Cracking Up (24 page)

I lay there that night in that stinking pit of a place, texting to Dobber on the mobie and made arrangements to get busted out the following day. The next morning I was ordered to hand over the phone before they slapped on the handcuffs and led me off to the waiting van. We were on our way to the judgement day at Crown Court. The rest of the lads boarded the sweat box, were packed into the claustrophobic confines of the cramped cubicles like sardines and we headed to our intended destination. It was near enough the same stretch of road where we’d sprung Spermy. A silver Volvo was ripping down the road and hit the van side on. The next minute, we’d mounted the curb, going straight up on to the pavement and finally smacking into a lampost. I heard a heavy object crashing through the windscreen and it hit the driver squarely on the head, splitting his scalp wide open, the blood streaming down his face in rivers. Dobber was going double-barrel on them, screaming with all the aggression he could muster for the guards to GIVE US THE FUCKING KEYS OR I’LL BLOWN YOUR FUCKING HEAD OFF!

As he entered the van through the side door, giving the screw inside a gobful of abuse and calling out to me. There was little the screw could do in the face of an angry Dobber waving a piece of fuck-off firepower at him except open the cubicle. Thank fuck for that, I thought. Nice one, Dobber. And then we were offmans, storming our way the fuck out of there as the old adrenalin kicked in and we legged it to the getaway car, bombing it back to the safehouse. From then on it was concluded that I would have to be a prick to stay around our own patch. That situation could only lead back to the slammer, and that was not on. By some stroke of luck, I managed to get some dough that was owed to me, picked up a snide passport and was on my way to Amsterdam with a big fuck off cheesy grin.

After The Dam, I stayed strong, kept on and made my way through the danger zones that lead a path to that favourite bolthole of the Brit mafiosi - the Costa Del Crime - and watched the bright sun rise over Puerto Banus, pondering how I’d ended up in a fuck-off fantastic place like this, buzzing in the relaxing hot Spanish sunshine and working on my tan, a thousand miles from the frigging cold and pissing down rain of Liverpool; a lucky bastard, for sure, because luckily I’d gotten away with murders but luck, like cash, counts in large amounts and, even though, some schools of thought will offer the opinion that luck’s a load of shite I was certain that the more shite I believed in the better off I was.