Danny, more than pleased that his intervention has been successful, urges us to sit back down, after which we await the charity auction with anticipation. First up on the roster are two identical paintings from the bloodied hands of Ronnie and Reggie Kray. Both are childlike representations of two-storey, happy houses surrounded on all sides by luminous green lawns and dotted with simply-drawn, multicoloured generic flowers. From chimneys on both roofs thin whispers of smoke spiral skyward to embrace orange and red suns that smile indulgently down on each household. They ain’t exactly masterpieces, more of the standard that you would expect a not very clever five-year-old using crayons to come up with. But in the event our firm ends up giving five grand for them, with all the dough going to a young local girl dying of leukaemia. Now none of us, excepting for Danny, I would consider to be heartless bastards, and no one likes to see children suffer. But if each of our firm looked deep into his own soul, they’d be patently aware that we don’t really give a fuck for some sick kid we don’t even know. It’s more than obvious, if we care to admit it, that we’ve just splashed out five grand so that the whisper filters through the East End that we are good and proper people, when what we really are is flash horrible cunts that don’t give two fucks about anyone but ourselves, alongside other people’s perceptions of us as caring, sharing criminals, in the good old Robin Hood tradition.
With the first bout over, Frankie and Billy slip away in the interval for light refreshments, and come back weighted down with a few cans of warm beer and a plate of cold hot dogs. I pass on the food but help myself to some beer, at which stage the lights above the ring start to flicker on and off once more, signalling the start of the second fight. A rigged-up sound system sparks into life, cranking out the opening bars of the Jimmy ‘Schnozzle’ Durante song, Baby Face. Which means only one thing. Denny Dalston’s fighting next. His signature tune being somewhat ironic as his face is definitely his misfortune, seeing as though it looks as if it’s been kicked in by a fucking horse. No sooner does Dalston step into the ring, carrying at least three extra stone of suet, than three quarters of the crowd are stomping their feet, applauding and going absolutely garrity, because no matter what shape he’s in he always gives value for dough. Rousing the crowd further by holding up both his arms, Dalston then commences to jaunt clumsily around the ring, before whipping the crowd into a further frenzy with a series of staged fighting poses and mock grimaces, which he finishes off with a bizarre pirouette across to his corner, that sees his flabby frontage come to a juddering halt, at least a half a second behind the rest of his body.
‘Daddy fucking Dumpling, ain’t it?’ shouts out Danny to me in disgust while motioning at Dalston, just as I’m getting ready to jump up ringside to let him know that the IRA puff coup’s on. After blowing down Dalston’s ear I then sit back down, as the hold begins to echo with a deafening cacophony of boos and racist chants as Dalston’s opponent climbs into the ring.
Ali ‘Boom-Boom’ Roomes is a muscular black dude out of Tulse Hill, south London. I’ve never seen him fight before but Frankie tugs me and tells me out of the side of his mouth that, ‘This spade can right fucking have it!’ Once in the ring, Boom-Boom throws of his robe, and flaunts his rippled torso at the audience, a move that elicits a series of monkey chants and yet more boos. Ignoring them, he gets up on his toes and uses the ring space to faint and parry an imaginary opponent, before counter-attacking with a series of beautifully executed flurries of lightning sharp hooks and uppercuts, and all to the appreciative cheers of his own supporters, approximately fifty strong on the far side of the ring. Every one of them black to a man, and more than a few of whom look pretty tasty in the tear-up department, which means we could be in for some fireworks. From the start of the first Boom-Boom’s running rings round Dalston, showboating and hitting him at will with a selection of well-placed hooks and jabs. Mugging him right off in other words. But for every useless lunge by Dalston that misses by a mile, his partisan fans scream approval, whereas for every scoring hit landed by Boom-Boom, there’s the threatening of a beating or a lynching accompanied by chants of, ‘Fuck off back to Africa, you black cunt!’
The first round ends with an untidy tussle that carries on after the bell has rung and with both men claiming victory, which only serves to inflame all sections of the crowd further. Round two, and Dalston comes out puffing like a coal miner with black lung running for a bus, and he still can’t get near his man. It’s then that things go from the embarrassing to the ridiculous, when Porky Edwards, who’s also doubling as referee, has to keep stopping the fight because Dalston’s shorts keep slipping down over his lard arse, exposing his hairy crack, which itself brings loud chants of derision from Boom-Boom’s followers.
‘Fucking disgrace!’ shouts Danny, and the dissent from the crowd increases, as Dalston continues to take a terrible beating. Cans of half-drunk booze start to rain down on the ring, and Dalston, a seasoned hand at prizefighting, knows he needs to pull something out of the bag to save what’s left of his reputation. No sooner does the bell go for the end of the second, and the two fighters are prised apart from yet another scruffy clinch, than Dalston steps forward and headbutts Boom-Boom, smack dab on the bridge of his hooter. The loud thwack of cartilage snapping reverberates around ringside as Boom-Boom drops to the floor clutching his face. Dalston’s supporters go fucking bonkers, for this is what they’ve come to see. An uppity south London nigger laying at a white man’s feet. And now that one of their own has spilt black blood, they want a piece of the action themselves. From Boom-Boom’s side of the ring, his supporters move forward as a dark menacing mass, grumbling and growling and making their displeasure felt. In an attempt to calm the situation Porky deducts a point from Dalston and gives him a public warning, which only serves to rile his support further. Shaking his head at the crowd in disapproval at Porky’s decision, Dalston then jerks up both his arms to take in the cheers of the crowd, as they go garrity once more. He then starts to strut the ring, milking the ecstatic applause before bowling back to his corner. Only he don’t sit down. Instead he picks up his stool, runs with it to the corner where Boom-Boom’s being treated by his seconds, and strikes him right over the top of his canister with it, knocking him sparko again and drenching the canvas with more blood. The place erupts, as Boom-Boom’s supporters steam into the ring from one side to cop for Dalston, only to be met halfway by Dalston’s mob spoiling for a war.
A pitched battle ensues inside the ring. Black against white, and it don’t matter who your pals are; your skin colour’s your uniform, so your team’s already been chosen. And so, our firm’s up and in against the black mob, striking mercilessly with bottles, fists, knives and dusters. Anything to hand as we go to work splitting skulls and puncturing lungs. Some terrible screaming permeates the air from both camps, and I look up to catch McClean having a rare old time lumping black bodies up into the air. Although they give a great account of themselves, by sheer weight of numbers the black firm starts to take a terrible beating, with bodies being stamped half to death, and broken beer glasses and knives opening up black flesh with undisguised glee. What’s left of the black firm that’s still standing has no choice but to have it on their toes, scrambling off the barge along the gangplanks, like rats leaving the proverbial sinking ship, and with more than a few losing their footings and falling the twenty feet into the stinking mud below, and the less fortunate ending up maimed and scarred for life. Eventually the ruckus subsides, as bodies grow weary and enough blood has been spilt to sate all appetites. But just when things appear to be returning to some semblance of normality, Lennie McClean comes running over in a pig of a panic and screaming he’s lost Derry O’Dourke amidst the mayhem, and has visions of his film deal slipping away. I tell him he needn’t worry, because we can see the tough-guy actor. He’s cowering under the timekeeper’s table, shitting his pussy film star pants.
Porky Edwards then steps back into the ring to make an announcement. Taking hold of the microphone o
nce more and appearing completely unruffled and unfazed by the riot that has just taken place, he places the microphone to his mouth and whispers huskily. ‘Due to circumstances beyond the promoter’s control, the rest of the evening’s entertainment has been cancelled. I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone here for attending, and ask that you start making your way back to your motors. I would also like to take this opportunity to remind you that drink driving kills. So don’t do it! And gentlemen, remember. It’s a jungle out there. So pleeeeze, be careful. Goodnight, and God bless!’
RICKETS HAS BEEN plaguing Custom House and Canning Town for about five years now. He started out as a housebreaker, which is bad enough, but now he’s moved up to creeping, which in anyone’s books is an out-and-out stinking fucking liberty. The difference between the two being that a housebreaker will only enter a house when he knows its occupants are out, rifle through their gear then have it on his toes. A creeper gets his kicks creeping through someone’s drum at night while the owners are tucked up in bed. And in our experience it is but a couple of short steps from creeper to rapist. Rickets has already done a couple of short stretches, but it ain’t stopped him reoffending. Plus, he’s naturally built for the game, what with him being six foot six of elasticated piss, as well as being so agile he jumps back fences like a gazelle before disappearing into the night. That’s why no one can catch him, and that’s why me and Danny have been plotted up outside his flat watching day turn to night. And by the time we’ve finished with him, he’s going to be six foot six of paralysed piss. He crossed into our world a few nights ago when he crept a pal of mine and Danny’s house, even venturing into the kids’ rooms and lifting their piggy banks while their dear little heads were far away in slumberland. Think about it, your innocent little babies fast asleep, while that total fucking lowlife is slipping about your gaff with his thieving hands robbing your toddlers of their pocket money. It’s a situation that can’t be tolerated in a manor where we hold sway, and all manner of people come to us to sort out grief because local plod’s a fucking joke, and spends most of his time slapping speeding tickets on boy racers instead of chasing after scumbags like Rickets. And Bunter, the owner of the house in question, ain’t a well man. Suffers from terrible circulation problems. Only last week he took off his socks to find another couple of his toes had dropped off inside them. But despite his handicap he still manages to help Danny out with his pigeons. And so, down to the old pals act, plus the reasons I’ve already stated, allied to the fact that Danny hates black men, we’re up to do whatever’s necessary to rid the local streets of this one-man plague.
I’m well up for the bit of graft seeing as I’ve been burgled twice myself. Not by Rickets, but that don’t matter, because if I can’t catch the slags that done my gaff, any housebreaking scumbag will do. To make matters worse Danny’s got the raving hump which will make it all the more fun, because yesterday he got doorstepped coming out of his pigeon club by a reporter from a scuzzball Sunday red-top about a murder he done a few years back. But instead of just ignoring the arsewipe reporter, Danny went garrity, smashed him to bits and put him into hospital with concussion. So now the pigs are crawling all over the show. The murder in question happened when he took Tina out one night to watch Freddie Starr at the Top Hat And Tails cabaret club in Bethnal Green. Lee Maggs, a part-time doorman and full-time flash cunt, stopped him and Tina at the front door and tried to charge them a cover.
Now the thing is, the club was owned by a pal of ours who we had lent some readies to, so Danny was in order to expect to just stroll in with the red carpet treatment, especially as he’d made the necessary arrangements beforehand. But Maggs weren’t having it. He didn’t know Danny, didn’t want to know Danny and that was the end of it, or so he thought. Danny took Tina straight back home and crept back up there just before closing time. He hit Maggs on the whiskers and then slit his throat with a hunting knife. Personally, I think Danny went a bit over the top. I would have just paid the entrance fee and sorted things out at a later date. Not only that, but Old Bill’s had the right hump over it for years, because they had a positive ID on Danny from a local grass, who happened to be out on the Joe Brown at the time. But by sheer coincidence or good fortune, a couple of months after the start of the investigation, the grass ended up being found dead in his garage, in the front seat of his car and with a hose leading from the exhaust. The coroner reckoned it was suicide. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. Who gives a fuck for a dead grass?
It’s now eleven at night, which means we’ve been plotted up for over four hours, staring out of our car windscreen and up at the gaff that Rickets shares with a white bird, which has given Danny even more of the hump. And she’s also a right good sort, which has given Danny even more of the hump on top of that. And for the last hour I’ve further frayed his nerves to shreds, by his twisted reckoning, and all because I didn’t have a chance to eat earlier and so had to grab a takeaway portion of Jamaican jerk chicken. First of all Danny sat there with a face like a smacked arse complaining I was eating too loud.
‘How the fuck can a man eat chicken too loud?’ I said to him.
‘You’re chanking it, mate,’ he reckoned to me. So to stop any further moaning I stopped chewing and simply started to suck the meat off the bone. But even that weren’t good enough for my psychopath of a partner, because then he turned to me and said, ‘Fucking hell, mate. We’re going to be shooting someone in a minute, and all your fingers are gonna be greasy from eating that fucking nigger chicken. Your finger might slip on the fucking trigger and you’ll end up shooting me instead.’
I had to tell him what a ridiculous fucking statement that was, especially when I showed him the lemon-fresh hand wipes that came with the food. But he still weren’t happy, and since my meal he’s been sitting next to me with a face like a sparrow that’s just laid a fucking ostrich egg.
‘There he is, the black cunt!’ says Danny, causing me to start from a daydream and look up. And sure enough there’s our man, bowling away from us in the near distance and clad head to toe in the de rigueur black of burglars, which obviously means he’s on his way to work. Saying nothing further, me and Danny slip quietly out of the car and bear quickly down on him from behind, our trainers masking any noise our footsteps may make. Reaching Rickets first, I take a leap forward and upward, as though ready to dunk a basketball, and then with both arms at full stretch grab him in a reverse chokehold around his pencil neck, before using my full body weight to bring him crashing down underneath me to the pavement, as easily as a lion takes down an antelope, whilst at the same time taking great care to smash his head hard onto the concrete, so as to knock the bollocks out of him before he has a chance to put up a struggle.
Grabbing hold of his hair I then smash his face into the pavement hard once more, before rolling him over onto his back, after which I pull out my revolver, cock back the hammer and stick the barrel of it into his right eye.
‘I ain’t done nothing!’ he protest loudly, glaring wide-eyed out of his left eye.
‘You ain’t done nothing, you black cunt?’ I scream back at him. ‘That’s what everyone says when it comes on them. It means fuck all from where we’re standing. You’re fucking guilty, ‘cos we say you’re fucking guilty. Now shut it, you housebreaking piece of shit. Or so help me, I’ll blow out your fucking voice box.’
‘Where you going this time of night, you fucking nigger cunt?’ says Danny, now standing directly over Rickets and stamping his foot hard down on the pit of his stomach.
‘Er… down… er… the Wwwwwwwwimpy bar,’ gasps Rickets, through shallow painful breaths, a statement that causes me to laugh out loud, because it’s funny what people say when you put it right on them. Fear takes over any reasoning and salient thought and they start to babble like a brook. Tell you anything you want to hear. I mean there is a Wimpy bar up on Star Lane, but no one ever goes in there. Nowadays, if you want fast food you go to McDonalds or Kentucky Fried Chicken.
&nbs
p; ‘Fucking Wimpy bar, you black cunt?’ screams Danny, pulling out his Colt .45. ‘You’ll be going down the fucking limpy bar when we’ve finished with you.’ And with that he tells me to roll Rickets back onto his front, which I do, after which he leans down and blows off the calf muscle on his right leg. Ricket’s piercing screams fill the air, as the hollow-tipped bullet from Danny’s .45 blows his calf muscle and the bone underneath to smithereens. And in the same instant that familiar stench of burnt flesh and gunpowder punches its way up my nostrils and into my brain. In order to counter that most hated of smells, I take a deep breath in through my mouth, right at the same time that a tiny piece of Ricket’s charcoaled flesh decides to gatecrash my open mouth and fly straight down the back of my throat.
Struck by the thought that I’ve just turned cannibal by swallowing a piece of this scumbag’s leg, I jump up and run around in a demented half-circle not quite knowing what to do. Luckily for me instinct kicks in straight away and my body convulses, instantaneously spewing out a thick, mushy mess of jerk chicken, combined with a taster of Ricket’s calf muscle, all over the man himself, who’s now laying curled up like a foetus and moaning gently. The aftertaste of Ricket’s calf muscle, whose flavour can best be described as akin to spit-roasted pig, lingers worryingly on my palate along with a mixture of bile and sick, causing me to fly into a terrible rage, and I end up steaming into him with a bevy of beautifully timed kicks to his head that open his face up like a watermelon, after which I run to catch Danny up, still spitting and grolleying vomit as I go.
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