Public Enemy Number Two Read Online Free PDF Page B

for the sentence. The policemen made me stand up. The judge glared at me.
    “Nicholas Martin Simple,” he began. “You have been found guilty on all five charges. It is now my duty to sentence you.
    “Your crime was a particularly unpleasant one. You are, if I may say, a particularly unpleasant criminal. You stole a priceless object, part of the national heritage. You viciously assaulted an old lady and a lion. You caused thousands of dollars’ worth of damage. And for what? Doubtless you would have squandered your profits on pop music, on violent video-cassettes, on glue, which you would then sniff.”
    He sniffed himself. Then he bent his fingers until the bones clicked.
    “Society must be protected from the likes of you,” he went on. “If you were older, the sentence would be more severe. As it is, it is the sentence of this court that you will go to a young offenders’ institution, for eighteen months.” He banged his hammer. “Court adjourned.”
     
     
    Things happened very quickly after that.
    The two policemen dragged me out of the courtroom, down a flight of stairs. My hands were cuffed in front of me and I was led along a passage to a door. Outside, in an underground parking garage, a van was waiting.
    “In you go,” one of the policemen said.
    On my way up—before I’d been tried—I’d been “son” or “Nick.” Now I didn’t have a name. A hand pushed me in the small of my back. And my back had never felt smaller. It was like I’d somehow shrunk.
    “But I’m innocent,” I mumbled.
    The policemen ignored me.
    Two of them got in after me. The doors were locked and the van drove away. There was one small window in the back, heavily barred. The frosted glass broke the whole world up into teardrops. We reached the surface. The Old Bailey, Holborn ... London slipped away behind me. The policemen didn’t speak. One of them was reading a newspaper. My own face smiled at me from the front page.
    But I wasn’t smiling now. It had begun to rain. The water was pattering down on the tin roof like somebody had dropped a bag of marbles. The policeman yawned and turned a page. I shifted in my seat and the handcuffs clinked.
    We drove for almost an hour, heading west. Then we slowed down. I saw a gate slide shut behind us. The van stopped. We had arrived.
    The prison was an ugly Victorian building: rust-colored bricks and a gray slate roof. It was shaped like a square with a wall running all the way around and a watchtower at each corner. The watchtowers were connected to the main building by metal drawbridges, which could be raised or lowered automatically. A glass-fronted guardhouse stood beside the central control gate.
    I was led in through a door in the side of the prison. And suddenly it was as if I’d stepped off the planet. All the street sounds, even the whisper of the wind, had been cut out. The air smelled of sweat and machine oil. The door clicked shut.
    The policemen led me to a counter where a man in guard’s uniform was waiting for me.
    “Simple?” the guard asked.
    “That’s him,” the policeman said.
    “All right.”
    The two policemen left.
    I was told to empty my pockets. Everything I owned—even my watch—was taken from me and put in a cardboard box marked with my name. The guard wrote it all down on a sheet of paper.
    “Two dollars in loose change. One pen. One lucky rabbit’s foot”—he smiled mirthlessly—“obviously not working. One bag of salt and vinegar chips, half eaten. A rubber band . . .” He made me sign for them, then told me to strip. My clothes went into the box and he handed me a pile of blue denim and white cotton with a pair of boots balanced on the top.
    “Now you take a shower,” he said.
    “But I’ve already had a shower.”
    “Just do as you’re told.”
    I took a shower. A medical examination followed. I was poked, prodded, and injected. My hair was cut. Finally, I was allowed to dress. The shirt was too small and the boots were too big,