I get a letter from Rex. We’ve been writing to each other since he went bin.
Wagwan Snoopz,
Blood it’s good to hear from you fam I’m glad you ain’t forgot about me still because everyone else has I swear down. Blood niggaz have been living nice making dough forgetting bout Rex like I’m dead fam, it’s nothing though coz when I land road I’m moving to man on some greazy ting.
Snoopz even my bitch left man blood can you fucking believe it blood, even you thought she was real ah lie fam, it’s nothing though coz now I feel no love my hearts turned cold as Antarctica. Snoopz I will never forget our friendship and never ever ever will I forget what them Grove pagan pussyoles done to you fam man will get them youts trust me.
Blood you give man joke you remember how much ho’s I got, do you remember that lighty when man ate that yout at her house for the vouchers that shit was funny.
Fam I want the see-through Bapes or it could be the see-through Air Forces I don’t mind as long as they’re see-through fam.
Anyway man’s just bored in here fam I’m missing the roadz nuff I swear down blood I need some pussy badly. Blood I need to touch road fam coz certain man are trying to play gangster and move like I’m some prick coz I’m locked in here. I can’t wait to see them, I’m not saying no names coz I don’t want you to do nothing you get me blood.
Anyway you dun know
Gangster for Life
from Rex HMP Gangster #1
It’s mad how no one really writes letters any more. It’s all phone messages and emails and all that; words made up of the same recognisable digital letters for everyone. But when you go prison, you end up writing letters to people you care about and they write back to you and it reveals a secret part of themselves. It’s like handwriting is the most truthful part of a person or some shit. And the maddest ting is how you can know everything about your bredrin – his habits, his life, even his hopes – but you don’t know what his handwriting’s like until he goes pen and writes you a letter. I’m not sure what exactly it reveals, but it’s definitely something. We speak on the phone, since Rex got one smuggled in from early, but it’s the effort of letters that keeps us connected in a deeper way.
Rex sends me a V/O – a visiting order – and I take a train to Kent because he’s doing his bird in HMP Rochester. When I see him in the visiting room I feel bare happs. He bops over in some shiny multicoloured Bapes and he’s looking hella stocky. Brudda, we both say at the same time and then we sit down to chat and I tell him how I finally split up with Yinka. Really and truly she split up with me coz she couldn’t take how I didn’t want to live with her, I say and he says she wasn’t the one Snoopz, she wasn’t the one, fuck her anyway, and I say it’s well and truly over now. Then he looks at me and says I told you about Gotti didn’t I? I told you he couldn’t look me in the eye when we was chatting in my yard. I say I know brudda I know, and I pass my hand over my face as if I’m trying to rub the memory away. After an hour the visit is over and he says man’s only got five months left Snoopz, soon touch road my brudda and I say I can’t wait fam, we’re gonna ride out on these fake brers. Rex says course brudda, all we need is couple burners and the bike and it will be Rex and Snoopz on a greazy ting, but make sure you finish your uni first, don’t do anyting to anyone until I touch road.
So now it’s Friday and I have exactly a week left before I have to hand in my dissertation, my final major piece of work before the end of my degree. I haven’t even started it, but then I decide to go country for the weekend to shot work and buj. Bare man go country to shot food coz there’s bare nittys down there, feds are less on it than in London and there’s less competition. Get yourself a nice spot in cunch, pattern the ting, and eventually you can end up kicking back in London while your boys run the line. Or you can send workers to run it and all you gotta do is pay them a salary. So the food ting in all these seaside towns in England, like Bournemouth and Hastings and wherever, is usually controlled by mandem from the big cities. The south coast of England is all London man and then the further north you go you get mandem from Brum and Manny and Liverpool and so on. When there’s a shooting in one of these places that has pebble beaches and a pier with a funfair and arcades and all that shit, it’s almost always different teams from London beefing over the lines they’re running. Coz if too many teams get the same idea, there’s less nittys for each line, less profit and slower turnover. So sometimes a little war breaks out to establish who’s really running shit and all the locals are shocked and horrified – this kind of thing never happens round here, they all say.
I’ve decided that my dissertation is going to be called On the Morality of Murder in Hamlet, coz Hamlet is all about honour and loyalty and being tormented by the need for revenge. I haven’t started it yet but I’ve made bare notes and I’ve got bare Nietzsche quotes lined up. I’ve only got seven days to write 10,000 words but I always do this, I always wait till the last minute when the pressure forces me to act. It’s the most important part of my degree and obviously I’m not looking to flop. But then I get a call from Stranger and he tells me his boys in Hackney are looking for someone, preferably a white brer – coz if you’re white you’ll stand out less in these small places where the most multicultural thing they have is a Chinese takeaway – to go country with two g-packs of b and work, and dot it out over the weekend. We’ll get back on Sunday since their line bangs and the food should all be done by Sunday morning, says Stranger. The p they’re offering is decent and Stranger says I just want a drink, which means he’ll be happy with a little cut of what they pay me. We’ll be staying in a hotel room that’s already paid for, so why not? I could do with a break from London, sea air and alladat, and anyway I haven’t really had much excitement this year so I say I’m on it fam and he says cool, I’ll come pick you up and we’ll go link them man in Hackney to get the food.
We buck up with Stranger’s people in the hallway of one crumbling block in Hackney. Low yellow lights infecting the gloom and Stranger’s boy with a couple goons in puffer jackets with hoods up, watching me like they’re tryna work suttin out. The brer whose line it is gives me a Nokia 3310 and says I’ll be dinging you on this when the sells holla. All you gotta do is hit dem with whatever I tell you they want and I say calm. Skitzo’s gonna drive you down there, he says and nods at one of his boys. Then he gives Stranger the two g-packs, which is two grand’s worth of heroin and crack all wrapped up in £10 and £20 pebbles. He gives Stranger £250 and says that’s for you man’s hotel room and then we follow Skitzo to his whip.
It is late afternoon when we get to Folkestone, seagulls crying out as they glide through the air, sounding like a gang of children going me me me. We book the hotel room, Skitzo leaves us and the line starts ringing.
I’m in a nitty’s house in Folkestone with Stranger and we are sitting in the living room. The floor is covered in broken toys. There’s literally nowhere to step without treading on one. It looks like Father Christmas crashed here a year ago and abandoned the mission, I say to Stranger and he starts bussin up. The sell is one woman called Debbie. She comes into the living room holding some p’s and says let me get three light and two dark. She’s not yet finished by the habit. She still has this big yard, which isn’t ghetto or anything, and she obviously buys her yout loads of toys. But she’s on her way. Blonde hair, little black dress with a wrinkled cleavage pushed up in it and bare gold Argos jewellery hanging between her breasts. She’s wearing black thigh-length stockings and as she counts out the p’s, one of them rolls down to her calf and I can see blue veins running under the pale skin. She says something about how she’s gonna get a jacuzzi built in the garden. Before we leave, a little girl walks into the room, picks her way through the toys and goes over to a chest which she opens, revealing a pillow and some blankets, almost like a little bed. She picks up one of the broken toys, a Buzz Lightyear figure with his wings missing, smiles at us and climbs into the chest before closing the lid on herself.
D
uring the day I sit on a bench by the seafront with a copy of For Esmé with Love and Squalor – my favourite short stories by J. D. Salinger – and a bag of Skittles. Between pages of the book I’ve put thirty pebbles of work and I’ve eaten most of the Skittles and put a whole load of b into the packet. When a nitty comes up to me, I tell them to have a Skittle and shake out however many wraps of buj they want, or I open the book on a certain page which has the work tucked in and tell them to take what they paid for. Whenever I run out, I go back to the hotel room where Stranger is jamming and reload. Then back to the bench to wait for the next sell while the sun shatters into thousands of pieces that dance all over the sea into the distance.
Later I give a nitty and his girlfriend two rocks in exchange for driving me to hit sells in another part of town. We park up on one bruckdown-looking street and one brer with no top on comes running up to the driver’s window, which is open, shouts you fucking owe me you cunt and bangs my driver in the face. Blood hits the windscreen. Then he takes the keys out of the ignition and runs into a yard. My driver’s got a broken nose and his girlfriend is shouting that fucking dickhead he’s got no right, but they’re moving so scatty they can’t even explain what any of it was about. I get out of the car. Fuck it, I’m gonna have to go into that yard and get the car keys back. The door isn’t closed. The brer is sitting at a table in the living room with his top off, holding the car keys and smoking a roll-up. He fucking nicked me brown the cunt, he says as I walk in. Yeah well that’s got nuttin to do with me bruv, I say. I’m tryna do business. You taking the keys is gonna fuck up my business. So unless you want it to get real sticky, you need to let off with the keys. He doesn’t look at me. Then a brainwave. I say I’ll give you two dark for your trouble. He looks up at me and says you can’t make it three? I take two wraps of buj out and say no I can’t. He gives me the keys, I give him the b and walk out of the yard and get into the whip. Later, my driver parks up on a quiet residential street and starts piping up work with his chick. I leave them as thick white smoke unravels through the car.
By Sunday morning everything is finished, so Stranger and I jump on a train back to London. When we get to the block in Hackney we give the big man his p’s and the line and he says rah you did the ting proper still. I heard how you dealt with getting the car keys back as well, you done your ting. He gives me my cut and says so what, you ready to do this ting on Monday yeah? I say nah g I got uni work to do, I’m already behind with that shit as well. Skitzo says what? You’re tryna say you got better plans than making three bills a day? He licks his gold tooth as he looks at me and I say listen, I got way more important tings to do than this shit. I’ve got a fucking 10,000 word dissertation to write and I ain’t compromising that shit for no one. The big man laughs and says nah he’s a real one, respect my g, and he spuds me while Skitzo screwfaces the floor. Then the big man says anytime you wanna work with man again, just holla at me. It’s five in the afternoon so I go Westfield and buy myself a pair of patent leather Pradas before the shop closes.
It’s Monday morning. I’ve got exactly five days before I have to hand in my dissertation. Sitting at the dinner table in Plaistow, I force the words out. I write everything by hand before typing it up. Papers spread around me like dead leaves covered in snail trails of black ink. Every 2,000 words I reward myself with a zoot. Sometimes I lose track of what I’m tryna say. Sometimes I gotta stop myself from going off on one. There’s this next book I’ve decided to use as a reference: On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts. True though. If you think about all them gangster films, Tarantino and Scorsese and so on, people love to be entertained by murder. The right combination of coldheartedness, the character’s drive for revenge – and don’t forget the lighting. Special effects. The right balance of shadows. Watch it from your sofa or a seat in a cinema with some popcorn to munch on. But see the real thing on the news, fuck it, see it in real life and your insides will tremble and you’ll cover your face as if you could rub what you just saw out of your eyes. And then you’ll want to look again, fascinated by the ugly reality.
Thoughts spiralling out coz I’m bunning zoots, drinking Boost and not getting enough sleep while I write and write. And then, suddenly I’ve got only 2,000 words to go and I’m basically already there, just need to write a conclusion. In the end I manage to hand in my dissertation typed and ready, just in time for the deadline. I feel like it’s drained me of words and ideas, left me with only breath and movement. I need to sleep. Fuck it I need to throw away all my notes.
Rex gets out of pen just as I’m finishing it all.
I go to check him in Finsbury Park because he’s out on licence and the prison service put him in a bail hostel there, full of mandem who’ve just been released. I see him walking down the road towards me and something inside me flies up to the sky and I start grinning teeth. I go to spud him and he says come on brudda give me a hug, wa’um to you? We hug in the street while the sun polishes the sky and I look up and the world feels new for a second. I can feel all the bulk of muscle under his hoodie and I’m like rah brudda, you got some size on you and he’s like truss me Snoopz, man’s strong now, I can curl you like a dumbbell. I laugh and say whatever man and he picks me up like it’s nuttin, right there in the middle of the street, cars going past, lays all six foot of me across his arms and starts doing curls like a madman. I start bussin up and he says I told you brudda, they’re not ready for Rex, I’m back. Then I start to wish that I’d done all the moves with Rex and not with Gotti and the sadness comes back so I say come we go bun a zoot brudda.
The bail hostel is straight fuckery. Full of nittys. I can smell work and buj and sweat as soon as we go downstairs to his room. Rex says I swear down Snoopz, I can’t wait to leave this place and not have to sign myself in at the front desk and just be able to open my own door with my own key whenever I want. We start bunning, but he frasses out and goes to sleep after like five draws coz all he’s used to are them skinny jail zoots, not these fat cones full of loud that I’m always billing. I throw a blanket over him and leave the hostel.
The first thing he does once he’s settled into freedom is to go on a move with one crazy Tottenham yout called Demon who was his co-d in Rochester. They go and rob some traphouse in Manor House and when Rex comes back from it he gives me a watch that has a white gold spider covered in black diamonds set into the face and the bezel has bare tiny white diamonds around it and I’m like brudda you can’t give me this, you’ve just got out, you should keep it or shot it or suttin. Rex says nah Snoopz, that’s for you, you never forgot about man when I was locked up, you’re my brudda for life. He tells me how there were three man in the trap. How him and Demon kicked off the door and ran in there bally’d up with straps. How one of the youts jumped right out of the bathroom window before they could grab him. How they made the other two youts lie face down before taking their phones and watches and food and any p’s they could find. How before they left, Demon turned around, cocked his strap and aimed it slowly at the head of one of the youts who was lying on the floor and Rex had to grab his arm and say what’s wrong with you fam, why you so eager to kill, we’ve just got outta the bin. I say brudda you shoulda phoned me, I woulda been on it, and Rex says I did, but you said you was working on your dissertation when you answered the phone so I thought no point telling you coz you gotta focus on dat.
And then I graduate. After all the madness. BA in English. Imagine. I just missed out on a First in my dissertation as well. Rex comes to the graduation ceremony. He has P.O.M.E. freshly tattooed on his neck. Product Of My Environment. He stands around talking with my parents and Danny and then we take photos with me in my gown and mortar board. Everyone is smiling, grinning pure teeth.
AFTER CHRISTMAS
A YEAR AFTER getting my degree I start trapping. So does Capo. How else am I gonna pay for my pilot’s licence? he says.
It is Boxing Day evening and my mother and Danny are playing chess in the living room, warmed by a fire in the
fireplace that my father hacked out of the wall. He’d worked out where the chimney flue was – it wasn’t his idea, my mother always wanted one – and over the course of a week, he hammered the wall away to reveal the original fireplace. My mother often comes home with pieces of wood salvaged from skips, old chairs and planks to feed the fireplace.
Capo put me onto the cro ting, so I’ve built up a punk line selling big bits. But it’s when Rex hooks me up with Chizzle that it really pops off for me. I say obviously I’ll sort you out brudda, what do you want for it? And Rex says don’t be dumb Snoopz, I don’t want nuttin, I just wanna see you up – you’re my brother. Chizzle has a traphouse in Hounslow and he’s got the whole block on lock – a small building, about six flats in total – and he’s patterned it so that everyone living in there works for him in some shape or form. I’ve been dropping Chiz a box of punk every two weeks. Whenever I link him I can tell if he’s been bagging up coz he’s got hay fever and the dust from the punk makes him sneeze and his eyes puff up. He breaks the box down into draws and moves it all like that. A whole box – that’s 1,000 grams, broken down into 1.8-gram draws, shotting them for a score each and moving the whole ting in under two weeks. That’s pretty fucking impressive fam I said to him and Chiz said dun know my broski, man’s in the trap day and night, I don’t sleep.
I’ve been staying more often at my parents’ flat, spending a night or two each week and when they start asking too many questions, or I just want the space to do whatever I want, I go and stay at one of my bredrins’ yards. Things are going well, I bought everyone Christmas presents and the rest of my p’s are piling up at the back of the sock drawer in my old bedroom.
Who They Was Page 25