Soldier Of The Queen Read Online Free PDF Page B

not caught and I never told anyone I was responsible. But for the next eight weeks as I handed over my money I said to the woman: "Have they caught anyone yet?" She would say: "No, O'Mahoney. But we will. We will."
    I carried out my first street robbery when I was around 13. One afternoon I was in Wolverhampton with a friend called Hughie. I saw a well-dressed boy, perhaps two years older than us, standing by a Mercedes in a back street near the town centre. He was carrying a bag containing the kit for a large model aeroplane. I did not say anything to Hughie, but we both instinctively knew we were going to rob him. I went up to him and asked if he had any money. He looked at me, laughed and in a well-spoken voice said: "Piss off, sonny." With that he pushed me in the chest and I fell backwards into a puddle. I felt gripped by a rage: I jumped up, ran towards him and started punching him in the head, face and kidneys. I spun him around so he was facing the car - it was probably his parents' and he was waiting for them to finish their shopping. I grabbed his hair and smashed his face into the bonnet. I pulled him round to the middle-centre of the bonnet and brought his head down repeatedly onto the Mercedes badge, which soon became flattened and spattered with blood. Hughie was shouting at me to stop and eventually he pulled me off. The boy collapsed limply and his body began to jerk violently. He started writhing on the floor in convulsions. I had the terrifying feeling I was watching someone's death throes. We ran to the bus stop and waited nervously for our bus. We were both panicking and I kept asking Hughie if he had seen the boy moving or breathing as we ran. He kept saying: "He'll be all right. He'll be all right." When I got home I turned on the radio to listen to the local news. Nothing. Then I went out and bought the local evening paper, the Wolverhampton Express and Star. Nothing. I was sure I had killed the boy, but over the next few days there were no reports of the attack, so after a while I relaxed. I can only assume now that my victim must have suffered an epileptic fit. I feel revolted, truly revolted, remembering this attack. My upbringing did not justify that behaviour and only partially explains it. I had been turned - but was also for my own dark reasons choosing to turn myself — into a cold and violent thug.
    I was always fighting at secondary school, at least for the first few years when there remained people willing to take me on. The teachers tried increasingly drastic methods to lessen my disruptive influence. For a long while I was prohibited from mixing with the other children. At the end of a lesson I had to wait until my fellow pupils had made their way to the next class before I could set off after them along the empty corridors; at breaktime I had to stand alone outside the headmaster's office; at lunchtime I had to leave the premises altogether.
    Not that that stopped me from forming my own gang and diversifying into illegal money-making ventures. One was the sale of alcohol from a loft in the school cloakroom. Boys would steal alcohol from home or local shops and sell it to me for cash. I would then sell it on at a profit. The other was a "steal-to-order" shoplifting scam: some pupils' parents would ask me to get them perfume or after-shave to give as presents - one even ordered a lawn-mower from me. So I employed two of my fellow pupils, both competent shoplifters, to get what they wanted for a price. Both scams added to my income, helping to pay my fines while funding my weekly trips to watch Manchester United.
    At school I would also use whatever opportunity presented itself to get back at teachers I didn't like. In one chemistry lesson I handed the teacher a test-tube whose top I'd heated over a Bunsen burner. The unsuspecting teacher grasped it in his palm and screamed in agony as the tube attached itself to him, burning its way into his skin. He shook his hand violently to shake off the