*****
Curtis Kennedy seemed to have a very short attention span, and various doctors and teachers had tried to put his behaviour down to a combination of two factors.
The first of which was the condition commonly known as ADHD, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. This condition affects a lot of people in society, and the severity of the symptoms varies from person-to-person. One person with ADHD may simply struggle to sit still and retain information. Another may be completely hyper all the time, and unable to control compulsive urges, such as shouting out at inappropriate times, saying inappropriate things and generally being “irritating” to others. Curtis Kennedy definitely suffered with the latter version.
But to make matters worse for him, Kennedy also had a condition called ODD. It stands for oppositional defiance disorder. Put simply, it’s a compulsion to do the opposite of what you are told. If you tell a child with ODD that they must sit quietly and do their homework, then you can guarantee that they will make a lot of noise, and rip up their homework book, even if they had been really looking forward to doing the work. Even if the work had been their idea in the first place. An ODD sufferer has to take the opposite stance, and it always ends with the sufferer making life harder, rather than simpler, for themselves.
It was certainly the case with Kennedy, that he made life hard for himself. It was as though he had no concept of doing things in a simple, straight-forward way. Indeed, if he had carried on with the doctor’s appointments, he might have been given some medication that would help him with this unfortunate combination of anti-social behaviour conditions.
But today, as he sat in this dark, smelly, scary room, the only thing on his mind was getting out of that place. There were no thoughts beyond that. He didn’t have any great desire to get back home, or get away to a certain place. He just wanted out. He could hear a lot of activity, people walking around, laughing and joking. There was the faint sound of a radio playing. Every so often, Kennedy could hear a familiar song playing. There was beeping as well, every now and again, it sounded a bit like an alarm-clock. Kennedy’s mind was racing with ideas and thoughts of where he was. His very first thought was that he’d been locked in an old disused electricity substation. The kind of which he’d climb onto the top of as a child, and win bravery kudos in the local community for jumping off, “stood up.”
Kennedy drifted off into a light, anxious sleep, but was soon disturbed by the banging of a chain against the cold, steel door which was keeping him prisoner. A loud, heavy sounding lock was removed, and after a few tense, scary, nerve-racking moments, the door swung open. Once his eyes had adapted to the light, Kennedy was surprised to see who was standing there to greet him.
“Wakey wakey, rise and shine!” said a cheerful looking man. It was Marco MacDowell.
“Fuck…”
“Aw God, your breath stinks you smelly little scrotum!”
“Soz… I’m…”
“Is it true you had a little accident last night?” asked Marco. He threw his head back, laughing loudly.
“Well, I… yeah… pissed myself!” Kennedy looked petrified. He couldn’t believe that he was being held by one of Manchester’s most feared gangsters.
“That’s fucking priceless! You rob one of my boys at knife-point, acting like Billy big balls, and then you piss in your pants like a toddler! Can’t wait to tell everyone up on Hattersley about this!”
Kennedy just stood there. He looked humiliated, and in normal circumstances, he would give something back. He certainly wouldn’t stand there looking down at the floor, trembling.
“Where’s my money and my tu-sheng-peng?”
“Dunno…”
“Well, you’re going to be gutted about that little stunt, aren’t you? Because you’re my little bitch now, and you’re going to work that debt off, and it’s going to take a fucking very long time you little dick nose. Do you understand?”
“Yeah.”
“And the fucking Mayor of Hattersley will give me the freedom of the shit-hole for taking you off the streets for a wee while. So, in a way, you did me a favour nicking my drugs and my money. Do you agree?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Right, let me show you around. Do you see this room?”
Kennedy turned and looked at the cold, rotten room that he’d spent the night in. With the light coming in through the open door where Marco MacDowell stood, he could make out that it was a mouldy, damp old store-room. There was a tree growing out of the brickwork in the corner. The mattress was filthy, it genuinely looked like it had been involved in a death, or a birth. It was a very, very disturbing place.
“That’s your living quarters.”
Marco stepped away from the door and gestured Kennedy out. He stepped forward, but looked reluctant, as though he was expecting a good hiding. But Marco didn’t touch him, he turned and started walking along the corridor. “Come on, follow me. I’ll take you down to the stores and we’ll get you some overalls. Can’t have you working for me in those disgusting clothes. What size shoes are you, anyway?” Marco was just walking along, talking casually, as though this was just a new employee’s first day.
“Sevens.”
“No problem, I’ll get some size seven work-boots ordered in for you.” Marco pushed open two huge swing doors, and held them until Kennedy followed through. The sudden, pungent smell of skunk cannabis was overpowering. The heat in the place came as a welcome relief after that cold, damp room he’d just come from. “Right, here we are in the main factory. This is where you’re going to be working off your debts.”
The place that Marco was talking about was quite literally a factory. It was the entire floor of an old Victorian Mill, easily the size of a football pitch. It was set out with rows upon rows of cannabis plants, hundreds, if not thousands of them, all growing healthily under a very professional looking set-up of bright lights.
“You’re going to need sun glasses on, working in here. This is the miracle of modern technology, LCD lights. Since these babies were invented, growing weed has become very cheap. That’s why pretty much everywhere you go in Manchester these days, it smells like Bob Marley’s bedroom! It’s all thanks to all these LCD lights, and my factory.” Marco started walking along the first row of plants. He stopped and inspected the flowers of one. “Do you like a chuff yourself?” he asked.
“Nah. Makes me paranoid.” Said Kennedy.
Marco laughed loudly. “Have you got ADHD?” he asked.
“Yeah, I think so. Summat like that.”
“Yeah, that’s the trouble with ADHD. Hyper people can’t handle a drug that settles most people down. It makes them even more hyper in their brains, and that manifests itself as paranoia and psychosis and shit like that. I’ve been reading up on all this.”
Kennedy wasn’t sure how to behave around this guy. Not only was he one of the most feared men in the area, who Kennedy had just unwittingly crossed, in an extremely bad way. But he was talking to Kennedy as though they were old mates. It was very weird. Especially as he was famed for being involved in the disappearance of a lot of scary people. Kennedy started wondering if they were all in here, working for him.
Suddenly, a fork-lift truck came through some clear, plastic curtains, and beyond the curtains, Kennedy could make out that there was another factory, just like this one. The bleeping noise that had been driving him mad all morning had been coming from the fork-lift. Its driver was wearing a hi-vis jacket, and looked as if he was fully involved in his work. One thing was for sure, this was not a mickey-mouse grow house. This place was being run like a professional, multi-national company, complete with Health and Safety work-wear.
“What am I going to be doing?” asked Kennedy, after finally plucking up the courage.
“Glad you asked that. You’re going to be my new watering assistant. What that basically means is…”
“Watering the plants?” asked Kennedy, growing a little in confidence.
“Bingo! You’re bang
on! Right, let’s go and get you some breakfast, you can get a shower and freshen up. We’ll get you some appropriate work-wear and then you’ll start your training.”
“Nice one.” Kennedy was starting to think that he was going to like this new job.
“Oh, and seriously, if you make any mistakes, if you fuck a single one of my plants up, you’ll be put to sleep and set in concrete that day, and then you’ll become an upright support beam in the new town hall they’re building in Ashton. Do I make myself clear?”
*****
Kennedy’s first day in the role of watering assistant was exhausting. The constant, relentless heat in the factory was intense. The work was simple enough, all he had to do was walk up and down, constantly spraying a fine water mist over each plant. That was it. It was interesting for the first three or four plants, but soon after, the novelty factor began to wear off, and Kennedy began to realise that he had seriously fucked up this time. His mind was racing with conflicting thoughts and questions, such as how long will he have to do this for? How could he escape? Will he be stuck here forever?
His hand started hurting after the first hour. The constant squeezing on the spray bottle was giving him cramps. An hour after that his arm was dead, and his shoulder felt as though it was popping out of its socket. The only respite he got from squeezing that trigger was a trip to the sink to refill the bottle every five minutes. He had never felt happier than when another worker came over and told him to stop spraying.
“It’s break time!” He announced, with a wide grin. Kennedy followed the other guy into a small room in the corner of the factory floor. Inside, there were three other men, and a KFC bucket meal.
“Two pieces and one chips. We share the gravy!” said the guy, opening a big bottle of Pepsi and then pouring it into the four paper cups. “It’s the best day Thursday, KFC. On Monday and Tuesday its Farmfoods meals. Wednesday we get a chippy, Thursday a KFC, and Friday we get a McDonalds. It’s always stone fucking cold though.” The guy who was talking seemed alright, thought Kennedy. The other two were just silent, and they looked like they weren’t to be trusted.
“How come you work here?” asked Kennedy, as he grabbed at the chicken and chips.
“Got involved in something that I shouldn’t have. Turns out I was set up, selling things on Marco’s streets. Been working in here ever since!” The guy took a bite from his chicken leg. Kennedy wanted to ask how long that had been, but he realised that he didn’t want to know. He could handle the idea of working here for a short time. But he didn’t want to know if it was going to be longer than that.
“What have you done wrong, anyway?” asked the other worker, once he’d swallowed his chicken.
“Oh, I robbed this dealer. I didn’t think it through properly. Last night the Cole brothers came and took me mam’s front door off.”
“Knob head!”
“I know, yeah.”
“Are you in the dungeon?”
“What’s that?”
“Marco puts new starters in the dungeon for the first few nights. It’s a freezing, stinking little shit-hole.”
“Yeah, yeah, last night, I was put in there. It were freezing.”
“Well, he’ll let you come and sleep in the bunks in a few days if you keep your head down and blend in. But if you step one-foot wrong, you’ll go straight back in the dungeon. He doesn’t fuck about. There’s no second chances or any of that bullshit here.”
“Fucking hell. It’d be easier doing time.”
“I know yeah. But Marco knows that prison doesn’t work. He says he rehabilitates offenders in his own way, so they will never piss him off again.”
The rest of the break time passed slowly, and quietly. It was nice to just have a rest from the heat and the smell of the growing room, as it was known. After around half an hour, a bell sounded around the building, and the three men opposite Kennedy jumped up and headed straight out of the rest-room.
“What’s up?” asked Kennedy, worried that there was a fire or something.
“Break time is over. Back to work. No more talking until next break.”
“When’s that?” whispered Kennedy as he followed the men onto the factory floor.
“Five hours. Beef and Tomato Pot Noodles. Now shush, if you’re seen talking, you’ll get a kicking you won’t forget. If you’re seen talking after that, you’ll be part of a missing person enquiry that never gets solved.”
*****
Curtis Kennedy had never held down a job before. Not a real job anyway. He’d done various stints doing community work for the Probation service as punishment for his anti-social behaviour. But he never really lasted, the Probation officers would let him go home as they couldn’t be arsed baby-sitting him all day, and he just wound the rest of the group up with his negative energy.
“You can get off if you want, Kennedy,” they’d say after half an hour. “I’ll put you down for your hundred hours.” It was a very polite way of telling him to fuck right off.
“Nah, I’m alright.” He’d say, as he got on with walking along the canal tow-path kicking dog shit into the water.
“No, honestly mate, here’s a tenner. There’s a bus in five minutes.”
Kennedy was an absolute nightmare to be around, and it was mainly down to his ADHD. But he was also a very antagonistic character, so it was a very unfortunate combination of characteristics, and it made him universally unpopular wherever he went. He had applied for a few real jobs, which actually paid money, but his applications weren’t exactly conventional. By the age of 19, he’d given up on the idea of a job, and learnt how to get by taking other’s people’s stuff and selling it. Whether that was phones, trainers, bikes or drugs. He seemed to have no conscience about it, mainly because he blamed everybody else for the problems in his life. If somebody had a new I-phone, it was because they were a spoilt bastard.
So, he’d take it away, and punch the owner. It’s worth pointing out that Curtis Kennedy never took anything off anybody who was bigger than him. He preferred to choose easier targets, young kids walking home from school, women with children.
Occasionally, he’d underestimated his target, and ran away crying after receiving a good beating. But most of the time, he ran away laughing as his victim picked themselves up from the floor.
This new job, working as a watering assistant came as a massive shock to the system for him. He had never stayed on his feet all day before, and he felt as though every bone in his body was ten times heavier, as that first, long day drew to a close.
“Do you think you’ll like it here?” asked Marco as he walked Kennedy back to the room that the other guy had described as “the dungeon” at break-time.
“Yeah, yeah, definitely,” lied Kennedy.
“You’ve done alright today, I’ve been keeping my eye on you.”
“Cheers.”
“You’ll have paid off your dues before you know it.”
Kennedy couldn’t wait to get in that stinking, freezing cess-pit, and lie down. As soon as Marco opened the door and gestured him in, he lay down on that minging mattress, and closed his eyes. He was asleep by the time that the door was locked.
*****
The routine continued, day after day. It was a gruelling, relentless, monotonous cycle which saw very little change. But on the plus side, Kennedy’s muscles were beginning to adapt to the physical demands of a daily, ten-hour shift. On the fifth day, Marco told Kennedy that he was going to give him a bunk, in the bedroom. Kennedy was beyond excited by this prospect, it really was the equivalent of winning the lottery for him. Instead of being walked down the corridor to the dungeon, he was led upstairs, to the third floor of the four-story mill, and shown into a room which contained seven bunk-beds, and thirteen frightened, frail looking men. They all stood up and looked down at the floor. It was like something out of a concentration camp.
“Going to see how Kennedy fits in up here. Anybody want to tell him the rules?” asked Marco. The sense of fear in the room
was overwhelming. Not one of the men looked up in Marco’s direction.
“Come on, how about you Frankie? Going to tell him the rules, or what?”
A very ill looking man, probably aged about fifty, cleared his throat before he started speaking. “It’s not a holiday camp, we are here because we have upset the wrong person. In this room, there will be no talking, no wanking, no nothing. Just relaxing and sleeping.”
“That’s right. You see, if you hadn’t been stupid little dick-chuggers out there, you wouldn’t be in here. Would you not?”
“No Marco!” chanted the men. Kennedy began to realise that this was a bit of a ritual.
“This city is a nicer place with you horrible doggy-knobbers working in here for me. Isn’t it?”
“Yes Marco!”
“What happens if you break my rules?”
“You break our bones!”
“Okay, well, I’ll let you douche-noggins get your beauty sleep. You fucking need it, you ugly set of jizz-moppers. Night!”
“Night Marco.”
*****
Life went on like this for several weeks. Motivated by an ever-present fear for his life, Curtis Kennedy had somehow managed to knuckle-down, and get busy following instructions, adhering to rules, and keeping his head down for the very first time in his life. The only conversations that the workers had took place over the two thirty-minute breaks that they were allowed each day. These conversations often centred around the things that had happened to previous workers who had stepped out of line.
Marco was a great believer in letting the other workers watch as he disciplined his workers. He had done many, many evil and wicked things to the people who had stepped out of line, such as whipping them, water-boarding them, beating them with sticks, and all manner of depraved activities. Marco would often laugh while he was delivering his punishments.
One of the workers described how hard it had been to watch one particular punishment ritual. It had been against a guy called Phil, he’d ended up in the factory after running up a debt with one of Marco’s dealers. Phil had injured his back carrying some pallets up the stairs and he was struggling to carry on.
The Final Cut Page 23
