Cracking Up (16 page)

He’d walked toward the toilets but, as he neared the end of the bar, a big fucker stuck out a foot and tripped him up. Spermy lost his balance and almost crashed into a table full of drinks. But he slammed his palms against the table and righted himself. Spermy turned and stormed over to the Taffy geezer giving it the biggun. Big bastard or not, it couldn’t be ignored. He had to have it out there and then. He pulled the nine milli out from the small of his back and pointed it straight at the offender’s boat race. “I’ll blow your fucking head off, you sheep shagging cunt,” he threatened.

The Welsh lad saw the shooter and set off running toward the rear exit. Spermy let off a round which exploded the optics behind the bar. The Taffy crashed through the door out into the parking lot with Spermy struggling after him with his gammy leg. Spermy stopped at the rear exit and fired the nine milli, licking off three more shots in rapid succession. Cartridges clattered onto the tarmac from the clips as the magazine unloaded. Then it was offmans, he jumped into a taxi and, like a prick, went back to the caravan.

It was just a matter of time before the armed response unit got to grips with him. A rapid response wasn’t long in coming. Police vans surrounded the caravan, demanding that he toss his weapon out. He phoned me up while it was going on. “I went loopy,” he said. “I was pissed up and off me head. Pulled the shooter out. Popped it off.”

I felt a shudder down my spine. “What!” I said. “You popped the shooter off? What the fucking hell for?”

“I went to the club chatting up some fanny,” he said. “We were just drinking some beers, I went for a slash and some cunt tripped us up … I lost me rag and went mental.”

It was true. Spunky couldn’t hold his ale and had a hair trigger temper.

“They’re going to shoot us,” he said. “They’re outside now. It’s all over.”

I couldn’t believe it. What a stupid bastard. “Just give yourself up,” I said. “Throw the banger out, RIGHT NOW!”

He did what I told him and then I heard the caravan door come crashing in and gruff voices shouting ARMED POLICE! ARMED POLICE! ARMED POLICE! He was stood there with his palms open and arms outstretched. They were yelling and all over him in no time, pistols drawn and aimed. They kicked his bad leg and downed him in one, flattened his face against the floor and put their knees between his shoulder blades. His arms were twisted behind his back and the cuffs clamped on his wrists. Game over!

22.

Dog Sick had set up a meeting in the cafe by us, The Bait Box, a local greasy spoon where you could eat the cheapest, nastiest scran that could only be consumed when smothered with copious quantities of thin vinegar-laced ketchup. I was sat at a table opposite him, slurping a cup of grease tea and munching on a bacon roll, drowned in red sauce. He was pitching his plan for a stunt because he was desperate to boost the coffers and neatly clean up messy drug debts to suppliers that had accrued due to the nice men of customs seizing a load being smuggled in. He’d done a reckie on a jewellery shop, sussed out which cabinets to target and stressed that no one was to be even shot at, let alone filled-in. “All right, our kid, look: Just get in there, get the fucking bling and get the fuck out of there. Yo our kid, remember, don’t slot no one.”

Two days later, in broad daylight, we were positioned outside the jewellery shop wearing crash helmets with the visors down and black leather golf gloves. I noticed the burner in my hand shaking because of the nerves, but it was all part of the process of pulling stunts like this. You’re always going to have a bit of nerves, it keeps you sharp and on top of your game.

I produced the Glock from the waistband of my trackie bottoms, cocked the slid hammer back and bounced into the jewellery shop. The adrenalin was pumping through the veins, the rush was enormous, paralysing almost, but the buzz of making a killing kept me glued together, unflinchingly, determined to clear the place out.

The innocent customers and staff were instantly gripped with shocking terror and fear, screaming with panic and anxiety coming out of their arseholes. Everybody threw their hands up, then obediently followed the orders I was barking as Caspar covered the shop door with a little something semi-automatic and a police scanner in a show of force and cunning. The two other lads slipped in smoothly behind us, they were carrying crowbars in their gloved up hands. I scanned the room, my weapon trained on the shell-shocked customers and employees, my head swivelling, checking out for any movement. I shouted orders over the screams. “This is an armed robbery. Get on the fucking floor NOW!”

They were trembling and sobbing but coward by my command, the workers and customers pressing their faces to the ground. “Keep your hands on the backs of your heads! I ain’t fucking around!” I yelled.

“Put the fucking phone down!” Caspar yelled at a woman who was talking on her mobile phone when we ran in. With her arms outstretched and her body lying on the ground, she slowly closed her phone, keeping her hands in open sight. The two other lads headed straight to the cases that displayed the watches and gold necklaces. They knew exactly where to go and what they were looking for because Dog Sick had genned us up on the layout.

Fuck me, all of a sudden, one of the women, dinky and getting on a bit, got up off the floor and waded into one of the lads. She was giving him a barrage of foul-mouthed abuse and battering him with her handbag. The fearless would-be wonder woman was obviously in no mood to be a compliant victim and flew into a civic rage with the intentions of putting a stop to our criminal enterprise. Not that old chestnut, I thought. Please don’t pull that stunt on us now. That’s all we need.

I barked at her to shut up, snarled at her for creating and in the end was faced with no other option but to switch my grip on the burner to the barrel, lift it up and smash it down on the top of her skull, vicious like. Her eyes rolled around in their sockets and a set of false teeth flew out of her gob, the knees gave way and she collapsed on the spot. It was birdies tweeting around the head time and she’d pissed her bloomers. Warm rivers of blood streamed down her face, the stupid fucking bitch and her stupid heroic blood. She was groaning and barely conscious. “You stupid fucking cow,” I growled.

SMASH! Fucking hell, what a commotion and the punters nearly died of fright as the shattering sound of the glass scared the shit out of everyone. Trim and Dobber were bashing the display cabinets, grabbing gold chains and trays of Rolexes and stuffing them into rucksacks. Their fingers worked like fury as they pinched the smart bling.

There were tens of thousands of pounds in the sacks now, Rolexes and thick gold chops worth a fucking mint. We’d only been at it for a couple of minutes, but smashed it and it was time to burn it out of there. “Come on! Let’s go!”

We got off the mark, scadoodled, made a run for it. We pushed past nosey shoppers congregating outside and, as we had no time for decorum, brandished the shooters menacingly and shrieked. “Get out of the fucking way!”

We headed for a nearby alleyway where we had left two scooters with the engine’s running. We buzzed out of there on the scooters, ripping up the road like we were in some Moto GP, dodging in and out of traffic like top lunatics. A few miles down the road, behind a petrol station, we leapt off the mopeds, jumped into our getaway motor, waiting with Dome at the wheel, and bombed it out of there. Trim and Dobber zoomed off on the scooters, while Dome gave it full throttle, burning it all the way back to the safe house where Dog Sick was waiting to check the stolen spoils.

23.

The next night, the top tier of the Ju$tu$ Crew were massed at the home of one of the joeys mams. His mam and her boyfriend had gone away for a few days and the typical house party was in progress. I couldn’t believe they had trusted the little muppet with the family home even for just a brief period. I mean, he could have had any old low life scumbags in off the street to trash the place. He did. He had us lot.

It was past midnight and the crew had taken the whole house over, pure partying with a top sound system blasting out the latest urban tunes. The entire gaff was packed out; there were loads of birds and loads of booze, loads of drugs and loads of dancing. The party was banging, the birds moving like Shakira and I even managed to cop for this bird who I’d had my eye on for some time, a sexy little bitch. I was after horny sex with this teenage Lolita-like diva, gagging at the prospect of getting to grips with a stunning piece of female flesh in a session of wild fornication. We vanished upstairs to his mam’s vacant bedroom for a mess about, going belly-to-belly, making some noise and pulling fuck faces when there was frantic banging on the bedroom door.

It was a manic Caspar. He’d got a call from one of our joeys who had spotted a carload of lads, dressed in black and ballied up, at the end of the road. I ripped myself off the bird and dressed in two seconds flat, put on my bulletproof, then flew down the stairs, out the front door with Caspar and a couple of the other lads following in my slipstream. I was outside the house, halfway down the close, and clocked the Astra at the junction at the top of the close. We ducked down for cover behind park cars because it looked like typical drive-by tactics were being employed. The junction was an ideal place to rain some burning fire down upon us, as it allowed for a quick getaway and easy access to the Drive that acted as the estate’s ring-road. The headlights were off but I could just make out the front passenger masked up, leaning out the window, then saw flashes as he cracked off six quick shots of semi-automatic fire. I winced as I heard bullets ripping through car windows, spraying shards of glass all over the pavement and road, blasting ragged holes in the metal bodywork of the parked cars we were huddled behind. Then the driver put his foot down, the back tires screeched and whistled as our attention was momentarily distracted from the lad creeping up behind us. I heard him shout. “You’re fucking dead!”

I turned abruptly, the fucker had emerged from a gloomy alleyway behind us, which ran down the side of the party-house. As soon as the car had fucked-off out of there, the kid ran out of his hiding place, ballied-up and our eyes locked as he aimed a handgun right at me. When I saw the gun I thought I was a dead man. I’d always known it would be this way: When you were least expecting it, had left your weapon under a pillow and had your back turned, some fucking murderous little bastard would sneak up on you. And then fucking nightmare of nightmares, he squeezed the trigger but nothing happened, the gun jammed. As the panicked shooter tried to force the jammed bullet free, my brain sent a hasty message to my limbs to bust a move, quick style, or get blown away. I was squatting next to a car but burst into a sprint and launched myself at him like a mad kamikaze fucker. I hollered a war cry, tackled him and sent us both sprawling to the pavement. The gun went off, the bullet ricocheted off the pavement, ending up embedded in the wall of the party house. I was struggling with his arms, grabbing for the pistol and he was fighting back, kicking and biting. “Come on!” I shouted at the other lads.

Caspar kicked him in the side of the head and followed up by delivering more vicious kicks to his body. Then he moved out the way, allowing Dobber to take a turn, booting the fuck out of the lad until his brains were like scrambled eggs. I sprung up with the shooter. “Got the fucker!” I shouted.

The lad was trying to roll up into a ball, folding in like a foetus with head, belly and balls protected, but we were mob-handed by now and the lads were giving him a good kicking. “Stop it, stop it … you’re going to kill us,” he mumbled through bloody, shredded lips, but the boys continued doing him over.

“No one tries to do us and walks,” Caspar said, putting another boot in.

“Get him up and put him in the boot of the car,” I told Caspar.

“Are we going to whack him, Ow-wee?” Caspar said. “I’m feeling proper murderous.”

One of the lads popped open the boot of the motor. The battered would-be assassin was literally picked up with brute force and the intention of bundling him into the boot. But he was wriggling like fuck in an attempt to save his life. We were holding on to his arms and legs while he was flipping and flapping furiously. We were having a top fucking buzz as we man-handled and manoeuvred matey boy into the boot, but the fucker was frenzied and jerking around like he was having an epileptic fit. “FUCK ME - SOMEONE HIT HIM!” I shouted.

A joey lunged at him with a baseball bat, WHACK! I could hear the crack of the bat against his skull. “Enough!” I shouted.

The blow had split his head wide open, cracking bone and splattering blood. The body stopped resisting and went limp. “I think he’s brown bread,” Caspar said. “Dead as Elvis.”

“Get him in the boot. We’ll dump him off the estate. Keep the coppers off our case,” I said.

We threw him in the boot, slammed it shut. Then Caspar got behind the wheel, I jumped in the passenger seat and we headed off towards the vast expanse of Sefton Park five miles away, Grime music blaring from the stereo, Rayzer’s Hometown. We ripped it out of the estate, doing about sixty miles an hour and still accelerating up the main road towards the city centre. At night the park was full of prozzies with their kerb crawling punters, flashers and doggers, benders cruising for a bum fuck in the bushes, prowling ASBOs up to no good. Because of an obvious lack of law and order, it would make an ideal dumping ground for a corpse.

BUMP! THUD! THUMP! I nearly shit myself. The bastard was still alive and kicking up a fuss. I remember thinking: This is one hard fucker to kill! As we were going along the main road the lad sprung the boot open, Houdini-style, and clambered out, bouncing and tumbling onto the tarmac. Caspar braked hard and the car came to a screeching halt in the middle of the road. The scuffed up, blood smeared, battered lad stood up on wobbly legs, stumbling down the road and screaming. “HELP! HELP! HELP!” There was nothing else for it; Caspar turned the car around and gunned the motor straight at him, scooping him up onto the bonnet then the arsehole fucking took off, doing somersaults in the air and landed in a crunch of bones. “That should sort that cunt out,” Caspar said, as we accelerated out of there.