THE BEGINNING OF THE END WAS AT HAND FOR KENNY Seddon. On the 25th of January (a week before his seventeenth birthday) WPC T______, the local Juvenile Liaison Officer, paid a visit to the flat and asked why he hadn’t reported the Friday before to the Rochdale Police headquarters. Kenny told her he had been ill with stomach trouble, and Miss T______ asked who his doctor was.
‘I didn’t bother going to the doctor,’ Kenny said. ‘I just stayed in bed. I’ve had it before; it’s nowt serious.’
‘Next time get a doctor’s note. You know you can get into serious trouble if you fail to report when you’re supposed to.’
‘Yeh,’ Kenny said. ‘I’ll remember that.’ He looked into her face. ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’
‘No thank you. Did you hear what I said?’
‘Yeh. I’ll remember, don’t worry.’ He tucked his vest into his jeans and flopped down on the settee. He was okay now but it had been a bad moment when he had opened the door and seen her standing there – his heart had lurched and he had felt his face going red. Even as she followed him down the dark staircase he had had the sense of terror that this was it, had actually expected her opening sentence to contain the words ‘Luton’ and ‘knifing’ and ‘arrest’. But now it was fine: he was relaxed: nothing could touch him.
Miss T______ said, ‘I’m not worried, Kenneth. It’s up to you, it’s your look-out.’ Her eyes were hard but she couldn’t hold his gaze for long and glanced round the flat at the discarded clothing on the chairs and the empty mug and breakfast plate on the floor. There were crumbs on the settee where Kenny lay sprawled.
‘See you,’ Kenny said as she prepared to leave.
Miss T______ stopped at the door. ‘I thought you were going to try and get a job? Have you done anything about it?’
‘I’ve been looking in the Observer,’ Kenny lied smoothly. ‘There is nowt though.’
‘You don’t call that really trying, do you?’
‘What else can I do?’
‘Go to the Youth Employment near the station. Tell them what kind of job you’d like and they’ll send you a postcard if anything comes along that would suit you. You’ve worked in engineering haven’t you?’
‘Yeh,’ Kenny said indifferently.
‘Well then: put your name down.’
‘I don’t really fancy doing that again.’
‘What job do you fancy?’
‘Millionaire’s pig,’ Kenny said, watching her lazily.
‘Don’t be silly, Kenneth,’ Miss T______ said. ‘How do you expect to stay out of trouble if you don’t have a job?’
‘There’s nowt I fancy doing. I can’t get a soft touch like yours, you know.’ He lit a cigarette and crossed his arms behind his head; Miss T______ looked at his hairy armpits and quickly turned away, almost imagining she could smell the unwashed sweat.
‘I want to hear that you’ve put your name down the next time I see you,’ she said curtly. ‘That’ll be on the 15th of February.’
‘I’ll be there,’ Kenny said. ‘You can find your own way out, can’t you?’
When he heard the front door close he had a quiet snigger to himself, lying back with the smoke drifting past his eyes, wriggling his toes in the stiff wrinkled socks. There was no need to get alarmed; no need at all. If they had anything on him they’d have picked him up days ago. It had even made the national newspapers (he still had the cutting from the Mirror) – which had given him a shock at first, he had to admit, the big black headline on page three and underneath it the story of the ‘Luton gangfight’ in which a lad had to be rushed to hospital and given an emergency transfusion. It was all over now, he kept telling himself, blood under the bridge. Yet still he had to be careful, to keep a check on what he said: the trouble was that he found himself wanting to tell people – even strangers – that Kenny Seddon had knifed somebody in a gangfight. He got a thrill whenever he thought about it – a terrifying thrill that crawled up inside his belly and stuck fast in his throat. He wanted to say, ‘Do you know who you’re talking to? I knifed a bloke. It was in the paper.’
The rest of the afternoon he sat watching Crown Court, Play School and Magpie on television, smoking the last of the cigarettes he had nicked from the Liberal Club, eating salted peanuts and picking the hard skin off the soles of his feet. Kat came in at ten-past four and made him a mug of instant coffee sweetened with three spoonfuls of condensed milk; then Margaret appeared and without a word dumped her bag on the chair and went into the kitchen to make the tea. Brian usually came home at five-thirty and at twenty minutes past Kenny shoved his socks into his pocket and went to his room. He couldn’t stand to be in the same room as Brian. The air seemed to be charged with negative particles of hate. They would enter and leave the room without looking at one another, circling the furniture with their eyes carefully averted and making it clear that when they spoke it was to the other members of the family.
Kenny waited till the others had finished eating and then had his tea in the kitchen alone. By seven-thirty he was clomping along the concrete walkways in the direction of the Weavers. There was a thin scattering of snow over the Estate, scooped into corners by the wind and lying like icing sugar on the frozen puddles. He didn’t stay long there, had a swift pint and carried on under the railway viaduct and up New Barn Lane to the new bypass which linked Rochdale to the M62. The traffic whipped by in an icy blast, the red tail-lights streaking along the dual carriageway to the roundabout at the junction of Half Acre and the motorway access road.
Kenny was undecided what to do: whether to walk up to Janice’s or catch the bus to town. It was early for the lads to be about but at the same time he didn’t feel like traipsing all the way up Bury Road. And ever since the break-in he had kept away from the flat as much as possible; he somehow felt safer at a distance. The cold wind made the rims of his ears sting and he hunched himself in the corner of the bus shelter to conserve as much warmth as he could inside the thin shirt and flimsy jacket. The cars went past in an endless procession. All the rich bastards, Kenny reflected, safe and snug behind the curved glass with the dashboard illuminating the lower parts of their smug faces. Get them out here though, in the freezing cold, away from their cars, and they were frightened, timid, spineless. Not one of them would have a notion what to do against a boot or a sharpened spindle or a fistful of steel washers. The real world belonged to him; theirs was confined to the semi-detached bungalow behind its tidy lawn and a few choice pubs which catered for passing trade – and in-between, his territory, the night-time streets, which they could cross only in the sealed comfort and security of steel and glass and moulded rubber trim. He shouted something and laughed, and the laughter sounded hollow and bounced back in his face from the walls and ceiling of the shelter.
The town itself was barely alive at this hour, but with each bus-load from the districts the crowds multiplied and grew, the tempo building up as the bars got full and the bingo halls prepared for the first session of eyes down, look in. As the bus swayed along the Esplanade Kenny ran full tilt down the metal stairs and jumped off as the automatic doors were opening in front of the GPO. The pavements were slushy underfoot and a few flakes of snow still lingered in the cold night air, floating down under the yellow lights.
• • •
It was gone nine o’clock before Janice showed up. Kenny, Andy and a few other lads were sitting in the White Lion arguing about how many cinemas Rochdale used to have before most of them either closed down or were turned into bingo halls. Kenny said ten: Regal, Rialto, Palace, Empire, Hippodrome, Victory, Pavilion, Kings, Ceylon, and a fleapit in Castleton whose name he couldn’t remember.
‘You can’t count that,’ said one of the lads Kenny hadn’t met before. ‘We’re talking about cinemas in Rochdale. And the Ceylon doesn’t count either; that was up Heybrook way.’
‘Heybrook’s still in Rochdale, you dozy pillock,’ Kenny said.
‘It’s not in the centre though.’
‘I know it’s not in the centre but it’s still Rochdale, innit? We’re talking about cinemas in Rochdale.’ He put his arm round Janice as she sat down. He said, ‘All right, love?’ feeling kindly disposed towards her. (He was in the mood for a good poke.) ‘Do you want half of mild?’
‘Have you enough money?’
‘The old lady lent me a quid. Well sort of lent it me. Here, get us a pint while you’re there,’ giving her a fifty-pence piece.
Fester said, ‘How do you fancy going over to Leeds tonight?’
‘What’s in Leeds?’ Andy said.
Fester leaned his squat elbows on the table. ‘All-nighter. It’s a soul club Alan and Rod have been to. Great. Stacked with talent.’
‘It’s too bloody far,’ Kenny said. ‘By the time we get the train and waste time pissing about trying to find—’
‘Alan’s got transport,’ Fester said, his tiny slitted eyes flicking excitedly from face to face. ‘We can do it in an hour on the motorway. What do you think? The five of us.’
‘Six,’ Kenny said. ‘Including Jan.’
The car was a dark-blue 1968 Ford Consul with rusty bumpers and a rear nearside spring in danger of collapse. Kenny, Janice and Andy sat in the back and Fester and Rod got in the front next to Alan.
‘Is it taxed?’ Kenny asked, not having seen a disc on the windscreen.
‘No,’ Alan said, grating into first gear. ‘It hasn’t got an MOT either.’
‘When did you pass your driving test?’ Andy said.
‘Haven’t taken it yet,’ Alan said.
Snow was blowing horizontally across the motorway as they climbed up beyond Milnrow, crossed the Rakewood Viaduct and topped the moors into Yorkshire. It was cosy with the heater on, gazing out from the dark interior of the car at the flurries of snow being driven silently through the beams of the headlights. Kenny had his hand on Janice’s thigh. Andy said to Rod:
‘You’ve trapped off at this place, have you?’
‘Yeh. Last week.’
‘She all right?’
‘Fit as a butcher’s dog.’ Rod was a handsome boy with long blond hair and intense brown eyes surrounded by soft dark lashes. He kept glancing at Janice, Kenny noticed, no doubt he fancied his chances; if only he knew that just a few days ago Kenny had knifed a bloke for less. But then some of these turds always had to push their luck until it was too late.
When they got there the club turned out to be a bit of a dump. The bar consisted of three trestle tables in the shape of a U and there was no draught beer or lager, only bottles and shorts.
‘Worse than fucking Chorley,’ Fester complained. Nearly everybody was high on something, mostly pills, and by midnight there were more bodies on the floor than standing upright. Many of the girls looked as if they hadn’t had a wash or brushed their hair for several weeks. Kenny was proud of Janice: compared to the slags she was a contender for Miss United Kingdom.
She said, ‘Me mum wasn’t for letting me come out tonight.’
‘Why, what’s up?’
‘She’s still mad about the meters.’
‘Weren’t your fault.’
‘She blames me for not reporting it sooner. She’s had to pay it back to the Electricity Board.’
‘What, all of it?’
‘Yeh.’
‘All seventeen quid?’
Janice nodded.
‘What about the insurance? Didn’t she claim off them?’
‘They wouldn’t pay up. They said the flats should have been looked after by a responsible person and as I’m under-age I don’t count. So she’s had to pay for new locks as well.’
‘She doesn’t think …?’ Kenny said.
‘No,’ Janice said quickly.
‘Just you be careful then. Keep your mouth shut. I don’t want any twat of a copper knocking on my door.’
He recalled the moment of seeing the Juvenile Liaison Officer standing there and his heart moved again as though the incident had to be re-lived and wasn’t safely past, over and done with. Then he thought about it rationally and the tension drained out of him: there was no way they could connect him with what had happened in Luton. Was there? He had to think very hard and when he had was almost certain there wasn’t. There wasn’t, was there? He had never been to Luton in his life – that was it – on ‘the day in question’ he had been… with Janice? Yes, he had been with Janice all that day; they had gone to Manchester on the train. Why did you go to Manchester? We went to Manchester… now then… we went to Manchester, yes, to buy soul records. Bradleys in Rochdale don’t stock the records we like, so Jan and me went to Manchester to buy soul records. For my birthday. Which records? Ah. (He’d better buy some new soul records just in case.) Here they are, look, the ones we bought. Okay? Satisfied?
… Anyway, calm down, he told himself, no need to get worked up. Jan would stick by him and none of the lads he’d been with would dare squeal because they knew what they’d get. They all knew he could do it. They’d all seen him knife a bloke.
Janice is snuggling against him, giving him ideas. The room is hot with bodies and yet has a dank sour smell like that of sweat gone cold. Janice closes her eyes and lifts her mouth for his kiss, blindly, her thin young face passive and trusting. He kisses her and afterwards she holds him tight and murmurs in his ear, ‘I’ll never let you down, Kenny. Never.’
Kenny is strangely moved by this and a lump fills his throat. He knows he has found the only girl for him and that whatever happens – whoever else might attract him – Jan is the one he wants to stay with. He has to have someone he can depend on in this rotten miserable world and she is the only one. The realisation of this makes him shiver, a swift tremor down his back that of all the people in the world Jan is on his side. It is a thought that brings comfort.
He hesitates for a moment and then forms the words: ‘I love you, Jan.’
‘I love you,’ Janice says. ‘Oh I do.’ She kisses him impulsively, in a dream of perfect happiness. She is loved by someone, loved in return by the person she loves. Everything becomes comprehensible to her, everything is clear and sharply defined as though a mystery has, in an instant, resolved itself and in so doing given her fresh eyes and a new vision of life.
On the way back (it was half-past one when they left the club) they sit holding one another, their closed eyes shutting out the dark rushing motorway and the headlights splayed out ahead. The floor of the car vibrates through their feet, with occasionally the hard jarring irritation of the failing rear spring. Andy is asleep in the corner, snoring gently.
‘Do you think people should get married early – you know, young?’
‘What brought this on?’
‘Something me mum said.’
‘What, about me?’
‘Well: yeh. It was to do with you.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She asked me – I think she was having a joke – she asked me when we were getting engaged.’
‘Oh aye.’
‘Yeh. Last week.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I didn’t say owt. It’s not up to me, is it?’
‘Does she reckon you’re old enough to get engaged?’
‘Not right yet. Not now. But I’ll be sixteen later this year. Loads of girls get engaged at sixteen. Some even get married.’
‘Aye they do. Some don’t get wed till they’re twenty-odd.’
‘Is that what you think?’
‘Up to them, innit? Suits some folk to get married early and doesn’t suit others. Depends who it is.’
‘What do you think though?’
‘Haven’t thought about it.’
‘You must have an opinion about it.’
‘Why?’
‘Most people have.’
‘What are you fishing for?’
‘I’m not fishing. I just wondered what you thought.’
‘I suppose it’s all right for some.’
‘But what do you think?’
‘Do you want to get engaged when you’re sixteen?’
‘I don’t know. Depends, I suppose.’
‘You think we should get engaged then?’
‘It’s not up to me.’
‘You don’t know what you want.’
‘I do. I do know. But it’s no good me thinking one thing and you thinking another. It’s no good me wanting to get engaged if you don’t.’
‘I never said I didn’t.’
‘I know you didn’t.’
‘I bet your mother never said anything about us getting engaged.’
‘She did, Kenny, honest.’
‘Why do you want to get engaged, anyway?’
‘I thought we loved each other.’
‘No excuse to get engaged. Folk can love each other without having to get engaged. You only need to get engaged if you’re in the club. You’re not in the club, are you?’
‘No. Would it be different if I was?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘We’d have to get engaged then. Married even. We’d have no choice, would we?’
‘Your mother’d have a blue fit. Her good little girl with a bun in the oven.’
‘Yeh,’ Janice says, feeling the vibration in her toes.
• • •
That night they slept in Kenny’s narrow bed in the fibreboard box behind number 472, having sneaked in as the three chimes of the Town Hall clock were echoing emptily over the flat silent roofs of the Estate. Motorway traffic hummed distantly, the faint scudding roar of lorries on the overnight run south. Their sound reminded Kenny that other places existed: that the town in which he lived had no claim on him other than that he had been born here. There was nothing to stop him and Janice packing two suitcases and catching the Yelloway coach and clearing out. They could go… almost anywhere; it was a free country.
It was warm in bed. Kenny had been feeling randy all day and couldn’t get enough of her, his large heavy body almost crushing the breath from her lungs. His lack of consideration both alarmed and excited Janice: it was another of his moods she couldn’t fathom, like having to deal with a stubborn and perverse animal whose brute strength carries it mindlessly forward in search of… and what that was she didn’t know. She was willing to help him if only he would tell her what it was he was seeking. It annoyed her that she couldn’t, even yet, understand him. After all, they were in love, so why were they not united as one person? Why did he drive himself blindly, using his strength as a battering-ram, crashing headfirst into the future as though desperate to break through a barrier that Janice couldn’t see? Life was simple to her: it lay before her like a map with all the landmarks clearly shown: there was no need to fight life or to change it because what was there would, given time, fulfil all their hopes and dreams. And in any case it never did any good to fight. It never got you anywhere, and more often than not would only lead to trouble.
• • •
A week later, walking through Rochdale market with Andy some time between eight-thirty and nine o’clock in the evening, Kenny was stopped by a man in plain clothes and asked if he wouldn’t mind coming along to the police station. They walked with the Detective-Constable along the Esplanade past the GPO and the Town Hall and up the tarmacadam incline into the greyish-white block where Andy was told to wait by the desk in the sleek reception hall while Kenny was shown into a room and asked to take a seat. He smoked three cigarettes one after the other, biting his nails between drags and waiting for the Detective-Constable to reappear pushing a trolley on which a corpse lay stiff under a white sheet with a gaping bloody hole in its stomach. He knew nothing about corpses; he supposed they could be kept indefinitely in cold storage and transported all over the country in refrigerated vans. That would be their way, he felt sure; confront him with the evidence and measure the shock on his face. He stiffened his face in readiness, setting the jaw muscles in squat defiance and bringing the brows close together; he couldn’t control his lips, however, except when he was dragging on the cigarette.
The Detective-Constable came in, not with a corpse on a trolley, but with a constable in uniform. They both appeared to be agreeable young men, both with sideburns, and the constable with a small black moustache. The small room seemed to Kenny to be filled with neatly-pressed suits and dark-blue uniforms and pink fleshy hands and faces. He was intimidated by their cleanliness.
‘It’s Kenny, isn’t it?’ the Detective-Constable said. He was holding two sheets of paper.
‘Yeh.’
‘What?’
‘Yeh,’ Kenny said, clearing his throat.
‘Four-seven-two Irvine, Ashfield Valley. What’s your father’s name?’
‘Brian.’
‘Brian Seddon,’ the Detective-Constable said, writing it down. ‘How old are you, Kenny?’
‘Sixteen,’ Kenny said. ‘Seventeen.’
The Detective-Constable waited.
‘It’s me birthday,’ Kenny blurted out. ‘Today.’
‘Many happy returns. Where do you work?’
‘Haven’t got a job at the moment.’
‘Unemployed,’ the Detective-Constable said, writing it down. ‘Have you ever been in trouble before?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Have you ever been in trouble before? With the police.’
Kenny swallowed. ‘I was picked up one time at Rochdale football ground.’
‘Were you charged?’
Kenny looked up at him and then down at the table. ‘I’m not sure. I wasn’t fined or anything like that. I have to see the Juvenile Liaison Officer every month.’
‘Right. Yes. What about outside Rochdale? Have you ever been in trouble, you know, anywhere else?’
‘No,’ Kenny said, almost a shade too quickly. He had nearly said Luton, almost wanted to say it. It was frightening how easy it was to give yourself away, as though something was urging you to confess everything. He lit another cigarette (his last one) and used it as camouflage to draw several deep steadying breaths. They must have got him mixed up with somebody else. They were polite enough; it was only routine; they wouldn’t be so polite if it was anything serious.
The constable with the neat black moustache was looking at him quite openly. It seemed to Kenny that he almost smiled. They were friendly blokes, really, not all that much older than him. They were probably married, with children: ordinary straightforward blokes in suits and uniforms. He felt his confidence returning.
The Detective-Constable said, ‘What’ve you done with the money?’
Kenny stopped breathing. He couldn’t answer the question because he hadn’t the faintest idea what the Detective-Constable was on about. There hadn’t been any money in the Liberal Club. Then he felt relieved; they really had confused him with somebody else. It was all right, they’d made a mistake. He felt like telling them they’d made a mistake, but instead he said:
‘I haven’t taken any money.’
The constable opened the door, poked his head into the corridor, and closed the door again. Kenny noticed that he was practically as tall as the door.
The Detective-Constable said, ‘We hate fucking liars: you’re a fucking liar.’
‘I’m not,’ Kenny said, ‘honest.’
‘On the 4th of January – a Friday – you did four meters on Bury Road. You broke in four flats and took seventeen quid from the meters. Right? This is a statement.’ He pushed a sheet of paper across the table. ‘Sign here,’ and laid a pen beside it.
‘Weren’t me,’ Kenny said. ‘Honest. I wasn’t in Rochdale that night. I was in Heywood—’
‘At the Seven Stars,’ the Detective-Constable said. ‘You got the bus to Rochdale, got the eleven o’clock bus up to Bury Road and broke in four flats and robbed the meters. Right? Anything else you want to tell us?’
‘Weren’t me.’
‘Keep your fucking voice down,’ the Detective-Constable said very quietly.
Kenny was suddenly furious. He controlled it inwardly but his stomach ached with the effort. She’d told them everything. He couldn’t think. He had to tell them something quickly to make them believe he hadn’t been there. He had to keep on saying he hadn’t been there and eventually they would have to believe him. But why him, why had she done this to him? He couldn’t credit it.
‘Sign the statement,’ the Detective-Constable said. ‘Right? Don’t give us any pain.’
Kenny dropped his cigarette on the floor and put his heel on it.
‘Pick that up,’ the constable said. Kenny picked it up and held it in his hand.
The Detective-Constable was looking at him across the table. The hairs in his nostrils were vibrating gently with his breathing. His shirt collar was starched and spotless, the tie in a precise triangular knot. He sighed almost imperceptibly and glanced up at the constable, muttering something that Kenny didn’t catch. The constable came round the table behind the chair and leaned over him, his chin almost on Kenny’s shoulder. There was a strong smell of aftershave.
‘Laddie,’ he said, ‘we can’t waste any more time on you. Sign the statement as you’ve been told. Don’t be a cunt all your life.’
‘It weren’t bloody me,’ Kenny protested.
‘You yobboes,’ the constable said softly. ‘You are as thick as pigshit. You are a prize cunt. I’ve sorted more of your lot out than you’ve had hot dinners. Now are you going to sign that statement – I’m asking you nicely – or do we have to make you sign it?’
Kenny stared at the piece of paper. The cigarette butt had crumbled in his fingers and bits of charred tobacco were falling to the floor. ‘I’m not—’ he said, and the constable lost his temper and hit Kenny so hard that he fell off the chair on to his knees. The blow had been on the upper arm, right on the muscle, and his entire arm went numb. The constable kicked him on the buttocks and Kenny rolled across the floor. The two of them picked him up and Kenny was astounded at the hate in their faces. It didn’t seem right to him, such hatred from these clean young men. They were married and probably had kids of their own. Surely if he asked them to be reasonable …
He found himself standing against the wall while the Detective-Constable took what seemed ages aiming a fist at his stomach; Kenny was watching his eyes as it came and he remembered that his main feeling was one of complete mystification that this young man who had walked along the Esplanade with him should be actually doing this. Kenny was angry – part of him, that is, was angry – but so frightened that the fear seemed to have drained his arms of all strength. He was afraid that if he retaliated they might do something really terrible to him. He was hit repeatedly on the arms and ribs (places where it wouldn’t show) and kicked on the shins and ankles. At one point he thought he was going to cry but managed to hold it back. After five minutes or so the two young men, panting a little, sat him down on the chair and the Detective-Constable started pushing Kenny’s head forward until his nose was resting on the paper.
‘Today is Friday.’ The Detective-Constable was slightly flushed and breathing unevenly. ‘If you don’t sign the statement now we’ll keep you here over the weekend. You’ll sign it Monday.’
His head still bowed, Kenny said, ‘What will you do to me if I sign it?’
‘What will we do to you if you don’t sign it?’
‘Can you write?’ the constable said. He took hold of Kenny by the scruff of the neck and jerked him upright. ‘Did anything penetrate that thick skull of yours at school?’ He gave a little snort of derision. ‘Seventeen quid. That’s about your mark, you thick twat. Come on, sign.’
Kenny wrote his name on the dotted line at the bottom of the paper.
He felt relieved somehow but he also felt physically sick. It wasn’t that he was badly hurt – just that he wanted to go home. He couldn’t think of anything better at this moment than to be sitting on the settee watching Les Dawson on the telly. He thought of Margaret sitting there in the flickering darkness and Kat eating Rice Krispies out of a bowl and his eyes filled with tears. He really thought that he was never going to see them again. That life had gone forever. His future was confined to this room and these two young men and him with a pen in his hand staring at a piece of paper with his name on it. All the alternatives had narrowed down to just this one: Kenny Seddon on his own without a friend in the world. He thought for a moment, wildly, that it was all a terrible dream; then he remembered he had no cigarettes left and knew that this time it was for real.
Rochdale Observer, 27 February 1974
FAMILY TROUBLE LED
‘REJECTED’ YOUTH
TO THEFT – SOLICITOR
REJECTION by his father and disharmony in his family led a seventeen-year-old youth to court, a solicitor told Rochdale borough magistrates on Monday.
B______ P______ W______of Sandridge, Ashfield Valley, admitted breaking into the Air Training Corps hut in Ashfield Valley and stealing £2.50 worth of property and cash.
W______ told police he climbed into the hut through an open window after removing wire mesh from the frame. A friend told him it was easy to get in.
Mr S. J. Greenwood, defending W______, said: ‘He has been rejected by his father for most of his life. His mother has left home and he doesn’t know where she is. His previous court appearances, as a juvenile, were because of the disharmony which resulted in the family.’
W______, said Mr Greenwood, lost a job in January, got another as a roof tiler and was then made redundant.
Police questioned W______ with a juvenile at W______’s home and were told: ‘We haven’t done anything wrong.’ But a pair of drumsticks, a cap badge, a blazer badge and £1.25 were found in his possession and he admitted breaking into the hut.
W______ was sent to a detention centre. The juvenile was allowed bail and is to appear before the juvenile court on Friday.