by V E Rooney
Possibly in a revenge attack for that revenge attack, one of Powell’s lads got shot himself when a gang burst into a gym in Bootle and let him have it. The lad only had a superficial wound but in revenge for that, Powell’s lads tracked down one of the shooters and almost knifed him to death outside a pub in Fazakerley.
That in turn led to even more revenge attacks, attacks which weren’t officially sanctioned. Sometimes lads from rival crews would literally bump into each other in various bars and clubs and mass brawls would break out. One time, one of Powell’s lads bumped into one of Vinny’s lads in a fucking Iceland supermarket and they stabbed each other over the frozen pea freezer. It was only a short jump from that to proper drive-bys, with cars chasing each other through the narrow streets of the city centre, shots ringing out and innocent passers-by diving for cover.
Obviously, all this aggro is making the busies twitch and the gangland bosses even twitchier. Nobody wants to turn the temperature up this way because sooner or later, it’ll become too hot to move drugs or guns around. Jimmy certainly has a talent for making enemies, put it that way.
A few weeks after the showdown at Taylor’s, something happens which in effect is the definitive declaration of war on Sean by Jimmy.
Ste was working out at a gym in Speke, owned by one of Paul’s mates, a place which is a favourite gossip shop for bouncers in the know. It wasn’t a flash place, just a bog-standard weights and boxing place, but various crew lads were often in there during the day, catching up with each other’s news, who twatted who, who fucked who, the usual stuff lads talk about in between repetitions.
Ste and one of the other Taylor’s bouncers were in there spotting each other on the weights. Ste was lying on the bench about to pull a rep down when a motorbike helmet-clad fella walked in with a sawn-off and fired it at Ste without any warning. Ste got hit on his right thigh, fell to the ground and despite the agonising pain he was in, managed to make a tourniquet from a towel to stem the blood loss. The fella with the sawn-off ducked out of the door as quick as he had come in and he did a dusty on a motorbike driven by an accomplice. The other lads in the gym had all hit the floor, fearful that they would be hit next. But one of the lads had recognised the shooter – Eddie, Powell’s top gorilla. Ste’s mate wasn’t inclined to call the busies or an ambulance and instead rang Sean.
Next thing, Sean, Richie, Paul, Lee and I turned up along with some of the other lads as back-up. We bundled Ste into one of the cars and drove Ste to a cash-in-hand doctor that does favours for Sean every now and then. I stayed with Ste while the doctor sorted him out and stitched him up. I was in a right state. I couldn’t bear to see Ste like that. It’s weird. You don’t think of blokes that big being able to feel pain, but he was crying and whimpering the whole time. Almost broke my hand, he was holding it so tightly while the doctor worked on him.
The doctor saved his leg, said it was mostly superficial flesh wounds with a few muscle lacerations. I wondered if Eddie had missed on purpose, was trying to warn him, but I knew in all likelihood he was probably just a crap shot. Ste was meant to be dead.
Ste’s injuries meant that he would need to rest up for about a month. And rest up well away from Liverpool. Powell wanted him dead. It was too dangerous for Ste to stay there.
And so, on a miserable Sunday morning, with the weather as bleak as my heart, I said a long, tearful goodbye to Ste at Speke Airport. He was jetting off to Spain to lay low for an indefinite period and would be linking up with Sean’s crew members over there. He’d still be in the loop, still in the game, but far, far away from me. And it was killing me.
We sat at the departure gate, looking to the world like girlfriend and boyfriend, but neither of us really able to define what it was that made us, well, us. Something special that can’t be defined by mere words. I tried to be cheerful, kept winding him up about hot-headed Spanish women not taking any of his crap, kept making out I wouldn’t miss him but I couldn’t keep the pretence up.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Ste. This is all my fault,” I said, trying not to cry.
“Eh, you. You pack that in right now, do you hear me?” he chided me as he gave me a cuddle. “As fucking gobsmacked as I am to hear you say the word ‘sorry’, you’ve got nothing to be sorry for. You didn’t kick this off, girl. You’ve got nothing to be blamed for.”
“What am I going to do without you? I’m gonna miss you loads, you know that, don’t you?” I say, getting the words out but beginning to choke.
“Fucking hell, it’s not like I’m going to fucking Mongolia, is it? It’s only bloody Spain. And you’d best get your arse over there to come visit me, you got that?” he said, blinking back tears of his own.
We hugged and held each other until he was called forward to board the plane. He ruffled my hair, I ruffled his, we kissed and then held hands until our fingers slipped apart. As he disappeared down the jetway, I made my way to the windows of the departure gate to watch his plane take off. I had no clue where he was sitting on the plane and he probably couldn’t see me anyway, but it didn’t matter.
My heart lurched forward and my stomach sank as his plane left the tarmac and disappeared into the clouds. Then the tears began to roll down my cheeks. They didn’t stop until the next morning.
If I could, I would wring Powell’s neck with my own hands. Because of him, Ste had to flee the country, taking away my rock, my only real connection to my former life before I got mixed up in the big time. But maybe it’s Sean I should be directing my ire at. We’re all only here because of him. But then I tell myself off. Choices, Ali. You made your choices, Ste made his and this is where those choices have led to. It’s all part of the game, girl.
As much as Sean would like to take Powell out himself, the ramifications for everyone would be disastrous – enough attention from the busies and Powell’s Turkish backers to put a halt to everyone’s business. For the first time since I met Sean, I begin to doubt his judgment. This man is not afraid to take the fight to his enemies but with Powell, I sense that Sean is having to keep himself in check. He can’t exact revenge in the way he wants. He’s holding himself in. And that annoys me. Jimmy Powell needs to be punished. I can’t wait for karma to kick in. That would take too long.
Sean once said that good teamwork was about working with people you couldn’t stand for the greater good. Putting coke deals together of this size, cost and complexity means that occasionally, you may have to call upon people you normally wouldn’t piss on if they were on fire. If they have something you need, then you need to leave your ego behind in order to get what you need. And if that means we have to join forces with Jimmy fucking Powell, I will have to swallow every bit of bile in order to do business.
We need Jimmy and he wants in with us. We need him because of his insiders at the container docks in Liverpool, which are in Jimmy’s patch, because they can wave through Charlie under the noses of the busies and the cuzzies, which means we don’t have to trek down to Felixstowe or Folkstone or Harwich or any of the southern ports which we use. Shipping Charlie directly into Liverpool cuts out a lot of complexity for us, and speeds up Charlie getting onto the streets, meaning that we get our money quicker. But in exchange for Jimmy’s access to the docks, we have to deal him in to our game. And he wants a very big stack of chips from us in return.
Tentative feelers have been put out between Sean and Jimmy and an agreement is reached for a meeting to take place on neutral ground. The meeting has been brokered by Sean’s biggest financier, a man who knows everyone there is to know in Liverpool and someone who is responsible for funding some of Sean’s earlier jobs and heists, putting Sean on the road to where he is today. This financier has also benevolently bestowed funds on other crims in the city, and occasionally he’ll try and put rival crims together if he thinks a job is big enough and promising enough.
I can’t give you this financier’s name. He’s too big and powerful for me to do that. If anyone let slip about the real identity of the financie
r, that hapless person would disappear in the flicker of an eye. You may have walked past the financier doing your weekly supermarket shop. He may have brushed past you at Lime Street Station. You may have paid no attention to the boringly average middle-aged man with his golf slacks and diamond pattern jumpers strolling past you in the pub. You would have no inkling whatsoever that this man is the banker to every major crim in the northwest of England, a man who is responsible for countless unsolved deaths and disappearances, a man even Sean is afraid of. Trust me, love, it’s best if you don’t dig too deeply into the financier’s real identity. Let’s just call him Mr Chips.
Mr Chips has been waiting for a deal like this his whole life. The coke game is the one area of activity he’s never been able to establish a foothold in and it burns him that he’s missing out on the action. So he and Jimmy have a lot in common, and they are both chomping at the bit to get Sean to deal them in. In reality, Sean has more than enough money to finance the coke deals himself – it just means a bit of bank account shuffling on my part but it’s feasible. But out of loyalty and respect, Sean wants Mr Chips to be one of the investors in this deal and Mr Chips has promised access to his vast array of sources and resources around the world to get the deal done.
The meeting is in a golf club in Lytham St Annes in Lancashire, on the coast in between Southport and Blackpool. It’s a genteel, laidback Victorian seaside resort, one of God’s waiting rooms, where pensioners retire to before they snuff it.
In the stuffy and formal restaurant of the golf club, tucked away in a private room in the back, I come face to face with Mr Chips for the first time. He knows who I am thanks to Sean but we have never had a reason to meet before now.
“Ah. Queenie,” he says, rising to his feet and giving me a perfunctory kiss on the cheek. “Thought it was about time I put a face to a name. Seanie boy speaks very highly of you,” Mr Chips says as he pulls my chair out so I can sit down at the large circular table.
“Likewise,” I say as Mr Chips pushes me into the table. “So you’re the infamous financier.”
At this, Mr Chips has a chuckle. “Financier? Bit of a fancy name for doling out the dosh every now and then. More like pocket money. And don’t be giving me any of your fancy codenames, alright love?” he says as he sits down and unfolds his napkin on his lap.
“You don’t mind hanging around with this boring old fart for a bit, do you, love?” he says in the manner of a jocular grandfather. “Sean and Jimmy are on their way. I thought you and I could have a bit of a chat. A pot of coffee, please,” he says to a nervous-looking waiter who has come in and is hovering around the table. The waiter leaves the room like his arse is on fire.
“Now then,” says Mr Chips as he pulls his chair into the table. “I’m a bit old-fashioned, I am. No, I’m very old-fashioned. I’m what you’d think of as a sexist dinosaur, love. That’s what my wife and daughters tell me, and I make no apologies for that. Back when I was a young lad, doing a bit of sneaky business down the docks, it was unheard of for birds – I’m sorry, women – to get their hands dirty in the way that you do. I’m old school, love. Let men be men and women be women, that’s what I say,” he says, looking at my suit jacket and skirt.
“If a young girl like you had been around in those days, trying to get in on one of my jobs, I’d have laughed at her, told her to do one. But,” he says as he pours some water into my glass, “even an old fart like me knows that times have to change and people have to change to keep up with them. Don’t get me wrong, love. Sean? Top man. He’s always known what he’s doing and where he’s going. And he’s done well for himself, with a little help from me when he first got started, of course. I saw potential, you see. He wasn’t like all those other scrotes in Toxteth, wasting their lives smoking their wacky baccy and what have you. He had ambition. Discipline. Brains. So, when he told me the little tale of stumbling across you and your little enterprise, I knew he’d found someone similar to him. He sees the same things in you that I saw in him all those years ago. And let’s make no bones about this, love. You and Sean are a formidable team. I can see that. Give credit where credit’s due, that’s what I say. Thanks to him and you, all of us are in a stronger position. And we’re now in a position to become unbeatable. You do know that, don’t you, love?”
“Absolutely,” I say. “Spotting opportunities and getting in there before anyone else is what it’s all about.”
“Mmm,” he says, nodding. “Then you’ll also know that sometimes, when you want to maximise those opportunities, you have to put competitive differences aside.”
“Which means working with Jimmy Powell,” I say, nodding back at him.
“It’s about identifying people’s individual strengths, and matching them in a complimentary way,” Mr Chips says, dovetailing his hands together. “Don’t get me wrong, love. Jimmy isn’t my favourite person by any means. He’s rubbed a lot of people up the wrong way. But he has his strengths, just like Sean has his and you have yours. Put all those different strengths together? We’ll be unstoppable.”
Before I can respond, Mr Chips stands up to greet Sean and Jimmy who have now been ushered into the room. Sean’s face is like thunder whereas Jimmy is still the loud, lairy gobshite I remember from previous encounters.
“Look who I bumped into in the car park, eh?” says Jimmy, cocking his thumb at Sean as he swaggers over to the table. “Couldn’t believe he’s driving such a heap of shit. You need to give him a pay rise, mate,” sniggers Jimmy as he shakes the hand of Mr Chips and plonks himself down at the table. He looks me up and down.
“Alright, love?” Jimmy says cheerily. “You the secretary, I take it? You can take my minutes down any time. Haha!”
“Minute being the operative word there,” I mutter, using the other pronunciation. It takes all of my resolve not to swing for the bastard. I can’t get the image of Ste walking away at the airport out of my mind. All thanks to Jimmy. And now the filthy fucking cunt is sat no more than four feet away from me. I hope herpes or whatever STD is riddled through his dick right now isn’t airborne.
Sean sits down next to me and almost knocks over the water bottle in his haste to do something over than interact with Jimmy. Mr Chips leans forward, putting his elbows on the table and clasping his hands together.
“Lads? Thanks for coming today,” Mr Chips says, looking at Sean and Jimmy in turn. “Don’t get me wrong. I know you two have had your squabbles in the past. But it’s time to grow up and stop kicking lumps out of each other. Got that?”
Sean dips his head ever so slightly to signal his acquiescence to Mr Chips while Jimmy emits a snort of laughter. “Listen, mate. You’ve never had any arguments from me,” Jimmy says to Mr Chips, holding both his hands up. At this, Sean laughs openly. Jimmy shoots him a look of hatred but Mr Chips is on top of this playground spat.
“You’ve caused enough of them, Jimmy,” says Mr Chips as he cuts Jimmy off. Jimmy manages to take the hint and he shuts the fuck up. But Mr Chips hasn’t finished scolding him. “People getting shot and stabbed over some pissy little thing, causing mayhem on other people’s turf,” Mr Chips says irritably.
“Listen, mate,” says Jimmy in a cocksure manner that is already annoying the tits off me. “If you think I’m gonna let some fucking little scrote make inroads into my area? You can think again. I’ve worked fucking hard to build myself up these past few years. No thanks to you,” he says, glaring at Mr Chips. “I’m not gonna let some bunch of jumped-up twats take away what’s mine. And if I have to go stepping on people’s toes to protect my interests, then I’ll fucking step on them until I break them. And that goes for you and all,” Jimmy says, sneering at Sean.
“Protect your interests?” I say with incredulity. “There’s not much protecting going on from what I can see. Seems like you’re doing everything you can to wind people up. You’ve got enough of your own territory to cock your leg up at and piss on. And now you want to piss on everyone else’s.”
“Do me a fav
our, love,” Jimmy says, leaning forward and eyeballing me, “when I want your fucking opinion I’ll ask for it. So how’s about you shut the fuck up and let the men do the talking, eh?”
Am I daunted? Am I fuck. I lean forward and meet his glare head on. “Jimmy? I know it’s difficult for you to get your head round this but the 1970s are over. Women are allowed to speak now. Shock fucking horror. So don’t you ever fucking tell me to shut up again. And seeing as you’re so fucking wound up about settling scores, how about you settle your own scores instead of sending your fucking lapdog Eddie to settle things for you? We’ve lost a valuable member of our crew because of him. And you. And I take that very personally.”
Then Sean jumps in.
“She’s right, Jimmy,” Sean says, leaning forward himself and giving Jimmy his full-on don’t-piss-me-off face. Subconsciously, Jimmy leans back as Sean speaks to him. “Seems everyone else understands the game, except you. You’re like a fucking toddler, do you know that? Throwing fucking tantrums for no reason. You, sunshine, are a special kind of knobhead. A knobhead who’s stupid enough to get us all sent down. Fucking twat.”
“Hang on a minute,” shouts Jimmy. “I don’t have to listen to this off you. Yeah, Sean, yeah. You’re a big man now, aren’t you? You haven’t done bad, lad, I’ll give you that. But even you’ve got your weak points so don’t be sitting there thinking you’re invincible, gobshite, because you’re not.”
“And neither are you, you loud-mouthed fucking prick,” growls Mr Chips. “The trouble with you is that you don’t know when to stop, Jimbo. You let it all go to your head, showing off with your fucking Yank cars, walking around with half of H. Samuel jangling off your wrists. How many times have I told you that you keep a low profile? Instead you go round, pissing people off and risking unwanted attention. You’ve got your patch. Sean has his. There’ll be no more turf wars going on. It stops now, Jimmy. Do you understand that?” says Mr Chips in a way that leaves Jimmy with no uncertainty.