Once Upon a Crime Read Online Free PDF Page A

beach together in the early evenings and then going back to the caravan and we could all stay up late as there was no school to go to. I did not know it then but these were probably the happiest days of my life, and probably the last time I felt so happy, free and untroubled.
    As that idyllic summer drew to a close Hughie returned and told us he had found our new home. It was in rural Berkshire, about eight miles from the racecourse town of Newbury and it was yet another caravan park. I hated it on sight and felt it was at the end of the earth. I said to Ma, ‘Does this mean that we are gypsies?’
    ‘No, son,’ she said, ‘it’s only temporary.’ But we spent the best part of the next three years there and I do not recall any time that I was ever really happy. It was way out in the back of beyond, there were no amenities on site save for a little shop, and the bus service was very infrequent. Here I was, an inner-city kid born and bred, stuck in the back of beyond with all these fucking yokels who spoke a foreign language to me, surrounded by trees and fields. Loch Lomond it wasn’t. There wasn’t even anything to steal.
    At least my sister Olive and her family had also left Glasgow and for a time lived on the outskirts of Windsor. She and her two weans, along with her man, James, moved onto the caravan park at Crookham Common in deepest Berkshire to be our neighbours. It was great for my two wee brothers and sister, who now had the company of Tony and Shona to play with, but I was the odd one out as I was a good bit older.
    The nearest school for me was Kennet secondary modern, a four-mile journey away by bus to the town of Thatcham. This was the local equivalent of St Mark’s in Glasgow’s east end and I was qualified to go to the much more prestigiousReading grammar school. I can only surmise that Ma was not aware of this and she probably felt that it was important to get me back to school as quickly as possible.
    For the first few days at this new school I was an object of great curiosity, being teased in a nice way by the girls who seemed to view me as some kind of a catch. I mean, to them I was somehow exotic coming from the big, bad Glasgow town! The local boys, however, viewed me in an altogether different way. They seemed to see me as a threat and it was only a matter of time before the gauntlet was thrown down and I was faced with the challenge the whole school wanted to see.
    It happened during a game of football one lunchtime on the hard court pitches. There was a large crowd of pupils watching and I knew something wasn’t quite right. For one thing there were lots of girls in attendance. By this age, I was an accomplished wee football player and I was running rings around the local yokels to the point where I was almost taking the piss out of them and this no doubt added fuel to the flames. There was one boy who just followed me during the game and aimed kicks at my ankles and shins. I tried to discourage him with some of Glasgow’s best putdowns but nobody could understand my broad accent.
    Finally, I had had enough and, turning to face him, said as slowly and as clearly as I could, ‘Right, listen, ya fuckin’ halfwit. Kick me one more time and I will fuckin’ leather you, OK?’
    He said, ‘Fuck you, you Scottish bastard. I’ll fight you right now.’
    This was right up my street. I never said another word, I kicked him right in the balls and followed up with a right uppercut and the fight was over. I had learned well from my encounter with Nicandro a few years earlier. But one of the ankle-snapper’s pals said, ‘I would like to see you do that tome.’ He was like a big farm boy and carrying too much fat around the middle, an easy target. I did not even reply but nutted him and threw a few punches at his abundant gut. Both fights were over in a matter of seconds apart from a bit of name calling: ‘You’re a dirty fighter’ etc.
    I was never challenged again and I certainly was not often