Street Soldier Read online

  He rested his head against the plastic around the window and tried to wish his headache away. His ears popped and another stab of pain entered his brain as the guard slammed the rear door closed.

  The driver turned round and addressed his passengers. ‘Hold on tight, ladies. Next stop, Burnleigh Palace!’

  Sean rolled his eyes. He wished. Burnleigh Young Offender Institution might be an HM Prison, but it was hardly fit for royalty.

  The van began to move, slowly trundling through the narrow tunnel, waiting while the metal gate rolled back to let it out into the world again. Then it was on the road and past the sculpted concrete blocks that acted as car bomb protection. It lurched as the driver shifted up, which simultaneously set off Sean’s headache and his whiny neighbour again.

  ‘Oi! You know we don’t have any cushions?’

  Sean closed his eyes. By the end of the journey, he suspected, turning round and planting his fist in McWhiny’s face would feel like a really good idea. Apart from the mesh between them.

  Peter, his caseworker, had explained it. No cushions because offenders ripped them off. No seat belts in case the prisoners hanged themselves. Sean had to grin at the image he had of a butcher’s truck, corpses dangling from the ceiling when they opened the doors.

  The cops had wanted him on remand. They didn’t know about the attempted garage heist but they did have him for the bike. It was Taking Without Consent, not theft, because they couldn’t prove he hadn’t meant to return it. But they had fingerprints. They couldn’t show that Sean had ever nicked a vehicle before, but they had him in several vehicles that had also been twocced.

  But on the plus side, he had never been more than a few miles from Walthamstow in his life, and had no previous record for assault. His solicitor had successfully argued that he was not a flight risk, the public were in no peril from him, and the remand cells were already too full of far more dangerous cases. So, bail.

  He had duly turned up for sentencing, hungover, in a borrowed jacket and tie, with a pair of armed cops lurking at the back of the stand. It must have taken all of thirty seconds. The judge had said he was taking Sean’s guilty plea into consideration, and this was a first offence, but it had involved violence in that he had assaulted the Ninja’s owner, and yadda yadda yadda . . .

  Twelve months. Six in custody, six on parole in the community.

  ‘A year!’ his mum had sobbed. She and PJ, the latest boyfriend, had come to visit him in the holding cell with a change of clothes – his usual things, so that he didn’t have to wear the borrowed clothes in jail. A bit switched-on for Mum, so probably PJ’s idea. ‘But it’s OK, sweetheart, I’ll come and see you whenever I can . . .’

  Then she’d broken down in tears. Like she always did. Whatever life did to her, she cried. At least PJ seemed like someone Sean was prepared to leave her with, unsupervised. She had gone through a bad run of boyfriends who liked to hit her, which had finally ended when Sean grew big enough to start hitting them back. PJ seemed fond of her, and that was all he asked.

  So Sean had given her a hug and a peck on the cheek, because she was a fat, soppy old cow – but hey, she was his mum. The chances of her getting round to visiting were, he knew, somewhere between zero and zilch.

  Heavy drops were a metallic drumbeat on the roof as they rolled round the M25. The weather matched Sean’s mood. He had been nicked during the summer. It was now an early evening in autumn. Summer had come and gone – and what a great one it had been: three months under curfew at home on the Littern Mills estate, with a tag on his ankle. At least it meant he had been elsewhere the night of the riots, and when the White Hart Lane bomb went off. That summer there had been a distinct sense of the world going to shit, even more than usual, and it hadn’t all been because of his looming court date. With terrorist strikes getting closer to home, everyone wondering where the next one would fall, Sean was happy to be stuck on the estate.

  Matt had joked that IS had a good sense of PR, so they wouldn’t blow up Littern Mills in case anyone mistook it for doing the world a favour.

  Eventually the van jarred to a halt; its way was blocked by more bomb barriers and a massive, solid gate set in a towering red-brick wall. The driver had a brief conversation with the guys outside. Then there was the sound of moving machinery and the gate slowly slid aside. The van edged forward into a tunnel, and the journey was over.

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Sean Harker.’

  ‘S-E-A-N?’

  Sean briefly considered responding with ‘No, D-I-P-S-T-I-C-K.’ But the glint in the eye of the large woman on the other side of the counter made him rethink. Her uniform blouse was stretched tight over the muscles beneath it.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ he said out loud.

  ‘Date of birth . . . ?’

  Reception into Burnleigh was about as welcoming as Sean had expected it to be. This was a prison and that meant punishment, not group hugs and a welcome party. The woman bashed at her keyboard like she was personally insulted that, of all the prisons in the world, Sean Harker had to turn up in hers.

  The windowless reception room smelled of sweat and fish and chips. The intake from the van sat in a row of chairs down one wall. Half-arsed efforts had been made to decorate the place. There was a fish tank against the far wall, with grimy sides and three fish. A pot plant drooped sadly on a pathetic wire pedestal in one corner. The room’s harsh strip lighting brought every badly painted corner, every bit of dirt, into sharp focus.

  The piss-poor attempts at making them feel at home were given the deathblow by the poster on the wall which warned of the penalty for biting staff. It hadn’t occurred to Sean that he would ever want to. Now he knew that if he did, he would get twenty-eight days added to his sentence. Presumably someone had needed telling.

  A couple of uniformed guards – screws, Sean reminded himself, if he was going to fit in here – stood watch over them: white short-sleeved shirts with epaulettes, black clip-on ties. One of them had a brown and white dog – Sean was pretty sure it was a spaniel – which had made a fuss of them all as they entered, running around with its tail wagging, sniffing, letting them give it a pat. It had even butted its nose against Sean’s leg as he waited in his chair, looking up at him with hopeful brown eyes. He had given its head a fondle because it seemed like the right thing to do.

  One by one they had been called over to the counter, and now it was Sean’s turn.

  The woman gave the keyboard a final thump, and nodded abruptly to where one of the screws waited by a side door.

  ‘Go through with Prison Officer King for the body search.’

  Oh, shit. Everyone from the van, one by one, had been going through that door. Sean had seen each one of them hesitate, before a screw took them firmly by the arm and led them away. And now he knew why. If there was one joke at last night’s party that Sean hadn’t found funny, it was the one about the body search – lads miming snapping latex gloves onto probing hands.

  Well, if he was going to tough it out for the next year, this was where he started. He nodded and let King guide him. The screw walked with all the grace and threat of an overweight Rottweiler. He had muscles, but he also had a belly straining against his shirt – not that Sean was considering having a go. What would be the point? Where would he go afterwards?

  Through the door, a screw with a face like an angry rat waited in a small, bare room. His name tag read PRISON OFFICER CAGE. There was a table with a screen and some kind of kit on it, but Sean’s gaze went straight to the thing next to it. It looked a bit like the electric chair used in all the movies.

  ‘Remove everything except your underwear,’ Cage snapped. Sean realized he had just been standing and staring at the chair. ‘Today, if you can.’

  Sean stripped down to his boxers and passed the pile of clothes to Cage, then stood in the middle of the room for King to make a visual check that he had no contraband taped to his skin. Next the warder ran hard fingers through his hair, peered into his ears, and held his
mouth open with a spatula. Finally he patted down Sean’s thighs, arse and balls through the fabric of his shorts.

  ‘Nothing of interest here,’ he said with a huge smile. Sean guessed it was an old joke. ‘And now we look where the sun don’t shine.’

  Sean swallowed, but he remembered how he had resolved to get through this. He hooked his thumbs into the elastic of his boxers and started to slide them down.

  ‘Don’t be soft!’ Cage shot King a glare. ‘Mr King likes to think he’s a comedian.’

  ‘Hey, it never gets old. The look on their faces!’

  Sean felt his face flushing red and hid his confusion in as much anger as he dared show. ‘So what do I do, then?’

  ‘You keep yer knickers on and you sit down there.’ King gave Sean a gentle push towards the chair.

  ‘Just sit?’

  ‘Just sit,’ Cage confirmed.

  ‘What does it do?’ Sean asked. He carefully placed his arse on the hard plastic surface. It was even less comfortable than the seats in the van. At least those were roughly bum-shaped. This was just a hard, flat surface.

  ‘Scans you. This is the Body Orifice Security Scanner – Boss for short. If the alarm goes off, we know you’ve got something inside you that you shouldn’t have.’

  ‘What, drugs?’

  King shook his head. ‘We’ve already checked that,’ he said. ‘You saw the dog, right?’

  Sean remembered the dog. He’d thought it was just being friendly. So it was scoping him out for possession? Sneaky four-legged tosser.

  ‘Nah, we’re talking way more exciting than drugs,’ said Cage. ‘We’ve had weapons, mobile phones . . . one guy managed a grenade. Had to call in Bomb Disposal to give him an enema.’

  ‘Mr Cage has been in this job long enough to remember when the only way to find out for sure was to have a good old root around ourselves,’ said King. ‘Progress is an amazing thing.’

  ‘Christ, it made my fingers sore.’ Cage pressed a number of buttons and looked at the screen. Sean heard a few whirs and buzzes, saw some flickering lights. ‘Boss says you’re clean.’

  ‘That’s it?’ Sean had been through so much bullshit since getting nicked that he couldn’t quite believe anything could only take a couple of seconds.

  ‘Unless you’d like us to get the gloves and Vaseline out for old times’ sake,’ King said. ‘This way. Bring your clothes.’

  Next stop was a narrow room with another counter and a door at the far end. This counter had a grille from the top to the ceiling. They made Sean stand against a measuring stick stuck to the wall.

  ‘Tall,’ said the screw behind the counter. ‘Shoe size?’

  ‘Eleven.’

  The counter screw pushed a pair of packages wrapped in cellophane through a square gap in the grille, followed by a plastic box.

  ‘Your new outfit.’ King pushed the packages at Sean. One was clothing; the other was a pair of scuzzy trainers. King pointed at the box. ‘Everything else goes in there. Clothes, watch . . .’ He tapped the ring in Sean’s left ear. ‘Jewellery, apart from approved religious items. If you’re wearing it, take it off, and it’ll be kept secure for you until your release.’

  Sean stared at the box. On its side was a shiny new label showing his photograph and a number. His prison number. If any further confirmation was needed of where he was and what he was, that was it.

  He pulled open the cellophane. There were even prison issue Y-fronts. How many other men’s balls had been where his were going? He shuddered.

  The rest of the clothing was basically a tracksuit, though the colour had faded from what must once have been a vivid lime green to something more like mould. The material was stretched and worn. He pulled it on silently, while the screw behind the grille catalogued his clothes. The new outfit was a size too large and it hung from his lanky frame like a baggy tent. Sean had to pull the drawstring as tight as it would go to stop the trousers falling down. He felt like a total prat and had no doubt that he looked like one too.

  The box was taken back inside the grille – and with it went his last physical connection to his life outside the prison.

  He signed a receipt for everything he had given up, and a last cellophane package was pushed through the grille.

  King handed it over. ‘Prison issue towel. Ready?’

  Sean held the pack under his arm and nodded.

  ‘This way.’ The warder felt for the keyring chained to his belt and turned to the far door. It opened into a dark, wet night where rain hammered down on a covered walkway. ‘Welcome to Paradise.’

  Chapter 3

  ‘Fresh meat!’

  The cry went up as Sean stepped out of the rain into his new home. He blinked for a moment, eyes dazzled by the light. Then he felt King’s hand on his shoulder, guiding him forward.

  ‘Fresh meat! Fresh meat!’

  It was a group of black lads gathered round a table. They could have been any group of teenagers hanging anywhere, except for the crap tracksuits and the absence of burgers or cans. Some sat; some stood, with a bad case of PBS – prison bitch syndrome, trousers hanging so far down their arses that if they wanted to take a piss, they would have had to pull them up to get everything aligned. They all thumped the table top in time with their chant.

  The unit was built around a large triangular open space. Cells lined each of the three sides at ground level and on a higher level, and in between was the common area. All the cell doors were open. Sean didn’t know what time they all got locked up, but he guessed that during the day they could move about. At least a little.

  King just kept walking like the cheering lads weren’t there. Sean glanced around, trying not to look worried. He couldn’t see any other screws. There were prisoners watching TV, playing pool, just lounging on bean bags and jawing. One thing he noticed immediately: each race stuck together. Asians, whites, blacks, each clustered together. Just like the world he knew outside. And the whites were subdivided too. Body language and other subtle clues told him that the group of lads sitting at the table there were distinct from the group lounging there. The table lads, he was prepared to bet, were fellow East Londoners. The lounging ones had rangy bodies, lean faces, severe haircuts – he wouldn’t have been surprised if they were East Europeans.

  Everyone who was standing or walking had both hands shoved down the front of their tracksuit bottoms, apparently holding their bollocks. Maybe for protection, maybe for warmth, maybe to keep their PBS bottoms up . . .

  For the first time in his life Sean realized that he had no idea. No idea at all.

  Usually, you saw a gang of teenagers, and if you didn’t know them, then you thought, What the fuck are they doing here? because they were strangers in your manor. So that kind of streamlined the process of deciding if they were going to be friends or enemies.

  He had only a few seconds to size them up. He was taller than half of them. Also probably younger. OK.

  He met the eye of the loudest, the largest, as he followed King. The other lad looked back and began to shout and thump even louder. A big cross dangled on a chain round his neck. Sean slowly raised his hand, middle finger extended, and turned it into a scratch behind his ear. Then he lowered the finger again, keeping it extended for as long as he could.

  The other lad’s eyes narrowed and he extended his own finger back.

  That was the opening pleasantries dealt with.

  Sean flashed his friendliest grin. ‘No, but seriously, guys,’ he said as he walked past. He turned to face them so that he was walking backwards. ‘You’re too kind, and I’d love to have you all queue up and suck my dick, but, you know . . .’ He put all the fingertips of one hand to his mouth and gave them an elaborate, lingering kiss. He never took his eyes off the other lad. And as he turned, he tapped the fingers he had just kissed against his bum crack, and gave his hips an extra wiggle for good measure. The message was obvious.

  Kiss my arse.

  King glanced sideways at him but said nothing. Sean s
till had no idea if he had just made friends or enemies, but he had made his mark.

  And then . . .

  ‘Seany!’

  Sean’s head whipped round just in time to catch someone advancing on him like a runaway petrol tanker bearing down on a moped. He just had a chance to take in the shock of red hair and a pair of arms that could bend steel pipes, and then Copper had flung his arms around him in a bear hug and hoisted his feet off the ground, shaking him.

  ‘Fuck me, it’s Sean fucking Harker! So they sent you here, you poor dumb fuck?’

  Copper was a lad with two very obvious defining features. The first was his short, but bright red, hair. And if anyone thought that taking the piss out of it was a good idea, then his other defining feature usually put them off: he was massive.

  ‘Hi . . . Copper . . .’ Sean gasped between shakes. And even though he was glad, all the usual Copper precautions were sliding into place. You put a smile on your face. You thought extra hard about everything you were about to say, because if he ever took offence, then there would be zero time to unsay it. With these defences in place, you could enjoy being around him.

  Because, for all his faults, Copper was one of the three big brothers Sean had never had, along with Matt and Gaz. Copper had taught him to fight, and fight hard. And one or two other lessons, including ‘Don’t be like Copper’.

  ‘Put him down and step away, Mulroy.’ The warder’s voice had suddenly taken on a harsher tone.

  Copper slowly put him down and backed off. ‘It’s OK, Mr King. Sean and I go way back.’ He ruffled Sean’s hair. ‘Right?’

  Sean knocked his hand away, still with a grin. ‘Right. Yeah, Matt said you’d be here.’

  ‘Yeah? How’s he doing, all on his ownsome?’

  ‘Hey, Mulroy.’ It was the big black lad calling, the one with the cross. ‘Your friend has respect issues.’