by Harry Crooks
She proved to be a valuable asset around the house though, being pretty well-gifted in the art of cooking. I’d never found much time for that sissy shit, it was all done for me at home by my mam. None of the other lads were equipped with the knowledge or necessary expertise to get to grips with the chip pan. Lez kept the food appearing at regular intervals, keeping our bellys full up and our spirits high. Like they say: You have to feed your soldiers or they can’t fight the battle. It was a good decision to let her get involved, I thought, especially as she not only served us the fry ups, pies and chips, but had also mastered the urban criminal art of cooking the rocks.
Pregnant when she was convicted of multiple benefit frauds, she had just emerged from a lengthy sentence because she was a repeat offender. Once on license, she’d been full of optimism but the bailiffs had been hounding her over unpaid bills, she had pains in her chest because she didn’t have any money and no means of earning an honest wage, especially with a criminal record and the little black cloud of a sentence still hanging over her character. She wasn’t making very good progress down the job centre and Dog Sick had taken her to one side and made her an offer she couldn’t refuse as it were, which she willingly accepted in her desperation. Upon incarceration, she’d given birth and the nipper had been taken into the care of social services. She was wild with the need to get some dough behind her and claim the shit critter back. Which was fair enough, I suppose.
It was a graft late afternoon and into the night set-up, and it worked pretty fucking well. It was amazingly easy to do the bizzo: there were fifteen joeys putting the work in around the marketplace. Punters would pull up in cars at the top of the close by the telephone kiosk and the lads would serve up in seconds. Whey hey, the motors were off down the road, no looking back. Herds of bagheads and crack fiends would come skulking around the close in their tattie trackies and smelly cheap trainers with that desperate glare in their eyes of fiends in dire need of a quick score, then disappear into the surrounding walkways of the estate like a puff of dragon smoke.
The lads on the frontline kept their heads up, constantly keeping a sharp, lookout for the drugs squad who would have the marketplace under covert surveillance and would often send undercover bummers in to make buys. The lads were on edge, wearing body armour and balaclavas, and would often challenge new faces. One time they were approached by a geezer with designer stubble, wearing squeaky clean jeans and a brand new Berghaus Vorlich Gore-Tex waterproof jacket. “I want to score some nasty,” he said, in an exaggerated conspiratorial tone of voice.
If someone’s lingo or look was wrong, the lads would know because fifty-five percent of communication is body language. They fronted him. “Are you a fucking copper or what?”
“No fucking way!” he replied.
“You reckon?”
He denied he was a copper again and kept banging on about the drugs. “Look, lads: Do you want to do the bizzo or what?”
His line of patter sounded suspicious and they eye-fucked him up and down, then told him straight. “Nah! You’re a fucking bizzie!”
“Am I fuck?” he said, further denying the accusation flat.
The boys weren’t having it. “You can fuck right off, mate!”
The copper was subjected to a barrage of abuse, as he slopped off. He’d been sussed and the best thing for it now was a quick, non-violent exit with a chorus ringing in his ears. “Fuck off out of it, you bizzie cunt!” “Yeh, piss off, fucking filth!” “Beast! Beast! Beast!”.
The troops were all young uns, prospects keeping dixie on mountain bikes, or on foot leashed up with pitbulls, serving as spotters, lookouts for the bizzies and acting as dogs bodies doing the joey jobs. Older foot soldiers served up and took the dough. This was a likkle dangerous, they were exposed on the frontline and had to be careful of the police and rip-offs because they were out in the open.
I was now the top lad in charge of the operation and swaggered it over the entire crew. Other lads acted as the muscle that protected the crew and the money-spinning bizzo. We were tooled up to the eyeballs, had all kinds of weapons on hand and weren’t shy about using them. Our menacing presence on the close ensured a fear-filled respect from the envious eyes of the opposition, or so we thought. We were making TOP TILL, and our crew’s reputation for bad intentions was intimidating. When we flexed, we went to the extreme because we were addicted to currency and buzzed off the adrenalised action like Scarface Tony Montana.
A typical day in the life of the crew at the drugs mission went something like this: I would be buzzing around between the stashhouse and the close, giving loads of orders out to the muscle, pestering the joeys and threatening to DO the poor kids if they didn’t GET ON WITH IT! The kids would have just received their snap bags of goodies and, wasting no time, were instantly doing the bizzo. It wouldn’t take long for the druggies to come along and have the lot off us, boosting gang funds nicely.
Lez would be in the kitchen, singing along to the latest crap pop tunes on the radio and engrossed in the method of sorting the crack out, filling a pan with water then placing it on the gas cooker. While the water was coming to the boil, she’d reach into the fridge and pull out the baking soda. She’d pour ounces of the baking soda into the pan, watching it swirl in the rapidly heating pan, then with both hands, adding the ounces of coke and keeping a close eye on the dangerous cocktail that threatened to bubble over and explode until the rocks formed. She was like a narcotic Gordon Ramsey and the crack coming out of that council house kitchen was ridiculously intoxicating and being tossed in the direction of the punters double quick.
Some of the lads would be at the kitchen table, chopping and cutting up the wholesale smack. Unfortunately, the nasty gear lost some of its potency by the time the punters got their grubby paws on it, which meant that they would have to go straight back out on the rob again to pay for more. The boys were hard at it, weighing it out on the triple beam scales and bagging it up along with speed, weed and ecstasy - whatever the punters needed. It was fucking hard work but the graft was peppered with breaks to indulge in the crew’s favourite pastime of inhaling the pussy skunk.
This was the crew. We grafted, battled and stuck it out together. We were double confident on our patch, being mob-handed and armed to the teeth, the only bunch of twats in town that mattered. The camaraderie was strong within the crew, which made the process of flogging drugs an easier task than if we were a fractured outfit with little in the way of team spirit, but we were still having to slog it out like the rest of the other crews to earn a crust. It was fucking hard keeping the money earning side of the venture turning over because the lads were, by nature, lazy fuckers and I had to kick a few cunts in to set an example. But for the most part, happily surrounded by the rest of the crew, the lads were grafting and raking it in.
The dough was certainly rolling in but we weren’t getting rich, far from it, as most of the money that came from the streets went straight back to Dog Sick. The wages we were receiving were actually pitiful, but Dog Sick kept telling us the overheads of the operation, the drugs, the logistics, were costing him mega money and re-assurring us that it would only be a matter of time and patience before we could begin to reap the rewards.
I almost felt sorry for him, but wasn’t sure he was on the level and suspected he would let us down in the long run because we were smashing it yet only taking home basic wages. At our peak, we were storming it, raking in tens of thousands of pounds every week.
The lads dealing would complain and grumble about earning a measley fifty quid a day, but they still needed to earn a crust to survive. If you don’t like it, you can always fuck off was the message. We could always get some other joey to do the job. They might have looked at the paltry fifty quid in their mitts and thought, Fuck that! But it’s fucking bollocks being skint and when there’s nothing else on offer a fifty’s quite nifty.
Most of them had been chucked out on to the streets, abandoned by whatever families they’d had, usually sick
to their back teeth of all their snide goings ons. Because the lads were an annoying bunch of lazy, arsehole CRASBOs; loud mouthed, gobbie little cunts with a mean streak in them, seeking sanctuary in the company of some like-minded nasty shites using the same crap tactics to stay alive on the streets.
I was making a little bit more than the rest of the lads, but I had to sort everything out: When stocks were running low, I would call Dog Sick from the TK at the top of the close and explain our needs, communicating in guarded code just in case it was a party line; nasty meant smack, Double D meant coke after devil dust, weed was pussy because we liked to put our lips on it, the code for crack was tic tacs, speed was amp and ecstasy was Mandy. Soon after, a pizza delivery moped would pull up, delivering fresh supplies, handed over in a pizza box with the minimum of fuss and zoom off with ease of movement through traffic.
It was a dirty little industry and some of the crew had sticky fingers and thought it would be clever to dip into THE TILL. I’d have to threaten to batter them to fuck if they didn’t come up with missing dough NOW, or in my gangster mentality I would kick their fucking cunts , making examples of them. The point I’m trying to make here, is that I had all the headaches and was the only one strong enough to hold the show together, trying to organize the crew in the face of real danger from the Mug Fam and Filth, useless cunts and haters.
We were giving it the biggun about the close all day long, selling our imported cargo of abusive substances at sensible prices to any passer-by willing to part with their cash. Flogging class A’s like it was black Friday and potent Es: The good uns embossed with the KFC and Xbox logos. There was a whole fucking army of punters, descending on our patch we had secured in the close. There were battalions of sad bastards hounding us to sort them out, gagging for their next blast of brown or toot of rock. The business was bobbing along quite nicely and we were making a pile of readies in the process.
Now, the dough I was taking home was not to be scoffed at but still, I found myself wondering if I weren’t getting the arse end of the deal. Me and the lads would be taking all the risks; we were the ones fighting tooth and nail in the gutter, risking nicks and dodging bullets. Okay, Dog Sick was the driving force behind the set up, but he was a greedy bastard, grabbing his chunky percentage all for himself. He never showed his face on the estate when it got messy, I had the feeling we were being fucking conned, eating dirt and pissed on.
One night, I was stood at the top of the close. I was surrounded by some of the crew. The bizzo was wrapped up for the day; it was eleven at night, and I was planning to head over to the house of a right goer that had a reputation for being a bit of a mattress, so I had excellent odds on copping for a shag and was desperate to spew me goo. I should have shot off and got my end away, but I was bubbling with the crew on the close, caught up in the crossfire of idle banter and laughter, as three of us were clustered around an iPhone 4, heads touching as we peered at a video. “Fucking hell … that’s fucking rotten, that is.”
A surge of thrill, electric disgust, passed between us as we jockeyed with one another to cop a better look of the tiny screen. There was a naked bird lying on a mattress, a lad on top of her between her skinny legs, arse cheeks pumping away. A mob of legs surrounded the copulating couple, they formed a circle, flanking them on all sides. The faces of the others in the room couldn’t be made out, only their legs and feet, shifting impatiently. It looked like there were six or eight lads perving over the little piece of fanny, frothing at the mouth and waiting their turn. Each time the lads traded places, another face was revealed - some of them were joeys in our crew. One of them even told me that he’d stuck a beer bottle into her gash. A couple of the others were older lads like Caspar and Trim, eighteen. The gang-bang had taken place the night before, in a battered old caravan balanced on concrete blocks in a back-garden. Some of them had filmed it and blue-toothed the video, passing it from phone to phone that day and almost everyone recognised the girl on the mattress. She was a willing participant but confirmed jailbait at just thirteen.
“Bunch of mucky minded bastards, you lot,” I cracked off, scolding them. “Fucking paedos!”
I was in my element, feeling a confident and cocky bastard because under the black Lowe-Alpine all-weathers I was wearing coz it was brass monkeys, a bulletproof vest hung over a Armani T-shirt and my black Mason Barzilla Stingray trainers matched my outfit. The designer clothes felt good; I was a cool fucker with my fully loaded Glock nine-milli subtly stuffed down the front of my trackie bottoms.
I was telling the boys to put the wanking material away and I’d see them tomorrow when I noticed a dark black Subaru Impressa with tinted windows gliding past suspiciously. There was only one Impressa on the estate, it had been up for sale and recently exchanged hands but, mysteriously, no one knew who had bought it. The lads had seen it cruising often in the last few days, usually in the evening, after dark, and it always prowled past the close . “That motor’s making me fucking nervous,” I muttered.
“Do you reckon it’s Mug Fam?” said Caspar. “On a mission.”
“Got to be,” I said. “Innit?”
“Fucking hell!” he said. “Better get the Big Mac. Sort these cunts out!”
He spun on his heels and went down a ginnel to the back garden of the vacant house where we had stashed the Mac-10 under a shed. “They’re in for a fucking shocker when they come back,” he snarled. “They’re fucking going down, lad. Telling you!”
The joeys glanced nervously at each other. They loved to big themselves up, make out they were hard bastards, but the pressure of proving themselves at that particular moment filled them with a potent mixture of adrenalin and anxious fear, they were torn between looking like soft cunts or showing a bit of bottle. But, underneath it all, they were dreading it and shitting themselves big time.
Shit, shit, shit and double shit, Caspar hadn’t re-appeared from the back garden when I spotted the car heading back towards us. It was coming on top rapido style so I shouted out. “They’re coming back. Fucking scatter!”
The motor, headlights off, speeded towards the top of the close, then slammed on the anchors and, with a squeal of tires, came to a stop sideways on. It was the Impressa. The front passenger window of their motor was already wound down. There was a flash of blue-orange and the rapid crackling sound of semi-automatic fire. CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
The boys ducked down behind parked cars and darted off down the close, taking cover in ginnels. I heard the sound of glass shattering and screams from inside a house, as a stray bullet smashed into a front room window exploding the tv screen. I was running for cover when I felt the rush of air from the bullets whizzing about, then ricocheting off pavements and the gable end of a house behind me and slamming into my chest; it was like a kick from a fucking mule. The sharp, sickening pain hit me in the solar plexus and the wind was knocked out of my lungs. I blacked out, sprawled on the ground from the impact.
Only seconds had passed, but Caspar didn’t hesitate because the adrenaline was pumping. He leaped over me and was sprinting towards the car, as he kept his gloved finger on the trigger and fired off bullets in auto-mode. The Mac-10 went loco; it shot the whole clip out, thirty of them, bullets spewing everywhere. BRRRRR!
The driver of the motor slammed his foot on the accelerator and screeched off at speed, getting the frigging hell out of there and back to the safety of their end of the estate, as bullets skimmed off the roof of the car.
Some of the lads came rushing over to help me back to my feet, dragged me to the crackhouse where I slumped on a sofa and tried to catch my breath back. Lez immediately assumed the worst and instantly flew into a massive panic, she wanted to call an ambulance but I was having none of it, because as I stripped off my top to check for wounds the bullet that hit me fell out of the panel of the Kevlar body armour I had on and onto the laminate floor. There was no lethal harm done after all, I was just wheezing like an asthmatic and was bruised up from the force of the impact. Ok
ay, so it was a bit of a fucking scare, a near-serious case of hasta la vista baby and goodnight Ow-wee lad but all I could think about was a good long pull on a loaded spliff. Surely it would make me feel better, I reasoned with myself. I insisted one of the joeys roll me one and after one drag I was paranoid as the shock of nearly being filled in intensified ten fold. It wasn’t a good idea at all, but all I could think about was smoking it to the end, if only to divert my attention away from the nasty goings on and attacks of that vicious bunch of baboons.
It had been a close shave and the Mug Fam were looking dangerously like they were out to get me personally. My paranoia must have been contagious because we all left the house a short while later, slouching off, muttering to ourselves and cursing the Mug Fam for being top pricks, we were raging over the incident and swearing to DO FUCKIN SOMETHIN. We were plotting and scheming, determined to give the bastards some grief. Yes, we concluded, there was definitely going to be a bit of bother, probably some big fuck-off drama.
God must have looked down on me that night and thought, Fuck that! I’ve got no time to be dealing with these nutters just now, coz I was left wondering how the fuck I’d managed to get out of that one alive and realized I’d just had a fucking lucky escape from yet more gangster aggro.
Scurrying out of the close and round the corner, I was relieved and thanking God that I’d managed to escape from another potentially murderous encounter without lasting injury and was vocalising this point to my homies, “Fucking close one that!” when, we had a fucking piece of jammy luck, bumping into one of the home invaders that had steamed into Lee’s flat and assaulted her. Spotting us, he turned on his heels and sprinted down the street with me and the boys in hot pursuit. When we caught up with him we dragged him forcibly into a dark alleyway and instantly surrounded him.
I should have slotted him right there and then and, for a few mad moments, it suddenly dawned on him that he might be a dead man and the colour drained from his face. But he was just another wannabe gangster with a big gob and no bottle, he was crying and begging to be let go. He was a low-life dirty bastard rapist but that didn’t warrant a death sentence. Now if he’d have been a grass that might have well sealed his fate. I grabbed him by the throat, shoved the nine-milli in his face and accused him of being out-of-order round Lee’s flat. “You EVER do that again and you’re dead meat,” I shouted at him, spit flying out me gob and on to his face because I was a little excited and overly animated at the time.
