Hateland (40 page)

     From the first day, Paul said, 'Fuck your ties. I'm not wearing a poncy tie.'

     They said, 'Well, then, you won't be allowed any privileges or visits.'

     Paul said, 'Fuck your privileges and visits.'

     They said, 'You can be out in six months or we can keep you here for two years. It's up to you.'

     Paul said, 'I don't give a fuck.'

     He ended up serving the full two years - with an additional two months for crimes committed while inside. He didn't receive a single visit in that time. By law, including the ones he'd broken in there, they couldn't keep him any longer. In the end, I think they had to beg him to leave.

     His spell in Borstal hardened him further. It was soon after his release that he bashed my father, who, wisely, left the house next day, never to return.

     Within the week, Paul had also left home with no forwarding address. He just packed a rucksack, told us he'd see us later and drove off on a motorbike. 'Later' turned out to be the best part of five years.

     I'll always remember him with the big green army rucksack on his back, like a soldier going to war, trying to kick-start the motorbike. He couldn't get it going. Eventually, he ran with it. The engine bump-started with a roar and Paul zoomed off up the road. I watched him disappear round the bend of our estate. A few days later, the police called. They said they'd found Paul's bike near a small village some miles away It had broken down. Over the next five years, he didn't phone once, let alone send a postcard. He just disappeared, like my father.

     In 1981, while serving in Northern Ireland, I got three days' leave. I rang my mother to tell her I'd be home for a few days. She told me Paul had just got back in touch. He'd phoned her from London, but hadn't explained where he'd been. He'd asked her to get me to phone him.

     I rang him after I arrived at Heathrow. He didn't say much. He only wanted to know about the six counties of Ulster. Had I been in any fire fights? Had I shot anyone? Had I tortured any prisoners? Could I get him a classified field book (containing mugshots of IRA suspects and the like)? Would I be able to get hold of guns and ammunition? Without needing to ask, I knew Paul was all right - being his old self, that is.

     I arranged to meet him at Birmingham New Street Station next morning. Within a few minutes of our greeting each other, we were engaged in close combat on the station concourse. I don't know why. Perhaps I'd asked him why in five years he hadn't phoned our tormented mother. Perhaps I'd asked him the time. Whatever - I'd taken some diabolical liberty that merited a violent assault. After a few minutes, we stopped punching. We wiped the blood from our faces, then went to a pub round the corner where we drank a lot, argued and talked about the joys of Northern Ireland. It was our first talk as adults. The one thing we didn't talk about was 'us', our family and what we'd been through as children. I could still feel that sense of hopelessness we'd shared.

     I had to squeeze in a court case during my leave, so I had limited time with Paul. However, we travelled together on the train back to London. At Euston, we jumped on a tube heading west to Heathrow. A few stations down the line, as the nameplate for Green Park flashed past our eyes, Paul said, 'This is me.' He just stood up and got off. No goodbye, no good luck, no 'we'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when'.

     However, surprisingly, this time he kept in touch with my mother. When I left the army, I moved to London and began to see a bit more of him. He'd tried joining an army himself - the Spanish Army. If he'd just wanted to carry a gun and wear a uniform, he could have applied to join the Hell's Angels, like my oldest brother Jerry. But Paul wanted more. He wanted real-life adventure, the sort he'd read about in his military books. So he became a paratrooper with the Spanish Foreign Legion.

     After basic training, they sent him to the 8th Airborne Battalion stationed on some forgotten piece of colonial territory somewhere in north Africa. But he kept falling foul of the petty rules and regulations. Paul, in his mind, is always right. Others know nothing. So he spent most of his time in the guardhouse. He decided to desert.

     He stowed away on a holiday cruise ship bound for England - and arrived in Grays, Essex, still wearing his legionnaire's uniform. I understand the Spanish Army no longer accepts foreigners in its ranks. I think its experience with Paul may have provoked it to change its policy.

     It was Paul who introduced me to Adolf. For a while, Adolf became his best friend. They'd worked together as hod-carriers at the building of a hospital in Croydon. Their boss, a King's Cross villain, asked them to work for him as 'strikebusters'. Their new job - for which their boss provided them with a Jaguar car, well-tailored suits and a licence to maim - involved their threatening, bullying and, if need be, beating union reps who visited, or tried to visit, sites run by the boss. If a strike still managed to get off the ground, then Adolf and Paul would visit striking members at their homes to point out the error of their ways. That was Paul's first taste of far-right politics. He learnt the Nazi approach to negotiation.

     However, although Paul and Adolf seemed close for a while, their friendship came to a sudden end one day when Paul stabbed Adolf. I've heard both versions of what happened - and there's no disagreement about the facts. Paul had been sitting in Adolf's front room as Adolf had started arguing with his mother. Adolf's tone of voice and choice of words had displeased Paul, who said, 'Don't talk to your mother like that.'

     Adolf said, 'I'll talk to my mother how I like. What are you going to do about it?' Paul jumped out of his armchair, pulled a nine-inch bayonet from somewhere and thrust it into Adolf's stomach. It came out his back.

     Paul then ran off. He travelled back to our mother's house in Codsall, where he burnt his clothes in the garden. When my mother asked him what he was doing, he told her he'd killed someone.

     The knife hadn't hit anything vital, so Adolf survived. He refused to tell the police what had happened, so Paul was never questioned, let alone charged. Paul did later make some sort of gesture of apology to Adolf, but their friendship never recovered. Understandably, like almost every human being who meets Paul, Adolf started avoiding him.

     We had a favourite uncle called Bernie. He was one of my mother's brothers, and I was named after him. He'd lived with us briefly in Dunstable and he visited us now and again in Codsall. He was a good, decent man, but misfortune and unhappiness dogged his life. In 1985, Paul and I had to identify his body.

     In the '60s, Bernie had served a short prison sentence in Ireland for assault. He came to England to start a new life. He married a woman he adored and they lived together happily. He could never bring himself to tell her about his prison sentence, because he felt ashamed. On a trip to Ireland, someone raised the subject and the marriage hit its first rock. His wife couldn't accept he'd kept his past from her. Eventually, she left him.

    
Bernie turned to drink. He soon lost everything else - his job, his fixed address and his hope. One evening, a security guard saw him sitting alone on a bench in a communal garden near the subways of Birmingham's Bull Ring shopping centre. He was holding an unopened bottle of Australian wine.

     A few hours later, another security guard saw him lying on the ground, his face covered in blood. Bernie was semi-conscious when the guard went to help him. Before passing out, he mumbled, 'No, no. Stop it.' He died a few days later, never having regained consciousness. The bottle of wine lay unopened by his side, and he still had money in his pocket, so he hadn't been the victim of a robbery. The police put up posters and a sign appealing for witnesses to 'an incident', but none came forward.

     When my mother and one of her sisters went to identify the body, they couldn't say for certain if it was his. Paul and I had seen Bernie only a few weeks earlier, so the police asked us to view the corpse. We were both living in London at the time, so we travelled to Birmingham together. I'd been working the night before the journey and felt tired. I hoped to catch a few hours' sleep on the coach. I stretched out across the back seat. Trying to relax, I took off my trainers and used my coat as a pillow. I soon fell sound asleep.

     Paul had been drinking the night before. He continued drinking from a carrier bag full of beer. He woke me when we reached Birmingham two and a half hours later. I sat up, stretched and rubbed my eyes. As I bent down to put on my trainers, Paul shouted, 'No! No! Don't put them on.'

     'Why not?' I said.

     'Because there's no toilet on here and I had to piss in them.'

     'You had to piss in my fucking trainers?'

     Paul looked at me earnestly and said, 'Well, of course I did.'

     I began doing my nut. He seemed sincerely confused by my anger. He said, 'What's up with you? What fucking choice did I have? I couldn't piss on the floor, could I?'

     His cold logic had defeated me. The problem with this logic is that it fails to take into account other people's needs and rights. In his world, only his needs exist. They take priority over everything and everyone else. He has a coldness that puts people on edge. He almost never laughs. My father taught us as children to repress all feeling and emotion. He wanted to make us cold, hard and callous, just like him. Paul is a successful product of my father's parenting skills.

     I left my urine-soaked trainers behind on the coach. Fortunately, I found a shoe shop near the station, so I didn't have to hobble too far in my socks. I bought a new pair of trainers before heading off to carry out our grisly task.

     At the mortuary, an official warned us that Bernie had sustained head injuries which we might find distressing. He told us to wait while the body was 'prepared'. Eventually, he returned to lead us into a spine-tinglingly cold room divided by a large glass panel. Curtains covered the panel. The official pressed a button. The curtains opened slowly to reveal a body lying on a trolley. A sheet covered the body to its chest. I'd been hoping and praying they'd made a mistake, that the body lying there wouldn't be Bernie's, but I recognised him instantly, even though his swollen eyes were no more than slits, one of his ears was the size of my hand, and bruising covered his face and head.

     When we left the room, the official told us the date of Bernie's forthcoming inquest. He said we didn't need to attend, as it would just be a formality, the most likely outcome being a verdict of accidental death.

     His words shocked me. I said, 'Accidental death? You're calling that a fucking accident? Have you seen his face?'

     The official said the police believed Bernie had accidentally fallen off the bench.

     I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I said, 'Where was the bench he fell off? On top of the fucking Empire State Building?'

     The official said he couldn't comment. He said, 'You can raise any concerns you may have at the inquest.'

     The inquest went ahead. I got the impression the police hadn't spent too much time investigating 'the incident'. I also got the impression the coroner didn't give a shit about the dead 'tramp'. Despite our protests, he recorded a verdict of accidental death. I felt livid. I believe to this day that someone beat Bernie to death. If he'd been leading a 'normal' lifestyle, the police would have investigated his death fully.

     One Christmas Day, I went for a lunch-time drink in

     Wolverhampton with my three brothers and my friend Millie. Everyone was in a good mood. As we stood chatting near the bar, a middle-aged man accidentally knocked into Paul, spilling his drink. The man, who was drunk, didn't apologise. I don't think he even realised what he'd done. When I looked at Paul's face, I knew that, unless I intervened quickly, the man was doomed.

     Before Paul could do anything, I manoeuvred the drunk away and gripped Paul's arm. I said, 'Leave it, Paul. Please fucking leave it.'

     He said, 'That fucking ignorant cunt's bumped into me and he's not said a word.'

     I said, 'Paul, it's Christmas Day Forget about it.'

     The man went into the toilet.

     I tried to change the subject. Paul said, 'When he comes out, he either apologises or he gets it.'

     I told him again to forget about it. He said, 'Fuck "forget about it".'

     I knew the way his mind was working: if the man didn't apologise, then he must have done it deliberately. And if he'd done it deliberately, then he deserved punishment.

     I still hoped to step in to prevent an unpleasant incident. The man came out of the toilet and squeezed past, putting his hand lightly on Paul's shoulder. The man didn't say anything. Without a word, Paul grabbed the man by the throat, forced his head down and gripped him in a head-lock. Then he picked up a pint glass, smashed it and began shoving the jagged stump repeatedly into the man's face. 'Ignorant cunt,' he said with each stab, 'ignorant cunt, ignorant cunt, ignorant cunt.'

     When the glass had totally disintegrated, Paul let the blood-soaked man fall to the floor, his face cut to ribbons.

     Paul neither ran nor showed any emotion. Instead, he asked for a fresh pint. The trembling barman said, 'Sorry, mate. I can't serve you.'

     Paul sat down. I said, 'Get out of the pub, you thick cunt.'

     Paul said, 'I'm going fucking nowhere.'

     Millie stood there shocked and on the verge of tears. I asked her to go outside. At the same time, I grabbed Paul and manhandled him out into the car park. One of my brothers had called for two taxis, which arrived quicker than the police and ambulance. I put myself and Millie in the first, then left my three brothers to get in the second.

     Paul could never grasp why I'd brought our little Christmas drink to a premature end. Later, he said, 'What's your fucking problem, Bernie? He asked for it. He was an ignorant cunt.'

     'Yeah, you already said,' I muttered. I didn't bother arguing. The police didn't catch up with Paul for this attack.