Guns of Brixton (2010)

by Timlin, Mark

  ‘And it was worth how much?’ asked Tubbs.

  ‘Three hundred thousand.’

  Eddie whistled between his teeth.

  ‘Sounds OK,’ said Tubbs. ‘But if they’ve got rid or we can’t find it, we get ten grand each, right?’

  Another nod from Mark.

  ‘No,’ said Tubbs. ‘Let’s make it twenty.’

  ‘You don’t want much, do you?’

  ‘Man, it’s risky. These guys are stone killers, right?’

  ‘Right,’ said Mark.

  ‘And they might have other friends?’

  ‘Almost certainly.’

  ‘So twenty sounds about right. Eddie?’

  It was Eddie’s turn to nod.

  ‘I dunno,’ said Mark. But he knew he’d agree in time, he just didn’t want to seem like a pushover.

  ‘Take it or leave it,’ said Tubbs, echoing Linda’s words the previous day.

  ‘And you’ll do what needs to be done?’ said Mark.

  Tubbs nodded.

  ‘Eddie?’ said Mark.

  Eddie Dawes looked at Tubbs and grinned, and suddenly Dizzy was back in the room, conjured up from some far off place where he’d lain dormant for years. ‘And we fuck off after, Tubbs, you and me?’

  ‘That’s the plan, my man,’ said Tubbs. ‘Just think about it. Cheap rum, cheap spliff and cheap women. We’ll be kings.’

  Eddie Dawes looked at Mark. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Fuck this country. Fuck this winter. Let’s do it, eh?’

  ‘Great,’ said Mark.

  ‘So what’s the plan?’ asked Tubbs.

  ‘Simple,’ said Mark. ‘You, my friend go down to Brixton and make like you’ve got a lot of dough and are in the market for a big buy. We find out where they’ve got the dope and get it back, taking no prisoners. We organise a buy and fuck them up.’

  ‘Then I’m going to need some flash,’ said Tubbs. ‘My Vauxhall Astra ain’t exactly some big drug buyer’s car of choice.’

  ‘We need Andy,’ said Eddie.

  ‘Yeah,’ agreed Tubbs. ‘He’d get me a fucking Roller, no danger.’

  ‘I’ll organise something,’ said Mark. ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘And my flash cash?’

  ‘There’s no problem there either,’ said Mark.

  ‘Sounds good,’ said Tubbs.

  ‘Eddie,’ said Mark.

  ‘Man, for that sort of loot I’ll do anything.’

  ‘Don’t forget they might’ve got rid of the gear already,’ warned Mark. ‘Don’t be getting your hopes up too high. And these geezers are dangerous. Really dangerous. Uncle John’s got twenty-four hour a day security.’

  ‘So why don’t they get the dope back?’ asked Tubbs. ‘His security, I mean.’

  ‘They’re legit,’ said Mark. ‘They’re bodyguards, not fucking assassins.’

  ‘But we are,’ said Tubbs. ‘Remember, Eddie?’

  ‘I’ll never forget it.’

  ‘And you’ll do it again?’

  ‘Just once more.’

  ‘And then we’ll be set for life,’ said Tubbs.

  Eddie grinned, and Mark could see the boy he used to be.

  * * *

  It had been a year before Mark vanished and the boys were full on rogues and vagabonds. Mark was with Linda, but the others preferred to play the field. Mark liked having a steady woman. It made him feel older and more responsible. He had to take a fair amount of piss taking from the others, but he was the boss and if it got out of hand, he soon sorted them. The 80s were almost over. The age of excess had peaked and fallen back, the pastel-coloured clothes had been replaced by darker, more sombre colours, but the boys were still up for whatever larks could be found. Mark was a busy man. Apart from working for John Jenner, he supplemented his income with money from the many and varied tricks the boys got up to. He was on coke, big style. Coke and booze and love. That was what kept him going and he thought the good times would never end. There was still the problem of his mother and Bobby Thomas. But he tried to ignore that as much as possible. Every night was a party and every day was grafting, but he had a beautiful woman, a wardrobe full of clothes, money in the bank, and his BMW parked out front for all to admire.

  Life was sweet, but it was about to turn sour.

  The boys were ambitious in their villainy. Andy Styles was a renowned car thief and, with help from Dev at the breaker’s yard and the garage he ran in Herne Hill, he was ringing motors like a trooper. The rest were flogging drugs the length and breadth of south London. By then, John Jenner had moved out of that market, not really understanding the changing tastes and styles of the younger generation, so Mark and his boys had taken over. Jenner meanwhile was huge in the protection racket, taking money from what seemed like most of the pubs, clubs and restaurants from Greenwich to Twickenham. Later, of course, he went back into dope, but for the moment he was happy to see Mark doing well, as long as there was a cut in it for him. It was all working out nicely. But of course, there was always someone ready to put his oar in and spoil a sweet operation.

  At that time, the particular someone was a young black man called Neville Lloyd. Neville lived at various addresses from the Elephant and Castle through Camberwell, all the way down to South Norwood. The boy was a bit of a beast with women, and had girlfriends stashed away all over the place. Most had children by him, all boys. Rumour was, he wanted to start a football team. He revelled in his reputation as a ‘babyfather’. And, despite the fact that his women knew there were others in the frame, they were desperately loyal to Neville, running errands, taking messages and letting him stay with them whenever he felt the need. Another rumour was that he had identical wardrobes in all the girls’ flats so that it didn’t matter where he was on any given night, because he could discard one designer suit and leave in top nick the next morning. Aside from his sexual prowess, Neville liked to think of himself as a bit of a style king.

  He also had a chain of boys on bicycles and motor scooters running around the estates and up and down to pubs and clubs, delivering all sorts with huge bricks of mobile phones stuck up their jumpers, ready to take orders and collect from one of Neville’s safe houses where the drugs were stashed.

  Mark had no argument when Neville was flogging weed. As far as he was concerned, weed was the black man’s natural stock in trade. And if he moved a little smack or cocaine on the side to his regulars, no problems. But suddenly, as club culture took off in a big way, the demand shifted to ecstasy. E’s were the next big thing, and at anything up to £25 a hit, were extremely lucrative. The Old Bill really didn’t know what was going on. All these kids stoned out of their minds on bottled water didn’t make any sense to them. But it made sense to Mark. Perfect sense. And when he linked up with a couple of geeky college students from Sussex called Paul and Dennis, who were producing thousands of the pretty little pills in all the colours of the rainbow and decorating them with cutout logos of comic characters, they knew their time had come.

  Business was booming. Until, that is, the day Elvis came in with a handful of their pills and a black eye. Dennis was in tow, looking like he’d lost a quid and found a twopenny piece.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ asked Mark.

  ‘These fucking well are,’ said Elvis, throwing a handful of pills on to Mark’s desk. ‘They’re fucking rubbish.’

  ‘What?’ said Mark. ‘Show.’

  The pills looked OK to him, but Dennis shook his head. ‘Not ours,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ said Mark again. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We got one analysed,’ said Dennis. ‘Mostly chalk with a tiny bit of speed.’

  ‘And you made these?’

  ‘Do me a favour, Mark,’ said Dennis. ‘We wouldn’t let rubbish like this out of the door.’

  ‘So?’ said Mark.

  ‘So someone’s bootlegging our product,’ said Elvis. ‘And there’s more than a few pissed-off punters out there. Two of them caught up with me last night and I got this. He stuck his face over Mark’s
desk and pointed to his swollen eye.

  ‘Shit,’ said Mark.

  ‘Shit’s right,’ said Elvis. ‘I had a right ruck. They wanted to rip my head off. Lucky Tubbs was with me.’

  Mark sat back and looked at Dennis. ‘There’s no chance that Paul’s been at it?’

  ‘Christ no,’ said Dennis. ‘Paul’s even more of a perfectionist than me. He just wants to love up the whole world.’

  ‘Yeah,’ agreed Mark. ‘But they’ve got our logo on them. Our guarantee of purity and value.’

  Dennis looked a little hinky.

  ‘What?’ said Mark.

  ‘I think the bloke who makes our pill stampers might have gone native.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’ said Mark.

  ‘Well, he’s an old mate from uni. You know we more or less make these by hand?’

  Mark nodded.

  ‘I mean we can do thousands, but we ain’t Glaxo Wellcome.’

  ‘Yeah…?’

  Dennis wasn’t happy. ‘I think the bloke who made our stamper dies made one for someone else and put our little logo in it.’

  ‘Fuck,’ said Mark. ‘So someone just produces any old shit and people think they’re buying off us?’

  Dennis nodded. ‘Or someone we’ve supplied.’

  ‘But they could put anything in them.’

  Dennis nodded.

  ‘Poison, all sorts.’ Mark knew all about drugs cut with strychnine, scouring powder and even ground glass. ‘Christ, people could be dying out there and it’s down to us.’

  ‘Well, not on these,’ said Dennis. ‘Like I said, it’s mainly chalk, a little baby laxative and some amphetamine.’

  ‘But you don’t know what else is going on.’

  ‘No,’ said Dennis.

  ‘Who is it?’ Mark said to Elvis.

  ‘No idea, mate.’

  ‘Well, you’d better find out. All of us had better get on the case. I don’t want no fucker saying I killed anyone. At least, not unless I meant to.’

  Elvis nodded.

  Finding out who was behind it wasn’t hard. The boys went to all the haunts where drugs were freely available, but instead of selling they were buying. Pretty soon they started to turn up more of the bootlegged E’s, all of them bought from Neville’s runners.

  ‘Bastard,’ said Mark late one night at Tubbs’ flat, where the boys had gathered.

  ‘Well, he’s not really doing much damage,’ said Dennis.

  Paul nodded.

  ‘Except to our reputation,’ said Dizzy. ‘No one’s bleedin’ buying at the moment. This stuff’s so duff we have to give the bloody things away to prove they’re good and that just wastes our time and makes no profit.’

  The rest nodded.

  ‘So we have a word with Neville,’ said Mark.

  ‘He needs more than a word,’ said Tubbs. ‘Black fucker.’

  ‘But no one can ever catch up with him,’ said Andy, lifting his nose out of a manual for the latest Volkswagen Golf. ‘He’s got more homes than Barretts.’

  ‘We’ll catch up with him,’ said Mark. ‘I’ll make a couple of calls.’

  Which he did. Posing as a punter looking for a couple of thousand tabs of E.

  It took a couple of days, but eventually he connected with one of Neville’s lieutenants and made his bid.

  ‘Perfect,’ he said to the boys when they met in the Four Feathers. ‘Greedy fuckers can’t wait to meet me. Promised me pure E for a fiver a tab.’

  ‘Bloody cheek,’ said Paul. ‘Our stuff’s worth twice that.’

  ‘So I jumped at the offer,’ said Mark.

  ‘Where and when?’ asked Elvis.

  ‘Saturday night there’s a rave on up Waterloo way. You know, in those old arches under the railway? They want to make a meet.’

  ‘Will Neville be there?’ asked Dizzy.

  ‘Oh, for sure,’ said Mark. ‘I’m supposed to turn up with ten grand in readies.’

  ‘And he believed you?’ asked Dennis.

  ‘Course he did. I told him I’d been buying off us big time. But I heard that he’d starting supplying the same merchandise for half the price.’

  ‘Didn’t he wonder about you?’ asked Andy.

  ‘No. Why should he?’

  ‘But he knows you,’ pressed Andy.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Mark. ‘But he doesn’t know Paul and Dennis. They go in and meet the boy and we’re right behind them.’

  Paul looked at Dennis and Dennis looked at Paul, and neither of them looked happy. ‘You know we’re scientists, not gangsters,’ said Paul.

  ‘You don’t have to do anything,’ explained Mark. ‘Just be there and get a sight of the merchandise. He’ll be at the bar, he said. There’s a door at the back. Go outside. Tell him you don’t want to flash the cash where everyone’s watching.’

  Mark knew the layout of the place well, having done regular business there.

  ‘Then we go after them mob-handed?’ said Dizzy.

  ‘Spot on,’ said Mark. ‘That bastard needs teaching a lesson.’

  Saturday night came and the boys met in the same boozer. They looked as if ready to party in jeans or combat trousers, desert boots and loose sweat tops and T-shirts. They stayed in the pub until past closing time then trooped out to their cars.

  At that time Suzuki jeeps were all the rage. Andy could unlock and start one as if by magic, and the boys were making a little extra spending money by ringing a couple a week in Dev’s garage. That week Andy had stolen two, resprayed them, changed the VIN number on the engine and replaced the registration. They were both soft tops, one now red, the other white. Dizzy was driving the red one, Andy its white twin, and they let the tops down before driving off. It was still a bit early for the rave to really get going so they took a diversion down the Kings Road to see what was happening down there. They stopped at a coffee shop and soon had a crowd of admiring young women collected around their motors. Dizzy was rolling spliff in the back of the red car and Mark was snorting coke with Tubbs and anyone else who was interested in the front of the other. Everyone was kicking back and happy, but Mark was keeping an eye on the clock and at one-thirty he went round reminding the boys that there was work to be done. ‘Shit,’ said Dizzy. ‘I was just getting off with that bird in the blue dress.’

  ‘Get her phone number,’ said Mark. ‘We’ve got heads to break.’

  That cheered Dizzy up no end, and a minute later he was ready to go, the young woman’s telephone number written in red lipstick on his belly.

  ‘That’ll wear off,’ said Mark as he got into the car next to Andy.

  ‘Let the boy have his fun,’ Andy said. ‘You know what he’s like.’

  They set off again, running the cars over the river on Battersea Bridge and heading east across the top of south London in convoy. Dizzy was off his nut and kept nudging Andy’s Suzuki with the bumper of his motor, and Mark, who was trying to snort coke off the dash, kept spilling the powder on to the carpet. ‘Fucking bastard,’ he said as Dizzy drew level with them just past Vauxhall Cross and then tried to run them on to the pavement. ‘He’ll have us nicked.’

  ‘Who the fuck cares?’ said Andy.

  ‘You will if Old Bill takes a look at the gear we’ve got in the back.’

  In a roll of carpet stuffed into the luggage compartment at the back of their car were four baseball bats, a couple of tyre irons from the garage and Dizzy’s sawn-off shotgun. And Mark was carrying a small .38 five – shot Colt revolver he’d borrowed off John Jenner tucked into his boot. Jenner hadn’t asked him why he needed a shooter, just given him the usual advice: ‘If you use it, lose it.’

  ‘No, mate,’ screamed Andy above the slipstream and the music booming out of the sound system. ‘We’re minted. Magic. Old Bill can’t even see us. We’re invisible.’

  ‘Have you had too much coke?’ yelled Mark in reply. But he knew what Andy meant. They were untouchable. The boys were out for revenge and no one could stop them.

  So on they raced, bumpin
g and tailgating each other, cutting off other drivers, jumping red lights and going the wrong way around roundabouts until they reached the mean streets of Waterloo.

  Before the rave scene took off, those streets would have been deserted at that time of a Saturday night/Sunday morning. Previously, all the action had been in the west end, various spots of north London and down the Old Kent Road. But then entrepreneurs discovered that they could make lots of money by leasing or squatting railway arches and playing Acid House music at ear-splitting levels – the bass could be turned up so high it made the dancers’ ribs vibrate inside their bodies – and tiny bottles of water that cost pennies in any cash and carry store could be sold for fortunes.

  Of course, the emergency exits and toilet facilities were almost non-existent, there was always danger from falling masonry and unsafe staircases, and taps were always turned off, which meant that kids who couldn’t afford the expensive bottled water dropped from dehydration. Oh yeah, and if you thought about bringing your own refreshment, there were always plenty of bouncers at the door to confiscate it. The raves were advertised by flyer, word of mouth and mentions on pirate radio, sometimes nothing more than a mobile number to call. The venues were cheap or free, and the entrance fee was enough to ensure that the organisers always drove the latest motors and wore the most fashionable clothes. Then there was the drug franchise. And that’s where Mark and the boys had been given pretty much free rein until Neville had stuck his beak into the action.

  Not that they minded competition. After all, there was plenty to go round. But like John Jenner before him, Mark Farrow treated south London as his own. He didn’t care what went on north of the river. Whoever wanted it was welcome; to Mark it was another country. But south of Old Father Thames was his – a massive cash cow that was there to be milked by him and his mates alone. And Neville was taking the piss. It wasn’t on, and Mark was determined to make an example of him. How much of an example none of them was going to realise until it was too late.

  Eventually they found a couple of parking spaces and dumped the cars. They didn’t bother putting up the tops as they didn’t intend being around for long, and Andy had fitted a couple of devices that made the cars almost impossible to drive away unless you were… well, Andy.