained customs police. Would they question me about the camera and 40 rolls of film? Did ordinary people travel with 40 rolls of film? A small voice inside told me that it was all academic anyway as they would undoubtedly know exactly who I was.

  In the event I breezed through customs without so much as a word exchanged and, within minutes, was in a battered taxi making my way through the equally battered streets towards my hotel. Bogota was a revelation, a large city in terminal stages of urban decay. Virtually every building looked tumbledown or seriously in need of repair. The roads were badly pot-holed so that, every now and again, drivers would have to slow and navigate around a particularly large chasm.  

  The hotel was a welcome surprise. Whilst being a long way from five-star standards at least it was clean and efficiently-run. With an absolute minimum of fuss I booked in and was soon in my room, the only troubling event being that the receptionist said she would have to keep my passport and return it to me later. Seriously tired now, I barricaded the door with a heavy table; positioned a heavy bed-side lamp within easy reaching distance to clobber any intruder and immediately drifted off into a dreamless sleep.

  Even though out of jail over two years now I sometimes woke up thinking I was still in a cell. The Bogota hotel room spared me that though. As consciousness dawned I was immediately aware of the awful cacophony rising from the streets below as rush-hour drivers leaned on their horns. Then there was the heat. Bogota is up in the mountains and is supposed to be cool. Virtually the whole of the rest of the country is down in the jungle. Acclimatisation was going to be a problem for me.

  Trent wasn’t due to arrive from Miami until the evening. Dangerous or not, I wasn’t going to skulk in my hotel room until then. Bogota was there to be explored. As I mentally prepared myself for the foray into the unknown, I noticed the printed pamphlet on the bedside table. In passable English it advised guests to leave all valuables in the hotel safe and warned that, in the event of being approached by people claiming to be the police, not to go with them but to return to the hotel instead. Very reassuring! Coming on top of the official warnings by both the British and US governments for their nationals not to even travel to Colombia, it served to concentrate the mind wonderfully.

  Trent had given me the number of a good friend of his, an English guy who had lived in Colombia for 20 years. Danny was in the music business and his club, ‘London House’, had been the first acid house club in Colombia. He had married a Colombian woman and, after the club closed, had eked out a living importing CDs and DJ-ing.. I remembered that Trent had told me that Danny was fluent in Colombian Spanish. I had already discovered that hardly anyone in Colombia spoke English. 

  Within twenty minutes Danny was at my room. Or rather, twenty minutes later ‘Hurricane Danny’ hit my room. A big-built, rangy-looking guy in his early forties, he entered almost at a run. Everything was a-hundred-miles-an-hour with Dan, his walking, his body movements and his talking. 

  I considered myself a good judge of men and weighed him up quickly. There was a decidedly mad look in his eyes, but that was no disbarment, many of my closest friends were quite mad. He had a bluff, easy-going personality and a ready wit. He soon had me laughing. The East End accent was reassuring, as was the, quickly-announced, fact that he was a West Ham supporter. He confessed to having run with their hooligan arm, the ‘Inter City Firm’ for a couple of years when he was younger. For me, this was even more of a recommendation. Not that I had any time for football hooliganism. There were plenty of things to fight over, I just didn’t consider football to be one of them. However, an immature outlook notwithstanding, the ICF were known for courage and loyalty to their mates. I was very big on loyalty.   

  Minutes into our conversation I discovered the reason behind Dan’s hundred-miles-an-hour approach. “Want a quick line, Norm”, he asked, whipping out a small tin, flipping its lid and revealing its contents of white powder. Back in London, where coke had found its way into every strata of society, this was the prelude to many social encounters. But it wasn’t for me. I wasn’t arrogant enough to think that I could control it where so many others had failed. And I liked to be in control. Especially on this, my first journalistic assignment.

  My “No thanks, Dan”, rebuffed him a bit and he looked closely to see if I had been offended. “But you carry on, mate”, I added to show that there was no offence. Dan needed little encouragement. In one fluid movement he pinched some powder out of the tin, placed it on the back of his hand and snorted it up his nose. 

  Just for a second, as its effects hit him, he wasn’t with me. Recovering quickly, he shook his head, refocused his eyes and broke into a crazy laugh. “It’s only about one pound fifty a gram out here, Norm. It keeps me going through the day.” He laughed again.

  No doubt it did, I was laughing with him now. This Dan was quite a character and I would enjoy his company. However, with the serious business of the assignment always in the background I pressed him on his knowledge of FARC’s jungle capital. For a guy who’s main interest was music, he was remarkably well-informed about the politics. But then, as he explained to me, the civil war was so much a part of every Colombian’s life that they followed its twists and turns almost like some TV soap. 

  Dan confessed he’d never been deep into guerilla-held territory himself, although he had been stopped several times by guerilla road-blocks on roads leading to Bogota when he’d been out doing DJ gigs. He said that they were easy enough to get on with, except if they thought you were working for the government. He also said that the people were very tired of the war and wanted peace, almost at any price. 

  Over the next couple of hours, Dan took me on a guided tour. His base, which he used almost as an office, was a record shop in an arcade just across the street. The owner was a close friend and the three assistants were all sometime party companions. Everywhere he went everyone seemed to know and like him. As we sat drinking the strong Colombian coffee Dan mentioned my assignment down to San Vicente, the guerilla capital.   

  Universally, everyone we spoke to was shocked. They strongly advised against it, saying that I must be mad even to consider it. From a social perspective it was all very interesting, but from a professional point of view it was quite depressing. It seemed that my assignment was going to be anything but straightforward.

  That evening we collected Trent from the airport. For Dan and Trent it was a reunion of old friends and fellow West Ham supporters. The little tin and its contents took a right hammering. If nothing else it helped them relax in the company of someone who, just a short while earlier, had been a complete stranger.

  The following morning though it was down to business. To give credit where it was due, Trent knew when to party and when to work. At his suggestion, we made the rounds of all the agencies for further news of the situation. Reuters and a French news agency dismissed us out of hand as journalistic delinquents, pausing only to warn us of the seriousness of the situation. Clearly, ‘Loaded’ didn’t carry much weight with them. The lady at Medicin Sans Frontieres tried to be more understanding. She warned us to stay close to the center of San Vicente, as the roads surrounding it were contested and, should we be stopped by the ‘wrong’ group, we could expect to be murdered out of hand.

  As we sat talking later that evening, Danny was clearly concerned for our safety. We’d had a busy and constructive day, as well as a lot of laughs. Already, a kind of camaraderie had sprung up between us, as often happens between Londoners in strange places. With it also came the rivalry. There was always friendly ribbing between East and West Londoners. At times I had been hard pressed to keep up my end of it with both Trent and Dan from the East, but in general I gave as good as I got.

  “Look, I’ve been thinking”, said Dan in a manner that suggested  he was on the verge of something portentous. Trent and I stopped whatever it was that we had been doing and looked at Danny in expectation.  “You’re my mate, Trent, and you, Norman, you’re a fellow Londoner. I can’t let you go down to San Vicente on your own. I’d never forgive myself if something happened. I’ll come with you. You badly need someone who can speak the language, Trent’s Costa Spanish will get you nowhere.” He stopped abruptly.

  It was an emotional moment. Danny was a loyal guy. He, probably better than anyone, realised the dangers of our trip. Yet he was going to put himself in harm’s way just to help us out. We both thanked him warmly and, with that, we all stumbled off to our beds.

(Part 1 of a 5 part short story)

Now that I had my assignment, I set about doing some serious preparation. My first stop was the British Airways travel clinic in Regent Street. I was aware that I needed vaccinations against various diseases before I would be allowed to travel. What I didn’t realize was just how many. Not only was Colombia one of the most dangerous countries from the political violence aspect, it seemed that the very environment was inimical to human life. 

  Next I considered what I should wear. No doubt professional journos in the field wore safari suits and other tropical kit. However, I didn’t want to advertise my assignment to the Colombian Government, because there might be restrictions on foreign journalists traveling to guerilla-held territory. Jeans and t-shirts should be sufficient to allow me to blend in with the natives.

  Finally, I read up on the current political situation to try to determine who the main players were. FARC were thoroughly Marxist-inspired. Their political agenda called for agrarian reform, protection of natural resources from multi-national corporations and democratisation. With up to 20,000 men and women under arms they were the biggest force in the field, apart from the Colombian army. So successful had their military campaign been that the previous year the Government had granted them a demilitarized zone the size of Switzerland in southern Colombia. This was where I was headed. FARC responded with an attack that reached the outskirts of the capital, Bogota.

  The National Liberation Army or ELN were inspired by the Cuban revolution and had up to 5,000 men and women under arms. Although mostly fighting against the Government, at different times and in different provinces, they had been known to fight with FARC.

  No South American revolution would be complete without it’s right wing death squads, and this function was enthusiastically performed by the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia or AUC. An illegal paramilitary army, they numbered up to 5,000 men and were the sworn enemies of FARC and ELN. Although supposedly independent, informed sources said that they were merely an extension of the Colombian military and had close links with the drugs cartels. Guilty of many human rights abuses, they were widely known as the ‘head-cutters’ for their habit of decapitating victims after torturing them to death.

  The Colombian Army was largely comprised of under-trained and unmotivated young men on national service. Regularly outfought and outgunned by FARC, they too had been accused of human rights abuses by, amongst others, Washington’s ‘Human Rights Watch’.

  If every South American revolution is incomplete without its death squads, then it is similarly incomplete without the US. Sure enough there was ongoing, heavy US financial and military involvement. Under ‘Plan Colombia’ they were in the process of giving 1.6 billion dollars in aid, 75% of it in military assistance. They were currently training and equipping two elite Colombian anti-narcotics battalions.

  All this added up to a very dangerous country indeed. The previous year 5,000 people were killed in political violence, out of a total annual toll of  30,000 violent deaths. Journalists were not immune to this violence either. Forty-six had been killed in the last ten years and all sides regularly took journalists hostage. I assumed that I wouldn’t be bumping into too many other foreign journalists in the field.

  The air ticket provided by ‘Loaded’ allowed me 12 days for the trip. However, it would take a day to get to Colombia and another day to get back. Once in Bogota, it would take a further day to get down to FARC’s jungle capital and another day to get back. Then there was the fact that Trent would be arriving from another assignment a day after I arrived. So if everything went absolutely like clockwork I would have a maximum of five, maybe six, days with the guerillas, not a lot of time to do a detailed piece. 

  Other than the above, I had two other tight schedules to meet. I was still on life licence which, amongst other things, entailed my reporting to Henry, my probation officer, every two weeks. I could just fit the trip in and be back two days before my next appointment. Needless to say, I hadn’t told Henry about the trip. He would have had to tell the Home Office which, in effect, would mean my asking for permission to go. Henry had once given me permission to go on a short holiday to Spain not long after my release and been given a terrible rollocking by the Home Office. They would have undoubtedly said no to Colombia.

  An extra problem was that Henry lived in the same tower block where I lived with my mother, only two floors above us. We often met in the lift. Just another of those little quirks of fate that seemed to plague my existence. So I would have to hope that Henry didn’t miss all my normal comings and goings and ask about it on our next appointed meeting.  

  The other tight schedule was entirely more threatening of dire consequences. Marsha was a tall, stunningly-beautiful, 28-year-old blonde with a figure to die for. Ferociously intelligent, she had two Honours degrees, two Masters degrees and was currently studying for her doctorate, all in psychology. She was a strong personality and very demanding. She was also my girlfriend.

  There were several ironies to the situation, not the least of them being that a prison Governor had once remarked that he would liked to have put a whole team of psychologists just to study me. Well I didn’t have a whole team, but I did have my very own, personal, full time shrink now.

  Marsha was also quite jealous. I had pointed out on several occasions that there weren’t too many attractive women who were into short, balding 50-year-old ex-cons, but it had little or no effect. Now, on our last evening, I was reassuring her that everything would be all right. I would be safe, and back before she knew it.

  Marsha looked at me with one of her studied, cool looks, the ones that always unnerved me. I had stared down dangerous psychopaths in the jailhouse, but I always blinked with Marsha. “And no looking at the women”, she said in a throaty growl. It surprised me. I would be looking at the potential robbers, kidnappers, murderers and carriers of all the various Colombian diseases, but it hadn’t occurred to me to look at the women. I was just about to say, “trust you to get your priorities right”, but thought better of it. “Of course I won’t, darling”, was the best I could manage.

  Marsha was also very strict about the observance of birthdays, especially her own. It just so happened that her birthday fell in about two weeks time. I deliberately hadn’t checked, but I knew it would be a close-run thing. “And don’t be late back for my birthday”, she purred.  

  The following day, a Friday and the day before my flight, was a frenzy of preparation. I must have checked, packed and unpacked my traveling bag six times. I was carrying Trent’s camera and 40 rolls of film to give to him in Bogota. For the umpteenth time I wrapped the camera in tissue to protect it from in-flight damage. 

  Just as I was as sure as I could be that I had everything, my phone rang. An official-sounding voice informed me that they would like to speak to me concerning a matter at Kensington Police Station. The voice wouldn’t be drawn on the nature of the matter, but I was told to ask for D.C. Keith Brown on arrival.

  Now my mind really was racing. What could it be that they wanted to see me about? I racked my brains about anything I might have done, but couldn’t come up with anything. I reassured myself that, if it was really serious, they wouldn’t have bothered to phone, they’d just have come and arrested me, It wasn’t a lot of consolation. Resignedly, I considered the possibility that it must be about the Colombia trip. I knew that everyone who traveled to Colombia, a drug-trafficking hot-spot, was ‘flagged’ by a note being made of it. No doubt the combination of Colombia and my being on life licence had provoked them. At best I could expect a stern warning: at worst I might not walk out of the police station and be on my way back to a prison.

  With considerable trepidation I approached the front counter of Kensington Police Station and asked for D.C. Brown. There was no pressing of alarm bells or frantic phone calls, in fact the desk officer hardly looked up at me. “D.C. Brown works out of the office directly across the street”, he said, before returning to what he was doing.

  ‘Across the street’ was entirely more hospitable, in that there were large glass windows and a modern-looking reception area. On asking for D.C. Brown I was politely asked to take a seat and promised that he would be with me very shortly.

  Keith Brown was surprisingly young, hardly out of his twenties. He was also polite and very laid back. Apologising for keeping me waiting, he led me into a small office. I refused the offer of a cup of tea and settled back in a manner that I hoped would indicate that, whilst not being unduly worried, I would like to know what was going on.

  “Your name’s come up in connection with the Jill Dando murder”, said the D.C. My immediate reaction was one of relief. It was nothing to do with me. I very nearly said, “Oh I thought it was something serious”, but realised that would sound flippant and insensitive. Perhaps reading my expression the D.C. added, “we’re not taking it too seriously, the computer’s just thrown up your name.” I mused on the fact that, whatever my journalistic pretensions, I would always be ‘Norman the Murderer’ to the police and their computers.

  He then asked me where I was on the 26^th of April last year. I confessed that I hadn’t a clue. I didn’t keep a diary and, unless something significant had happened in my life on that day, I wouldn’t ever be able to remember. The D.C. admitted that he couldn’t remember where he had been on that day either, a further indication that he wasn’t taking this enquiry too seriously. And with that the interview was over.

  The final surprise came as I was leaving. He asked me what my personal theory was about the Jill Dando murder. I remembered reading that she had been killed by a single  pistol shot to the head. I opined that the killer was either an amateur or didn’t really intend to kill. Many victims had survived one shot to the head. A professional would have administered the second shot to make sure.

Part two will follow shortly....

In 1994 I was released from prison after 24 continuous years. Lest anyone should think that the appropriate reaction was to perform cartwheels down the street and party ‘til dawn, I should add that I had spent the previous nine months partially free on a prison hostel and for three years prior to that been in Ford open prison. So rather than being a major, individual act of being released, it was more a succession of minor degrees of increasing freedom.

  With each increasing degree came the greater realization that, whatever novelty I found in my new surroundings and whichever problems I had in coming to terms with them, there was one inescapable reality that I would have to deal with sooner rather than later. I would have to find a way to earn a living.   

  My immediate prospects were not particularly good. I had passed a Bachelor of Arts, Honours degree in prison, but had no actual work experience of anything. Coupled with the facts that I was now 50 years old and had a conviction for murder, it made for a CV that was anything but attractive to a prospective employer.

  However, I had started to write in my last months at Ford. ‘Parkhurst Tales’ was a collection of short stories, factually based on incidents that had happened in various jails. My incarceration notwithstanding, I had managed to accumulate a wide circle of friends and acquaintances over the years. Now I used them to ‘network’ my way to a book deal. 

  My work came to the attention of Frank Delaney, the writer and TV presenter. He was impressed, agreed to write a foreword and set out to get me a two-book deal with Random Century. At the same time, Mike Mansfield, the music impresario, had visited me at Ford with a view to pitching a TV series to the networks based on ‘Parkhurst Tales’.

  It had been all too easy really. But I was soon to come face to face with the reality of the false promises and let-downs of the media world. Frank Delaney suddenly got the job of presenting ‘The Book Program’ on Sky and backed away from any involvement with me. After a series of meetings, the TV project also came to nothing.

  I still managed to get a book deal with a £3,000 advance though. ‘Parkhurst Tales’ was duly released and promptly became a best-seller, selling over 20,000 copies in hardback. I did the rounds of the many TV chat shows and found that it was a medium I handled quite well. I had realised by now that to be a successful author, one who actually makes a living out of writing, one also had to be an ardent and resourceful self-publicist.

  My second book, ‘The Goldfish Bowl’, was a full length story set in Kingston Prison, Europe’s only prison exclusively for lifers. The book launch was long on location, but short on timing. ‘Grouchos’ might have been something of a media cliché, but it still had plenty of potential for publicity. However, the Dunblane shooting massacre was all over the media. The main question the, mostly female, journalists asked was, “Why should they write anything positive about somebody who had also killed by shooting?” 

  For me, trying to establish myself as a serious writer, it was a major, if not unexpected, disappointment. I had discovered very early on that, for many people, I would always be ‘Norman the Murderer’ rather than ‘Norman the Writer’. It wasn’t something I agonised over or railed against the unfairness of the world about, but in my heart I knew that I would never escape the shadow of my convictions. 

  For that reason I had always kept one foot in the, for want for a better term, underworld, a milieu where my criminal convictions were never held against me. To the contrary, in fact. I was widely known, trusted and respected, useful qualities for someone trying to make a living by crime. 

  But I was well aware of the high percentage of people fresh out of prison who had gone back in again. Further, my long-suffering and ever-loyal mother was doting on the fact that, at long last, she had me living with her again. I was ever mindful of the fact that I could easily break her heart. 

  Tragedy though, was but a heartbeat away. Whether I was ill-starred, or actively sought misfortune out by my choice of equally ill-starred and self-destructive companions, I couldn’t discern. When it came, everybody was agreed that I hadn’t had much luck in life.

  I had met Janice through an old prison pal down on his luck. She was a petite, pretty, 23-year-old, mixed-race girl, with a serious drug problem that she funded through shop-lifting. She used Ian’s run-down flat as a base for her shop-lifting forays.

  It was a tempestuous relationship from the start. My character, fired in the furnace of the institution, was hard, unyielding, uncompromising and totally focused. It wasn’t so much that I was selfish, rather just completely self-oriented from having to care only for myself for so long. At times it must have seemed to Janice that I was inconsiderate. 

  For her part, she was also moulded by the institution, courtesy of the various sentences she had served. This was further compounded by having to live by the chaotic and fratricidal rules of ‘the street’. If her paranoia wasn’t a clearly defined clinical condition, then its practical effects still served to make her distrustful of everyone. If it was a ‘marriage’ made in heaven, then the Great Creator must have been smiling whilst in the process of creation.        

  Before long we were deeply in love. That our characters and lifestyles were mutually self-destructive didn’t seem to matter. And even if it had there was nothing we could do about it. Our love for each other was an addiction in itself. Both of us, in our own ways, were very strong. Together, when in unison, we were indestructible. Friends often commented on the fact that, at times, we seemed to ‘shine’ together.

  Janice died in front of a train. Afterwards, the police told me that she had been the victim of a ‘suicide-pact, serial killer’ (see my ‘Life After Life’). I was too devastated to consider the facts logically. Secretly I blamed myself for not being there for her. It coloured every aspect of my existence. 

  My one remaining positive passion was to gain recognition as a serious writer. Painful though it was, I embarked on writing my fourth book (number three, ‘Parkhurst Tales 2’ had been published a short time earlier). ‘Life After Life’ was to be an account of all that had happened to me since my last months at Ford. If I had thought that it would exorcise the ghosts, then I was to be disappointed.    

  Fearful that my latest literary effort might be ignored when finished, I set out to raise my public profile. Shortly after ‘Parkhurst Tales’ was published I found out that, as a published author, I was entitled to apply for a journalist’s card. I had done so at the time with no journalistic intent whatsoever.

   Even though free from jail, in truth I had only been released on ‘life license’ and was forever under threat of being recalled to prison by the Home Office for any infraction of that license. One of the restrictions I was under was that I couldn’t travel abroad without Home Office permission. Received wisdom was that this was very difficult to get.

  I reasoned that, as an accredited journalist, the Home Office would be reluctant to put me back in jail just for traveling abroad without permission. I knew that the European Court didn’t even accept the legality of the ‘life license’, so even if the H.O. did ‘recall’ me I would have a good case at ‘Europe’.  

  Now, just before the publication of my latest book, I thought I would use my journalist’s card to get some articles published. But where should I start? Would the national press even consider someone with a criminal record like mine? And even if they did, what would I write about?

  As part of the round of launching my books, mostly in the media watering holes of Soho, I had met and become friendly with some of the young men who worked and wrote for the ‘Lad’s magazines’. These had recently become something of a publishing phenomenon. Initially I dismissed the medium, mostly because of the ‘tits and bums’ format.. However, it was explained to me that the readership included many ‘city boys’, young men who worked for City banks and other financial institutions and had large, disposable incomes. They were looking for a light-hearted and irreverent read to take their minds off the serious business of dealing in money. As a result these magazine had become very fashionable.

  The market leaders amongst the ‘Lad’s mags’ were ‘Maxim’, ‘Loaded’ and ‘Front’, with fluctuating circulation figures per month of 500,000, 300,000 and 250,000 respectively. It was further explained to me that, on average, two people read every copy bought. So the prospect of reaching a readership of up to a million suddenly became very attractive to me.     

  One of the guys I had become friendly with was Bill Borrows, features editor at ‘Loaded’. A highly talented writer himself, he asked me to write for the magazine. He said that, if I could come up with a project, he would back it up by recommending me to the editor. I immediately began searching for a suitable subject.

  I had always been interested in politics and was well-informed about most of the ongoing conflicts in the world. I reasoned that I could hardly compete with most of the established journalists, who, through the power of their organisations, would have things largely sown up. That ruled out many of the most easily accessible places. It left only the most dangerous and inaccessible places.

  Fortunately, my political viewpoint was decidedly left wing, so I would have little difficulty in sympathizing with many of the guerilla movements. Whether this provided me with any sort of ‘in’ with them was another matter entirely. In jail, through the natural comradeship that springs up in shared, oppressive situations, I had become friendly with several leading IRA men. One in particular, Gerry Kelley, was now a senior figure in Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA. I rung him and asked if he could recommend me to any guerilla groups and provide an introduction. 

  Gerry baulked at the idea. He explained that, as a party, Sinn  Fein just didn’t do things like that. He went on to say that there had been cases in the past where they had recommended someone and things had gone badly wrong. So I was back to square one.

  Reading through some old newspaper articles that I had saved I came upon one about Colombia. There had been a guerilla war going on for almost 40 years. The article focused on the fact that the Government had ceded a large area of land to the main guerilla organization, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC.), where the latter had set up an unofficial ‘capital’ of their armed struggle. It was generally referred to as ‘Farcland’. Government forces stayed out of the area. I had my idea for a story. I would go to Colombia and do a story on ‘Farcland’.

  The next problem was for me to convince ‘Loaded’ that I had some way of getting the story, that is, that I had some special access. The newspaper article had mentioned that FARC had a website and gave it’s address. I immediately e-mailed them, explaining that I was a journalist who generally sympathized with left wing revolutions and asked permission to come to their ‘capital’ and do a story on them.

  Their reply two days later was as disappointing as it was unhelpful. Firstly, it was in Spanish, a language I didn’t speak at all With the translation came the second disappointment. They asked me to submit my request in Spanish.

  However, I was confident that, once in Colombia, I could make contact with the guerillas. As dangerous as the place was I was savvy enough to know that modern-day guerilla movements tried to avoid harming or killing journalists, because that only brought down a storm of criticism from journalists of every persuasion. Anyway, Parkhurst prison had been a pretty dangerous place and I had survived that. So Colombia held no fears for me.

  As non-committal as the reply from FARC had been, at least I could now say that I had been in contact with them. It was just a short step to saying that they were expecting me. With the encouragement of Bill Borrows it was enough to sway ‘Loaded’. Perhaps they figured that if I got myself killed there would be a story for them in that!

  A meeting was duly convened at ‘Loaded’s offices where they introduced me to my photographer for the trip. ‘Loaded’ is 90% a visual magazine, so that part of the story had concerned me. Now, with my own professional photographer, that was taken care of. 

  I had met several photographers during my Soho jaunts and, in general, I hadn’t been impressed. I found them mostly to be narcissistic and obsessed by social status. Despite a thoroughly working class accent, my photographer, wasn’t to disappoint. 

  Trent was a sharp-featured, anxious-looking guy in his early thirties. Stylish, well-pressed clothes fitted snugly to his slim figure and he hadn’t a hair out of place. The word ‘fastidious’ immediately sprang to mind. The first twenty minutes of the conversation was all about him and his work. Then he touched briefly on all the celebrities he knew, segueing neatly at the end into a story about him and his close friend, a famous DJ.

  This was my first assignment. I wasn’t about to grovel, but I would try to get on with everyone. In ‘underworld’ mode I would have been readying myself to give this Trent a strong put-down. Instead I focused on the promising things, namely his East End upbringing and his support for West Ham. I walked out of ‘Loaded’s offices with an air ticket to Colombia, £1,200 in expenses and my first journalistic assignment.

In 1970, at 26 years of age, I was sentenced to life imprisonment. As much as it was a shock to the system it wasn’t entirely unexpected. I was an active criminal, heavily involved in armed robbery, as well as being a known ‘face’ on the, for want of a better term, underworld scene.
  I had served a previous sentence of 6 years for another serious offence when I was 18. Far from  making it easier to accept my present sentence, this, in fact, made it harder. I actually had a reference point to quantify time served against. I knew just how long, in psychological terms, it had taken to serve the 6 year sentence.
  Further,  because of this serious previous conviction, I realised that I would serve very much longer than the average lifer. The Home Office never gave any guidelines, so it was all a matter of guesswork. However, I estimated that I was looking at somewhere between 15 and 20 years.
  Quite clearly, I was entering uncharted territory. Equally clearly. I would have to work out some sort of survival strategy.
  On my previous sentence I had seen men who had ‘cracked up’. There were regular suicides and others had become so eccentric that they had been certified insane and sent to one of the special hospitals. The risk of losing one’s mind was every prisoner’s greatest fear.
  So I looked among my fellow prisoners for human yardsticks to measure against. The majority of men who had served 5 years seemed fully in command of their faculties. Among the much fewer men who had served 10 years a sizeable proportion showed clear signs of eccentricity. Virtually to a man, the handful of prisoners who had served 15 years or more were seriously damaged.
  But I was the irresistible force, blessed or cursed with a fanatical self-belief. It was my very strength that had brought me into such violent conflict with the accepted norms of society. Even so, I realised that I would have to make myself immeasurably stronger in order to survive the long years.
  An immediate problem was the ‘politics’ of the world I lived in. Violence is epidemic in prison. It is truly a warrior society, with strength and viciousness the most necessary qualities for survival. As a notorious killer I would be a target for other violent men wanting to make a name for themselves. Further, the prison authorities are in the business of trying to break the prisoner’s spirit.
  Intuitively, I felt that the strength of one’s spirit was supremely important. This ruled out trying to lead a low-profile existence. I would have to stand my ground whatever the challenge and if that brought me into conflict, then so be it. It would be extremely stressful, but stress isn’t necessarily the enemy. It is all a question of how one handles it.
  The strategy I was to adopt would work on two levels, the mental and the physical. The latter was designed to strengthen my will and was really an interaction between the mental and the physical. Grueling work-outs up to three hours a day would hone an obsessive determination that would enable me to make the most rational decision, no matter how much pain and grief it caused me in the short term. A welcome by-product of the work-outs was that I would better be able to defend myself in violent confrontations.
  It was also part of my strategy never to accept the life sentence. I was a resourceful and determined escaper. The ‘spiritual’ benefits of this was that salvation could come at any time. Next week, next month, a successful escape could put me on the street and at the end of my life sentence.
  I spent a lot of time in solitary confinement in the early years. In many ways this worked directly against my survival plan. Sensory deprivation is the most extreme of human environments, one where the mind invariably fractures. However, in line with the maxim ‘that which does not kill you makes you stronger’, if you can survive it you do emerge the stronger.
  But if I was the irresistible force, then the institution of prison was the immovable object. Unsuccessful escape attempts, violent incidents and confrontations with the authorities saw me constantly thrown into solitary and/or moved around the country. Emotionally, physically and spiritually it was tiring. As I approasched my tenth year and my first parole review I realised that it was impossible to sustain such a life.
  But with ten years behind me, other possibilities now presented themselves. Lower security prisons offered better resourced, less violent regimes that were more stimulating. I was sent to a well-resourced Category C prison called The Verne, at Portland in Dorset. Here, in conditions of comparative freedom, I continued my programme of mental and physical survival.
  There were still shocks and surprises. At the thirteen year mark the incumbent ‘law and order’ Home Secretary changed the whole lifer system. Every lifer was given a ‘tariff’ and mine was to be 20 years. But at least I had something  to aim at now.
  At the 18 year mark I was suddenly struck by a crippling arthritic illness. Within weeks I could hardly walk and the prison doctor warned that  my condition could only worsen. My awesome self-discipline stood me in good stead though. I researched the illness and through a combination of diet and exercise largely overcame it. I was phenomenally strong in every way now.
  I continued to do what I had always done and the time passed. On 20 years they sent me to open prison. Four years later I was released.
  I have since written six books, one of them a best-seller, with all the others still in print after several years. I became a journalist and travelled all over the world for the Sunday Express and men’s life-style magazines. I attended Surrey University and passed a Master’s degree in criminology. I currently live in Spain.
  In conclusion, what I am most definitely not saying is that my life is one to be emulated. The message is, that with a finely honed and focused will, one can overcome seemingly insurmountable problems. Often, the rational, logical decision is plain to see. Equally often, the flesh is weak. Will-power is a muscle  It can be strengthened if you have the determination.