‘Andy, I’d like to introduce you to Dylan. He’s a good friend of mine. He’s a friend of ours.’ A little smile passes between Paul and Dylan, both getting onto the Godfather reference. Everyone loves buzzing off the filmies. ‘He’s one of the most respected young men around here and he’s a nice man. All the young lads around here look up to Dylan and he’s got a lot of respect.’
The underlying message to Andy is clear: ‘Dylan is the up-and-coming gangster in Norris Green. He’s the new kid around the area, so he’s got to be shown respect – and fear. Even though he may look like a rag-arsed kid to you and me, he’ll kill you as soon as look at you.’ Andy acknowledges receipt of the message with a slight nod.
Dylan blushes inside, barely understanding what this feeling is. Embarrassment? Confusion? No one ever says stuff like that to him.
Everyone likes that about Paul – he never stands on the up-and-coming lads, the street dealers, the robbers, the pistoleros. He shows them all respect. Here he is – Paul with his banks in the Far East, mines in the Baltic, building his motorways in Mexico – stood here, on these premises in his nice new crew-neck sorting out a problem with Dylan. Dylan in his Lowies, with three pounds in his pocket and no credit on his phone.
After the big-up, Paul walks around the desk and stands next to Andy, both of them facing Dylan, like businessmen posing for a photograph in the Echo, Paul introduces Andy, stretching his mouth and licking his lips. ‘Dylan, this is Andy. As you know, he’s the boss of this place. He’s also one of the most respected businessmen in the city and he’s been a great friend of mine for nearly twenty years.’
Dylan keeps his eyes on Paul, listening carefully to the speech, full of admiration for Paul’s rich language and sense of drama, at least compared to anyone he knows. How can someone just praise someone else like that?
Paul turns away from Andy and speaks directly to Dylan. ‘Got something to talk to you about. That OK?’
‘Yeah.’
‘It’s a bit of a mad one. Andy phoned me this morning . . . And please don’t take it as a sign of disrespect that I’m asking you this.’
‘Yeah.’
‘One of the things from around the back went missing last night.’
‘Mad, innit?’
‘Now, it goes without saying that he [looks at Andy] didn’t tell them [points out the window, meaning the bizzies].’
‘Course, yeah.’
‘He phoned me to help him get it back, before there’s a problem. D’you know what I’m saying?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You don’t want everyone knowing that a corpse has gone missing, do you? Could be your little daughter, couldn’t it?’
Andy is clearly shocked and embarrassed about the theft of the body, but he also understands local sensibilities. He’s frightened it could get him dragged into a gang war.
‘So, Dylan,’ Paul continues, ‘it goes without saying that we want to get the thing back, without any harrishment.’
‘Yeah. Sound.’
Dylan’s made up. Can’t fucking believe it. Paul is asking him to do him a favour, which he’s already onto. And can sort. Good graft or what? Paul will be made up with him. And he’ll probably get a little drink out the funeral man. For real.
‘All right, Paul. I’ll sort that,’ he says, hoping Paul will admire his no-fuss, no-frills approach.
‘You all right with that, lad?’
‘Yeah. Sound. And if we get the thing back, can we just carry on with the funeral tomorrow as normal?’
Andy looks at Paul and nods slightly, as though that’s what he’s wanted all along.
‘OK, Dylan. If you get it back, Andy will just crack on, you know what I’m saying.’
‘Nice one, Paul.’ For the first time in the conversation, Dylan turns to the funeral director, although he still speaks to Paul. ‘only one problem, though, mate. We can get it back, but the jangle is that his head’s been chopped off, you know.’
Paul looked at him, serious, sucking his teeth for a second: ‘Go way. You messing?’
‘No, it’s . . .’ shrugging his shoulders, not knowing what more to say.
‘Mad, innit?’ says Paul, but he’s not too fazed and too busy to be too arsed.
‘I know, yeah. Mad, aren’t they? Fucking rats, you know what I’m saying, mate? You know what it’s like.’
‘I know, yeah.’
‘I’ll send the lads out now to get it back. And I’ll tell them to grab both bits. That be all right?’
‘Make life easier, wouldn’t it, lad?’
‘I was just thinking, though, if we do get it back, can the head be stitched back on? Just for his ma and that. At the funeral . . .’
‘Work wonders him, mate,’ says Paul, nodding at Andy, looking at his watch, Dylan clocking the Rolex. ‘He’s a flippin’ master.’
Andy looks horrified.
‘As long as it can just be made to look all right, d’you know worramean?’ says Dylan. ‘It’s just his ma, so she doesn’t have to see it.’
Paul’s a bit fazed, but only a bit. Weary of a 1,000 street mini-crises. He looks to Andy for guidance on the technicalities of stitching a head back on, but Andy is still reeling, too stunned to talk. Paul turns back to Dylan. ‘If you get the thing back, I’m sure it can be sorted, lad,’ he says, not wanting to get bogged down in the details.
Andy clearly doesn’t want to get involved in any compromising conversations with the rag-arse stood in front of him, so he just stares back at Paul. Paul and Dylan take his silence as agreement.
‘OK, lad. Just get it all dropped off around the back and Andy will do his best to sort it. That OK, lad? C’mon, best be off, hadn’t we.’
Dylan walks with Paul back to the beige Lexus. He knows he’s going to get the pep talk that always comes sometime after the big-up, as night follows day. He’s not liking these as much, though.
Paul breathes a sigh of mock perplexity: ‘Why do youse all do it, lad? Behaving like this. All this gang stuff. I mean, there’s no graft in you shooting him and him shooting you, is there?’
‘Just the way it is, isn’t it, though, Paul?’
‘But you can’t be making much dough, booting in his door and him booting in your door. And arguing with this feller and that feller. And him saying he’s robbed an ounce off you, and you saying he’s robbed a motorbike off him. It’s mad, isn’t it, mate?’
Dylan feels chastened, a bit embarrassed, like a kid. ‘Just a bit of drama to get through the day, Paul.’
‘It’s like these flippin’ bouncers, isn’t it, Dylan? Him shooting his house up, then him putting a call out on this feller. Made up cos the takings have gone up a fiver. I mean, it’s beyond belief. But there’s no quality, is there, lad? I mean, far be it from me to say something disrespectful, but youse are just hanging around the shops and in McDonald’s. I mean, youse might as well be working in McDonald’s, cos you’d be better off. You’re hanging around in there to get a warm. At least the girls who’re working in there are getting paid to. Know where I’m going? And the minute you step outside, you’re getting nicked. Mad, isn’t it, lad? I mean, where’s the sense in that?’
‘I don’t know, Paul. It just makes the lads feel a little bit important, having all those bizzies come after them. Big convoy of ships and that. Lights on. Star Wars on Earth, d’you get me? Anyway, fuck all better to do on Friday night, is there?’
Paul feigns bemusement, looking up into the sky for the spaceships. ‘Get into some proper graft, lad. Put your Lowies in your back bin. Got a bit of work for you, any road. Get you over the other place, if you fancy it,’ he says, nodding in the general direction of Amsterdam, Spain and Portugal.
CHAPTER 5
THE FUNERAL
Everyone in T-shirts. White ones with a head shot of Bleeker at 16: blond skinhead, Prada shirt on. Black ones for the hardcore mourners. Those are printed with a picture of Bleeker sitting in a pub, smoking a joint, showing his own T-shirt with ‘Anthony Mulhearn Is
A Grass’ on it, all the younger lads hanging off him, buzzing off Bleeker’s T-shirt. The T-shirts for the funeral were Dylan’s idea. He didn’t want anyone to feel last about not having a suit.
Some of the people lining the streets are ghouls, busybodies who hardly knew him but whose cries are loudest, whose calls for revenge are the most passionate. A lot of the mourners are young lads and washed-out mas. Most of the dads are long gone off the estate. They start off at Bleeker’s ma’s, Julie. She’s hysterical. One of the lads shoots off to Julie’s mate’s house to get her to come round and help, to dress her – she’s been in her pyjamas for days – to stop her wailing. ‘Have you heard her, lad?’ asks Clegsy. ‘She’s like a fucking Muslim.’
The house is getting chokka. Bleeker’s auld feller Laurence turns up. Red alky face, skinny as fuck, wearing their Bleeker’s old black Berghaus. That’s what Bleeker left him. Their kid Jimmy got his motorbike (a robbed one). His cousin Marie – who he was shagging – got his stash: £2,500 in cash, 2 oz beak and 23 £10 bags of brown. Dylan’s got his Gotti. That was the entirety of Bleeker’s estate. Laurence goes outside. Can’t smoke inside cos of the babies. He’s at the door having a ciggie, already snided a can out of the fridge, baseball cap on, hooded up in the drizzle. He looks like one of the lads. He’s 67.
There are three couches in the living room, all skewed at mad angles. Their Jimmy’s sat in the back room, hidden in the corner, on the PlayStation 3. Premier League Stars.
‘Fuckin’ ’ell, lad,’ says New Loon, ‘half of fucking Milan are playing for Everton there.’
‘I know, yeah,’ says Jimmy, thumbs going mad on the gamepad, taking blasts on a joint when new Everton signing Kaka gets the ball. Jimmy’s bird, Keeley, is lying on the couch in the front room, with the baby under a coat to keep it warm.
Marie’s there, with the confidence of a newly wealthy woman. Wagged up in a new Cavalli basque. It cost £600 of Bleeker’s £2,500 ‘bequest’. Nogger’s sat next to her, chatting shit, half trying to find out where she’s stashed the rest of Bleeker’s white and brown, half thinking of bursting her ken while the funeral’s on. Tax her, tax dead Bleeker, then slip quietly back to the wake. But Marie’s half onto him and fucking him off, the shady twat, telling him that she’s sold the lot wholesale to a firm from Anfield who came down last night. She says it’s all gone, even Bleeker’s side-by-side shottie, which she gave to Dylan, out of respect, in a tearful ceremony in the Canada Dock. Nogger’s angered by this detail – by Dylan’s popularity. But he starts blimping her sussies instead, makes a mental note to try for blowie off her in the bogs at the wake later, after she’s full of the stripes.
Whizzer arrives with the coke, a plentiful bag of squidgy soft powder. Just weighed it on his new electronic scales. Usually, he’d bag it up in little knotted squares of carrier bag, not the smooth plastic type you get from Tesco’s, but the crinkly, rustly kind you get from the corner shop. That way, people snort it all in one go, cos they can’t be arsed tying it up again. A trick of the trade. But because it’s a funeral, he’s put it in a few resealables out of respect. He dishes them out to the lads.
Bloot and Whizzer disappear into the upstairs bog to rack up in private. Got to show respect – it’s a funeral, and there’s bin lids about. The toilet’s yellowed and shit-stained, the lino ripped, the sink caked with dirt. Blobs of dried toilet paper are stuck to the wall just above the outflow. They chop out two fat stripes on the cistern.
Clegsy does his downstairs in the kitchen. Not so arsed about respecting the dead. Just wants to get charged up for the funeral. He clears a bit of space on a dirty worktop, chops out a few lines. He shouts in to Bleeker’s auntie Carmen, ‘Carmen, look, come ’ere. This bottle of milk is leaking.’
‘Our Peter must have dropped it off his bike coming back from the shop. Didn’t say nothing, though,’ Carmen shouts in the general direction of her son Peter, who is perched on the edge of their Jimmy’s armchair, watching him on the PlayStation. ‘Peter, you little twat. Did you drop this milk and not say nothing?’
‘No, it wasn’t me.’
‘Fucking hell,’ says Carmen, looking at Clegsy. ‘What are they like?’
‘I know, yeah,’ replies Clegsy, pretending to be grown up. ‘They won’t admit to anything will they? ’Ere y’are, girl. Stand it in one of these pans ’ere,’ he says, but he can’t be arsed looking for a clean one.
Clegsy snorts his line, tells her, ‘Carmen, there’s a line there for you, girl. Have that,’ and takes the opportunity to get off into the crowd.
The kitchen is a tip: sink full of dishes; chip pan on the side, half full of solidified fat; three half-full plazzie bottles of orange, big size; two polystyrene trays from the Chinese, sides shrivelled and brown from reheating in the oven, bit of fish in one, half a chicken fried rice in the other with a portion of curry, two days old, a skin on the curry sauce.
Bleeker’s ma comes in, half ashamed of her midden kitchen. She has a fat, squashed face, a bulbous veiny nose. She’s an alky, too. In a vain effort to appear house-proud, she says, ‘Got some nice bowls under there. Pour the milk in there, Carmen.’ But there’s too much shite all over the place to get in any of the cupboards. She wanders off, stressed by the thought of digging out some clean bowls.
Bleeker’s coffin’s upstairs. He’s been laid to rest in his Lowies, hood up, jacket collar zipped right up to the top, forming a perfect cylinder around his neck, hermetically sealed, hooligan-style, by the toggles, to cover his garrotted nape. Everyone’s telling his ma that this is what he would have liked, to be buried in his uniform. Solja and all that. But everybody’s buzzing because they know the real reason.
All the lads are in there now, stripes racked out on the coffin lid, which has been taken off and set across two chairs, a makeshift table. When that becomes sticky with spilled ale and broken ciggies, some of the lads balance their lines of coke on the thin rim of the open casket, wafting plumes of excess powder over the corpse. Some of the lads are building ceremonial joints. Spark it up, have a few pulls, put it out, then throw it in for Bleeker to get high in the afterlife. Lupus pulls out an old .38. It’s a bit fucked, rusty with bits of soil on it. He’s just dug it up from a stash, a disused garden on The Boot. He puts it in the coffin at Bleeker’s side, then changes his mind. Joint in mouth, eyes smarting from the back smoke, he hides it down the front of Bleeker’s trackies, where he used to carry it. He half shudders at the thought of touching Bleeker’s cold, dead cock, but notices Bleeker is wearing a new pair of Everton shorts.
‘What are you putting that in for, lad?’ asks Nogger, bullying.
‘For Bleeker, lad,’ says Lupus. ‘Full solja honours and that.’
‘What the fuck does he need an auld .38 like that for in his state?’
Bloot, laughing, pointing his joint at the body, says, ‘Bleeker’s going straight to hell. There’ll be Mac-10s and all sorts down there. Doesn’t need an auld banger like that.’
‘Well, it’s better than nothing, lad,’ says Lupus. ‘And there’s fuck all else that can be done with it. It’s too on top anyway.’
‘What d’you mean, lad?’ asks Bloot.
‘Roasting, lad. It’s the one I used to shoot thingio. Remember? That prick?’
‘Fool, wasn’t he, lad? Smoked him, didn’t you?’
‘I remember, lad,’ says Clegsy. ‘Shot him in his Audi, lad, parked up by the shops.’
‘One right in the head,’ says Lupus.
‘Is right, lad,’ nods Bloot.
‘Didn’t mean to do it properly, lad. But it was just one of them, a fluke.’
‘I see, lad.’
‘So the police know the gun. So Bleeker’s better off having it in his box, rather than me.’
Nogger: ‘But what if Crocky rob the grave? Bound to happen, lad. Have you thought about that?’
‘What d’you mean?’ asks Lupus.
‘Are you mad? The cunts have already had the body off once from the fucking funeral home.
The jangle is now that they’re gonna dig the poor cunt up tonight and drag him down the street again. And when the bizzies find the gun, it’s all gonna come back to us, isn’t it?’
‘Not so bad, is it, lad? Cos Bleeker’ll get the blame, won’t he? And he’s dead, lad.’
‘Suppose so,’ concedes Bloot.
‘Can’t arrest a body, can you, lad?’
Just then, Dylan bounces in. He’s not in Lowies. Black trousers, shoes, white Marksies shirt on, a bit see-through, and a tie. He’s in a bit of a fluster, his speech scribbled down on the back of a betting slip. He looks at Bleeker in his coffin, says no to a line but opens a green can of Carlsberg. ‘Got to stay straight to make sure this goes off half all right,’ he explains, looking around.
‘Is right,’ says Lupus.
‘Heard the funeral man had done a boss job on Bleeker’s head,’ says Dylan. ‘Looks good, dunnit?’
The funeral director had tried hard to reattach Bleeker’s head to the body but failed. The side of Bleeker’s head was caved in and there were lacerations on his forehead and across most of the body. There was no way he could have sewn the head back on – with clearly visible, Frankenstein-style thread – and covered up the other horrific injuries with make-up. He concluded that the only solution was to physically cover up most of the face and body somehow. At first, he thought of using silk and lace and various tricks of undertaker’s upholstery, like he did with crushed car-crash victims. He’d phoned Paul to ask him to phone Dylan and run it past him. It was then that Dylan had come up with the genius idea of burying Bleeker’s body in his Lowies. His black Sprayway had a full peaked hood and the six-inch-high, cylindrical collar easily covered the area of severance. They put a grey Berghaus baseball cap on the head and covered the whole lot with the oversized Sprayway hood, toggled tight so that only a disc of face around his nose could be seen.
Dylan checks out the coffin. ‘Mad, isn’t it? Look how thin the wood is, lad. It’s plywood.’
Gang War Page 3
