We take off again, this time spinning the motor round and heading in the opposite direction with the pig still hanging on for his life.
‘Stop the fucking motor!’ screams Danny, as we screech to a halt and I feel like I’m going to go through the fucking windscreen. Without saying a word Danny jumps out, drags the cozzer off of the boot and chins him, knocking him unconscious to the kerb. Job done, hurry up, I’m thinking. Get back in the motor and let’s get the fuck out of here. But what does the fucking psycho do? He pulls out a bottle of sulphuric acid from his jacket, opens it up and pours it over the cozzer, then gets back in the car laughing his nut off and leaving the cozzer sizzling and screaming to his god for mercy, as we flee the manor. This is not a good development. We’ve turned up at our own gaff to protect our own interests, seen off a little firm with next to no problem, so everything should be hunky-dory. Granted, we did have a little run in with Old Bill, but we were out of it. So why did that lunatic have to set fire to an unarmed cozzer, who he’d knocked out already? This ain’t right, I ain’t got no sort of beef with Old Bill that I want to be setting fire to them for nishmans. Don’t they hate the sight of us enough already, without this sort of shit? And as if that weren’t enough to rub salt into a burning wound, a couple of days later Danny pays some scallies to go round Canning Town with aerosol cans and spray up everywhere, DC HARGREAVES IS AN ACID FREAK. Far fucking out, man!
PULLED A BLINDER last night in Mickey Ferdenze’s late night drinker in Savile Row. Reasonably well-known actress, good sort. Took her back to my Porsche for a toot and a tumble. She begged me to fuck her till she farted, so I fucked her till she farted then fucked off. I hit home riding on the crest of a wave, only to climb out of my pit this afternoon to be dumped by a big roller right out of the blue. A pal of mine, Georgie Bloom has just been found dead in a New York flophouse. Georgie was one of the best fighters to come out of our manor, east London’s very own Raging Bull. He was a gentleman out of the ring but an absolute animal inside it. He could have taken it all the way, but unfortunately he cut easy and bruised like a banana. Looking back on it now I could always sense a loneliness in him. And he never had any luck with the ladies. I always felt he was just too nice to be appreciated. He went to the States to find himself, found out he was gay, went back to a stinky, lonely old room and blew his brains out with a .45. In our world the good don’t always die young, but when they do, it fucking hurts.
Danny’s round the safe house and says he needs to speak to me urgently, so I make my way over there. It appears that a local villain, Denny Dalston, has been making a nuisance of himself with Danny’s oldest brother Colin’s scaffolding firm. Colin, who retired from villainy some time back, struck gold when he secured a contract on the Canary Wharf. Everything was going sweet, when out of the blue along comes Denny Dalston, backed by a little firm from Shepherd’s Bush, known as the Bush Babies, because they’re always bleating over spilt blood. Together they’ve been putting the frighteners on some of the scaffolders, causing works to grind to a halt, so as to try and nick the contract for themselves. Dalston’s been on and off the plot for years. He comes out of the north inner-city area of Dublin and has close contacts with the IRA’s southern command. His game is protection and prizefighting, and he’s taken so much punishment in and out of the ring over the years that his face is as flat as a shove-halfpenny board. But never mind that, he’s a dangerous cunt.
A few years back he was sparring with Lennie ‘Daddy Cool’ McClean, the legendary east London bare-knuckle prizefighter, who earned his reputation back in the seventies in a succession of terrific grudge matches against another street fighting legend, Roy ‘Pretty Boy’ Shaw. Fantastic fights they were, seeing as both men were as hard as nails and thick as two short planks. Anyway, McClean, who’s earned a reputation of being a terrible bully, bashed Dalston all round the ring. Dalston went home and sulked, then decided that McClean had mugged him off. So he slipped round his house and knocked on the door.
McClean, who weighs about twenty-two stone, answered wearing nothing but a bath towel. Dalston pulled out a sawn-off from his jacket and cocked both hammers. McClean, knowing that nearly all of Dalston’s respect has been earned out the barrel of a gun, turned and legged it up his stairs. But not fast enough. Dalston let him have both barrels right up his arse, peppering his already spotty ginger chadwick with red-hot buckshot.
We flop on Dalston in a boozer in Canning Town and find him on the piss as usual. Danny puts a yogger in his mouth while I cover the rest of the pub with a sawn-off.
‘Leave off, Denny,’ says Danny. ‘Or you’ll lose your fucking nut, understand?’ Of course he does, so we leave. Word comes back later that he wants to make amends, and brings round some Easter eggs for Danny’s chavvies. For that act of unusual kindness, Danny tells me he’s going to spare his life. We then decide to keep Dalston in the wings for any jobs that come along that don’t require too much in the way of brains. And use him we surely will. To us, a div like Dalston ain’t nothing more than toilet paper, to be used to clean up shit.
BONGO IS ANOTHER out-and-out liberty taker in need of livening up. An ex-pro fighter with a left hook from hell that’ll take any man’s jaw off its hinges. In his prime he actually made it to the States to spar with Muhammad Ali. But he couldn’t help himself he just had to push the boat out. Seeing as he was a white contender, the Mob took him under their wing and he got the red carpet treatment all over New York. But he fucked up big time. Got on the booze and then got the idea of trying to fuck a Mob missus in the back of a Mob limo. They gave him a choice: ‘Pack your bags, or we’ll send you home in a fucking bag.’ He packed his bags. Once he was back in Blighty, he hit the skids and started to make a right fucking string vest out of himself. All schoolboy stuff, petty blags, knocking out mugs and terrifying the locals. Frankie and Stevie lent him a Jeep for a weekend two months ago and he still ain’t given it back. Normally, a beating would suffice, but you could whack this fucking retard over the head with an iron bar all day long and he’d just think his dandruff was itching him. And now, to compound matters, last Friday he strolled into one of mine and Danny’s boozers, walked behind the bar, helped himself to some cigars, then emptied out the charity box and ordered himself a drink with the change. When the guv’nor protested, Bongo walloped him then made him face the corner like a naughty schoolboy, a prank which of course everyone in the gaff thought was hilarious. But we have to nip behaviour like this in the bud, otherwise every liberty taker from here to Limehouse will think it’s open season. We’ve decided to shoot him. Not to kill him, he don’t warrant that. Just a couple of slugs to slow him down. The job falls me to which is fine, I fucking hate Bully Beefs.
Bongo’s also got his claws into an old face called Connie Blackhead. Connie used to run with the Kray twins, but he’s absolutely terrified of Bongo. He runs a small drinker just under the Canning Town flyover and Bongo opens the gaff up when he likes, invites all his pals over and then proceeds to drink the place dry. It’s an ideal spot to plug him because it’ll put the pigs on the wrong scent. Not that they care about gangsters shooting gangsters. As one pig told me once when I was pulled in, ‘We don’t care about you lot killing each other. It’s less shit for our shovels.’
It’s early Saturday night and I’m standing in the shadows of a bus stop, a few feet away from Connie Blackhead’s club. I’m wearing a dark windcheater, trainers, jeans, and a plain baseball cap pulled down low over my face. I’ve got both hands in my pocket and I’m fingering the trigger on my revolver for comfort, trying to keep focused. It’s a good night to plug a mug, seeing as the street’s half empty, and the only people that travel by bus these days are pensioners and poor people. Before long Bongo turns the corner, so I slide back into the doorway, peeking out from behind my cap. Sucking in a few deep breaths to steady my nerves, I then step out smartly from the shadows and move quickly towards him, keeping my head down.
‘Hello, Bongo,’ I say, just to let him know t
hat what’s coming is meant for him. As he looks up I let off two rounds just above his bollocks which causes him to look down, mumble something or other, before crashing onto the floor, groaning and groping frantically at the bullet holes to try and stop the burning pain. Walking calmly across the road I slip into a quiet side street where Danny’s waiting to pick me up. After driving off we phone for an ambulance. Like I say we don’t want him dead, just a couple of little reminders not to fuck with the cream of the crop.
I’VE GOT TO do a favour for an old pal, Jimmy Tarrant. Jimmy, not long out of a sixteen stretch for armed robbery, has just had a nice little earner bringing in a load of puff with a very proper firm from north London, the Adams’s. He can’t drive, and asked me if I could run him over to Islington so he can sort out some outstanding business. He’s a good man and a good friend, so I fly over to pick him up at his luxury flat in Chigwell.
‘Did you see the news?’ He says to me, as I stroll into his kitchen.
‘Another bod nicked on the gold bullion job?’
‘Yeah, we knew about it three months before it went down, Jimmy. Ronnie Olive was touting the graft all over south London.’
‘Thirty-six million quid’s worth of gold bars. I wish I had known. That’s some fucking proper bit of work, Billy.’
‘Not really, Jimmy, it was fucking amateur hour. When they were first offered it they were told it was three mil in cash. No mention of any gold. Five robbers, six hundred grand apiece.’
‘Still, not bad for a day’s work.’
‘Fucking right, but it was only when they got there they found the thirty million quid’s worth of gold bars. Had to send out for a Transit to carry the stuff out in.’
‘I make them right. I mean who’s going to turn their noses up at that?’
‘No one, that’s why they swagged the fucking lot.’
‘Proper.’
‘That’s why the men in the grey suits had the right hump with it. The whisper was that if they had just taken the cash the security firm would have swallowed it, but it was so big they had to smack some arses.’
‘In case the masses start getting ideas, eh, Billy?’
‘Fucking right. Cunts stopped us peasants carrying arms back in the Middle Ages. What’s up with your hooter, Jimmy?’
‘Hollywood cold, mate.’
‘Unavoidable, anytime of the year,’ I say. ‘Fancy a livener?’
‘Does the Pope shit in the woods?’
Carving up the requisite couple of big fat hairy ones, which we hoover up off the glass table in Jimmy’s kitchen, we walk through to the front room where the first thing I see is Jimmy’s two-year-old boy, sitting on the carpet as naked as Adam and playing happily with a mountain of creased and smelly wonga, piled high in a scruffy pyramid stretching halfway to the ceiling.
‘Fucking hell,’ I say, taking in the sight in front of me.
‘Over a mil there,’ says Jimmy. ‘And look at me chavvie, rolling around in it. Loves the stuff he does.’
‘Just like his old man, eh?’
‘Yeah, c’mon, let’s make tracks.’
Buzzing like bees in a field of flowers sees us taking the lift down to the underground car park and climbing into my latest motor, a candy-apple red, convertible Range Rover with a white leather Rolls Royce interior and full walnut dashboard.
‘Proper set of wheels, Billy.’
‘Sweet, ain’t they? Made for an Arab Sheikh, Jimmy,’ I add, pressing down a button that allows the top to roll slowly back. ‘Bought it from Micksy Martin two weeks ago and he’s just been tugged over the gold bullion job. Last thing I need at the moment is this wrapped round my bollocks, so I’m getting rid of it. But it’s proper tackle though. Look, it’s even got a retractable bar for a falcon.’
‘You got a falcon, Billy?’
‘I ain’t even got a fucking budgie, but it looks the bollocks, don’t it?’
‘Adds a bit of class.’
So off we go, and I’m spinning one of the lairiest motors ever seen on an English road through the dilapidated streets of east London, feeling like Charlie Large Spuds but probably looking like a right cunt. After dropping Jimmy off outside a snooker club at the back of the Angel, I double park two wheels on the pavement right outside a trendy coffee shop, large it in and order myself a Grande, double choc-chip mocha, extra hot, with skimmed milk and just a tiny splash of vanilla, then sit down in the window to enjoy it, while Joe and Josephine Public cast hushed looks at me out of the corner of their eyes, as though I just got here by spaceship instead of a Sheik’s shag-mobile. Fifteen minutes later Jimmy returns and we’re just about to climb back into the car, when out of the blue someone starts taking pot shots at Jimmy. Well fuck that, we both pull out yoggers and start returning fire at this black dude with saucer eyes, who’s standing bold as brass on the other side of the road and letting shots go indiscriminately. While bullets whizz, ping, and ricochet past our heads, Saturday shoppers start screaming and diving for cover behind cars and market stalls. And for about thirty seconds, the Angel has morphed into Dodge City. But after emptying his chamber in a panic, the schwartzer comes to his senses and has it straight on his toes through the antiques market, leaving me and Jimmy standing there with our smoking yoggers in our hands, feeling like a couple of foreskins at a kosher wedding.
All around us is pandemonium and it don’t take us long to realise that Joe Public’s not only pointing the finger in our direction, he’s dialling 999 with the other. We’re in shit street here, and the motor I’m driving ain’t exactly inconspicuous. But with no time to ponder such nonsense I tell Jimmy to jump in, and in the spit of a tinker’s cuss I’ve got the motor started, the throttle down hard on the floor, and I’m tearing down the pavement with my hooter blaring and scattering terrified pedestrians in all directions. Hooking a left, I end up skidding the wrong way up a one-way street and on through a pedestrian thoroughfare. Shoving my yogger into Jimmy’s hands I yell for him to jump out, and in a spit he disappears speedily down the steps of a nearby underground station. With the ironware now safely out of the motor I try to regain my breathing, whilst at the same time slowing down my motor and beginning to drive as normally as my shattered nerves will allow. In a few anxious minutes I arrive at my pal’s car lot up on the Caledonian Road, where I know I can dump the motor, no questions asked.
My pal’s a diamond. He’d already heard the gunfire, put two and two together and sussed out I was involved. After taking the motor without hesitation he slams it into the rear of his garage before pulling the shutters tight down, then escorting me through a small maze of back alleys to hide out in the basement of his pal’s porn cinema, till the heat dies down. Sitting at the back of the cinema nursing a cold beer and with the screams of Old Bill sirens outside beginning to fade, my body and brain begins to calm. After about an hour of sitting through some top quality hardcore porn, as well as having to tell a couple of cocksuckers to fuck off, a mush comes in with his fat cunt missus in tow, orders her to strip and lay down in front of the screen before inviting men to spunk over her. Deeming it impolite to refuse a freebie, I stroll down to the front and shoot my bolt over the shitcunt’s mooey, zip up and fuck off.
TWO WEEKS LATER and Danny’s had a whisper. He won’t rocker on the blower so our firm meets up at a cafe in Canning Town.
‘I met with Wallah this morning,’ he says, ‘and he reckons that there’s a load of the bullion job gold bricked up in a chimney stack in a farmhouse down in Kent.’
‘How the fuck does Wallah know that?’ says Stevie.
‘Said he helped put it there,’ says Danny.
‘And why would he want to tell us?’ I say.
‘Because Ronnie Olive put him on a promise, and now he’s fucked him off.’
‘It ain’t Ronnie Olive’s gold,’ says Frankie. ‘It’s Micksy Martin’s. He done the fucking robbery.’
‘Well it don’t matter to us whose fucking gold it is,’ says Danny, starting to blow steam. ‘Wallah�
�s one hundred per cent, and if those silly south London cunts are stupid enough to get a bricklayer to pug it up inside a chimney, then it’s our fucking job to go and nick it. What do you think, Billy?’
‘It’s like the fucking Yukon over there,’ I say. ‘Every cunt under the sun seems to have some of the stuff pugged up somewhere. Remember that Range Rover I bought off of Micksy Martin a couple of months back? Well, I passed it on through a car dealer pal of mine who sold it to a bubble who’s got a fish and chip shop in Edmonton. Anyways, this bubble was on his way back from Billingsgate in it one morning, loaded up with fucking cod and saveloys, or whatever the fuck he’d been buying, and the heavy mob flopped on him and nicked him. Held him incommunicado for four fucking days then let him go, but kept the car. Now as you know, some moody spade shot at me and Jimmy Tarrant over at the Angel, and I was driving the car then. But I don’t know if Old Bill’s pulled the bubble in because of that shooting or because the car belonged to Micksy Martin. When I asked my pal to slip over and see the bubble, it turns out that down to the stress of being pulled in, the poor fucker’s had a heart attack and is in a bad fucking way. Whatever we do, we got to tread lightly.’
‘Where the fuck is Ronnie Olive?’ says Frankie. ‘Cunt ain’t been about.’
‘Got his fucking head up his arse,’ I say.
‘Fucking ostrich!’ growls Frankie.
‘Yeah, he’s shitting himself, ain’t he?’ I say. ‘I mean let’s be truthful, how can you trust a villain that ain’t ever done a day’s bird in his life.’
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