Jog On Fat Barry by Kevin Cotter Read Free Book Online Page B

their faces with ice cream wafers. Yeah… I miss things. Then again, birthdays always depress me. And mine was last week. I turned forty-four. Had it in this pisshole: HMP Full Sutton. “Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own” was Top of the Pops. I worked out that in two years I would have spent half my life behind bars. I do get well looked after though, always get slipped a lager or two. The prison governor even told me (off the record, of course) that what I did was heroic. And the screws couldn’t be nicer, bringing me this here, that there. The Father even pops up. He brings me a birthday cake every year, and asks me the same old silly questions about my soul and that. In fact, I told him only last week that I was growing more remorseful with each passing year.
    “I sometimes wish things turned out differently,” I said. “I miss Rosy. And do you know, when I close my eyes and concentrate, I can still hear that nonce’s wife howling at me the way that she did in court, telling everyone I’d destroyed her life. Well, destroyed hers maybe, Father, but I saved a few by doing so.”
    “The world’s unjust,” the Father had told me back, chomping down on his little bit of cake. “But there’re better places to go; better places to see.”
    I told him he had no reason to worry about me. Said I’d do what I done again. Said I’d do it all again. And besides, I told him, it wasn’t as if they were going to keep me where I was forever. They didn’t keep you in these places forever, no, not for doing what had to be done. And I said it was funny, when I thought about everything that had happened, because I didn’t feel courageous, or bold, or any of those other things people on the radio, or in newspapers had said about me. Because at the end of the day, well, it was Him who planted the seed in my heart, wasn’t it. And who was I to question His will? You answer me that.
    I told the Father it was odd being seen by others as a champion of the people. I said a feeling like that, placed in the wrong hands, could be a dangerous thing: could work its way up under your skin, like some itch you couldn’t scratch, and make you want to do it all again. I went on to say that I’d been doing quite a bit of inward thinking lately: contemplating, if you like, about what I might possibly do when I got released.
    “Which isn’t that far away now, Father,” I said.
    I told him that I’d been thinking about going to see Rosy’s dad: thinking about doing the same things to him that I’d done to the nonce. Of course, they were only thoughts, but still. The Father stopped eating. He put down his plate, wiped his mouth, and placed his hand on my shoulder.
    “Let me pray for you,” he said.
    “Pray?” I laughed, shrugging off his hand. “You want to fucking pray for me? I’ll tell you what, Father, if you’ve got praying to do, you’d best do it for them! Because when I get out of here!”
    I threw my plate against the wall. It shattered into pieces and the fork skated across the floor.
    “When these fucking bastards let me out of here!”

mutton
    Pauline Jacks wasn’t what anyone would call a sort. Truth be told, she was hard to look at: she had fat ankles, and fat arms, and a fat head, and her school uniform was always grubby with bits of dried egg on it. Her black hair was lank and smelled like chips, and she was a dirty cow too. My brother Frank told me that every Thursday afternoon milkmen from Unigate and Express Dairy took turns shagging her in the storeroom under Johnson House for a dozen eggs, two bottles of gold top and a tub of cottage cheese. But Pauline was also fearless, and could steal just about anything once she put her mind to it.
    “Here, Freddie.”
    She was sitting on the bonnet of the Ford Capri Frankie Toast and Jimmy King had raped and pillaged the night before.
    “Bet you can’t guess what I got up my jumper.”
    “What?” I asked.
    “Put your hands up there and find out,” she