And so me and my girl met and so we fucked. She moved in and I bought her a BMW convertible and treated her as best I knew how. She told me she loved me, and even though I had fuck-all idea what love was I had no reason to doubt her. She was a fly girl looking to spread her wings by spreading her legs, and I was a troubled man with a grudge and a point to prove. It was a match made in hell, lubricated by the luxury of easy dough. It weren’t to last. Because of my Soho shenanigans, west end Old Bill had been shitting rusty blades over me for years. They eventually cobbled together a variety of bullshit conspiracy charges and came through my door unexpectedly one morning. Because of previous absconding I never made bail, which meant I’d be stewing like a piece of steak behind the nick wall for the foreseeable future. I’d been through the same hoops before so I just put my nut down and got on with it. And things were sweet. Business on the out was booming, and as is the duty of a woman that lives off the proceeds of crime, my girl visited as often as I requested. Danny came once a week which meant I didn’t have a care in the world.
Down to a bit of good luck and bad Old Bill work the case got chucked at the start of the trial, and I strolled cocky and carefree out of the back door of the Old Bailey, past the posse of stone-faced plod that nicked me, to be welcomed in the sweet afternoon sunshine right into the arms of my honey. We went home and fucked like it was the end of the world, and although neither of us knew anything about making love, it didn’t matter. Sweating up a storm felt like the real thing.
‘I’ve been unfaithful,’ she said, as we lay there cuddling. Just like that. Matter of fact. I felt like I’d been hit in the face with a shovel by a six foot navvy.
‘Nah,’ I managed to croak, after an age of terrible silence. ‘You’ve been fucked.’
‘It only happened once,’ she said, through the start of tears.
‘Once is once too fucking much!’ I screamed, throwing her off me as if she was a smallpox blanket.
‘It was a mistake, I was lonely.’
‘Not as fucking lonely as I was in an eight by six fucking cell.’
‘It won’t happen again.’
‘I know it won’t, ‘cos I want you the fuck out now!’
Jumping up from the bed and already starting to go loopy, I began to run around the bedroom banging and crashing like a loon, but she just curled up into a ball screaming that she didn’t want to go. Well neither would I. Not from living in a luxury slaughter apartment in the Docklands back to a paint peeling, poxy old council flat in Plaistow. But this was an issue above compromise. For all my failings I didn’t deserve betrayal. I’d pulled her out of the gutter and she’d turned out to be just another shitcunt with desires on my pockets. We screamed and shouted all afternoon, the tears flowing the anger raging, but still she wouldn’t budge. In the end I snapped and gave her a couple of well-aimed digs up her ribs that sent her crashing to the ground, then ran and grabbed a sawn-off that I kept hidden in the kitchen cupboard. She was still lying on the floor holding her chest, sobbing and looking for the sympathy vote by the time I got back. Didn’t mean a thing. You fuck me over and I go as hard as nails. I put the sole of my foot hard across her throat and shoved both barrels of the shooter in her mouth, imagining that that’s what she looked like as she was sucking strange cock while I was banged up believing in us. I pulled back both hammers and there she was staring up at me, her eyes pleading not to shoot. A couple of seconds passed like a million years with my trigger finger trembling, as I prepared to squeeze and blow her to kingdom come. Lucky for both of us, the voice of reason sitting on my left shoulder shouted down the devil on my right, telling me this shitcunt ain’t worth doing a day in prison for, let alone life.
It took me a while to take it all in but when I came to I grabbed her by her corkscrew hair and threw her half-dressed and weeping straight out into the communal hallway with all her clobber following close behind. And that was the end of my only foray into the love business. But what’s funny is that although I still hate her with a vengeance after all these years, I still love her as well. Don’t matter. I can’t admit that to myself even if I do. I couldn’t take her back, neither. Once a shitcunt, always a shitcunt.
SIX HOURS LATER and my intercom buzzes, cutting through my nightmares like a chainsaw. Shit, I’ve been akip in my armchair, still wearing my clobber from the night before. It takes me a minute or so to pull myself together, and after prising myself out of my chair I stagger blindly over to the intercom to peer into the camera, only to find Stevie’s ugly mug glaring back at me.
‘What?’ I shout at him, groggily.
‘It’s me, Stevie.’
‘Fuck me, I can see that. What’s the matter?’
‘We’re outside. Bit of graft, double important. Wear a smother.’
‘I don’t fucking need this!’ I shout, banging down the receiver before hauling myself off to the bathroom to empty my screaming bladder.
Pulling out the softening remnants of an impressive hard-on from my strides I take aim at the toilet bowl but end up pissing all over my shoes. This is not a great fucking omen. Re-aiming, I hit the bullseye, finish my piss and then hurry back out of the bathroom without even bothering to freshen up. Ain’t no way I can face myself in the mirror this morning, I just know I’m going to despise what I see. As I grab my leather grafting jacket from the back of my wardrobe and make for my front door, it strikes me that this is the first time in my entire life, excepting when I’ve been nicked, that I’ve ever gone out in the morning without showering and cleaning my teeth. Plus, I’m still wearing the same clobber I crashed in. Dead men’s clothes, that’s what these are. You don’t go wearing them back out on the streets the very next day. It’s a bad sign. Means I’m fucking slipping.
I make it to the lift with my head still spinning and look hesitantly inside as the door opens, thanking Christ it’s Christian-free. After stepping inside and hitting the ground floor button I pull out my charlie bullet and knock back a couple of quick hits as the lift descends, then give my armpits a sly sniff. A hint of Persian rug-seller wafts its way to my senses, and I make a mental note to keep my elbows down. The lift hits the ground floor and I stroll out into the reception area, tipping the night and day porter the wink as I go. He smiles warmly back and suddenly I feel overcome with guilt. The man looks likes shit, what with his pale translucent skin and black sunken eyes. Reminds me of some kind of Martian panda. Ain’t no wonder! The poor bastard puts in more hours than the good Lord himself to make up the pitiful wages they obviously pay him. And what do I sometimes do when I come back in the early hours, after being out all night on the Joe Brown, to find him crashed out and catching some much needed zeds behind his desk? I hide his shoes in the lift, that’s what. Bit fucking spiteful really but no malice intended.
Strolling through the revolving door into the street outside, the morning sun, although not that strong, still burns into my face as if I was a vampire, so I immediately slip on a pair of wrap-around shades and climb into the back of our firm’s Mercedes, angrily slamming the door shut behind me.
‘Sawn-off’s under my seat,’ says Danny from behind the driving wheel, as he eases the motor smoothly away from the front of my apartment block.
‘Anyone we know?’ I say, not really giving a fuck because I ain’t in the mood for these dog-cunts, not after what they’ve just done to my pal Jewish Dave. But I know that fuck all will be said. For these unfeeling slags it’s just another day at the office. Slipping my hands through the specially cut-out pockets of my leather jacket, I lean forward and reach under where Danny’s sitting to pull out the shotgun, happy at least to find it’s my favourite tool, a lovely, handcrafted, double-barrelled little number that’s been sawn down and tapered in at the handle to look like a highwayman’s pistol. We call it the Dick Turpin.
‘Some pikeys have nicked one of Perry Pomfritter’s greyhounds,’ says Stevie, who’s sitting in the passenger seat beside Danny.
‘His prize fucking greyhound,’ says Frankie
, who’s seated to my left and passing the time by pulling scaly lumps off the eczema that covers his arms.
‘Ten grand to get it back,’ says Danny.
‘Ten poxy fucking gorillas,’ I say. ‘That’s only two and half fucking large each. I put more than that in the spastic box every week. And it must be some fucking cherry hog for Pomfritter to be paying any sort of dough to get it back. That cunt’d skin a turd for a fiver.’
‘A favour for a favour,’ snarls Danny, but I ain’t buying it. This is all getting beyond a bad joke. Less than ten minutes ago I was soundo with my hands wrapped round my rock-hard knob and now they’re wrapped around the barrel of a yogger, all for a poxy two and half grand apiece.
‘What favours he ever do anyone?’ I spit back. ‘That dry-lunch-cunt wouldn’t give his grandmother the drippings off his foreskin. And why the yoggers for a few fucking hedgemumpers?’
‘He wants us to teach them a lesson,’ says Danny.
‘Yeah, fucking hedgehog pie-eating cunts,’ says Stevie.
‘Funny you should call them that,’ says Frankie. ‘They brought out hedgehog pie flavoured crisps a few years ago.’
‘What did they taste like?’ says Danny.
‘Hedgehog pie, I suppose,’ says Frankie, taking a deep breath, at which point I shudder involuntary, because whenever Frankie takes a deep breath, it means he’s about to start a parable, and Frankie’s parables, like the feeding of the five thousand are total bollocks, and just meander on to some unfathomable conclusion. Turning to press my face against the side window, the Old Kent Road, a rotten, crumbling vista of two-bob shops and permanent roadworks crawls slowly past, and I wish I was anywhere but here. Then Frankie begins.
‘On the subject of hedgehogs, there’s another thing I gotta tell yers. A few years ago, a good few years ago, I went down to Pomfritter’s dog track with the wife and kids. I mean it’s always a good fucking night out, especially for the nippers, they love a little bet and a sly drop of Blue Nun. And the scampi and chips there is different class, ‘cos they clean the cooking oil once a week regular like fucking clockwork. Real proper bit of scran it is. Well, anyways, this particular night they got a load of these little monkeys, y’know, the ones that are about the same size as squirrels. So they dressed the little fuckers up in jockeys outfits, put ‘em on the backs of the greyhounds and made them race round the track. Funny it was. Like horse racing, only smaller.’
‘Fucking hell,’ says Stevie. ‘I’ve been down to Pomfritter’s loads of times but I ain’t never seen that.’
‘Nah, they only done it the once,’ says Frankie. ‘Fucking things kept on falling off as the dogs flew round the bends. I fucking love dogs. Guide dogs are different class. Remember I blinded that mush by mistake and then went out and bought him a guide dog, just to square things up with him, like? Well, I saw him the other day. Course he couldn’t fucking see me. But the dog I got him is beautiful. Crosses the road, keeps an eye out for him, even acts as a guard dog. Fucking amazing really.’
The car jolts unexpectedly and we all bounce up and down. I hit my head on the roof.
‘Sorry, boys,’ says Danny. ‘Sleeping policeman.’
‘Fucking pigs, kip anywhere,’ says Stevie, and we all have a little titter, but funny really don’t matter. The truth of the matter is I ain’t happy. I ain’t long buried one of my best pals, the blood’s still wet on all of our hands, yet nobody’s said a word about it. It’s like the man never existed. Then there’s the fact that every one of us in this car has each made more dough in the last three months than the Prime Minister earns in a year. So this bit of graft don’t make no fucking sense. Something ain’t right. I ain’t managed to suss it out yet but I will get Danny’s angle.
EAST MALLING, KENT. Pikey paradise. If Kent is the garden of England, then East Malling is its compost heap. Reef round under the surface down here and you never know what you’ll drag up, although the chances are it’ll have a pikey hanging from it somewhere. We turn off a main road which leads to a smaller dirt road and then slow down to ease our way past rusting skeletons of cannibalised motors and towering mounds of bald, death-wall tyres. As we hit the main entrance to the pikey site, Danny drops gear once more and we stare out of the car in silence, watching as a posse of crop-headed, dirty-faced little oiks get their kicks teasing the granny out of a three-legged mongrel dog sporting a coat rotted with mange. As we pass the dog growls at us through a mouth of missing fangs. Following in the tracks left by a tipper lorry we reach a clearing dotted with caravans. Some are spotless whilst others are decrepit hovels buried tyre-deep in filthy, stinking mud patches.
‘Don’t seem to be no one about apart from them few chavvies,’ says Frankie.
‘Must be at university finishing collecting their degrees,’ I say, adding. ‘Anyway, do we definitely know the cherry hog’s in this fucking piss-hole?’
‘Yeah,’ says Stevie. ‘I had a chat with Lacker Bunghole last night and he reckons the mush that’s got it is the chap out of all the pikeys and lives on his own in a little bubble-van. He gave me the full SP. Reckons we can’t miss it.’
‘I thought Gypsy John Johnny was the top man down this neck of the woods?’ I say.
‘He was,’ says Danny. ‘But apparently this mush jumped all over him and bit half his fucking windpipe out. They reckon he can right have it on the cobbles.’
Moving forward once more we draw alongside the first sign of adult life, a mini-skirted, ginger pikey bird who’s standing beside one of the shittier vans, barefoot inside a pair of her old man’s unlaced working boots, and hanging out a pile of grey washing on a bit of string tied to a nearby tree. And as we pass she squints at us through eyes of hate and mistrust.
‘See the way that shitcunt’s looking at us?’ says Danny. ‘If she says a dicky bird, I swear to God I’ll get out and punch her pikey fucking head in.’
‘Look at the fucking state of her gaff,’ says Stevie. ‘Rotten as a pear.’
‘If that’s the state of her gaff,’ says Frankie, ‘I’d hate to see the state of her fucking knickers. What d’you reckon it’d be like down there, Billy?’
‘Fucking clinkersville, Frankie. Like a fisherman’s tobacco pouch after two months at sea.’
‘Fucking filth,’ sneers Frankie.
‘There’s our gaff!’ says Stevie, pointing out a rotten looking bubble-van at the far end of the camp. Danny eases back on the gas and we skid slightly in a pool of stinking slush before gliding to a halt to take in the scene. This gaff is something else. I personally wouldn’t let a goat live in it, even if I fucking hated it. Ain’t no windows to speak of, just bits of torn-up cardboard stuffed into bare, buckled frames. No door, no wheels, and the only thing that seems to be holding it up is a few house bricks, built up in a couple of rickety looking stacks under each axle.
‘Fucking hell,’ I say. ‘Surely nothing lives in that, that sits on a khazi?’
‘I just saw a puff of smoke coming out of the roof, so someone must,’ says Stevie.
Without anyone saying a further word the four of us climb out to take a closer shufti. And as we do, Danny steps straight into a puddle which causes me to snicker under my breath.
‘Fucking hell,’ he growls. ‘I just give a gorilla for these Geckos and now they’re fucking ruined.’ Reaching back through the car window, Danny gives a couple of toots on the car horn, as the four of us form a loose line facing the van. Nothing, not a fucking sausage. The silence causes the four of us to bristle uneasily. Then, after about thirty seconds, the caravan wobbles, just slightly, sending our hearts jumping. Without warning, a quiet involuntary fart silently escapes from my arse. Ain’t no worry, it’s the body’s built in safety valve. Taking a steady breath I wrap both hands hand tight around the Dick Turpin, and the contrasting cold of the steel barrels and warmth of the wooden handle sends a slight shiver through my body, a feeling I find both pleasant and reassuring.
A quick glance sideways shows us all to be ready for action. I qu
ickly scan the pikey site, noticing that a small gathering of the camp’s inhabitants are forming behind us in the distance. No fucking sweat! We’ve got enough firepower hidden beneath our smothers and enough arsehole between our legs to fuck this little firm of Kentish diddicoys over properly. The caravan in front of us wobbles some more, rocks from side to side and then groans as though about to give up the ghost. As it shudders to a stop its owner, a pikey, a great big bare-chested, shovel-handed, Stone Age, simian pikey, wedges himself into the empty door-space to check us out. The four of us take in the scene, and I know all of us are thinking the same thing. That if this fucking creature had another head with one eye in the middle of it stuck on the top of his shoulders, he’d look almost human. And now he’s standing there soaking the four of us up, and we know exactly what he’s thinking. He’s looking down his bobbled nose at us, dripping with expensive tom, togged up in our designer clobber with slick barnets, and thinking we’re just bits of boys come to do men’s work. And that’s what’s so great about our firm. We’re wolves in sheep’s clothing. And believe me we’ve turned plenty of tables down to it. And what this genetically deformed Goliath of a prick don’t know is that we’re tooled up to the eyebrows, and that when working as a unit take a backward step from no one.
‘Mac?’ says Danny, looking our man straight in the eyes.
‘Big Mac!’ growls the giant, drawing himself up outside his door to his full six foot seven and puffing out his chest to show off a beautifully tattooed eagle, spoilt somewhat by the columns of thick black chest hairs sprouting through the ink work, like weeds forcing their way up between the mosaic tiles of an ornamental garden.
‘Big Mac!’ says Danny sarcastically, causing a ripple of quiet laughter to run through the four of us.
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