Putting the Boot In
Page 22
Taffy’s career went way back and began, like most criminal careers, in mediocrity: a little pilfering, a little taking and driving away, a little gentle robbery. He didn’t steal much, he wasn’t particularly violent, and he got caught quite often. What with the constant interruptions to Taffy’s schooling, there was little chance of him getting into university. He was in his middle twenties before he finally broke out of the self-defeating cycle of small theft, small violence and small spells in prison. He worked out that the amount you could steal was often directly related to the amount of violence you were prepared to use. This key discovery led to his career breakthrough: the very nasty roughing-up of a husband-and-wife in Sussex, in return for which he obtained a large quantity of Georgian silver, not all of it on obvious display. Taffy also worked out that if you stole more at one time, then you didn’t have to steal so often, and the fewer times you went to work, the less often the lads in blue uniforms had a chance to nab you. As a result, Taffy was for some time able to live a normal social life; though he never did get into university.
What put him on the front page helping Belinda sell copies for the same press proprietor was a touch of over-enthusiasm with an iron bar during a slack period for news. He’d been serving two years in Maidstone for being over-fond of what didn’t belong to him when he suddenly went stir-crazy, brained a prison officer with a piece of railing and did a runner. Where he’d got the weapon from nobody found out. The photo of the officer with blood all over his face looked rather fetching to the professional eye of front-page layout men; and it was swiftly followed by a picture of Taffy himself, definitely not looking his best. For a few summer weeks he became a brief celebrity. One newspaper offered a reward for his recapture; another speculated that he had escaped with the intention of making some public protest — perhaps he planned to interfere with the minor royal wedding two weeks hence. The public quickly deduced that Taffy was on the run, eager to inflict maximum violence on anyone who stood in his way, and plotting to blow up the entire royal family. A Welsh reader wrote to The Times pointing out that Taffy was not one of his fellow-countrymen.
In fact, Taffy was the opposite of on the run: he was holed up with a bit of female company and a crate of his favourite beer, both of which he’d been badly missing in prison, and like any other loyal citizen he watched the royal wedding on the telly and reckoned we did these things better than anyone else. He guessed he’d get another five for braining the warder, and get beaten up a bit by the other screws, which was fair enough; but, when he turned himself in, he did it cleverly, by claiming the newspaper’s reward for his own recapture, and arranging for what the newspaper imagined was a secret rendezvous in a public place to be covered by several other papers, and even by television. He didn’t get the reward, of course; but he copped a lot of publicity, some of which hinted that here was a human being who, though evil, might be reclaimable for society. So he went back to prison, and he got beaten up a bit when nobody was looking, and he got the five he’d anticipated; whereupon he began attending chapel regularly, and started taking an Open University course in sociology, both of which activities eventually impressed the parole board. He was released quietly, at dawn, with a damp mist in the air, and he never went to church again.
Taffy was very quiet over dinner, not saying much and laughing at other people’s remarks. His neck and shoulders were enormous. Duffy had seen that sort of muscular development before in ex-cons. The ones who didn’t go all apathetic in prison often took to furious keep-fit activity; but since the opportunities for this were usually a bit limited — especially if you were doing a spell in solitary — it often ended up with you doing pull-ups and push-ups in your cell. You could easily get a bit obsessive about this, and the obsession eventually showed itself in the shape of your body.
‘You’re a bit of a chancer,’ said Duffy when he got Vic on one side after dinner.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Taffy.’
‘Taffy? Don’t you like him?’
‘You know who he is, Vic?’
‘You mean, do I know who he was? Of course I know who he was.’ Vic shook his head a little sorrowfully. ‘Don’t you believe in rehabilitation, Duffy? Society offering a helping hand to the offender? “Come unto me, all ye who have done more than five years inside.” Don’t you believe in any of that?’
Duffy couldn’t tell how far Vic was taking the piss, so he ducked the question. ‘I notice he kills wild animals,’ he said neutrally.
‘A pigeon is not an animal, Duffy. It’s a bird. You’re in the country now. And if you want to lock up fellows who kill birds you may as well begin with all the dukes and marquises and whatsit.’
‘That’d make a good start.’
At this moment Mrs Hardcastle came up to them. ‘I know this sounds silly, Mr Crowther, but I thought I should mention it. Some of the cutlery has gone missing.’
Buy Going to the Dogs Now!
About the Author
Dan Kavanagh was born in County Sligo, Ireland, in 1946. After an uncompromising adolescence, he left Ireland when he was nineteen and roamed the world. He has been an entertainment officer on a Japanese supertanker, a waiter on roller skates at a drive-in eatery in Tucson, and a bouncer in a gay bar in San Francisco. He boasts of having flown light planes on the Colombian cocaine route, but all that is known for certain is that he was once a baggage handler at Toronto International Airport. He lives in Islington, North London, and works in jobs that (with mild paranoia) he declines to specify.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1985 by Dan Kavanagh
Cover design by Michael Vrana
978-1-4804-6744-6
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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