Free Patchwork Man by D.B. Martin

way down.
    ‘You are absolutely right, Danny. Whatever we think about each other is one of those things we said isn’t relevant – but your story is. Let’s get on with it, shall we?’
    He studied me coolly for a while. ‘OK, yeah.’
    She threw me a thankful look and seemed to physically shrink down in her chair. The tense body language relaxed and was replaced with submission. The boy had centre-stage. Surprisingly it was being centre of attention that released the trap door and Danny’s story came tumbling through it without the need for any more prompting. I’d interviewed enough old lags to already know the psychology, but not that it applied equally well to a kid as an adult. I took note. It had already been an unusually illuminating morning but it wasn’t until the session wound up that I realised how fully my mind had been taken off funerals, newspapers and the bloody route to the top, although it was probably one of the very last things the boy told me that did it.

6: Jaggers
    J ohn Arthur Green, he called himself; ‘Jaggers’ – and he’d been to Borstal. He was a legend before he even turned up at the children’s home in June 1962. He’d been sent there for much the same offence as we’d so carefully hidden – a stabbing. With the arrival of Jaggers, it was no longer petty theft or small time crime that we had to keep ahead of, it was full scale war. Not only had he learnt how to play with the big boys when he’d been in Borstal, he’d also acquired their tastes. Sex, drugs, violence, intimidation – all with a smile and perfect courtesy to the Houseparents, who unexpectedly doted on him. I think that might have been when Georgie first started using. No-one approached me. Maybe they knew I would have run and told Win, and Win would have turned it into a fight for control – another part of the empire to conquer. Georgie though, he was so much in his own world by then, I think he barely remembered I was there – let alone who I was. I let him slip away because I didn’t know what else to do.
    It had always been a world of barely hidden violence and carefully controlled fear, not just from the gang influences but from each other and the home’s staff. Nights were often punctuated by the screams of nightmarish dreams, and days by small discomforts and petty cruelties. Jaggers brought a new and excruciating level of terror with him. Of course he and Win went head to head straight away even though Win only had months left before he was formally released from care when he was sixteen. The die-hards from Win’s reign stuck with him but the turncoats and spin doctors followed Jaggers. I was left in the middle – afraid of Win, but even more afraid of Jaggers and the unnatural practices it was said he imposed on dissenters. I teetered – withholding my alliance, relying on Win’s protection until Win was ill with gut rot one day about two months after Jaggers arrived. It was probably engineered by Jaggers and his crew, but it left Win out of action and me within firing range. Jaggers wheeled in the big guns to convert me because as Win’s little brother – by then Georgie didn’t count – I was a pivotal point in his strategy. If I defected, so would most of the rest of Win’s gang.
    I spent the day anxiously avoiding Jaggers or any of his crew. It was fairly easy during the day. There were lessons to endure, although even then I enjoyed learning. I had to pretend otherwise in the home but I had my secret passions. English class – and one piece of literature in particular was one. For the other boys, hearing the teacher expound on the principles of honesty and truth in something like To Kill a Mocking Bird was an exercise in boredom. For me it was inspiration. Lucky perhaps that we had such an enlightened and rebellious young teacher at the time. Of course it wasn’t part of the curriculum but the book was all the rage because of the Hollywood blockbuster starring Gregory Peck. Not what