by Harry Crooks
I bolted upright in bed and could see my heart beating through my chest. Fucking hell, I thought. Another fucking nightmare! I was having the same one every time now. The funny thing was; I never reached the top of the stairs where the bright light was.
It was getting well late now, after one. In the distance, I could hear the muffled, droning noise of the police helicopter circling the estate with its search light. I was absolutely knackered, but struggled to nod off again. I listened intently to the rotor blades and, eventually, I couldn’t keep my eyes open and drifted off into a deep sleep.
9.
Early next morning I woke up expecting the worse, another big fuck-off confrontation, a lecture and a dressing down from my mam, but there was an eerie silence throughout the house. It freaked me out. I got up, put my tank top, trackie bottoms and flip-flops on and had a nosey around for her. It was only half-past seven, too early for her to be getting off for work but the house was empty. Shit! That made things worse; I was convinced now that she really must have known what I had been up to last night and had taken off in a proper huff.
I went into the kitchen and looked in the cupboards for a tin. As far as I was concerned a meal was something that lived in a tin. I used a can opener to crack open an all-in-one breakfast and tipped it into a saucepan. I heated it up, then got stuck in, spooning it straight out the pan. It tasted like dog sick, but I was starving and gobbled it down like a fucking seagull. Next I made myself a brew and took it into the front room, switched on the telly. I sat down on the sofa, built a good morning draw and watched the regional news.
The newsreader stated: “Excessive violence among rival Liverpool drug gangs came to a head last night when a nasty confrontation in the Bricklayer’s public house ended with multiple shootings. A ripple of shock was felt through the local community and the police have emphasized the serious level to which the feuding had escalated …”
Any investigations, though, would come up against a brick wall. There was a code of conduct the hood rats lived by: Never snitch on anyone, sort out your own problems. If another crew shoots you with a nine-milli, you come back with a Mac-10 - even if it’s in a public place and there’s innocent bystanders milling around. The police were the common enemy and policies of zero tolerance enforced with brutality made trouble for everyone one of us while we made trouble for those who co-operated with the bizzies.
Like Judas informants who broke the code against giving the bizzies the heads up. Confidential informants and phone calls to Crimestoppers accounted for most of the crime detection on the estate. This malicious behaviour had to be discouraged and, if outted and exposed, the lives of these lowest of the low and their relatives would be made worthless on the estate. Their ultimate nemesis would be to end up on Witness Protection, branded outcasts and grasses for life.
It was eight bells by the telly’s reckoning. I switched it off and rubbed out the spliff in an ashtray on the coffee table. I grabbed hold of my tablet, went back upstairs and laid on top of the bed with it. I logged onto Facebook to read the news feed. There were threats, taunts and challenges from the attacked rivals on the other side, but I resisted taking the bait because the police monitored the same pages that these muppets were leaving messages on. I logged off and put the tablet down, stretched and yawned.
The house was at the mouth of a cul-de-sac of terraced, pebble-dashed houses. It backed onto the ring road that bordered the estate. Everytime a bus or HGV drove past the foundations of the house rumbled like there was some kind of mini-earthquake striking and shaking me awake as I tried to get some shut-eye. But the spliff had the effect of making me doze off and, before long, I was lost in a dream. It was the same one, recurring. I was in the dark stairwell, being chased up the stairs by an evil and menacing presence. Dreading looking over my shoulder and then running for my life up to the light I couldn’t reach. All of a sudden I was snapped out of it.
I must have slept for only half-an-hour when I woke up startled because there was a racket going on outside and I thought I was in some kind of mini-Syria for a moment, the noise pollution was deafening. Something was up; the sounds of screeching tires, a low-flying chopper and orders barked from a loud hailer.
I jumped out of bed and looked out the window. The bizzies were everywhere; in vans, cars and a helicopter, some of them Matrix wearing skip hats and flak jackets, weapons drawn. When I saw them pointing Heckler Koch MP5s I crapped my kecks. For a second I thought they were coming for me, but three armoured-plated vehicles had blocked in a car on the main road outside the house.
It was the usual aggressive-stop routine: ARMED POLICE! ARMED POLICE! ARMED POLICE! DO AS I SAY! HANDS ON TOP OF THE HEAD AND SLOWLY GET OUT OF THE CAR! The driver was slow in reacting, the bizzies were wired to the mains. Electricity had replaced the blood in their veins, but the driver was frozen at the wheel. It was like a fillum in slow motion. Then it was in fast-forward. The bizzies smashed out the side window, broken glass scattered, pitting the driver’s face. They yanked him through the car window with extreme force as he wriggled about, resisting. His bloodied face was pushed into the tarmac, a knee buried into his back, arms twisted behind him and metal handcuffs clamped on his wrists. They pulled him from the ground using his cuffed arms as a lever and led him off to a waiting meat wagon. The two bizzies frog-marching him were getting in some sly digs and the bummer in charge with the loud hailer gave them a warning to lay off with witnesses about. The lad was shouting and complaining, calling them every name under the sun. It was a raw scene of intense anger, the lad was blazing as they struggled to bundle him into the cage in the back of the meat wagon. I recognized him; it was Harpik, a Mug Fam enforcer. He was called that because he was clean round the bend.
When the police searched the car they found a Mac-10 spray-and pray, two Baikal handguns and ammo stashed in the boot. The Mug Fam were buying weapons, they were preparing for some war business.
I retreated from the window and ended up rolling another draw, smoking it in the front room where I put a DVD in the player, Scarface. What a top fillum. We were a long way off from the Scarface world of grotesque amounts of money, phenomenally priced mansions, fucking flash motors, tasty birds and mountains of the wicked devil dust to tickle our nasal passages. But to a bunch of fucking villanous, low-life losers like us lot, we looked up to Scarface and a top lad like Curtis Warren was our role model and Pablo Escobar, a father figure.
My mobie rang. It was Dog Sick. “All right, there, our kid?”
“Yeh, sound,” I said. I asked after Spermy. Turned out that he had been operated on, the wounds cleaned and stitched up, but he was being drip fed morphine to mong him out, incapacitate him. Dog Sick had employed the services of a brief to make sure Spermy’s human rights weren’t violated, but the bizzies meant business. They had posted an armed guard and there would be no legging it from the plod mafiosi in the hospital. They were taking statements from witnesses and retrieving forensic evidence with a view to locking him up and throwing away the key. In the meantime it suited their purposes to keep him drugged up to the eyeballs and treat him like a mushroom: Feed him shit and keep him in the dark.
I shared the bit of intel I’d witnessed from my bedroom window. “Listen: Just had a load of drama out in the road …”
I went on to tell him about the armed police ambush that had been executed.
“Yeh, knew that was going happen,” he said.
I couldn’t believe my ears. Was Dog Sick a slippery snake in the grass?
“What do you mean like?” I asked.
“I had Harpik lifted.”
“What do you mean EXACTLY?” I was amazed at his nerve.
“There’s an arms dealer, I know, owed me a solid. I gave him some tools to sell to Harpik, he even helped put them in the boot for him. A little tinkle to my mole on the force and game over. He got pulled and he’s offski.”
“Fuck me! That’s a bit off, innit?”
“It’s nothing personal, our kid. Strictly
business.”
Enough said! But I didn’t work that way. If I had a problem I sorted it myself. No way would I have involved the bizzies. The only thing to gain from back-stabbing behaviour like that was a bad name. Dog Sick was playing a dirty and dangerous game: If anybody found out what he’d been up to his street credibility wouldn’t be worth spit and he’d be a marked man.
Fuck that for a game of soldiers, I thought. Pissing the bed! We were supposed to be pulling the bizzies plonkers and smashing it, making fortunes. From that moment on, I found myself treading warily in my unavoidable association with Dog Sick.
“It’s strategy, mate,” he continued, as if to justify being a collaborator. “If it benefits us, then happy days. Fuck the Mug Fam. It’ll be all over the news tonight. The chief bummer will be boasting about his officers doing a great job, getting bangers off the streets, making the shithole a safer place and all that bollicks. So what if they come down like a ton of bricks on that lot. Takes the pressure off us for a bit. They’re doing us a favour, our kid, if you ask me!”
I was gob-smacked by the outburst, but I was just going to have to get on with it for the time being. As much as I hated the idea of providing the bizzies with intel, he was the connect and supplied the devil dust and the brown powder from the East. It just served as a reminder that the drug business was a sick and schizoid ATM machine. A big, fuck-off public lavatory where psychos, snides and grasses shit on everyone, and good lads are used like arse wipes. The bastards smiled as they wiped their shit-stained bungholes with you, the crocodile smile.
Dog Sick told me that all the boys should lay low until he said different. The bizzies were obviously having a crackdown. It would be getting on top round the estate, there would be the inevitable, high profile police operations. Although the Mug Fam would be the target one now, some of our boys would suffer in the collateral damage. Dog Sick would continue to stitch up the Mug Fam with planted shooters and anonymous tip-offs until the bizzies had covered themselves in enough media glory.
In the meantime he was going to keep me well out the way because there were leaky bums everywhere. He had booked me on a flight to Malaga that evening. “You’re on a break, our kid! Don’t tell no one nothing about it, though. They’ll find out soon enough, when you get back.”
“I’m fucking skint, mate,” I said. But I didn’t really give a fuck about such minor problems, to be honest. I was always on the bones of my arse and was used to living on my wits. I could always team up with other like-minded scallies from the Scouse nation out there and graft.
He told me not to worry about a thing, he was giving us a sub of two hundred and fifty quid. Fucking brilliant! I was going to link-up with his mate out there and he’d put me up; so there was nothing to shell out for. Top one. I rushed up to my bedroom, stuffing some counterfeit clothes into a holdall and picking up my passport.
My face and ear were still aching and swelling; so I spent the rest of the day with my head immersed in a bowl of iced water, trying to minimize the damage so that I could face the customs at the airport without drawing undue attention to myself.
I wondered how I was going to break the news to my mum. I loved her to bits but, to be honest, I was getting a bit fed up staying at her house. Things were getting a bit too claustrophobic under her caring and watchful eye. I needed some space to breath and avoid awkward questions. After all I seemed to cause her nothing but trouble, anguish and grief. I thought if I frigged off for a week it would be like a holiday for her too. I scribbled a note, telling her I was off on a jolly to Blackpool for a week and left it on the kitchen table.
As the day went by, phone calls were exchanged between crew members and it was obvious that the police were becoming a top fucking nuisance, patrolling the estate in their armour-plated Volvo 850 estates. Inside were hit squads of kick-arse coppers, butched up in paramilitary clobber, bulletproof vests, tooled up with H&K sub-machine guns and Smith & Wesson .38 revolvers. What a bunch of fucking dickheads! Giving it the biggun, as usual. Chomping at the bit, cruising around, looking for some fucking huge showdown. Turning the place upside down, making sweeps. Stopping and searching, doing random vehicle checks. Groups of innocent, unemployed lads loitering on street corners and shopping parades would be collared, trawled straight down to the police station in meat wagons where they would be taken to interview rooms and cross-examined by THE FILTH with the hidden agenda of pinning unsolved crimes on them. What a fucking palaver!
John Lennon Airport, later that evening: I was queuing with all the other tourist and their many suitcases, decked out in our finest shell-suits and brand spanking new trainers. Everyone was smiling and the communal chatter was about basking in the sun and boss beaches straight out of holiday brochures. Whey hey! I thought. You’re going on holiday, son. I was buzzing. All I could think of was getting a suntan, getting away from the dismal winter weather.
Then Dog Sick arrived, at the last minute. He strolled up, grinning, handed me an envelope with the cash and flight tickets inside. Then he promptly took the kitbag off his shoulder and hung it on mine with the instruction to hand it over to his mate at the other end.
I checked in, slung my bag of snide clobber in the hold and took the mysterious kitbag on board as carry on. I’d been warned that whatever I did I wasn’t to let this bag out of my sight. I was fucking shitting myself going through customs. I didn’t know what was in the bag, of course, but I did have my usual suspicions, so I was double cacking my pants at the thought of getting a pull and missing out on spending a week in sunny Spain.
I got through customs without a hitch and, before I knew it, I was on a two-and-a-half hour flight to Malaga, hunkered down in my seat, grinning from ear to ear. The kitbag was safely jammed into the overhead locker.
The FASTEN SEAT BELTS sign was switched off and I unbuckled my seat belt, reached into the overhead storage, grabbed the bag and walked up the aisle to the lavatory. When I got inside, with the door locked behind me, I rummaged in the bag and found it contained a hidden compartment that concealed a mini-fortune in dirty cash. Thank fuck for that! I thought. For all I knew, it could have been five kilos of pure smack.
I went back to my seat and, about ten minutes later, a Polish stewardess came along with the drinks trolley. I bought a couple of dumpy tins of beer and a mini-box of Pringles. I didn’t get much change out of a tenner, she pulled my pants down good and proper, but I was feeling golden, man, looking forward to the hot sun and praying the babes out there would be hot as well.
10.
As soon as I hit the ground, I used a pay-phone in the airport to call the lad whose number Dog Sick had keyed into my mobie. Matey was a fellow Scouser and I sort of knew about him from back home. He gave me an address and I set off to God knows where. The taxi drove to the centre of Fuengirola and pulled up outside a towering block of high rise flats over-looking the Feria Ground. I spotted the lad stood by the entrance and noticed he was a big bastard with a streetwise swagger on him. He was decked out in designer shorts, Armani t-shirt and Louis Vuitton flip-flops, a nice bronzie, looking the part. He came bounding over, rolling his shoulders with a grinning kipper, we clasped hands and dipped our shoulders into each other. “Alright, I’m Rez.”
“Alright, I’m Ow-wee.” Simple as that.
He put a big arm arm around me. “Good to see you, lad. Dog Sick told me all about you. Bigged you up, man! Come up to the flat and let’s stash the kitbag.”
We went into the block and took the lift up to his apartment. He showed me to the spare bedroom and I dumped my holdall in it. When I returned to the front room Rez was sat down on the couch and he’d emptied the kitbag all over the coffee table rummaging through the contents, which included a slab of Ulster Fry, Liverpool footie tops and bottles of health supplements from Holland & Barrett. He found what he was looking for and now he was smiling happily at the stacks of notes in his hand. “You’ve found it then,” I said.
He nodded, clutching it with both hands to his ches
t, as if he’d just won the lottery and nothing else mattered in this fucked-up loony bin of a world but the readies. “Telling you: If it don’t make money, Ow-wee; it don’t make sense.”
I sat down while he stuffed the money back into the kit bag. “Got to stash this wonga, where it’s safe,” he said, zipping up the kit bag, taking it into his bedroom and stacking the cash in a safe bolted to the wall inside his fitted wardrobe.
“Can you fucking believe that?” Rez said, when he returned. “Customs never even looked inside that kit bag. Sixty grand in there, lad.”
Fucking hell, I thought, if only I’d known. It was almost insulting, smuggling that amount of currency through Customs for a pitiful two hundred and fifty quid. The more I thought about it, the more I copped the hump because when he had told me I was off to Spain I had a real sense of being taken care of and protected by Dog Sick. He was looking after me and making me safe from the clutches of the bizzies, wasn’t he? Nah, not really! I could have been nicked at both airports, sent down for the sake of two hundred and fifty squid. I could almost hear him laughing at me, thinking: “Fuck’s sake! What a stupid fucking cunt! Fucking idiot!”
Okay, so Customs hadn’t opened the bag for even the laziest of inspections, but that was down to daft luck.
I was feeling angry and plunging into a fit of depression when Rez chopped and lined up two fat daddy lines of devil dust with a credit card and rolled up a two hundred euro note. This was a man after my own heart. He must have liked me too because, after snorting the class As off a compact mirror, he was offering to take us out for a beer.
We set off for the nearest bar. He was cracking jokes, making me laugh, over a few pints. You know what they say, first impressions count a lot and I couldn’t help but warm up to him. The coke, the ale, the jokes. I liked him already.