Gang War

by Graham Johnson

  He’s not arsed with the brass-houses and the coffee shops. Jay and Nogger have been on a bender every day for weeks now, the pair of them doing nothing but drinking, smoking, sleeping and whoring. Nogger and Jay ran amok at first, kicking fuck out the Algerian pimps, shivving mouthy punters from Germany. There were running battles in the streets with Albanian traffickers, fighting and shooting with Hells Angels and mad traveller families at their weddings. Now, though, they’ve settled into a routine. ‘Doesn’t it ever get boring?’ Dylan asks them, half smiling. In the darkened parlours, shagging and stinking in there all day and night. ‘Youse are like pigs in shit,’ he tells them.

  Nogger and Jay bowl up to the café with Wade. He’s 23, on his toes for a murder back home, but grafting in Holland with Dean’s crew now. Scrunched up Rizlas and bags of White Widow and Northern Lights are falling out of Nogger and Jay’s pockets. They’re laughing like kids, still can’t believe it’s legal. They chat shit with Dylan for a bit but then they’re straight over to the brasses.

  They’re shagging pale, skinny Moldovans two at a time. Nogger goes mad for their tight, baldy fannies and their wide moon faces, which he likes coming across, aiming onto the planes of their cheeks with his jizzum, then slapping their bony arses with his red-raw cock. Nogger doesn’t even wear a bag. ‘You worry too much about the test on the blood,’ he says to the young girls, laughing, not even paying them extra for a natural spurt up them. He bends their rickety legs over their heads and pokes them from up top. ‘By sitting on them, facing the other way,’ Nogger explains. ‘Like in a bluey.’

  Jay joins in, literally. Says he does a bit of sword-fighting with Nogger. ‘One up the fanny, one up the arse,’ he says.

  ‘Shut up, you dirty little cunt,’ says Dylan, ‘you’re only 15.’ Nogger calls Jay a ‘smelly-fingered little twat’. Jay rags him back by saying that he could feel Nogger’s cock inside one of the brasses and it was tiny. Nogger tries to dig him on the top of the arm, laughing so he nearly spits his joint out. ‘Cheeky little twat,’ he says, crumbs of glowing pot falling from the joint onto the freshly sluiced pavement. Wade chips in, ‘Fuck off, Jay, you’re barely old enough to get your grabs off a little sprouter, never mind acting the goat.’ Jay says that he’s ‘cosmopolitan’ now that he’s moved to The Dam. Where the fuck he picked that up from, no one knows.

  Graft’s going well. Dylan’s working hard during the day, grafting for Dean as a runner. In the first few months, he was just vacuum-packing gear all day, nine to five, in a food-processing unit on an industrial estate somewhere just north of the city. When he first turned up, one of the other lads threw him a white paper Noddy suit, a hairnet and a pair of wellies. They burned the overalls at the end of each day. ‘Just like working in a chicken factory, innit?’ the lad said. Dylan wrapped a tonne of skunk a week, a tonne of pollum hash, 50 kilos of coke and 60 of heroin. Day in day out, for months.

  But Paul sorted out some better wages for him. He was promoted to transport: driving furniture vans all over Holland and Belgium, loading them up with groupage – parcels of Es, coke, brown and cannabis – then handing them over to sweating, arse-gone lorry drivers in Rotterdam, Utrecht and Antwerp, telling them to fucking drive, twatting them with tyre levers if they threatened to cry off. ‘That’s the problem with using freelancers,’ Dean told him. Dylan said that one of the cry-offs would go to the bizzies one day if they were pushed too hard. Dean laughed, confided in him that he’s got no choice because he’s been forced to get his own transport. ‘Got to,’ he said, ‘because the Dutch and Irish control the lorries and the ports. But the Dutch are dubious about us now cos so much of the gear was being had off by robbing twats like you.’ Dylan laughed. ‘They won’t graft with us any more,’ Dean said.

  On the other hand, he told Dylan, the Turks, Colombians and Moroccans love his crew because of their work ethic. He says that the Turks and South Americans aren’t bothered by scallies from back home robbing too much of their gear because they factor in losing ‘so many million’ every year anyway. They know that little cunts like Nogger and Jay are going to have them off, but as long as the big parcels get through, it’s happy days, he says. And, of course, it goes without saying that they must get paid on time.

  Now Dylan spends his days cutting up lead ingots full of gear from Venezuela and Mexico on industrial estates in the Benelux, dripping sweat over the jackhammers, oxy-burners and metal saws. or he’s running bags of money to be wired and washed, sitting in the basements of travel agents and currency shops counting up stacks of Kellogg’s boxes with £200,000 carefully layered inside each one. Dylan keeps the burned or ripped notes himself because the money-washers won’t accept them.

  Sometimes he has to meet up with Khalid and Azzam, the Bradford lads with their flash trackies, their £3,000-a-day rented Ferraris and their hawala transactions reaching from corner shops in Keighley to Dubai and Hyderabad. Scary how much money leaves England on a Monday, says Wade, to pay for gear received before the weekend from Holland.

  At first, Dylan lived in a graft flat but he’s just moved in with Wade, into a tall townhouse overlooking some wooden barges with little gardens and fences on them. The price of property in The Dam is ruthless, says Wade. Of a night, they go to the City Bar with all the lads. Danny, the Bengali Mancunian who used to graft with the Turks, was shot in here, says Wade. ‘Only 25, he was.’ Then it’s all off to Chopsticks for a Chinese. There’s so many of them that it’s just table after table of grafters letting on to each other. They’re on the run or they’ve been chased out of the Gang Exclusion Zones. They’ve got their own five-a-side league, a team for each of the neighbourhoods back home. Dylan plays for Ajax Nogzy, fully kitted out in a brand-new Real Betis strip that one of the lads brought home from a bit of graft in Andalusia. The league’s sponsored by a sandwich shop Wade’s just bought as a front.

  Wade says that you need a little business over here to show that you’ve got a legit income. Dylan’s stashed £90,000 in three different banks so far – a Spanish one, an Irish one and one based in Liechtenstein. Wade says that once you’ve got over 100 quid you’ve got to get a front to wash it so the Dutch revenue won’t be on your case. They all used to be sunbed shops, he says, but the lads are bang into franchises now. You can get a fast-food business for £30,000, he lets on. He knows the score, does Wade.

  Sitting in Chopsticks one night he tells Dylan and Nogger, ‘I’m gonna buy a pawn shop franchise next time, because you get four businesses in one – the pawn shop, a money-wiring bureau, a retail outlet and a cheque-cashing counter. That’s four ways to make money. But the franchise on that is 750,000 euros.’ Wade’s talking big now but Nogger thinks he’s talking about French fries not franchise. He says he’s gonna buy a Mackie D’s when he’s brewstered. Wade tells him that the franchise on that is a million. But Nogger’s lost interest. Suddenly he’s running outside, down the street. He comes back with his knuckles bleeding, says he clocked a lad from Crocky walking past so he ran out and twatted him. ‘Bet the rat thought he wouldn’t get caught slipping in Amsterdam, didn’t he?’

  The next day is shopping day. Dylan comes back to the flat with three bags from Lidl, gets buzzed off heavily. ‘Got to go to Marksies to buy your scran, you meff,’ says Richard, Dean’s deputy. He’s turned up at the flat saying he needs some workers. Richard is worth £100 million plus. He drives round in an old Zafira back home, but he’s a proper flash cunt once he’s over in The Dam.

  Dylan laughs but he’s got half a cherry on over the shame of going to the Lidl. Nogger and Jay swap daggers. Nogger would drop Richard now, if he could. Cut his head off with a kitchen knife. Does not give a fuck how much he’s worth. No one calls one of the lads a meff. But Dylan sees his face and warns him not to slaughter the golden goose. Not just yet, anyways. Dylan’s whispering to him in front of the widescreen telly: ‘Take the graft off him. He’s looking for workers.’ Nogger holds his tongue.

  The next day, Dylan pops into Marks. Sure enoug
h, all the lads are bombing round the aisles with their birds, showing off, trolleys piled high with Chinese chicken wings, ready meals, Viennese whirls, salads for the birds. ‘The lads won’t shop anywhere else but Marksies,’ Wade had explained to him. ‘Got to have Marksies scran cos they’ve got to have the best, haven’t they?’

  The birds are talking dead loudly, letting everyone know they’re there, tottering across the tiles in their high heels, wearing slashed tops flown in from Cricket. They’re on their cocaine hangovers, massive sunglasses on to soothe away the glare from the strip lights.

  Dylan flashes back to Casey, almost shudders at the memory of her, but doesn’t know whether he’s just shivering because it’s cold walking by the chiller cabinets or if it’s because she was such a fucking horror. But then he gets a semi on in the frozen-foods aisle, the heavy, misted-up doors of the double freezers reminding him of her window-licking in the steam room when he was getting stuck up her at the hotel. Dylan pulls open one of the freezer doors and takes out a box of fish fingers. The dirty slag.

  CHAPTER 31

  THE WORLD IS YOURS

  Over the next few months, Dylan moves up the hierarchy bit by bit. Nogger complains that there was never any hierarchy back home. Everyone just grafted with each other, he says. Which is true, as far as it goes. But on campaign, there’s a strict pyramid. Dean is number one, in the field, anyway, Richard his number two. Of course, the whole thing falls under Paul’s umbrella. Run from back home, it is. No one would dispute the Imperator’s strategic significance. Then below the lot of them are the lieutenants, one of which Dylan is rapidly becoming. Some have specific departments, like transport, security, money. Others are general runabouts like Dylan. Then below the middlemen are the workers, your bog-standard grafters like Nogger and Jay.

  Dylan fills up scaff pipes with long strips of cocaine, then sorts out the bills of lading for port officials by fax and email from moody hotels or Internet cafés owned by mad Russians. Dean lets him do bits of paperwork now and again.

  In the evenings, after Chopsticks it’s on to Escape, all the little firms letting on to each other. Dylan says that the lads might as well be back home cos they do the exact same things. Escape is just a Dam version of the Cream.

  He cops for an American tourist backpacking round Europe. She’s nice but he can’t shag her cos he can’t stop thinking about Elizabeth. Even though he’s peeled her jeans off within five minutes of getting back to the kennel and she’s walking round the cream carpet with a pair of pink cotton knickers with a little blue ribbon at the front on, smoking a weed and playing on the Wii. He boots her out at seven in the morning, then goes down to one of the Irish bars in the drizzle. They’re the only places you can get a decent English brekkie, says Wade, and a decent roast on a Sunday. Dylan, Nogger and Jay have never had a roast before, but they’re settling in to the good life with the lads in The Dam now. Easy living.

  Dylan tries searching for Elizabeth on the Internet but all of her MySpace, Facebook and YouTube pages are frozen in time, on the day of the rape. Dylan pores over the old photos on her Facebook. There are no videos of her but he plays a few of the links he finds on her YouTube channel, things that she must have liked, buzzed off. One shows two Belgian girls dancing about madly to a Coldplay song; another, from Germany, is a montage of romantic photos set to a jangly ’90s indie hit. They remind Dylan of her.

  Then there’s sales and marketing. Dylan goes out on the piss with the diesel Mercs from Green Lanes, North London Turks who look foreign but speak with thick Cockney accents. Dean tells him to take care of them. Dylan lays on 300-euro-a-pop brasses for them. Then, while they’re getting their cocks sucked, Dylan loads up a bottle of Cristal with eight grams of charlie, so it goes down their throats nice and numb. Later, they sort out the details for a 110-kilo load of brown, to go through Paris in a coach full of folk dancers from Anatolia.

  Then there’s the Tony Montanas, the South Americans. The most important ones, the VIPs. Mario and Ortez, salesmen for the Mexicans in Europe. Hector from Cali. He takes them to the match with all the lads in a rented Gulfstream, cos they’re footie mad. Six-star hotels, panoramic views, two grand a night spent on Chinese meals. All the top touts flying in to serve them up the best tickets in person, everyone trying to outdo each other, forcing Rolexes onto each other as gifts of lifelong friendship.

  Loads of the Turks, South Americans and Moroccans live in a little town in the Randstad region. Dylan gets to know a few of the black lads from Tocky who’ve set up there. Nogger won’t have anything to do with them. Jay’s not that arsed cos he’s so cosmopolitan nowadays. Dylan likes grafting with them. The Tocky lads tend to do their own thing more. The light-skinned, mixed-race ones are good ‘blenders’ there, they tell him. They say they don’t stand out in this little town cos they look like part of the local Turkish community.

  Nogger and Jay aren’t allowed front of house. Dean won’t let them near the gear end of the job or anyone connected to it in case they rob one and tax the other. Nogger’s not jealous of Dylan – not yet, anyway – but he wouldn’t think twice about dropping Dean and Richard for lording it over him and Jay while bigging up Dylan with the same graft. ‘Not on, is it,’ says Nogger.

  Dean keeps them at arm’s length, farms them out to Richard cos he doesn’t know what to do with two kiddies who are well known hotheads. Richard hates the pair of them but he can’t do fuck all. Can’t fuck them off or even wallop them on the sly, because they’re on safe passage from the Imperator. Dean has warned him against any funny business. So he gives Nogger and Jay the moodiest jobs he can find in the hope they won’t come back alive.

  He sends Jay to iron out a 64-year-old Turkish baba outside a smoked-glass casino on the Antwerp seafront. Jay pushes him down an iron stairwell, the foam from the crashing waves lashing over them, and blasts him with a three-foot-long single-barrelled shotgun. The sound of the wind and the waves hid the blast, he tells Dylan later. Then he just walked off down the street and sat off in a park until he was picked up by his driver.

  Richard can’t believe it when Jay comes back from Antwerp alive. He’s only 15. ‘He’s like the fucking Terminator,’ Richard keeps telling everyone, scragging him by the head like he’s a kid in a Sunday league team or a pet or something. Jay’s waiting for Nogger or Dylan to give him the nod so he can put an end to the humiliation. Then he sends Jay to burn out an old mate of his in a terraced house in Amsterdam. Jay takes the slates off the roof, pours the petrol in and torches it. ‘Like a fucking pro,’ Richard says, bragging to his mates in Chopsticks.

  Nogger’s more of an enforcer. Richard drags him into all the firm’s internecine wars in The Dam: shivving out-of-order Yardies, going on campaign with ex-’Ra gunmen to wallop Serbs who’ve stolen gear. Nogger loves it.

  Richard tries to put the shits up Nogger before one job in Rotterdam: ‘Some of those Jamaicans have killed 20 or 30 fellers back where they’re from, you know? I mean, we know loads of lads who’ve ironed maybe three or four. But 20 to 30 is very unusual, you know.’ Nogger laughs. He’s not arsed about the stats. He comes back from the job with their thick gold chains spattered with blood as spoils. Richard starts to get Nogger involved in personal stuff, petty stuff between the lads.

  After that, Dean moves his crew into the countryside, says it’s too on top in The Dam now, with Richard using Nogger and Jay to drop his own workers.

  ‘His own workers!’ Dean rants at Dylan. ‘Lads he grew up with. Lads who’ve arrived in The Dam on their toes with holes in their trainies, just looking for a bit of work. And he’s getting Nogger to iron them out just for doing a bit of their own graft on the side. Not even robbing his gear – ours even, our gear – just making a few quid. I’ve told him to ease up, but he’s got a fucking nasty streak in him, has Richard. Stay clear of him. And your mate. And stay out Marksies as well,’ he says, spying Dylan loading up the fan oven with a sun-dried tomato quiche.

  ‘Why?’ Dylan asks.

>   ‘Because the bizzies are all over it,’ Dean says. ‘Are you backward or what?’ He keeps saying ‘Why?’ over and over again, feigning astonishment at Dylan’s naivety. Dylan laughs and Dean shakes his head in mock disgust.

  He tells Dylan, ‘Merseyside Police have got Level 3 capability now. There’s fucking squadloads over here. And they don’t have to work too hard to find youse – just sit outside of Marksies and follow you pricks back to your kens.’

  Dylan’s still laughing.

  ‘Are you backward?’ Dean asks again.

  * * *

  Easy living. In the countryside, Dylan gets up at half ten. First off, he spends 20 minutes scanning the fields surrounding their commuter mansion through the tripod-mounted binoculars on the top floor of the pale-yellow villa. He checks every bush and hedge for Customs and Excise, searches by the dyke and the canal for Dutch police surveillance, poring over the bland, featureless farmland that stretches for miles around. There are acres of tulip beds. Dean says that’s why he bought this house – because he can see who’s outside for miles. It’s midway between The Dam and The Hague, in a neat little market town.

  He gets himself a bowl of Kellogg’s, lashes the empty box in the counting room, tramps back to his sleeping bag in the corner of one of the bare, unfurnished rooms. Like all the others, the nine or ten grafters who are here working for Dean, he’s kipping on the floor. There are a few flat-screens and laptops dotted about, but mostly their possessions are limited to little piles of shit next to their sleeping bags: ciggies, hardcore Dutch porn mags, key fobs for the anonymous Euro saloons they drive round in – company cars for the Continent’s number-one cocaine firm.

  Dylan doesn’t like the other lads on Dean’s new firm. They’re a ragtag of fat-faced jailbirds on the run from all over Britain, cold and twice his age. They’ve got faces you could strike matches on and they’re stinking. They’ll wear the same old trackies four days running. They’ve been in prison that much that they can’t wear anything tight around their balls.