Guns Of Brixton (36 page)

    'What
was he driving?' asked Mark.

    'Funnily
enough, a bog standard Ford Sierra. He was mini cabbing at the time.'

    'Stroll
on. Elvis?'

    'He's
inside. Doing a double handful in Parkhurst for dealing smack.'

    'Bloody
hell. What about Tubbs?'

    'He's
about.'

    'Where?'

    'Managing
a KFC in Holloway.'

    'I
don't believe this.'

    'What
did you expect? That we were all doing well in your absence?'

    'I
didn't know.'

    'So
what's the job?'

    'I need
to take care of some spades who're getting above themselves.' 'How much care?'

    'Intensive
care. Undertaker care.'

    'Heavy.'

    'We
did it before, remember?'

    'How
can I forget? I still dream about it sometimes.'

    'Yeah.'

    'So
where did you get to, Mark?'

    'Long
story.'

    'You
keep saying that. Enlighten me.'

    'Not
now. I need to think.'

    'You
talked about money. How much?'

    Mark
thought about the case full of cash in John Jenner's safe and plucked a figure
from the air. 'Ten grand.' He'd worry about getting it later.

    'For
what?'

    'A
couple of days' work.'

    'Sounds
all right.'

    Mark
looked at the state of Eddie Dawes. 'I don't think so, Eddie. I don't think
you're up to it.'

    'But
I could use the money. And I've still got my little baby.' He was referring to
the topped and tailed sawn-off double-barrelled Remington shotgun he'd used to
great effect in the old days.

    'I
would've thought you'd've dumped that years ago.'

    'Sentimental
value.'

    'Listen,
mate, I don't mean to be personal…'

    'But
you're going to be.'

    'OK.
Look at you. Man, you were the sharpest of the lot of us. What happened?'

    'Life
happened. Bren leaving happened. Being out of work happened. You leaving
happened.'

    'You
can't blame me…'

    'I
do. We were great, the five of us. We had a future. And look what went down.
One dead, one banged up, one doing some stupid job for not much more than
minimum wage, and me on my arse in an empty flat.'

    Mark
didn't know what to say.

    'Then
look at you. Nice clothes. Probably got a decent motor outside and talking
grands. Something's wrong somewhere.'

    'Yeah.'

    'So?'
•

    'So?'

    'So
let me get in touch with Tubbs. It'll be just like the old days. Only three of us
instead of five.'

    'These
people killed three friends of Uncle John's the other day and nicked three
hundred thousand quid's worth of coke. This is fucking heavy, Eddie. Not to be
played about with. You could die.'

    'I'm
already dead, Mark, if you hadn't noticed. I'm just walking around a little bit
longer than most corpses. I don't give a shit about that. But for ten grand I'm
prepared to do anything. It could be a whole new start for me.'

    'And
what about Tubbs? These are black geezers.'

    'He
always was an equal opportunities villain, Mark, remember? He wouldn't care if
they were red, white or blue.'

    'And
you still speak to him?'

    'Every
now and then I go up Holloway and pig out on free chicken. It's his only perk.'

    'Where's
he living?'

    'In a
bedsit a couple of streets away from the shop. He always smells of fat.'

    'Lovely.'

    'So?'

    'All
right, Ed, get in touch. Let's make a meet. It can't hurt.'

    'You
got any more dough? I've got expenses.'

    What,
a bus pass? thought Mark, but he didn't say it. Instead he peeled off another
fifty quid and passed it over to Eddie Dawes. After giving him his mobile
number, he left him to his drinking.

    Christ,
he thought, when he returned to his car. Talk about the gang that couldn't
shoot straight. But he only needed them for backup, and they'd been good as
gold in the old days. So what could go wrong? Everything. That was what.

    ' So
where do these spades hang out then?' Mark asked John Jenner and Chas on his
return to the house.

    'On
the Ashworthy,' growled John Jenner. 'Niggers like to stick together in their
little tribes. Gather round the cooking pot at night and eat their stinking
goat curry.'

    'Nice,
Uncle,' said Mark. 'A very modern outlook. We had goat curry at Tootsies,
remember? I need to take a look. Suss out the ground.'

    'I'll
give you the guided tour,' said Chas. 'We'll take your motor. It looks like a
drug dealer's car, so it'll be well at home up there. How long's it been since
you saw the place?'

    'Years.'

    'You
won't recognise it.'

    Mark
had been familiar with the Ashworthy estate on Brixton Hill. It was an
immediate post-war project, although he wasn't sure if it had been built on bomb
sites or whether it was part of the great slum clearance that had taken place
in the late 1940s. Homes fit for heroes being the intention. No huge high rises
there, the tallest buildings being perhaps ten stories, like large matchboxes
laid out on their sides, almost Stalinist in their brick and window
regularities. There were low rise blocks too, and maisonettes, and even
studio-type flats for single people. Utopia in south London had been the
architects' aim and, for a while at least, it had been. Mark always imagined
the planners of the Ashworthy to be out of some post-war black and white
British film. Good looking boys back from the conflict, full of liberal
feelings, dressed in baggy flannels and pullovers, smoking pipes and untipped
cigarettes over their drawing boards, still using military slang. He'd had
friends from school who'd lived on the Ashworthy, and often he'd visited the
place to while away the school holidays, playing music, smoking dope, and
hanging round the open areas looking for girls. It had been all right then, he
remembered. But as he and Chas cruised the winding streets in the Range Rover,
he realised it had changed for the worse.

    Homes
fit for heroes had turned into homes fit for crack whores. The Community
Centre, once the hub of the estate, where residents' committee used to meet,
had been burnt out. Graffiti scarred what smoke-stained walls remained. Next
door was an off-licence, its windows and door covered with metal sheeting and
its entire stock seeming to consist of strong canned lagers, cheap cigarettes
and cut price vodka. What a career move to get to manage that dump, thought
Mark as they cruised slowly by. 'Shithouse,' grumbled Chas who was driving.
'Filthy fucking shithouse.'

    The
tarmac on the roads was cracked and weeds sprouted through the gaps. The whole
place was seedy, dirty and depressing. Black sacks of garbage spilled out
smaller supermarket bags that had been torn by dogs or cats or rats, and
evil-smelling rubbish tumbled into the gutters, propelled by a sharp wind that
blew across the muddy spaces where once grass had been religiously shaved by
council workers. No one cut the grass any more and what was left of it sprouted
in unhealthy clumps, dotted with faeces - both animal and human. 'Christ,' said
Mark. 'I wouldn't fancy wandering round here after dark.'

    'Let's
hope our motor doesn't break down then,' said Chas. 'It wouldn't last the night
up here without being picked clean and burnt out.'

    'You're
so cheerful, Chas,' said Mark. 'Is that what keeps you going?'

    'Something
like that,' replied Chas, but he laughed as he said it. 'Sorry, mate. But
things seem to be going from bad to worse.'

    'Since
I got back, you mean?' said Mark.

    'No.'
Chas shook his mighty head. 'It's been going pear-shaped since John was
diagnosed with the big C.' He stopped the car and pointed to one of the smaller
blocks. 'Moses lives in number five with his mum.

    Slag's
been on the game since the old king died. Seen more pricks than a secondhand
dartboard.'

    Mark
smiled at the old joke and reflected that the old firm wasn't suited to the
modern world. 'Beretta lives behind us in that tall block. Top floor. He's got
some white trash slapper sucking his dick every night after she's sucked on the
crack-pipe. And young Karl is in the maisonettes on Brixton Hill. Handy for the
chip shop and the pub. Life's good for these fuckers, ain't it?'

    'It's
about to change, Chas, I can promise you that,' said Mark. 'Drive around a bit
more. And then let's go and have a pint.'

    They
settled in the Telegraph pub on the Hill. A huge old boozer that had gone
through so many style changes over the years, it was a wonder it still retained
its original name. Mark bought two pints of lager and they sat in a corner away
from the boisterous, mixed race crowd around the pool table.

    'This
place has changed,' said Mark.

    'Changed,'
said Chas. 'I'll say it's fucking changed. Used to be a nice old pub, but it's
gone downhill.'

    "What
hasn't, in your opinion?' asked Mark.

    'Don't
be funny. You think things have got better?'

    'Some
things. Technology. Would you still like cars with no heaters and wind-up
gramophones and having to use a payphone to get in touch?'

    'We
managed,' said Chas. 'And, for your information, I never had a wind-up
gramophone.'

    'Dansette,
was it?' asked Mark with a grin.

    'Yeah.
It was, as it goes, and I had to work all summer holidays in the grocers to get
it.'

    It
had been a magic summer for Chas. Nineteen fifty nine, and he had been fourteen.
He'd been in long trousers a couple of years and loved the sound of the music
he listened to every night on Radio Luxembourg and the

    American
Forces Network, under the covers in the bedroom in the attic of his parents' house
in Streatham Vale. Boy, he loved that music. The record that changed his life
was
Rockin' Through The Rye
by Bill Haley and The Comets. He'd heard it
on
Two Way Family Favourites,
a request show on the old Light Programme,
whilst eating his Sunday lunch - or dinner as they called it then -three years
before. He'd practically felt his balls drop at the first notes and almost
choked on a piece of hot roast potato as his father leapt to his feet to turn
off 'that bloody jungle music' as he called it. Chas shared his old dad's
racist views, but was somehow blinkered about black musicians and the white
ones that aped them. He adored them from that moment and still did. Lonnie
Donegan, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis, The Drifters, Coasters, Platters
et al.
He ate them up over the next few years, but his father wouldn't let him near
the Bush radiogram where he stored his Ronnie Hilton, Mantovani, Alma Cogan and
Ted Heath LPs. 'If you want to play that rubbish, get your own,' he'd said.

    So
Chas hunted out boys of his own age who were equally besotted with rock 'n'
roll, and spent hours around their houses listening to everyone from Tommy
Steele - just OK - to Cliff Richard - awful - in the hope of the occasional
Little Richard record floating to the top of the pile.

    As he
sat in the pub with Mark, Chas yearned for those simpler days when he was an
innocent and not yet the gangster he was to become. He'd broken his mother's
heart when he'd first been sent away in the early 60s, even though she'd slowly
come round to the way he ran his life later on. His father, of course, had long
washed his hands of the long haired lout that his son had become. That's what
he'd called him when he'd thrown Chas out of the house at age sixteen, with
little more than the clothes he stood up in. His father had smashed up his
record player and destroyed his precious vinyl that day and, although he could
forgive him for the disownment, the records were another matter. They'd never
spoken again. Not even at his mother's funeral. When his father died a few
years later, Chas didn't even bother to attend his cremation. Burnt before he
got to hell, was his opinion. And good riddance.