No sooner does it sink into Big Spud’s low-rent racklers that the party’s well and truly over, than they start screaming the street down. Without blinking, I turn and shove my gun in their direction ready to give them a bullet each. And immediately, the presence of my firearm sticking in their shovelled-on-slap faces causes them both to freeze and struggle vainly for breath. But then without warning, my feelings turn from that of anger to bewilderment, as my trigger finger also freezes and my hand starts to shake violently. It then dawns on me that I can’t finish them off. Quickly running my thought process through the whole gamut of reasons why, it strikes me like a bolt of thunder that I’ve been hit by an unprecedented bout of pity. But it ain’t pity for the two racklers. It ain’t even pity for their husbands, ‘cos if they had any principles or arsehole, they’d kick this pair of shitcunts’ cottage-cheese arses out on to the street, with their belongings following them in suitcases. What I’m feeling is pity for their kids, for having to call these two walking horror shows mum. As this terrible wave of weakness rushes over me, pushing me to breaking point, it’s all I can do to turn and have it on my toes sharpish back the ex-pig-mobile, which I’m still driving about in. On reaching it I clamber in, and after a few seconds of fumbling about trying to get the keys in the ignition, screech off, still shaking like a leaf, but at least safe in the knowledge that the two racklers have been so completely fucking traumatised by their close encounter with death, that they won’t be able to piece together anything for Old Bill’s jigsaw puzzle when he arrives.
I’VE BEEN DRIVING round in circles on the M25 in this pox-ridden motor and trying to hit the Brighton road for what seems like an eternity, but without any success whatsoever. A situation that might just have something to do with the fact that straight after I topped Big Spud I necked a couple of Nut-Nuts and they kicked in just as I hit the motorway. Worse still, the sky’s pitch black, it’s pissing cats and dogs and I’m feeling for all the world like I’m in some mad-arsed giant pinball game, what with all the flashing motorway and vehicle lights, and the strange-looking mooeys peering out at me from their car windows as they whizz past, tooting their horns like lunatics. It’s got me to thinking that perhaps dropping two acid tabs after just having blown someone’s nut off wasn’t the smartest move in the book. After managing to prise my saucer eyes momentarily off the road ahead I glance down at my speedometer, flabbergasted to find it’s reading a steady twenty-five miles an hour. Which seeing as I’m bang in the middle lane now makes sense why I’ve been getting so much stick from passing motorists. Fuck! I could have sworn I was going at least sixty. But even that’s beside the point, because the glaring gargoyle faces rubbernecking me as they pass are scaring me shitless. Let’s face it, the indigenous English are an ugly bunch of bulldog bastards at the best of times, but when you’re on acid they’re positively fucking grotesque.
That’s the thing with acid, it can go either way, good or bad. Mind you, I’ve only ever had one really bad trip on the stuff before, and that was when I was on Brighton beach with a few pals. We dropped some Dennis the Menaces and before we knew it things started to go absolutely fucking loopy. We ended up being chased back to my flat by a swarm of whistling cockroaches; that was some heavy-duty shit. On this time round I finally catch sight of the Brighton sign as it looms into view, and so switch to the inside lane in order to hook a left and hit the coast road home, when from out of the blue, a gravelly voice behind me greets me in old-time cockney, a dialect that’s virtually extinct today, and certainly one I ain’t heard used since I was a kid.
‘‘Ello, son,’ it rasps, the sudden manifestation of it almost sending me into apoplexy. After stiffening visibly I sit bolt upright and nervously check my rear-view mirror, and I can’t believe the sight confronting me. It’s my old uncle, Deaffy Dursley, the pigeon man. He’s sitting there as bold as brass on the passenger side backseat of my motor and staring straight back at me. Now there’s two things very strange about this. First, he’s been dead fifteen stretch. And second, when he was walking with the living, he was deaf and dumb.
Convinced that the acid I’ve dropped is fucking with my nut big-time, I swivel my head ninety degrees and do a double take. But this ain’t no fucking hallucination, it’s definitely him and he’s sitting there looking just as I remember him. Swamped in the same old threadbare, three-piece worsted wool demob suit that he lived and died in, his black flat cap pulled down low over his wrinkled forehead, and the obligatory unlit woodbine glued to his bottom lip, and all the while stroking his prize bird, The Rock, who he named after the undefeated American heavyweight boxing champion, Rocky Marciano. After blowing out a loud breath I shake my head slightly before turning back to face front, only to find that having taken my eyes off the road, I’m now creeping along the hard shoulder like a caterpillar on a leaf. So, after jerking the steering wheel sharply and stamping my foot back on the gas, I swing the motor back out onto the left-hand lane and carry on driving.
‘Wot the fuck yer doing, boy?’ says Deaffy.
‘What do you mean, what the fuck am I doing, Deaffy?’ I say, trying to keep one eye on him in the mirror and the other on the road. ‘I’m tripping, that’s what I’m doing.’
‘Day tripping, boy?’
‘Nah, tripping on fucking acid.’
‘Yer acting like a cunt. Yer got to sort yerself out, boy.’
‘I am sorted,’ I spit back at him. ‘Well fucking sorted. Plus, I only got one more lot of readies to pick up, then I’m slipping out the back door, end of.’
‘Where yer going?’
‘Dunno, States maybe… Miami.’
‘Don’t matter where yer go to, boy. Yer can’t run away from wot yer are. And that wonga yer got ain’t worth two bob.’
‘What you fucking talking about? I got enough wrapped round me to do anything I want.’
‘Yuss, but it’s bad wonga, boy. Reeks of death and destruction. No goodness in it at all. And besides, yer can’t run away from yer past because no matter where yer go and no matter how much yer spend to try and cover it up, it’s always gonna be two steps behind yer, waiting to tap yer on the shoulder.’
‘So, what the fuck am I gonna do?’
‘Yer ain’t got no choice, boy, yer in too deep. And seeing as yer ain’t got the arse’ole to take yer partner Danny outta the game, then yer gotta take yerself outta the game.’
‘I tried that three times already. Fucked it up every time.’
‘I’m telling yer, boy, if yer don’t do it now, yer be going round in circles all yer life, just like yer been driving round the M25 all night. Yer ain’t gonna get no better. Look at yer muvver, she ended up in the nuthouse.’
‘That was down to my old man shagging a shitcunt on the sly.’
‘It’s defective genes, boy, passes down through the generations. Take a proper gander at yerself in the mirror. Yer a nutcase, always have been, even when yer was a chavvie. Always fighting and fieving you was. Cor, blind O’bleeding Riley! And forever in trouble wiv the bogeys. Had yer first run in wiv ‘em when yer was ten fer hitting a chavvie round his turnip wiv a cricket bat. Yer can’t hide from the truth, boy, it’ll always find yer. I mean yer took a drugs overdose when yer was seventeen. Four days in hospital having yer stomach pumped. Yer nearly snuffed it.’
‘I wished I fucking had. And anyway, what would you have done if it was you that had been fucked up the arse?’
‘Who fucked yer up the arse?’
‘Me dentist, when I was fourteen.’
‘Wot that Chinky one, I thought he was all right?’
‘Nah, not him. Some bald old Paddy bastard with milk-bottle bins and liver spots all over his fucking hands. I remember it like it was yesterday, and it still runs me hot with hatred. I went in for an extraction, and the cross-eyed cunt knocked me out with an injection, then fucked me senseless while I was senseless.’
‘Dirty bleeding old bugger, needs castrating wiv a rusty blunt knife.’
‘And others like
him. I been abused all my fucking life. That’s why I ended up on the fucking meat rack.’
‘Working wiv yer old man?’
‘Nah, that was Smithfield, Deaffy. The old man worked up the meat market.’
‘Wot’s the difference?’
‘Fucking hell, Deaffy, don’t you know nothing? You go to the meat market to buy dead animals, and to the meat rack to buy live boys.’
‘Well I never knew that. I always fought yer could look after yerself, boy?’
But before I can reply to Deaffy’s last question, I have to take my eye off him in order to negotiate the Brighton turn-off. And by the time I look back into my rear-view mirror, it’s too late, he’s gone, just like that. Disappeared into thin air like a ghost in the machine. In a mounting panic and with a flush of cold sweat trickling down my spine, I slam down on the brakes and turn once more to look over the back seat. But all there is is air between me and the back window, so I just turn back to the front again and carry on driving alone, because that’s the way it’s always been. Just when I need someone to pour my heart out to, I’m back on my jack with not a friend in the world whose shoulder I can cry on. But it’s true what my old uncle said. There ain’t never going to be an end to my misery. No matter how much dough I earn or no matter how much dough I spend, it’s always going to be the same, it always has been. For every six days of black clouds all I ever get is one day of clear blue skies. It just ain’t worth it. Going to bed every night just to get back up in the morning to deal with the same old shit, day in and day out. The buck’s got to stop here. And if I’m honest with myself I was born to be alone. Marriage? Never wanted to get married, ‘cos I never wanted to get divorced. And kids? Fuck that, I ain’t never wanted no kids. Would have broke my heart if they came out all fucked-up because of all the wrong I’ve done. Bad karma and all that shit. And besides, it wouldn’t be right to pass my bad seed on to some poor innocent little bastard who ain’t never done nobody no wrong.
DELROY JUST HAS this bad, bad feeling deep down inside, that the white BMW with the blacked-out windows parked outside the tower block where he lives is waiting for him. Call it what you will, gut instinct or just plain paranoia, but something don’t feel right. So instead of stopping at his own motor he puts his hands in his pockets, lowers his head and walks right on past it. His first thought being, Spud Murphy. And his second, fucking leggit! But fear has already kicked in and clenched his heart tight in its clammy glove, squeezing out every last drop of his bottle and paralysing his running muscles. And it’s all he can now do to keep breathing regular and carrying on walking, slowly struggling to place one leaden foot in front of the other. It’s at times like this he wishes he had the bollocks to take Billy’s advice and carry a gun. But on the other hand he’s honest enough to admit to himself that even if he was packing, he ain’t got the arsehole to shoot a sparrow, let alone a human being. In fact, the one and only time he ever pulled a gun on someone, an absolute fucking no one, it was in a nightclub and they laughed in his mooey. So, he threw the tool away and then had it straight on his toes out of the back door. And even to this day he still gets the piss taken out of him for that little turnout.
So, instead what he does is just clench his teeth, clench his hands deep in his pockets and moves on, staring down at the ground and scanning the chewing gum blobs while trying to look as nonchalant as possible, and all the while hoping and praying that it’s a case of mistaken identity, or perhaps just someone who’s lost and needs directions. He thinks about giving out a little whistle as he walks, just to let the mush in the motor, now closely tailing him, think that he don’t give a fuck, but then he remembers he can’t whistle to save his life. So he strolls on in silence, heading as discreetly as possible to a nearby patch of waste-ground that leads to an adjoining council estate, knowing that if he can just make it to the broken fence that separates the two, he can hop over it in the knowledge he’ll be as safe as houses, because cars can’t drive onto it. Well, that’s the wish, but in gangster-land wishes very rarely come true. And he ain’t but a few yards from the safety of the outer lip of the waste-ground’s verge, when his heart sinks and tightens further, as that all too familiar expensive and silky whoosh, that all top of the range motors make when their owners step on the gas, fills his ears. He then swallows hard as the BMW materialises in the corner of his left eye before screeching to halt by his side. And now he’s begging on high for the ground below to open up and swallow him whole, and spit him back out in Australia perhaps, or anywhere. Anywhere but fucking here.
‘Delroy!’ shouts out a familiar voice from out of the wound-down window on the driver’s side of the motor.
‘Oh fuck, it’s you, Danny,’ says Delroy, half-smiling as he turns to face the car, and with what’s left of his heart now in his mouth. ‘Thank fuck, I thought it was Spud Murphy.’
‘Get in the fucking car,’ growls Danny, at which point Delroy makes to walk around to the passenger side. ‘In the fucking back,’ growls Danny again.
‘OK,’ says Delroy, meekly.
‘Where the fuck is he?’ growls Danny once more, as Delroy slips into the back and shuts the door, and Danny then slams his foot down on the gas pedal and does a U-turn, before steering the motor expertly through two metal poles that make up the entrance of the residents’ car park that runs two floors deep under the tower block where Delroy lives.
‘Who you talking about?’ says Delroy, now starting to shit bricks as the motor descends the first ramp and the natural daylight disappears, to be replaced by nothing except for the occasional, poorly-glowing interior car park wall light. The majority of which have been smashed to smithereens by local scum.
As Danny glides the car down further ramps into the murky depths of the second floor, Delroy’s imagination starts running riot, computing crazily through a million and one would-be answers and excuses and possible alibis. But he don’t know which one to choose in order to keep Danny on his side. So he just sits there silent and dumb and on the verge of tears, and thinking, how at this very moment he’d gladly walk away from all the dough he’s due out of the Spud Murphy coup, just to be back upstairs in the real world and not a prisoner driving downwards into a stinking blackness normally only used by skankyard junkies, who haunt the gaff to swap syringes and infected blood by shooting jank shit up horrible withered arms, and who then spend all night talking bollocks, squat-shitting onto old newspapers and pissing into empty beer bottles.
‘So, cat got your fucking tongue, has it?’ says Danny, pulling up in front of a row of burgled and empty garages before cutting the car engine and then turning in his seat to confront Delroy full on. ‘I’ll ask you one more time, and don’t give me all the old bollocks about who am I talking about. You know full well who I’m looking for. Now where the fuck is he?’
‘Don’t know, Danny,’ rasps Delroy out of a mouth as dry as the bottom of a budgie’s cage, as he pushes himself back as far as he can into the rear seat, terrified to be sitting alone in a deserted underground car park with one of the most violent gangsters in the country. ‘He said not to ring him no more. Told me to lay low. Is there a problem?’
‘Yeah, there’s a fucking problem,’ says Danny, flicking on the car’s interior light. ‘The cunt’s out of his box on fucking shit twenty-four seven. Not only that, he’s just topped Big Spud, and he’s riding around in a motor that’s got me and my brother’s dabs all over the fucking thing.’
‘I don’t know what the fuck’s happening, Danny,’ says Delroy, staring back at Danny, whose sinister scowl appears even more frightening in the car interior’s yellowy half-light.
‘I’ll tell you exactly what’s happening. Down to your silly little cunt of a cousin, Shakesy, and our freelance fucking coke-head of a friend thinking he’s Wyatt Earp, I gotta go to war with Spud fucking Murphy.’
‘What’s Shakesy got to do with this?’
‘Think about it, bollock-brain! Big Spud was after scalping the little prick.’
&nbs
p; ‘Nah, he knew Shakesy looks after me dog. He was just gonna use him to get to me.’
‘Fucking hell, was you born stupid or did you have to work at it? Your cousin was riding shotgun for Spud Murphy. The little fucker was in the back of the lorry minding his gear. We were gonna let him go, but Billy reckoned he’d lollar us all once Spud claimed hold of him, so he put one in his canister.’
‘Nah, nah, no fucking way. Oh, what the fuck, man, he was only a chavvie,’ says Delroy, dropping his head forward into his hands.
‘Anyway, that’s by the fucking board. And pull yourself together you little prick.’ At which point Delroy sits back up to take stock of Danny. ‘That’s better. Now you listen to me you little cunt. You got two hopes of getting out of this. No hope and Bob Hope, and Bob Hope’s playing golf with Bing. Believe me, I’m gonna do Billy. He’s been going downhill for too fucking long. And you’re gonna set him up.’
‘I can’t do that, Danny, he’s my friend,’ says Delroy, his face frozen with fear.
‘You ain’t got no fucking friends, you mug, only me. Who you gonna run to now when Spud Murphy comes knocking? Not that useless junkie cunt, Billy. Now you bring the dinlow in, or I’m gonna slit your fucking throat like a dog, right here, right now.’
Delroy’s never looked death full in the face before. But staring into the cold, black killer eyes of Danny right now, he knows the only way he’s going to walk away from this is by selling his best friend down the river.
‘OK, I’ll do it,’ he says.
‘Course you fucking will, ‘cos your arsehole ain’t worth a fucking carrot. And by the way, did you know that your best friend’s been fucking the arse off your sister behind your back?’
‘What?’
‘Yeah, reckons she’s absolute fucking filth in the sack. Now get the fuck out of this motor, you little nigger toerag, before I cut you to pieces for being the treacherous piece of shit you are.’ And with that, Danny drives off with a smile on his mooey, leaving Delroy standing in a puddle of junkie piss and feeling like the loneliest man in the world.
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