‘About what?’
‘How the fuck did your middle name get to be Moses?’
‘Delusions of fucking grandeur on my mum and dad’s part, I reckon. Think they had visions of me parting the Thames and leading my people across to the Promised Land.’
‘What the fuck went wrong?’
‘Council built a fucking foot tunnel.’
‘Slags, anyway back to reality. Gear’s on its way. One million per cent. Be here in the next few days. Charlie, pills, but mostly Gold Seal.’
‘Moroccan?’
‘Lebanese.’
‘Fresh?’
‘Fresher than that fucking cake you’re eating.’
‘Yeah, you’re right,’ I say, spitting out a mouthful and then throwing the remainder at a passing pigeon. ‘Just cost me a score and tastes like a fucking jank pussy. By the way, we gotta sell the gear up the road. Manchester.’
‘Why?’
‘‘Cos Spud Murphy will have had the bars and pills signature stamped, bollock-brains. Which means that if we move them down here they’ll traced back to us. I mean we don’t give two fucks, but you don’t want Spud on your knocker, do you?’
‘Fuck that! Fucking shame having to sell it up there though.’
‘Yeah, be wasted on them northern maggots.’
‘I want you to promise me something, Billy.’
‘Go on?’
‘No fucking rough stuff.’
‘Perish the thought, son.’
‘I fucking mean it. I know a couple of the mushes that will be on the bit of graft. Straight-goers they are, only on wages. I don’t wanna see them get hurt down to nishmans.’
‘You got my word.’
‘What about Danny?’
‘What d’ya mean?’
‘He’s the resident fucking psycho on the firm, ain’t he? Likes topping people just to watch ‘em die.’
‘Word in your shell-like, son.’ I say, pulling Delroy close and placing an arm firmly around his shoulder. ‘Ain’t nothing down that stretch of your imagination, son. Only plenty of unwanted fucking grief. So drop it, eh?’
‘Sorry, mate, just getting a bit twitchy. Reckon you’ll be able to handle it. I’m talking about Spud Murphy and his boys.’
‘Fuck Spud Murphy and his boys. We’re premier league. Those mick cunts are Hackney Marshes, carry your own fucking goalposts.’
‘Sweet, mate. ‘Ere listen, you wanna see some premier league class, look at these. Whaddya think?’ he adds, opening his mouth and flashing me a wide smile.
‘‘Cor, hit me in the face with a wet packet of shit! What do I think? I tell you what I think. I’m sitting here trying to discuss what seems like a sensible bit of business, with a man that’s just gone and had a load of fucking diamonds put in his front teeth. Fuck me, mate, this is London town not Trenchtown. You want respect from proper people, you ain’t gonna get it walking round with your mooey looking like the front grill of a spade’s Cadillac.’
‘Think they’re over the top then?’
‘You might be better walking round with a neon sign flashing on your head saying, please nick me I’m a fucking drug dealer.’
‘Go fuck yourself, Chief Fucking High Horse! I like them. And, as well as looking hard, they’re practical. I mean if things get a bit hot and I have to have it on my toes for a while, well I ain’t like you cunts, got bank accounts all over the fucking show. So, all I gotta do is just pop these little suckers out, sell them on, and the dough will keep me going until it’s safe to come back on the plot.’
‘I think you’ve lost the fucking plot. Anyway, between me you and the gatepost, I’m thinking of jacking the game in.’
‘What game?’
‘This fucking game, you fucking knob. It’s finished, all of it. Gone down the pan. You add it all up and what does it come to? Zilch! Just one big load of old bollocks and never mind all the flash accessories. I could have done so much more with my life. At one stage, when I was a chavvie, I wanted to be a vet. Now the only animals I get to work with wear Burberry macs and carry shotguns. Whatever happened to all the heroes, eh? The people you could look up to? I’ll tell you what, you build ‘em up high, and then they always let you down. And that’s how it’s been all my life. I mean God fucking help us, you’ve got Johnny Rotten selling butter. Y’know, when I was a young punk that man was someone to look up to. Now he’s a cross between Dot Cotton and Albert Steptoe.’
‘I ain’t got a clue what you’re on about. You’re just in a rut, man.’
‘In a rut? I’m in a fucking trench with bullets flying.’
‘My heart bleeds for you, man, it really does. And anyway you can’t leave here, this city is you, it’s your fucking roots. It’s like a tree, it needs its roots to suck up all the goodness out of the ground. Without its roots it fucking dies, and so will you if you leave this place.’
‘Die if I leave here? I’ll fucking die if I don’t. And as for goodness, where’s the fucking goodness in one of your best pals ending up on a salad plate next to a dollop of piccalilli?’
‘Dollop of piccalilli?’
‘Forget about it.’
‘So where you thinking of going, when you jack all this in?’
‘Bollocks you cunt, I ain’t going nowhere, I’m just fucked off. I’ve just watched a crow getting mullered and been served coffee and cake by a skank with teeth marks all over her fucking gregory, and you’re sitting there spouting out cod philosophy. Stick to cod and chips, you dopey cunt.’
And with that I walk off cursing my big mouth, knowing I’ve just made a big mistake in revealing my innermost thoughts to Delroy. I love the kid to death but he’s got the brains of a fucking beefburger and a mouth as big as the Blackwall Tunnel, and I should know better than to be showing anyone my hand. The fact is I really am thinking of getting out. I’m tired of all the backbiting, all the violence and the greed. To be truthful I’m just sick to death of the whole shebang. My nightmares are becoming my reality and it’s getting to the stage where I can’t go on. I ain’t functioning like a proper human being. I need some space where I can breathe and be myself. And how many narrow escapes can a man have before his luck runs out? I even get cunts like my pal Stewpot saying to me. ‘Don’t worry about it, Billy. The way to look at is, if a bullet’s got your name on it, it’s got your name on it.’ The trouble with that statement being that if a bullet had Stewpot’s name on it he wouldn’t even know, because the dinlow cunt can’t even read and write.
It’s sod’s law that sooner rather than later one of us is going to get topped, even if Danny’s convinced himself he’s invincible. And if the truth be told I don’t think that any of us will be crying over each other’s collection plates whenever it does happen. Of course, there’ll be the usual huffing and puffing and shows of strength. Yet another funeral and more pious words. But then it’ll be business as usual, with the winners carving up the dead man’s spoils. And contrary to popular belief, when a gangster’s pushing up daisies, all his wife and kids end up with is crumbs off the table. There ain’t no honour amongst thieves. But like I say, these are my pillow thoughts and I have to keep them tightly under wraps. If a whisper, even a single whisper, gets out that I’m wobbling, then my situation becomes precarious. A gangster showing weakness quickly becomes a liability in the minds of his paranoid firm. I’ve known for people to be taken out of the game just for wanting to take a backseat, because their firm got jittery that they were going boss-eyed.
SILVERTOWN BOXING CLUB is a spit and sawdust fighters’ gym situated at the arse end of Custom House. It sits bang over the top of a run-down boozer called the Flying Scud and is looked after by a cigar chomping half-chat we call Castro. Castro, who’s a ringer for the famed Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel, also runs the poker machine rackets for the IRA. Nobody fucks with him. I’m here to hook up with my firm, to reassess the situation regarding the dough still owed to us by the Essex car dealers, the Rite brothers, and in the event of their non-payment, the prospect of slippi
ng into some heavy-duty drug action with The Bug. As I ease open the front door of the gym the stink hits me. Cigar smoke tinged with honest sweat, an aroma I normally find quite pleasing. But I had a late one last night, so not only am I in receipt of a hangover from hell, but my mouth feels like the inside of an Arab gravedigger’s flip-flop. Sucking in a couple of deep breaths to acclimatise, I ease my way past a handful of solemn men soaked in sweat and the toils of their trade. In stony-faced silence they push themselves through the time-honoured rituals of punching bags, boxing shadows and chasing elusive dreams, and all to the heart-stopping bass and rat-a-tat-tat rap of eardrum-shattering east coast hip-hop, blasting from a bashed-up boom box in the corner. Passing the boxing ring I look up disinterestedly as a couple of bullet-heads pound each other mercilessly with big bombs. It’s a crying shame because the only thing any of these undercard heroes will ever be is badly-paid punch bags. Yeah, they’ve got big hearts, but empty pockets and no brains. Ain’t no dough in the game on this rung of the ladder, and none of them will face the fact that they’re going to end up fat and punchy on slim pickings. Welcome to the real pro-fight game. The unscrupulous making dough from the uneducated and cheered on by those of us who should know better.
My firm’s grouped in a tight little semicircle over in the corner by a broken running machine. The two men they’re shooting shit with are Little Titch and Long Lenny, the strangest double act in the criminal circus. Lenny’s six foot six and skinny as a stick of seaside rock, while Titch is five foot four and bald as a baboon’s arse. They’re jump-up men, which means they earn their whack sticking shooters up the hooters of long-distance lorry drivers and relieving them of their loads when they pull over to the roadside for a cheese sandwich and a cup of Bovril. Snout mostly, because fags are easy to fence. Sometimes though they come unstuck. Once they hit a lorry thinking it was full of snout but when they got it home it was full of Mars bars. Work, rest and play? Not on the poxy bit of dough they got from that little fucking load they didn’t. But don’t let appearances fool you, they can be nasty bastards. They’ll torture a driver if he won’t hand over his keys. Don’t know what they do to them exactly, but I know one thing: if Titch breathed on me I’d hand him over anything he wanted. I don’t like to get personal, but the man’s got the foulest breath this side of a cancerous dog. Even on a good day his open gob smells like Sweeney Todd’s cellar. I must get round to telling him either to ease off the shit sandwiches or try a course of colonics.
But before I hook up with my firm I must tell you about last night. Went to a party in a private golf club right out in the sticks. Beautiful gaff, proper toby, as we say in these parts, set in its own secluded grounds. I was mob-handed and the first thing we did when we got there was to find a nice little plot in the corner of the bar to monitor the proceedings. Then we started to cane the charlie and astound all the other revellers by buying up all thirty bottles of Bolly they had stashed behind the bar. The place started to come alive, and by midnight it was rammed full of premier league tarts. I was completely out of the fucking game, shimmying across the dance floor and cutting some razor-sharp moves to a medley of seventies disco classics. And of course, because me and the boys were putting on the Ritz, all the little birdies were flocking round us wanting a piece of the action. In short, we were having a blast. Then out of the blue this little weasel-faced prick came strolling into the equation, just while I was fully engaged in a deep and meaningful conversation with a bird that worked as a kissogram. Without any apology for his interruption, this pissant gave me a tug.
‘Celebrating something, are you?’ he said. Now I got his stamp straight away. Not only was the cunt so skinny he has to run around in the shower to get wet, but he was a ringer for that school slap-neck you always hated because he was also the teacher’s grass. But I was in a good mood so I rolled with it.
`Yeah,’ I replied. ‘Me and my pals are celebrating the fact that we can afford to drink thirty bottles of Bolly on a Wednesday night and not have to get up for work the next fucking morning.’
‘I’m a policeman,’ he replied, shoving a warrant card in my face. ‘And I want to know what’s going on.’
Without any further ado I snatched his warrant card off him, took a bite out of it and threw it over the bar. Then I turned back to him and told him straight.
‘Now, you listen to me you jumped-up, poor excuse for a cunt. I’m here with good people, having a good time. Now fuck off, otherwise I’m gonna bite your nose off and spit it in your fucking drink.’ On hearing me raise my voice my firm gathered protectively around me, wanting to know what all the palaver was. And believe me, no matter who you are, you wouldn’t want to fall out with any one of us sober, let alone when we’re firm-handed and coked up to our eyeballs. From left to right there was Siddie ‘treble Malibu and Coke’ Smith and his best pal, Bronco Billy Bullfrog, both ex-pro fighters and as game as bagels. Making up the rest of the circle was Jimbals and Scatty Bob, two armed robbers that would shoot you dead at the drop of a hat, plus another six absolute lunatics that can have a terrible core on the cobbles. Jimmy ‘Mad Dog’ Hughes, Adrian ‘Cookie Cutter’ Cook, Muppet George, Stevie Stutter, Joey Tomatoes and Ollie ‘The One-Armed Bandit’ who, despite having had his left arm chopped off with a machete, is a black belt in Karate, and a terrific snooker player to boot.
The pig, sensing he was well out of his depth, done the right thing and backed off.
‘What a fucking liberty!’ was the agreed consensus. But no matter, to us it was just champagne down a criminal’s throat and we got back to the more serious obligation to party. But then five minutes later weasel-face reappeared. Only this time he’d brought the cavalry. Seems he was part of an Old Bill rugby team also out on the razzle. Right at the head of the charge was this great big ginger copper with cauliflower ears and a boot nose. It was twelve to a dozen it was going to kick off anyway, so I went straight in like Flynn, and although I’m blowing my own trumpet here, I hit him with the best punch I’ve ever thrown. A peach of a straight right cross, bang on his ginger whiskers. CRUNCH! He hit the deck like the proverbial wet sack of shit. Only thing is, being completely out of my tree, I staggered onwards and ended up crashing into the DJ’s console, bringing all his equipment falling down around my ears. So the music went off, but then so did everything else. With their main man down, Old Bill’s arses started to blow brown bubbles but it was too late for détente. My people were all over them, smashing the stems of broken champagne glasses into necks, biting big chunks out of petrified pork, and stamping on cowering bodies with well-heeled designer shoes.
In less than five minutes we’d smashed the granny out of the pigs leaving the gaff looking like an abattoir. Someone switched on the lights which meant that the party was over, but it didn’t matter, we strolled broad-shouldered from the club victorious. And as we climbed over whining and bleeding bodies, I smiled with satisfaction because over in one corner, the big ginger pig that fancied it straight-up, was still sparkoed and slumped against a wall, comatose and with blood trickling out of his nose and ears. It was a shame the night had come to an end just when we were just starting to enjoy ourselves. But at least I was comforted by the fact that none of the pigs would be making their rugby first team that weekend.
As I approach my firm Danny looks up, and on catching sight of me blows down Titch and Lenny’s earholes. Taking the nod they slip away to a neutral corner, so that we can get down to business.
‘So what’s the word on The Bug?’ I say, to no one in particular.
‘He’s terrified to do business with us,’ says Frankie.
‘Whadd’ya mean?’ I say.
‘He reckons he don’t wanna be doing any business with us. Not only that, he called Danny a psychopath.’
‘Yeah, well fuck The Bug,’ says Danny, cutting in. ‘That slag’s had his chance to get his bit of dough back first, but instead he wants to cunt me off. Psychopath? I’ll give him fucking psychopath.’
‘Why don’t w
e just take over the Rite brothers’ Southend showroom and get our dough back that way?’ says Stevie.
It’s a good idea and one on which we all agree. So, after a bit of cud chewing and some more deliberating we bid farewell to a few pals, slip out into the street and into our firm’s Mercedes, and hit the A13 towards Southend-on-Sea.
‘Why don’t we just take The Bug anyway?’ says Danny, once we get rolling.
‘Whadd’ya mean?’ I say.
‘He lives down in Spain, right?’
‘Yeah.’
‘So the only time he’s comes over here is when his shipment’s in. That means he comes here just to oversee the gear and collect his dough. So all we’ve got to do is find out when he’s gonna be here, take him away and hold him to ransom.’
‘Sounds all right,’ says Frankie. ‘But don’t forget he’ll have Skinny O’Neil minding him off.’
‘Fuck that Mick bag-of-bones cunt,’ growls Danny. ‘If he fucks with us he’ll lose his nut.’
‘How we gonna know when The Bug’s here?’ I say. ‘He’s a slippery cunt. No one ever knows his movements.’
‘You just watch me graft,’ says Danny.
We hit the outskirts of Southend in stony silence and with Danny wound up like a cheap watch. Behind us the sun is struggling to break cover from behind a large cloud full of pissy rain, and in front, a WELCOME TO SOUTHEND sign, made up of multicoloured flowers on a small grass roundabout, heralds our arrival and the start of the sea-front. There ain’t nothing I hate so fucking much as English tweeness, so the unreconstructed yob in me winds down the car window and flicks a lighted cigarette at the floral display. It lightens my mood a little but don’t detract from the fact we’ve got a lot of dough laid down with the Rite brothers, and if it ain’t forthcoming, they’ll be fishing at least one bloated body out of the estuary down this neck of the woods in the not too distant future. Moving on down toward the business end of the front we pass the usual glut of cockle and muscle stalls, and then a tiny fairground full of inanely grinning parents waving like retards at their sprogs as they go round and round in pointless circles on silly little kiddie roundabouts. There’s even a crazy golf course. You don’t have to be crazy to play crazy golf. You just have to be a sad fuck with fuck all better to do.
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