by Harry Crooks
She snatched the crack out of my hand quicker than the human eye. “Nice one, babe. Top one!”
She was still bare-arsed naked but, in her hurry to get blasted, reached into her bedside draw and pulled out a little glass pipe while I was putting my clothes back on. I watched with a sideways glance as she burnt some wire wool, then stuffed it into the pipe. She quickly crumbled her prize in the middle of it and kept the lighter on it, all the while inhaling, sucking it down deeply. The crack was like being wired into the National Grid. The rush she was getting was massive, like a tsunami of electricity buzzing through her veins replacing removed blood. “Wow! Fuck me! That’s fucking nice.”
The crack would make her feel fucking fantastic for fifteen minutes until the dreaded comedown. Her eyes were as big as fifty pence pieces, as she whizzed her tits off, having to hold herself up against the wall to steady herself. “Woo hoo!”
I had just finished putting the Adidas on my feet, but she was gagging for more and turned all sketchy on me all of a sudden: “That was fucking ace, babe! I need another toot.”
I got the message loud and clear, she was cracked to the max and in the mood for a freebie session but all I wanted now was out, a trouble free exit. I scooted out of there and off down the balcony to my mates flat. I knocked on his front door. There were three bullet holes in the door: A frequent hazard of living on the estate. “Bangerz! Bangerz! It’s me … open up.”
I heard someone moving something behind the door and saw an eyeball peeking through the spyhole, a latch was dropped and a key turned. “Come on, lad! Hurry up, will you,” I shouted, knowing he had barricaded himself inside because he had the good sense to be paranoid. Burglars were drumming gaffs and working round the clock on the estate, even when peeps were in their beds. They’d empty the place like a proper removals firm and even take the wallpaper.
“All right, all right, mate … hang on will you…”
He opened the door and we clasped hands and I walked in. “All right there, lar!” I said.
“You got any smack on you, bruv?” He was twitchy and nervous, showing obvious signs of stress and withdrawl.
“Fuck’s sake, lad. Give us a fucking chance, will you. I’ve only just put me fucking foot in the door.”
There was a piece of ten-foot, four-be-two on the floor. He’d wedged it between the middle of the door and the skirting at the end of the hallway because somebody had tried to kick in the door.
I went into the front room and sat down in an armchair. He followed and flopped down on the couch. The flat was a complete health hazard; a real druggies den with the front room littered with piles of discarded clothes that he couldn’t be bothered to clean, overflowing ashtrays and empty white cider bottles littering the floor and all sorts of rotting leftovers from takeaways were discarded on the tatty carpet. What a sad bastard!
“What happened to your ear?” he asked.
“What happened to your front door?”
“Listen to this: I was sat here last night, having a dig up. Watching Shameless on the telly. About two in the morning. I heard some shitty goings on. Arseholes tried to boot the door in. I rushed to the hallway and warned them to fuck off out of it. Then, BANG! BANG! BANG! I fired the bullets through the door. They fucked off sharpish then …”
“You’re a fucking mad man!”
“Come on, Ow-wee! They’re fucking cunts, mate, you know that!” he said, shaking his head. “The bastards are taking the piss. Trying to bust in when you’re sat in front of the fucking telly. Total scumbags, mate.”
“Yeh, I know. Piss takers and scumbags everywhere, lad. Just like the Mug Fam.”
“You been beefing with that lot?”
“Yeh. They’re treating us like knobs. Trying it on. We got to sort them out.”
“Well, when you make the moves, count me in. I fucking can’t stand that shower of cunts,” he spat out.
He hated them because they were the attempted housebreakers. He had a dirty, filthy smack habit and he was pulling smackhead stunts left, right and centre opening up lines of credit with opposition drug gangs like the Mug Fam and failing to settle up. His bad habit of swerving the payment had resulted in the drama last night. The Mug Fam were going ballistic, threatening to do him in if they didn’t get their dough, NOW.
Bangerz was called that because not only did he liked to scoff sausages but he also had a hard-on for shooters. That’s how he had ended up in nick. Back in the day, he was a proper nutty lad: A hard case and he could handle himself. One day, he was plotted up by the community centre, dealing by himself. These two lads from another crew came up to him, giving it the biggun. They started arguing the toss over who should be grafting the patch: A trade dispute. Bangerz had a little something semi-automatic tucked into his trackie bottoms waistband. He pulled the thing out and popped it off above their heads. They scarpered and the plod landed. He got nicked and sent down, potted off to the Chokie for a year.
He was only sixteen and that was the maximum sentence the Beak could dish out. When he came out of the Young Offenders Institution, he told us all about it: “Them screws, man. Fucking cunts. They think they’re hard coz their wearing a fucking uniform and mob-handed. One of them walked up to me and tried to boss me around like I was some fucking no mark. Talking down to us, he was, like I was a soft cunt. I called him a fucking bastard straight to his face. He shoved us into me cell because there’s CCTV on the landings, grabbed us by the throat and rammed the back of me head into the wall. Me nut felt like it was going to explode. Then two of his mates piled in, grabbed both me arms and bent them up round me back. Next thing: Cuntie steps in front of us and gives us a dig on the chin.”
“One of them holding us back shouted: Just the body! Smack! Smack! Smack! The screw using us as a punchbag pummelled us in the chest a few times and belted us once in the guts. I threw up blood and puke on the cell floor and one of them called us a dirty fucking bastard. Forced me down on to me hands and knees, and pushed me face into the chuck-up. This’ll teach you a little lesson, cocky Scouse cunt. Plastic gangster, playing us up. They rubbed me face into it like I was a fucking dog, then stuck the boot in while I was down. Blood was coming out of me nose and mouth, everything was spinning and I blacked out. Then the cheeky cunts claimed I’d had a bit of a funny turn and tried to smash out of me cell using me barnet. Fucking clowns! They told us they were in charge of the nick and to behave me-self and keep me fucking trap shut, or I’d get another fucking doing.”
The telly was switched on and he was watching some shit TV: Jeremy Kyle.
Nothing was said. We just sat there, watching the show. Jezza was gobbing off at some blurt, demanding he take a drugs test.
He broke the silence. “So … you got any gear on you, then?”
“Hold on a second; let me have a look,” I said, rummaging through me trackie pockets and digging out a snap bag with the brown powder in it. “Knock yourself out!”
“I ain’t got no money,” he said. “I’ll have to have it on tick.”
“I don’t want your money,” I said, keeping it simple. “I want a favour!”
“What’s that then?”
“Laters. Have a dig up first.”
I handed it over and he fannied about, organising his doings on the cluttered coffee table in front of the couch. Amongst the toxic debris of used drug paraphernalia such as dirty needles and blood splatters was a batch of newly-acquired squeaky clean 1ml syringes, cookers and water ampules from the needle exchange at the drug agency.
He poured water into the tiny tin-foil cooker, then tipped the brown powder into it and heated it up with a plastic lighter until the brown mix was bubbling. He put a needle into the liquid and sucked it up into the syringe, found a vein in the crook of his elbow and pumped it into his system. Sitting back on the couch, he made himself comfortable and felt the gear kicking in. “Yeh, that’s nice, that is. Nice as fuck, that is. Top gear, that is.”
He was crashed out, getting into the buzz
of things. He couldn’t keep his eyelids open, they were heavy as lead and he was nodding off. Going into himself, monged out and disappearing into his own little druggie dreamscape. Sitting there, in a dingy doss-hole, with his head so far up his own arse I doubt he even knew I was still there. No worries now, nothing to stress about until the next toxic craving. Just chilling out in the front room and floating dreamily on an opiate cloud. The shit-stem was still out there, still horrible but, for the chemical moment, it didn’t have him by the bollocks.
He’d been a proper tasty fucker before he’d been sent to the rubbish heap. He wasn’t one to be crossed and sworn enemies shat in their kecks when they saw him coming. But the shithole had left its mark on him and he’d gone down the banks inside HMP Altcourse. “It’s fucking dread in there, Ow-wee lad. I got thrown into some cramped fucking cell. There were shout outs scratched all over the walls and I even put JU$TU$ CREW REIGNS up there. The beds were fucking torture, anorexic mattresses and no pillows. Me cellie was this schizo kid called Kenny. He was sick in the head, kept hearing voices. He said the devil was getting at him, testing him. Kept going on about the end of days, when God’s children would go to heaven and everyone else left behind. Seeing things that weren’t there, chatting to thin air. Wouldn’t take his meds. At night he’d be talking in his sleep, telling the devil to get his hands off him. Saying he belonged to Jesus. Mad being trapped in a cell with someone like that, going on about scriptures and revelations all day long. Thought I was going looney tunes me-self. He should have been sectioned, end off. Then one morning, before five o’clock roll check, something woke us up: A gargling noise it was and I could smell shit in the cell. I got up out of me pit and saw him hanging from the bars. Eyes bulging and the shit had just fallen out of his arse. It was fucking horrible, mate. He’d made this noose from two fuck-off black bin liners. I ripped through the plastic bags with me knife. He fell down with a bump on the concrete floor. He weren’t brown bread, though: His ticker had stopped but the guards came legging it, found a pulse and brought him back. He was sent to hospital and was in a coma for a week but he was brain dead and they switched off his life-support machine.”
“Then they threw me in with this other cellie: Tricky. He was a Mank but all right though. We had a telly and a Playstation; it only costs us buttons. But it was a poxie one-man cell that was fucking miniscule. There was no room to fart and everywhere I turned, his smelly fucking feet were there. Stunk worse than a kipper’s cunt.”
“Can’t even flip one over your thumb sly-like: You’ve got some boss dirty slut fantasy going off in your head after lights out. Tossing off, trying not to make the bed squeak. Frantic, manic wanking. The fucking veins are popping out your head and your about to blow your beans when your cellie wakes up and starts moaning at you to pack it in. Fucking sad, or what?”
“And the fucking food was pig-slop quality. One day they served up some rancid puke. Green, smelly, rotten pork. They smothered it in curry sauce, trying to put one over on us. Plated it up with some soggy rice and the whole nick got the shits. Fucking hell, I’d never smelled anything like it! Everybody must have been following through on their farts. It made me fucking heave.”
“There was some proper madness kicking off in there, like the time some of the lads had a mini-riot coz the screws wanted to lock them up early on New Year’s Eve, so they could have a good drink. The shout went around and the lads slung tables and chairs up against the door. The riot bells went off and the screws scarpered. It was mayhem going off as the lads smashed windows and wrecked the pool tables. It weren’t really a proper riot, though - just ten of the lads sitting around having a laugh, smoking spliff and setting a few fires. Most of the lads on the wing had locked themselves in their cells, coz they didn’t want to make a bad situation worse. They didn’t want to get more time on their stretches coz they wanted out. Anyway, three or four hours in, the shit hit the fan when the Tornado Team stormed the wing. There was about fifty of them and, fuck me, they had the fucking hump! I was locked up in me cell, but I could hear it all going off on the wing. The screws were wound up and giving it to them good and hard. The lads got cained, completely done over, copping for some big-time beatings.”
“A good few loonies in there, lad. They didn’t give a flying fuck about anything. Doing big fuck-off stretches and couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. Proper fucking psychos, always vexed and it was best to keep out of their way. These two nutters flipped after being ripped off in a drug deal. Filled this feller in, stabbed the poor cunt in the heart. One of the lads saw it, said the kid didn’t see it coming, took the hit and backed up a few steps. Alls he said was: You’ve stabbed me. Then he lifted his top up and blood spewed all over the floor. He went down like the twin towers. He was in a bad way and they rushed him to the Aintree hospital. Dead on arrival, he was.”
“Fucking torture in there, lad: The black clouds, man, worries plaguing your mind because you’re paranoid about everyone and everything, the whole set-up puts you on your back foot. Fuck all to do, fidgeting about in your cell for days on end. Dead dismal and frigging boring. Felt like slitting me fucking wrists a few times. Not even joking. Topping me-self … true, lar. No fucking wonder some of the lads do themselves in. Luckily for us, Tricky arranged for his bird to come in and drop-off a party balloon, which was a fucking massive life-saver. She came on a visit and had half-an-ounce stuffed up her gash. She slipped it to him on the sly in the visitor’s reception and he shoved it up his arsehole. His rusty sheriff’s badge was lubed-up with margarine. Happy days!”
“Once he’d washed his shitty fingers, the dirty bugger, we got stuck in that night. We already had the doings stashed in the cell and we had a dig up like. Got numbed up in a cozy coma big style. No stressing, no looking over your shoulder, no nightmares. A top fucking release it was. Effing Brill. From then on everything revolved around the nasty, the days routine, digging up and flogging it. We made a mint out of it and ended up getting ours for free.”
“If it weren’t for smack, I’d be six feet under now. Telling you, lad! How are you going do time straight-headed? Sat in that stinking fucking zoo with nothing to take the edge off, just thinking about everyone outside and what’s going on out there. The gear gives you a head change. I couldn’t have done me time straight-headed, man. No fucking way. I’d have topped me-self.”
When he got released and came back to the estate, he’d turned into a raging smackhead and a wasted shadow of his former self. As long as he had a hole in his arse he was never getting back to his old existence. Only seventeen and no one wanted anything to do with the smacked-out fucker because he’d passed the point of no return and had lost the strength to crawl back to our twisted version of normality. Nowadays he was just ticking over, getting drugs in for himself and sorting out the scruffy, junkie mates around him to pay for his own. You couldn’t even call it drug dealing because he wasn’t making any decent dough. Just maintaining his degenerate habit.
His personal hygiene had gone downhill, he had a permanent crust on him and wax coming out of his ear lugs. The flat had a rank rotten odour and, although he was polite enough to keep layers of clothing on when I visited, he had infested the diseased kennel with his stinkiness. I’d assumed the bird he’d been shacked-up with had decamped from the messy shithole in a top sulk, but he informed me that she would soon crumble and it’d all blow over. Kaylee was plain-looking but fit with it and I fancied giving her one. I didn’t know what she saw in him anymore, looking like the ravaged smackhead that he was: Teeth falling out and stinking worse than a building site portaloo. I wondered how long it would take him to give her a taste of the brown powder and drag her down with him.
3.
I was just sitting there while Bangerz was still in his smack-induced coma. I got up and walked over to the window and looked out at the bumfuck council-housing estate. Endless rows of pebble-dashed, three-bedroomed terraced houses with overgrown gardens, packed into claustrophobic closes. Bl
eak mid-rise blocks of flats with communal grass areas in between, where even the dogs ran around in pairs because it was that rough and the prozzies casually touted for kerb crawlers. Fucking hell, what a fucked-up, depressing shithole. The place was dull-grey and featureless, decaying like a murdered corpse. I felt like a caged animal, enduring a slow and aching confinement in an urban zoo. As a nervous reaction I felt for the skunk and Rizlas stashed in the pocket of my trackie top.
I sat back down and built up a spliff. I smoked it, getting nicely stoned and escaping the outside filth descending on my thoughts and bumming me out.
My mobile phone went off. It was Spermy. “You got away, then?”
“Fucking too right! That fat copper had no fucking chance.”
“Fucking cunts, eh? What a shower of shite! That fucking wanker Bola. Me fucking hands are pissing blood here, lad.”
“Tell me about it! I’ve got a top cauliflower ear, me-self.”
“Well, I’m sowing up the cuts on me hands with a needle and cotton.”
“You fucking loon. They’ll go mankie.”
“I’ll just have to wash them in dettol. I can’t go to the hospital, can I? They’ve carted that kid off, the one I stabbed, in the back of an ambulance and rushed him to ozzie. The police have collared Chocko and Zerk. A load of their twats, too. They’ve all copped for some nasty injuries and been dragged down to casualty. Next stop, cop shop.”
“So what’s the next move?” I asked.
“Keep your head down. The bizzies are still hanging around. The whole estate is crawling with them. All eyes and ears, looking for charge sheet material.”
“I’ll stay put here, then. Round Bangerz.”
“You’re fucking joking me, man. You’re not round his? I don’t know why you fucking bother with that minging baghead.”
“He’s all right,” I vouched. “He’s getting off the nasty, he reckons. Anyway, he’s a mate!”