My Name Is Not Jacob Ramsay (15 page)

Sinatra tried his hardest to keep his focus on the youth's eyes and not reveal the fact he had just plainly seen the very weapon that could, in a matter of seconds, cause his death.

"Ah, man, a genta man don't reveal his conquests init. Dat shit is per-son-al, joo get me!" he chuckled and took one step, then two lengthy strides; three steps and by then he had found himself in the middle of the other youths.

Each youth grinned and glistened with blinging silver chains and diamond earrings.

One youth grinned wider than the others and turned. He flapped open his jacket as he did so, flashing a brown leather case inside which contained a machete.

Sinatra swallowed as he trod lightly on the paving slab, as if he was literally walking on air. Sinatra continued his fancy, springing footwork as he stepped past the youths.

"Tell your uncle that Younger Glock says what's happening, joo get me, blud?" called out the youth.

Sinatra stepped round into a corner, momentarily out of the youths' sight. His bouncy stride instantly picked up into a jog and in seconds he was sprinting down the street and into the night, well away from the youths, far from the street and their postcode. Sinatra's heart pounded fast with every racing footstep. His breath was visible in the darkness and resembled a steam locomotive. Blue lights suddenly flickered upon his sweaty face and within his dark brown eyes. He widened them and his heart sank, which slowed down his impressive momentum. He exhaled a deep breath and his body slumped, as if he was a robot and his power supply had just been cut. The plug had been pulled. He looked disheartened as he stopped and bent down. Then he straightened and took a step back to lean against a wall as the blue lights shone stronger, swirling angrily across his body and onto the bricks behind him.

Two uniformed police officers approached Sinatra.

He placed his hands upon his head.

"Done this before, son?" smirked the first officer.

"Think you're Usain Bolt, running like that? Where you going to?" asked the second officer. 

"I'm... I'm going to Blackheath. To... to the village," answered Sinatra, barely able to speak.

"What's your name then, son?" asked the first officer.

"Sinatra. Sinatra Umbundo."

"Interesting," commented the first officer.

"Got a brother called Dean Martin, have you?" said the second officer, sarcastically.

"No. Sammy Davis Junior," said Sinatra, exhaling deep, controlled breaths as he looked up at the officers, both of whom had formed disappointed looks of disgust on their faces. 

"Turn around and face the wall, son. That's it. Spread your feet apart. More. Bit more. All right, now press your hands against the wall. We're going to search you. Before we do, are you carrying any sharp objects, knives or needles in your pockets, or anything like that?"

"No, sir. Nothing like that. Just my phone, my money and Oyster Card," Sinatra said, as the first officer began to search him, patting and feeling his neck, T-shirt, jacket sleeves, arms, inside and out. Sinatra's belt buckle and waist were checked over, then his thighs, groin, down his legs, shins, ankles and trainers.

The second police officer sneered and held his radio, ready to speak into it, taking a couple of steps away.

The first officer took his pencil and notepad out. "Spell your name for me, son. Sinatra I can handle. Spell your last name for me and tell me your date of birth."

"R703 to Control. Require a check on an IC3 male. Name is Sinatra Umbundo." He looked at his colleague with Sinatra.

"U-M-B-U-N-D-O," said the first officer, jotting the name down. "Date of birth, son. Come on."

"First of January nineteen ninety-eight," said Sinatra. 

The police officer quickly noted it down and handed the notepad to his colleague who read it and continued to speak into his radio.

"Umbundo is spelt Uniform, Mike, Bravo, Uniform, November, Delta, Oscar. Date of Birth. One, one, ninety-eight, over."

"So where are you going to, Sinatra?" asked the first officer as his colleague awaited confirmation of Sinatra's details. "You seemed like you were in a hurry,"

"I was running from a gang," Sinatra blurted.

"Gang, eh?"

"Details check out. No record. You're a clean boy, Sinatra. Go to church, do yer?" asked the second police officer, who stepped back to his colleague and Sinatra.

"Yes, sir."

"Says he was running from a gang. You can turn back round, son. Arms down now."

"Where was the gang, Sinatra?"

"I don't remember. A couple of streets away. Past the Standard." He turned round to face the police officers. He lowered his arms to his sides.

"You're not helping yourself, you're helping them, Sinatra. Try and remember a bit harder where they might be. You're not being a snake if you tell us."

"Near Mayhill Road, I think. Yeah. Near there. By Marks and Spencer," said Sinatra.

"How many would you say there were, Sinatra?" asked the first officer.

Sinatra thought hard. He just wanted to get on with his journey, so the quicker he got finished with the police, the better he would be. "Four. There were four," he said, truthfully.

"Were they like you?" asked the second officer.

"How'd you mean?" asked Sinatra. He knew full well what he meant, but took instant offence to the question.

"Were they black?" the officer clarified, sighing.

"Yes," replied Sinatra, abruptly.

"Weapons?"

"Maybe," Sinatra sighed.

The second officer tweaked his radio once more and spoke into it. "R703 to Control. Still with Sinatra Umbundo, over. Require assistance to Mayhill Road, Charlton. Gang sighting. Weapons highly probable, over."

"What kind of weapons, Sinatra?" inquired the first officer.

Sinatra shrugged. He wondered what the hell was in store for him if the information he was about to tell got him into deeper trouble. Not with the police, but with the gangs. What the hell. He just wanted to get on with his journey. It was a seven or eight minute jog for him across the heath.

"I saw what looked like the handle of a gun and I definitely saw a machete," Sinatra said, seriously.

The officers widened their eyes as they exchanged a look with one another, in total disbelief.

"You definitely saw a gun?" asked the second.

"I saw the handle of a gun," corrected Sinatra.

"The handle of a gun?"

"Yes. It was sticking out the back of the guy's jeans."

"And you saw him with a knife as well?"

"No. I saw a machete. A bit different to a knife," Sinatra said, firmly, holding his serious stare on the officers.

"And how would you know the difference between a knife and a machete, son?" asked the first police officer as his colleague once again took to his radio.

"R703 to Control. Still with Sinatra Umbundo and have updated info for officers en route to Mayhill Road, over."

Sinatra stared wild into the night, sending his gaze past the law enforcers in front of him. He remembered his nightmare experiences of a life long gone, in Angola. 

A rebel, wild and savage, held aloft a shiny, gleaming machete as he stared wide-eyed at the screaming middle-aged man kneeling down before him. A heavy army boot pressed hard on his back. It forced him forward, into a log, while another rebel stretched his arms across the log.

The middle-aged man cried out, loudly. He looked across at his young son, horrified to see the despicable, unforgivable torture and death that surrounded him. The glistening blade of the machete was brought down hard onto the man's wrists.

The wrist links the hand to the arm. There are eight bones called carpel bones. Small and highly complex. The carpel bones are arranged in a set of two rows. One row is connected to the forearm, the radius and ulna. If you hold your hand in the thumbs-up position, the radius is the bone on the top of your forearm and the ulna is the bone on the bottom. The second row of carpel bones links to the palm of your hand. Between these are synovial joints, where the bones meet. They are covered with articular cartilage, which enables movement.

The machete cut the flesh like a hot knife slides through butter. It sliced the radius and ulna bones, severing the hand from the arm.

The boy saw a silent scream of indescribable pain in the middle-aged man's face. The boy saw his father, helpless, pained, with bleeding stumps. The boy, Sinatra, looked at the blood dripping from the machete, held aloft once more by the mad-eyed rebel.

Sinatra rolled his eyes up to the officers. "I know the difference between a machete and a knife, sir. Trust me, I know the difference. I saw my father's hands being cut from his arms. Cut with a machete. A machete that should be used for farming, but instead was used for torture, pain and death. I know the difference between a knife and a machete, sir." Sinatra huffed and inflated his chest. He was angry and enraged, but fought not to express it any further.

The officers weren't entirely sure how to react to the seriousness of Sinatra's emotional tone and vivid response.

"Possible sighting of firearms. CO19 advised, over."

CO19 is the Central Operations Specialist Firearms Command. It was previously known as SO19: Specialist Operations Directorate. Renamed in 2005, it was responsible for providing a firearms-response.

"ARV required to Mayhill Road, over."

An ARV is an Armed Response Vehicle. They are crewed by Authorised Firearms Officers and they respond to 999 calls believed to involve firearms. They were first introduced in 1991.

"What if you catch them?" asked Sinatra.

"Then you may be in store for a reward."

"More guns and knives will also be removed from the streets." followed the second officer.

"I mean, will it get back that I reported it?" Sinatra was concerned for his safety.

"No. You'll be fine. There shouldn't be any call for you to be mentioned, son," the first officer assured him.

"Can I go? Now, I mean. Am I allowed to go?" he asked.

The officers exchanged a look.

The second nodded his head and both then turned to Sinatra, giving him the OK to leave.

The youth, with the gun handle poking out the back of his baggy jeans, stood on the street corner with his fellow gang members.

The machete-carrying youth zipped up his Puffa jacket as a siren sounded out. He looked at his friends with a confused expression.

"Let's bounce," he said.

"Nah, man. It ain't for us," replied the baggy youth.

The siren became louder and louder and there were flashing blue lights. The siren became sirens and the youths heard a combination of loud, blaring tones from both ends of the street. They saw a silver armed response vehicle.

The youths panicked, turning their heads this way and that. They wondered which way they should turn. Which way to flee.

The net closed in.

The machete youth decided to run first. He weaved in and out of parked cars, like a rat in a lab. He crouched low in the darkness, occasionally illuminated by headlights and the swirling blue, rotating flash of the police vehicles. He stooped behind a parked car and pressed his back against the bumper. Unzipping his jacket, he placed his hand inside, flicking a press-stud that released the small leather strap on the case. He pulled out his machete. Wide-eyed and wild, the youth gripped his weapon tight as he slid it out from within its sheath when something hard and metal made contact with his wrist. It forced him to lose grip of the glistening machete. A hard knee slammed into his back and he was brought face down to the ground, with his arms twisted behind his back. He was handcuffed. Click, click.  The machete was kicked well away from him to the curb side and the youth was dragged to the middle of the street in front of a police patrol car. The bright, beaming headlamps forced the youth to close his eyes tight. He opened his eyes briefly to squint down the street and saw the silhouettes of his fellow gang members lined up against the wall, handcuffed by several police officers. He closed his eyes tight.

The youth with the baggy jeans stepped backwards against a hedgerow, edging himself into a front garden gate. He held his belt buckle with one hand so his jeans didn't fall down completely, and with his other hand, he reached behind himself to pull out his automatic pistol.

The pistol was a Glock 26 and had a standard capacity of ten rounds. It was a smaller variant of the Glock 19, but was little more than just a short version of it, as it could be adapted to have a capacity of thirty-three rounds.

That particular Glock weapon had been used in three separate gangland killings. Passed from gang member to gang member, and through postcodes across south-east London.

The Glock gunmaking business was founded by Gaston Glock, an Austrian engineer, born on 19 July, 1929. When Gaston Glock was seventy years old, in July 1999, a sixty-seven-year-old French ex-mercenary, called Jacques Pêcheur, was hired to murder him in Luxembourg. Gaston Glock was in a garage when he suffered severe head injuries caused, violently, by Pêcheur. However, Glock managed to defend himself, thus enabling police to capture his assailant. Gaston Glock survived the incident.