Bell stepped back. Parley over, party just beginning. Down and dirty with the Reverend. ‘May the best tribe win.’ Yeah, the best tribe.
CHAPTER 3
The UK
‘Clock the tits on the tom.’
There was little else to relieve the dismal street scene, a foreground of rat-gnawed garbage sacks, McSqualor burger wraps and discarded shopping trolleys, a backdrop of vandalized tenements fronting crack and gambling dens, shebeens and property-fencing operations. Location, location, location. This was as good as any, as no-go as it was going to get. Situation vacant, situation desolate, a grey existence that put the low into life and offspring into local authority care. The police rarely came here, cabs never. It took twenty seconds to purchase your drug of choice, perhaps twenty minutes for your firearm. Inner city that had no inner soul; working class without work or class; Babel languages that spoke resentment, wrote graffiti, on every landing, in every corner.
The two men sat in the front of the dirt-brown, urban discoloured Honda, one sipping sweet tea from a disposable cup, the other resting his head on a hand and watching the hooker as she jelly-rolled into the wasteland distance. Local villains appreciating local brass. She was not one of theirs, made a living blowing punters for a fiver, spent a life blowing fivers to unpick scabs and find a vein. Across the road, a young mother with an old mottle-chapped face, legs cake-mix crammed into spandex leggings, floored her toddler with a cuff that had the subtlety of a rabbit-punch. It sat, shocked for a moment, then opened its mouth for a mucous bawl. She pre-empted, screaming obscenities, and yanked it to its feet.
‘Dig the parenting skills,’ the driver observed behind the rim of his cup.
A sigh cut with cynicism from his colleague. ‘Heart-warming, one generation passing knowledge to the next like that.’
More street theatre. A mongrel canine defecated beneath a rusting child’s swing, an empty rum bottle balloon-exploded on an improvised tip piling next to outsize drum bins. Truants kicked a football to each other, would get round to kicking the dog. Needle match in needle alley. Even the ball was deflating. An argument, a blast of ragga, a slammed door. The dog trotted over, ears and body low, to sniff submissively at a pit bull. Bad mistake. It came off worst and dodged away yelping.
‘Know how he feels,’ the tea drinker said. ‘S’how my missus treats me in the mornings.’
‘Bet she doesn’t do that, though.’ The driver nodded in the direction of a woman wandering across a patch of concrete, clutching a carrier bag. She squatted briefly on her haunches, a puddle streaming between her feet.
‘Jesus. Don’t they teach them the basics? Straight off the fucking African plain.’
‘Straight off the fucking plane from Africa.’
‘Have ovaries, a few quid, TB, a couple of English words, practice at doing a signature, and they’re over here having kids, free housing, and laughing.’
‘Laughing in our bloody faces. Wanna nick her?’
‘Nah. Wait ’til she does solids.’ The man had flicked out a handset, was making a call.
An average day. On a hundred gas cookers, pans would be boiling off water to leave a cocaine-baking powder residue; in a hundred rooms, wraps containing magenta-coloured rocks of crack would be swapped for cash; in a hundred vignettes of piss-soaked pleasure and paranoia, emaciated humans crouched in corners to follow a ritual, pursue a euphoric nightmare, feed an addiction. Cut shavings of pure potency from the small lump, push into metal gauze at the base of a glass pipe or knocked-through miniature liquor bottle, heat with a lighter flame, and draw a lungful of captured mist, captured enrapture. Let it in, let it out. Instant locomotive-rush, mind-fuck, the great brain robbery. Cookery for beginners. Advanced practitioners added a squeeze of lemon, a dash of warm water, for solubility and injection. Few graduated with their faculties intact.
The telephone conversation ended. ‘Cascade lines are going crazy. These guys are hooked, won’t stop ringing.’ They were also cautious, double-checking the contact details given on the faked business cards.
‘The dreads are wising up.’
‘So are we, so are we.’ The cup drained. ‘Just hope the Brussels are right.’ Brussels equalled brussel sprouts, which in turn rhymed with snouts. Office slang for informants.
‘Office sorted out the cash?’
‘Enough for eight kilos of charlie, ten of speed, and a bit for the teen club confectionary assortment.’
A low whistle. ‘They could redecorate the whole of the seventh floor for that.’
‘I’ll put it to them. NDR VIU could do with a lick of paint.’ The anti-Jamaican gang squad at New Scotland Yard could do with a bit of luck. The Yardies, with their swagger and effortless savagery, their fondness for small arms, were moving up from the estates, closing on the cosseted, pampered market of Soho and the West End, the bistros, the wine-bars, the watering-holes of gays, PR babes and bankers. The new white man’s burden, where fuckwit chic met bored professionals to create a ready market, and the Yardies piled high the rocks and counted the currency. Thirty thousand sterling per kilo of cocaine, eighteen thousand for a kilo of heroin. Rich pickings.
‘Shit, I’ll be pleased when I hear the Enforcer rams hitting those doors.’
‘They’ll use Remingtons and Hatton rounds on this one.’
‘The bigger the bang, the bigger my smile.’
‘Relax. SO19 are putting in a full-strength firearms squad, SO11 have got their best surveillance specialists on the job, and an army of wooden-tops from Territorial Support are on hand. We do our bit, get a pat on the back. Sweet.’
‘And the usual bollocking from our guvnors for being away for so long.’
‘Saving the world’s like that sometimes.’
‘I’d still prefer to be wired.’
‘There’s no such thing as covert comms when the bad guys feel your collar, look in your arse and ears with a pen-torch. How d’you hide the spare battery?’
‘That’s between me and my gynaecologist.’ Subdued nervous mirth between the pair. ‘At least there’s a tracker on us. What’s the sitrep from the nondy sweeps?’
‘All quiet. They’ve got two plain vans satelliting the area, picking up local gen. Nothing unusual. Well, not for a shit-hole, anyway. I’ve sneaked us some decent wheels, a top-of-the-range Merc from the pool.’
‘How long ’til we change into our gear?’
‘Give it a bit. Say an hour. I’m going for Paul Smith. Bit of colour, bit of gold. You?’
‘Got to be Armani.’
‘Poof.’
The pair of undercover cops made themselves comfortable. This was method-acting, a textbook bust, an operation that had taken months to set up, and would take seconds to close down. They – their aliases – were Essex–East End hybrids, middle-rankers going big-time, dealers from Romford wheeling themselves to the next level, to the Tudorbethan mansion belt and manicured invincibility of the estuary upper-criminal class. Their cover was solid, credentials secure. Well placed to act as interface between white wannabe-junkies and the grim bredren from the Caribbean.
Well placed for the taking. SO10 – Crime Operations Group – the Metropolitan Police elite, without a doubt. Sitting pretty, sitting ducks. Soft and flaccid amateurs processed through the Peel Centre, Hendon, sent to penetrate gangs with the same dreary lack of intelligence, the same predictable scale of incompetence. Neither side understood true mission, real dedication. The Tiger was not concerned. He assessed them from his vantage point, had encountered their type too often. So, they once attended a fortnight specialist course, prided themselves, enjoyed their status. All those stories in the bar, all the envy of other officers. Must be fun. He checked his weapon. Two weeks of theory, a few assignments, against his lifetime training in the drug slums of the city, in the festering cockpit settlements, in cutting off fingers, ears, noses, tongues, genitals, in terminating with efficiency and ease – with enjoyment. An unequal contest.
