Street Soldier Read Free

closed his eyes. The prick had the kind of voice that was carefully tuned to pierce your eardrums. Someone shut him up . . .
    His head was still throbbing from last night’s farewell party. Matt had rounded up all the Littern Guyz – not just Curly, but Joe and Wayne and Spence and all of them – to mark Sean’s last opportunity to get well and truly wasted for a good long time. They all knew, and appreciated, that Matt and Curly were free because Sean wasn’t. But that was how it rolled. You took your hits.
    It sucked that of the three people Sean loved most in the world – Matt and Gaz and Copper, his surrogate big brothers – Matt was the only one still at liberty to throw the party. But maybe it was also appropriate. Most of Sean’s first life experiences – first drink, first smoke, first binger – had taken place in Matt’s flat. A party for Sean’s first custodial sentence kind of completed the deal.
    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 toreturn 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 seemedlike 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