‘They’re pigs,’ says Trevor. ‘Let’s have it right.’
‘See, you’ve got the very top kiddies, who are right smooth, see it as a swindle, then you got the foot soldiers who are real divs and probably believe all that master race bollocks, that’s the lot your hoolie mates was out and about with.’
‘They ain’t our mates,’ I say wearily, ‘but they would have a lot in common.’
I can see it all now, the pitchers of beer, the schnapps, the whores, the pidgin-English from both sides, the arms around the shoulders, the big plans for the future, the you’re-my-best-mate bollock-talk. Inside I’m liquefying.
‘Come the day of the trade,’ continues Shanks, ‘they’re all best mates, but when the stock’s all counted and the Germans want their money the English team go at it with semi-automatic assault pistols. No one was meant to be tooled-up, turns out that both sides were. The rumours, the Dam is always full of rumours, say the Germans were gonna turn over the other lot but they were quicker.’
‘Can’t trust anyone, can ya?’ says Morty.
‘It gets worse,’ says Shanks. ‘There’s a bitta argy-bargy and one of the Germans, who is in fact Belgian, gets shot twice through the guts. He dies later cos they wouldn’t risk takin him to hospital with a gunshot wound.’
‘So he bleeds to death,’ I say.
‘Yep. And this team of white power loonies hold your lot responsible,’ says Shanks, who’s on some kinda scally wind-up.
‘Now hold on,’ says Morty, getting up, all didgy. ‘Them cunts are nothin to do with us. Will you guys be told.’
‘Hold fire, Mort,’ says Victor calmly. ‘You say they ain’t but everyone in Amsterdam thinks they are. This German posse think they are.’
‘But why us?’ I shrug.
‘Cos your monikers were banded about for a drop of creditability.’ He goes on, ‘It ain’t us you gotta convince. You guys have got a bittova problem.’
That’s a bit of an understatement, Victor. We’ve got a serious misunderstanding with a deceived nightmare outfit who, Nazis being Nazis, ain’t famous for their ability to consider reasoned argument and, more importantly, we’re sat in a room with some very capable geezers who may be thinking that we’re here to mug them off a lorryload of bushwhacked pills. That would stink of slackness and disrespect. Not knowing the real origin makes us look like amateurs, mug punters. Shanks definitely thinks we’re at it.
‘When did all this go off?’ I ask.
Shanks is looking at me like he’s still unconvinced.
‘Ten days ago, maybe twelve. Here’s a clue for yer. A guy I do a few moves with over there knows this German outfit. He drinks with ’em to keep ’em sweet, yeah. He says the top mover from over this side was a guy called Duke. Do you know any Duke? Ever heard of any Duke?’
Morty and Clarkie shake their heads. We look at one another to see if any of the others knows a Duke. Sidney’s little slapstick tale don’t seem so fuckin funny now. I can see it all laid out before me. Duke, toot, missus, toot, council man, mace, dogs, shooters, flit, gonski, pals reunion in the Dam, plot, scam, raid, pension, start-up money, dead Belgian, oops, irate Germans, looking for readies, meet with us, pills for sale, dead cheap, big eyes, mugs, us.
‘To be honest, chaps,’ says Trevor, ‘I thought you were a bit cocky when you walk in. You really didn’t know about this turn-out, did yer?’
‘I think we’ve been set up,’ I say, indignant.
‘By who?’
‘By the geezers who hijacked the pills. We was asked if we could punt the gear in one hit.’
‘With who?’ says Trevor.
‘Well, work it out. Why’re we here?’
‘But you didn’t know they were skanked?’ he says.
‘Not till now. I swear on my mother’s life.’
‘How many bits are we talkin about here?’
‘Two million.’
He takes a sharp intake of breath. ‘That’s a lotta pills. You know we’re talkin pennies.’
‘This ain’t worth fallin out over, ain’t worth gettin indigestion over.’
‘Very true. Different story if they were legit,’ says Trevor.
‘But someone’s gonna make a lotta dough outta these cunts,’ says Morty to Victor.
‘Someone’s gonna get very seriously fucked-up as well,’ replies Victor.
‘See, you guys might be better off gettin word to the Germans that this ain’t your coup,’ says Trevor.
He’s up, walking backward and forward, patrolling the room. He goes on.
‘This madness ain’t any good to anybody. They’re gonna want one of yous as payback. That’s how it works, one for one and it could be yous –’ he points at us in turn ‘– or yous or yous.’
‘But it’s got nothin to do with us,’ says Clarkie, ignoring the mounting evidence.
‘Like fuck it ain’t. You three are up here lookin to sell the fuckers to us,’ says Trevor, towering over Clarkie.
‘But we never tea-leafed the cunts.’
‘Okay, so you didn’t, okay, let’s say we accept that. How’s it look?’
‘Bad.’
‘Thank you.’
Trevor sits back down.
‘Hang on,’ I’m saying, ‘have you ever heard of us goin on the rob, skankin? I ain’t talkin about toe-rags from the sticks.’
‘Well, put like that it’s not a problem,’ says Shanks, ‘but are the North European White Misfit Alliance gonna ask us for a reference?’
‘Shanks, we didn’t send anyone over there, okay? These cunts are tryin to mug us into doin the biz.’
‘And you’re fuckin doin it, pal.’
I turn my chair to face Shanks.
‘This guy you know in Amsterdam. What’s he like?’
‘He does trips for us.’
‘Trips where?’
‘No. Acid trips. He makes them. He’s a chemist of sorts.’
‘Is he okay?’
‘Not really. He’s a bitter, fucked-up old hippie, went over there in seventy-six and never left.’
‘But would he do as an intermediary, could he handle it?’
‘For money he would. You want me to talk to him?’
‘Not yet, hold fire. I need to talk to some people in London first.’
‘Listen, if you need geezers who can do the business, you know –’ he makes a gun shape ‘– we can sort that as well.’
‘That’s handy to know,’ I wink. You never know with people like Shanks if he’s just letting you know he’s got some right naughty hounds on the firm, so don’t fuck him about.
‘See,’ says Shanks, ‘it might be that the only way they believe you weren’t in coup would be if you deliver this Duke geezer. There was a dispute between two firms over there and one lot had to serve up this geezer’s head in an icebox, you know, what you take on a picnic, to show good faith.’
‘Some picnic’
‘They might just want some compensation.’
‘Why from us?’
‘They think they’ve got a genuine grievance against ya and a good few guilder might do the trick.’
‘I ain’t givin ’em fuck all,’ says Morty, shaking his head, eyes alight.
‘Shanks is sayin how it could go down,’ says Trevor. ‘If you do need specialists we’ll work out codes before you go back.’
‘Thanks. We appreciate it. So you don’t want anythin to do with the pills,’ I say, getting up.
‘Let’s not be hasty,’ says Ronnie. ‘If they were at a keen price we might.’
‘These are like pills were ten years ago,’ I say, sitting down.
‘Everybody says that. We’d wanna keep it quiet for obvious reasons.’ He puts his finger up to his lips. ‘We’ll have to have a chat among ourselves.’
‘Fair enough. I think we need to do the same,’ I say. ‘I’ll leave you some samples.’
‘If we ain’t interested,’ says Ron, ‘I’ll just ring ya and say, no code, you’ll know.’
I
f I was sitting where they’re sitting I’d be thinking on the lines of half a million quid the lot, take it or leave it, twenty-five pence per an article. They’re the big hitters.
‘You really didn’t know?’ says Shanks, getting up, shaking his head.
‘Clarkie –’ says Morty.
‘What?’
‘Tell this lot about that fuckin Turkish geezer.’
Quiet Night In
I wake up suddenly from my dream, feeling right weirded-out. I dreamed that I was watching this huge battle, a set-piece affair, armies from different periods of history marched into one another in ordered fashion and began fighting in vicious hand-to-hand combat. A Spitfire appeared above and strafed a Roman legion, while redcoats from Waterloo battled it out with Waffen-SS troops. All this is taking place on a large oval field like a cricket pitch, with pendants and flags on poles around the outside. I’m sitting at a raised table on a grassy knoll picnicking with Jimmy Price. The fighting has the atmosphere of a sporting event but the death-cries of the combatants seem very real. Jimmy’s head is twice the size it is in real life. He’s pushing food into his face in pure gluttony, laughing at the slaughter, choking and spluttering, pointing and slapping his thigh. The table is laden with grub of the finest kind, game birds and dressed fish, like a medieval royal feast. Servants in livery from Pepi’s Barn bring more and more all the time. Suddenly large droplets of rain start to land on the tablecloth and soon a summer shower has started. Jimmy glances skyward with a look of distaste on his massive face, as if to say ‘What’s this? Rain? I didn’t order rain. How fuckin dare you.’ But then he abruptly snaps outta it, slaps me hard enough on the back to leave a bruise and laughs himself red raw, then the hotel reception buzzes through with my alarm call and wakes me. I get left with the feeling that I can’t make my mind up if it qualifies as a nightmare or not.
Morty and Clarkie are gonna have a night out in Manchester with Victor and Ronnie. I can tell by the look in Mister Mortimer’s eyes that he’s up for a mad one so I decide against it, and just when they’re all giving me serious grief, Trevor invites me to come over to meet his wife and kids, eat dinner, cos his missus cooks amazing Thai food, and chill right out. A couple of spliffs, a bottle of good wine, nothing excessive. I leave them in the hotel bar and sneak off to have a kip about half-four and it’s now on the dot of six. I order some coffee from the reception and turn on the telly in the room. What was that fuckin dream all about? I reckon after you wake from dreams it’s sometimes hard to lose the feelings and weirded-out, spooky shit I don’t need. I can’t seem to get any sense outta this telly either. I can’t get it to change channel, maybe you gotta pay to change the channel, which is a fuckin liberty. I sling the remote control across the room, hitting a wall, and instantly regret it cos it shatters into bits. Now I’m stuck with the local news and weather, something I don’t really give a toss about but I ain’t getting outta bed until I’ve had my coffee. Then I’m gonna jump in the shower and that’s gonna wake me right up. I’ll probably get charged for a whole new set by these conniving bastards.
The main story on the local news is a grisly murder, and if it’s on the telly I don’t mind a grisly murder. It seems a boat-broker, whatever the fuck that is, has been found murdered in his home-cum-office on a boat in a harbour about ten miles up the coast from Liverpool. There’s a cozzer being interviewed but he’s being very tight-lipped but what he is saying is that in all his time on the force, twenty-three years, he’s never witnessed a more brutal, horrifying and callous act and I believe him. He looks jittery and a deathly white, like there’s something wrong with the colour on the telly, like it’s suddenly gone black and white. There’s TV crews sticking microphones under his nose and asking loadsa questions and every time he says he can’t answer that particular question they just jump back in and try a different tack. He’s trying not to get too graphic but it turns out that the guy was tortured before he was killed and one look at the old bill convinces me that they really did go to town on the guy.
My coffee arrives. ‘Was this a robbery gone wrong?’ asks one of the reporters. ‘No,’ says the cozzer, and goes on to explain that sums of cash and other valuables were not taken from the scene and the perpetrator or perpetrators were at the scene for some time and the place was ransacked. Maybe the work of a professional contract killer, another reporter suggests. The cozzer thinks it’s too early to tell and they, the old bill, are keeping an open mind and asking the public for every assistance. Contract killers, I’m thinking, don’t hang around, it’s the old one-two in the canister and offski, maybe they got a killing-for-kicks nutter on the loose up here. All this don’t really help my spooked-out mood but I find watching it very compelling with a nice cup of coffee and a complimentary Amarto biscuit. They interview one of the neighbours. The old dear says he was a very nice man, Mister Van Hire or something like that, always said good morning if I met him while out walking the dogs, he kept himself to himself, and went about his business. It always is, love, the quiet ones, the inconspicuous ones, who get ironed out brutally in their own homes. Funny how, if the dog wags its tail at ya, you couldn’t be a bad person. Waking up at six in the evening in this fuckin bunker is enough to send ya twitchy without lucid dreams about Jimmy Price in a military theme park, this afternoon’s disappointment over the Jack and Jills and a carve-up being shown live on the local TV news.
I take a leisurely shower, letting it run as ice-cold as I can stand just before I get out. That livens me right up. I get dressed, sky-blue polo neck, jeans and black suede Gucci loafers. This afternoon’s meeting was a fiasco, a real show-up, but I’m glad I ain’t the one who’s gonna have to go back and tell Geno or Jimmy about the Yahoos’ little raiding party. Tonight I don’t even wanna think about it and right now ain’t an opportune time to be discussing tactics with Morty or Clarkie. I’m sure I saw them popping a sample each earlier on. We’ll have the journey back tomorrow morning to discuss it at length.
Trevor’s said he’s gonna send a car round for me at exactly seven-fifteen and to be waiting outside. As I walk past the bar I can see Morty holding court with Clarkie, Shanks, Victor and Ronnie. They all look well on the way to getting mighty lashed, getting noisy and making merry, so I sneak past without popping in to say hello. As I walk out the driver simply opens the back door of the motor and I get in. The engine’s running so we’re off straight away and soon we’re going down country lanes at about fifty miles an hour but the driver inspires confidence with his control. Looking out the window, across fields lit by the nearly full moon, it looks like a picture-postcard landscape, with valleys and small villages. Soon this gives way to woodland and it gets denser as we go on. I make a point of never engaging taxi drivers in conversation cos you never know what you’re gonna get, but this geezer ain’t said a dickey-bird all the way and we’ve been driving for fifteen minutes.
He begins to slow down on a curvy wooded lane, pulls up suddenly. I realise that it’s the start of a driveway going up a slight hill. You would never see it, especially at night, if you didn’t know exactly, and I mean ex-act-lee, what you were looking for. The driver pushes a button in a panel that seems to be buried, covered with ivy. It beeps for a few seconds and then stops and the mute driver continues up the drive slowly. Fifty yards further on there’s a set of heavy steel gates wide open and the very second after we drive through they start to close again automatically. Lights come on, as if by magic, as we drive further up the drive, bathing the forest in a harsh white light and throwing up eerie shapes and shadows. There must be invisible infra-red laser beams flying about or sensors buried in the road. Another hundred yards up the drive we pull up in front of a house that looks Swedish. It’s made entirely of wood, is tucked away into the side of a small hillside but blends into its surroundings like it’s camouflaged. Two motors are parked in the garage, a Saab soft-top and a Land Rover Discovery. Above the doors and garage are CCTV cameras, so Trevor’s got the whole place ready-eyed up. This place being s
o isolated, I bet anyone living round here would have serious security, but Trevor’s are there to give him a bitta warning against more than communal garden burglars. His would, hopefully, give him extra protection against the busies, as they still call ’em, bogeymen, skankers or kidnappers.
The driver pulls the motor up noiselessly in front of the house, gets out, walks round, opens the back door. I get out, he gets back in and drives off. All the time he ain’t said a word, not a peep. I’m impressed in a funny kinda way. I find the bell and push it and it chimes away inside. Trevor opens the door, grinning, with a huge Great Dane on the end of his arm, pulling it back on a massive steel choker. The hound is friendly enough, not like those evil small dogs that have an inferiority complex and have to make up for it by being extra nasty. It’s the kinda dog you can give kids pony-rides on. He’s panting and jumping about in excitement, he’s about five foot tall and must weigh in at about twelve or thirteen stone. He looks like Goofy, so now we got Mickey Mouse and Goofy.
‘This is Albert, daft as a brush,’ says Trevor.
If dogs are like their masters then Trevor and Albert were made for each other. If anything Trevor’s size makes Albert look smaller than he is, but not much.
He brings me in and the house is beautiful, with wooden floors and beams everywhere, not old wood, but fresh blond pine. Everywhere shows taste and thought. There’s a pungent smell of coconut and lime, lemongrass and other Thai spices wafting around. Trevor shows me into the kitchen. ‘This is Mandy,’ he says.
She’s quite small and petite. Again, stood next to Trevor she looks smaller still cos she only comes up to his chest. Mandy’s blond and pretty, got a good vibe about her. Two kids, about eighteen months and three years, are up at the breakfast bar eating cod-shapes and baked beans. The younger one’s in a highchair and Mandy’s helping her with her food. This is what I need tonight, a homely glimpse of family life and home cooking.
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