by Jay Stringer
The figure leaned forward as we came out of the tunnel and into the station. It was just a drunk-looking teenager, trying to fiddle with the laces of his Converse trainers.
My mobile started to ring. The caller ID said it was Matt.
Shit.
Gaines saw me staring at it. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s Branko.”
“Answer it.”
I clicked to receive the call and put the phone to my ear.
“Mr. Miller, why did you run? I was looking forward to a chat.”
“Sorry, we have meetings to get to.”
I heard a static-filled chuckle. “I admire your effort, really. I would like to speak to Ms. Gaines, please.”
Gaines had been watching me the whole time. She must have read the request in my eyes because she nodded and held out her hand, taking the phone from me. She grunted a few times, uh huh, mmm. Then she said, “Yes.” And then her voice dropped to its frosty depths.
“Mr. Branko, is it? Listen. You can try, and you can fail, but you cannot assume to threaten me.” She disconnected the call and handed the phone back to me. “Nice guy.”
“What did he say?”
“He says I’m not making it back to Wolverhampton alive. The usual. Like he’s the first to think he can take me out.”
I nodded. “I’m sorry your plan didn’t work.”
Gaines sat in silence with her arms folded, staring out the window at the train track running parallel to the tramlines. I saw movement at the other end of the tram, someone standing up from a seat, and looked up to see Branko. He smiled at me and began stepping toward us.
The tram slowed down as it pulled into the Benson Road station, the tall buildings and privilege of the city having given way to terraced housing and winding streets. I stood up and signaled for Gaines to follow, darting for the nearest door just as it opened. I stood in the doorway with Gaines hard on my shoulder and looked down the tram at Branko. He had stepped to the door nearest him and was waiting for my move. I leaned forward as if to step off, and saw him tensed, ready to follow suit. I jerked forward and he stepped off the tram, but I pulled back, bumping into Gaines.
The tram driver let out the three loud electronic beeps to indicate the doors were about to close, and Branko stepped back on. We stayed rooted to our positions as the tram picked up speed briefly, going under a few short bridges before slowing down for the next stop.
Winson Green.
To most people Winson Green was known for its prison. To me it was known for Black Patch Park. The park was the only remaining sign of the large Romani community that had lived on the land here for half a century, before they’d been evicted in the early nineteen hundreds. My father still insisted that Charlie Chaplin was born on the Black Patch at the same time as my father’s grandfather, despite all evidence to the contrary. The original Romani settlers were the only reason the park still existed, because if they hadn’t been there for so long, it would have been lost beneath another factory or foundry.
The tram pulled into Winson Green, and the doors opened. I stood still, smiling at Branko, daring him to make a move before we did. People pushed passed, making tutting noises and moaning to each other about how rude we were, not daring to say anything to us. I took Gaines’s hand in mine and stepped out onto the platform and saw Branko follow suit. As the warning sounds rang out, I stepped back on board, pulling Gaines with me. Branko stood on the platform, staring at me and trying to read my thoughts. As the doors started to slide closed he gave in and stepped back on. We stepped off. I waved at him as the tram began to pull away, then turned away and headed down the steps.
I heard the tram stop a few hundred yards down the line and didn’t want to think about what Branko had done to make that happen. I turned left onto Handsworth New Road and started walking fast.
Gaines pulled back. “Here? You know where we are, right?”
“Relax. I know what I’m doing.”
I hoped I did, anyway.
Handsworth was Dodge’s territory, and leading Gaines down these steps was as good as leading a soldier across enemy lines. It was the most overcrowded area of the second city, but you’d find little in common between this area and the tall gleaming buildings of downtown which rose up only a couple miles to the south. This ten square miles of council houses, flats, and terrace streets had taken in generations of immigrants of every race, religion, and class imaginable, all thrown together and expected to get along. The few main roads were traditionally used to mark the boundary points for local gangs. The area had seen massive riots every decade for the last thirty years, and one of my training officers on the force had been a Brummie who had worked on at least two of them. He’d told me that to walk around Handsworth and the Lozells after dark was to see every problem in Britain.
Up until the turn of the decade, the area had been loosely and quietly controlled by two main gangs: the Meatpackers and the Watsons. After a few high-profile shootings, the national media ran with the two names just long enough to sensationalize what was going on. Soon every kid in the city wanted to claim to be part of one gang or the other. Each had stories of epic violence and mythical confrontations; each wore colors and gave its members street names. The national media went away again soon enough but the problem was only just beginning.
A Police Intelligence unit, along with local cops and some community groups, worked to take down the two gangs, and succeeded in putting enough of the senior figures behind bars to shut them down. The remaining members fractured into groups, and expanded by pulling in street kids who were armed and angry, and these grew into new gangs named after streets or postcodes who guarded their tiny little kingdoms with steel and violence. They all looked across the border into our territory, at the organization and money, and they wanted a piece. None of them had been organized enough to take a shot at our borders, though, so it had been easy enough to keep them out.
Then Dodge came along.
Not long after Gaines took out Channy Mann, we started to hear the name. Some new kid, with a shiny new street name. First he was a wannabe, then a leader of one gang. Then he started pulling all the gangs back together, creating a new generation that combined the best of the Meatpackers and the Watsons into one gang with a single leader. If Becker had been right about the bounty on Gaines’s head, then I was as good as delivering her to them.
But my trump card was that I knew who Dodge was. It was why I’d refused to suspect him as a killer, and why I was holding on to that feeling now. I was also gambling that the cartel were as wary of the gang as we were. I was betting that Branko and the cartel wouldn’t have good contacts with Dodge’s people. His territory was the last place Branko would want or expect us to lead him, and I didn’t have to worry about anyone stabbing us in the back because around here they wanted to shoot us in the head.
I led Gaines to Barn Lane and into a snooker club called Scooter’s, one of the most infamous of the old Meatpacker hangouts. The club had traded hands several times over the last few decades but had always had a rough reputation. In truth, very little snooker playing went on. I’d been here a number of times in the past to talk to the old gangs, but more recently I’d driven by a couple of times to confirm my suspicions about Dodge’s true identity.
I walked into the front entrance, which led to a hallway with photographs and framed certificates of prizes the club had won in snooker and pool leagues. There was a door at the back of the hallway, and I motioned for Gaines to hang back while I went inside. I stepped straight into darkness. Pool and snooker halls had lost something since the smoking ban; there was no longer a haze of cigarette smoke hanging at head height. This one had replaced the old atmosphere with graffiti on the walls and hip-hop music playing from speakers somewhere out of sight. I couldn’t pretend to know what the track was, but it was loud enough to cover the sound of gunshots. Looped drums, a driving bass, and
shouted lyrics detailing poverty and discrimination.
To my left were a line of gambling machines and then the old-fashioned wooden bar, behind which stood a barman pouring a pint for an old black man in a leather deerstalker. He gave me the quick once over and nodded. I stepped further into the room and then Gaines stepped in after me—too soon. The barman stopped pouring a drink to stare at her, his right hand disappearing below the counter. Somewhere in the darkness I heard the unmistakable metal-on-palm sound of a gun being picked up. Four men stepped in close around us—three black and one Asian, each showing the color purple somewhere on their clothes. None of them was carrying a gun, so that meant there was a fifth person behind them somewhere, and the barman to my left, who still hadn’t moved his hand. The old man stayed on his stool, staring away from us and sipping at his beer.
I cleared my throat. “We want to talk to Dodge.”
The Asian kid nodded at us in a challenging way, but they were staring at Gaines rather than me. “Fuck you doing here?” he spat out.
One of the others smiled slowly. “Long way from your own patch.”
Gaines stepped around me to stand in front of them, raising her chin to go eyeball to eyeball with the Asian. “My own patch is wherever I decide it is.”
“You know I could get rich killing you right now.” The Asian kid stepped forward, leaning in, but Gaines didn’t give any ground.
“Whatever you’re thinking, it won’t go well for you,” she said.
He smiled at her, but stepped back a little. “Your man here going to get your back?”
“Why would I need him to?” asked Gaines. “You going to be a problem?”
“Filo, relax.” The voice came from behind the group. Low, calm, and confident. “If they want to see me, let them see me.”
The four kids stepped aside, making room for the new voice. This was Dodge. The big bad. He was a few inches shorter than the others, but his well-built shoulders showed he was the one with the muscles, a wife beater stretched tight across them. He stepped between them with the easy confidence of a young Muhammad Ali. He raised a gun without pointing at anyone, then nodded at Gaines. They had met once before, when he’d been part of Channy Mann’s crew. I wondered if she remembered him. That felt like a lifetime ago.
Dodge took another step closer and let his cold gaze shift from Gaines to me. His face thawed into the vaguest hint of a smile, not enough for his boys to see.
“What you doing here?” he said.
“Hey, Boz.” I stepped forward and put my hand out for a shake. “We need your help.”
Marcus Boswell had grown up in the last two years. The last time I’d seen him, he’d been a skinny and confused kid looking for a gang to belong to. I’d met him through his brother, Eric, who had died after crossing the Mann brothers. Eric had gone by the name Bauser, but Marcus had liked things simpler and had been known as Boz. But that was then. Things had changed.
He led Gaines and me to the back of the hall, where a door led to what would once have been a private room for parties and league games. The old snooker table was pushed against the wall now, though, and piled high with cans and bottles of beer and liquor. A television and games console rested on top of some old milk crates. The walls were covered with sound-muffling curtains behind faded leather sofas, and the coffee table between them held ashtrays, rolling papers, and a bag of pot. Dodge waved us to the nearest sofa before stepping round the table and dropping down onto the one opposite. He waved at the Asian, who he had called Sukh, and the three of us were left alone.
“Dodge, huh? That’s new.”
He spread his arms out either side of him on the back of the sofa. “How long you known it was me?”
“I’ve always known.” I liked getting the chance to seem in control. “It’s my job. I’ve been trying to protect you, keep you out of things and keep us from coming over here looking for you.”
This was all news to Gaines, who’d had no idea who Dodge was or why I always talked her out of looking for him. She didn’t say anything, but for a moment I felt the same cold stare hit me as when she’d learned about the death threat. Another mark to add to the tally of ways I’d crossed her. I didn’t know if we could go back from today, but if I could keep her alive I didn’t care.
She turned to Dodge. “Where does the name come from?”
Dodge scratched his left elbow with his right hand. There was a tight collection of scars there where his skin looked paler, almost pink. “Some cops tried arresting me, back when they were giving a shit about us. I jumped off the bridge and slid down the bank to the motorway, scratched all my side, but got up and ran between the cars to the other side. Next day people were saying I was a human dodgem, so I ran with it. Better than Boz.”
Gaines nodded, showing him she was impressed. He smiled. Somewhere in there was still the boy I’d known, looking for approval.
“I hear you’re a high-up now, Gyp. Running the show. But you know I’ve put a price on her head, right?”
Gaines leaned forward now, her voice cold. “I’m sat right here, and I have a name.”
Dodge stared at her for a cold minute before nodding and putting his hand out.
“I been rude, I’m sorry.” They shook hands and then he leaned back. “But you been rude too. Coming in here, going eye-to with my boys? This ay your patch, Gaines, and you need to show some respect.”
Gaines smiled. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“Gotta respect you coming here, though. You know how this is likely to go?”
Gaines leaned back in her seat. “Same way it went for Letisha, right? It’s not going to go that way.”
Dodge sat upright. The confusion on his face was for real. “Letisha? You think that was me?” He looked from Gaines to me, then back again. “I liked her. I had her back. Whole fucking reason I put a price on you was I thought it was you done her.”
Gaines looked at me. I had nothing.
I’d thought Dodge had been behind the killing too. As much as I’d told myself I was protecting him by stalling a war between us, I’d been protecting myself, too; if he’d killed Letisha then he wasn’t the kid I’d once known, and that was something else I’d not wanted to deal with.
“Then who?” Gaines asked.
Dodge shook his head. “Not one of mine. I was willing to talk. That’s why I agreed to meeting with her. Last thing I needed was a fight with you. I wasn’t ready for that.” He let that hang in the air for a second before he felt the need to cover it with bravado. “Not then, anyway. Now? We’re ready.”
My turn. “We’re not here for trouble. We need your help. There are people coming in from abroad, taking out the family. They want our patch, and right now they want us.”
“Do my job for me?”
Gaines put a hand up to stop me and took over. “No. You know how it works. If someone else takes me out, you don’t get to make your name, and you lose all of this to the next kid who comes along with a reputation. Look, your lot and my lot? We’ve had an understanding. We stay the other side of the M5, and you don’t start pushing into West Brom or Smethwick. You’ve got guns and muscle, sure, but my lot are the ones with connections. We get the best product, we make the most money.”
She waited for Dodge to say something, but all he did was pull a nonplussed expression and wave for her to carry on.
“These people coming in? They’re bigger than both of us. If they take us out, they won’t stop at that. They’re already buying land out at the airport. They’ll want to connect the dots, fill in the land between.”
“Anyone comes in here looking for trouble will find more than enough of it to go round.”
Gaines shook her head. Dodge wasn’t getting it. “You know how much pull I have? You do. You’ve seen me take out both Mann brothers. You know we don’t get messed with. But here we are, and right now I can’t stop it
happening. What chance do you think you have?”
“Skip to your point.”
I had no idea where Gaines was going with this, but it was the opposite of what I’d had planned. I was going to appeal to our old friendship, ask Dodge to give us protection as we drove to wherever Gaines wanted to go. She seemed to have other plans.
“I want to wipe them off our map. I want to show them what happens when they pick a fight with the Gaines family. I’m talking the biggest fight this whole region has ever seen, and I think you’d not only want to get in on that, but you’d want to be on the winning side.”
Dodge stood up and walked in a lazy circle in front of us before lifting three cans of lager off the table and throwing two of them to us.
We each pulled the top and took a sip.
It was cheap and nasty, but now didn’t seem like the time to play the snob, so I took another sip and looked like I was enjoying it. I knew Gaines was used to much finer things, but she didn’t show any disgust. A seasoned pro.
“Let me get this.” Dodge stood in front of us, his beer hanging down from his hand, drawing a loop in the air as he talked. “You come here and think to play me by offering a fight? You think that’s going to be enough of a draw for us to work with you, after all that’s gone before?”
Gaines swigged from the beer and leaned back, putting her free arm across the back of the sofa and looking at ease. She flicked her eyebrow, a move she’d used on me many times. “Isn’t it?”
Dodge shook his head. He drank again and watched us. I started thinking of things to say. If Gaines’s big play had failed I would need to go back to plan A, appeal to old times, maybe offer a trade. What did I have?
Then Dodge held up his beer in a toast that Gaines matched. He drew long on the can before licking his lips and settling back down into the sofa opposite. “Here’s how this will work. We’ll help you, and you’ll help us.”
