Billy Rags (3 page)

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 said. “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.

“So,” I said. “Now you're leading a baron's life.”

“It's different in Security. Not like the other wings. Less of a hassle to make your points. There's no petty stuff. All big fish together. Who wants to prove anything? We wouldn't be here in the first place, would we?”

“You'd call Strachey and Hopper and Rose big fish, would you?”

“We never see them, so consequently we never think about them.”

“I hope we never do,” I said. “I don't want to have to go back behind my door because of that filth.”

“You know, Billy,” Walter said, “that's always been your trouble. If you don't mind me saying so. You're always on the boil. Never know how to relax. Never been able to sit back and accept things.”

“And that's what you're going to do, is it, Walter?” I said. “Sit back and accept things? For the next twenty-five fucking years?”

Walter didn't like that one. He raised himself up on his elbows.

“Do you know where you
are
, Billy?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Well, there it is. I can't be plainer, can I?”

“You mean to say that with all your bread and influence you're calling this place the end of the line?”

He shrugged.

I looked at him.

“Do me a favour,” I said.

He didn't say anything. I picked up the magazine from his bed.

“Lend us your
Playboy
, Wally,” I said. “After all, you've got plenty of time in front of you to finish it.”

“Cracken.”

Soft shafts of afternoon sunlight slide through the slow swirling chalk dust in the quiet classroom.

I pretend not to hear Copley's voice. Johnny Stretch and the others begin to buzz at the prospect of a Cracken diversion.

“Cracken? Somebody pinch him, will you, just to make sure he's still with us.”

Copley always tries to turn this kind of thing into a joke if he thinks it's going to get out of hand. He's one of the easiest of the lot to play up.

The buzzing gets a little louder.

“Quieten down, class” he says.

I stay as I am, hunched forward over my desk as if I'm concentrating on my book. The class goes quiet again. Copley is forced to walk down the aisle of desks to where I am sitting. I take no notice of him.

“Cracken?”

I sit bolt upright in my chair, nearly causing my desk to topple over, acting as though I've been startled out of my wits. The class bursts out laughing. Copley steps back a foot or two in surprise.

“Yes sir, sorry sir,” I say, like a soldier on parade.

Copley tries to recover his poise.

“Cracken, I was attempting to communicate with you. But somehow I didn't seem to be meeting with much success. Do you think you could explain why?”

“Pardon, sir?”

“Why didn't you answer?”

“Sorry, sir, I can't hear you very well. You haven't lost your voice have you, sir?”

Copley is on the verge of fetching me one but he manages to restrain himself.

“Out to the front of the class, boy,” he says in what he imagines to be his no-nonsense voice.

“Sorry, sir,” I says, wrapping my handkerchief round my finger and wriggling it about in my ear. “I think I've gone deaf.”

This is too much even for Copley. He grabs my arm and drags me to the front of the class and with his free hand he scrambles his wooden ruler out of the drawer in his desk. He moves his grip down to my wrist and holds my hand out in front of me.

“Now, boy,” he says, “we'll see if this won't improve your hearing.”

But as he swishes the ruler down I jerk my hand out of the way, not only causing him to miss but also to overbalance slightly, so that he has to let go of my hand to steady himself on the edge of his desk.

“Sorry, sir,” I say. “My hand slipped.”

The class roars with laughter.

“Quiet!” shouts Copley.

“Won't let it happen again, sir.”

Copley grasps my hand again and furiously brings the ruler down seven or eight times, completely out of control, haphazardly hitting my knuckles, fingers, wrist, anywhere. But I make his lack of control even more unbearable for him because all the while he is raining blows on me I just keep looking him straight in the eyes and smiling as though he's not having any effect on me at all.

When Moffatt and his assistant Creasey took over you could hardly say the earth shook. Nothing changed and nobody took much notice of them. But I sensed that Moffatt was watching us and most of what he saw he didn't like. I was on to his game straight away; he was giving it a week or two to sort us out and after that we could expect a few new rules to stop life from becoming one long dreary round.

I found out about the first innovation one night while I was working out with the weights. The gym was empty until Terry Beckley, who was on a fifteen for armed robbery, came in and squatted down on a barbell and watched me for a while.

Terry was twenty-two. I'd got his form from a mate of mine while I'd been outside. He was one of those characters who always seem to have some private joke going on inside their heads. Whenever you bump into them they always look as though they've just seen something very funny and you always have the feeling that when you say something to them it reminds them of what they were laughing at in the first place. But this mate of mine who'd known him on the outside had been full of bad news about him. He'd once seen Terry do his pieces on an old billiard hall cowboy called Harold Pearson just because Harold had tried to save the game by accidentally-on-purpose moving the pink to get a better angle. Now, according to my mate, Terry wasn't exactly short of a bob or two at the time and Harold whose eyes for the game were no longer as good as they should be, and not being a superannuated man, was reduced in his old age to living off the leftovers at the all night pie-stands. But on the occasion of his tournament with Terry he must have thought he was in luck because apparently even a blind man playing with an eel for a cue could have beaten him.

But Harold hadn't been able to resist brushing a cuff against the pink and Terry had taken him apart and finished up by putting Harold's fingers on the edge of the table and giving them one with the stick.

But tonight Terry was his usual grinning self.

“What is it, Billy?” he said. “Planning to walk through the walls? Like Superman?”

I let the weights go and picked up my towel and draped it round my shoulders.

“You've got muscles on your muscles,” he said.

“Never know when you might need them,” I said. “Got a snout?”

“Naw,” he said. “Right out. Got some news, though.”

“News?”

“There's something else to look at in the TV room.”

“How do you mean?”

“Moffatt's invited Hopper and Rose out to watch TV.”

I stared at him.

“You're joking,” I said.

“Rose had more sense,” Terry said, “but Hopper's out there now, looking for a friendly face. Course, with Strachey, it's different. He's going to be allowed to see
Watch with Mother
during the day.”

“How long's Hopper been up there?”

“Bout an hour.”

“And nobody copped for him?”

Terry shook his head.

“Well, I hope they have before I get up there,” I said. “Otherwise I might wind up behind my door again.”

I went into the shower and ran it cold. I thought about Hopper. Just Terry saying his name had been enough to tie my stomach up in knots.

I'd been in the nick at the time he'd made the papers. Usually I avoided reading stuff like that, but this I'd read and I'd been shocked to tears, the kind of tears that pop out of your ducts when grief chills the skin on your face. The bit that had affected me really badly had been the part where the father of one of the kids had found his own daughter where Hopper had left her. I could imagine myself standing over the body, looking down at what Hopper had done to it, done to something that had once belonged to me.

I toweled myself down and dressed and walked upstairs to the TV room.

I stood in the doorway and looked round the room.

Hopper was sitting near the door with his screw, well apart from the rest of them. The others, eleven or so of them, were sitting in a semi-circle around the room. Everybody was watching TV as though they'd never seen it before. Not one of them was cracking on to Hopper. It was as if he wasn't there. Maybe they were ignoring him because none of them wanted to go behind their doors. Or because just to acknowledge his presence would make them sick to their stomachs. But whatever the reasons I wasn't standing for this. I looked at Hopper who was staring hard at the box. He didn't look more than seventeen, let alone twenty, with his fair hair brushed straight back and his bony cheeks and the straggly bumfluff along his top lip he looked like something out of a sepia photograph around 1914. He was sitting bolt upright, his hands gripping his kneecaps.

The only person who'd cracked on to my being in the doorway was Terry Beckley, who'd fixed himself up with a place next to the TV set so that he'd have a good view of my entrance.

“Turn it off, Terry,” I said. “He's not watching that.”

Terry was well pleased to do something. He promptly stood up and turned it off and grinned his grin in Hopper's direction.

The room was so quiet it could have been empty. Everybody was looking at Hopper. I began to wind them up.

“You got any kids, Tommy?” I said to Tommy Dugdale. Tommy inclined his head slightly and massaged his bald spot with the flat of his hand.