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taking vehicles without the owner’s consent, assault, and the list goes on. If you were to look at his record it would seem there was a life criminal in the making, and that’s what they saw. I knew he wasn’t that guy, he really wasn’t. That’s what being locked up with other crims does, especially as a child, and it fucked him up.
    They saw someone with a record, but when they looked closer, they realised Tommy wasn’t just some punk with half a brain with an attitude of ‘look at me, I’m the victim the system has failed’ like most of the born-to-lose thugs he resided with. No, Tommy was clever, he calculated his endeavours, he did his homework – but most of all he learned from his mistakes.
    They recognised this; they watched him.
    Places such as The Hepshaws Institution for Young Offenders were like a breeding ground for criminals, and when they identified guys like Tommy, they targeted them. They new a potential criminal with promise when they saw one. It was already inside him, all they had to do was chip away the pieces and sculpt him in to what they wanted.
    They were the Army. Or least they said they were. Disguising themselves as Army careers personnel was a masterstroke. It was easy. Send a man in uniform, throw in a few forms, promises of this and that. To the kid that is going nowhere fast it all seems too good to be true, and it is.
    X Company was more than a gang, more than a crew. They were organised, connected, and deadly.
    The policy of X Company’s recruitment was no man could be part of the organisation unless he had had at least three years’ military service. Once a target came to their attention, usually with no family, no ties, then the young man would be sold the idea of the army, to prove himself as honourable, to be part of something. Then, when they eventually got out, they were recruited into X Company and given the chance to work a turf and become an earner. If all went well then any member could rest assured he was untouchable. If someone fucked with you, they were fucked with ten times as bad.
    It was like the rules of the old Cosa Nostra. You fuck with a made guy, and it’s your arse.
    They threw him a friend in the shape of Trigg. It was no accident that they ended up as bunkmates. They both saw the army careers guy, and they were both sold the dream. They basically had two choices: stay in Hepshaws, the academy for fuck ups and amount to nothing, or cut short the stay, get special dispensation at 16, and join the infantry, do the service, and look forward to a life with X Company when the service was finished.
    I saw the road Tommy was going down. I tried and tried to tell him he was being played, but he didn’t see it. He had a new buddy in Trigg (who hated my guts for the record).
    I saw Tommy every time he came home and tried to talk to him, but he wouldn’t listen to me. I couldn’t be around him too much because he was into too much heavy shit, and I was going in a different direction.
    He was better than what he was doing but I couldn’t get through to him, nobody could until he met Emma. Still I was always there for him and would have never abandoned him, ever.
    Tommy, my friend, they had polluted his mind and I was powerless to stop it.
    My life took a different route. I had been lucky to do well in exams, I was also lucky in college. Then I got lucky at university, lucky, that’s what they always told me. So with my luck I also got a Law Degree. I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to make sure nobody got locked up who didn’t deserve it, not on my watch. I wanted to be someone who could look at himself in the mirror and know that I tried.
    To me it was some deep ‘man in the mirror’ type of thing. I had to change my ways, had to make a difference.
    I had to find my calling card, find my identity, make something of myself. I didn’t just owe it to myself, I owed it to Tommy. I knew scum when I saw it, and I knew victims of ‘wrong place wrong time’