Cracking Up (23 page)

The convoy of cars set off out of a lay-by near the nick and bombed it down the dual carriage way. Me, Dobber and Melt in a Saab with the shooters and sledgehammers we’d copped for, and the other two no-good fuckers - Dome and Kushie - tail-gaiting behind in another set of wheels. We soon clocked the prison van up ahead and tried to keep up without looking conspicuous in balaclavas, when the van came to a suprisingly sudden stop at a set of traffic lights at a major junction. Sensing an opportunity, Melt slammed on the accelarator to gain some ground. Next thing, there was a fuck-off squeal of tires, as he managed to get in front of the van in a textbook blocking-in manoeuvre when, at that same moment, our other motor pulled-in behind it.

A split-second later, everyone but the drivers burst out of our vehicles. We all began shouting our fucking heads off and a barrage of foul-mouthed abuse commenced, alerting the guards inside the van to the seriously agonizing realization that they were being hijacked. Because they were boxed-in, their driver had no fucking clue what to do and hesitated for an instant. He just sat there like in a brain-freeze, the stupid prick, hardly daring to move, absolutely stunned into mute apathy. Fuck! The air became fraught with a frenzy of harsh words rebounding off the van as the driver, startled by the completely unprovoked and aggressive verbal assault, refused to open the door. Not gaining enough ground on the argument for his liking, Dobber bellowed FUCK THIS SHIT! and swung the sledgehammer. FUCK ME! It landed spectacularly. A nano-second later, the windscreen exploded like a glass handgrenade and sported a large, gaping hole through which I brandish the sawed-off double-twelve in my possession. I issued firm orders for the driver to extract himself from the van. “Open the fucking door, you blurt. NOW!” Offering the warning that if he didn’t co-operate, I was going to blow his fucking face off. The driver’s door swung open and Dobber pounced, dragging the feller out of the vehicle by his hair around to the back of the van where the rear doors were opened after Dobber banged on the doors to bring to the attention of his colleagues inside that we had hold of him and threatened to do him in.

Once inside the back of the escort vehicle, the colour drained from the female screw’s face as stared down the barrels of the shotgun sawed off to just two inches. I demanded that she free Spermy from the close confines of his compartment. Spermy didn’t like screws and delighted in body-barreling her out the fucking way as he exploded out of the tiny cubicle. He was still handcuffed but couldn’t resist taking his pent-up anger out on the bitch as she went arse-over-tit and still managed to kicked her in the cunt while she was down.

He was growling and snarling, going beserk, completely and utterly dangerous like a caged animal let loose and was getting totally out of hand. At the time all I could think of was fucking hell, we’d better get out of here fast or it was going to degenerate into absolute fucking chaos. I shouted at Spermy COME ON, YOU FUCKING BALD HEAD NUT! WE’RE UP OUT OF HERE! I bundled him out the van and the adrenaline was full on tingling down our spines as we legged it to the cars and got the fuck out of there, back to the cover of a nearby estate where the getaway vehicles were abandoned and his cuffs bolt-cropped. We bailed out, running and sweating like fuck and jumped into another waiting motor which whisked us off to a safehouse on another deadend estate. Dog Sick had decided that Spermy was being sent on a fuck-off mission to The Dam; hiding out and laying low and helping with the narco bizzo going down there. He didn’t hesitate, knowing that he’d be public enemy number one in The Pool now and the proper barmy bastard thought that maybe that shifty streets of that sleazy city would be an ideal place to cool off and keep him out of harm’s way if only for a little bit.

33.

The storm clouds were gathering and the black clouds looked darker than usual and forecasted corrosive rain. Reliable sources - for instance, bent coppers - close to Dog Sick had no qualms about tipping him off that a crackdown was on the way. The War On Drugs was full-on in Liverpool and the drugs were winning, but the bizzies were desperate to polish up their reputations within the law enforcement business and neatly clean up the messy drug-infested streets. Surveillance units had been watching the comings and goings at Gravesend Close and suddenly the area was radioactive. Dog Sick had called time on the marketplace and warned Lez to straighten up the property before it got raided by the bizzies. Engaging the old grey matter, armed with a Dyson and possessing superhuman cleaning abilities Big Lez got to grips with the situation at hand. She’d never cleaned so fucking much in her life, reworking time and time again areas that already appeared spotless. It was like she’d suddenly fallen victim to an obsessive compulsive disorder because the gaff was so squeaky clean. But the Matrix Disruption Team that pulled up outside the house in yellow Merck sprinter vans in the early morning hours didn’t know that. Fired up Matrix bizzies in black ballistic vests took up positions outside the house and within seconds pounced, smashing through the front door with a big red key in a human whirlwind of destruction. POLICE! SEARCH WARRANT! She was on her own in the supposed security of her home and had been dozing on the couch with the telly on, but was rudely awakened and watching wide-eyed over the edge of her duvet as armed men in black steamed into her front room. One of them threw her fat face down on the carpet while someone shouted an obvious GET DOWN! She began screaming as she was pinned on the floor, arms behind her back. Officers trundled off round the house, searching in dramatic fashion as if looking to unearth a secret arms cache or an obscene amount of drugs, only stopping to pose for some group photos on their mobiles which would later come back to haunt them. Les was nicked and trawled off straight down to the police station. After a day of questioning, keeping her cool and pleading total innocence all the way down the line, desperately denying the crimes they suspected she’d done - operating a crackhouse, for starters. Detectives with smug, smirking faces announced that they had discovered an ounce of coke hidden in the cistern tank of her upstairs toilet and asked if she ever wanted to see her kid again. She was gutted; to be pulled for something so stupid after Dog Sick had forewarned her. She was sat in the interview room squealing like a stuck pig; she was not prepared to take any rap for the drugs. At the same time, detectives told her it was her lucky day; if she co-operated fully with the ongoing investigation, called Operation Storm Cloud, into the Ju$tu$ Crew there was a good chance she’d get her kid back and they’d put her on Witness Protection. She wasn’t overly keen on being branded an outcast and a grass for life but, in her hopeless misery and anguish, broke ranks. She felt sick as she did the police’s dirty work for them, coughing up names and only sparing Dog Sick, trying to minimize his role because she knew he was a string-puller and there would be the inevitable comebacks. I couldn’t believe it! What a worthless fat piece of filth she’d become, the lowest of the low; I would have loved to have stuck a sharpened pencil in the foul creature’s neck. Police were convinced of Dog Sick’s involvement though, knowing he was the driving force behind the joint enterprise and over aggressive officers were exerting excessive pressure to get her to sing like Pavarotti and bubble him up big time. Dog Sick had gotten wind of it from his contacts within the force and was out of there, departing that very day with a false passport and kitbag full to the brim with money. He ran from the scene like a guilty bastard all the way to another luxurious pad in Amsterdam. He was going to continue his fuck-off drugs mission in The Tulip Gaff and become a mythical character because the war on drugs always sacrifices the little shits to let the big turds float free.

I was fucked because the only place I’d be heading would be back to The Choke Hold. But I wasn’t about to hand my fucking self in for a minute, no way was I serving myself up for the fuckers to remove me from the streets and decided the only option I had left was to lay low. I was dreading getting collared, knowing the inevitable would happen; that I’d be charged with heavy duty crimes and sentenced to a long detain and go down for real with the meanest of the mean in a dire place called The Concrete Coffin. I’d been getting my head down at different mate’s houses here and there, but never more than a night or two so that I wouldn’t get them into trouble for harbouring me while presenting a moving target at the same time. Paranoia had set in big-style, I stayed off the streets, keeping my head down for fear of being recognized and I even stopped using my mobile because the plod were tracking us that way too. To combat the mind-numbing boredom of being stuck indoors, I spent the rest of that week chain-smoking as much draw as I possibly could and playing untold Xbox games. I was fucking trapped and in the thick of a police search and detain mission with no escape. It was like a fucking living nightmare. The police were our most threatening adversary and all over the crew like a spreading rash. We were being constantly chased and hounded, taken the fuck down and locked-up. The pig-dogs came for me just before dawn in the form of a posse of Matrix pouring out of their vans outside the ugly block of council flats in a paramilitary-style assault. I was holed-up in Sinkie’s scruffy kennel, a small ground floor flat with easy access but the police didn’t plan on taking any chances and exploded through the front door with a battering ram in a no-holds-barred, heavy-handed fashion. I was on the couch, half-naked, cocooned in a duvet. A milli-second later, a big fuck-off bully of a bizzie stormed into the front room, pointed a gun in my face and instructed me to LIE ON THE FUCKING FLOOR. He also issued the warning that if I attempted to resist arrest, he’d blast a big fucking hole in my face.

Before I knew it, I found myself at the booking-in desk of a cop shop, having my hand scanned electronically because I’d been in possession of a false ID when nicked. I was tossed into a stark holding cell, wallowing in that fucking stifling confinement with cocky, smart-arsed police all around. As usual the pigs would keep me waiting an eternity, trapped and squirming, before I was taken to an interview room where I was told I’d be up in court that day and the bizzies would be opposing bail. Shit, that’s that then I thought, I’m going down here. Before that happened though, they tried to pin some more crimes on me. A detective smugly informed me that while I was being charged with a catalogue of drug and robbery-related crimes, I was also a prime suspect in the murder of Narkie because he had failed to pay me proper respect. No fucking way man! I laughed back in my chair. You can’t put that one on me! Fuck right off! I protested my innocence, but the bizzies obviously knew because Les had put my name in the hat and the plod mafiosi were seething for my blood. It was obvious they had no relevant evidence and the twisted babylon were merely presenting hearsay and trumped-up charges before the wary court as a form of character defamation. Branding me a one man crime wave and menace to society, for fuck’s sake. There wasn’t even the semblance of a fair hearing after I was taken to Liverpool Crown Court later the same day where I was shown no leniency and sent down double-quick to be remanded at HMP Altcourse in Fazak-el-lee. There would be no time to even take a piss. I was put straight in the van and we were off. Where did IT all go wrong? I couldn’t help but wonder on the way. Maybe IT was a natural conclusion to the disease from which I and the rest of the crews suffered from: The psychopathology of growing up in the grimey crime hotspots of Liverpool. We were doomed from birth because our fucked up and sad environment was toxic and polluted.

I was banged up in a grim claustrophobic cell of the remand block, bored shitless and smoking Mamba to ease the monotony. It made me feel physically sick with depression shut up in that fucking dull as stale dogshit prison. I felt like a trapped animal in a freak zoo, enduring a slow and painful captivity. I was melting down at the thought of my prospects but, of course, I bottled it all up and, with appropriate gangster swag, fronted it out, but it still did my head in; I just could not do the time. Fat arsed prison officials counselled the inmates to keep themselves quiet and busy, do easy time and count down the days but who were the pricks kidding. Bollocks to all that shit, I thought. Life inside is gruesome, a fucking horrible spectacle of raw poisonous humanity: Screws standing inches from your face screaming with all the authority they could muster at some supposed minor infraction of rules, itching to get to grips with all of us, looking for the slightest reason to use the lads as punchbags and, mob-handed, release their pent-up frustration at being locked up in the same shithole for the whole of their so-called careers. Vicious lunatic predator cellies who wouldn’t shy away from any form of aggro and violence. They’d lost pure liberty and didn’t give two fucks about anything or anybody. They were dangerous, unpredictable vicious brutes and I was now one of them. I was wild with the need to escape my confinement, waiting for the perfect opportunity to do one and seize the chance to get the fucking hell out of there just like others had before me. I had started going to the gym and working out, putting muscle on and preparing myself mentally and physically to breakout. I was determined and meant business. The plan was to hijack the prison van on the way to court in the exact same fashion as we had done for Spermy, hot-footing it to The Dam in the immediate aftermath. Remnants of my faction had slipped through the dragnet and would willingly come to my aid, and so they did, giving the SHIT-STEM a big two-fingered fuck-off salute.

I was rubbing my hands with glee when I was informed one evening that I was to go to the court for sentencing the next morning. Desperate measures call for desperate actions and I was ready for the action like Rambo. But then, nightmare of nightmares, I was taken from my cell and sat in the hard detect chair. It flagged up; it was obvious I had something concealed up my rear end. All I could think of was that under no circumstances was I giving up the fob phone that I’d been desperate enough to jam up my back passage. My freedom was on the line and I would not be denied. A prison officer immediately caught me off guard with a sharp punch to the gut, ordering me to take the mobie out of my arse end. I told him to go fuck himself, with conviction. I was completely surrounded in seconds by mob-handed screws and they literally dragged me down the block to solitary, leaving me in no doubt about the consequences of not adhering to the rules. I was thrown into the cell where four more screws came marching in. One of them got a proper dig in. I was taking the piss out of them, hiding the mobile and they weren’t about to let it drop quietly. I couldn’t contain myself and let fly at the fat officer who’d sucker punched me. There was nothing to lose, I might as well stand my ground and get in a few digs of my own. There would be a big kick off and the inevitable beating anyway. They wanted my head on a stick, no fear. I wanted the fat cunt who’d thrown the cheap shot, one on one. A senior officer was forced to enter and try and diffuse the situation before it got too out of hand, giving the warning to lay off because I was in court the next morning and it wouldn’t look too favourable for the prosecution if I attended seriously bashed up.