Cracking Up (7 page)

8.

Dog Sick dropped me off at the top of our road to get myself in order; relaxed and innocent-looking. My heart was doing somersaults and I was drenched in sweat from all the carry-on. About ten minutes passed as I sat on a garden wall reflecting on the nights madness, steadying my nerves before the careful, silent creep back into the house.

It was after midnight and I went in with stealth, sneaking up the stairs to my room, mission accomplished. I nearly shit myself; my mam was in my bedroom, waiting vigilantly on the end of my bed to collar me on re-entry.

Most of the lads dealing on the estate were living with their mams because we were scrapping by, just making enough to make ends meet. My poor, long-suffering mam was pulling her hair out, as I had gotten more and more involved in the outlaw lifestyle. I was turning into a top fucking menace to society, but she had tried her best to put me off; going fucking mental on us, giving me some proper clouts and threatening to chuck me out onto the street.

She clocked the bruising and the ear and, obviously, sussed something was up. “Look at the state of you! And what’s that smell - petrol? What have you been up to, now?” she said, accusingly.

She knew by intuition that whatever I had been up to, it was seriously wrong and before I could answer, she told me that there had been a gun fight at the Bricklayers pub and some young people had been shot. I lied through my teeth, denying any involvement and proclaiming my innocence. “You’re a liar, Ow-wee!” she raised her voice, getting wound up. “Me friend Judy phoned me up in a right state and one of those kids is her daughter Kirsty.”

It was at this point that everything went ballistic with my mam bursting with rage and screaming at me. “You’re an animal! You’re scum! Nothing but a two-bob gangster!”

She stared at me angry like for a split second. There was shocking, furious silence and she was shaking with rage. “I can’t believe you’re my son! A vicious thug. Drug dealing vermin. The same thing that happened to Kirsty and those other kids in the pub is going to happen to you. You’re going to end up in ozzie or in prison, rotting away. Or worse - DEAD!”

I swore to God that I wasn’t guilty. I was trapped and squirming, trying to get out of a sticky situation but even if there wasn’t any evidence or clues my mam always knew. She could read me like a bible truth in the old solemn swearing-in book.

“I’ve told you not to hang around with those animals. You wouldn’t listen and now you’ve probably thrown your life away,” she said, her head dropping and tears filling her eyes up. “Ow-wee, you’ve got to get some sense into you, son!”

Seeing that look of disgust and hurt in her eyes was crushing. I mean your mam is your mam when all’s said and done. She was the one person who cared for me unconditionally and I eventually realised that when I hurt other people I was only hurting her. “Poor Kirsty!” The anger was gone now, there was only sadness in her voice. “Judy’s devastated!”

Her head went down, she turned on her heels and went to her bedroom. I could hear her through the wall, sobbing and crying her heart out. Now I loved my mam but, seeing the grief I was causing her what with the outlaw way of living, I realized it was time to move on. I was going to ask around tomorrow, see if I could stop round a mates house for a bit.

I built a skinny little weed, took my clothes off and got into bed. My mam’s outburst had done my head in. I smoked the bedtime draw, stubbed the roach out then snuggled under the duvet. It was cozy and warm, but I tossed and turned, struggling to slip into unconsciousness. Eventually I went into that state between nodding off and deep sleep. I was in a state of rapid eye movement, a sure sign I was dreaming. I was in the dark stairwell of a dread block of flats, legging it up the cold concrete steps, leaping two at a time. I didn’t know what was wrong but, deep down, was certain something bad was going to happen. The stairwell was dark and the wind howled through it like a banshee. There were bad vibes, I felt uneasy and fearful. I’d felt that way before, not often, but you never forget that feeling: Alone, hunted, scared for your life. As though an apex predator was stalking you for prey.

At the top of the stairwell I could see a bright light, shining like a lighthouse beacon. But there was something behind me, in the inky black darkness. Close behind me, gaining ground. I didn’t want to look, but couldn’t help myself. Terror forced me to look. Something was about to pounce on me, as I looked over my shoulder. A blurry shape shifted towards me and before I could make out what it was, I woke up with sweat oozing out of every pore and my heart was pounding.

I bolted upright in bed and could see my heart beating through my chest. Fucking hell, I thought. Another fucking nightmare! I was having the same one every time now. The funny thing was; I never reached the top of the stairs where the bright light was.

It was getting well late now, after one. In the distance, I could hear the muffled, droning noise of the police helicopter circling the estate with its search light. I was absolutely knackered, but struggled to nod off again. I listened intently to the rotor blades and, eventually, I couldn’t keep my eyes open and drifted off into a deep sleep.

9.

Early next morning I woke up expecting the worse, another big fuck-off confrontation, a lecture and a dressing down from my mam, but there was an eerie silence throughout the house. It freaked me out. I got up, put my tank top, trackie bottoms and flip-flops on and had a nosey around for her. It was only half-past seven, too early for her to be getting off for work but the house was empty. Shit! That made things worse; I was convinced now that she really must have known what I had been up to last night and had taken off in a proper huff.

I went into the kitchen and looked in the cupboards for a tin. As far as I was concerned a meal was something that lived in a tin. I used a can opener to crack open an all-in-one breakfast and tipped it into a saucepan. I heated it up, then got stuck in, spooning it straight out the pan. It tasted like dog sick, but I was starving and gobbled it down like a fucking seagull. Next I made myself a brew and took it into the front room, switched on the telly. I sat down on the sofa, built a good morning draw and watched the regional news.

The newsreader stated: “Excessive violence among rival Liverpool drug gangs came to a head last night when a nasty confrontation in the Bricklayer’s public house ended with multiple shootings. A ripple of shock was felt through the local community and the police have emphasized the serious level to which the feuding had escalated …”

Any investigations, though, would come up against a brick wall. There was a code of conduct the hood rats lived by: Never snitch on anyone, sort out your own problems. If another crew shoots you with a nine-milli, you come back with a Mac-10 - even if it’s in a public place and there’s innocent bystanders milling around. The police were the common enemy and policies of zero tolerance enforced with brutality made trouble for everyone one of us while we made trouble for those who co-operated with the bizzies.

Like Judas informants who broke the code against giving the bizzies the heads up. Confidential informants and phone calls to Crimestoppers accounted for most of the crime detection on the estate. This malicious behaviour had to be discouraged and, if outted and exposed, the lives of these lowest of the low and their relatives would be made worthless on the estate. Their ultimate nemesis would be to end up on Witness Protection, branded outcasts and grasses for life.

It was eight bells by the telly’s reckoning. I switched it off and rubbed out the spliff in an ashtray on the coffee table. I grabbed hold of my tablet, went back upstairs and laid on top of the bed with it. I logged onto Facebook to read the news feed. There were threats, taunts and challenges from the attacked rivals on the other side, but I resisted taking the bait because the police monitored the same pages that these muppets were leaving messages on. I logged off and put the tablet down, stretched and yawned.

The house was at the mouth of a cul-de-sac of terraced, pebble-dashed houses. It backed onto the ring road that bordered the estate. Everytime a bus or HGV drove past the foundations of the house rumbled like there was some kind of mini-earthquake striking and shaking me awake as I tried to get some shut-eye. But the spliff had the effect of making me doze off and, before long, I was lost in a dream. It was the same one, recurring. I was in the dark stairwell, being chased up the stairs by an evil and menacing presence. Dreading looking over my shoulder and then running for my life up to the light I couldn’t reach. All of a sudden I was snapped out of it.

I must have slept for only half-an-hour when I woke up startled because there was a racket going on outside and I thought I was in some kind of mini-Syria for a moment, the noise pollution was deafening. Something was up; the sounds of screeching tires, a low-flying chopper and orders barked from a loud hailer.

I jumped out of bed and looked out the window. The bizzies were everywhere; in vans, cars and a helicopter, some of them Matrix wearing skip hats and flak jackets, weapons drawn. When I saw them pointing Heckler Koch MP5s I crapped my kecks. For a second I thought they were coming for me, but three armoured-plated vehicles had blocked in a car on the main road outside the house.

It was the usual aggressive-stop routine: ARMED POLICE! ARMED POLICE! ARMED POLICE! DO AS I SAY! HANDS ON TOP OF THE HEAD AND SLOWLY GET OUT OF THE CAR! The driver was slow in reacting, the bizzies were wired to the mains. Electricity had replaced the blood in their veins, but the driver was frozen at the wheel. It was like a fillum in slow motion. Then it was in fast-forward. The bizzies smashed out the side window, broken glass scattered, pitting the driver’s face. They yanked him through the car window with extreme force as he wriggled about, resisting. His bloodied face was pushed into the tarmac, a knee buried into his back, arms twisted behind him and metal handcuffs clamped on his wrists. They pulled him from the ground using his cuffed arms as a lever and led him off to a waiting meat wagon. The two bizzies frog-marching him were getting in some sly digs and the bummer in charge with the loud hailer gave them a warning to lay off with witnesses about. The lad was shouting and complaining, calling them every name under the sun. It was a raw scene of intense anger, the lad was blazing as they struggled to bundle him into the cage in the back of the meat wagon. I recognized him; it was Harpik, a Mug Fam enforcer. He was called that because he was clean round the bend.

When the police searched the car they found a Mac-10 spray-and pray, two Baikal handguns and ammo stashed in the boot. The Mug Fam were buying weapons, they were preparing for some war business.

I retreated from the window and ended up rolling another draw, smoking it in the front room where I put a DVD in the player, Scarface. What a top fillum. We were a long way off from the Scarface world of grotesque amounts of money, phenomenally priced mansions, fucking flash motors, tasty birds and mountains of the wicked devil dust to tickle our nasal passages. But to a bunch of fucking villanous, low-life losers like us lot, we looked up to Scarface and a top lad like Curtis Warren was our role model and Pablo Escobar, a father figure.

My mobie rang. It was Dog Sick. “All right, there, our kid?”

“Yeh, sound,” I said. I asked after Spermy. Turned out that he had been operated on, the wounds cleaned and stitched up, but he was being drip fed morphine to mong him out, incapacitate him. Dog Sick had employed the services of a brief to make sure Spermy’s human rights weren’t violated, but the bizzies meant business. They had posted an armed guard and there would be no legging it from the plod mafiosi in the hospital. They were taking statements from witnesses and retrieving forensic evidence with a view to locking him up and throwing away the key. In the meantime it suited their purposes to keep him drugged up to the eyeballs and treat him like a mushroom: Feed him shit and keep him in the dark.

I shared the bit of intel I’d witnessed from my bedroom window. “Listen: Just had a load of drama out in the road …”

I went on to tell him about the armed police ambush that had been executed.

“Yeh, knew that was going happen,” he said.

I couldn’t believe my ears. Was Dog Sick a slippery snake in the grass?

“What do you mean like?” I asked.

“I had Harpik lifted.”

“What do you mean EXACTLY?” I was amazed at his nerve.

“There’s an arms dealer, I know, owed me a solid. I gave him some tools to sell to Harpik, he even helped put them in the boot for him. A little tinkle to my mole on the force and game over. He got pulled and he’s offski.”

“Fuck me! That’s a bit off, innit?”

“It’s nothing personal, our kid. Strictly business.”

Enough said! But I didn’t work that way. If I had a problem I sorted it myself. No way would I have involved the bizzies. The only thing to gain from back-stabbing behaviour like that was a bad name. Dog Sick was playing a dirty and dangerous game: If anybody found out what he’d been up to his street credibility wouldn’t be worth spit and he’d be a marked man.

Fuck that for a game of soldiers, I thought. Pissing the bed! We were supposed to be pulling the bizzies plonkers and smashing it, making fortunes. From that moment on, I found myself treading warily in my unavoidable association with Dog Sick.

“It’s strategy, mate,” he continued, as if to justify being a collaborator. “If it benefits us, then happy days. Fuck the Mug Fam. It’ll be all over the news tonight. The chief bummer will be boasting about his officers doing a great job, getting bangers off the streets, making the shithole a safer place and all that bollicks. So what if they come down like a ton of bricks on that lot. Takes the pressure off us for a bit. They’re doing us a favour, our kid, if you ask me!”

I was gob-smacked by the outburst, but I was just going to have to get on with it for the time being. As much as I hated the idea of providing the bizzies with intel, he was the connect and supplied the devil dust and the brown powder from the East. It just served as a reminder that the drug business was a sick and schizoid ATM machine. A big, fuck-off public lavatory where psychos, snides and grasses shit on everyone, and good lads are used like arse wipes. The bastards smiled as they wiped their shit-stained bungholes with you, the crocodile smile.