Part 15 (1/2)

'And others like him. I been abused all my f.u.c.king life. That's why I ended up on the f.u.c.king meat rack.'

'Working wiv yer old man?'

'Nah, that was Smithfield, Deaffy. The old man worked up the meat market.'

'Wot's the difference?'

'f.u.c.king h.e.l.l, Deaffy, don't you know nothing? You go to the meat market to buy dead animals, and to the meat rack to buy live boys.'

'Well I never knew that. I always fought yer could look after yerself, boy?'

But before I can reply to Deaffy's last question, I have to take my eye off him in order to negotiate the Brighton turn-off. And by the time I look back into my rear-view mirror, it's too late, he's gone, just like that. Disappeared into thin air like a ghost in the machine. In a mounting panic and with a flush of cold sweat trickling down my spine, I slam down on the brakes and turn once more to look over the back seat. But all there is is air between me and the back window, so I just turn back to the front again and carry on driving alone, because that's the way it's always been. Just when I need someone to pour my heart out to, I'm back on my jack with not a friend in the world whose shoulder I can cry on. But it's true what my old uncle said. There ain't never going to be an end to my misery. No matter how much dough I earn or no matter how much dough I spend, it's always going to be the same, it always has been. For every six days of black clouds all I ever get is one day of clear blue skies. It just ain't worth it. Going to bed every night just to get back up in the morning to deal with the same old s.h.i.+t, day in and day out. The buck's got to stop here. And if I'm honest with myself I was born to be alone. Marriage? Never wanted to get married, 'cos I never wanted to get divorced. And kids? f.u.c.k that, I ain't never wanted no kids. Would have broke my heart if they came out all f.u.c.ked-up because of all the wrong I've done. Bad karma and all that s.h.i.+t. And besides, it wouldn't be right to pa.s.s my bad seed on to some poor innocent little b.a.s.t.a.r.d who ain't never done n.o.body no wrong.

DELROY JUST HAS this bad, bad feeling deep down inside, that the white BMW with the blacked-out windows parked outside the tower block where he lives is waiting for him. Call it what you will, gut instinct or just plain paranoia, but something don't feel right. So instead of stopping at his own motor he puts his hands in his pockets, lowers his head and walks right on past it. His first thought being, Spud Murphy. And his second, f.u.c.king leggit! But fear has already kicked in and clenched his heart tight in its clammy glove, squeezing out every last drop of his bottle and paralysing his running muscles. And it's all he can now do to keep breathing regular and carrying on walking, slowly struggling to place one leaden foot in front of the other. It's at times like this he wishes he had the b.o.l.l.o.c.ks to take Billy's advice and carry a gun. But on the other hand he's honest enough to admit to himself that even if he was packing, he ain't got the a.r.s.ehole to shoot a sparrow, let alone a human being. In fact, the one and only time he ever pulled a gun on someone, an absolute f.u.c.king no one, it was in a nightclub and they laughed in his mooey. So, he threw the tool away and then had it straight on his toes out of the back door. And even to this day he still gets the p.i.s.s taken out of him for that little turnout.

So, instead what he does is just clench his teeth, clench his hands deep in his pockets and moves on, staring down at the ground and scanning the chewing gum blobs while trying to look as nonchalant as possible, and all the while hoping and praying that it's a case of mistaken ident.i.ty, or perhaps just someone who's lost and needs directions. He thinks about giving out a little whistle as he walks, just to let the mush in the motor, now closely tailing him, think that he don't give a f.u.c.k, but then he remembers he can't whistle to save his life. So he strolls on in silence, heading as discreetly as possible to a nearby patch of waste-ground that leads to an adjoining council estate, knowing that if he can just make it to the broken fence that separates the two, he can hop over it in the knowledge he'll be as safe as houses, because cars can't drive onto it. Well, that's the wish, but in gangster-land wishes very rarely come true. And he ain't but a few yards from the safety of the outer lip of the waste-ground's verge, when his heart sinks and tightens further, as that all too familiar expensive and silky whoosh, that all top of the range motors make when their owners step on the gas, fills his ears. He then swallows hard as the BMW materialises in the corner of his left eye before screeching to halt by his side. And now he's begging on high for the ground below to open up and swallow him whole, and spit him back out in Australia perhaps, or anywhere. Anywhere but f.u.c.king here.

'Delroy!' shouts out a familiar voice from out of the wound-down window on the driver's side of the motor.

'Oh f.u.c.k, it's you, Danny,' says Delroy, half-smiling as he turns to face the car, and with what's left of his heart now in his mouth. 'Thank f.u.c.k, I thought it was Spud Murphy.'

'Get in the f.u.c.king car,' growls Danny, at which point Delroy makes to walk around to the pa.s.senger side. 'In the f.u.c.king back,' growls Danny again.

'OK,' says Delroy, meekly.

'Where the f.u.c.k is he?' growls Danny once more, as Delroy slips into the back and shuts the door, and Danny then slams his foot down on the gas pedal and does a U-turn, before steering the motor expertly through two metal poles that make up the entrance of the residents' car park that runs two floors deep under the tower block where Delroy lives.

'Who you talking about?' says Delroy, now starting to s.h.i.+t bricks as the motor descends the first ramp and the natural daylight disappears, to be replaced by nothing except for the occasional, poorly-glowing interior car park wall light. The majority of which have been smashed to smithereens by local sc.u.m.

As Danny glides the car down further ramps into the murky depths of the second floor, Delroy's imagination starts running riot, computing crazily through a million and one would-be answers and excuses and possible alibis. But he don't know which one to choose in order to keep Danny on his side. So he just sits there silent and dumb and on the verge of tears, and thinking, how at this very moment he'd gladly walk away from all the dough he's due out of the Spud Murphy coup, just to be back upstairs in the real world and not a prisoner driving downwards into a stinking blackness normally only used by s.k.a.n.kyard junkies, who haunt the gaff to swap syringes and infected blood by shooting jank s.h.i.+t up horrible withered arms, and who then spend all night talking b.o.l.l.o.c.ks, squat-s.h.i.+tting onto old newspapers and p.i.s.sing into empty beer bottles.

'So, cat got your f.u.c.king tongue, has it?' says Danny, pulling up in front of a row of burgled and empty garages before cutting the car engine and then turning in his seat to confront Delroy full on. 'I'll ask you one more time, and don't give me all the old b.o.l.l.o.c.ks about who am I talking about. You know full well who I'm looking for. Now where the f.u.c.k is he?'

'Don't know, Danny,' rasps Delroy out of a mouth as dry as the bottom of a budgie's cage, as he pushes himself back as far as he can into the rear seat, terrified to be sitting alone in a deserted underground car park with one of the most violent gangsters in the country. 'He said not to ring him no more. Told me to lay low. Is there a problem?'

'Yeah, there's a f.u.c.king problem,' says Danny, flicking on the car's interior light. 'The c.u.n.t's out of his box on f.u.c.king s.h.i.+t twenty-four seven. Not only that, he's just topped Big Spud, and he's riding around in a motor that's got me and my brother's dabs all over the f.u.c.king thing.'

'I don't know what the f.u.c.k's happening, Danny,' says Delroy, staring back at Danny, whose sinister scowl appears even more frightening in the car interior's yellowy half-light.

'I'll tell you exactly what's happening. Down to your silly little c.u.n.t of a cousin, Shakesy, and our freelance f.u.c.king c.o.ke-head of a friend thinking he's Wyatt Earp, I gotta go to war with Spud f.u.c.king Murphy.'

'What's Shakesy got to do with this?'

'Think about it, b.o.l.l.o.c.k-brain! Big Spud was after scalping the little p.r.i.c.k.'

'Nah, he knew Shakesy looks after me dog. He was just gonna use him to get to me.'

'f.u.c.king h.e.l.l, was you born stupid or did you have to work at it? Your cousin was riding shotgun for Spud Murphy. The little f.u.c.ker was in the back of the lorry minding his gear. We were gonna let him go, but Billy reckoned he'd lollar us all once Spud claimed hold of him, so he put one in his canister.'

'Nah, nah, no f.u.c.king way. Oh, what the f.u.c.k, man, he was only a chavvie,' says Delroy, dropping his head forward into his hands.

'Anyway, that's by the f.u.c.king board. And pull yourself together you little p.r.i.c.k.' At which point Delroy sits back up to take stock of Danny. 'That's better. Now you listen to me you little c.u.n.t. You got two hopes of getting out of this. No hope and Bob Hope, and Bob Hope's playing golf with Bing. Believe me, I'm gonna do Billy. He's been going downhill for too f.u.c.king long. And you're gonna set him up.'

'I can't do that, Danny, he's my friend,' says Delroy, his face frozen with fear.

'You ain't got no f.u.c.king friends, you mug, only me. Who you gonna run to now when Spud Murphy comes knocking? Not that useless junkie c.u.n.t, Billy. Now you bring the dinlow in, or I'm gonna slit your f.u.c.king throat like a dog, right here, right now.'

Delroy's never looked death full in the face before. But staring into the cold, black killer eyes of Danny right now, he knows the only way he's going to walk away from this is by selling his best friend down the river.

'OK, I'll do it,' he says.

'Course you f.u.c.king will, 'cos your a.r.s.ehole ain't worth a f.u.c.king carrot. And by the way, did you know that your best friend's been f.u.c.king the a.r.s.e off your sister behind your back?'

'What?'

'Yeah, reckons she's absolute f.u.c.king filth in the sack. Now get the f.u.c.k out of this motor, you little n.i.g.g.e.r toerag, before I cut you to pieces for being the treacherous piece of s.h.i.+t you are.' And with that, Danny drives off with a smile on his mooey, leaving Delroy standing in a puddle of junkie p.i.s.s and feeling like the loneliest man in the world.

I'M STILL FLYING high as a kite and trying to hold it down as I pull away from my Brighton flat to take the coast road leading to the nearby Seaford Cliffs, having just loaded three holdalls containing nearly four hundred grand onto the back seat of my motor. It's all the readies I have in the world at the moment, and it's true what my uncle Deaffy told me, it chucks up real bad. It goes without saying that every bit of dough that pa.s.ses through anyone's fingers has its own story to tell, but I doubt if any of it will have as b.l.o.o.d.y a history as any of this stuff on my back seat. It makes me laugh to think I used to get a serious stork on over the smell of this s.h.i.+t. And thinking about it further, there's one other thing that really cracks me up, and that's when you get those pony British gangster films that the poncey upper middle cla.s.ses knock out every now and then. You know the ones, where after a bit of graft the mockney, RADA-taught gunman, or whatever, gets weighed off and the dough comes up all in fifties, wrapped nice and stashed in little black briefcases. Total f.u.c.king b.o.l.l.o.c.ks! Crooked dough comes as it comes, sometime big notes, sometimes little notes, but nearly always in supermarket carrier bags, and always chucking up to high heaven. You take it as you can get it. The wind outside is beating what must be near gale-force as I pull in adjacent to the cliffs and park up in a small man-made clearing. A quick shufti about the gaff lets me know it's deserted. Well, only a lunatic would think of walking them on a day like today. After unzipping the holdalls and pouring lighter fuel over the dough, I wind down a couple of windows halfway to allow combustion, get out of the motor then set the whole caboodle alight, before closing the door behind me and walking off to meet my destiny, with my head down and shoulders hunched against the elements.

I ain't got far when the sound of the car's windscreen cracking under the intense heat causes me to stop and peer back over my shoulder, to see my dough, now enveloped in a fierce crackling inferno of blue and yellow flame, shooting the last ten years of my life heavenward in a swirling, snaking column of acrid black smoke. And you know what? I don't give two f.u.c.ks. Instead, I simply turn back to face front and carry on walking, when for no reason I can fathom, I let rip with a large burst of manic laugher, while by force of habit pulling out my revolver to check it for bullets. But then more madness, as I find myself becoming extremely distressed to find there's one missing from the chamber. A panic ensues as I rack my brains violently, cranking my cells and wondering where the f.u.c.k it is. But sanity prevails once more, with the sudden realisation I left it buried in Big Spud's skull. A long winding path leads me down to some fifty feet or so from the cliff's edge, where I'm stopped dead in my tracks by an oncoming wind, howling like a banshee as it belts in over the top of the English Channel, and seemingly mustering all its might in its endeavour to push me back inland, as if trying to dissuade me from meeting my maker. But it's going to take a lot more than a little bit of inclement English weather to stop this muchacho from completing his mission. So I drop to my hands and knees and start to crawl over the damp gra.s.s, thinking, oh the f.u.c.king ignominy of it. Because I had a grand vision of myself bowling straight over the edge like a lovelorn matinee idol. Instead, here I am creeping along on all fours and heading to my doom like a lemming.

But today ain't a day to worry about what's made up most of my existence, that of style over substance. Because I've now only got twenty more feet or so to go, after which, the war with myself will be over, and my entire life will have been no more than a horrible f.u.c.king nightmare, worthy of nothing more than a few cobbled together lines in the local rag. Today's news, tomorrow some tramp's bog roll. Then just when I think the wind's getting up even stronger, by grace or good fortune, or maybe just the fact that somebody up there really does love me, it drops to a gentle breeze, just like that. And so, I climb to my feet, tidy up my barnet and move almost to the cliff edge and prepare myself to jump, when a chorus of ear-shattering squawks above me distracts me from my task, occasioning me to look up to see a small flock of nose-ointment seagulls, that have come down to watch this sorry-a.r.s.e end-of-the-pier show. And what's more, one of the cheeky little feathered c.u.n.ts has dropped twenty feet from its flock to get right in my face and is just hanging there in the wind laughing its head off at me. Now, I know I'm in a bad way, but I ain't in such a bad way that I'm having a seagull take the p.i.s.s out me. So, quickly pulling my gun back out, I c.o.c.k back the hammer and blow it to smithereens, watching with no small amount of satisfaction as it drops like ball of hot snot before disappearing under the precipice below me in a tangled ma.s.s of blood, guts and fluttering feathers. With the rest of the seagulls taking the hint and flapping frantically back off across the channel, I now steady myself, take one last look along the coast, before glancing tentatively down at the waves cras.h.i.+ng into a foaming froth onto the rocks below. Then it hits me. I'm scared of f.u.c.king heights. That's right. Ever since I fell of a garage roof when I was a kid and broke my arm, I ain't never ever been able to climb even five steps up a ladder before suffering terrible attacks of vertigo. So why the f.u.c.k did I choose jumping off a cliff as a way to commit suicide? Must be the f.u.c.king drugs, they're not letting me think straight!

The dread of the long drop down sends me staggering back about fifteen feet, where I collapse onto my back and violently spew up a mouthful of green milky bile all down the front of my designer duds, and I don't even have a hankie to wipe myself clean. Instead, I roll over onto my stomach and rub myself off as best I can on the gra.s.s. So now things are getting sadder, because not only is my clobber covered with the stench and stain of drying vomit, but my mouth is tingling with that terrible taste of leftover sick. And I forget to pack the Wrigleys! But then I reason, what the f.u.c.k, for in a few minutes I'll be an unrecognisable mess, splattered like Humpty Dumpty on the rocks below with probably not enough of me left for a burial, after the crabs and the fishes have had their go. f.u.c.k all that burial s.h.i.+t anyway. As far as I'm concerned they can sc.r.a.pe up what's left, lob me straight in the back of a dustcart and ferry me off to the local tip and toss me in alongside the rest of the garbage. It'd be a fitting end to my lifetime's achievement.

After a quick breather to gather my senses, I spin round on my stomach and crawl back to the cliff's edge like a lizard, to peer back over and watch as the waves crash and pound the rocks, spraying swell twenty feet into the air. And I can't even see the seagull I shot. Nothing, not a feather or single spot of blood. Every inch of it has been devoured by the incoming tide and sucked down to a watery grave. But it's got me to thinking that maybe, just maybe, jumping off a cliff to end it all ain't such a good idea. Seems like a pretty painful way to go, in the scheme of things. Worse than jumping in front of train. And least with that you get the satisfaction of f.u.c.king up the day up for Joe c.u.n.t commuter. And how about if, after having jumped, I don't die straight away. I'm s.h.i.+t-scared of drowning as well. Standing back up I take a moment to deliberate, and decide to shoot myself in the head as I make the leap. That way I'll make sure I'm brown bread before I hit the rocks. And so, with my mind now made up, I put my gun to the side of my head and click back the hammer. Just one small squeeze, then it'll all be over. I close my eyes and here I go. Silence. The calm before the storm.

My phone rings. Can you f.u.c.king believe it? I forgot I even had the c.u.n.t-eyed thing on me. Surely I can't answer it now, not when I'm just about to top myself. I always said these things were a f.u.c.king menace. No privacy. But this is one cat that curiosity can't kill because I'm nearly already dead. But you know what it's like with a ringing phone, you just have to answer it. And so I do. And now picture the absurdity of this. I'm standing on the edge of a cliff tripping my f.u.c.king nut off. I've got a gun in my right ear, a phone in my left ear, and parked up a few yards behind me is an ex-Old Bill motor on fire with nearly four hundred grand in it. Not what you'd call a conventional lifestyle, is it?

'h.e.l.lo?' I shout into the phone.

'It's me, Delroy,' comes back the reply.

'You f.u.c.king c.u.n.t!' I scream back at him. 'What did I tell you about ringing me?'

'Sorry, mate, it's important. Where are you?'

'Standing on the edge of a cliff just about to blow my f.u.c.king brains out.'

'Don't f.u.c.k about, man, this is serious.'

'I ain't f.u.c.king about. What's the matter then?'

'The Spud Murphy dough's here, we gotta pick it up in the morning.'

'I don't need it where I'm going, son. You can have my share, how about that?'

'Don't be silly, man, for f.u.c.k's sake. I mean if you don't show, your firm ain't gonna weigh me on are they? They'll tell me to f.u.c.k off and then that's it, back to sucking on sherbet dips. Oh man, you can't do this to me.'