BACK DOWN TO earth with a bump as my plane hits the tarmac on a grey, pissy-wet morning at Heathrow, after a month of glorious Caribbean sunshine. The bollocks has started straight away, and I’m in the process of getting a tug coming through customs.
‘Would you step over here please, sir?’ Like I got a choice. Fucking customs! Have a look at them. Wage-packet weasels. Ain’t got a fucking clue. I’ve got more respect for Old Bill. At least he’s out there on the front line, dodging bullets and taking backhanders. With barely concealed contempt I drop my bag on a large table in front of two snides. One of them’s a sorry excuse for a bloke and weighs about six stone dripping wet. The other’s a man-hating bulldyke with a buzz cut and a face like a budgie with a hair lip.
‘Can I ask where you’ve been, sir?’ says Dripping Wet.
‘Sucking and fucking my way around Jamaica for the last four weeks,’ I tell him. ‘First class there and back.’
‘Anything to declare, sir?’ says Bulldyke.
‘A great big pair of hairy bollocks,’ I say, causing it to bristle.
‘Would you mind if I take a look, sir?’ it then says, grimacing through a poxy set of National Health railings.
‘At my bollocks?’
‘In your holdall, sir.’
‘Not as long as you put everything back as you find it,’ I say, relishing the fact that their job compels them to call me sir, even though they hate everything they think I stand for.
Bulldyke starts rummaging through my belongings, while at the same time, her oppo tries to engage me in rhubarb. I tell him not to bother as I know all the strokes.
‘And let me tell you something else,’ I continue. ‘That bag you’re looking through cost me a grand from Bally of Switzerland. This kettle on my arm is a Dunhill, sculptured by Kajinsky of Bond Street, twelve grand. Shirt, Issey Miyake, five hundred quid. Suit, Commes des Garçons, two grand. Now, do you think that a man of my obvious means would be strolling through customs on a flight from Jamaica with a suitcase full of drugs, or would he have paid a mule a pittance for doing the job on his behalf?’ Of course, they say nothing and find nothing. So much for profiling. After thumbing my nose at them and telling them to keep up the good work, I stroll out of the airport and turn on my mobile for the first time in a month. The poxy fucking thing rings straight away.
‘Who’s that?’ I growl.
‘It’s Gary, Gary Oxley. Fucking hell, Billy, where you been? Everybody’s been looking for you!’
‘Hold up, let’s get this straight,’ I say. ‘The last time I looked, you work for me. So what the fuck business is it of yours where I’ve been?’
‘Sorry, mate, I didn’t mean it like that. Er, good holiday?’
‘Sweet, Mr O, thank you very much. Now is there a fucking problem or something?’
‘Yeah, yeah, fuck yeah! I went over to pick up the rents as usual last week in Soho, and someone had put a bomb in the Windmill Street peepshow.’
‘Fucking hell, much damage?’ I say, jumping into a taxi and ordering the wally-nosed driver to head towards central London.
‘Luckily it never went off.’
‘So, what’s the fucking problem then?’
‘Mmm… see what you mean. Do you have any idea who it could be?’
‘The Animal Liberation Front I should think, judging by some of the fucking pigs they got working round there.’
‘Heh heh, make you fucking right. Other thing is, Danny’s been driving everybody mad looking for you.’
‘Yeah, well you just pick up the rents, keep walking in straight lines, and keep your ears to the ground.’
‘OK, Billy.’
‘I don’t mean literally, of course. Otherwise you’ll get all dog-shit stuck in your fucking lugholes.’
And with that final piece of advice I cut Gary Oxley off mid-sentence. I like the man but he’s a total fucking plank, with the brains of a banana. Keeps making himself busy cutting mugs for crabs and waving .45s about in peoples mooeys, thinking he’s some kind of Clint Eastwood. But I mean let’s face it, Dirty Gary don’t have quite the same ring as Dirty Harry, do it? And if I want to be brutally honest I have to say, Clint Eastwood is six foot four, a multimillionaire and lives in Hollywood, California. Gary Oxley is five foot four, earns a monkey a week for picking up rents from prostitutes and peepshows, and lives in Abbey Wood in Kent. Small man syndrome it is. If I weren’t here to look after him, he’d end up doing a twenty stretch within no time. Some people should just know their station and accept it.
BRIGHTON SWINGS BOTH ways. That’s why I’ve just bought myself a flat in the town’s plushest Georgian square. Gave readies for it, of course, then registered it to one of our Isle of Man companies, run by trustees from Guernsey. And what with all the headfuck in London, God knows I need some kind of bolt-hole to help me keep my nut straight. The great thing about having a sly nest down the tea-and-toast is that no one knows anything about it. Even the drive down unwinds me. Plus, the M25 is a gold mine for sport. Driving down late yesterday afternoon in my Porsche I was moving it along quite nicely, when up in front of me appears some soapy-looking salesman, crammed inside a snide whistle and sporting a Shredded Wheat comb-over. The prick’s hogging the outside lane and thinking he’s cracked it big time because he’s behind the wheel of a top of the range company Ford. So I got right up his bottle and started to flash him.
‘Get that fucking Dagenham Dustbin back over to the middle lane where it belongs!’ I shouted, and after a little bit of silly grief which nearly popped the boils on the back of his neck, he done as he was told, and slinked his cottage cheese arse back over to the middle lane. And I know he was feeling as sick as pig, ‘cos he took a quick shufti at me and saw that I was half his age, twice as good-looking, driving a car what’s paid for, and don’t have to take shit to get a living. In fact, I give shit to get a living. And because I’m a nasty cunt with a sack of spuds on each shoulder and love rubbing salt into open wounds, I whacked my toe to the floor and proceeded to burn the fucking mug off the road, blowing a little kiss to him as I passed. What a great feeling it is smashing holes in people’s self-esteem. He’ll probably go home tonight, get drunk as a skunk and then bash the granny out of his missus.
I’m just pulling in on a meet with Danny round the safe house. He’s bought a new motor and says he wants my opinion on it.
‘What the fuck!?’ I whisper to myself, on spotting Danny sitting as proud as a peacock behind the wheel of a pussy-pink convertible Merc, doing a double take as I do so, when clocking the reg number. GBH 1. Fuck me, if I didn’t have both hands on my own steering wheel, I’d have to pinch myself to see I ain’t having a fucking nightmare. One of London’s most feared criminals ensconced in a motor the same colour as Lady Penelope’s Roller. Parking up my motor I stroll towards him doing my best to keep a straight face. He gets out of the Merc, and the sight that greets me almost stops me dead in my tracks, just like as if someone had hit me in the face with a wet packet of shit. He’s had himself got up in a matching pink suit, pink socks and a pair of patent pink choccas.
‘What d’ya think, son?’ he says, spreading his legs apart and giving it the large one, obviously well pleased with himself.
‘Fuck me, Danny,’ I say. ‘You look like the Pink Panther.’
‘You don’t fucking like it?’ he says, his face dropping like a Bolivian landslide, and I can see my retort has wounded him badly, which means I should back off, but I can’t pass the chance to milk the udders off of this one.
‘It’d be OK, if you we’re making a movie with Peter Sellers,’ I tell him, with a sly smile, prompting him to storm into the safe house, blowing steam out of his lugholes.
Nursing a cob-on the size of a French roll, Danny disappears into the bedroom to shed the Pink Panther outfit, only to re-emerge clad in an equally offensive shell suit the colour of cat sick. Not long after, Stevie and Frankie turn up, and after the usual gangster bollocks of handshakes and how’s your fathers, Kelly Amore e
arns maximum brownie points by wheeling out the refreshment trolley in double quick time. She’s outdone herself this morning, having squeezed herself into a fetching little leopard-skin print number with matching stilettos. To complement, I suppose, the new additions to the family that I’ve only just spotted. A matching pair of four foot high, glazed china Pharaoh hounds, that have taken up guard duty aside the snide, neo-Edwardian television cabinet.
OUR FIRM HAS laid down a lorry load of readies with a family of Essex car dealers, the Rite brothers. Good boys on the whole. Live wires. As well as selling top of the range motors, we also arrange cars stolen to order for them, which they ring, then ship out to the Far East. Trouble is they have the tendency to playboy it up a bit. They’ve got themselves into debt, not only with our dough, which in itself is an out-and-out diabolical stinking liberty. But without letting us know first, they’ve also borrowed a lot of dough from a major league player in the puff game called Jimmy Masters, also known as The Bug. Some people will tell you that Jimmy Masters is called The Bug because he should be trodden under foot. Others, because he’s got sticky-out eyes. It ain’t true. He’s called The Bug because he always seems to know when the big deals are going down, so his pals reckon he’s got them bugged.
The Bug lives in Spain, as all proper big time dealers should do, and only grafts two or three times a year. Always big loads and nothing but ream gear. And while he’s not heavy in himself, he’s minded off by a very dangerous man, Skinny O’Neil. O’Neil’s ex-INLA, and has lost more than a few bodies on the plot. And if you go by the credo that a man is as heavy as his help, then The Bug is not a man to be taken lightly.
‘So what’s the state of play?’ says Frankie. ‘Are we looking like doing our bit of dough or what?’
‘Well, they’ve got the banks and The Bug up their bottle,’ says Danny. ‘The banks can fucking whistle, but The Bug wants his pint of blood.’
‘Fuck The Bug!’ growls Stevie. ‘We don’t wait behind anyone in the queue.’
‘I knew those boys were living too large,’ I say. ‘They’re up Stringfellows five nights a week and got a two hundred foot fucking luxury yacht down in Marbella. That’s where our readies have gone. I think we should move straight in and snatch back some of their properties. I mean that gaff they’ve got down at Southend’ll cover a lot of what they owe us. If we wait too long, and the bank pulls the plug, they’ll be going straight down the fucking plughole taking us with them.’
Muttered agreement from Stevie and Frankie surfaces amidst the chomping of cream cakes and slurping of coffee. But Danny has other plans.
‘This might be a good time for us to slip into The Bug,’ he says. ‘I mean that cunt brought in over ten ton of gear last year. That’s big fucking bucks. We could pull a couple of the Rites, say Jacko or Mackie, and tell them we’ll give them some breathing space. Then let them tell The Bug that we said he can take some dough first but that we’d like to buy in on his next load, on account of our goodwill.’
We all agree it’s a good move. If we slip into The Bug, it’ll take us up another rung of the ladder, and I can think of nothing better than putting my feet up in Spain and watching the dough fall like rain. With all agreed, Frankie and Stevie go straight round to see the Rite brothers in order to get to work smoothing out a deal, and to let them know that if they don’t swing it, we’ll be putting them under some very heavy discipline. After a few more rounds of natter we make a meet for later in the month to reassess The Bug situation, after which I head off happily for a night out with Delroy over the West End, and to hook up with another pal, a character called Johnny Peacock, or as we just call him, Cocky. Cocky’s a Soho tailor. I should say, he’s the Soho tailor. He’s also a balding, bolshie egomaniac who bespokes top notch whistle and flutes for many London celebs, and like yours truly, he’s well partial to a ream bit of nosebag. Best of all, you can wind him up like a clockwork toy.
I first met Cocky when I was beginning to make a name for myself in Soho. He was cutting cloth in a South Molton Street menswear shop where I had my suits knocked up. He let it be known he wanted to start up on his own, so I found him a premises, an old peepshow next to Charlie Chester’s casino in Archer Street, loaned him ten grand, and away he went. He’s grafted hard over the years and now business is booming, mainly because a lot of modern day celebs are sad-fuck, never had a fight, wannabe wide boys, and Cocky wins them over with his barrow boy banter, which is all the more fitting because he hangs with us, the proper chaps, and there’s nothing that gives a celebrity mockney more of a storker than rubbing shoulders with the man that rubs shoulders with the men that rub people out. Yeah, of course, the world and his friend knows that Cocky’s a plastic gangster, but he don’t ever get too close to the fire, so there ain’t no danger of him melting. But give the man his due, he’s done his shop up proper and even left a couple of the old peep-booths as they were. And if there’s any action going down we’ll watch it through the slots. An apple core a nosh is the norm from one of the low rent rotters that graft the local streets, or a pony for the full fandango.
Delroy sometimes jumps in to wet his nuts as well, and sometimes I’ll partake of a nosh, but I never fuck stray skanks. And like I’ve said before, sloppy seconds ain’t my bag. But Cocky’s got the principles of a Tory politician when it comes to playing away from home. If he’s really gagging for his hole and the bird looks a bit grimy, he’ll just shove her in the shower with a bar of soap and tell her, ‘Don’t forget to wash downstairs, love.’ To maximise his earning potential Cocky rents out two barber chairs and sinks set up in the back of the shop. But a word of warning. If you’re in the area and fancy a haircut and choose Cocky’s barbers, under no circumstances ask for a shampoo. Because when the boys that run the gaff ain’t there, he uses the shower attachments in the sinks to cleanse his arse of clinkers, if ever he has to knock out a quick pony. Putting the man’s foibles to one side though, his business is a great front for our firm. We’ve laundered untold amounts of readies through his books, and because it’s in the West End there ain’t never any stink at all. We even used to use his wooden floor to stash yoggers under, and it was always great for any urgent West End work that needed a bit of firepower.
Mind you we had to put a stop to all that because one day I went there to pick a yogger up on the quick, and it had gone missing. I went fucking ballistic and flew off in a right fucking state. I eventually caught hold of Cocky round the bank, and the silly prick had the yogger in his jacket pocket.
‘I like carrying it, mate,’ he told me. ‘Just in case.’
‘Just in case?’ I screamed, snatching the piece off him. ‘What, just in case Ant and Dec turn up to put the heavy on you for putting the wrong turn-ups in their suits, you dopey cunt?’ Sometimes it feels like I’m always on his case but I’m only trying to help him. Like I said to him the other week, ‘Cocky, if you want to be taken seriously, you’ll have to stop living at home with your mum. You’re a thirty-year-old, hairy-arsed man for Christ’s sake. You shouldn’t still be at home hanging out of your old dear’s arsehole.’ But I don’t suppose he’ll be leaving any time soon, because the Duchess, for that’s what he calls his mum, spoils him something chronic. Not only does she wait on him hand and foot, while he’s poncing around their council house tonced up like Noel Coward, monogrammed slippers, cigarette holder, the lot. She even flushes the toilet behind him after he’s laid a cable. Bless her!
I remember he told me that one day while he was at work, the Duchess was clearing up his bedroom and a charlie wrap fell out of his jacket, bust open and spilt all over the carpet. Of course, she didn’t know exactly what the gear was, but she knew it was some kind of drug and therefore had to be very expensive. Coming from an age of ‘waste not want not’, she couldn’t face just picking it up with the hoover. So she got down on her knees and sniffed up the whole half a gram. Cocky strolled in at six the following morning and the Duchess, who’s seventy, was sweating like a donkey and flying through the
housework like a twenty year old French maid.
‘Hello, boys,’ says Cocky, looking genuinely pleased to see us, as me and Delroy stroll into his shop like we own the place, as I in fact do.
After the obligatory handshakes I make myself right at home behind Cocky’s Chippendale desk, before patting his Mussolini table figurine on its bald nut, and then proceeding to chop up three big fat hairy ones, while Delroy reclines on an adjacent chair and takes a shufti through a fashion mag.
‘Fucking hell,’ says Cocky. ‘Keep it discreet, I’ve got a punter in one of the changing rooms.’
‘Anyone famous?’ I say, ignoring his request by rolling up a fifty spot and offering him the first sniff, which he demolishes in a single loud snort. Cocky’s a total fucking charlie slag.
‘German fucking pop star,’ he says, as the coke starts to kicks him in the head. ‘If there is such a thing. Cunt ain’t got a fucking clue. I’ve altered the Kraut slag’s strides six million times already. That’s one for each Yid his mob topped, and he still ain’t happy.’
The punter, a weedy, sour-faced little twink comes mincing out of the changing rooms, just as me and Delroy settle back to enjoy the show. Cocky’s all over him, buttering him up, kidding him along, but the punter ain’t buying it. All he keeps on about is wanting a ‘seexties keek’ on the bottom of the strides, whatever the fuck that is.
As his charlie kicks in more, Cocky’s getting more and more pissed off. One, because we’re here and he don’t want to look like a mug in front of us, and two, even the tiniest amount of charlie sends him fucking garrity.
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