‘Right on, I think you’re right,’ he says, pulling his lips back in a tight grimace.
‘Yeah,’ chimes in Frankie. ‘You’re right. Cancer has to be cut out before it spreads.’ And then Stevie throws his lot in the affirmative as well. Bingo! I knew it wouldn’t be too hard to work my magic on these morons.
‘What we’ll do is plot the spiel up and work out a plan,’ says Danny.
‘Fuck plotting the spiel up,’ I cut in. ‘We know Ronnie Olive’s up there nearly every day, and even if he ain’t, Smoothound will be. So worse ways we take one of them out of the game. But we gotta strike now while the iron’s hot. Otherwise they’ll book us right fucking mugs and be back on our bottle again.’
Danny’s mouth twitches slightly in one corner. It’s a good sign, and one that means the thought of being taken as a mug by Ronnie Olive has tilted the coup full swing in my favour. But at the end of the day this is total bollocks. I shouldn’t have had to talk them round into this. So now I definitely know there’s had blood simmering between us, which I’m putting down to my displeasure over Jewish Dave’s murder.
So with things agreed the first thing we do is make a phone call for a ringer, because we need a getaway car. Second up we make another for a pizza because we’re starving. And it’s a damning indictment of the service industry in this country that the ringer arrives quicker than the pizza. The motor’s a brown Volvo saloon, a great motor for grafting in. Let’s face it, when was the last time you saw Old Bill pulling over a Jewish Rolls Royce? And the pizza when it finally arrives is a deep pan, chilli beef, no anchovies. And so, after a hastily eaten lunch washed down with more coffee and cream cakes, we hit the road, stopping at a nearby lock-up to pick up some firepower and face masks. A silenced Beretta is the order of the day for yours truly. Danny and Stevie each claim a Colt revolver, while Frankie grabs a sawn-off, which means it’ll be his job to cover the three of us by spraying the proceedings with buckshot, should the need arise. After stashing the ironware in the spare tyre section of the car’s boot, we climb in and head south. Normally on regular bits of work the mood can be light, breezy almost. But today it’s sombre and our mooeys are tight with miserabilism. That’s because we’re going to top at least one man at the drop of a hat, and if it goes boss-eyed we’re obviously looking at life behind bars. I’ve known plenty of mushes that have started a day like today and never made it home again for fifteen stretch. Come to think of it I’ve known plenty of people that have started a day like today and never made it back home again at all.
After pulling out of the south side of Rotherhithe Tunnel we slip along the backwater rat runs of the Old Kent Road, so as to avoid the watching eyes of CCTV cameras. Old Bill’s very own silent network of twenty four hour a day grasses that scan the streets, picking up anything from burglars to booze-fighters. Fucking things are a criminal blight. And what’s worse, they’re growing like a malignant tumour. Granted, they make it safer for Joe and Josephine to nip down to Tesco’s for their weekly parcel of lamb chops, but they’re a pain in the arse when you’ve got to travel any kind of distance to graft. Nearing the spiel we cruise under a low-slung railway bridge, infamous for being the one that the Great Train Robbers used as a practise model for the real thing. After motoring on past a patch of wasteland infested with dead black taxis, we slow to a crawl before pulling to a halt right behind the rear of the spiel. Danny cuts the engine and I slip out first to test the gate that leads to the garden, then on to the spiel’s rear stairway.
A burst of adrenaline surges through me almost rooting me to the spot, but I force myself forward, pleased to find the gate unlocked. Walking back to the car as calmly as I can under the circumstances, my heart is beating three thousand times a second, and my mouth’s as dry as a granny’s tit. On giving a discreet thumbs up to my firm, the boot of the car flicks open and they all climb out, making their way to its rear. This is my bit of graft, so after slipping our rolled up balaclavas on our heads in the manner of workmen and each picking up our respective tools, I lead the way. On through the gate we go and into the garden, where it strikes me I’m less than fifty feet away from taking a life. My bottle goes slightly but it ain’t too bad. Most people in this situation would need a butt-plug to stop their insides spilling out all over the inside of the underpants, but luckily I had all the niceness kicked and fucked out of me years ago and I can handle this as easy as I could burning ants as a chavvie.
The garden’s straight out of fucking hell, being a sprawling mass of pissed-on, yellowing jungle grass, dotted with dollops of dried dog shit and alien looking weeds sprouting in all directions, like the hairs hanging out of a madman’s arse. Laying up against the wall by the spiel’s rear door is a mattress, stained with ancient body fluids, and which some sad-fuck of a wannabe gangster has been stabbing with a hunting knife, causing its innards to spill out in tufts around about chest height. After gently easing the rear door of the spiel open, the four of us move on through, and although at the moment my firm’s not flavour of the month for me, I’m glad they’re up my bottle. For all their failings I know for sure they’ll never leave me roasting. And when you’ve got that type of backup, the only way to go is forward.
Hats are pulled down into masks in the hallway, turning us from recognisable men into anonymous silhouettes with narrowed eyes and laboured breathing. I lead the way up two flights of rickety, unlit banisterless stairs, until reaching the top landing, where we come to an almost noiseless halt outside the steel security door leading to the main gambling room.
It’s time to go to work, and so, after giving the required coded knocks on the door, two loud and one soft in quick succession, we draw our yoggers and wait. There’s a thirty seconds pause, after which, the door opens slightly to reveal a pair of darting, suspicious eyes. Me and Danny barge in, trapping their owner between the door and the inside wall. He gives out a muffled scream which gives the game away, but it’s too late. The four of us are already in, finding ourselves confronted by a roomful of chain-smoking lowlifes, enveloped in a thick fug. Straight away everyone in the room freezes. Unshaven jaws drop onto the faded green baize tables, while manicured hands holding crumpled playing cards hang still in mid-air, as if playing the next card would end it all. Silent prayers are recited by men that ain’t stepped inside a church since the day they were christened. And scanning their petrified faces, it don’t take Einstein to work out that every one of them would sell their mother down the river to save their own skin at a moment like this. Nothing’s said. Nothing needs to be. Our ironware is doing all the talking. So, with Stevie and Frankie covering the gambling room, me and Danny move swiftly on, examining faces as we go. We know the layout of this gaff so well that before you can blink, we’re through the first passage and already anticipating the sharp left that leads into the khazi that is the kitchen. But there’s one serious blot on the horizon. No sign of Ronnie Olive. But bingo, Smoothound’s here, sitting alone at a table with his back against the far wall. Straight away I notice his face still bears scars from the beating at the funeral. A fact which pleases me. It also pleases me to see he’s so busy burying his nut in a plate of food that he don’t even notice us arrive. Fucking excellent, I’m thinking. Your last supper on the planet is going to be a poxy bit of overcooked roast pork and two veg, eaten off of a cracked plate on a wonky-legged, peeling Formica table, in a piss-hole illegal south London spieler.
But then, obviously noticing the change of light caused by me and Danny’s presence he looks up, just as he’s about to put a forkful of food into his mouth. And in that instant he knows we’re here for him. He knows it’s me as well, ‘cos although I’m smothered up, our eyes meet for a flickering second, and there’s just this understanding. The same look of understanding you see in the eyes of a gazelle that’s just been brought down by a lion. An acceptance deep down in its soul that its brief time on the planet is about to come to an end. And in that same split second I also know beyond any comprehension, that this is the slag
that ambushed me on the motorway. His eyes widen in terror and he mouths something, but nothing comes out. And you can bet your bottom dollar that this is the first time he’s ever been lost for words. It’s also going to be the last. Taking two steps forward I bring up my gun and put four bullets into his chest. Four rapid-fire rounds, not much louder than the crack of a Christmas cracker, that tear into his upper torso, jerking him back against the wall and making him body-pop like a jacked-up Thunderbird puppet in the mosh pit of a Metallica concert. And while this two-bit, south London slag is doing the dance of the damned, his face is a joy to behold. One of pain, mixed with horror and total disbelief. In less than five seconds his brain acknowledges the fact that its body’s vital organs have been ripped apart by a volley of burning lead, and he shudders to a halt against the back of the dining table chair. He then looks up at me as if to say, I’ll see you in hell motherfucker, before taking one last look around the room for old times’ sake. He then slides gently forward, open-mouthed and still holding his knife and fork before coming to his final rest, face down into his half-eaten dinner.
AFTER SENDING SMOOTHOUND to that great big spieler in the sky we slipped back to our home turf without a glitch. But even so, our firm still has to be extra-careful, as recriminations from Ronnie Olive can well be expected. But I’m over the moon because at least we’ve returned fire with fire. For my own protection and peace of mind I’m now tooled up twenty-four seven, a situation I ain’t crazy about, but I have my future to think of. And fuck it, at least a pistol’s sexier than a pension plan. But it means I’ve got to be on my best behaviour, because before I was released on my last bit of bird, I had to sign the firearms act, which means one silly mistake or a bad tug by Old Bill gets me five years at the very least. It goes without saying that the authorities are not enamoured with the likes of us carrying guns, especially silenced semi-automatics. Makes us unpredictable and very, very dangerous.
I’m just on my way to meet Delroy now. The kid’s growing progressively twitchy about the Spud Murphy coup he’s helping to set up. Can’t be helped, this is the only ticket he’s got to drag himself out of the quagmire that makes up his day-to-day existence. But nevertheless I’ve told him he’s got to hold his horses. The more he drives himself mad, the harder he’ll make it on himself and everyone else involved. I’ve laid the meet on at Greenwich Park in south London. It’s out of the way, peaceful, plod-free, and on a clear day you can see for miles out over the Thames, which may not be the greatest river in the world, but it cuts a fine swathe through my home town, so it’s OK by me. After easing my motor into a parking space a couple of hundred yards or so from where I’m due to meet Delroy, I climb out and step straight into a bit of grief. A small murder of crows has turned on one of their own and have backed it up against a wilted poppy wreath at the base of a World War II memorial plinth. Having surrounded it in a semicircle, they’ve given it fuck-all chance of escape. I stop to watch with interest because it ain’t every day you see jungle justice being meted out in the real animal world. While the rest of the murder guards the escape route, the boss bird seizes the privilege of first strike. Taking a short hop forward, it pulls back its head and delivers a spiteful hammer peck with its razor-sharp beak into the side of its victim’s neck. This is the signal for the rest of the murder to join in the fray. They leap in to gouge and peck under furious flurries of angry squawks and jet-black feathers, now dripping with fresh blood. One particularly brutal strike by the boss bird sends its victim tumbling over onto its back, where it lays stock-still, drenched in blood, its feet up in passive surrender.
As the murder stands back to admire its work, the bird under attack struggles gamely back to its feet before attempting to fly away, only to find itself grounded by its right-side wing, which is hanging useless and broken by its side. Sensing final victory, the boss bird throws back its hooded head, opens its beak to full stretch and lets out a loud and menacing caw that echoes off the marble plinth and into the nearby trees, scaring smaller birds into a panic of alarmed flaps and screeches. Then it bounds forward to deliver the killer blow, a fierce peck that strikes deep into its victim’s eye, piercing its brain. The vanquished crow topples over onto its side and lays still, as a tiny rivulet of blood begins to pump steadily from its eyeless socket, staining the base of the statue. Job done, the murder bounds off into a clump of nearby bushes while releasing a barrage of victorious caws. I adjust my suit and turn away, heading off towards my meet. It sets me to thinking about the first time I took out an eye.
I was still at school at the time, only I weren’t. I was hopping the wag, jumping on buses and getting picked up by predatory paedophiles in Playland, an infamous amusement arcade just down from Piccadilly Circus. It was a magnet for screwed-up schoolboys with no one to confide in, and a happy hunting ground for well-heeled nonces with a taste for teenage rough trade in school uniforms. So there I was, banging another ball up the pin-table in my ongoing quest for replay nirvana, when this city-type gent sidled up beside me and plonked down some coins on the glass to replenish my disappearing stack. Once the dough had finished, I followed him at a discreet distance back to his luxury flat in Mayfair. You get two types of molesters. There’s the talkers and then there’s the silent ones. Talkers are guilt-ridden about their bent for jailbait, and think, if they strike up conversation with you, then there’s actually some kind of relationship going down. Makes them feel less like the scumbags they are. I prefer the silent ones, at least you know where you stand with them. All they want to do is pay you, fuck you, then wash their hands of you, literally. This one was a talker. Soon as we got back to his pad he started telling me his life story, like I was interested.
Then out came the porn mags. Always straight, never gay. Another form of denial. Then out came the beer, another nonce stroke. Give nearly any boy a beer and he’ll turn queer. And there I was, supping underage and scanning porn mags and getting a nice little stiffy. And there he was sitting next to me on the couch, all fumbles and fingers, foaming at the mouth, having a nervous reef around my almost-hairless bollocks. So then I said I wanted paying.
‘Thirty bob,’ he said. I remember nearly fucking choking on the beer he’d plied me with. Thirty bob was a fucking liberty! Even back then it weren’t that much, especially to have your arse torn in half by some conscience-free creature that didn’t give a shit whether you lived or died. Thirty bob! I said to myself over and over again. That wouldn’t even buy me a Wimpy and chips and a Knickerbocker Glory. I grew madder and madder about the fact that this clean-on-the-outside dirtbag wanted to further soil a hapless kid’s life for shirt buttons. I weren’t going to stand for it. But I kidded him on and agreed the deal. Then he told me to stand up, which I did. After unzipping my flies, he wormed my dick out of my trousers and then got down on his knees and proceeded to suck me off. Quick as a flash I smashed the beer bottle I was drinking from onto a nearby table and stuck the broken stem into his right eye. It made a sort of soft squelching sound as it pierced the soft tissue, after which he let out a pathetic little sigh, then keeled over onto the floor clutching at it and mouthing silently, like a fish gasping for its last breath on a river bank. I just laughed, called him a pervert, then kicked the shit out of him. After that I relieved him of his wallet and looted his flat of any jewellery I could find, before legging it back out onto the street and catching a bus home.
Watching that crow getting mullered has whetted my appetite and so I decide to stop and pick up some coffee and cake up at the Roundhouse, a cafe which sits in a fenced-off ornamental garden a little way back from the top of the park hill. I stroll in to find it empty, as usual, but the tables still need clearing, as usual. There’s a young bird serving behind the jump and she gives me the eye as I approach the counter. Only thing is she ain’t my cup of tea. She’s all right in a bend-her-over-the-bonnet-of-your-motor, fuck-her-then-fuck-her-off kind of way. But her skin’s a bit pasty for my liking, bit like the pastries she’s selling really. After a quick de
liberation of the goods on offer I reluctantly plump for the blueberry cheesecake thinking it looks very tasty, but then a closer inspection of the tart behind the jump reveals a dirty great big, horrible, deep purple love bite, blighting her already spotty neck. And what’s most disconcerting is that it exactly matches the colour of the cheesecake. Just the thought of it almost causes me to retch. There’s only one thing worse than a slag, and that’s a cheap slag, and by the looks of it this one’s almost free. I come to the instant conclusion it’s got to be squaddies meat. Probably spends its weekends in some shithole boozer getting hammered on cheap cider, before being fucked up against the wall in a nearby, piss-stinky alley by some jug-eared, deep-fried Mars bar-eating piece of sweaty sock cannon fodder. Fucking shitcunt! After pointing out my displeasure about her serving the general public with a square-bashing wallah’s wonky teeth marks on the side of her gregory, I plump for an apple Danish and a coffee, throwing down a twenty pound note onto the counter and telling her, ‘Keep the change, love, and buy yourself some fucking class.’ For some reason this statement causes her to burst into tears and run off into the back room. Don’t know why, I just left her a fifteen quid tip.
Approaching from behind, I spot Delroy sitting on a park bench overlooking the river, his Staffordshire Bull Terrier asleep beside him.
‘Fucking dog’s got sleeping sickness, ain’t it?’ I say, taking a seat next to him to enjoy my coffee and cake, whilst staring out over the river.
‘Tranquillo, mate, like his owner,’ says Delroy, toking on a large joint.
‘Yeah, right. So what’s happening?’
‘Just sitting here taking it easy, Squeezy. And it got me to thinking.’
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