Fighting to the Death Read online

  The other two brothers and those school kids took one look at my machete and John’s evil-looking cutlass and turned and ran. Looking back on it now I realise that Terry didn’t give a toss about us. He just got off on the violence of it all. We didn’t have any problem with Robert Allen because of his colour. We just didn’t like the way he was going around bullying kids at school. Terry no doubt got a kick out of having two big kids by his side armed to the teeth. I think he manipulated us that day and we followed him because we were kids, just doing what we was told.

  The next day me and my brother John had to report to the headmaster. Terry said we should deny everything. But from that day on we became known as a menacing family with violence flowing through our veins, which wasn’t strictly speaking true. Sure, we’d got involved in one incident, but Terry had egged us on. Now me and John were known as nasty pieces of work. Other kids at school didn’t have the bottle to talk to us, which made us both feel even more isolated. That attitude undoubtedly caused me a lot of problems later in life.

  Around this time I got into a lucrative sideline painting walls at Liverpool Street Underground Station with my uncle Pete whenever I could bunk off school. I also worked on the dodgems at local fairgrounds. I had a bit of aggro when other kids got rude, when they saw me talking to my black mates. But I soon sorted them out.

  Some people had the effrontery to call me a ‘nigger-lover’ behind my back but I didn’t care. My black mate Robbie was known as the ‘Bounty Bar Kid’ because his black friends reckoned he was black on the outside and white on the inside.

  We were all very shocked by the race riots in Brixton later, which was all over the TV news for days, but that coverage had a nasty backlash round where I lived. I was working at the fair on Wanstead Flats at the time. Two massive black kids called Delroy and Leroy smashed up a hotdog stand and then they and a few other kids tipped it over. Suddenly there was a full-scale riot going on. The cozzers then turned up in full force and the mob – now about fifty strong – headed away from the Flats and towards the Forest Gate shopping area. There, they smashed shop windows and looted TVs and stuff before heading for another shopping area called Green Street. It was bedlam. Truth was that both white and black kids joined in together and used it as an excuse to go on the rampage and nick a few things. It was completely out of order.

  Just before I turned fourteen, I fell for a pretty young neighbour called Tracy, who was two years older than me. I really thought this was it and I’d spend the rest of my life with her. Then I stupidly went and got her pregnant. She was going to boarding school and her stepdad and mum insisted she was taken away and ‘seen to’ so the pregnancy could be terminated. I’ll never forget the day I went to Plaistow Hospital by taxi to pick Tracy up. Naturally she was very upset and I tried everything to comfort her but it wasn’t easy. I grew up a lot on that day.

  My mum was fantastic and made a real point of looking after Tracy, as we were both too young to take on the responsibility. Tracey was getting on so badly with her family she came and lived with us for some time. We carried on going out together for three or four months after she had the abortion but it was never the same again.

  At fourteen, I really thought boxing held the key to my future. I was doing well in the ring and could pack a mean punch. The trainers at West Ham Boys’ Club all reckoned I’d go far and the idea of using my fists to fight my way out of the poverty trap really appealed to me. Even back then I felt a responsibility towards my mum, brothers and sister. I wanted to do good by them. I wanted them to be proud of me. One day, just before Christmas in 1979 I went down to the Pigeons pub near our home where my mum worked most nights as a barmaid. Back in those days, kids weren’t allowed in boozers, but the manager let me in because I didn’t drink and I loved playing pool,

  That day I had a winning run at the pool table and beat this other boy, aged about seventeen, three games on the trot. He looked really narked off by the end of the third game. His mates were also taking the piss out of him for losing to a younger kid.

  A few minutes later I waved goodbye to Mum, who was behind the bar and walked out of the Pigeons. As I stepped onto the pavement, an iron bar smashed right into the side of my head. I could feel my cheekbone cave in. Then the iron bar came back at me again, this time catching my jaw with an almighty crunch. I must have blacked out then because the next thing I remember is being in the back of the pub manager’s car as he drove me to St Mary’s Hospital in Stratford.

  I was in a bad way. They had to wire up my jaw and completely rebuild my face using specialised plastic. It looked like the side of my head had been used for target practice at a golf driving range. I told the doctors in the hospital that I didn’t want the cozzers involved. I ended up in there for four days and doctors informed me I’d be drinking through a straw for at least a month.

  But that was nothing compared to the stress I felt about the threat to my boxing career. The doctors refused to commit on whether I’d be able to get in a boxing ring again, so I went to see my trainer down at West Ham Boys’ Club. He told me there was no way I’d ever be passed fit enough by a boxing board medical to fight again because of the plastic plate they’d fitted in the side of my face. After I left the gym that day, I cried. I felt as if my life was effectively over. What future did I have if I couldn’t fight in the ring?

  My mum broke down when I told her the news. She knew how important boxing was to me. It was the one thing I was any good at. It was the one thing that might have helped improve all our lives. Within a week I found out where that bastard who attacked me lived, and started planning my revenge. My jaw was still bound up and I was hobbling on crutches, but none of that put me off. The manager of the pub went with me and even offered to do it for me, but I knew I had to do it myself, otherwise I’d never exorcise those demons.

  I had no second thoughts. I remember almost slipping on the icy pavement as I struggled up the garden path to his maisonette. I knocked hard and firm on the front door. This was it. I wanted to hurt him as much as he’d hurt me. To be honest about it, at that moment I wanted to kill him.

  The stupid bastard didn’t even recognise me when he opened the door. But he certainly recognised the baseball bat that sank into his skull. ‘Leave it out!’ he screamed as the second and third blows came raining down on him. ‘Why are you doin’ this?’ he asked after the next thud. For a moment I thought maybe I’d got the wrong man, but then I recognised the same orange t-shirt he’d had on when I’d beaten him at pool. As I looked down at his crumpled body on the doorstep, I spat on him. Now it was time to get on with the rest of my life.

  My attacker moved house shortly afterwards and the attack was reported in the local paper. It referred to a ‘mystery doorstep attack’. There was even a photo of the victim. His face looked like it had just been through a mincing machine. The paper said it was a mugging, but that was rubbish since nothing had been taken from him.

  Up until that incident I’d always been on the edge, but at least I was a reasonably content sort of kid who kept his head down and got on with his boxing. All that changed after the attack with the iron bar. I didn’t like anybody any more. I didn’t trust a soul apart from my mum, brothers and sister.

  The next couple of months were a living hell as I hobbled around home and school trying to pick up the pieces of my life, still harbouring a deep resentment. The elation I’d felt at getting revenge on that other boy had soon worn off. It was a lesson I learned about revenge: it may seem sweet at the time, but it doesn’t solve any problems in the long term. I lost a lot of weight and stopped going to the gym because I couldn’t see the point any more. My mum tried to pamper me to make up for what had happened. But I still presumed everyone was a threat to me apart from my family and was determined always to get the first punch in if it ever came down to a tear-up.

  I still get nightmares about what happened to me at the Pigeons that night. Sometimes I’m outside my attacker’s front door and he’s fighting back. I can
feel the pain that he caused me, even in my dream. Often, I wake up to feel if I really am injured, and there it is, this hated piece of plastic that changed the whole course of my life. In another nightmare my assailant swings the iron bar over and over my head and I slowly sink into the ground, until there is nothing left.

  With little for me to do, combined with my total bitterness towards authority and society in general, my mind started wandering towards the inevitable: crime. My first real excursion into thieving came when I was fifteen and got chatting in a pub one night with an older boy called Joe, who must have been about eighteen. He was a slim, wiry bloke who looked a bit like the pop singer Leo Sayer. Joe told me there was some real money to be earned from robbing shops, so a few days later we broke into a local Fine Fare supermarket late at night. I stayed on the roof while he slid down into the shop on a rope ladder. Then he passed all the gear up to me before we scarpered. It seemed a piece of cake and he bunged me £20 for my troubles, which was huge money back in those days.

  On the next job we had to rip an alarm out from a wall above a shop before we could get in. Unfortunately, as it fell, it smashed so hard into my face it broke my nose. Joe took me down the local hospital to get my nose sorted out and then we both returned later that night to finish the job. Again, he bunged me another score – £20 – for my troubles. I felt I was rolling in it.

  Then Joe suggested we do some ‘pirate work’ down at Leigh-on-Sea, near Southend. I didn’t know what he meant but I tagged along in the hope of making a few bob to help my family. Joe nicked a rusty orange Cortina in Stratford and we headed down to the coast. Then we found a dinghy on the beach and rowed out to where dozens of boats were moored. It was pitch dark and I fell in the icy water trying to get onto one boat. But we still managed to nick a load of booze and portable TVs and stuff like that. This time Joe bunged me £50 after he’d sold off the gear to a local fence.

  Funny thing about Joe was that he must have had a criminal record but he never even bothered wearing gloves. We must’ve been mad to think we could get away with it. He gambled a lot and told me that one night he’d blown £5000. I’m not a great one for gambling so found it hard to understand why anyone would want to waste his money like that.

  Then my criminal career was rudely interrupted by the person I hated most in life.

  I’d just returned from one of my regular excursions to Leigh-on-Sea when I walked into our house to find that bastard Terry at it again. Mum’s face was all blown up like a football and the moment I saw it I knew he’d been smashing her up again. Without saying a word, I whacked him straight in the face and then followed up with a flurry of right hooks. Mum did nothing to stop me this time. We both knew it was time to finish off this arsehole for good.

  I was a lot bigger this time compared to when we’d last had a stand-up, and I still had all that pent-up anger from getting my boxing career ruined by the iron bar. As me and Terry were scrapping, I grabbed a pen and stuck it right in his kidneys. I didn’t mean to do it: it was just a defensive reaction. Terry collapsed in agony. Minutes later he crawled out of the house for the last time.

  I could feel the plastic in the side of my head aching from where he’d landed a few direct hits but it was worth the pain to have taught that shit a lesson. Less than an hour later, the cozzers came knocking at our front door and said Terry had lodged a complaint against me and my older brother John, who hadn’t even done anything. I couldn’t believe it. That slimy bastard had not only taken a pop at my poor little defenceless mum but he’d gone and grassed us up to the law. The police wanted to take me and John down to the nick. Well, I wouldn’t have any of that so I put my hand up and said I’d done all the fighting so they wouldn’t nick John.

  I spent that night in a cell at Forest Gate Police Station. Terry pressed for me to be charged with Grievous Bodily Harm. He must have really hated me. I was shit scared and close to tears when they locked the door of that cell. I was suddenly all alone. I threw myself onto the half-inch-thick mattress against the wall and wondered how the hell my life could be so shitty. I cried myself to sleep that night, not because I was afraid of being in the nick but because I couldn’t understand how I’d allowed things to get so out of hand. And I just didn’t know how any man – even sicko Terry – could point the finger at a school kid.

  Back at home my mum was in a terrible state. She was outraged that they could lock a kid up on the word of her estranged, punch-happy boyfriend. And she blamed herself for what had happened. But there’s no way she could be responsible for the rantings and violence of a man like Terry. The next morning the cozzers hauled me out of the cell and I gave a statement admitting what had happened. If I hadn’t stuck that pen in him then maybe I wouldn’t have been so harshly treated. One of the coppers said that pen turned it from a common assault charge to Grievous Bodily Harm.

  I’ve got to say here and now the cops were fairly decent to me. They only cuffed me when they had to and they didn’t rough me up at all. Round where I lived you expected a few problems down the local nick, but this time they were as good as gold. I think they felt sorry for me because Terry was so clearly a toerag. But there was nothing they could do as he was insisting on pressing charges. One of the coppers pulled me aside and said he thought it was a disgrace that a big fella like Terry would press charges against a fifteen-year-old kid. He reckoned I’d severely damaged Terry’s pride more than anything else.

  I admitted the GBH charge so they held the trial within a couple of days of my arrest. As I had no previous convictions I thought I’d get off with something like a community service order. I was – and still am – a shy sort of bloke so all those people staring at me in court made me shrink even more into myself. I even caught a glimpse of that bastard Terry smirking at me from across the courtroom. I answered all the questions with a short ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and I could tell that was narking off a lot of the officials. Then there was my mum in the public gallery, close to tears. This was her baby accused of defending her against the man she now hated more than anyone else in the world. She’d earlier even tried to press counter-charges but the police told her not to bother.

  The magistrate gave me three months’youth detention. My legs wobbled for a few seconds after he said it. I couldn’t quite believe my ears. Then my mum stood up and shouted at Terry: ‘He’s the one you should be locking up.’

  I was taken away in cuffs. I was about to serve a stretch inside for defending my tiny, fragile mum against a six-foot-plus bully who’d tried to smash her to a pulp. Something wasn’t right, but I was too young and too scared to say anything. My head bowed, I just took the punishment. I was numbed and resigned to what had happened. I didn’t fight. I didn’t try to have a bundle with the guards. I just went quietly.

  Minutes later I was pushed into the back of a dark blue transit van with blacked-out windows and driven off to Her Majesty’s Borstal in Rochester, Kent, which was – I would soon discover – one of the worst youth detention centres in the whole of Britain. The screws picked up three other kids on the way there. Two of them were crying throughout the journey, which didn’t make things any easier. Meanwhile I sat in the back chained up like a rabid dog, trying not to look too worried. But beneath my brave exterior I was in tatters. I felt broken and wasted. And I wondered if I’d ever get my life on track again.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Two-Way Stretch

  I’d been told by some relatives before my sentencing that if I was sent down then the best way to handle it was not to talk much to other inmates. My uncle Pete said: ‘Keep your head down and you’ll get through it, son.’

  And in some ways he was right. I quickly got myself a reputation as someone not to mess with. I was considered a big, brooding ‘psycho’ type who hardly uttered a word, and that suited me fine. I also made a point of keeping my eyes to myself because once you catch someone’s glance inside then there’s always trouble.

  It might sound predictable, but the most dangerous place in Rochester
was the shower room. You always had to keep your wits about you and it really was a case of backs against the wall. The bullies and rapists always leered at everyone in there. They were on the lookout for the weakest. I heard one poor bastard being gang raped just a couple of cubicles from me. I couldn’t do anything about it because there were four inmates standing guard while this poor little kid was abused. And it wasn’t just sexual attacks in the shower room. One kid tried to stab another with an aerial he’d snapped in two and then sharpened up for an attack. Blood was everywhere as this nutter plunged his weapon into the other kid at least a dozen times. I don’t know what was behind the attack, but the screws came charging in and dragged them both away. The victim’s claret was still gushing down the floor drains as they rushed him to the sickbay. I later heard the attacker got a right thrashing. It was just as bad as that film Scum, which came out a few years back starring Ray Winstone. A lot of us called it hell.

  The dorms we slept in at Rochester were pretty grim too. There were twelve kids to each room and all you had was a small bedside cabinet to put all your worldly belongings in. Naturally, anything of value was soon pinched. And there was a lot of farting and wanking going on at night, which didn’t exactly add to the friendly atmosphere.

  One of my next-door neighbours in that dorm was this Italian-looking kid who constantly combed his hair. He really got up my nose. He had a sly way of looking at you as he combed his hair over and over again. Eventually I couldn’t stand watching him any longer so I barked at him to stop doing it or else I’d have to sort him out. He nodded his head, stopped and moved away. Then he started up again in the other corner of the dorm.

  We each had a single bed and lights went out at 9 pm. Some of the kids were such basket cases they cried themselves to sleep which made it bloody depressing. A lot of them were burglars while a handful were in for violence, including me. That’s why most of the other kids left me alone.