Skinhead (5 page)

“That's another of the fuckin' bastards!” screamed a Chelsea fan. His boot landed on Billy's hip, his tool finding the enemy's shoulder – the nails digging in with agonizing force.

Billy buckled, clawing at his shoulder. He could feel the rusted nails biting deep, screwed as the Chelsea skinhead tried to withdraw his weapon for another attack.

Billy screamed. He wanted to vomit as a boot landed right in his balls.

Joe yelled as a bottle exploded in his face – a jagged-broken bottle pushed at him with savage force. He felt his skin yield, crack, blood spurt. His cosh flicked... swung in a blind circle as the Chelsea fans swarmed in on him.

Tony and Frank battled gamely – clearing a path for the
hors de combat
duo struggling in their wake.

At the turnstile, Joe wavered. He didn't enjoy being victimized, nor sent packing without getting in a few licks of his own. The cosh in his hand itched to crack a few more skulls – yet the blood pouring down his face needed attention.

“Come on, mate,” Frank coaxed. “Let's have a beer, eh?”

Joe accepted the out, pushed through the turnstile and hurried past an observant copper. The first cheers for the teams sounded from the ground.

“We won anyway, Joe,” Billy grinned.

Joe glared at his companion, ready to argue the point but unwilling to make an issue right then. Once he stopped the flow of blood he would be in a better position to stress that opinion. He nodded, holding his handkerchief to his slashed face. “Yeah,” he mouthed. “Yeah – we won!”

They'd had an eventful journey back on the Underground. Fortunately, they were earlier than the police estimated trouble would begin. They'd terrorized a few passengers, slashed a dozen or so seats and broken the normal number of windows before reaching East Ham. There, they alighted and scared the hell out of the ticket-collector by stealing his small change from those who preferred to pay short instead of purchasing tickets at their boarding station.

Once outside the station, Joe decided to visit a bookie. He had heard one of his mates talking about a certain horse and he figured a few quid on it wouldn't go astray.

The bookie's office wasn't far from the station and it was packed. Joe scribbled his bet, handed it across the counter to a cute blonde and tried to date her for the night. When she refused he got mad – threatening to tear the place apart until a thick-set gent in loud tweed stepped forward and told him to “Get lost, sonny”. He got lost – and when Frank returned with the news that his horse had lost by fifteen lengths he felt like a dictator who had been ousted from his seat of supreme power.

His one compensation was Mary, the barmaid. Everybody loved Saturday night, he reasoned – especially an old bag wanting a young lover.

“There wasn't much aggro, was there, Joe?” Billy remarked as they wandered down the High Street in search of adventure.

Joe touched his battered face. It had been enough for him. An inch closer and he could have been blind. His cheek hurt, his handkerchief in his pocket felt sodden with blood. His cosh had taken its deadly toll but he'd thirsted for more... much more than The Shed crowd had permitted. God how he hated those Chelsea bastards! If only he had a better mob to support his ambitions! Billy wasn't bad and Frank could use the boot if he got the upper-hand. Tony wasn't eager and Don wanted the odds always in his favour before resorting to violence. Jack and Henry were, in Joe's opinion, non-starters – they screamed before the first blow caught 'em.

“Not bad, mate, “Joe said thoughtfully. “Did you see 'ow I got the cunt?”

Billy nodded enthusiastically, saying fast, “You got 'im, Joe. An' I didn't waste time puttin' the boot in, either... eh?”

Joe played the game – the Big Con. “You was terrific, Billy. We was both fantastic...”

“Yeah, Joe – fantastic!”

They searched the shops for signs of easy pickings and found none. The crowds were thick, the shops jammed with Saturday bargain-hunters. In East Ham it didn't pay to look for trouble where people gathered in bunches.

“Wot's the time?”

Billy looked at his watch. “Quarter past five, Joe.”

“'Ow about Mary?”

Billy grinned. “She's easy, Joe.”

“So?”

Frank rubbed his trousers and yelped, “I'm for her, mate. God, she gives me a hard on!”

Joe grinned. “See, Billy?”

Billy shrugged. He didn't give a damn either way. If Joe wanted Mary he got what was left. If he tried the old cow himself he got nothing that wasn't there after Joe finished. “Yeah... okay!”

“When's she start?” Joe asked.

Billy looked puzzled. “I dunno...”

“Shit! We'll go in soon's they open.” Joe stalked down the street, reaching Barking Road. He paused, eyed the traffic coming from London, and wondered if – perhaps – some of the cars had been parked outside Stamford Bridge. He hated the bastards if they had seen the whole match; loathed those Chelsea cunts for getting them involved before the match started.

As he walked, Joe thought. He wasn't completely satisfied with his mob. For one thing, they weren't strong enough. He wanted command of a larger force. Say about forty guys all tooled up and ready to follow where he led. The other mobs had larger forces – he could name dozens like the Willesden Whites, the Hendon Mafia, the Kilburn Aggro Boys. Even in West Ham they had mobs numbering close on fifty qualified bovver boys. He knew what was wrong, though – he needed a helluva bigger reputation before he could see a drift away from established gangs into his own. He had a name but it was too local, too limited. He hadn't done porridge and he hadn't been written up in the papers as an outstanding example of skinhead terrorism. He'd have to do something drastic to make the grade. One big aggro with a reporter present and he'd have them all clamouring to get into his mob.

A Pakistani student approached with an armful of library books under one crooked arm.

Joe grinned, whispering, “Crowd the bastard!”

With undisciplined compliance, his team formed a spearhead smashing through the scattered shoppers. Ten feet away, the Pakistani became aware of the advancing enemy, and hesitated. He didn't have to be reminded of the last exploit involving one of his fellow-students and a skinhead mob – it had made headline news in the Barking paper.

“Ain't he pretty...” Joe laughed.

A small man wearing a scarf and hurrying for his favourite pub abruptly veered into a side-street and took a detour that would not help his thirst for bitter.

A mother with laden shopping bags grabbed her two snotty-nosed kids and ventured across the road regardless of oncoming traffic.

A burly Irishman smiled inwardly, skirted Joe's mob and offered a silent prayer as he stared at the Pakistani and continued on his journey to the boozer.

“Lemme take your books,” Joe said, knocking the volumes from the student's arm.

For an instant, the dark face angered then, abruptly, broke into a nervous smile. “Sorry...” he muttered, bending to retrieve his books.

“Bloody wog!” Joe snapped, kicking the Pakistani in the face, knocking him backwards across the pavement. His voice carried above the traffic growl to those watching the all too familiar scene. “You bleedin' wogs... you don't want us to...” A passing lorry swallowed his words and spat them out in a defiant roar of exhausts.

The Pakistani cowered against a shop window, watchfully aware that the books were being kicked into the road; seeing them flattened under merciless tyres.

“Look wot you done,” Joe shouted, grabbing the frightened student. “That costs us money, mate... we pays for your books!” His right caught the Pakistani under the Adam's Apple, his left foot finding the soft underbelly of the other in a vicious kick. “You don't deserve to be 'ere...” He screamed, building to a fever pitch as his feet lashed out with frightening regularity... each blow finding its target.

Like ants swarming over a tasty morsel, the mob crowded the already beaten student, putting the boot in, helping Joe pulverize the Asian. All the hatreds for the newcomers blurred their ability to consider the battered man as a human being – not that they ever considered any target as anything other than a kicking bag for their perverted pleasures.

When it was over – less than three minutes from start to finish – Joe, tired of his kicks, walked away from the stricken Pakistani to get lost in a gathering crowd. One by one, his mob filtered from the scene... vicious shadows flitting into the darkness of evil minds.

The pub was, as usual, jam-packed with Saturday night spenders. Joe felt inferior in the mass of hefty dockers and other assorted heavies. He was smart enough not to force his hand in the middle of such a gathering; he had discovered early in life that a stripling did not gain feathers fighting old cock-birds. These were men accustomed to fisticuffs, to putting the boot in, to brawling against odds. They didn't back down to anyone – not even with Joe Hawkins' reputation. Joe could heave sacks of coal around but the weight he could lift was nothing compared to what the average docker thought infantile...

“Your turn, mate,” Joe growled to Billy, shoving his empty glass across the table.

Billy got to his feet, feeling for spare change in his pocket.

“An' don't forget to chat-up the old cow,” Joe admonished.

Billy fought his way to the bar. He didn't relish the thought of getting Mary outside. He'd had too many beers and all he wanted to do was sleep it off. Beer and sex didn't mix with him – certainly not in the quantities he'd drunk that night. Frankly, he regretted ever mentioning his escapade with Mary. The more alcoholic thought he gave to Mary the more he was convinced that she was a bloody good stand-by when he felt in the mood for cunt. He hated the idea of Joe shoving it into her and him getting seconds. After all, hadn't he been the one who discovered her liking for shafting?

“Billy...”

He leant against the bar with a drunken who-cares stance, affecting those movies with Sinatra playing the short-statured he-man-I-can-handle-'em-all attitude. His bleary eyes beamed on the woman, leering his sexual inclinations like a lightship warning off ships in the night that pass dangerously close to perilous sands. “Same again,” he said.

“Will you be there?” she asked.

He straightened, and tried standing without the bar to support him. “Of course...”

“Don't drink any more, Billy,” she said softly. “I wouldn't want it without you!” She gave him the all-promising eye.

“Joe's first,” he said sternly.

“So?”

“He likes it different...”

“So do I, Billy. Won't you do it how
you
like it?”

He sobered fast. “You're big, Mary...”

“I'm smaller other places...” she countered neatly.

Billy wanted to scream. Suddenly, he felt that Joe was unimportant; that he alone was the big man in their mob.

“When Joe's finished I'll make sure you're pleased, Billy,” she said, depositing the first pint before him.

Alec Jamison didn't like skinheads. He had good reason for his hatred; his daughter Alice had been raped by one of the bovver boys and the abortion she'd had resulted in an inflammation of the womb which had proved fatal. Now, a gaunt, lonely man with wife and daughter buried in the East London cemetery, Alec listened to the whispered conversation between Billy and Mary.

Alec liked Mary. He knew she was a tramp; available for any man with enough money to double her weekly take from the pub – and that included all her fiddles, too! He didn't care about fiddles... he got enough on the side from his milk round. He didn't give a shit whether she got into bed with her old man or some kid. His women on the round often paid with a bit and he didn't think any less of them for opening their legs.

But, somehow, he couldn't associate Mary with those little bastards in Joe Hawkins' mob. God, how he detested them!

He felt his glass almost creak as his grip tightened...

Then suddenly...

Mary gasped, hand fluttering to her open mouth as blood spurted from Alec's hand. The bitter spilled over the floor, glass shards flying willy-nilly, some sticking from the cut and bleeding palm.

It wasn't so much the shock of seeing Alec smash the glass in his fist; it was his expression – the wild-glaring eyes, the contorted features as he fixed Billy with his demented gaze.

She felt her knees turn rubbery. Alec wasn't the type of man anyone annoyed. Tall, heavy, with the face of an ex-boxer, he looked every inch the determined fighter he certainly was. She'd seen him in action; seen him beat a man to pulp before he recovered his temper. And she feared for Billy...

Glass stabbed into his flesh but he refused to be put off. The bastard had it coming to him and he clenched his fist into a hard-knuckled ball. All the pent-up loathing surged to the surface.

Before he could strike a blow, he felt the sickening weight of a hard object descend on his head... saw dim, flying lights circle the bar and heard the savage cry of one of the young thugs...

Semi-conscious, he felt boots seek his secret places... find them with excruciating thuds... and, as the boots kept going in, the pain lessened... lessened... grew more distant, less brutal!

Joe flung the bedclothes aside with disgust. His body ached – especially where that rotten bastard had planted three darts in his arse. He could still hear the burly man's yell: “I got 'im... treble arse!”

He staggered to his small mirror and looked at his naked image. Christ, he thought, that thing should have been giving Mary a good go last night. If only Billy hadn't been stupid enough to get into bovver with Crazy Alec!

He grinned at his reflection. If he looked terrible Billy must be one awful mess. He'd clobbered Alec before his bloody fist could flatten Billy but that hadn't saved his mate from the ire of those others kindly disposed to Alec. He'd been bleedin' lucky to skip out with but a few fists shoved down his throat. Not Billy! The last he saw, Billy was sprawled on the pub floor getting the dockers' boots rammed home where it would do his sex life most harm. Mary must have gone without from all of them, he mused happily. If he was sure her old man wasn't home he'd go round there and give her what she wanted most!