Guns Of Brixton (37 page)

    But
that summer of 1959 had been the dog's bollocks for Chas. He'd grown tall and
strong over the previous winter playing football for the school and spending
hours in the gymnasium building muscle. He'd done some boxing and won every
bout he'd taken part in, making him quite a star with the girls. He'd lost his
virginity that spring to a little raver called Sally from St Martin's School
For Girls, who must've worn twenty stiff petticoats under her brown gingham
school dress. Fourteen. Early for those days, but now… pretty much average, he
imagined, or maybe - looking at the little girls in the street dressed like
tarts - it was as old as the hills.

    Just
before the summer holidays, he'd toured the shops and cafes close to home
looking for part time work. The shop where his mum bought her groceries was run
by an elderly Jewish man and his wife, and he'd offered him a couple of hours'
work a day, plus all day Saturdays, for the princely sum of a pound a week;
Chas jumped at it. He'd yet to become the hardened thief he would be before too
much time had passed, but he'd earned his spurs shoplifting small items at Woolworths,
and he knew that on top of his wages he could probably nick enough fags and
sweets to make his pay up to something decent. And if they left that old till
unattended from time to time, he could lift a few bob as well. His pocket money
from home was five shillings a week; that, plus the quid, plus whatever else he
could scavenge, would soon get him that Dansette record player in the window of
the electrical shop that he yearned for and admired every day on his way to
school. Chas'd also noticed that the attached record bar, as they called them
then, wasn't too security minded. He was sure that he could nick a few
forty-fives when it got busy in there.

    So
all summer he worked in the shop, delivering boxes of groceries on a broken down
bicycle that the proprietor supplied, pocketing tips and stealing bits and
pieces until, two days before school was due to start, he took twelve and a
half quid into the electrical shop and purchased the machine. Laughable by
today's standards, the record player was made of cheap boxwood covered in red
and white plastic, with a BSR ten-record autochange, a four-inch speaker and a
single tone control. But it became the centre of his life. He begged, borrowed
and stole records from wherever he could and, although the sound was as lo-fi
as could be, it played those little plastic discs to perfection. Something that
his recently purchased multispace CD player could never do. Maybe it was his
age, he thought. Maybe you had to be a teenager.

    It
was the time of teddy boys. Italian style was just creeping into the shops. To
go with his music, Chas needed a pair of Levi 501's, a box jacket and some
winklepickers. His father wouldn't hear of it. 'Stout shoes,' he said. 'Stout
shoes for school that will last. And if you want jeans -' he almost spat the
word '- Ladybird do a perfectly good pair for ten and six at Woolworths.' So
Chas had to rob the money from his mother's purse and his father's wallet. Then
hide them in the garden shed and change out of his hated Ladybirds before
hitting the hot spots of Streatham and Croydon. It was at these coffee bars and
record hops that he met the people he admired. Young villains with money in
their pockets: he dreamed of emulating them, and did so until he was caught and
sent down.

    'Drink
up, Chas,' said Mark, shaking the big man out of his reverie and back to the
present, where rap. music was pumping out from the pub jukebox. 'We'd better be
getting back.'

    If
only I could, thought Chas. Get back to simpler times. Duller times too, for
sure. But they fitted his skin. Not like now, when he felt like he had ants
running around inside his body all the time. But he only grunted, drained his
glass and followed Mark back to the car. They drove home in silence.

    Once there,
Mark said to John. 'I need to know more about these people. I'm going to wander
up and have a look round on my own. Nobody knows me. I'll buy some spliff and
make myself busy.' Then he had a thought. 'Or maybe I'll send somebody else.'

    'You
take care,' said John. 'It's the badlands up there.'

    'I'll
be fine, Uncle. And soon they'll be out of your hair.'

    John
Jenner touched his receding pate and smiled for the first time. 'Good. You do
that, son and I'll owe you.'

    'And
get Martine off my case will you, Uncle?' said Mark. 'She's getting to be a
pain in the arse.'

    'Getting?'
said John Jenner.

    'You
know what I mean.'

    Later
on his mobile rang. It was Eddie Dawes. 'I've made a meet with Tubbs,' he said.

    'When?'

    'Tomorrow.
It's his day off.'

    'Where?'

    'A
pub in Holloway.'

    'What
time?' asked Mark.

    'Twelve.'

    'Fine.
I'll pick you up at your place. Elevenish.'

    'I'll
be waiting.'

    Mark
arrived in the familiar street just before the allotted hour, left the car at
the kerb and went to Eddie's door. He still lived in the top flat in a terraced
house off Stockwell Road. It hadn't weathered well: the front door was battered
and looked like it had been busted open several times and repaired by a blind
man. A blind man had painted it too, sometime back in the last century, and the
paint was peeling and blistered. Mark rang the doorbell marked 'Dawes', and a
few minutes later Eddie appeared, pulling on his anorak. 'I'd ask you up,' he
said. 'But it could do with a tidy.' If the flat was anything like the outside
of the house, or indeed Eddie himself, Mark thought, a tidy was the least it
needed, but he said nothing. They went to the Vogue and Eddie said: 'I knew
you'd have a nice motor.'

    'It's
stolen,' said Mark.

    'Yeah?'

    'Yeah.'

    'Good
for you. Nick it in France, did you?' asked Eddie after examining the plates.

    'Something
like that.'

    'Good
on you, Mark. Andy would be proud of you.'

    Mark nodded.
'When things are sorted, I'll get something of my own.'

    'Lexus
are good,' said Eddie. 'Always fancied a Lexus myself.'

    'We'll
see,' said Mark as he started the car and headed towards the river.

    They
were mostly silent on the drive until Eddie directed Mark into the back streets
of Holloway and pointed out their meeting place. It was another theme pub. Mark
was getting heartily sick of the idea. This one was a taste of blarney; the
name picked out in gold script on the sign, with shamrocks instead of
punctuation marks, and enough Irish memorabilia inside to dam the Liffey. There
was a hockey match playing on the TV, the sound low and an Irish tenor bleating
from the sound system.

    'Bloody
hell,' said Mark. 'I hate these places.'

    'They're
all the go,' said Eddie as they went to the bar- and Mark ordered two pints of
Guinness. What else?

    There
was no sign of Tubbs; the entire clientele, what there was of it, was white. A
few hard looking gentlemen sat around getting the feel of the auld sod, and a
couple of ladies of rather dubious virtue sat at the bar sucking on glasses of
the black nectar. Behind the bar counter a young man with short hair, dressed
in black trousers, a white shirt and a black waistcoat busily polished a glass,
occasionally taking surreptitious drags on a cigarette he had hidden behind the
till. 'Nice,' said Mark. 'You bring me to the best places.'

    'It'll
do,' said Eddie. 'It serves booze and the music's not too bad.'

    Mark
gave him a funny look. 'So where's the man?'

    'He'll
be here.'

    Mark
looked at his watch. 'Speak of the Devil,' said Eddie as the door opened and a
huge black man appeared. 'Christ,' said Mark. 'Tubbs has got tubby.'

    The black
man walked to their table and Mark got to his feet. 'Tubbs,' he said.

    'Crockett,'
said the black man, his face splitting open to show two rows of even white
teeth. 'I never thought I'd see you again.'

    'Well,
here I am,' said Mark. 'And if he's not Dizzy, I'm not Crockett. Mark'll da'

    That
had been their names in their youth. Crockett and Tubbs from
Miami Vice
,
Dizzy Dawes, Elvis and Andy. What a crew. And how times had changed.

    'Drink?'
asked Tubbs.

    'I'll
get them,' said Mark. 'It's my treat.'

    'Rum
and coke,' said Tubbs. 'With plenty of ice and a slice.' Eddie Dawes pointed at
his almost empty Guinness glass. Mark went to the bar and suddenly it was the
80s again.

    The
Miami Vice
boys had all gone to Tulse Hill Comprehensive together, just a
few yards up the road from John Jenner's alma mater, the Strand. It hadn't been
a good school and Mark was glad when John had showed him that it had been
demolished. It fact it had been a dump. A sink for all the losers in south London
as far as he could remember. Him included.

    The
boys were all the same age and had entered their secondary education in 1981.
The five had teamed up early on, in fact, just before Mark Farrow's father had
been murdered. It made him something of a celebrity at the school, that his
policeman father had been gunned down only a couple of miles away. They didn't
start out to be villains, but circumstances, and Mark's deteriorating home
life, had led them into a life of crime. He was their leader and where he went
the others followed.

    Tubbs,
at the time known simply as Winston McLeash, was one outcome of the marriage
between a Scottish merchant seaman, Angus McLeash, who had carrot-coloured hair
and the palest skin that Mark had ever seen, and a young Nigerian woman who was
black enough to almost vanish in a darkened room. Winston, the eldest of their
five children, all born neatly nine months after Angus's various shore leaves,
had fared well by the match. He was black, but not completely, and his hair was
thick and shiny as if oiled. Life was not kind to redheaded black people, Mark
had noted, so Tubbs had been lucky. He'd been a slim boy despite his nickname,
but now his waistline had expanded. He toasted his two old friends when Mark
brought their drinks over.

    'To
good times,' he said.

    'Looks
like you've had more than a few lately,' said Mark, tapping him on the belly.

    Tubbs
roared. 'Too much fried chicken, my friend. Doesn't do much for the figure.'

    'Well,
it's good to see you, Tubbs,' said Mark. 'I've missed you.'

    The
black man suddenly became serious. 'No man,' he said. 'You want something, just
like the old days. But me and Eddie have fallen on hard times, as you can see.
So what do you need, and how much is it worth?'

    Mark
looked at Eddie. 'I thought I'd leave it up to you to tell him,' said the
latter.

    Mark
nodded. Probably for the best, he thought. 'A little job,' he said. 'Like the
old days.'

    'What
kind of job exactly?' asked Tubbs.

    Mark made
a pistol out of his right hand and dropped his thumb like the hammer but said
nothing.

    'It's
been a long time, man,' said Tubbs. 'Me and Eddie, we're out of practice.
What's the fee again?'

    'Ten
grand each. Cash. Unmarked notes out of sequence. A little reconnaissance and
it should be all over by the weekend.'

    'Sounds
good,' said Tubbs. 'Maybe too good. Who we going to fix?'

    'Some
bad black boys from Brixton,' replied Mark.

    'How
bad?'

    'About
as bad as they come.'

    'Ten
grand each you say?'

    Mark
nodded.

    'Eddie?'
said Tubbs.

    Dawes
shrugged. 'I've already said I'm in if you are.'

    Tubbs
smiled again. 'I wish Elvis was here.'

    'Me
too,' said Mark.

    'What
the hell,' said Tubbs. 'I can go home to the islands with that much dough.'

    'You've
never been to the islands in your life,' said Mark. 'Closest you've been to the
West Indies is a week in Lanzarote in 1989.'