Our Vinnie (13 page)

‘And even if they realise and get two of the books back,’ Jock finished, grinning. ‘They’re not having
that
one.’ He nodded towards June’s handbag. ‘Two and a half fucking
grand
!’ He raised his glass.

After blowing all the family allowance on cider and whiskey, June had held a planning meeting round at her house that evening. Maureen and Steven had come round, as had Billy and Moira from next door, Barbara and Joe from across the road and their neighbours, Doreen and John. It had turned out to be something of a party. But a party with a purpose, a plan of action having been decided. As the men had done the hard work – and having found the cheques in the first place, it would now be down to the women to convert the cheques into cash. And the best way to do this, everyone agreed, would be for the women to share the cheques out and shop with them individually, buying booze – bottles of spirits, vodka, whiskey, rum and so on – which they could then tout round the pubs at half price.

And even at half price, they’d soon make a fortune – even with just the one book of cheques. Then they’d pool it before splitting the proceeds. After that, the cash would be their own to do with as they pleased.

A brilliant plan, they all agreed, put together in a happy, drunken haze. What could possibly go wrong?

Chapter 10

‘C’mon McKellan! Let’s have you, you lazy little fucker!’ shouted Mr Downey as he banged on Vinnie’s bed posts with his keys.

Vinnie groaned. ‘Aw, fuck off,’ he mumbled, conscious of the light spilling in on him, of the biscuity morning smell of sweaty male teenage bodies, of the others – lucky buggers – still all snoring. He turned in his bed to face the wall and found himself nose to crotch with Suzi Quatro. A much nicer prospect all round.

‘What was that?’ Downey barked at him. ‘What was that, ginger nut?’

‘I meant fuck off,
sir
,’ Vinnie corrected, pulling the rough grey borstal blanket over his head.

Like everything else about Redditch, the blanket was rough; rough as hell. Where approved school had been all about trying to educate lads like Vinnie, borstal had a different approach – the ‘short sharp shock’ method – the goal being to teach them a lesson they’d never forget, and so keep them away from adult prisons. In reality, though Vinnie’d not yet seen much of adult prisons, he’d certainly heard about them, and what he’d heard was that, in adult prison, you got to do what you wanted. Yeah, you were locked up, and yeah, you had to work to join privileges, but, outside of that you could do your own thing and chill – not have some tit banging on at you at all hours. No, to his mind, being here was
far
worse.

Downey, one of the officers – or screws, as the boys called them – was having none of his whining, much less his half-awake attempt at humour. He never did. Because he was a cunt. He ripped the blanket back, pulling off the sheet at the same time, exposing Vinnie, shivering in his vest and underpants. ‘It’s 5.00 a.m., lad,’ he pointed out. ‘You know the drill. If you’d used your fucking tiny brain yesterday, you’d have had another hour in bed, wouldn’t you? And then I wouldn’t be here witnessing your equally tiny fucking cock shrivelling up in your filthy skidders, would I?’

With no other options open to him, Vinnie levered himself up and sprang from his bed, flexing and unflexing his fingers. He made a fist out of one of them and thought just how much he’d love to turn round and slam it right into Downey’s hairy old-man knackers. He unballed it. ‘Get out, then while I get dressed,’ he said instead, feeling the draught snake round his ankles. ‘Or do you wanna watch me take a piss as well?’

‘Two minutes, you cheeky cunt,’ Downey snorted as he left the room. ‘Or I’ll be back here to drag you out, got it?’

It was the hill and the medicine ball for Vinnie this morning, the legacy of yesterday’s little ‘incident’ in the canteen. He groaned as he threw aside his grey prison garb and reached for PE shorts and T-shirt.

It was a far worse punishment, to his mind, than getting a good hiding. He would rather take a cricket bat across the arse any day rather than the pointless business of trudging up and down a bastard hill for an hour, carrying a fuck-off leather ball that weighed a ton.

Not only that, but he was still expected to do the usual two-mile run with the other lads straight afterwards. And all of it happened before breakfast. And if he or any of the others were late getting back from their run, they would miss their morning feast – (and it would bloody feel like one, after that lot) of porridge with jam and bread. No excuses. They were late back, they got nothing. They would simply have to wait till lunch-time, which meant the fat lads, the ones who loved their food the most, had the most to lose if they didn’t make it.

And they often didn’t. The regime at Redditch was tough as well as rough. Set in the middle of remote woodland, inside a huge, barbed-wire topped perimeter fence, it put Vinnie in mind of a concentration camp. You could run a long way – their daily two-mile run took place inside it – and know you were getting nowhere at all. It really was like you’d been snatched from the normal world. Designed to put off would-be serial offenders from going back into law breaking, it ran a programme that took no prisoners. It was do or – well, if not exactly ‘die trying’, spend half the time wishing you fucking
were
dead. After the run and breakfast, it was dorm cleaning, every single fucking day. Vinnie’d never seen anywhere as pointlessly pristine as the dorms at Redditch. Everything had to be spotless – everything.

He’d always thought his mam was bad enough; always on at him about being a sloth and leaving a trail of muck behind him, but in here it was ridiculous. It wasn’t unheard of for a screw to insist that toilet floors got cleaned, inch by stinking inch, with a toothbrush. It was back-breaking work, and the only good thing about it was that it filled the day and stopped him thinking too much. He missed his mum, mad as she was, and he wasn’t afraid to admit it – to himself if not to any other fucker.

When they weren’t cleaning they were usually doing one of two things – either lessons, if they were school age, or trades, if they weren’t. Bricklaying, very often, which didn’t appeal to him any more than it had at the approved school. Pointless, to Vinnie’s mind, not to mention brainless. Anyway, how many bricklayers did the world fucking need?

Yeah, a few got the benefit of going out with proper bricklayers, in the real world, but for most of them it was a case of practising in the school grounds, building walls and then dismantling them again till they learned to do it right. Vinnie preferred doing gardening. At least the gardening had a point to it. They had this area where they grew potatoes and carrots, which were actually used in the kitchen. Flowers and herbs too, so you felt you were making something useful at least.

Then, at last, if there had been no misdemeanours during the day, they were all allowed to take part in recreation in the evenings – usually TV and cards, playing table tennis or darts. Vinnie was good at darts, because his dad – who played for the pub team – had taught him, but more often than not he would leave the rec room early and go back to his bunk and get stuck into a book. You had to hide away to do that – to be seen reading was to get the piss taken out of you and, as Vinnie was trying to establish that he wasn’t going to be one to mess with, things like that could put a dent in his plan. He loved to read though, and even if he only had a few books at his disposal, he didn’t mind reading them over and over – especially the Dickens. He was just grateful for the chance to go somewhere else in his head.

Finally dressed, Vinnie went out to meet Downey, slamming the door as he did so. He grinned, knowing the three lads he currently shared the room with would wake up and not be able to get back to sleep. Good. Because he couldn’t stick any of them. Henry with his ‘groovy’ this and ‘groovy’ that every other fucking sentence, then Mick Hanley and Mickey Timpson, both older than Vinnie, and both with the same hobby – fucking pushing him about.

Though they might think again after yesterday
, he told himself as, Downey having given him the medicine ball, as promised, he struggled up the steep and muddy hill, cradling it to his stomach like it was a baby.

Knowing he’d caused such a ruckus was at least some sort of consolation. Because, to his mind, the punishment wasn’t fair. He wasn’t going to give the screws the satisfaction of knowing he felt that, obviously, but what burned most right now – well, after the pain in his throat from all the panting – was the injustice of being punished for doing right.

And he had done right – no one would ever be able to tell him differently. It had been building up and up and enough had been enough. So he’d stood up for the little guy and faced-down the bully. Since when did that sort of thing deserve punishment?

Not that he’d have done things any differently,
whatever
the punishment. He’d done the right thing and he’d do the same again – every time – because if there was one thing he fucking hated it was bullies.

Kevin had come to Redditch only a month ago. He was the same age as Vinnie, or thereabouts, just turned 17, but you’d never have known it, because Kevin was tiny. He was scruffy, too, and didn’t seem to have come with any decent clothes. Where the other lads, during their down time, wore flares and tie-dyed T-shirts, Kevin seemed to live in nothing but old black school trousers and once-white shirts.

He was a natural target, and all the other lads would duly take the piss out of him, taunting him and trying to trip him up on the gravel and stuff, but there was this one boy especially – a lad called Frank Pemberton.

Frank was also 17 but he was built like a brick shit-house, with a thick neck and short, wiry, black hair. He was inside for assault and aggravated burglary, and as soon as he was 18 he would be transferred to a mainstream prison to finish his sentence. So far Vinnie, being prudent and also wary, had kept away from him, but he didn’t need to know him personally to know plenty enough about him; that he was mean and relentless and a persistent and cruel bully who, once he had found a target would never leave off tormenting him. Kevin was that target, it seemed, and Frank would regularly hunt him down, pin him to the ground and burn him with cigarettes for pleasure.

For some reason, Vinnie liked Kevin. He didn’t know why, but he reminded him of a boy he knew a bit called Colin, back on the estate. Colin’s family were dirt poor as well, the poor fucker, and he didn’t own a single item of clothing that fitted. He was always starving, as well, as his mam never made him dinner, and he always had a snotty, runny nose. But none of that mattered. Not to Colin, or to Vinnie. He was a mate – funny as fuck and always up for a lark. A good kid. One worth defending.

And that was the thing with Kevin. Like Colin, he was a good lad. So Vinnie couldn’t, for the life of him, understand what he was doing there. All it seemed he’d done was a bit of nicking. That was all. And it wasn’t even as if he’d nicked anything that bad, either, by all accounts – just robbing food and clothes and that, and only because he didn’t have a dad.

Vinnie had Frank’s number from the first time he’d seen him in action, extorting cigarettes, like they always fucking did, from a smaller, weaker boy. And though he’d have to be careful – not wanting to scupper his chances of an early release – he’d started plotting Frank’s downfall straight away. He’d had to be patient, too, because it had taken a while for a perfect opportunity to present itself. But the day before, in the dinner queue, had proved to be the one.

He had timed his manoeuvre equally carefully. Making sure he was next to Frank in queue for serving, he accidentally bumped into him as he passed his plate forward for beans. It had the desired result, half a spoonful of beans ending up splattering onto Frank’s tray, and provoking the predictable (and desired) response. He turned on Vinnie, furious. ‘You fucking cunt, McKellan!’ he snapped at him. ‘You did that on purpose!’

‘Did I fuck!’ Vinnie argued, looking pleadingly at the screw who was serving. ‘You saw that, didn’t you, sir?’ he said. ‘I tripped!’

Predictably, the screw ignored him, even though he’d clearly heard him.

‘Just keep out of my way, you ginger cunt, or you’re dead,’ Frank said to him, as the screw just carried on serving the next in line.

Vinnie grinned as Frank then headed off with his tray, making sure that he hung back now and kept his distance. He collected the rest of his food and a mug of tea and as he walked through the dining hall, made a note of where Frank had just sat down, and started making his way to the table opposite. This meant squeezing past Frank’s table, which very much included Frank. Balancing his tray above his shoulder with one hand and with the mug of tea in the other, Vinnie leaned down to Frank’s ear as he got to him and whispered, ‘Touch young Kevin again, you scruffy bastard, and
you’re
the one who’s dead.’ He then tipped the tea all down the shocked Frank’s neck and back.

Frank leaped up, then, screaming, knocking the mug from Vinnie’s hand, and within seconds the two boys were surrounded by screws.

‘He tripped me up, sir,’ Vinnie protested, as Mr Green grabbed him by the shoulders. ‘And all cos I bumped into him in the queue!’

Frank himself was crying now. Spluttering and actually
crying
. Not so much the ‘big I am’
now
, then, thought Vinnie. Good.

‘Well?’ Green wanted to know, his gaze seeking out all the lads in the vicinity. ‘You saw that? Is what McKellan says true?’

There was the gratifying and immediate chorus of ‘Yes, sir’ that Vinnie had been counting on – bar his henchmen, they hated Frank, and they mostly loved Vinnie, so he’d have been seriously concerned if it
hadn’t
happened. Know-it-all Downey though, watching from the sidelines with that assessing gaze of his –
he
hadn’t been convinced, Vinnie could tell. He’d been watching Vinnie carefully throughout all the questions afterwards, and even though he couldn’t prove anything (there was nothing to
be
proved – only Frank’s version), he decided that he’d punish Vinnie anyway.