Gang War

by Graham Johnson

  Casey hugs him. ‘Well done, lad. You’re a fucking hero. Fucking love you.’

  ‘Love you as well, girl. Couldn’t have done that without you.’

  With just an old brown towel around him and still reeking of petrol, he pulls her into a little room off to the side. He slips her hotpants off, like Mulhearn did a couple of hours before, fucks her. He likes the idea of mixing his live sperm with the Crocky rat’s dead ones.

  Afterwards, high off the death sex, Dylan is buzzing. This is what it’s about. Letting off some buck with the lads. Having a boss bird with top tits who’s game. Come on! What other bird would do what she’s done? Get shagged by a Crocky rat to set him up. That’s one proper bird. Marriage material.

  Then he looks at Nogger, arsing about as he’s getting dressed, their old Lowies being petrolised and torched behind him. I fucking love that lad. That’s what it’s all about. Doing some boss little graft with your mates. That’s what it’s all about. Sticking by your mates. So they stick by you.

  In the hazy high, he’s forgiven Nogger for raping Elizabeth. The girl he loved. He knows that Nogger was the lad sat in the chair. It took him a while to figure it out. He watched and rewatched the vid in the days between deciding on the ambush and carrying it out. He spotted the white polystyrene chippy container on the bedside cabinet, studied the delicate transparent film sticking out of the top, streaked with curry sauce. Pure classic Nogger. Exhibit A. Then he analysed the shadowy figure sat down having a wank at the side. If you’ve known someone all your life, you just know how they walk, stoop, sit. He knows that Nogger set her up, sat there while the taxi driver raped her, having a wank in the chair. Probably walloped her later, off-camera, while she was crying. That would be classic Nogger.

  Elizabeth wasn’t raped by Crocky Young Guns. The credit on the video was just a smokescreen, a nice detail that only Nogger could have schemed up, not only to cover his tracks but for maximum impact on the crime’s intended victim – Dylan. The rape wasn’t about Elizabeth for Nogger. It was all about Dylan. Once he figured that out, Dylan worked backwards, reasoning everything through. He imagined how Bunter had gone to complain to Nogger about Dylan pulling the knife on him, then Nogger getting Bunter to show him where Dylan’s mysterious new girlfriend lived, seeing the perfect opportunity to teach Dylan a lesson.

  But Dylan tells himself he’s over it now. After all, how long had he known the silly bint? Two weeks at the most. And at the end of the day, he was gonna have to choose between her and Casey at some time. Would Elizabeth have done for him what Casey had today? Dylan laughs and walks over to Nogger.

  ‘I know it was you, you know.’

  Nogger gives him daggers. He’s onto it immediately. No denial.

  ‘I’m not arsed, by the way. I know you did it for the right reasons.’

  They hug.

  ‘I just needed to get your attention, lad,’ says Nogger. ‘You were being distracted.’

  ‘But why didn’t you just come and see me? You didn’t have to get her. Not that I’m arsed, by the way. Hardly knew her, d’you know worramean?’

  ‘You were being dragged away from us by a silly bird, lad. I was angry. I didn’t even know what the fuck was going on. You just got off.’

  ‘Only for a fucking day, lad.’

  ‘A day alive round here, lad, is a lifetime.’ Dylan says nothing. ‘Listen, Bleeker’s been dead fucking months, his fucking head chopped off . . . and you hadn’t done nothing about it. It was as though you wanted Crocky to get away with it, as though you weren’t arsed about getting revenge.’

  ‘Fucking hell, lad,’ says Dylan, his head down, ashamed, feeling the great dishonour.

  ‘I knew that if you thought Crocky had smashed your bird, you’d go mad. Which you fucking did, mate. So I was fucking right, weren’t I?’

  ‘Suppose so.’

  ‘Fucking right, I was. If I hadn’t have given you a kick up the arse, you wouldn’t have dropped Mulhearn today. And you’ll remember this for the rest of your life. Fucking legend, lad.’

  Dylan looks into Nogger’s eyes. It’s clear to him now that Nogger raped his bird because he loves him. Simple as. Didn’t want the lad he’s grafted with since he was a kid dragged away from the gang by some girl. The rape was a means to an end. Dylan knows the score. If the truth be told, the bond between you and your gang is stronger than between you and your mum, dad, sister, all put together, stronger than your ties to Nogzy itself, never mind a silly bird. End of story.

  * * *

  Ninety minutes later, they’re fully decontaminated, every molecule of compromising forensics gone. Casey’s even manicured their nails as a special treat, scraping the dirt from underneath them and pushing back the cuticles just to make sure. Nogger is surging off the military pride as they leave the garage in a convoy of blacked out cars. Untold texts and congratulations are flooding in from allied gangs. ‘Is right. Fucken skum had it comen.’ ‘Congratulations.’ ‘Anthony Mulhearn in a box. Little cunt.’ They’re even coming in from Spain and The Dam, from Dylan’s new Easygraft mates. ‘Fuck’s sake,’ says Dylan. ‘Gone global, lad.’

  It’s time to stage a ticker-tape parade round the barrio. They dress in plain white T-shirts, like army heroes. They switch cars, into a robbed rag-top Lexus. Nogger and Dylan ride in the back. Jay’s sitting up on the back boot, presidential-style. They’ve got a full complement of outriders: quads, an exoskeleton scooter, a couple of Segways, a few Boardwalk 20-inch-wheel BMX scooters. There’s a Rangey up front, with New Loon sticking out of the sunroof. There’s a belt-fed M42 heavy machine gun under the seat – force protection, green zone-style. The younger ones are riding in a robbed Omega at the tail. They’ve got IEDs made of industrial fireworks wrapped in sheet metal with a two-inch fuse, to ward off any insurgents bent on quick revenge, and a white phosphorus smoke bomb, to cover an aggressive getaway if need be.

  As they progress through The Boot, clusters of well-wishers line the streets: grateful campesinos, a few young mas in pyjamas clapping, kids letting off balloons from the party shop. There’s clapping, loads of shouts: ‘Fucking great stuff, Dylan!’ Footie chants from some of the teenagers: ‘Nogzy, Nogzy, Nogzy.’ A couple of banners hang from bedroom windows, dripping in fresh red paint: ‘Mulhearn you fucking maggot. Dropped by Nogzy Loyalist Fighters’, and the date underneath.

  ‘Look at that,’ says Nogger. ‘Fucking boss, innit? That’s the thing about a ticker-tape – you’ve got to let the community know who did this, who struck revenge in their honour so that they can sleep safe in their beds, who were prepared to go onto the battlefield for them, d’you know worramean? No one knows the half of what we do to help them.’

  ‘You know what?’ asks Lupus. ‘We should get a fucking big mural done. Like the ones in Northern Ireland. Painting of us with our hoods on and that, holding a few pieces. Battle honours and that.’

  ‘Fucking boss idea, that,’ says Nogger. ‘Sort it out and I’ll sign it off.’

  They put the foot down, doing over 70, when they reach the parts of the estate where no one’s out, slowing back down at The Strand then heading up to Broadway. Jay stands up, one hand on Nogger’s shoulder, on the mobile to a well-wisher who’s giving him big-ups.

  There’s not many older ones paying their respects here. Everyone’s just out shopping, picking the kids up from school, chatting shit with the neighbours. A few of the younger ones are smiling, though. One shop lad, carrying a box of cheap bananas, shouts ‘nice one’ to Nogger. ‘True Nogzy soljas.’ A few LA-style gang signs are going up on the sly.

  Meanwhile, a team of cleaners is bombing around the estate, disposing of the evidence, hoovering up the trail. Bloot stows Jay’s .455 with Warren, a kid he knows on The Boot.

  Bloot turns up on the doorstep carrying a faded blue JD Sports plazzie bag with a cord on it.

  ‘Go ’ead,’ says Warren. ‘What do youse want?’

  ‘Jay wants you to look after this,’ says Bloot.

  �
��What d’you mean?’

  ‘Just fucking take it, will you, you prick?’

  ‘What d’you fucking mean?’

  Warren’s ma’s drinking wine on the couch, Jeremy Kyle on the telly. ‘Who is it, Warren?’

  ‘Nothing. Fucking shut up, will you, you fucking witch.’ To Bloot, he says, ‘Go on. See you later.’ He scowls and snatches the bag, slams the door.

  He wraps the gun in cling film and hides it under the gravel at the bottom of his dirtiest fish tank. A few days later, he reluctantly takes delivery of the Mac-10s and moves all three to an old drain near a sewer.

  Pacer rides Jay’s bike a few miles across the city to Childwall Woods, next to where Hollyoaks is filmed. He throws one wheel down a deep, overgrown gully with high sandstone sides, the other in a patch of tyre-ribbed mud near an abandoned porno mag and a half-burned tree stump where goth schoolies pretend to devil worship. He carries the frame into a field used after the war to dump bomb debris, covers it in shite and fucks off, gets the bus home.

  * * *

  For tea, Nogger buys in a load of pizzas and they chill out in an abandoned house on the estate. Lupus bowls into the pad. Shocker. ‘Fucking hell. Have you seen d’Echo?’ Dylan rags it off him, half-stoned.

  GIRL, 3, SHOT

  Toddler Fights for Life

  Gang Shoot Out

  ‘Fuck’s sake,’ says Dylan. ‘What’s going on?’ To New Loon, he says accusingly, ‘Thought you said there was one dead. Fucking Mulhearn, wannit?’

  New Loon gets defensive: ‘Well, there is one dead. But we don’t know who it is. I thought it was fucking him as well. Obviously.’

  ‘People are saying it’s this girl now,’ says Lupus, ‘that she’s fucking dead. Just met some girl in the street and she says to me, “Have you heard about the baby being killed?”’

  Dylan’s on his feet. ‘What fucking baby?’

  ‘Fuck off, lad,’ Nogger tells Lupus. ‘What d’you think I am? A fucking Crocky-head that fires the gun anywhere, doesn’t look where he’s shooting?’ He mimes firing a gun, with a heavy recoil, accidentally shooting into the air.

  Dylan reads the story in the paper:

  A three-year-old girl is in a critical condition after being shot while playing outside a shop with her mother. Merseyside Police confirmed that the child was hit near the Royal oak public house in Croxteth, Liverpool.

  Ambulance chiefs said the girl, who has not been named, was rushed to Alder Hey hospital at 5.30 p.m. last night with a serious gunshot wound.

  She was initially said to be in a stable condition but a spokesman for the hospital later said that a bullet had entered her head and that she was fighting for her life in intensive care.

  A Merseyside Police spokeswoman said: ‘We can confirm that a girl aged three has been shot near the Royal Oak public house. Police were called shortly after 5.20 p.m. An investigation is under way.’

  Dylan feels stressed, a white haze of worry bleaching out his thoughts. Nogger’s reading more of the story. ‘Says that she was wearing a Liverpool top. Serves her fucking right, the rednose twat,’ he says, trying to make light of it.

  Dylan’s fucking seething, straining to stop himself saying, ‘Bet you’d fucking shag her if you could, you dirty nonce wretch.’

  Everyone’s getting wound up. Nogger stops messing about and starts to focus. ‘Can’t fucking remember a girl in a footie top, can you?’

  ‘No way, lad,’ says Dylan. ‘Cannot have been fucking us, can it, lad?’

  ‘It must have been those cunts firing back,’ says Jay.

  Whizzer butts in, reading on from the newspaper story: ‘Witnesses told how the girl was shot in front of her older brother whilst her mother was looking on a few yards away. The victim was playing near a chip shop with her brother while their mother was inside being served. Another witness said the family may have been walking back to their car when shots were fired and the girl fell to the ground. A teenage boy rode past on a BMX bicycle with his face covered by a hood and opened fire from a large black handgun, a local resident claimed.’

  A secret pang of pleasure sparks through Dylan. Nice one. They’ve not mentioned his and Nogger’s guns. Only Jay’s. That’s good. Let’s hope it stays that way. Jay. The poor cunt.

  Jay instinctively senses that he’s being manipulated by the older lads, that they are subtly putting a bit of distance between them and him. For a moment, he looks alone and worried. But then he smiles, secretly buzzing off the notoriety, showing his age.

  The next paragraph reads:

  Other shots, described by an onlooker as ‘automatic gunfire’, were also heard coming from behind the pub. According to a local shopkeeper, there were several guns firing in quick succession, suggesting that there was more than one assailant.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ says Nogger. ‘Who are these fucking witnesses chatting shit to the paper? Croxteth, la. Full of fucking snitches. That’s all you get over there: grasses. If that would have happened in Norris Green, no one would have said fuck all, even straight-goers.’

  Jay, trying to help, adds, ‘Says this grass is a fucking shopkeeper. We should blow up his shop.’

  ‘Doesn’t say what fucking name it is, though,’ Dylan points out.

  ‘Just blow the fucking lot up,’ suggests Nogger. ‘Tonight or tomorrow, when the bizzies fuck off. IEDs into every fucking one, la. Boom. Gone. No more jangling, innit?’

  Dylan looks at the picture illustrating the story. A night shot of a police van, officers at the scene of the crime wearing yellow hi-vis vests, white fluorescent stripes glowing, others in white Noddy suits. He reads the story’s conclusion aloud: ‘The Croxteth Park Estate was formerly the biggest private housing estate in western Europe. Merseyside’s Assistant Chief Constable is appealing for witnesses.’

  Everyone laughs at this ridiculous statement. There’ll definitely be no witnesses. Not by tomorrow night there won’t be, anyway. As soon as the bizzies have left, shops/residents/passers-by/mates/family/the fucking lot are getting told, getting it if need be.

  Dylan’s desperate for information, can’t stand the uncertainty. He phones Casey, looking for someone to blame.

  ‘You know when you were doing the thingio before, with that other fucking prick, did you see a little girl in a Liverpool top?’

  ‘Erm, what are you fucking on about? Was fucking busy, lad, if you remember, giving the poor cunt a nosh.’

  ‘Shut up, you fucking spunkbucket. Just answer the question. Did you see her or fucking not? Says she’s been –’

  ‘I’ll split your fucking wig if you speak to me like that again.’

  Dylan buttons the call, goes outside, purely fucking gutted.

  CHAPTER 19

  PUBLIC OUTCRY

  Dylan knows the script. He keeps focusing in on the key facts, trying to work his way through it. She was fucking three. Girl was wearing a fucking Liverpool kit. His head’s blown by this new revelation. He’s shaking his head, tutting.

  After dark, they reconvene in one of the younger lads’ bedrooms. Dylan turns to Pacer. ‘D’you realise what that means in this city? This fucking dickhead city. Liverpool kit – three years old – shot dead. They’ll hunt us to the ends of the earth.’

  New Loon agrees but tries to play it down: ‘Only if she fucking dies. If she lives, there’s half a chance it’ll fade away.’

  Dylan stares at him. For a moment, he hates this fucking wretched city. Full of opinionated pricks with their fucking footie. Dylan knows these hypocrites off by heart. He’s spent a lifetime around them, sitting on their couches, talking shit, agreeing, arguing. They’ll spend £2,000 to go away with Liverpool to Europe but won’t give their wives fuck all to feed the kids. Fanatical love for the Reds but they come home bevvied and bash their birds up when they lose. These pricks would be casting the first stones. Just you watch.

  Dylan’s exasperated. But then he remembers she’s still alive – just a-fucking-bout. So he tries to keep cool. Just then Karl, one o
f the younger lads who’s been drafted in as a runabout until the heat dies down, bursts in with a robbed laptop, Voda-netted-up. They look at the news on the BBC. ‘She’s fucking dead all right, lad,’ says Karl.

  That’s that. Dylan puts his head in his hands. ‘Oh no. Oh fucking no.’ For fuck’s sake. He just wants Elizabeth now, wants to put his arms round her and cry. Aches for it. But then he thinks about Nogger raping her, depriving him of the one thing he ever loved as soon as he’d fucking got it. He hasn’t seen her since, or even tried to phone her. He blames himself for the rape and he can’t face her.

  The guilt overwhelms him. He springs up like a ninja. He punches the giant flat-screen. The LED crystals shatter. A combination of jabs and high knee kicks dislodges the TV from its steel wall mount. Dylan throws it at the window but it bounces back off the plastic frame. The younger ones are looking on speechless, still holding their gamepads. He breaks down and sobs on the edge of the bed. No one knows what to do, seeing their leader crumble before their eyes.

  A few minutes later, Nogger arrives and Dylan gets his head together. Karl whizzes through to the Sky website for confirmation: ‘Three-year-old girl dies after being shot in Liverpool.’

  ‘What are the fucking papers saying?’ asks New Loon. Karl brings up the Daily Mirror’s site: ‘Breaking news: Prime Minister Mourns Shot Girl.’ He scrolls down, speed-reading the story: ‘. . . the girl has not been officially named but locals say her name is Chalina.’

  ‘Chalina?’ says Nogger. ‘Never fucking heard of her.’

  ‘Anyone know her? Anyone know that name?’ asks Dylan, looking round the room at the lads’ faces, trying to get a grip. No one says fuck all.

  ‘Chalina? What kind of a fucking name is that? Sounds like a coon.’ Nogger’s trying to make light with the lads.