by John Macrae
I now had six .32 pistol rounds, converted to flat nosed dum-dum and pre-cut to 'blossom' on impact. None of them could go far and none of them would be totally accurate, but they would deliver a lot of foot-pounds over the short distances I intended to shoot. I tidied up, had a drink, listened to the news and went to bed. I slept like a log and only woke when the alarm went off next morning. I had no bad dreams.
* * *
I used a nondescript hire car next morning and parked it safely near my planned target area. I had dressed the part carefully; a theatrical grey wig, a walking stick and an old double breasted chalk stripe suit that I had picked up in an Help the Aged charity shop the previous weekend. Apart from my face, I now looked the part of a pensioner. Even the thin grey army surplus pilot's gloves added to the picture. To confuse the issue further I slipped a pair of glassless orange coloured horn-rimmed glasses on my nose, and stuck a bright plaster across my cheek. Any one trying to describe my face afterwards would remember those decoys, and not my real features. I slipped the pistol into my waistband, checked my watch and, head down, limped up the pavement.
If I felt any emotion, it was certainly not nervousness, or even a heightened awareness. I was calm, relaxed and quietly anticipatory. While I leaned against a lamppost to scan the street, out of curiosity I took my pulse. It was 65, stone cold normal. Somewhat surprised, I tottered to the end of the road. Nothing happened. There was a sprinkling of people going about their business in the windy streets, but not my targets. To keep it looking good I tapped my way to the Post Office and, still seeing nothing, drifted into the welter of bright boiled sweets and strident girlie magazines.
A cheerful Pakistani took my money for a packet of crisps and some chocolate bars. I kept my head down to avoid his eye and ignored the idle chatter. Clutching my brown paper bag, I bumbled back into the empty street and retraced my steps towards the spot where I had seen the yobbo gang yesterday. Apart from the occasional passing car, I saw nobody until I turned the corner into the seedy avenue. There, heads close together, a hundred metres away, three young faces turned to stare at me. A pair of red trainers gleamed like beacons. Like a gulp of brandy on a cold day a split-second glow of satisfaction coursed through my veins.
Gotcha!
I leaned against a wall, making a great act of wheezing and regaining my breath, while I transferred the pistol discreetly from my waistband to the brown bag. Then, head down, tapping my stick in the left hand, gripping a pistol behind a paper bag, I walked up the right hand pavement, closing on my unsuspecting victims, who continued to stare at me while talking urgently among themselves.
Although I kept my head down to mask my face and simulate age, I saw the hasty consultation before they split up. Grey Top leant ostentatiously against a vandalised phone box. This time he was wearing roller skates. Ready for action at the Post Office, I wondered? Red shoes, the girl, crossed the street and began to move past me on the left hand pavement. Sallow Face had performed his disappearing trick again. God knows how he did it. Leaning on the stick, puffing and bent, I assessed my targets.
Ten metres ahead, Grey boy blocking my path; safe cover on my right, a hard brick wall. Over the road and about twenty metres behind to my left was Red shoes, now stopped and watching. Otherwise the street was empty. Sallow face must have slid into the alley on my right alongside grey top Ivor, and was waiting out of sight there.
Easy: taking a firm grip on the pistol, I puffed up to the roller-skated youth in the grey top leaning against the phone box.
As I got level, he stood up straight and moved into my path, looking hard at me. To his obvious surprise I kept on walking, pretending not to notice him until I was almost at the entrance to the alley on the right. Grey Top Ivor on the roller skates leaned a thin arm against the wall to stop me. His eyes flicked into the alley and I heard the pad of running as Red shoes closed up from across the road from my left. Perfect! I had all three of the bastards trapped.
Trying to look surprised, I backed against the wall and straightened up. At that moment I had all three targets in sight as Sallow face Nelson emerged from the alley, a bottle in his hand two metres to my right. Grey boy spoke first, stepping towards me.
"Hey, Granddad, just give us yo' wallet, man ... " His voice trailed off as he saw my face properly for the first time. "Unless yo' wanta get beat some," he added in a less confident tone. He stared hard at my face, puzzled.
My back firmly against the wall, I brought the stick in my left hand up to the 'en garde' position, pointing at Red shoes. She screeched to a halt, shouting, "Belt him, Nelson. Belt him!"
The little semi-circle advanced on me, with sallow faced Nelson on my right raising the bottle. In contrast to the white snarls of the other two, his leer revealed surprisingly bad teeth, I noticed. The sparse black bum fluff framed yellow fangs.
I let the brown paper bag fall away, exposing the blue-black revolver, tight and small in my gloved hand.
For a split second the little tableau froze. Ivor, the tall one in the middle with the grey track suit, spoke first. "Oh, shit," he muttered. Nelson's bottle hovered, raised to strike. Snarling, he took a pace forward.
The CQB (Close Quarter Battle) instructors always say attack the first hostile movement as savagely and as quickly as possible. It will remove the immediate danger and should frighten off any other would-be heroes. The more violent and savage the first act, the greater effect it will have. At a range of about six feet, I swung hard right and shot Sallow Face Nelson in the middle of the visible target, as I had been taught, with two rapid shots. The 'cracks' sounded like fireworks and the over-charged revolver bucked in my hand.
His lunge forward stopped abruptly as if he had run into a brick wall, and his body jack-knifed backwards with the shock of the blossoming dum-dum bullets. The bottle fell slowly from his fingers and shattered against the pavement, its crash sounding louder than the pistol. His eyes bulged and gazed at me, horrified.
"Oh, Christ," he sobbed, "Oh, Christ ..."but his second curse choked off in a splutter as bright red blood spattered from his mouth and ran freely over his chin. He fell away and I swung left to where Ivor and the red-shoed girl they called Jelly stood petrified, mouths open, literally rooted to the spot with fear. I fired once straight ahead through Ivor's waving hands, at his lower belly, and the impact of the lead smashed him back against the wooden telegraph pole.
My aim was awful; his thigh was hit and as the roller skates slipped away, he pole-axed down yowling and clutching a dark stain on the grey tracksuited thigh.
I was conscious that I was shouting too; a stream of foul-mouthed abuse poured from my lips as the pistol swung hard left to fasten onto Red shoes. As if a spell was broken she turned to run. And she was fast. Taking my time, I raised the gun and sighted it carefully on her fleeing back, my arm outstretched in the classic duelling pose.
The first shot from the leaping pistol had no effect. I assumed I'd missed and carefully squeezed off a second, at which her arms flew wide as if crucified. Then the red shoes slowly seemed to melt into the pavement, her bottom half buckling under her as she ran, until finally she lay screaming and thrashing her arms on the ground, legs seized and motionless, like someone stuck in a quicksand.
We all stopped shouting and Ivor's groans sounded loud in the silence. I straightened up and looked around. The smell of cordite drifted in the air.
In front of me Ivor was lying, moaning, his blood-smeared hands desperately grabbing at the pulpy mass that had been an upper thigh, his back arched in agony against the telephone box. To my right, Nelson lay face down, ominously silent, in a widening puddle of blood that slowly crept over the broken sparkles of bottle glass. His fingers twitched spasmodically. He'd had two shots, Ivor one and the running Jelly Red shoes two. That left one left.
I walked over to Red Shoes strange form flailing the pavement from the waist up. She was fifteen paces away and I seemed to have plenty of time. Things seemed to go very slowly.
Avoid
ing the scything arms, I pulled her head back hard. Her anguished eyes stared up at me, wide-eyed in panic and terror. She stopped screaming. Had her mugged victims felt terrified like this, I wondered?
"I can't move," she said, and as I looked down I saw why. A small dark stain dead centre in his lower back marked where the single bullet had struck. It had been a good shot. Very good, considering. She twisted her head to look up at me. The eyes were wide with fear. "I can’t feel nuffing ..." The eyes pleaded.
I wasn't surprised; I reckoned the bullet must have lodged in her spine.
I remembered to speak Scots. "That'll teach you to go mugging innocent women and children, lassie. Not such a big brave fuckin’ girl now, are we…?”
She didn't seem to hear me. "Ah can't feel my legs ... " She started to cry
"Tough. D'ye remember the baby and the bleach? How d'ye think it felt? You shoulda stayed in school, girlie and not gone robbin’ with yer wee pals…Yer scum!” She dropped her head, wailing. I looked back up the avenue. A woman had appeared about a hundred yards away and was standing at her gate, head-craned to see what all the noise was about. I realised that I was still clutching the pistol, hanging down in my right hand, so I dropped it into my jacket pocket and loped back to Ivor at the pole. His thumbs were pressed into the top of his thigh. Sweat beaded his face as he looked at me, wide-eyed.
"Why, man? Why do you do it?" He squeezed his eyes with pain.
I stood over him. I wanted him to remember the message and the accent. "You know why, Ivor."
He groaned. "Are you a pig, man?"
"No, this is private, sonny Jim. You've been taken out to teach you a lesson and others we're paying off a score. For the baby. And the bleach. And the old folk. Have you got that?" I glanced up the street.
A little knot of watching people had now formed around the woman. They were pointing and someone was running away up the road. Someone was talking on a mobile phone. Time to go. I considered knee-capping Ivor with my last bullet, but it was time to quit. On an impulse I kicked his bleeding leg. He screamed in agony.
"Listen, you. Just pass the word on. From the Vengeance Man. To all yer scumbag wee pals. The next one of you lot that we catch will get the same treatment, or worse. No more mugging; ye hear me? Tell your friends. All your friends. D'ye understand?"
He nodded dumbly, eyes full of tears now. He'd bitten through his lip and blood smeared his teeth. I started to leave. "Remember, laddy, it's oor revenge. No more fucking around with old ladies and kiddies. We'll do it again, if we haf' tae. There's a contract oot on scum like you. All of you. You got that?"
I kicked his leg again, hard where the hands held it together. Then I turned and walked rapidly away, away from the screams, away from the panting body of Jelly, her red trainers sprawled at an impossible angle. She’d never walk again. Tough. Little cow. Worst of the lot. I turned the corner away from the horror of the street. In the distance behind me I heard someone shout, ‘Stop!’
Before the view was blotted out I looked back once. Unaccountably an image of the bloody square at Hasak flashed into my mind; the same little knot of people, the same litter of bodies, the same distant shouts. Then people started running towards the three bodies, and someone was screaming. In contrast, Ivor's wails sounded weak and shrill. Time to get out fast.
I whipped round the corner, dragging off the, wig and glasses and sprinted the twenty metres to the next street as hard as I could. The plaster tore at my face. Round that bend my car was parked a hundred metres up, round another corner. As I hurtled along, I banged into a large black woman.
"Hey, what you doin', man?"
"Sorry, lady, I'm just going to get help. Someone's been hurt. Down there."
I waved back to the street I'd left. On an inspiration I said, as urgently as I could, "Can you help them? I'll phone for the police and an ambulance."
She nodded dumbly and disappeared open-mouthed in the direction I'd just come from, leaving me to walk to the car, parked in the row of others on the quiet road without any CCTV cameras, and get in fast. There was no time to lose.
Checking the mirror, I pulled slowly away, glad that I'd taken the precaution of pointing the car in the right direction when I'd parked. I was the only traffic moving in the road and now I wanted to put as much distance as possible between myself and the avenue. The car seemed to move slowly and reluctantly.
At the top of the road I looked back. Nothing. No-one had come round the corner. I was safe, with only the distant wail of a police car. I drove steadily up to the main road, noting with almost cold detachment that a splatter of small dark spots were on the trousers of the old grey suit. I supposed it was Jelly's coughed-up blood, and shrugged. The pistol lumped heavy in my pocket. I'd got away with it. A Met Rover, siren wailing, light flashing, roared round the corner, jumping the lights, to disappear back towards the avenue.
Did I feel bad about what I’d done?
Did I fuck . . .
To my surprise, my knees were trembling.
CHAPTER 23
A Little Relief
BLOOD BATH IN BRIXTON
THREE SHOT IN COLD BLOOD
Police Vigilante Theory
I remembered a cynical old BBC journalist that I'd drunk with in Northern Ireland years ago. We'd been lamenting the fact that the real horror stories somehow never seemed to make it intact across the Irish Sea. He'd considered the point judiciously as he swilled his whiskey, hunched over the bar.
"Ah, well, you've got to remember that real news, printable that-day, get-it-in-the-TV-bulletin-at-six-o'clock news, has got to happen before noon and within a twelve mile radius of Charing Cross. That's the real definition of news to the BBC newsroom. Bastards…." And with that he'd returned to the vital issue of keeping Bushmills Distillery in business, like the seasoned newsman he was.
I was reminded of this professional definition as I contemplated the Standard's page one story that afternoon. To say it was worth reading would be an understatement. Over a blurry, blown-up amateur photograph, showing a blanketed body on the ground, framed against an ambulance and worried-looking policemen, two inch headlines screamed their message. ‘Slaughter in SE 10’ The combination of the wounded muggers' stories and my own terse call to the Press Association guaranteed the full press treatment on a day that could only boast yet another £25,000 Post Office snatch as competition for the front page.
As I plodded through the afternoon's work, my first feelings of being drained and nervy were overtaken by a growing elation. I'd done it. I'd done something that might make an impact, and it had worked. I wondered what Barbara would think, now. The news bulletins flickered on and off all away all afternoon in the ops room and we stopped every so often to listen to some breathless wannabe reporter doing their piece to camera live for the viewing audience but more importantly, for the furtherance of their own careers. As casually as possible I scanned the developing story.
The bald facts were clear by three o'clock. I'd killed one - the sallow-faced Nelson - and paralysed another from the waist down. The red shoes girl wouldn't be twinkling around Brixton ever again, pouring bleach onto babies' faces. She was destined for a wheelchair and Ivor would walk with a limp and a stick for the rest of his life. Even without reading between the lines, the press hadn't got a word of sympathy for them; oblique references to gang violence, ASBOs, “young tearaways” and 'known minor criminals' suggested a certain grim satisfaction that I shared.
As the story broke, the inevitable vigilante theory surfaced when the police spokesman had to admit, after close questioning, that the 'three injured young people' as he carefully called them were apparently the juveniles suspected of or wanted for some particularly nasty crimes. As two of them came from ethnic minorities the situation looked even messier. Scenting an even juicier story still, the press began to float their own theories about what had really gone on.
A bandwagon began to roll. By the five o'clock news, the news reader was reporting that the police fear
ed the incident could spark off a wave of more attacks against young people - at which point the Establishment weighed in with full force.
Rows of grave talking heads were on and off the television screen that evening, all pointing out that the attack was not anti-black, but anti-mugging, and was not entirely unwelcome to the inhabitants of Brixton, or London in general, black and white alike. Suitably selected respectable and articulate citizens of the area nodded wisely at the sage remarks of the good and the great, and agreed that despite my unorthodox methods, anything that helped to clean up the streets and make them safer for 'decent, honest folk' had to be ... well, helpful. Of course, everybody added hastily, they didn't condone violence, but the police had been powerless, and apparently less than willing to do anything, so...
In fact, it was a fine old muddle. The more radical elements, recruited for 'balance', squawked that the whole thing was nothing more than a Metropolitan Police plot to eradicate crooks they couldn't convict. The idea of the Met sending South American-style death squads into darkest Brixton in unmarked cars to rub out muggers didn't really strike the right note somehow.
The respectable audiences looked uncomfortably at one another and shook their heads. The Met police spokesman looked aggrieved and hurt, but kept a stiff upper lip. Even the interviewers looked sceptical, but as they all agreed, if it wasn't racist and wasn't political and it wasn't the Met's mythical Ton Ton Macoutes, then only one realistic motive was left – revenge against a gang of known thugs. But who by?
The highpoint of the evening came on TV’s 'Question Time' when a well known radical London MP claimed that Ivor, Redshoes and Sallowface were really martyrs to the black struggle for the oppressed working man in South London. His opponent, a formidable black lady MP from Lewisham replied in unequivocal terms that rich champagne socialists living in radical chic in NW 6 were ill-equipped to pontificate on the problems of SE 13. Not only that, but the three in question were scum who had terrorised decent citizens and brought the decent God-fearing black community into disrepute and she hoped that a lot of other hooligans in the area would get the message too and… She stopped to draw breath at about this point. .