Gang War

by Graham Johnson

  ‘Nice though, isn’t it?’ says Lupus. ‘Got a nice finish on it.’

  Clegsy uses the technical term: ‘Veneer, it is. Veneer.’

  ‘OK, fucking veneer, then,’ says Lupus, still stung by Nogger bullying him over the gun.

  Dylan tries to calm it all down: ‘I know, lad. Thought they were solid oak. But it’s just a wood effect. Can you believe that, lad? Reminds me of that auld plastic wooden wallpaper me nan used to have.’

  ‘I know, yeah,’ Lupus agrees. ‘It’s like the wooden floor in ours – shit. And look at the handles. They’re plazzie brass as well. Weird, innit?’

  Bizzies line the whole route of the funeral cortège. A police helicopter hovers at low altitude, the noise enveloping the whole estate. Everyone’s buzzing with it. Old women standing at the front gates of their houses are forced to talk in higher voices.

  What they can’t see or hear is the unmanned surveillance drone that the police have launched, flying high above the chopper, spying on them from just under 20,000 ft. It’s their latest weapon in the War on Gangs, or so said the police propaganda in the Echo a few weeks earlier. A Watchkeeper Tactical Unmanned Air Vehicle, the article called it, next to a picture of a remote-controlled plane about the size of a car and the chief con, his silver buttons and medals gleaming, showing it off. Clegsy says it’s the same as the ones the army use in Afghanistan. But Clegsy, who reads all the technical sites on the Internet to keep up on latest police kit, says the bizzies bought it because similar ones had been used to good effect by the Israelis in the Gaza Strip. He says it sends back its video feed to a specially built suite on a secret industrial unit – disguised as a civilian business – on the dock road.

  Yellow Vaderis bases – heavily armoured, computerised Mercedes Sprinter vans – are sat off in side streets. The Vaderis Disruption Corps is Merseyside Police’s semi-militarised anti-gang unit, set up to ‘tackle gun crime and faction-based disorder’. The corps’ motto – ‘Speed. Aggression. Mobility.’ – is stencilled underneath the Vaderis logo – a hooded criminal in the crosshairs of an electronic target designator – on the sides of the vans. The corps is fully independent with its own armed response units, incident response vehicles and rope access teams.

  A battle group of 20 vans had descended from the dawn horizon at 4 a.m., come in low out of the rising sun. The plan is to contain the funeral with a two-pronged manoeuvre, an urban warfare Schlieffen Plan. One arm is Operation Sphere (objective: show of force). The second, lighter arm is Operation Neon (objective: rapid deployment/operational flexibility). The convoy of ships peeled off into a two-line formation at the roundabout at the entrance to the estate, cruising through like a fleet of spaceships, their state-of-the-art emergency lights strobing and randomising in the Vaderis Corps’ colours, lighting up the sky. Star Wars on Earth.

  Vaderis disruption reconnaissance teams are already plotted up secretly on the estate, Waffen SS camouflaged up, buried SAS-style in holes and in dugouts in derelict houses, infrared sights on, safety catches off their sniper rifles. They’re waiting for the high-impact players to come onto the battlefield, into the crosshairs. They’ve got standing orders to take them out if they threaten public safety.

  As soon as the cortège leaves The Strand, council workers move in to remove the flowers. Riot bizzies stand to, the back doors of their ships open, their shields – giant Perspex rectangles – stacked purposefully but untidily against the roll-bar cage in which they are stored. Armed response vehicles are parked nearby to protect the flanks of the stationary Vaderis columns. A detachment of StreetSafe vans has been drafted in, small Peugeot Expert vans known as ‘bugs’ because of their bulbous shape. Two of the yellow bugs have got their periscope cameras high in the air.

  Bleeker’s coffin is in the back of a blacked-out Humvee. Behind, there’s a big crew of mourners. They look like a football crew being escorted to a moody away, all in black and masked up. A few high kicks are aimed at the camera crews and snappers at the side of the road. Two photographers get had off. A backpack full of equipment is ragged off one, a £4,000 Apple Mac G4 is swallowed up by the crowd. ‘Victim. Bringing that to this. Imagine that, lad.’ The tail end – a crew of about 20 lads – start rioting with the bizzies. The route of the cortège was deliberately planned by some of the older lads so that it cut right through The Boot. That way there’d be lots of urban-disturbance ammo to hand. Vaderis vans are getting twatted by concrete and metal bars now. Chants of ‘RIP Bleeker’ and ‘Dead Crocky Rats’.

  A few of the lads are carrying. Some are not. Five years mandatory, and there’ll be a load of arrests today. Mostly the ones that are owe money to someone or other. The best place to cop for someone you’re after is at a funeral. Everyone knows that.

  Into Norris Green cemetery and gravestones are being booted over, others hid behind to stop the bizzy surveillance photographers getting shots. Big stone crosses are being toppled from plinths, clay pots being booted to fuck, tagged, sprayed up. The priest and the gravediggers have been ran and are stood by the wall of the cemetery under police protection. Two gravediggers were chased with a samurai sword. The lads are arming themselves with the spades and pickaxes they left behind.

  Dylan takes charge of the funeral, trying to restore order, trying to get Bleeker buried before the Vaderis pile in. ‘Come ’ead get Bleeker’s coffin,’ he tells the lads. It’s ragged out the back of the Humvee and Bloot jumps down the hole so that he can help lower it in. ‘’Ere y’are, let me get this end.’ The coffin’s manhandled into the hole. All hands have got mobiles out filming it for the video DJ tribute later. Lupus jumps in the Humvee. The drivers have cleared the scene. He puts on a show for the TV cameras, flooring it up and down the cemetery – handbrake turns, doughnuts, double-clutching it, smoke, burning rubber.

  Dylan makes his speech: ‘We’re gathered here today to remember a true Nogzy solja. What people forget is that Bleeker had never had fuck all. He never had a chance. His ma was a scag and an alky. His auld feller was a baghead.’ He looks at Laurence in the crowd, thinking, ‘No disrespect, Laurence, but you were bang into the rocks for time when Bleeker was a kid.’

  He continues, ‘It’s mainly down to that he turned out the way he did. Who wouldn’t, sat in front of the vid watching Scarface all day? Poor cunt. Ashes to ashes, lad. God bless.’

  The finale. An IRA-style honour guard appears out of the chaos, and quickly takes up position near the grave. Two lads, Lowied up, stand on the muddy edges. One lad with a long feller jumps into the grave to hide the length of the shottie, stands on top of the coffin.

  Nogger gives the orders: ‘Present arms.’ The lad in the grave with the shottie puts the stock into his shoulder and raises the barrel like a lord on a grouse shoot, squints his eyes. One of the other lads at the side of the grave raises a nine millie, held horizontally. The other raises a Magnum revolver, frailly, heavily, with both hands, like the kid in Once Upon a Time in America who shoots little Dominic. ‘Take aim.’ Everyone’s cocked and ready to go. Extraction teams discreetly take up position ready to get the lads out ASAP. ‘Fire.’ Bang! Bang! Bang!

  Nogger, head bowed: ‘Is right.’

  CHAPTER 6

  THE WAKE

  Back to the Station House for the wake. Running battles with the bizzies all the way, them trying to snatch the honour guard, the lads trying to rag the camera crews. One bird TV reporter – thin, petite, smart, in a tight-fitting, satin shirt from Pink, an elegant stripe running through the dark, well-cut pinstripe trousers, a glossy black belt with matching practical heels – has blood matting her severe, shiny bob. She’s winded, holding her chest, been booted in the tit, a flying cage-fighter kick. A dark-red stain is spreading like a blood blister through her shirt from under her bra. Her cameraman, a war reporter, is panic-sobbing now, running into his outside-broadcast vehicle to hide inside. His mobile, lappy, video camera are gone, smashed and scattered on the floor. He’s covering his arse, on the phone to his bosses already, t
elling them that it wasn’t his fault.

  Pacer’s terroring the bystanders lining the route. He lets off a CS canister then follows through with a squirty full of acid. ‘You fucking ghouls! Bleeker was our Lady Dee,’ he buzzes, pronouncing it wrong on purpose, French-wise, like he’s seen on the telly.

  On the steps of the pub, no one’s happy. The manager, Roberto Griffin, has come out to the door to see what’s going on. By day, he’s the estate crank; by night, a mercenary. He shot Bleeker’s bird once, way back, after she aborted his kid. Nogger pulls out a .38 to do him. Dylan steps in to negotiate with the head doorman, who’s standing shakily behind Roberto.

  The head doorman’s a big roid head, but all right, old school: ‘Look, lad,’ he says, beginning his talk-round. But he’s put under manners straight away.

  ‘Never mind the “look, lad” and “we’re only doing a job” and all that carry on,’ Nogger tells him. The head doorman shuts the fuck up.

  Lupus is arsing about in the background, howling, ‘We’re only out for a bevvy,’ mimicking the knocked-back Friday-night revellers.

  ‘I know where you’re coming from, Dylan,’ says the head doorman, ‘but youse can’t be causing any trouble here tonight.’

  ‘It’s up to you, lad,’ Dylan tells him. ‘That’s all I’m saying. But mark my words, lad,’ he says, pointing at Roberto, ‘big mad mercenary or not, if he doesn’t let us in, he will be fucking smoked.’

  They’re surrounded by little skinny kids armed to the teeth. Everyone’s a bit panicky now, even Roberto Griffin. He’s wanted in the Balkans for torching villages, was leader of a Croatian fascist HOS unit during the war there, 20-odd women and children to his name, he says, triangulation of fire, textbook IRA, no DNA. But even he’s a bit ‘What’s going on?’ now, looking around him, arse gone. He’s naked – no gun. He knows there’s nothing he can do to the rats. He’ll stew in private later, shout at his sister, say that he’s gonna put their heads on sticks, all the Rhodesian Army dogs-of-war stuff. But he can do fuck all for now.

  ‘Listen, you fucking crank,’ says Nogger. ‘I’ll put one in you now the same way you dropped those refugees, you fucking maggot. Now fuck off.’

  Roberto, the regional ju-jitsu champion in his £900 military-strength bulletproof jacket, is impotent.

  ‘Big fucking gangster? Fuck off!’ Clegsy tells him. ‘You fucking prick. Big-time Charlie fucking atrocities. Still live with your biff fucking sister, you prick. I’ll set the fucking scrubber on fire if you don’t fuck off now.’ Roberto’s sister has multiple sclerosis. She works for the council. Everyone thinks she’s a grass.

  ‘Think of your little sister, lad,’ says Pacer. ‘I’ll rape her arse, lad. Anally rape the fucking mong slag. I’ll ram that fucking pole up her baggy, red arse, lad. At the bingo, lad.’

  Roberto Griffin, kidnapper, torturer, player of Romanian fascist marching songs, reckons he was asked to ‘stay behind’ by NATO after the Russian invasion, is humiliated now.

  ‘No need for this, lads,’ says the head doorman. ‘Youse are only out for a bevvy.’

  ‘Shut up, prick,’ says Nogger, his .38 palmed at 90 degrees to the vertical, quick off the draw. He has it pointed at Roberto’s skinny neck. Code Red now. Lupus and Dylan are wincing backwards slightly. New Loon has his fingers in his ears, waiting for the bang. They’re all getting out the way of the blood spray, the forensics, Dylan not wanting to get his new shirt bukkaked up with claret and sulphur on the day of Bleeker’s funeral.

  Roberto breaks the deadlock, agrees to stand down, giving ‘out of respect for Bleeker’s family’ as his outro. ‘Fuck off, you big lanky ming,’ Nogger tells him, wiping a bead of sweat off Roberto’s wobbly neck with the barrel of the snub-nose.

  Dylan, trying not to laugh, shakes Roberto’s hands, big mad bear hugs, little pats on the back. ‘Nice one, Roberto,’ he says. ‘Sorry about all that carry-on. Lads are bit tense and that, cos of the funeral.’

  ‘It’s all right, mate. I understand. It’s just the shock and that, when you lose one of your crew. I know . . .’ Dylan has to try not to burst out laughing at the word ‘mate’.

  Into the function room. Nogger and Dylan have a little livener off the table. Iggo tries to cop for the till behind the bar.

  There’s a little group of lads in the corner left over from the previous do, squaddies having a last drink for their mate killed abroad somewhere in the War on Terror. Dylan sends over three pints. Jay starts asking them about ‘dropping niggers’, before robbing one of their mobile phones and laughing at them for fighting for someone else.

  Bleeker’s bird’s playing the grieving widow, holding court, loving the attention. Nogger cops for her as she’s coming out of a cubicle in the birds’ bogs, pushes her back in. Stinks. She’s just had a shit. There’s baby laxative in the charlie. Bogs’ll be pebble-dashed up in half an hour. Anyway, this’ll take the smell away. He chops out a line for her on the cistern. He’s got half-decent gear, cut with the beno. She’s crying. Weeping widow, lad. She won’t give him a blowie ‘out of respect’ for Bleeker, but settles on a wank for him instead. Nogger roughly uncups her big puppy tits. He’s soft off the stripes, soft because she’s not young enough but dying to come off the stripes as well. He finally spurts over her falsies, bought in the boom by a local baron but balloony and droopy now.

  Then he tries his luck over Bleeker’s stash again as she’s cleaning herself up with some bog roll. You fucking animal. He despises her. Desperate to get away from her within seconds of coming, but having to be nice to her, his eyes on the prize now. ‘So what about this parcel, girl? That Bleeker got before . . . he got walloped.’

  Marie’s adjusting her Just Cavalli top from the wank and her hotpants from her shit. ‘Told you, lad,’ she says. ‘It’s gone. Told you. Couple of lads from Anfield came down last night.’

  ‘Why didn’t you bell me, girl? I would have sorted that,’ he asks, pride dented cos he should be able to sort the graft on his own patch.

  ‘Fuck off, Nogger, lad. Sorted? Snorted, more like. Or fucking had it off.’

  Nogger bangs her right on the nose, a heavy, precise boxing-club jab. Bang! Fuck Off! Her septum spreads across her face, splits like a ripe fruit on concrete flags, blood all over the show. ‘You dirty fucking animal,’ he says.

  Nogger grabs hold of her extensions at the back of her head, wallops her face against the cistern. ‘Anfield? Fucking Anfield. Beef down there, girl. Take the little cunts to an abode.’ Garbled rage.

  Nogger pulls the extensions out, a fistful of hair coming away at the wax-adhesive joins. Then he rips her earring out of the fleshy lobe. It’s gold, bejewelled, so it goes into his vertical side pocket, no messing about. One of her false lashes is hanging off by a string of lash gel, dried residue like flakes of dandruff on her eyebrow and lids.

  ‘Can’t believe you’d do that!’ he rants. ‘Offload Bleeker’s graft to someone you don’t even know. While I’m being nice to you. Fucking cocaine? ’Ere y’are. Here’s some fucking cocaine.’ Nogger pushes her bladdered nose into the small heaps of cocaine racked out on the cistern. Some of the blood dissolves the powder, the liquid sucking it up. Viscous suspension.

  Nogger peels her head back with his arm and smashes it into the cistern again, her teeth cracking against the rounded ceramic edges. She’s had SuperSmiles Mobile Teeth Whitening. Seen it in Grazia. Now they’re smashed and her mouth is full of blood. He follows through by ragging her eyes downwards across the broken flush handle. Marie howls, hysterical.

  ‘Take away the pain, girl?’ Nogger asks, taking out an ounce bag of white powder from his pocket. He grabs a fistful and sprinkles it over her bubbling mouth, her hair, her smudgy, bloody ear. ‘Don’t need Bleeker’s bits, girl. Got me own. And it’s not shit either. No fucking mannitol in this. Bashed up with the beno. From a Paki in Nottingham.’

  Nogger rags up her skirt, draws her down and rapes her arse, his herpes sores grating against her tight, hairy rectum and t
he rib of her stretched knickers. She’s sobbing. Nogger’s pushing in and out, no hands, just vibrating his hips. In and out. Kerfuffling about in his jacket pockets for his phone. Finds it. Menu. Applications. Camera. Flicks through it to get the video on and starts filming it, pulling his neckwarmer up over his grid just in case. Could be reflections in the tiles.

  In the quiet, concentrating hard to come, Nogger can hear a few girls snorting in the next cubicle. One shouts over, ‘You all right, Marie?’

  Nogger answers for her. ‘She’s just having a little cry over Bleeker and that, girl. No sweat. Just sorting her out,’ he says, knowing they’ll think he means he’s giving her a line to help with the grief.

  ‘Aarh! You’ll be all right, girl. Have a little line and you’ll feel better.’ The girls go back to snorting their own off their fellas.

  Marie sobs a bit louder and turns her head towards Nogger, bent over the bog, her face covered in blood, congealing now and shiny with surface tension. Black blood is bubbling up from her gums. She’s flicking her tongue in and out like a lizard, trying to lick a few specs of powder off the coagulating film of blood and powder, her face a grotesque mask. Money shot. Nogger splurges. Can’t help it. Right up her arse. Tight and silent. Keeps his dick in there, balling her deep down with his hips, even during the flourish of his orgasm, but doesn’t make a sound. He’s used to keeping his rapes under wraps. ‘RIP Bleeker,’ he whispers finally.

  Back in the function room, everyone’s charlied up to death, drinking loads. Three-day bender on the cards, for sure. A few of the girls, just arrived, are in new pyjamas and Ugg boots, standard daytime wear for flitting between their mates’ houses and nipping to the shop for a pint of milk. Tupac and Biggie Smalls on the disco. But everything’s turned off when Bleeker’s nan turns up. She’s very old, 90-odd, in a wheelchair, no teeth. Laurence gets out his mobile phone, plays ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’. Puts it through the MC’s mike. Everyone joins in for the street hymn. Loads of crying. The room is smashed up, petrolised, then set on fire.