Gang War Read online

  She gets on the mattress, which has been pulled off the bed especially and onto the floor. On all fours now, New Loon walloping her from behind while Clegsy’s getting half a blowie up the front, still fully Lowied up, but with his trackies and the Everton shorts underneath pulled down a bit, at least until the cameras go off in a minute. Can’t have your ma seeing this, can you?

  Dylan’s just sat off on a chair in the corner, building up. He’s got a twenty bag of green. Gone in three joints, that. He likes watching the party girls. Feels half a lob-on pushing up on his trackies, a taut bit of composite fabric pulled tight when he sat down. He fucking loves these dirty young Scouse princesses, has half a dozen vids on his phone. Some of them getting ragged in their cosy teddy-beared bedrooms by the local fucking gangster, while their dickhead dads who’ve spent a life spoiling them are downstairs half-crashed in front of Granada Reports. Another shows a pinched-nosed beauty getting ragged over a bog in a nightclub, being filmed over a low partition wall by the doormen. He’ll have a tug over Danielle later, but first there’s business to be taken care of. After this joint.

  No one can think. Brains wiped clean by the green. ‘Good gear, that, lad,’ says Lupus. ‘Sandstorm blowin’ in me head.’

  Nogger appears at the window at the back door. Tall and broad, even in his Lowies. Behind him a young girl, no more than a shadow of a bird, shuffling nervously. Dylan sees her put down a bottle – probably cider by the glint of brown plastic – on the doorstep, embarrassed at her teenage vice.

  Nogger comes in, head down in his chippy, booting fuck out of curry, rice and chips. At first, he pretends to ignore the floor show, protecting his position, acting as if he’s above it. But then he nods towards Clegsy, who’s sperming over Danielle’s face. ‘Go ’ead, lad.’ He stops to stab a fork into a hot chip and dip it in the curry. ‘Next on that, lad,’ he says, buzzing, pointing the chip at Danielle. But everyone knows Nogger can’t be arsed with the older girls.

  He’s got the little bird with him. A little rip off the shops. She hangs round outside the offie. About 13, her perm cheap and wet, stuck to her head. Little jacket. Poor. Just got changed from school and ran out to see her mates, full of Friday-night anticipation. Ran into Nogger.

  ‘Fucking lovely, that curry from there, innit?’ he says to the girl, flicking a hot chip around his mouth to cool it down and so he can speak at the same time.

  ‘Fucking sound, that chippy, isn’t it, Nogger?’ the girl replies, trying to sound grown-up. Her ma has remarked similarly on the quality of that chippy before. She’s a bit wasted off the cider and a bit nervous in front of a room full of older lads, legendary lads off the estate.

  Nogger has her watch the floor show, letting her know what will be required. The girl looks at Danielle, half stunned, half intrigued. Puts her hand over her face, pretends to look away. ‘Feel ashamed.’ Danielle doesn’t even notice her. The stripes have sent her sex haywire by now. Won’t be long before a three-piper is on the cards. Pacer’s giving it loads up Danielle, the sensation making him serious. ‘The birds and the coke, mate. Ruthless.’

  Nogger scans the room to root out Dylan. Nogger to Dylan: ‘All right, lad?’

  Dylan’s keen not to show too much respect, in protest at the underage bint. ‘Sound, lad,’ he replies, looking at the little girl to show Nogger that he doesn’t approve.

  ‘What are you up to, lad?’ asks Nogger.

  ‘Gonna take this’ – holding up the taxed parcel of heroin – ‘over the other place, lad, to get rid.’

  ‘Sound. Catch up with you, later.’

  Nogger takes his bit of a bird up to a bedroom. It’s one of the younger lad’s houses. Everton FC quilt on the bed. He lashes his chippy on the floor, over a pile of ironing. Manoeuvres the bird on the bed, rags her little Asda skirt up (George, kids’ section). Dylan recognised it before because his ten-year-old sister has the same one. He ruffles his trackies down to his knees, violently yanking the mass of elastic cords, toggles and ties to get them untangled. Bums her from behind. The bird trying to look serious, copying the dirty enthusiasm of Danielle.

  Halfway through, Nogger pulls out his phone and videos the spectacle. She’s excited but tries to appear cool and controlled for the footage. Downstairs, the lads whack the Tupac up one louder to drown out Nogger’s virgin child.

  Dylan ponders Nogger’s curry rape. He looks round the room. Jay is back from Mackie D’s, manoeuvring himself under Danielle so he can get into her fanny. Fishing and finishing off the three-piper, Iggo getting a blowie, New Loon still up her arse.

  Bloot and Lupus are having a wank, Bloot gripping her hair with one hand as he does, moving it down now and again to grab her swinging, lacied-up taigs. ‘Go ’ead, Danielle,’ he says. ‘Boss, you, girl.’

  Dylan observes the scene through a cloud of green. Not one of these lads has ever chatted up a bird. Not one has ever picked one up in the alehouse, or done a bit of romancing at the pictures or over a Chinese. Raised on a diet of Internet porn, Bluetooth blueys and instant gratification, brasses like Danielle. Even the little meffs off the shops have to pretend to be porn stars to please the lads nowadays. Dylan gets off into the night.

  CHAPTER 3

  BLACK HAWK DOWN

  Bleeker’s funeral on Monday. RIP Bleeker. Tension all over the estate. There’s a fleet of ships sat off up and down The Strand, yellow riot vans slashed with the Vaderis police unit insignia. They’re expecting a revenge shooting.

  The po-po are getting very heavy over Bleeker’s floral tribute. ‘Bout four grand’s worth of flowers there now,’ one of the lads says. Two grand’s worth are from the lads alone. Even the bizzies have sent a wreath. The pricks. And now they’re turning Turk on it. There’s a big ‘RIP Bleeker’ a foot high in red roses. ‘True Nogzy Solja’ spelled out in mad black flowers, specially dyed. ‘Mates 4 Ever’. ‘Happy Death from the Troops’. A Lowe Alpine badge, black background, the name spelled out in white flowers, with half an orange sun rising above a snow-capped peak. From the younger lads.

  ‘Sick, that, lad,’ says Pacer proudly, nodding in admiration at it. Then there’s just loads of little bunches tied to the railings, loads of cards from everyone saying what a great feller he was. Bleeker: rapist, drug dealer, urban terrorist.

  Tommy from the flower shop is chokka with it. Started crying the other day after the lads sent him and his wife a card to say nice one for all his hard work with the flowers, for lining himself up with the lads. The top bizzy gets out of his command shipper, a battered yellow base, and goes over to Tommy, rather than going straight to the lads, who never speak to the bizzies on no account – except Dylan, who can give as good as he gets and never loses his temper. ‘The floral tribute, Tommy. We’re going to have to take it down.’

  Tommy knows that’ll cause murder. ‘You’ll have a riot on your hands. You know that, don’t you?’

  The bizzy can’t back down, but he can’t lose face by giving in either. Tommy says he’ll bring one of the lads over to negotiate. Dylan moseys over, puts his hood down as a sign of peace but keeps his Berghaus sun hat on because the bizzy keeps his hat on. Dylan gets him to agree that the flowers can stay, but the top bizzy insists that the graffiti all over the shutters has to be cleaned off. ‘RIP Bleeker’ has been sprayed on each shop. The top bizzy radios in for the council’s anti-graffiti clean-up team to be brought in under police escort. No one has ever seen council workers work so fast.

  That night, the crew that killed Bleeker, Crocky Young Guns, robs his body from the Connor and Co. Chapel of Rest. They put a robbed Focus through the big metal shutters at the back and put Bleeker in the boot. When they’re safely away, the body is tied to the back of the car and ragged around the estate, General Aidid-style.

  Nogger gets the video sent to his phone the next day. All the lads are watching it. Dylan thinks it’s boss, but he doesn’t say nothing. It shows them tipping the body from the coffin into the open boot, the car revving loudly round the back of the
funeral parlour, waiting to get off.

  ‘Fucking shitbags,’ says Dylan. ‘Look. They’re too fucking scared to touch the body, lad.’ But within a few seconds, the video shows them booting fuck out of it. While they’re preparing to tie it to the towbar, one of them runs up and wellies the head repeatedly. Dylan knows what’s going on here, but he doesn’t say nothing except to murmur, ‘Vietnam, lad,’ vaguely remembering a magazine he’d read, US Marines dehumanising the enemy by kicking fuck out of dead prisoners.

  Another Crocky rat pokes a stick into Bleeker’s cheek. The bullet hole – from the shot that killed the poor cunt – has been covered by death make-up. But the lad with the stick clearly knows where the entry wound is. ‘Cos he fucking done it,’ says Iggo, without taking his eyes off the phone’s LED screen. Dylan and Bloot nod an acknowledgement, in agreement with Iggo’s sharp detective work. He pokes around until he’s picked away the thick specialist foundation. When the concave film of powder caves in, he shoves the stick a little further through the bullet hole and into the taut flesh of the cheek.

  The rat with the stick talks to the camera: ‘Look at Bleeker. He’s got two fucking mouths now. To chat twice as much shit.’ Another one – a faint, hooded black silhouette against the night sky – goes: ‘Bleeker, you grassing twat. Tell the bizzies twice as fucking much now.’ All the rats are buzzing. Another is bending down, putting a noose around Bleeker’s neck and tying it to the towie. He pulls the noose up, lifting Bleeker’s upper torso off the ground with the rope, saying, ‘Told yer not to hang around by our shops, Bleeker.’ One-liners coming thick and fast now. They’re a top act. No denying.

  Bloot’s like that: ‘Check that fucking tow rope, lad – cheap one out of the 24-hour.’ No one in Bleeker’s crew feels sorry for their mate’s body watching the video. They’re mainly curious.

  ‘Watch this,’ says Nogger, revelling in his expertise having watched the vid many times. ‘They drag Bleeker along the tarmac. Poor cunt.’ He’s trying to sound sympathetic and shocked, barely containing his excitement. The robbed Focus races past the camera with the body bumping behind, like an overloaded plane trying to take off. ‘Get on this bit,’ says Nogger. ‘Sick, lad.’ The car does a handbrake turn and the body flies fast through the air until the rope becomes taut. Snap! The force separates Bleeker’s head from the body and it flies off across the road. The car stops and all the rats crowd around looking for the head. ‘It’s over there, lad,’ says one, pointing. ‘There, lad,’ he repeats impatiently to another rat who’s searching in the dark.

  Bleeker had a skinhead, so no cunt can pick his head up when it’s finally found. No one wants his fingers coming into direct contact with dead flesh. It’s worse cos his scalp was peeled back during the post-mortem and reconstituted afterwards. Their gloved hands keep slipping off his scalp. One of them tries to pick the head up by the ear, but he freaks out and drops it almost immediately, hopping away, laughing. Eventually, one of them wraps a car-seat cover from the old Ford around the head. He holds it up for an ICF-style group shot, all of them yelling and shouting abuse, making gang signs.

  When the video stops, everyone’s head is wrecked. Nogger is the first to speak: ‘Let’s walk over there now and shoot every fucking one of the little cunts.’ Amongst the others, anger hasn’t properly set in yet. Most of the lads simply feel an overwhelming urge to watch the video again. Dylan feels edgy, his soul uneasy and blackened. He always feels a bit mad after watching a happy slap. And he’s seen some fucking bad ones. But Bleeker’s one was in a different fucking league.

  ‘No,’ he says to Nogger. ‘We can’t do that. Not the day before the funeral.’

  ‘Why not, lad?’

  Dylan sues for temporary peace using false sentiment. ‘Cos his ma’s in bits already. Po-po all over the show. We can’t even let her find out. Tell her that her son’s body’s been swiped from the funeral parlour? And then dragged through the road like fucking Somali? Are youse mad?’ He makes sure to use the plural, not singling Nogger out. ‘No way, lad. Never mind start a fucking wagar over it, as well.’

  ‘So we gonna do fuck all then? That it?’ asks Nogger.

  Bloot, stirring now, adds, ‘Fucking humiliating, lad. Doing that to one of us.’

  Dylan, the voice of reason again: ‘Wait till it cools down, lad. Then you can do what you want. What we want.’ Dylan knows that he has to distract the lads quickly from the subject of revenge if he wants to stop the idea dead. ‘Anyway,’ he says, ‘we’ve got to get Bleeker’s body back.’ Good move, he thinks. Action. Practical. Something to do. ‘Just for his ma’s sake,’ he goes on. ‘If the bizzies get to it before us, there’ll be untold. Nother fucking autopsy, not releasing the body for another fucking three months, no fucking funeral at all.’

  Dylan has a couple of aces up his sleeve. He knows that the lads are actually looking forward to the funeral – and the party afterwards. And he knows that the little snides have already bought their coke for the wake. Bits and bobs have been ordered or paid for, so to call off Bleeker’s big day now would only cause personal loss to them. Bubble has already had all the T-shirts made up: ‘RIP Bleeker’ on the front, ‘Anthony Mulhearn Is A Grass’ on the back. Cars have been booked and all that carry-on, the lads chipping in a tenner each. Lots of talk about the cortège already. ‘Should see the main funeral car. It’s fucking boss.’ They’ve got a blacked-out stretch Humvee with Dutch plates on it. ‘How shady is that?’ one of them says.

  ‘Total slim shady, if you ask me,’ says Iggo.

  ‘Too much. Roasting,’ says Clegsy. ‘Bleeker’ll get five years mandatory for just being near it – and the cunt’s dead.’ Gets a laugh off the lads.

  All the lads behind are gonna be cortèged up in Lexuses and four-by-fours, some rented, some lent by the older ones, the bigger dealers, out of respect. The lads are seeing this in their minds’ eyes now. Weighing it up, heads ticking, coming round.

  Clegsy, adept at political manoeuvrings and riding the wave of his quips, says, ‘And you know what? Think about Bleeker’s ma.’

  Dylan’s thinking that was a boss move, bringing Bleeker’s ma back into play. ‘What a beauty,’ Clegsy’s thinking. Always loyal to D. Always Dylan’s number two.

  Clegsy carries on: ‘She’s paid for the funeral. Two grand, lad. She’ll be paying that off for two years. Twenty-five quid a week for two years.’ The final remark wins the argument. The funeral is now most definitely on. For Bleeker’s ma’s sake. No one wants it postponed. Dylan carries the day. Nogger gives him a bad stare.

  CHAPTER 4

  BODY RETRIEVAL

  From the Black Hawk Down video, as it’s already being called, Dylan gets onto where the Crocky Young Guns have dumped Bleeker’s body. The final scene shows them throwing Bleeker’s headless corpse down a sewer bank next to a run-down Evangelical church near the boundary between old Crocky and new Crocky. Odds are, Dylan figures, it’s still there.

  Dylan asks – asks, not tells – Nogger to take Jay and a few of the younger ones up to get the body back. At the same time, he’ll go up to Connor and Co. to have a word with the funeral director. ‘If he’s called the bizzies about Bleeker’s body already then we’re fucked, lad,’ he says. ‘But if he hasn’t, I’ll try and get him to hold off. I’ll tell him we can get Bleeker back, no one will ever know and we can get on the funeral tomorrow.’

  ‘What d’you mean, ask him, lad?’ says Nogger. ‘Tell the twat if he phones the bizzies, he’ll be burying himself.’

  At the funeral parlour, proceedings are active already. There’s a beige Lexus on the forecourt; Dylan’s onto it straight away: ‘community leader’ in the building. Paul McQuillum, ‘the Imperator’. Former world-champion kickboxer, heroin/cocaine financier/importer, famous, well loved – dollars.

  Dylan moseys into the office, hood down, trapper hat off. The bird on reception is half-tasty: slim, boss tan, swingy ponytail.

  ‘What d’you want, lad?’ she asks. ‘One of yer big mad gangst
ers been shot?’

  Dylan, looking up at the speakers, says: ‘All right, that music, girl.’

  The girl sits back: boss tits, lovely tight jumper; short black skirt, thick black tights; ponytail swinging with the movement of the sprung office chair; little smile. Bend you over that coffin, y’li’l rip, skirt riding up your arse, girl.

  ‘Boss in, girl?’ he asks. The bird gets a bit excited and Dylan knows she’s heard the jangle from the back room. Why else would Dylan Olsen want to see the MD? Other than Bleeker’s body and that? Dylan is relaxed. He already knows the funeral man has done the right thing. Why else would Paul McQuillum’s car be here? He’s not phoned the bizzies. Instead, he’s called a ‘well-known community leader’ for help to get the body back. What other option did he have?

  Dylan’s shown into the office by the boss little bird. Top little arse, there, girl. Paul’s standing there, dark-blue crew-neck on, smart, half-Chinese with an urchin crop of black hair, precisely shaped and at odds with his slack middle-aged face. The funeral director, looking nervous, is stood behind his desk. Fuck him, the little prick. No let-on for him. He’ll do what he’s told, the fucking beaut. But Paul. Different story, lad. Fucking love him. Everyone, fucking loves him.

  Dylan gives Paul a big smile. Warm greetings, big mad gangster hugs. Paul goes a bit over the top, giving him a full body embrace Goodfellas-style, like the doormen do in town outside the clubs.

  ‘You all right, lad?’ asks Paul. ‘Good to see you.’

  Paul turns to the funeral man. Here comes the big-up. I love this. I fucking love these big-ups from Paul.

  Paul and Dylan are facing Andy Holden, the managing director of the funeral parlour. McQuillum has his left arm around Dylan’s shoulder, his right hand pointing to Dylan’s face. Paul’s finding his footing on the carpet, ready for the speech.