Cracking Up (3 page)

“Then they threw me in with this other cellie: Tricky. He was a Mank but all right though. We had a telly and a Playstation; it only costs us buttons. But it was a poxie one-man cell that was fucking miniscule. There was no room to fart and everywhere I turned, his smelly fucking feet were there. Stunk worse than a kipper’s cunt.”

“Can’t even flip one over your thumb sly-like: You’ve got some boss dirty slut fantasy going off in your head after lights out. Tossing off, trying not to make the bed squeak. Frantic, manic wanking. The fucking veins are popping out your head and your about to blow your beans when your cellie wakes up and starts moaning at you to pack it in. Fucking sad, or what?”

“And the fucking food was pig-slop quality. One day they served up some rancid puke. Green, smelly, rotten pork. They smothered it in curry sauce, trying to put one over on us. Plated it up with some soggy rice and the whole nick got the shits. Fucking hell, I’d never smelled anything like it! Everybody must have been following through on their farts. It made me fucking heave.”

“There was some proper madness kicking off in there, like the time some of the lads had a mini-riot coz the screws wanted to lock them up early on New Year’s Eve, so they could have a good drink. The shout went around and the lads slung tables and chairs up against the door. The riot bells went off and the screws scarpered. It was mayhem going off as the lads smashed windows and wrecked the pool tables. It weren’t really a proper riot, though - just ten of the lads sitting around having a laugh, smoking spliff and setting a few fires. Most of the lads on the wing had locked themselves in their cells, coz they didn’t want to make a bad situation worse. They didn’t want to get more time on their stretches coz they wanted out. Anyway, three or four hours in, the shit hit the fan when the Tornado Team stormed the wing. There was about fifty of them and, fuck me, they had the fucking hump! I was locked up in me cell, but I could hear it all going off on the wing. The screws were wound up and giving it to them good and hard. The lads got cained, completely done over, copping for some big-time beatings.”

“A good few loonies in there, lad. They didn’t give a flying fuck about anything. Doing big fuck-off stretches and couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. Proper fucking psychos, always vexed and it was best to keep out of their way. These two nutters flipped after being ripped off in a drug deal. Filled this feller in, stabbed the poor cunt in the heart. One of the lads saw it, said the kid didn’t see it coming, took the hit and backed up a few steps. Alls he said was: You’ve stabbed me. Then he lifted his top up and blood spewed all over the floor. He went down like the twin towers. He was in a bad way and they rushed him to the Aintree hospital. Dead on arrival, he was.”

“Fucking torture in there, lad: The black clouds, man, worries plaguing your mind because you’re paranoid about everyone and everything, the whole set-up puts you on your back foot. Fuck all to do, fidgeting about in your cell for days on end. Dead dismal and frigging boring. Felt like slitting me fucking wrists a few times. Not even joking. Topping me-self … true, lar. No fucking wonder some of the lads do themselves in. Luckily for us, Tricky arranged for his bird to come in and drop-off a party balloon, which was a fucking massive life-saver. She came on a visit and had half-an-ounce stuffed up her gash. She slipped it to him on the sly in the visitor’s reception and he shoved it up his arsehole. His rusty sheriff’s badge was lubed-up with margarine. Happy days!”

“Once he’d washed his shitty fingers, the dirty bugger, we got stuck in that night. We already had the doings stashed in the cell and we had a dig up like. Got numbed up in a cozy coma big style. No stressing, no looking over your shoulder, no nightmares. A top fucking release it was. Effing Brill. From then on everything revolved around the nasty, the days routine, digging up and flogging it. We made a mint out of it and ended up getting ours for free.”

“If it weren’t for smack, I’d be six feet under now. Telling you, lad! How are you going do time straight-headed? Sat in that stinking fucking zoo with nothing to take the edge off, just thinking about everyone outside and what’s going on out there. The gear gives you a head change. I couldn’t have done me time straight-headed, man. No fucking way. I’d have topped me-self.”

When he got released and came back to the estate, he’d turned into a raging smackhead and a wasted shadow of his former self. As long as he had a hole in his arse he was never getting back to his old existence. Only seventeen and no one wanted anything to do with the smacked-out fucker because he’d passed the point of no return and had lost the strength to crawl back to our twisted version of normality. Nowadays he was just ticking over, getting drugs in for himself and sorting out the scruffy, junkie mates around him to pay for his own. You couldn’t even call it drug dealing because he wasn’t making any decent dough. Just maintaining his degenerate habit.

His personal hygiene had gone downhill, he had a permanent crust on him and wax coming out of his ear lugs. The flat had a rank rotten odour and, although he was polite enough to keep layers of clothing on when I visited, he had infested the diseased kennel with his stinkiness. I’d assumed the bird he’d been shacked-up with had decamped from the messy shithole in a top sulk, but he informed me that she would soon crumble and it’d all blow over. Kaylee was plain-looking but fit with it and I fancied giving her one. I didn’t know what she saw in him anymore, looking like the ravaged smackhead that he was: Teeth falling out and stinking worse than a building site portaloo. I wondered how long it would take him to give her a taste of the brown powder and drag her down with him.

3.

I was just sitting there while Bangerz was still in his smack-induced coma. I got up and walked over to the window and looked out at the bumfuck council-housing estate. Endless rows of pebble-dashed, three-bedroomed terraced houses with overgrown gardens, packed into claustrophobic closes. Bleak mid-rise blocks of flats with communal grass areas in between, where even the dogs ran around in pairs because it was that rough and the prozzies casually touted for kerb crawlers. Fucking hell, what a fucked-up, depressing shithole. The place was dull-grey and featureless, decaying like a murdered corpse. I felt like a caged animal, enduring a slow and aching confinement in an urban zoo. As a nervous reaction I felt for the skunk and Rizlas stashed in the pocket of my trackie top.

I sat back down and built up a spliff. I smoked it, getting nicely stoned and escaping the outside filth descending on my thoughts and bumming me out.

My mobile phone went off. It was Spermy. “You got away, then?”

“Fucking too right! That fat copper had no fucking chance.”

“Fucking cunts, eh? What a shower of shite! That fucking wanker Bola. Me fucking hands are pissing blood here, lad.”

“Tell me about it! I’ve got a top cauliflower ear, me-self.”

“Well, I’m sowing up the cuts on me hands with a needle and cotton.”

“You fucking loon. They’ll go mankie.”

“I’ll just have to wash them in dettol. I can’t go to the hospital, can I? They’ve carted that kid off, the one I stabbed, in the back of an ambulance and rushed him to ozzie. The police have collared Chocko and Zerk. A load of their twats, too. They’ve all copped for some nasty injuries and been dragged down to casualty. Next stop, cop shop.”

“So what’s the next move?” I asked.

“Keep your head down. The bizzies are still hanging around. The whole estate is crawling with them. All eyes and ears, looking for charge sheet material.”

“I’ll stay put here, then. Round Bangerz.”

“You’re fucking joking me, man. You’re not round his? I don’t know why you fucking bother with that minging baghead.”

“He’s all right,” I vouched. “He’s getting off the nasty, he reckons. Anyway, he’s a mate!”

“You know the Mug Fam are after him, don’t you?”

“Yeh, I know! What are we going to do about that bunch of fucking cunts?”

“Got to get the fuckers, Ow-wee. Once and for all. They’ll be looking to do us over now; so we got to get in their first. That Bola’s going round like a dickhead, bigging himself up. He robbed me gold chain, for fuck’s sake. Tried to stab us up. No cunt does that to me and gets away with it. I’ve had e-fucking-nuff of the cunt. He’s the first one I’m going after. Defo!”

“Yeh, I know what you mean like. But it’s fucking tricky. The boys in blue’ll be crawling all over the estate.”

“Fuck the filth! We’re going to tan the Mug Fams arses tonight. Fuck them up GOOD STYLE!”

“We’ll need some firepower.”

“I’m on it! I’ll have a word with Dog Sick. He’ll sort us out with some burners. No fucking worries about that! Then we’ll be tooled up and go get the fuckers.”

“So, when do you want to link-up?” I said.

“Meet us round Lee’s flat after seven. We’ll have the crack and do a few, eh?”

“Sound! See you later, lad.” I hung up.

My stomach made an involuntary growl and I realized I was feeling a bit on the peckish side. I had a bad case of THE MUNCHIES! I got up and went into the kitchen, rifling through the cupboards. The only thing I could find was a pot noodle - a Bombay Bad Boy. Result! I boiled the kettle and did the necessaries.

I sat back down in the front room and scoffed the scran, then got up again and made myself a mug of brew, took it back into the front room and finished off with another draw. I thought about the war business coming up. Things needed settling. The Mug Fam were taking fucking liberties with us, disrespecting. We had to kick their cunts in, mash them up. It was a must! The estate was a stark, barren gladiator school with two warring factions battling it out in an unresolved territorial feud and trade dispute: The Mug Fam, up the north end, and us lot, the Justus Crew, down the south end. There was always aggro and grief because we all wanted to make a wedge in this dirty fucking cut-throat business. Ganging up and ambushing, dishing out proper batterings and copping a load back, no hard feelings; it was all a part of it. But now, all of a sudden, bangers were turning up on the Shooting Range. Crack and nasty were going to turn it all into casual murder and mayhem.

Jeremy Kyle was still on the box, rabbiting on about how it was his show and everyone had to listen to him. I sucked on the spliff, buzzing. The draw lightened my dark mood and I was feeling relaxed, chilled out. I watched Kyle ranting. It was allegedly a serious show and you weren’t supposed to get the giggles, but everything is funny when you’re smoking spliff. I was laughing me tits off at the brain dead hillbillies, arguing the toss and taking lie detectors. Big, bubble-snotted, bent-double laughing. I was so out of it that even Chris Moyles would have been funny at that moment in time.

“What the fuck are you on?” Bangerz said. He was stirring, coming back to life. A funny smell got up me nose; it was his feet stinking through his trainers.

“Fucking hell, when was the last time you washed them feet? Them trainers stink like smelly old cabbage.”

His reply was fair enough, considering the slagging his feet and footwear had just received. “Fuck off, give us a go on that spliff, you cheeky cunt.”

I passed it over. There was only a couple puffs left on it. Then, I asked him. “Listen, lad: Do us a solid, will you? Give me a loan of your nine-milli?”

“What for?”

“Got a mission on tonight.”

“Ow-wee!”

“What?”

“Let me come with you lot tonight!”

Bangerz was no mug and as soon as I had asked for the banger he knew we were on a search and destroy mission for the Mug Fam that night.

“No fucking way!”

He carried on, trying to convince us he was battle worthy but the boys would not have tolerated Bangerz. Smackheads were the lowest of the low, corrupted outcasts and totally unreliable.

“Go on, Ow-wee, you know I’m no soft cunt. I can handle me-self and I’ve got a score to settle with those wankers.”

Fair play to Bangerz though, despite his nightmare addiction, he was still up for it. He hated the Mug Fam as much as our crew did. But Spermy would have none of it, I knew that for certain.

“Nah man! No fucking way.”

“Ah, come on, Ow-wee …”

“Look, lad: Turn it in, will you. You’re doing me fucking head in now. Do I get the banger or not?”

His head went down and he backed off. “What’s innit for me?” he asked, a bit sheepish.

“Well, apart from getting the Mug Fam off your case, I’ll throw in another bag of brown.”

“You’re on!”

I put my hand down the front of my trackie bottoms, fumbled about in my undies and peeled back my foreskin. I pulled out a bag of brown for him to be getting on with and warned him to stay off the streets for the night. “Shit’s going to get hectic!” I told him.

He stubbed the roach out in an ashtray on his coffee table, turned and buried his hand down the back of the couch, pulled out the burner stuffed down there and handed it over. “Look after it,” he said. “That’s me baby - me baby Glock 26!”

I ejected the Glock 19 magazine and clocked it was fully loaded with fifteen fun things, slammed it back into the gun then checked the trigger safety was on and stuffed it down the front of my trackie bottoms. “Yeh, well, this baby’s going to spit its dummy tonight, lar.”

We both had a good laugh at that one. He was missing most of his front teeth and, as he was sitting there laughing his fucking head off, I could see his tonsils.

His mobie went off. It was his girlfriend. I could hear them bickering. “Listen, you junkie prick. I’m fed-up with your smacking up. I’m sick of it, I’ve had enough.”

“I’ve told you before, I’m sacking it! I’m off to see the quack and ask him to put me on a methadone program. And when I start perking up, I’ll stop using smack. Eventually, in a couple of months, I can come off the methadone, gradual like. I’ll be a brand new squeaky clean Bangerz again, babe.”

“With rotten teeth! Listen, you arsehole: You’ve promised me that before. You’re fulla shit and I’m not going to go through it again.”

“No lying. I’m giving it up.”

“No, that’s it. I’m telling you, I’ve had it. I saw those bullet holes in the front door, that’s when I decided to leave. I’m not going to live like that anymore.”