Billy Rags Read online

  The day before the visiting Magistrates’ Board turned up to smack our hands because of the escape I said to Toddy: “Have you ever noticed the way everybody bulls up for a scene like the Board?”

  “Sure I have, Billy. Standard practice.”

  “It may be standard practice for you and the rest of the fucking cons in the place but you can leave me out of it.”

  “How do you mean, Billy?”

  “The way they all go down there. Polished and pressed. It’s disgusting. Like they’re going to a party.”

  “So what about it?”

  “Wait until tomorrow, Toddy,” I said. “I’ll give the sods bulling up.”

  I’d always been a great one for walking around in my underpants in the Boobs. It’s a marvelous demoralizer of the spit and polish union to which all screws are fully paid-up members. And after getting myself all wound up by all the anxious pleasers I realized that the interview with the Board was an occasion when underpants were de rigueur.

  So the next day I went to meet the Board just wearing my underpants, enhancing the effect with my hair en brosse and about two weeks’ growth on my face.

  The local worthy couldn’t believe his eyes when I sauntered in. Neither could his secretary: her eyes and mouth registered Full House disgust.

  Reece affected a wash-my-hands-of-it-all expression but I knew he’d be burning slowly for the next day or two.

  Then the Chairman read out the charges and told me off in a voice full of tact and kindness appropriate to dealing with the abnormal. So just to show him he hadn’t got me weighed up wrong I acted a bit spare as though I hadn’t understood very much of what he’d said so he repeated it all over again carefully enunciating every word and pausing after the long ones. I never had the heart to keep it up second time round so I gave him a nod or two just to encourage him and then pleaded guilty. Reece just stared into space, but even though he wasn’t looking at me he couldn’t see anybody but Billy Cracken in front of his eyes.

  So we did our chokey and after two months everybody came off except me. I was the only one that got put on a confined-to-cell rule. Not even Freddie got that one and he’d threatened to hang the sodding governor.

  I tried a new tactic with Reece. Instead of ignoring him, I tried to talk to him as he came to my cell door, just to throw him. But all the time I talked he just looked into my cell at me with this expression of contempt on his face and when I’d finished he just smiled his smile and walked away without saying anything. I marked him up one point.

  But the next time I went out on Exercise I refused to go back in. Six screws gathered round me and there was the usual little drama.

  They set me and I set them but it was up to them to make the first move and that was never going to happen. The Chief Screw came out and bawled at them to take me in but he was wasting his breath so to save face he said: “For Christ’s sake, Cracken, don’t be a cunt. What do you think this’ll get you apart from the flu? All I’ve got to do is double them up and then even you won’t have any choice.”

  “All right, Chief,” I said. “I’ll come in now because I’m on a hiding to nothing out here. But if I’m not moved inside three days I’m going to smash one of your screws for you. I won’t give him any chance. Because nobody’s giving me one.”

  With that I walked through the bunch of them and back inside.

  Two mornings later a screw unlocked my cell and said: “Get your kit packed up, Cracken.”

  I looked at him. I knew I was going but screws make a point of telling you as little as possible just to keep you down so I said: “Going? How do you mean going?”

  “What I say,” said the screw. “You’re on your way.”

  “Where to?”

  “Just pack up, Cracken. Then maybe you’ll find out.”

  The screw’s name was Melchett. He’d been down on my list since the first week. But now I’d never get the chance.

  “You’re a very lucky screw, Melchett,” I said. Melchett just looked at me. He knew what I meant. And so because he knew he was safe he relaxed and leant against the cell door and fished out a cigarette.

  I began to sort out my odds and ends.

  “Hope you don’t suffer from homesickness,” Melchett said.

  I ignored him.

  “Where you’re going’ll make this seem like home sweet home.”

  I picked up my stuff and whirled round quick as if I was going to cop for him. He dropped his cigarette and leapt out into the corridor. I grinned at him.

  “Right,” I said. “Let’s go down.”

  I walked out into the corridor.

  “What’s up, Billy?” Toddy said from behind his door.

  “I’m off on my holidays.”

  “Somewhere good?”

  “Reece’s booked me for the Riviera.”

  “Give Brigitte one for me,” called Freddie as I passed his door.

  “Send us a postcard,” said somebody else.

  “If I’ve time to write,” I said.

  We walked downstairs.

  Reece was waiting at the bottom with about fifteen screws. We all walked out into reception. It was like a state visit. While I was signing the private property book Reece went into another room and I heard him say: “Why isn’t he wearing a jacket?”

  Some screw mumbled a reply and Reece said: “I want him wearing a jacket when he goes out of here.”

  A couple of seconds later a decent sort of screw came into reception holding a prison jacket.

  “Billy,” he said, “put this on.”

  I straightened up.

  “You must be joking,” I said.

  “Come on, Billy,” he said.

  “Tell silly ballocks to put it on himself.”

  The screw went back into the room where Reece was and there was some more muttering and about four of them came back out and the same screw holding the jacket said: “You’ve got to put it on. Otherwise the Governor’s ordered us to make you put it on.”

  “Oh, well,” I said, “that’s all right then. Now we know where we are. This way there’ll be no misunderstandings.”

  I backed off into a corner and shaped up. I look the business when I shape up, hard eyes and everything, it’s one of my best effects. The screws walked towards me but they weren’t too keen to get where they were going. There was a bit of maneuvering and then Greaves, who had been watching from the doorway of the room where Reece was, walked to the screw who was holding the jacket and plucked it off him in disgust and went back into the room. I heard him say very emphatically: “He won’t wear it, sir.”

  The edge in his voice was to let Reece know that that was that. There was a pause while they faced each other out and then Reece said something I couldn’t catch.

  Greaves came back out looking weary of the whole fucking world, put the cuffs on me and handed his half of the cuffs over to one of the police officers who’d come to fetch me.

  I got in the back of the car, a copper on either side of me and one up front beside the driver.

  Reece came out and stood next to Greaves to watch us drive off. Just before Greaves closed the car door on us I leant across and said:

  “Where are we going, Greavesy?”

  Before Greaves could answer Reece stepped forward and stared in at me. The veins in his head were almost throbbing enough to knock his hat off. He just couldn’t help himself because he snapped: “Broadmoor.”

  The car drew away. We never went to Broadmoor. We went to Aston.

  But even the piddling victories available in the nick have to be paid for one way or another. Two and a half years later, a couple of days after I’d been recaptured, I had to talk to a PO about a visit.

  In the course of the conversation he casually remarked: “Oh, by the way, I was talkin
g to an old friend of yours on the phone yesterday. Captain Reece. He asked to be remembered to you.”

  They always win in the end.

  The new kids are beginning to settle down. Cocksure set of little bleeders. Playground hardly room to move, they’re pushing and shoving and running all over the place. Soon be time to show them who’s top. Who’s king. Who’s Bozo.

  Grey cloud streaks across the water puddle sky and shatters broken with footstep running.

  A new kid stops in front of me.

  “Hey, is it you?” he says.

  I stop. Johnny Stretch and Arthur Easton stop too, two steps behind me, like they should.

  “Is it you though? Is it you that’s called Billy Rags?”

  The excuse. The chance. Now I’ll show them.

  “Who telled you to say that?”

  The yukker makes to dart but only his legs move flailing nowhere because his shirt collar’s in my fist.

  “Who?”

  “Don’t.”

  Tears.

  “Who?”

  “Him.”

  A nod to Bas Acker. Bas. The rival. The only one worth fighting. I’d found that out my first week. Two years above me. But that didn’t matter. I’d cracked him easily, publicly, quickly. I was top. That was what counted. I’d weighed it up: you were popular if you had no peers. You did everything best. Best at fighting, best at footballing, best at cig-carding, everything. The better you were, the better you were liked. And if you were liked, you could do as you liked. And everybody did things for you. You were a king. It was easy. And now Bas had given me the excuse to prove it all over again, to the new lot.

  I dragged the yukker over to where Bas Acker was standing with his mates. Johnny and Arthur followed behind.

  “Now boy,” I say to Bas. “This yukker says you told him I’m called Billy Rags.”

  Bas glances at his mates who in turn wait to see what he’s going to do.

  He hasn’t any choice.

  “What if I did?”

  “Take it back, that’s what.”

  “What if I don’t?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Bas doesn’t say anything. I say to the yukker: “My name’s William Cracken. What is it?”

  “William Cracken.”

  I slap him round the head.

  “What is it?”

  “William Cracken,” he says, through tears.

  I slap him again.

  “Leave him,” says Bas Acker.

  “Oh yes?” I say. “And what if I don’t?”

  Now he’s no choice. Bas steps forward. I let the yukker go.

  “Fair fight, boy?” I say to Bas.

  “Fair fight.”

  “Leather him, Billy,” Johnny says.

  I step forward.

  “I will,” I say. “Just like last time. And next.”

  After the fresh air it’s the smell that gets you. Even though I’d been inside the police car breathing in the BO of my four travelling companions, it had been like sniffing Paradise compared to the smell of E wing. It hadn’t been up more than three years, but the smell was there. They must mix it in with the concrete.

  E wing was an L-shaped block of cells. The two gates leading into it were on the bottom landing on either end of the L. When I arrived there were about twenty-nine normal prisoners scattered around on the top three tiers. Apart from three sex cases: Strachey, Hopper and Rose. Of course, these were kept separate, but they were there.

  There was no work. You either stayed in your cell during the day or were split into one of two rooms where you sat around chatting. There was a piddling little exercise yard that people often didn’t bother to use for the statutory hour a day. And from six to nine there was tele-vision. The only other facility was weight lifting or weight training every week night from six to seven-thirty. Which was something I marked down for when I got out from behind my door.

  Which was where I spent my first month at Aston.

  But just the same when I got from behind it I’d sorted out everything there was to be sorted. I’d got all my information through my door in the form of notes from Walter Colman via a tame screw called Fussey.

  Walter was the first person I went to see the day they unlocked my door.

  When I appeared in the doorway of Walter’s cell he was half-lying, half-sitting on his bunk reading a Playboy magazine that was without its cover. I thought: knowing you, Walter, you’ll be reading the interview or an article on the proliferating dangers of a data bank society, not studying the bums and knockers.

  He didn’t look much different since I’d seen him last, except that this time he didn’t have a tie on. The shirt was nice, pale yellow with a tabbed collar, and the trousers were sharp and beautifully pressed, obviously the bottom half of one of his old business suits.

  His hairline had receded a bit, but he’d combed it across instead of back so that his forehead didn’t show too much. He still had his sideboards and at the back his hair was barbered just the way he always wore it, just tickling over the edge of his collar. Except for a slight pursing of the lips there was no expression on his face at all as he read the magazine. His eyes were blank and his face was flat and motionless as ever.

  I tapped on the cell door.

  “Anybody at home?” I said.

  Walter looked up. For a split second the deadness stayed on his face and then he grinned and got up off the bunk, but his eyes were blank and cold. Walter’s eyes always were: excepting when he was shooting volts through someone’s ballocks.

  “Billy,” he said, taking hold of my hand. “You’re out, then.”

  “That’s right, Wally,” I said, gently pulling my hand away from his. “They finally decided to open the cage.”

  “Sit down,” Walter said, indicating the bunk. “Have a snout and tell me the news.”

  I shook my head.

  “I’ve been sitting down for the last bleeding month,” I said. “And funnily enough nothing very much has happened to me.”

  “No, what I meant was,” Walter said, offering me a snout, “tell me about Burnham.”

  I took the snout and Walter lit us up. I leant on the edge of his writing desk and he lay down on his bunk.

  “I saw about it in the papers,” Walter said, “but tell us what really happened.”

  I shrugged.

  “That’s all in the past, Wally. I don’t really want to talk about it.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  “You tell me your news,” I said.

  It was Walter’s time to shrug.

  “A few changes in the offing,” he said. “Or so I hear.”

  “Like what?”

  “They’re talking about a proper exercise yard being built. And they’re fixing up a wrought-iron shop on the ground floor.”

  “That should be fun,” I said.

  “Yes,” said Walter.

  Outside across the landing, four cons broke into laughter at something or other. The sound echoed up to the roof of the block.

  “And what else?”

  “What else?” Walter blew smoke out into the air. “Nothing, only that we get a new Governor shortly, together with his new assistant who’ll be responsible for this wing.”

  “I can’t wait.”

  Walter smiled slightly.

  “You seem quite content, Walter,” I said. “I mean, sort of at peace with the world and all that.”

  “Not much sense being any other way, Billy, really, is there? I mean, with my card.”

  I put my cigarette out in his ashtray.

  “How’s business?” I said.

  “Can’t complain,” he said. “We show a profit.”

  “You must be fucking rolling in it,” I s
aid. “If it’s anything like I remember.”

  “That was quite some time ago,” Walter said. “We’ve expanded a bit since then.”

  “I bet you fucking have. What happened at the trial? I mean, you must have done a deal for them to leave the other operations alone.”

  “The way of the world, Billy,” said Walter. “Justice must be seen to be done. We were too much in the public sector to be absolutely watertight on that one.”

  “Don’t tell me you took a chance, Walter. I mean, not you and Tony.”

  “Let’s say our inside man at the top had a lower tolerance level than we’d bargained for.”

  “That man being Braben.”

  Walter didn’t say anything.

  “Who is now off the force.”

  No answer. The penny dropped.

  “That’s why they only clobbered you on the one operation,” I said. “That’s why they only went for you and Mavis. They wanted Braben. And you gave him to them.”

  “Retired of his own accord, so I believe,” Walter said.

  There was a short silence. I looked at Walter and Walter looked at the ceiling. A lump of ash dropped on to his shirt, but he didn’t attempt to brush it away. Which was very unlike Walter.

  “You know,” he said, almost as if he was talking to himself, “I reckon if we’d knocked off Franklin, I mean, actually finished him off, as opposed to what we did do, I don’t think I’d have got my card marked anything like as big. Or Mavis. I really don’t.”

  I didn’t say anything to that. I knew all about Walter and Mavis when they went to work on someone and that was one reason why Walter and I would never be bosom pals. Amongst various other things.