Billy Rags

by Ted Lewis

  But Read was the only one. Apart from the sex-cases, and they didn’t count.

  When Dave sauntered out of his cell to cotton the PO I got that marvellous singing gut feeling I always got on capers like this one. These were the kind of moments you lived for, especially in the nick. The feeling was so great it was almost dangerous: at a moment like this it didn’t matter what happened to you before or after the moment. Only the moment itself mattered. The tension, the assertion, the tangible danger. Before this kind of moment you were like a guitar with its strings slackened off. Then you moved into the moment of danger and you became tight, strung with the purpose and the risk, aware of every muscle and every nerve in your body, but in control of everything, thoughts progressing through your brain with the cool purity of spring water stroking subterranean rocks.

  The minute I heard Dave and the PO begin to climb the steps I lit up a snout and began to stroll across the landing to the TV room. Halfway across I saw the two of them rise up from the Ones, Dave’s face blank and white, the PO looking at me with that stare they all have. I flicked the match away and strolled into the TV room. Inside, it was a scene to remember.

  It was as if they were at the starting flag in a seaside handicap, crouched out of sight of the screws on the landings. Ray had given them the wink that Dave had gone to get the PO because now they were holding the buckets of water and trays of bread puddings and boiled eggs and fruit and cheese all wrapped in towels and Christ knows what else that had previously been hidden under the TV room chairs. When I drifted in past Ray every eyeball in the place swivelled on to me. They all stood there, slack- jawed, poised like wankers, clutching their provisions to their chests, ready for the all off. Still, I don’t suppose anybody fancied being last through that gate.

  About now Ray should have told us that Dave and the PO had gone through the gate and that the gate was open and that now was the time to go charging out of the TV room. But he didn’t. Instead Ray said: “They’ve gone through but he’s locked it. The bloody bastard’s locked it.” Ray turned round to face into the room. Nobody had moved. The poses were still struck as if nobody had grasped the significance of his words. Ray struck a pose himself, chest forward, arms supplicant, knees knocked, arse stuck out and said again in a kind of low shriek:

  “The bastard’s locked it.”

  Everybody melted and a few characters sank down into chairs, trying not to look too relieved. Everybody was looking at everybody else.

  “We can’t call it off now,” Terry said.

  Nobody replied. Walter began to pace up and down in the middle of the room.

  “Come on,” Walter said, “what are we fucking about for? This is no good. We’ve got to get into that office.”

  He was having a bout of resolution tremens. I’d seen this kind of thing before, back in the old days: red face, wild staring eyes, clutching fingers, the words coming out all wrong because his mouth was stiff with frustration. But again nobody said anything.

  “We’llgetinthatoffice,” said Walter.

  He looked as if he was about to dash out and grapple the gate off its hinges.

  “Leave it out, Walter,” I said, “you’ll nouse it.” I appealed to Walter’s cousin. “Dennis, for fuck’s sake calm him down, will you?”

  Dennis took a grip of Walter and said:

  “Wally. For fuck’s sake.”

  Walter carried on gurgling out words until I cut him short by saying:

  “Look. The gate’s locked. So somebody’s got to come out of George’s cell and claim the PO on the way back.”

  George’s cell was the one nearest the gate.

  “I mean,” I said, “Dave can’t do it, can he?”

  Dave was about eight stone nothing. Everybody knew that Dave couldn’t pull it. But nobody volunteered to take Dave’s place. Before the situation became too embarrassing Ray turned back to the door. Everybody focused on Ray’s back.

  “They’re coming out,” Ray said. “He’s locked it.” I listened to the footstep sounds clanging across the landing. “The PO’s staying at the gate. I think Dave’s going to have a listen.”

  The footsteps got closer. Dave passed by the doorway on the other side of the landing.

  “I’m just going to test it, Ray,” Dave said.

  For form’s sake, Ray said: “Make sure you get it right, then. I’m sick and tired of you fucking that wireless up.”

  Dave went into his cell. Ray said: “The gate’s still unlocked. The PO’s standing by for Dave’s OK.”

  There was only a minute or so to decide what to do. Everybody could feel it slipping away from them. It was out of the question to try and rush the PO as he and Dave were going in or out: we were about fifteen yards from the gate and we would have to bundle across the catwalk to get at him. It was just no go: screws get very quick at sticking keys in locks. Basically it was all down to what I’d suggested earlier: one of us had to cop for the PO. Walter knew it, and he also knew who it had to be to do the copping.

  “Billy,” he said, “you do it, will you? You’ve got the sense. Someone else is bound to fuck it up.”

  I’d known it would be down to me all along but I let Walter think his appeal to my vanity had tipped the balance; the more Walter felt he had me, the better it would be for me later on when I screwed him.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll go down and spring him when Dave brings him out again.” I turned to Tommy Dugdale. “Tommy, you grab his keys and lock the gate after I’ve pushed him out.”

  Tommy agreed to the nomination. A second later Dave came out of his cell and walked over to the TV room door and said:

  “He’s locking the poxy gate now. I’ve checked it.”

  From behind Ray I said: “For fuck’s sake, tell him it’s not right and go back in and fix it again. When you come out grab him to stop him locking it again. I’ll be right on you as you do.”

  Dave couldn’t back out with all the eyes in the TV room on him.

  “You’re sure?” he said.

  “I’ll be there, Dave. Don’t worry.”

  Dave nodded. Then he walked off back to the gate. When Ray told me that Dave and the PO had disappeared into the office I left the TV room and strolled down to George’s cell, which was about eight feet from the catwalk.

  It suddenly struck me as I got near to George’s cell: there wasn’t a sign of a screw on the landing. I looked up. The Threes were deserted as well. But there was no time to sort the implications because I heard Dave and the PO start to leave the office.

  I dodged into George’s cell. Lenny Monks was waiting in there with him. Their eyes nearly dropped into their trays of bread pudding.

  “What the fuck’s happening?” George said.

  “Change of plan,” I said.

  “So what’s—”

  “For fuck’s sake, George,”

  He shut up.

  The footsteps stopped. The keys jingled. Then the lock was turned. Now the door was open.

  I pounded out of George’s cell screaming my bloody head off. The screaming had the desired effect; the PO froze and stared at me as if he’d never seen anything like it in his life. I was vaguely aware of all the other cons streaming out behind me but I was so intent on my own business that the racket they were making was as faint in my ears as the sound of the sea in a conch-shell.

  Dave grabbed the PO. Then the PO unfroze and with hardly any trouble at all threw Dave off his back. Dave hit the floor kidneys first. All the breath flew from his body. But luckily Dave had chopped the PO’s wrist with a canteen knife before he’d wrestled him and the PO had let go of the keys which were attached to his belt. The PO scrambled for them and he was halfway to the lock when I got to the gate. I didn’t slow down. I angled myself and grasped the bars and kept going. The edge of the gate smashed the PO’s fore-arm ag
ainst his chest. He turned green but I’ll give him this, he still tried to make it. He grabbed one of the bars with his free hand just as I hit the gate, so he didn’t go over the way I’d intended. Instead he clung on to the gate and tried to pull himself up even as I was coming through it. He was wasting his time. I twisted round the gate and picked him up by his middle, pinning his arms to his sides. I slammed his shoulders against the wall.

  “Behave your fucking self,” I said. “Don’t forget your nice supper’s waiting for you in the oven.”

  By now the others were stampeding across the catwalk. Tommy was first through the gate and began to rip the keys from the PO’s belt. Everyone started pouring through the gate, faces like hysterical gargoyles. When Tommy had got the keys I began to push the PO out. I’ve seen films of salmon swimming upstream against a strong current and that’s just how the PO went through that gate, swimming. Any help I gave him was superfluous. I doubt if he’d ever wanted anything as badly as he wanted to get through that gate before it was locked. His arms were flailing against the surging cons as if he was trying to do the breast-stroke.

  As the last of the cons were getting in and he was getting out I saw the vanguard of the heavy mob streaming down both sides of the landing towards us, the big riot sticks in their hands. The feeling I’d had a few minutes earlier had been right: the demo had been leaked. That’s why the screws had been evacuated from the Twos. They must have been waiting in the visiting rooms all evening.

  We pushed the gate to. The PO was reeling all over the landing, dazed and dishevelled, just like a drunk out of Laurel and Hardy. The screws charged past him, spinning him round all over again. Tommy turned the key in the gate just as the heavy mob hit it, jabbing their sticks through the bars at us. They were sick. They looked like a bunch of gorillas in a bramble bush, jab-jabbing away, screaming out our names, squeezing every inch of their arms through the bars.

  Behind me, the altar came rocketing out of the chapel. I had to nip to one side as six of the lads propelled it along the passage and slammed it into the gate. One of the screws got his arm broke in the process and fell to the floor, screaming. Some of his mates dragged him off. I squeezed past the lads who’d brought the altar and left them to cheer the screw with the broken arm.

  Everybody else was working in the office so I went into the chapel and set about smashing up the furniture in order to buttress the back of the altar. Soon the whole passageway was wedged up with steel filing cabinets, tables, furniture; even the doors had been ripped off the office and the chapel and jammed in amongst the rest of it.

  They would need a tank to get down that passageway. The screws were still pissing about with their sticks. One of them came back with a key but by that time it was too late. Walter had ripped some metal piping off a wall and had broken himself off a bit and was waving it at the screws. He was having a rare time; his face had all pursed up and the veins were wriggling in his forehead.

  “You cunts,” he screeched. “You’re the thickest fucking screws in the country! Thicker than the fucking Filth!”

  “You’ve got to come out sometime,” one of them yelled.

  Walter picked up the seat of a chair and winged it at the gate. All the waving arms withdrew for a second. Walter got the rest of the lead pipe and broke it up into short lengths and organised a five-handed poking-militia just in case the screws got too ambitious. I made myself conspicuously absent from all this and got on with feeding furniture to Benny Beauty who was stacking everything he could shift on to the barricade. After about half an hour it was almost up to the ceiling but there were plenty of gaps and passages and you could climb through the middle to get from the chapel to the office or vice versa, no trouble.

  The screws kept digging and poking at the stuff by the gate but that would get them nowhere.

  I crawled through the barricade and into the office.

  Lying by the edge of the football field, Potter, Jarrow, Clapson, and me. Warm summer sun fills the sky and beyond the school buildings there is the buzz of lunch-time traffic.

  “What you doing tonight, Billy?” Potter asks.

  “Pictures, I expect,” I answer.

  “What’s on at yours?”

  “Street with No Name. Richard Widmark.”

  “Seen it. Saw it at ours last week. Dead good. He gets mown down at the end.”

  “All right, don’t tell us about it.”

  “It’s dead good, though:

  We fall silent. On the opposite side of the pitch, walking slowly round the perimeter, is Derek Arnatt, arm in arm with Anita Dent; they started going with one another the end of last week.

  They turned the angle where the corner post is and walk another straight line towards the goal posts.

  “Look at them,” Clapson says. “Love’s young dream.”

  “Gordon McCrae and Doris Day,” says Jarrow.

  “Wait till they get on this side,” I say. “We’ll give them a calling at.”

  They turn by the next corner flag and walk towards us. I can tell that Arnatt is already embarrassed, dreading the gauntlet, but not daring to turn back.

  “Do you reckon they’re off to the bushes?” Clapson says, loud enough for them to hear.

  “Naw,” says Arnatt. “You don’t do things like that when it’s True Love. That’d spoil it.”

  “Or when your dad’s a copper,” I say. “That’d never do.”

  Anita Dent’s face is crimson.

  “Here, Arnatt, how many villains did your dad catch last night?” calls Jarrow. “Twenty-six or was it twenty-seven?”

  “Forty-nine,” says Clapson. “That’s where he gets his name from. PC Forty-nine.”

  “Forty-eight and a Half,” I say.

  Arnatt stops and turns to face us.

  “All right, clever sods. Now pack it in,” he says.

  “I thought that’s what you were going to do in the bushes,” I say.

  The others burst out laughing.

  Arnatt takes a few steps towards us.

  “I’m telling you,” he says.

  “What?” I say.

  “Shut up or I’ll shut you up.”

  “What he means is he’ll tell his Dad,” says Clapson.

  “No point,” I said. “His dad’s even a bigger ponce than he is.”

  Arnatt lunges forward and tries to pull me up off the grass but I grab his blazer and pull him to the ground, next to me.

  “So that’s what you want, is it boy?” I say.

  “Go on, Billy,” says Clapson. “Murder him.”

  Arnatt and I stand up. Clapson and the others move away to give us room.

  “Come on then,” I say to Arnatt. “You first. Put one on me.”

  Arnatt lashes out with his right and tries to land it on the side of my head but I parry the blow with my forearm and punch him hard in the chest. I am well set on my feet and there is a lot of weight behind my punch but it doesn’t have the effect I expect it to have. It rocks him all right, but it doesn’t seem to hurt him very much, and while I am considering this he has given me a left and a right to the head. Stars burst and he hurls himself at me, toppling me. I try and roll out of the way but I’m not quick enough and he jumps astride me, punching as he lands. I stretch up my arms to pull him off me but his blows scythe down my arms and I take punch after punch on my head. I thrash about and try to arch my body but I can’t dislodge him. He has a furious strength I didn’t expect. I know I’m tougher than he is, I know I can beat him. Yet he is winning and I’m unable to do anything about it. All my mates are watching, and a crowd is growing. I hear someone shout from across the pitch, “Billy Cracken is getting a beating.”

  Tears of frustration well up in my eyes and I am weakened by the fear of losing.

  “Do you give in?” breathes Arnatt, pinning my arms
to the ground. I shake my head and more blows clang down on me. The tears roll down my cheeks and the watchers think it’s because I’m hurt but they don’t know the real reason. Suddenly Arnatt jumps off me. I don’t move straight away because his action has surprised me. I raise my head. Arnatt is walking away, proving to the crowd that he has finished with me. Anger and frustration rush through me and I get up and rush after him. Voices cry out and Arnatt spins round and grabs hold of me before I can throw any punches and hurls me to the ground. This time I don’t get up. The humiliation has left me too weak to carry on. The rest of the crowd begins to drift away.

  Except for Potter and Jarrow and Clapson.

  They know better than to try and help me up.

  The office was eighteen feet by twelve. Most of the twenty-two were inside it. The noise was deafening. Everybody was talking at once. The radio had been turned on full blast. Records and files and papers and smashed furniture were scattered all over the floor and most of the cons were down on their hands and knees sorting through the mess trying to find their own records. Those who’d already found them were systematically tearing them up and throwing the shreds of their lives up into the air, creating their own little blizzards.

  When Ray Crompton saw me come into the office he waved a thick file above his head.

  “Here, Billy,” he said. “I’ve got yours here.”

  I took the file off him and put it on the window sill. Out of the way.

  “There’s Hopper’s as well,” Ray said.

  I picked up that one and did the same as I’d done with my own.

  Over by the window, Walter was talking on the phone.

  “It’s Walter Colman,” he said. There was a pause. He looked at me and grinned. “Honest,” he said down the phone, “it’s right. Listen, if you don’t believe me, I’ll tell you about the last time we met. Right? Fine. It was the Turk’s Head, am I right? Middle of last March. You’d got a message from the Filth that they were out for me so you come along and give me the information in return for me giving you the exclusives if they ever sort it, right? Also you want me to phone you every week from wherever I am so you can let me know what the Filth’s up to. And you put a few misleading paras in your rag so’s the Filth’s legging it all over Manchester. In return for a deposit of two grand and fifty a week till I’m nicked. Right? So who else could it be?”