Billy Rags Read Free

of the evening so that I’d have something to exercise my mind on during the inevitable chokey that was to come.
    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?”
    â€œSure I have, Billy. Standard practice.”
    â€œIt may be standard practice for you and the rest of the fucking cons in the place but you can leave me out of it.”
    â€œHow do you mean, Billy?”
    â€œThe way they all go down there. Polished and pressed. It’s disgusting. Like they’re going to a party.”
    â€œSo what about it?”
    â€œWait 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.”
    â€œAll 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