Gang War

by Graham Johnson

  Haden’s there. Britain’s first crack dealer, trying to get back on his feet with Dean’s wages. Dylan recognises him from the night in the park when he chopped up One Arm. Haden doesn’t get onto Dylan because he had a hood on that night. He spends his free time doing weights in the gym, wearing a dirty leotard and an acid-house bandana, chatting shit about back home, like how B&Q’s a bit pricey if you’re doing up your house.

  There’s not much to do in the day. They just laze around watching the satellite. All the grafters in Holland have got Sky boxes so they can watch all the same shit they watch back in England. ‘Need little things like that, don’t you?’ Wade says. ‘To make life comfortable when you’re on campaign.’

  One afternoon, Ste Ellis suddenly jumps up. ‘Shall we all go fishing?’ So they all troop out to go fishing in the canal, swigging cans of lager. But Ste keeps getting paranoid about a Dutch angler who repeatedly uses the wrong bait. ‘Definitely customs, him,’ Ste says. In the end, he phones Dean to tell him that he thinks they’re under surveillance by a plain-clothes officer disguised as a fisherman. Dean laughs and tells him that he’s off for a massage.

  The next day, they all go ratting around the dykes. Dean comes along to take a look at the suspect fisherman. He brings the Neapolitan mastiffs that he’s just bought as guard dogs. He’s on the phone all the time, first to a South American scrap dealer who’s selling them X-ray-proof lead ingots so that they can drill them out in Venezuela and stuff them up with a tonne of cocaine each. Meanwhile, Yorkshire Phil is setting the dogs on the wildlife in the scrub. They’re chasing otters up the muddy banks and crunching their heads. Then Dean rings up a Bulgarian feller to tell him off about a winery he’s bought outside of Sofia.

  Suddenly, they see the moody angler by the canal again. Stephen sets the dogs on him straight away. ‘Now we’ll see if he’s kosher,’ he says. The dogs maul his face. Yorkshire Phil pushes him in the canal and throws his flask and keep net in after him. Dean is still doing business on the phone, has to cover the handset and say, ‘Don’t be doing that, you pricks. You’ll bring it on top for everyone.’ He climbs out the other side with his cheek hanging off from the dog bite, in shock. It turns out the feller’s not customs after all, but a sheet-metal worker from Ostend enjoying a few days off. Yorkshire Phil tries to say he’s sorry from the other bank. Ste robs his rod. Then they all head back, still swigging lager.

  That evening, Dylan fills up the plastic roof of an old Land Rover with vacuum-packed skunk and drives it to the Hook of Holland to hand it over to some lads from Bolton.

  Next day, Dean’s sat in the jacuzzi in the tasteless pine-panelled gym under the mansion. The water’s foamy and greasy because none of the lads ever clean it, jizzum and hair-dye stains from the cheap brasses Stephen uses all up the sides. The steam room and sauna is dark and dusty because no one has sussed how to work it. Damien’s in there putting a new bulb in one of the ’70s-style heat lamps. He’s a divvy doorman with a stripy top on and a fierce false smile, suck-holing Dean for more graft.

  Svetlana, Dean’s favourite brass, swans in, a purple silk dressing gown clinging to her small tits. She’s got a little pot belly but she’s as fit as a fiddle. She starts arranging her things on the pine rack – johnnies, massage oil, KY jelly, hand cream, a nice Dutch dildo that Dean likes to get stuck up her if he can’t shag her cos he’s on the phone.

  ‘Gonna get blew off in a minute, mate,’ he tells Damien.

  Damien puts his stepladder down and says, ‘Best way, isn’t it, mate?’

  Dean has arranged to have his new Merc delivered straight from the factory. He says that he never buys a car from a showroom now cos it gives the bizzies a chance to put a listening probe in. He’s sending a private detective he knows to pick the car up from Germany. Dylan says he’ll go as well. Him and the private detective drive it back to Holland. Turns out the PI is an ex-para. Dylan tells him about when they used to fight the paras in the Gang Exclusion Zone. The feller says that it’s calmed down a bit now back home. Says that the Government have got what they want now. The army’s in seven cities now and the police forces are all armed, with special powers of arrest. There’s a new division of militarised police that’s half army, half bizzies, ‘like the Carabinieri,’ he says.

  After they bring it back to the villa, the PI strips the car down and scans it to make double sure. Then Dean asks him to debug the mansion. It turns out he’s able to track people down as well. Dylan asks him to find Elizabeth, but two weeks later he says that there’s no trace of her. Dylan gives him a good drink for trying and says that if he ever does get an address, he’ll pay 30,000 euros for it.

  CHAPTER 32

  FRANCE

  One of Dean’s partners turns up from back home, a drugs financier who puts up millions to underwrite shipments. His hair’s in a greying wedge he must have had since the 1980s, but he’s well groomed, sporting casual golf wear from Florida. Dylan’s onto him straight away: shrewd ex-docker type, started off by grafting out of the port, been en route from day one.

  Dylan’s met a lot of higher-ups but the banker’s in a different league. Most heavy hitters are on a conveyor belt: graft, make brewster’s, go to jail; come out, graft, make brewster’s, go to jail; come out, graft, make brewster’s, and so on. But this one’s done less jug than Dylan and Nogger put together and he’s three times older. Even the taxman back home can’t get on him.

  The banker asks Dean to send a worker down to Paris to make a bank transfer. Dylan’s spider sense goes into overdrive. France means Elizabeth. Dean asks the lads for a volunteer. They’re in the kitchen, eggs and bacon on the go, keeping their heads down. None of them wants to do the business. France is too on top for their moody passports and false IDs these days. ‘Especially for messing around in banks,’ moans Yorkshire Phil. They’re scooting about and making themselves look busy now that there’s proper graft to be done.

  Dean goes off on one, calls them shithouses, says he doesn’t fucking know why he pays them so much to sit around, to go fishing, when there’s graft on the go. Then to save face, he ribbons Yorkshire Phil in front of the banker and the lads, tells the banker how Yorkshire Phil took his bird with him to help him buy a new car. ‘Can you believe that? Taking your bird with you to buy a car. He’s backward.’ Guffawing from the lads. Yorkshire Phil blows up crimson, sheepishly not looking up from his frying pan full of eggs.

  The banker shakes his head. ‘You take your mates with you to buy a car, not your bird.’ He taps his foot against the side of the kitchen table, mug of tea on the go, hands in his slacks, pretending he’s doing a bit of tyre-kicking.

  ‘And that’s not the worst of it,’ says Dean. ‘Holding hands with her, he was, yesterday. On the couch. In the daytime. Can you believe that?’

  ‘I’d sack the lot of them, Dean. I can’t believe what I’m hearing.’

  Dylan sees his opening, butts in: ‘I’ll go to Paris for youse. Give us the paperwork and I’ll front it.’ The lads are sniding looks at Dylan, jealous of him because he doesn’t even look like he’s trying to suck-hole.

  The banker turns to him suspiciously. ‘You’re the lad who Paul sent over, aren’t you? The one that was involved in the accident.’

  Dylan says fuck all about that, just asks him, ‘D’you want your graft doing or what?’

  Dean smiles. The banker takes out a bank statement, scribbles some instructions down on the back. ‘Once you’ve read that and got your head round the numbers, give the piece of paper back to Dean.’ He looks Dylan in the eye. ‘And I mean memorise the accounts before you go. Ring it in when you’ve done it.’

  ‘Nice one, Dylan,’ says Dean, laughing. ‘I knew I could rely on you.’

  Dylan gets off early doors the next day. It’s still dark when he leaves. He jumps a sea-green bendy bus. The day-glo sign on the front says Schiphol. It winds through the thin, spindly streets, passes the canals and the rows of bikes. Black skies over the flat roofs.

  Schiphol’
s busy with backpackers and school trips, kids crashed all over the departure lounge. A few business types are propping up the breakfast bars, drinking beers and eating cheese rolls. Dylan feels tired and trippy, his mouth dry, off the early start, but the space-age fountains and modern art wake him up a bit. He pays cash for a mid-morning flight to Charles de Gaulle, breezes through security with a mad Jersey passport stamped up with a jarg Schengen visa.

  In Paris, he checks into the Hotel Costes first off, but quickly decides the other guests are sneering pricks – a few footballer-player types in there. It’s too high profile, anyway. So he gets off to the Normandy Hotel to get lost amongst the tourists. He sits off in his room, curtains blowing in the warm air, then lazes around in the brasseries near the Opera and Bastille.

  Dylan takes a walk past the bank and goes through the drill. The graft looks straightforward. A transfer from the Dutch Antibes to Paris, 22 million euros. Dean and the Banker wouldn’t tell him what it was about, but he collared Wade on the sly before he left to see if he thought it was too mad, to ask him if he was being set up. Wade told him that it was ‘pretty safe’, as long as Dylan looked and spoke the part.

  ‘What d’you mean?’ Dylan asked.

  ‘Listen, you’re not going over the counter, lad. It’s white-collar stuff. You’ll be all right. It’s money-washing, that’s all. Pinging money between one computer and another. But the older ones won’t go near it in case someone’s following the money. Plus Dean is half-caste and this is a white man’s game. Stick a white boy in front of the bank manager – that’s what he’s used to. You’ve just got to fill in a few forms and wait around until the dough lands. Fill in a few more, then send it on to wherever they want it stashed.’

  Dylan was still a bit suss. ‘What if it goes wrong and I’m stuck inside the bank?’ Thinking about it in the cold light of day, after he’d said he’d do it, his arse had gone a bit. It was a big risk to take just to hang around in France on the off chance he might bump into Elizabeth.

  ‘It’ll be all right if you do it right,’ Wade reassures him. ‘Don’t go in like a scruff. Pretend you’re an accounts clerk for a big company or something like a cashier, who does this day in, day out. The bods in the bank won’t give a fuck as long as the paperwork looks shipshape and they’re getting their wire fees and all that bollocks.’

  Wade filled him in on the back story. Dean had got stuck with 40 million pounds’ worth of out-of-date Dutch guilders that he couldn’t change over when the euro had come in 2002.

  ‘Wow, fuck’s sake,’ said Dylan.

  ‘Telling you, they’d kept their money in guilders and not pounds for storage reasons. Back then, guilders came in 1,000 fl. notes worth around £300 each – high-denomination notes so the cash piles were smaller and could be moved round or buried easier. They thought they were being clever but they got caught with their pants down big-style when the Euro came in and they had all this buried dough that couldn’t be changed up.’

  ‘So what’s that got to do with me?’

  ‘They’ve paid a little crew of ex-Dutch marines to take the old guilders bit-by-bit over to the Dutch Antibes, where some dodgy banks’ll still change them up – but at a huge loss. The hard graft is getting it wired back into the Eurozone and cleaned up. So that’s you. That’s your graft. When it lands in Paris, you’ve got to sign the paperwork to get it sent off again, on to fuck knows where, so that the trail is clean. D’you get me?’

  ‘I get you.’

  Before Dylan left, Dean offered to get him make-upped up with a prosthetic mask specially made by some pop-video people they knew in Belgium. But Dylan thought it would look even madder, sitting in a smoked-glass bank in Paris with a mad mask on. So he laughed and said no. ‘Just in case you felt a bit exposed,’ Dean said, ‘sitting in there on your tod. Just looking out for you, kidder.’

  Dylan wanders round the Left Bank near the Sorbonne, hoping he might see Elizabeth, pining to see her badly now. But nothing. He phones up a few places, a few universities, runs her name by the offices. But no joy because he doesn’t speak French. He gets fucked off by snooty French women cos he’s a bit nervous on the phone.

  Then he gets back to the graft, goes and buys a nice 800-euro suit from a decent shop on the rue Saint-Honore. Gets it fitted properly, double-cuff shirt, silk tie, decent pair of slippery-soled brogues. He goes for a shave, sauna and steam at a posh health club he’s found in the 2nd arrondissement, near the Stock Exchange. He still looks young, but he’s half smart now.

  The first visit to the bank goes off OK. He’s shown into an old office. Everyone speaks English. Dylan reactivates the account the banker told him about. It’s in the name of a wine-shipping company that has offices in France, Bulgaria and Chile. Dylan scans the recent transactions while he waits. Four million euros came in from Chile two weeks ago. And before that 7.2 million from a big leisure chain in the Bahamas. Dylan guesses they’re jarg transfers, legit money pumped through the account so it looks live and on the up and up. Dylan goes through the instructions, telling the woman that he’s expecting a deposit of 22 million to land overnight, that he wants to move it on to the Bank of Sofia in Bulgaria. They fill in the computer forms together. The private banking manager tells him to come back in 24 hours.

  He buys a second set of business clothes in case they think he’s a scruff. But when he scopes the bank out the next day, he notices that it’s a different woman at the desk he went to before. He spied the guards on the doors, whom he hadn’t noticed yesterday.

  He gets Dean on a safe sat phone number he’s been given, bells him from a bar opposite the bank. ‘I’m telling you, it’s on top.’

  ‘What are you on about?’

  ‘It’s not the same bird that was here yesterday, for a start. It’s what’s going on in the background, as well – security, all sorts. Just doesn’t feel right, d’you know what I mean?’

  Dean is calm, placatory: ‘Listen, just go back in, will you, finish the fucking thing and come home? It’s safe. You’re imagining all this shit. We’ve been monitoring it from this end and there’s no red flags. It’s just nerves cos you’re not used to this kind of graft.’

  ‘Fuck off, Dean. Something’s gone skew-whiff, telling you.’

  ‘It’s just the peasant in you. If I was asking to go over the pavement on it, you’d feel comfortable. That’s what you’re used to. But because it’s business, proper fucking graft, you’re fucking flummoxed by it.’

  Maybe he’s right. Or maybe Dean isn’t arsed whether he gets nicked or not. Maybe Dylan’s expendable. Either way, Dylan can’t lose face in front of the lads. And if he backs out now, there’ll be untold, not only for him but for Nogger and Jay as well. They’ll either have to get on their toes or go back home, back into the Gang Exclusion Zone again, and deal with the Chalina thing. The spectre of the accident is a distant memory for him now. Strange how he hasn’t thought about Chalina for months, as though it never happened.

  He marches into the bank, right over to the foreign bureau, to the different woman. She’s polite but firm, almost off-hand, speaks English. He signs the forms, she gets off. Dylan clocks the two security guards at the sliding doors. Foreign Legion types. They’re wearing earpieces but they’re unarmed. Dylan has to try hard to resist staring them out. He picks up copies of Paris Match and Newsweek to distract him while he waits.

  The woman returns with two men and introduces one of them. ‘There’s an issue with your account,’ she says. ‘Would you care to step into the office?’ Dylan thinks about making a run for the sliding doors. He might make it through the exit. At a push, he could ask to go for a piss and slip out. Tell them he has to move his car, whatever. But he thinks about the 22 million dangling there. He thinks about Chalina. His stomach churns. What would happen if he lost Paul, Dean and the banker 22 million euros? He could run. But Nogger and Jay would get dropped for sure. Tortured, dropped and burned. And Richard would love to do it.

  Dylan fronts it out. Into the o
ffice. ‘Would you like something to drink?’ the woman asks him.

  Dylan fucks her off. ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘It’s not a problem as such. For now, anyway. It’s purely administrative. We’ve noticed the recipient account has been dormant for a while, except for a couple of recent deposits.’

  ‘Yes. So what?’ He doesn’t know what the fuck she’s on about. The two men stand behind the woman, one looking over her shoulder at the computer, the other grim-faced.

  ‘The account history is mostly concerned with transactions of a global nature – international transfers, some of which pass through unusual territories.’ Dylan says nothing. ‘We’ve noticed that the status of the account hasn’t been reviewed for some time.’

  ‘Yeah? What’s your point?’

  ‘Well, our personal banking arm can offer you a free review that might help save you and your company money.’

  The cunts want to sell him insurance to guard against wire fraud or money getting frozen in dodgy banks. Dylan fronts it out. After fifteen minutes of spiel from the two men he buys eleven grand’s worth of insurance and opens a premium online account that costs thirty-five hundred a year in fees. ‘Just charge it to the account,’ he says as he shakes hands with the salesman. The woman comes back with confirmation that the 22 million has been sent on to Sofia.

  Everyone’s happy. Dylan’s buzzing.

  Near the hotel, Dylan does three go-rounds of the neighbourhood to make sure he’s not being followed, then he phones Dean on a pay-as-you-go number he’s been given.

  ‘Sorted.’

  ‘Told you, didn’t I? You little arse bottler,’ says Dean, chiding him for nearly crumbling on the job.