Sharman and other Filth E-Book

Mark Timlin

• Herausgeber: No Exit Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

They had so much on Sharman that he couldn't move without their say-so. Stuff he'd done for himself, and things he'd done for them, too. His name was ruined on both sides of the fence. So they came up with one more job, the big one. When he found out they'd snared him in a honey trap, he was ready to kill...

Leseprobe

SHARMAN AND OTHER FILTH

The THIRTEENTH Nick Sharman Title

They had so much on Sharman that he couldn’t move without their say-so. Stuff he’d done for himself, and things he’d done for them, too. His name was ruined on both sides of the fence. So they came up with one more job, the big one. When he found out they’d snared him in a honey trap, he was ready to kill...

This collection of short Sharman stories is accompanied by a novella about another South London anti-hero, Filth, of the title

About the Author

Mark Timlin has written some thirty novels under many different names, including best-selling books as Lee Martin, innumerable short stories, an anthology and numerous articles for various newspapers and magazines. His serial hero, Nick Sharman, who appears in Take the A-Train, has featured in a Carlton TV series, starring Clive Owen, before he went on to become a Hollywood superstar. Mark lives in Newport, Wales.

‘The king of the British hard-boiled thriller’ – Times

‘Grips like a pair of regulation handcuffs’ –Guardian

‘Reverberates like a gunshot’ – Irish Times

‘Definitely one of the best’ – Time Out

‘The mean streets of South London need their heroes tough. Private eye Nick Sharman fits the bill’ – Telegraph

‘Full of cars, girls, guns, strung out along the high sierras of Brixton and Battersea, the Elephant and the North Peckham Estate, all those jewels in the crown they call Sarf London’ – Arena

Other books by Mark Timlin

A Good Year for the Roses 1988

Romeo’s Tune 1990

Gun Street Girl 1990

Take the A-Train 1991

The Turnaround 1991

Zip Gun Boogie 1992

Hearts of Stone 1992

Falls the Shadow 1993

Ashes by Now 1993

Pretend We’re Dead 1994

Paint It Black 1995

Find My Way Home 1996

Sharman and Other Filth (short stories) 1996

A Street That Rhymed at 3 AM 1997

Dead Flowers 1998

Quick Before They Catch Us 1999

All the Empty Places 2000

Stay Another Day 2010

OTHERS

I Spied a Pale Horse 1999

Answers from the Grave 2004

as TONY WILLIAMS

Valin’s Raiders 1994

Blue on Blue 1999

as JIM BALLANTYNE

The Torturer 1995

as MARTIN MILK

That Saturday 1996

as LEE MARTIN

Gangsters Wives 2007

The Lipstick Killers 2009

This book is dedicated to

my friend and editor

Richard Evans, who

tragically died during

the preparation of it

INTRODUCTION

Most of the following short stories were written for one or other of the excellent anthologies edited by Maxim Jakubowski. So it’s him you’ve got to thank or otherwise.

There’s a whole lot of other people to thank too, and this is a great opportunity: fiction writers rarely have a chance to speak in their own voices, as their characters always seem to take over. Which, I suppose, is the whole point of fiction.

Here goes. First there’s my mother, who helped out with big breakfasts and large steak and kidney pies. My wife Robyn Timlin and my good friend Robin Cook, two more examples of the fact that living is losing those people we love most. Then there’s Hazel Griffith, who encouraged me to write all those years ago, and who sadly died soon after my first novel was published. No more than a few minutes have gone by when I haven’t thought of her, or missed her.

On a happier note, though they may not share the sentiment, I thank my book editors: Colin Murray, Oliver Johnson, Jane Morpeth, Peter Lavery, Mike Bailey, Penny Phillips, Julia Wisdom, Faith Brooker, and, of course, my mate Richard Evans, who rescued me from oblivion, took me to Headline Books and saved my skin all those years ago. Cheers, pal. You’ve got a lot to answer for.

A big mention has to go to Heather Jeeves, my agent and buddy. And I mustn’t forget all those at Casarotto and Co., especially Tracey Smith, who made it her business to get my books on to TV – and succeeded. Serena, too, who took the books into ICM and got the whole works rolling there.

Then there’s the World Productions team who actually put the books on the screen: Tony Garnett, Wild Bill Shapter, Suri Krishnamma, Jim, Fleur, Valery, Bob Bierman, Matthew Evans, Nigel, Danielle and too many others to mention, except, of course, for Clive Owen who is Nick Sharman now.

Who else to mention? Lucy Ramsey, who keeps annoying people into writing about me. My two daughters, Amy and Charlotte, of whom I am inordinately proud. All who worked at Keables in West Norwood – it keeps turning up in the books and films in various disguises. The staff at A Shot in the Dark for all the coverage and all those free books. Maxim Jakubowski (again), his wife Dolores, and the Murder One crew who sell the books when they can get them. Gerry’s club should be in here, too, plus Kathy, Nick and Angus, Gerry and Pat, Kerstan and Maxine, Philip Miles, Piers Allardyce, Milton and Stewart Homan who keep the wheels turning, my friends from Cropredy, Martin, Polly and family, Geoff, Angus and Anthea, little Annie Ival and Barbara, Dirk, Charlie Grima, and, finally, anyone else I’ve forgotten to mention. There must be hundreds of you.

I’ve also written a pompous little introduction to each story, just like a real writer. Christ, I’ll be having my teeth fixed next.

AI NO CORRIDA

This is the first short story I ever wrote. It was originally intended for a collection by a bunch of crime writers gathered together under the umbrella of Fresh Blood, which was also going to be the title of the anthology. Unfortunately, in a classic ‘piss-up’ and ‘brewery’ scenario, nothing ever came of it, and eventually the story was published in 1992 in Constable New Crimes 1.

It’s actually an extract from the original manuscript of my first novel, A Good Year For the Roses, and explains why Sharman left the police. Eventually, some kind editor pointed out that, if this was how Sharman left the force, he’d’ve ended up in jail for twenty-five years, so I changed it. But I still liked the idea and kept it in a drawer until I could use it. So in a way it is a Sharman story, and reminds all us writers never to throw anything away, because one day it could be worth a bob or two. ‘Ai No Corrida’ is a hefty hunk of eighties disco funk by Quincy Jones.

It was the kind of midsummer’s night that never really gets dark. Some memory of the day remains in the sky until dawn, and the city shimmers like the skirts of a girl’s white dress seen out of the corner of your eye as she vanishes through a closing door.

Any mist was burnt off by 5 a.m. I was in an all-night drinker in Peckham with Eddie. The place was quiet. Just us and the barman, who wanted us to go but was too scared to throw us out.

Even though the curtains were tightly drawn there were enough cuts and holes in the material to allow a few rays of the early sunlight through. They lay like gold coins on the filthy carpet. I saw Eddie watch them move slowly across the floor. He checked his watch and, with one smooth movement, leaned down and picked up the black leather bag that stood next to our table and flicked it in my direction. I caught the bag one-handed.

‘Time to get changed,’ he said.

I headed for the toilet. On the way I picked the raincoat I didn’t need for the weather off the coat rack. Inside the gents’ there was just one filthy stall. It stank of old shit and vomit overlaid with the sharp tang of urine and the sharper smell of cheap bleach. The floor felt sticky underneath the soles of my shoes. I stripped naked in the confined space, folded my clothes neatly and piled them on the closed toilet seat. Then I removed the outfit that was in the bag. Eddie had done me proud. I struggled into a clean jock-strap. Then pulled on a lilac satin running vest and tight black shorts. There was a new pair of white tube socks, still in their plastic bag, and finally a pair of Nike trainers with thick rubber soles. I put the suit and shirt, boxer shorts, socks and plain black loafers that I’d been wearing previously into the bag and zipped it up. I pulled on the raincoat and went back to the bar. ‘I’ve always admired your legs,’ said Eddie when he saw me.

‘Shove it,’ I replied, with what felt like a sour look.

‘Lighten up and have a quick one,’ he said. The idea made me want to puke. We’d been up all night, drinking and smoking too many cigarettes and snorting too much coke so that we’d stay awake. My throat was numb but I could feel the rawness underneath and my eyes felt as if they were full of ground glass.

‘No more. I’ve had enough,’ I said. ‘Let’s do it if we’re going to.’

‘OK,’ he said.

So we did it.

That’s how it began. But it seemed to have begun so many times. So maybe that was just the beginning of the end.

It had really begun a few weeks earlier when Eddie found the girl.

The pair of us had been temporarily seconded to Kennington Nick Crime Squad. There had been a spate of queer-bashing in Kennington Park, which had culminated in a double murder on spring Bank Holiday Monday.

Then, a gay man who jogged around the park every morning looking for talent and combining his two favourite sports, sex and running, literally had to run for his life when he approached a young guy sitting on a bench. The young guy turned out to be carrying a flick knife, and had a friend with another, hiding in the bushes. When the jogger made his intentions clear the friend came at him and slashed his arm so badly he had to go to hospital. If he hadn’t, I doubt whether he would have reported the assault. Eddie and I interviewed him. I think he talked because he realized that his sexual predilections didn’t bother us. Eddie didn’t care that he was gay. I don’t think that Eddie cared that much for sex at all. He had another love in his life. As far as I was concerned, the more guys that were gay the better. All the more women for me. We moved in mob-handed for an undercover operation. I wasn’t known locally so I was the mug who got dressed up as the decoy. I’d been pumping iron all winter and looked pretty fit, even if I do say so myself. I was supposed to be a gay jogger. All pastel running gear with tight shorts and a butch haircut. I drew the line at growing a big moustache but did look the part when I was all dressed up, as the rest of the chaps took much delight in telling me.

The idea was that I’d cruise around the park as if I was looking for early-morning trade. If the bashers were around and took the bait, the squad would leap out of the undergrowth and nick some bodies. If I collected a spank, too bad. It was up to me to duck and dive until the lads appeared. I spent four mornings poncing around the park like a prat. The fifth morning, the Friday, things changed. I was swanning around like I was looking for some swift buggery in the bushes when Eddie crashed out of a small copse of trees looking as grey as last week’s shirt. I swerved in his direction, picking up speed. He grabbed my arm when I got close. ‘Back there,’ he said, in a gagging kind of voice that I hadn’t heard from him before. ‘I’ll get the others.’

‘What’s up?’ I said.

‘Take a fucking look,’ he said. ‘And stay with her. I’ve called an ambulance on the R/T.’

I pushed my way through the undergrowth and found her. She could have been any age, but I later found out she was fifteen. Poor little bitch. She’d been raped, beaten and left. Some of what had happened was obvious. Some I guessed, and some I found out over the next few days from the doctors at St Tommy’s. She’d been pretty well hammered. At first, in that shady clearing, I thought she was going to die on me there and then. There was a lot of blood. More than you’d think could possibly be contained in her small white body. When the doctors got through with her, their reports showed that she’d been the victim of a multiple rape, perhaps by as many as five or six men. Portions of her hair and scalp had been torn from her head. She’d been punched and beaten around her face and head, which resulted in a broken cheekbone, two breaks to her nose, severe bruising and lacerations around both eyes, a broken jaw and the loss of most of her upper front teeth. One arm was dislocated. Both her breasts had been savagely bitten and her right nipple had been hacked off. Her vagina had been chewed raw. Some of her clothes had been torn off, the rest had been cut off with a saw-edged knife. Someone had carved the letters SKAG on her stomach. One finger had been chopped off with the same knife to facilitate the removal of an antique gold ring, too small to take off by more reasonable means. Her panties had been stuffed in her mouth to act as a gag. There was a quantity of semen on her face, in her hair, inside her vagina and over her thighs. At first all I could see as I bent down beside her were her two black eyes, one totally, one partially closed. I gently eased the flimsy material from between her lips. Her battered face was covered in blood and come. She moved the hand with the stump of a finger to try and hide her damaged cunt. She was either having a heavy period or haemorrhaging badly. By the time the ambulance arrived, bouncing across the grass with its siren yelping, and the attendants were carrying her to it, the rest of the squad had gathered round. There were some hard men watching her taken away, but more than one excused himself to throw up behind the trees. Me included.

The uniforms found the rest of her clothes, her nipple, her finger and seven teeth in the grass when they came in to do a close search. One morning, in the canteen, some joker called it a fingertip search, within Eddie’s hearing. If I hadn’t stopped him, Eddie would have killed the bloke. No one called it that again. At least not when we were around.

Eddie and I went with her to hospital. I held her good hand. About halfway there she opened her less damaged eye and said, through lips swollen to the size of sausages, one word. Beneath the scream of the siren it sounded like ‘Dago’.

‘What did she say?’ asked Eddie.

‘It sounded like Dago,’ I replied.

‘Christ, I should have known. This has got that little posse’s mark all over it.’

‘You know him then?’

‘You mean you don’t?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘You’re lucky.’

‘Sounds like it. Who is he?’

‘I’ll tell you about him later,’ said Eddie. ‘The bastard’s gone too far this time.’

‘We’ll get him,’ I said.

‘Bollocks,’ said Eddie. ‘We’ll never get him for this or anything else.’

I didn’t reply. We just sat in the back of the hot ambulance and didn’t say any more.

Later I checked on Dago in the files. He and his little crew were a collective pain in the arse to the local force. With his mate Maggs he ran a gang of hotshots who lived on the Aylesbury Estate, SE11. It was one of the nastier corners of South London. A part of the city that had no past, no history, no future. Around that way, what the blitz didn’t knock down during the war, the council did during the fifties. In the sixties they flung up a maze of interconnected blocks that hadn’t been too hot on day one, and had deteriorated badly since. It was a no-go area for milkmen and postmen and even us lot were a bit wary.

On the scale of council estates it wasn’t as bad as North Peckham and slightly superior to St Martin’s. Which meant that the cockroaches were safe, but the junkies went around in pairs.

There were six in the gang.

Dago and Maggs were the top dogs. Dago’s real name was Owen Whittaker. He had a white mother and a black father. The old man hadn’t been seen since the night of conception. He and Ms Whittaker were just ships that passed in the night. Nine months later, a bonny brown-skinned baby boy was born in King’s College Hospital. After nineteen years, the baby had turned into a mean-mouthed half-caste who bounced his mum around the walls of their slovenly living-room when she wouldn’t turn tricks in order to supply his pocket money.

Jimmy Maggs, aka The Junkie, was just that. A glue sniffer at twelve, he’d graduated to mainlining smack by the time he was fifteen, with a touch at most of the stops along the way. When times were hard Maggs had been known to snort Brillo powder just to remind himself of the real thing.

The other four weren’t much better. Johnny Crawford had begun his criminal career nicking fruit from barrows down the lane whilst in his pre-teens. Then he’d moved on to shoplifting from Woolies, until eventually he’d made the quantum leap to specializing in robbing sub-post offices run by Asian families. He’d done one short stretch for ABH, but that was all. For some reason the Asian postmasters could never give a description of the robber. Johnny told them graphically what would happen to their wives and children if they did.

Jason Ford, Little Jase to his mates, was an angel-faced twenty-year-old black youth who looked about thirteen. He was small and slim and handsome, with a mouthful of white teeth that smiled all the time. He liked rap music and stabbing people. Not necessarily in that order.

Alan Bird was a white-haired half-German, who’d been born to an army sergeant father and the wife he’d met in Dortmund and brought home to London. Mrs B. wasn’t too keen on the Aylesbury, and soon hopped it after her husband dragged her there to keep house for the trio, and Sergeant Bird’s incontinent mother. The German lady had been a real beauty by all accounts, and ended up living with a pop star in Cheyne Walk. Alan ran wild when his alcoholic father gave up the contest between the booze and being a daddy. Alan was a hard sod. He wasn’t big but he fought like a demon. He was a jack of all trades, but preferred robbery with violence, preferably if the violence was meted out with a pick-axe handle.

That left Peter Parker. A large, moon-faced individual with an IQ about the same size as his dick. And he wasn’t called Tinymeat for nothing. His one asset was his ability to drive, repair and steal any make and model of motor car he’d ever come across.

So that was Dago’s bunch. They were all hard except for Parker, who was as soft as a fresh doughnut. They were all young. All used soft and/or hard drugs to some extent. They all had a history of juvenile crime. All had been on probation. Some had done community service or short, sharp shock. Only one had done adult time. All had been known to carry firearms at some time or another, and a blade was just another fashion accessory. But they moved as one round the streets. They protected each other. Their world was concrete and glass, and when trouble loomed they vanished back into the safety of the estate. They were clean and clever. But not for long. Eddie and I made sure of that.

When we got to the hospital the girl was rushed into intensive care. We hung around until some uniforms arrived, but as I was getting funny looks from patients and staff alike, still dressed in my sports rig, we thumbed a lift from a squad car and headed back to the nick. I got changed, and the pair of us pushed off for a drink at The Early Hours. We were both walking a thin line in our careers by then. We were hanging on to our jobs by the skin of our teeth and we both knew it. They say, whoever they are, that all villains could be coppers and all coppers villains. In Eddie’s and my case they weren’t far wrong, especially Eddie’s.

Eddie was a hard man. As hard as they breed in the badlands of Essex. He was big too, and made even bigger by the look in his eyes. He even scared me sometimes when he glared up from underneath his eyebrows and his eyes went as cold as drops of January rain. Yet underneath the hardness, if you looked long enough, was something else. Only when he relaxed did it show, and he was a very tense individual who didn’t relax often. But I’d seen that something else when we shared a squad car together for eighteen months. You don’t have many secrets from your partner in a white Rover with a blue light on top. Eddie was just Eddie. Maybe he was half mental like some said, but there was no one on the force I’d sooner have covering my back in a bad situation.

He’d been married for a while, but it hadn’t worked for one reason or another. The job mainly. But that was about par for the course. By that time his mum and dad had moved to Norwood. He’d moved there himself after his marriage broke up and his father died. That was when he transferred to the Met and we got together. He took over the basement of his mother’s house and made a pretty good job of converting and decorating it. He put in all kinds of security devices to protect his little toys. They were the love of his life that I told you about. Eddie was a gun freak. Had been since he was a boy. His first weapon, he told me, was a Daisy air pistol. He’d moved on since then, collecting any gun he could get his hands on. Guns were the main reason he’d joined the force. He could learn more about guns, use the shooting range for free, but most important of all, he could appropriate guns for his own use.

I suppose we were like a little firm ourselves. Me and Eddie and half a dozen or so others. But me and Eddie were the ringleaders. Where we went the others followed. We charged up and down the town from Putney to Rotherhithe and back, and they acted like they loved us in the pubs and clubs we frequented. Did they fuck. They hated us. We screwed their wives and girlfriends and didn’t pay for our meals or drinks. We could have gone on like it for years. But me and Eddie started taking backhanders. No big deal. Just a few quid for looking the other way, and we soon spunked it away on women and booze and nice clothes. Then the two of us got into coke. It was easy to get round South London in them days. Still is, I suppose. Specially if you had a warrant card.

The other faces dropped out pretty quick. No one seemed able to keep up, and the few that tried soon got the good word. We were on a one-way journey to deep trouble, but I don’t think anyone guessed how bad it was going to get.

Of course, Eddie was right about Dago. We never got him for the rape. The girl, whose name turned out to be Sarah Campbell, never mentioned him again. She had a round-the-clock police guard whilst she was in the ICU. Hardly any visitors, just immediate family. What the hell was there to see? Just a hank of hair sticking out of a swathe of bandage. But by the time she could talk, she wouldn’t. I even interviewed her myself. Dago? Never heard the name. Some fat chance. She lived on the Aylesbury herself. Dago’s mum was her aunty’s best friend. Sarah had been got at. Just like the rest, and it pissed me off.

It pissed Eddie off too. One night he and I were in the boozer near Kennington Cross. Eddie was drunk and snorting coke and ranting on about Dago’s mob. ‘They’ll never go down,’ he said bitterly. ‘Unless we put them down ourselves.’

‘How?’ I asked.

‘Fit the fuckers right up.’

‘It’s been tried.’ I was an expert on them by then.

‘Fit them up permanent.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘Those prats are laughing at us.’

‘Them and a thousand others,’ I said.

‘It’s them I want.’

‘What, for your collection?’

‘I’m not kidding.’ I could tell.

‘How?’ I asked.

‘Set the fuckers up, and blow them away.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Never more so, my son.’

‘We can’t’

‘Why not? I’ve got the firepower.’

‘We can’t just shoot them in cold blood.’

‘Why not? Seems like a reasonable idea to me. Rid the streets of some vermin. A public service.’

I couldn’t think of an argument against it, not off-hand.

‘How?’ I said.

‘Think about it. We know exactly where they are, regular, one morning a week, after their little night out. Right or wrong?’

He was right. The chaps had settled into a routine. Every Wednesday night, come what may, they got together for a little meet. At first it had been local. Then, as they got a few quid in their pockets, they thought that an evening up in town would be in order. So they began to head up West or down the King’s Road. Always in one car, always law-abiding. They’d start off in a wine bar, then on to an expensive restaurant. They loved to chuck money around and be treated like little gentlemen. After dinner they’d go on to a disco and maybe wind up the night with a little gambling. It became a regular outing. And at six sharp, winter or summer, Dago took them back home, and his mum brought out the bacon and eggs and fried slices so that the boys could have a bit of breakfast before hitting the sack. We’d kept an eye on them but they weren’t breaking any laws that we could see. Peter did all the driving and he didn’t drink so we couldn’t even bust him on a drunk in charge. Anyway, at least one night a week we knew roughly where they were, and that one bunch of villains was out of circulation, if only temporarily.

‘They’re always there,’ Eddie went on, suddenly sober. ‘That’s the one mistake they make every week. They’re like a bunch of old men off to the pub every Sunday for their roast potatoes. You do your arse bandit act. They’ll never resist you in your running gear. Look. When they see you coming they’ll never guess what you really are. They’ll think you’re a poof with a skinny little arse. They’ll think it’s their birthday. Someone easy. Someone to push around with no comebacks. They start performing and I come out shooting.’

‘Come out from where?’ I asked. It was important. To me at least.

He waved his hand in the air as if it was a minor detail. ‘I don’t know. We’ll think of something.’

‘It’s a bit thin.’

‘It’s a million.’

‘You’re fucking mental.’

‘How much more can you take from them?’ he said.

‘We’re coppers. Not vigilantes.’

‘We’re what we need to be.’

‘Then we go down. For ever.’

‘Self-defence.’

‘Eddie. Don’t talk such shit. No jury’s going to wear that. You’re pissed.’

‘Pissed off. How many more little girls do you want to find like we found Sarah? Come on, tell me. How many?’

My mind went back to her broken body, with her pathetic fingers trying to hide her bloody pubic hair, and the dried blood and come on her thighs. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ I said.

‘’Course I am. I’m fed up with this shit.’ His gesture took in the whole world. ‘I don’t care what happens to me anymore. I’ve had this fucking crap up to my fucking eyeballs. Those fuckers are poncing round like they own this town. We’re supposed to keep the streets free from scum like that. But all we do is sit around shitholes like this begging drinks off civilians. I want to be a policeman again. I want vengeance. I want revenge. I want justice for all the little Sarahs who get pissed on, and can’t do anything about it. If you won’t help I’ll do it on my own.’

I knew I couldn’t leave him to it. We were friends. That was all that mattered.

So the seeds were planted over a table covered with sticky glasses and dead cigarette ends. The seeds that flowered into bloody murder.

It didn’t take long to get it together. Once these things start rolling they never do. Eddie showed me the gun I was going to use. A Mossberg Model 500 Persuader ATP8 model. 12 gauge, pump action with an eight-shot capacity and a twenty-inch barrel. Ideal for the conditions. We were down in his gun room.

If the commissioner could have seen Eddie’s collection, mostly illegal, he’d have had kittens. Right on the floor in front of us.

‘You’ve used this before,’ said Eddie. So I had. Firing at clay pigeons and beer cans. Never human beings. I said as much.

‘They’re not human,’ said Eddie.

He showed me the gun he was going to use too. The pride of his collection. A Colt Model I-3 Python .357 magnum, six-shot, double or single action, with an eight-inch barrel. It was over thirteen inches long and weighed nearly three pounds fully loaded. A hell of a gun.

We worked out a plan together over bottles of lager and the sandwiches Eddie’s mother brought in every couple of hours. It was simple. We were going to borrow a truck from the motor pool at the station. We knew exactly which one. A rusty old Ford Transit that looked like shit and went like hell. We knew where Peter parked the car. Right in front of the block where Dago lived. We knew because we watched. I would jog around the corner and catch the boys’ attention. Eddie would drive round after me, stop the truck, introduce himself, and between us we’d kill anything that moved. Simple. Then… well, we’d worry about then later. Eddie took the truck out on the Wednesday morning, all legit. He stashed it in a council car-park in Rye Lane. The guns were hidden in a canvas bag under the floor in a box that had been built in by our lot when the Transit was new.

So that’s how we ended up drinking and snorting cocaine in a scabby bar over a betting shop in Peckham High Street, and finally how I came to be running round the streets of the Elephant at five forty-five on a Thursday morning dressed in lilac running strip. I ask you. There just aren’t that many fitness freaks in that part of the world. Not in the Aylesbury for sure. I mean the fucking army wouldn’t go in there.

I turned into Stanley Street and there they were. Just a bunch of regular geezers back from a night out. As soon as I saw them I felt the short hairs on my neck and the backs of my arms and legs begin to rise as if it was suddenly cold.

They saw me at about the same time. They were grouped round a big red Mercedes-Benz saloon. I don’t know how they did it. After all, these boys were officially trying to exist on their Giros from the DSS.

There they stood, all six of them, cool as a sea breeze, and deadly as a collection of poisonous snakes.

One of their girls was with them. There were two or three who hung out with our heroes. They were passed round the firm like sauce bottles in a cheap café, when nothing better was available. The girls knew what was going on. They weren’t debutantes. Sometimes they even took part to a greater or lesser extent. They were gore groupies one and all. This one was called Carla. Carla West. She was a good-looking woman, with white skin and a tumble of thick black hair which was pulled back and knotted in a pony tail. She looked great as long as she kept her mouth shut. When she opened it, she could empty an Irish doss house with her gutter language. If she worked, which was rarely, she served behind a succession of bars, or one of her numerous relatives’ market stalls. That particular morning she was wearing a bright yellow dress that was just a few hours overdue a visit to the cleaners. It was short and tight, and cut low to show off her extensive cleavage. But in the harsh morning light, it was grubby and she’d spilled something on the skirt. Still, she’d do a turn, I guessed. Johnny Crawford had one proprietorial arm around her shoulders when I turned the corner. It must have been his turn for a shake at the bottle.

I kept moving towards them, my head down, but I peered up under my eyelids as I got closer. They fanned out to block the pavement. I checked them out. Between them they had it all together. There was enough sharp flannel and shiny mohair and crumpled silk to stock a Bond Street boutique. I knew for a fact that at least three murders, more robberies than you could decently shake a stick at, and one or two particularly nasty assaults had financed their appearance.

Dago nudged Parker who asked no one in particular, ‘Who’s this cunt then?’

‘You’re a nice boy, aren’t you?’ said Dago, who was wearing a pale grey suit, double breasted, with the jacket undone. The sun caught the silver of his belt buckle and splashed the reflection into my eyes. His light blue shirt was open at the collar and the knot of his multi-coloured tie was pulled down to the second button. On his feet he wore grey leather lace-ups. He was the one I wanted most. He was the one that Sarah had identified by name. He’d been arrested twice previously for rape. Once on an eighty-six-year-old and once on an eleven-year-old girl. Not particularly choosy was our Dago. If it moved, fuck it, was his motto. Both times he’d been released through lack of evidence. The other five had seen to that. They’d let it be known that anyone who was prepared to make a statement should book a single ticket in a black Daimler limo. Dago liked to hurt people. Women especially. I was hoping he liked to hurt homosexuals too, or anyone he thought was homosexual.

I stopped running and tried to look confused, as if I’d been interrupted whilst deep in thought. I looked at them properly for the first time and stepped back as if frightened. To tell you the truth I was, just a bit, but getting less so. Up close they were just a bunch of wankers.

Dago liked that. The fear bit. Cunts like him always do. ‘Right pretty, ain’t he?’ he said. I felt the sweat trickle down from my armpits, and behind me I heard the sound of the Transit’s engine as it turned the corner and stopped. They paid it no attention. They were the lords and masters here.

Maggs decided it was his turn to get into the act. He slipped out of his linen Harrington jacket. Underneath he was wearing a pink polo shirt. From the tight sleeves his arms emerged like twin hawsers, ropy with muscle and scarred with old track marks. He scratched at his crotch as he moved round to flank me. I moved back to keep him at arm’s length, and get closer to the Transit. Dago lunged at me and I jumped. He laughed. It was a horrible sound. I wondered if he’d laughed like that at Sarah. ‘Chicken,’ he said, smiling.

All of a sudden Little Jase was at my elbow. I swallowed hard and felt the sun’s heat full on my back. The other three and the girl leaned casually up against the Mercedes to enjoy the show. Dago came towards me again. I stepped even further back and my spine connected with a lamppost. I slithered round to get it between me and my three opponents and force them to separate. Dago slipped his hand into his back pocket and produced a gravity knife. Everything went quiet as he released the blade with an oily click. The street was as still as a photograph. I stood with one hand on the cool concrete of the lamppost, keeping it between me and Dago, who was holding the six-inch blade. Even the pigeons seemed to be holding their breath.

The creak from the back doors of the Transit as they opened split the silence like an axe through a ripe melon. Seven pairs of eyes moved round to the battered old truck. Eddie stepped out on to the street dressed in an oily boiler suit over his clothes, and carrying the Mossberg in his right hand with the barrel pointing towards the sky. ‘Morning all,’ he said.

I kicked out with my foot and it connected cleanly with Dago’s right wrist. The knife spun into the air, twinkling in the sun. It fell into the front garden of the block and stuck, handle upwards in the dirt. Dago looked at his empty hand and then at me in surprise. ‘Cunt,’ he mouthed.

‘Language,’ I said, and hit him in the throat with the tips of the stiffened fingers of my right hand. He fell to his knees, clawing at his neck and vomited the remains of last night’s dinner, and all the expensive wine he’d consumed, down the front of his jacket. I kicked him in the head just for badness’ sake. The thud of my trainer connecting with his skull galvanized some action. Peter Parker bounced off the bonnet of the Merc as if he’d been goosed up his jacksie. He was probably showing off for the girl. Not a good idea, all things considered. He ran towards Eddie, who smiled a rare smile and transferred the shotgun to his left hand. With his right he produced the Colt from the pocket of his overalls and hit Parker across the face with the barrel. Parker screamed a long, drawn-out animal sound and dropped to his knees. I could see that Eddie’s blow had revealed the white of Parker’s cheekbone. I told you it was a heavy gun. He held his face together with his fingers and blood began to leak down his sleeve. Eddie bounced the barrel of the gun off the top of his head, and he rolled into the gutter where he lay still. Alan Bird dived over the garden wall and went for the knife. Eddie fired the Python, and the bullet clipped a lump of brick off the top of the wall. I grabbed Little Jase by a handful of his short dreadlocks and mashed his face into the lamppost. I heard his nose break like an elastic band snapping, and twin streams of blood and mucus shot from his nostrils.

‘Gun,’ shouted Eddie, and threw the Mossberg to me. It arced through the air, casting a long, dark shadow on the pavement like a bird swooping towards its prey. The pump slapped into my left palm and I pulled the butt into my hip with my right. I chambered a shell in one smooth motion, and the chunk-chunk of the action sounded loud in my ears. Dago staggered to his feet and stood unsteadily facing me. He held his throat with one hand and the other crawled slowly across his chest and under his jacket.

That’s when I should have declared myself. ‘Armed police,’ is what I should have said. ‘Stand still or I’ll shoot,’ is what I should have said, and perhaps something of law and order could have been saved. Instead, I watched Dago’s hand go under his vomit-caked lapel and I simply said, ‘This is for Sarah.’ And pulled the trigger. In the split second between the words and the deed, before the load of buckshot took him in the chest, I saw realization fill Dago’s eyes. For one moment. The last moment of his life, he knew that I knew what he’d done. And he knew what he was paying for. Then the shot knocked him back against the wall and he fell to the pavement. The recoil of the Mossberg cracked me painfully in the hip bone. I pumped the action and crouched down, gently fanning the gun across those that were still standing.

‘You’ve killed him,’ whispered Maggs.

Even then, there was still time to regain some semblance of civilized behaviour. I looked over at Eddie. He was grinning crazily. Fuck it, I thought. ‘I hope so,’ I said to Maggs. ‘And you’re next, you little cunt.’ And I shot him too.

That was when the shit really hit the fan. Suddenly the smooth choreography of Eddie’s and my plan turned into chaos. Everything seemed to happen at once. Crawford came alive all of a sudden. He grabbed Carla by her arm and pulled her in front of himself. His other hand snaked towards his jacket pocket, and he produced an automatic pistol.

‘He’s armed, Eddie. Watch it,’ I shouted.

Then Alan Bird popped back over the garden wall with Dago’s gravity knife in his fist. I’d forgotten about him. That almost finished it.

I couldn’t get a clear shot at Crawford with the girl in the way. Eddie wasn’t so chivalrous. He dropped to the ground and snapped off a shot without really taking aim. The bullet went neatly through Carla’s throat and up to blow the top of Crawford’s head off. I clamped my teeth together to hold back a shout of horror, or a laugh, I didn’t know which, as I saw a new orifice created by the bullet in the smooth skin of her neck. Blood fountained down over her breasts and on to the bright material of her dress. She cannoned back into Crawford’s body and the pair fell in a tumble of arms and legs and flesh and blood and bone splinters. The automatic hit the pavement with a clatter.

Bird was looking from one body to another. I think it was too much even for a vicious little bastard like him. Then Maggs came back from the dead. He rolled over from where he was lying. His face was a mask and the front of his body was a mass of blood and guts, and his polo shirt was still smoking from the shot I’d fired into him at point blank range. In his hand was the automatic that Crawford had dropped. He aimed it at Eddie and I saw his finger tighten on the trigger, as Alan Bird screamed something I couldn’t understand and charged at me, the gravity knife held at arm’s length. I fired for a third time directly at the gun that Maggs held. It flew on to the pavement, his hand still attached. Then I fired at Bird, but the shot went high and wide. The load took him in the shoulder and blew meat from bone but he kept coming. I fired again, almost panicking. A direct hit. Eddie was firing at him too, double action, and I could see the bullets ripping at his clothes. But still he came through a mist of his own blood that he breathed out through his open mouth.

He was slowing, but not enough to avoid the inevitable collision. He stumbled, tripped and fell. The knife plunged into my leg just above the knee with a horrible thud. A sound I’ll never forget. The pain was like a kick from a steel-tipped boot. I fired down again into Bird’s back as he lay half on and half off the pavement. Half in and half out of the gutter. The barrel of the Mossberg was red hot and my eardrums felt as if they had ruptured from the concussions of the explosions.

I reached down and started to pull the blade out of my leg, but blood began to spurt and I knew that it had cut into an artery so I pushed it back to plug the hole.

The pain was worse. My hand was slippery with my own blood and I knew I didn’t have many shells left in the gun. I looked around for more people to shoot. I was beginning to enjoy myself.

Little Jase came up from the ground like a fucking athlete. An Olympic runner. A regular Linford Christie. He was hurt but moved like lightning. But no one could move faster than the muzzle velocity of my trusty old Mossberg. I watched him running down the road. So did Eddie. We fired in unison. Eddie’s bullet took him in the side. The shotgun load blew his legs from underneath him, and he skidded along the path on his face to stop in a shower of black plastic garbage sacks.

That’s how we both missed Parker at first. He’d crawled back to the Mercedes and pulled his fat body into the driver’s seat. The saloon’s ignition ground, then caught with a roar. I saw the car lurch as he slammed it into gear, then with a screech of rubber, peel away from the kerb and head directly to where Eddie was standing in the middle of the road. I screamed his name and spun on my heel of my injured leg. The pain hit like a hammer and I felt myself falling towards the pavement. As I watched, time slowed. Eddie fired his pistol at the car. I heard glass smash. The huge vehicle swerved and caught Eddie with its radiator, tossing him into the air like a spastic doll. The car skidded, hit the Transit, bounced off and rolled over Eddie on to its roof which collapsed into itself with a crunch. I felt my head hit the kerb and a blood-red fog swept over my eyes. I fired the shotgun once more in the direction of the smoking car, but only heard faintly the click of the firing pin on the empty chamber, before the red mist went black and I slid into unconsciousness.

So I never got to survey the scene.

The blood on the pavement was thick and turning brown and crawling with flies when the first uniforms arrived. Someone said later that it looked like a butcher’s shop window that had exploded. Like I said I never saw it, and I never saw my best friend’s body crushed by the weight of the Mercedes-Benz. I never saw any of it. Only in photographs. I never saw it. I did it. That was enough for anyone.

TOO LATE BLUES

This story was originally written as an outline for a proposed episode of the TV series The Bill. It was sent to the programme makers and returned with a very snotty letter letting me know, in no uncertain terms, that a) I wasn’t a scriptwriter, a fact I’ve never disputed, and b) it failed to feature a single member of The Bill cast. A fact I thought was a plus after having watched the show go downhill for years. I later met one of the producers of the show at a Carlton scriptwriters’ course I attended that confirmed (a) completely. And I totally burnt my bridges with him by saying I thought that the programme was a sad apology for a corrupt regime. There was supposed to be a second story/episode starring the wonderful DI Burnside, but after he quit the sinking ship it never got written.

I still like it, and the title was pinched from a film starring Bobby Darin and Stella Stevens.

If Ronnie hadn’t forgotten his cigarettes it would have been all right.

I don’t smoke, and Derek only smokes spliff, so Ronnie couldn’t even ponce one off either of us. All the way from his place into town, he was going on about it, and he was beginning to get right on my nerves. When we got close to the centre he said, ‘We’ve got time. Pull over, and I’ll get some fags in that shop. I won’t be a minute.’

Except it’s just past nine in the morning, and the shop’s full of schoolkids, and people buying papers, and Ronnie takes considerably longer, and I’m parked on a bus lane. I never even saw the copper. He must have come through the buildings. First thing I know, Derek looks round for Ronnie and says, ‘Filth.’

I nearly shit myself. I look round too, and there he is. I can only see his middle through the back window. But I can see well enough to know he’s a cozzer, and he’s writing in his notebook. Then I see Ronnie behind him, and the next thing is the back door’s open and they’re both in the car, and Ronnie’s torn off the copper’s radio and tossed it in the front, and he’s got his gun stuck in the copper’s face. It was unreal because the copper was just a kid, see. He looked like he didn’t even shave yet, and before Ronnie knocked it off I saw that his helmet was too big for him. That made it worse somehow, the fact that his bleeding hat didn’t even fit. They should have given him one that did before they let him out on the street.

So now we’re on the way to a blag, and we’ve got a bleeding copper as a passenger. I mean, I ask you. And what’s even worse is that the local CID are waiting for us to arrive.

You’ve got to understand I didn’t want to grass. I hate grasses. I’d string the bleeders up if I had my way. But Ronnie and Derek were well mental, always armed. A menace to society, and it was only a matter of time before they were back inside with my help or without it. And I’d been captured pulling a stroke of my own a couple of weeks previous. Nothing serious, but with my form I was for the high jump, and that little sod of a DI who nicked me knew it. I told him that Ronnie and Derek had asked me to drive for them on a little over-the-pavement tickle. But I’d turned them down flat. I mean I hate shooters, worse than grasses, worse than nonces even.

The DI worked out that, if I went back to the pair of them and told them I’d changed my mind, and went out on the job and filled in the DI in plenty of time, all would be sweet. He’d get a result. Ronnie and Derek would get their just deserts and I’d get another chance, and maybe a few quid for my trouble out of the informants’ fund.

And now what I’ve got is some young copper lying on the floor in the back of the Granada and a big load of trouble.

‘Drive, for Christ’s sake,’ says Ronnie. ‘Before someone susses us out.’

I remembered what I was supposed to be doing then, and I slaps the motor into gear and takes off smartish. Too smartish, as I nearly take the side off a Telecom van, and get well tooted up and a mouthful of abuse for my trouble. If the fat ponce driving had known we had two guns on board, and two nutters carrying them, he would have kept his gob shut. ‘Take it easy,’ says Ronnie.

‘Do what?’ I said to him. ‘Don’t you tell me to take it easy. You’re the one who’s kidnapped a copper. What the bloody hell did you do that for?’

‘What was I supposed to do, shoot him in the bloody street?’

‘You weren’t supposed to shoot him at all. You were supposed to take the ticket like a punter, and let him get on with his life.’

‘Yeah, and if he’d radioed through for a registration check on the car, what then?’

‘The car hasn’t even been missed yet,’ I said. I knew that for a fact. I’d been checking the railway station car park for a week. The geezer who belonged to the Granada parked it up at 7.30 a.m., and picked it up again at 6 p.m. He was as regular as a cat fed on goose grease.

‘But you can’t prove it’s yours, can you?’ said Ronnie.