JUDAS PIG.

Horace Silver.

"I ain't never hoid of him. I suppose he's one of dem foreign heavyweights. They're all lousy. Sure as h.e.l.l I'll moider de b.u.m."

American heavyweight boxer 'Two Ton' Tony Galento on William Shakespeare.

I WAS BORN in the sixties on one of the s.h.i.+ttiest housing estates in London and let me tell you things were f.u.c.king grim. Yet you still find some bitter old flag-wavers looking back in time through the bottoms of their beer gla.s.ses and telling you that they were the good old days. Days when you could leave your pints of milk on your doorstop and no one would touch them. That's as maybe, but you'd still hear about kids going missing on their way to school. For me childhood was a brutal time full of bare light bulbs and angry black shadows. I learnt from very early on that it was us or them. Us being the poor, them being the rich. One of my earliest recollections of getting f.u.c.ked over by them was when the Queen came to visit. The council came round to our flats and repainted all the doors and windows for the first time in donkey's, before laying down fresh turf over what was nothing more than bare and cracked paving slabs. We didn't recognise the gaff, and so, when the old rip actually turned up, we were told by our betters to turn out and cheer her on. She stared out at us down the end of her toffee nose, stayed about long enough for a s.h.i.+t and a shave, before swanning back off in her limo and never looking back.

The day after she left the council came back and took up all the turf, leaving the gaff looking back like the s.h.i.+thole it was. I made up my mind there and then that if anyone ever took anything away from me ever again I'd exact revenge. It weren't long after seeing how well turned out the other half were that I started to take real pride in my own appearance. I decided if you wanted respect you had to dress sharp. A philosophy I carried through my teenage years and made me the man I am today. You've got to be right up to the mark in this game. Ain't nothing more off-putting than a scruffy gangster. You stroll about like a f.u.c.king paraffin, you ain't going to get even a sniff of any sensible graft. Sharp clobber enhances a man's reputation, but it's got to be ream tackle. You won't never catch this hombre dead in high-street gutter schmutter. I'm strictly South Molton Street, baby.

And so, after giving my reflection the once-over in the window of a feng shui shop gone bust and patting down the gun bulge in my jacket, I straighten my shoulders and stroll into Tipples, a yuppified boozer on the scrag-end of the Mile End Road and that's owned by a very good pal of mine, Tiger Teeny. Tiger was a British middleweight boxing champion back the fifties, as well as being an enforcer for the Kray twins, who, as it so happens were born less than a five minute stroll from the bar.

The gaff is empty when I arrive, it being only just past noon, but the stink of last night's booze lingers in the air, leaving me pleased I never had a full breakfast, or I reckon I would've puked all over the wooden floor. After nodding my arrival to a worn-out bint behind the jump, I make my way up two flights of stairs before emerging into a private function room, where I catch sight of the man I've come to meet, Freddie Cannon. He's slumped over a table, looking as washed out as a granny's t.i.t, while fiddling nervously with a half-drunk gla.s.s of sweetened orange juice.

Freddie's a very well connected wide boy who made his dough and name in the topsoil game before moving into ringing and pinging prestige motors, alongside poggering the granny out of Page Three p.u.s.s.y on his luxury yacht down in Marbella. His younger brother Terry has just been stabbed to death. Only twenty-one years old. Crying f.u.c.king shame. The kid was a bit player in the West End; flash but harmless. Seems he'd been having a quiet after-hours booze in the Kit Kat strip club in Dean Street and got a little bit bols.h.i.+e with someone over some b.o.l.l.o.c.ks on the stairs. Insults were exchanged. The other mush pulled a blade and plunged Terry four or five times before having it on his toes.

Terry staggered out to his Jag meaning to get himself sorted out, but terrified of needles, he got confused and couldn't bring himself to make the drive to the hospital. The poor c.u.n.t ended up slowly bleeding to death during the night on the front seat of his motor. And while his brother Freddie ain't heavy, in the fact he can't hold his hands up to save his life, he's got a lot of dough wrapped round his b.o.l.l.o.c.ks and is well in with people like me and my firm, which makes him a dangerous c.u.n.t to cross.

'Sorry about your brother, Freddie,' I say, shaking his hand and taking a seat opposite.

'Buried him yesterday, Billy. Did you know him?'

'Never met.'

'Beautiful he was, wouldn't harm a fly. Well when I say he wouldn't harm a fly. I mean if a fly s.h.i.+t on his grub or something, he'd kill it, who wouldn't? But I mean he never ever carried a tool, or anything like that.'

'f.u.c.king terrible, Freddie. I mean, you can understand someone carrying a blade when there's a bit of graft to be done, but only slags carry knives for a night out on the tiles.'

'Make you right, Billy. Any word on the c.u.n.t who done it?'

'Maltese Tony Falcone.'

'Never heard of him. What's he like?'

'f.u.c.king peasant! Tons of aftershave and smelly armpits. Before he come over to this country he was probably pimping out goats.'

'I hear you, Billy. f.u.c.king thing is I've had the Old Bill round non-stop, driving me f.u.c.king mad they are. Course, I won't say a d.i.c.ky bird to the slags. So what's the actual strength of this mush?'

'Absolute f.u.c.king mug, no disrespect to your brother. Got a bit of reputation for plunging people, that's about it.'

'That makes it even f.u.c.king harder. I mean if he was done by one of the chaps, that's one thing, but my little brother topped by a f.u.c.king non-ent.i.ty? The c.u.n.t's got to f.u.c.king go. How does he get his living?'

'f.u.c.king ponce! Hangs up around King's Cross picking up teenage runaways. Gets them on the brown then on the game. No one's going to miss the slag if he cops one in the canister. I can set him up like water. He's on the pinball machines every night in Soho. It'd be a piece of p.i.s.s.'

'Thing is, Billy, my hands are tied. As you know, killing ain't my game, and me two cousins, Jerry and Georgie, have just been weighed off with twenties. Plus the missus's film career's just taking back off. If I pick me hooter in public, it's all over the f.u.c.king papers the next day.'

'You want me to sort it?'

'Yeah.'

'How much?'

'Bottle! I only want proper people on it, Billy. No f.u.c.king cowboys.'

I tell him to leave it with me because two hundred gorillas for a hit is proper dough. I mean you can give can any mongrel in a mac ten large to top someone. But the chances are he'll get caught. And when he does, it's a dime to a dozen he'll scream the Old Bill shop down and get everyone else in the swindle nicked. You want proper people you've got to pay the proper price.

After talking the situation over with my partner Danny Longshanks, his greed finally outweighed any reservations he might have had, which means we've decided to take the job on ourselves. Five days later I'm easing a ringed Kawasaki through the b.u.mper to b.u.mper traffic of Soho's Chinatown with Danny riding pillion. Slung over his shoulder is a courier bag containing a silenced .32 semi-automatic. We're both decked out in racing leathers and with our faces hidden behind full-face crash helmets. It's a good disguise because motorcycle couriers are two a penny in this neck of the woods. We've picked a Sat.u.r.day night for the bit of graft because Old Bill will be busy with p.i.s.sed p.r.i.c.ks and pickpockets. Plus, the weekend gridlock will make our getaway easier. Hooking a right into Wardour Street sees me taking a quick shufti in my wing mirrors, to check we ain't being tailed, before slowing down to ease a right into Old Compton Street. Two hundred yards up ahead I catch sight of our destination and Maltese Tony's nightly hangout: The Golden Goose amus.e.m.e.nt arcade. My stomach knots slightly as I glide the bike towards the pavement outside. Although I ain't a novice in the hit game, it ain't stopping me from s.h.i.+tting bricks. It's only natural. We're talking big bird here. All it takes is some have-a-go-hero or nose-ointment plod to come creeping along at the wrong time, and we've got to shoot our way out of the West End. And if Old Bill cops a bullet while we're doing it, then we're f.u.c.ked. They don't release cop-killers in this country. Take Harry Roberts. Blew away three pigs in '63, and he's been banged up ever since. People I know who've met in him the b.o.o.b have watched him shrink from a terrace hero to sad old man, as his bird sucked him slowly dry. Each year he tells his nick pals he's getting out, and each year the authorities knock back his jam roll. The pitiful thing is he's got about ten grand saved up and thinks he's going to come out and start again. What the mug don't realise is that ten grand don't even get you a decent second-hand motor nowadays.

In case of grief I'm tooled up myself with a small sawn-off, loaded with buckshot and stashed down the front of my jacket. On parking up the bike, I leave the engine idling, and check my mirrors once more. After I give Danny the thumbs up, he slides off the back seat and strides purposefully past a tribal scarred Nigerian, sitting at the change counter, before disappearing into the flas.h.i.+ng neon and headf.u.c.k clatter of the arcade. And I can picture the scene. One minute, Maltese Tony'll be standing there with his legs splayed gunslinger wide and sucking hard on an unfiltered f.a.g as he dry humps his favourite pinball machine. The next, he won't even know what's. .h.i.t him and his mooey will be sliding down the plate gla.s.s of the machine, while a silenced bullet is ricocheting round the inside of his bacon bonce at 900 miles an hour, before exploding out of his eye socket in a mess of sinew and busted eyeball, spraying bone splinters and bits of brain over the machine's flickering fascia. Then there'll be a split second of freeze-frame stillness, a moment when anyone watching will hold their breath, not quite believing what their eyes are showing them. Just like you see the cheering crowd stop suddenly still when JFK copped it in the nut. And then Maltese Tony will slump slowly to the floor and come to rest in an undignified heap of dead ponce, his busted f.u.c.king head p.i.s.sing blood all over the arcade's monogrammed carpet. Dead as a f.u.c.king dodo. No more replays, you f.u.c.king mug.

Before I know it, Danny's out of the arcade and back on the bike and I'm gunning the throttle and motoring on out of Old Compton Street before chucking a left into St Martin's Lane. By the time plod gets to finish his bacon sandwich, we'll be out of Soho and on our way back home. Danny's definitely the man when it comes to killing. Cool as cuc.u.mber and cold as ice. Ain't no blood running through those veins, just hatred and greed. For which, at this moment, I'm truly thankful. We reach the safety of Canning Town without a glitch and at a prearranged meeting hook up with a trusted pal, Monksie, who's on hand to take our guns and clobber. After sending the bike for a swim in the docks we both scrub up roadside, before putting on clean clobber and going our separate ways. And that's how easy it is to set up a hit. All you need is plenty of a.r.s.ehole and the right tools. It ain't rocket science. It ain't any kind of science. It's just killing. It's what we do.

WOKE THIS MORNING in a stinking sweat after another poxy night's kip. Maltese Tony? Couldn't give a toss about that mug. Mullering a maggot for dough ain't no harder than wiping s.h.i.+t off your shoes. He was over twenty-one, he knew the rules. And carrying on like that he was never going to make old bones. Nah, the reason I woke up in such a state is I'm still a prisoner of my past. The ghosts just won't let me be. And it ain't even like they only come when I'm asleep, they're with me all day, every day. Very rare I get any f.u.c.king respite. I fight my enemies in the day and my demons at night. Childhood guilt can be such a destructive emotion. But I have to be strong and keep moving forward. Let's face it, faint heart never won f.u.c.k all, let alone fair lady. Having s.h.i.+tted and showered I'm in serious need of a livener, so I bang up a couple of smallish hits of charlie. Don't want to be acting like no junkie, discreetly wired is the order of the day. Of course, I ain't always been putting this s.h.i.+t up my hooter. Never took anything until a few years ago. But I need it now, for not only does it ease the pain, it also helps deaden the remorse, which is more important for me. It's all right for Danny, he's a psychopath. The c.u.n.t ain't got no remorse in the hurting department. But me, I feel bad about some of the people we've had to give it to. Not all of them, mind. Most of them are slags and I don't give them a second thought. But when you've got to hurt a good man, it can be painful, for both parties. And believe me the charlie does help.

Fifteen minutes later I'm pulling out of my dockside apartment's underground car park in my Porsche. Top down, stereo on full blast and with Bird blowing some super spade madness out of his plastic alto. Ain't been another jazzman, white or black, fit enough to even lick the spit off his mouthpiece. b.o.l.l.o.c.ks to this, I need another line. f.u.c.k being discreetly wired! I hit Tower Bridge. It's empty, save for a couple of coachloads of polyestered, mid-western Yanks on a whistle-stop tour of London. Beefeaters then beef burgers. Should've stayed in Idaho, you sorry-a.r.s.ed sons and daughters of Uncle Sam. Motoring on around the Minories, I pull up outside Tubby Isaac's world-famous jellied eel stall, that sits at the bottom end of long demolished back alleys where Jack did his ripping back in days of yore. A man I recognise approaches from a side street. He's casually dressed and carrying a sports holdall. After giving me a very discreet nod he casually climbs into the pa.s.senger side of my car and we shake hands. Pulling away, I check my rear-view mirror and move off, before pulling back into the kerb about a few hundred yards up the road to let the bag-man out. Inside a holdall now sitting on the front pa.s.senger side floor is two hundred grand.

The scenery starts to deteriorate at the Aldgate end of Whitechapel Road. It's changed since I was a kid. The secular Yids have made their dough and moved to Golders Green, whereas the frummers have stayed poor and schlepped it up to Stamford Hill. There used to be a road sign not far from here that said, five miles to Stamford Hill. Underneath, some funny c.u.n.t had sprayed, TO YOU, FOUR AND A HALF. Nowadays it's nearly all Bengali, best curries in the f.u.c.king world, but the schmutter shops are s.h.i.+t, worse than the ones the Yids had. There's plenty of Somalians as well. None of my black British mates like them. For instance, my pal Black Benji said to me only the other day, 'f.u.c.k me, Billy, these Somalians all look the f.u.c.king same.' Bloom's, my favourite Jewish restaurant, has long since closed. Now it's a Burger King. Ain't nothing f.u.c.king kosher about a flame-grilled Whopper. But that's the way it is, things change. When my old man was growing up, there'd be graffiti saying JEWS f.u.c.k OFF TO PALESTINE. Nowadays the graffiti says JEWS GET THE f.u.c.k OUT OF PALESTINE. One of my best pals Dave is a front wheel skid, but like the flame-grilled Whopper, he ain't what you call kosher. Dave's a long-firmer. That's to say, he's a slippery b.a.s.t.a.r.d who buys up companies that ain't worth a s.p.u.n.kless b.o.l.l.o.c.k and then rebuilds their credit by pumping his own dough through them. Once all is sweet, he worms his way into suppliers and wholesalers and gains their confidence to run up huge debts before pulling the rug from underneath them and then having it on his toes.

But Dave's a conman not a villain and he don't like mixing it in the ring with the likes of us. And apart from the fact that he walks a crooked mile, he ain't got a bad bone in his entire body. He's all about the bubbly and the craic. He'll do anything to raise a laugh. For instance, his old man, who's some top Rabbi, cut him out of his will because he'd shacked up with a s.h.i.+ksa from the Roman Road. So to spite him, Dave became a 'tugger'.

That's to say, he's tied one end of a piece of elastic to the top of his corey, the other end to his right thigh, and strolled about with it tugging at his manhood for eighteen months. And the c.u.n.t's got some corey. In fact he's hung like a f.u.c.king Hoover. Anyway, when he was satisfied that the sheathing had been stretched far enough over his helmet to const.i.tute a foreskin, he went straight round to his old man's synagogue and waggled his newly-restored corey at him through the letter box. On catching sight of his son's new uncut corey poking at him, Dave's old man cast a desperate look skywards for some help from the almighty, gave out a quick 'Oy vey', and then keeled over onto the carpet with a suspected heart attack. Priceless entertainment! That's why l love Dave to death. In fact, I'm G.o.dfather to his chavvies. But Danny despises him. Firstly because he's a Yid, but secondly because he's cleverer than Danny. And thirdly because his house is bigger. Come to think of it, his hooter's bigger as well, but I don't think that's a bone of contention there.

Bethnal Green. Another f.u.c.king khazi! Boarded up buildings and swag-shops, fronted by a few manky fruit and veg stalls and run by sour-faced c.o.c.kneys with bulging wallets and caravans in Clacton. This has always been a poxy part of town. Swinging London? The only thing that's ever swung round here is us criminals on the end of the hangman's rope. Pulling into a quiet cul-de-sac I'm now in sight of my destination, a mock Tudor two-up two-down, ex-council house number, the outside done up to the nines, replete with Greco-Roman columns, a small gravel drive and a knee high sculpture of a man who to my eyes looks like the Moors Murderer Ian Brady. Giving my nut a chance I take a sly butcher's around, not just for Old Bill, but also for Danny's wife Tina, because this ain't just our safe house, it's also where Danny keeps his moll Kelly Amore, shackled and under the cosh. Nearly every married East End gangster I know has a moll. Basically they're just expensively painted f.u.c.k-pieces, whose only purpose in life seems to be keeping clean house, staying schtummo and swallowing, but not necessarily in that order. The only difference with Danny's set up is that Kelly Amore's his first cousin.

In straight terms, that means he's slipping a goldfish to his own flesh and blood. Can't be right, I mean look what inbreeding's done to the Royals. The front doorbell chimes the opening bars of Evita, and presently the door's opened by Kelly Amore, glammed up like she's going out on the game, and peering out from under the roof of a strawberry blonde beehive that resembles a stick of candyfloss. Every day's a bad hair day in lady gangster-land.

'h.e.l.lo, Kelly,' I murmur, strolling straight through into the living room to find Danny, sitting alone in the dark as usual, staring at his reflection, in a turned-off large screen TV, as usual. Flopping down into an oversized leather Chesterfield chair opposite I drop the holdall to my side, my nut flicking through last night's bit of graft.

'How'd you kip?' says Danny, making no attempt at eye contact.

'Not all that,' I say.

'Coffee!' He calls out loudly, and in no time at all, Kelly appears, dutifully proffering two scalding beverages.

'Too f.u.c.king hot!' He growls, thrusting his cup back at her to blow on, which she does in the manner of a small chavvie blowing bubbles.

'How did I kip last night, Kelly?' he growls again.

'Like a baby, why?'

'Don't ask stupid f.u.c.king questions. Now get back in the kitchen, we're talking business.'

Handing Danny back the cooled coffee she does as she's told without a murmur. How I detest this man's lack of manners. And while I appreciate that silence equals compliance, I never say anything. But Kelly suffers it. I don't know how, 'cos I'm f.u.c.ked if I would. Probably writes the constant humiliation off against the fox fur coats and Cartier watches. And who am I to judge?

'Easy bit of graft last night or what?' says Danny.

'In and out,' I say.

'Yeah, in the back of his head and out the f.u.c.king front.'

STEVIE, DANNY'S YEAR-YOUNGER brother is out on home leave. His first steps on civvy street after an eighteen month stretch for malicious wounding, so it's a night out for the boys. The whole firm's here. Me, Danny, Stevie, and Frankie Simmons, who's as staunch as a tourniquet and a good pal of Danny's from way back. After an Italian supper, the four of us wash up in the Peac.o.c.k, an all-night drinker in Custom House, to catch up on war stories and what's what. Charlie's in abundance, Moey Joey's flowing non-stop down our throats, and appropriate respect is shown by everyone who pa.s.ses by. Which means everything is good and pleasant. A little firm of armed robbers from Stratford come bowling in, lairy as Mary. There's Darkie George, Tony Teroni and Mookie Wilson. Very good blaggers, quick on the bag but not our cup of tea. Rumour has it they've just done a tasty bit of graft. Security van and well over a mil in readies. But like all armed robbers they ain't got a clue what to do with the dough except squander it on s.h.i.+te. Hence they keep sending us over bottle after bottle of bubbly. We acknowledge the respect and the night prowls on.

'h.e.l.lo, Frankie,' says Darkie, was.h.i.+ng up his hands just as Frankie strolls into the toilet, some fifty feet or so from where we're partying.

'All right, Darkie,' says Frankie.

'How long Stevie been out?'

'Just gotta bit of home leave, Darkie.'

'Heard he was making tea for the screws in there.'

'What you talking about?'

'That's what I heard.'

Now there's insults and there's insults. And proper people in the b.o.o.b don't make tea for screws, they make trouble. You might as well call a man a nonce case as a screw's boy, and an insult to one is an insult to all. So, Frankie does the right thing and chins Darkie, knocking him down into the nearest p.i.s.ser. Then he comes back out into the company, without saying a word, until all of a sudden he lets out a loud sigh and collapses. Well, we just think he's out of the game, and pull him to his feet.

'I've been f.u.c.king plunged,' he groans. 'It was that black c.u.n.t, Darkie George.'

Knowing it's bang on top, their firm's already scarpering for the door, but down to more luck than judgement, I manage to catch Tony Teroni with a champagne bottle across the back of his canister, one of the ones they sent over. Down he goes, like a Premiers.h.i.+p footballer while his two pals run off leaving him, a terrible dog-stroke thing to do. In the frenzied atmosphere a friendly hand slips Danny a stiletto. He picks up Teroni's head and rams the blade right the way through the back of his neck, just missing his windpipe and leaving me to gawp, 'f.u.c.k me, he looks just like Frankenstein!' Helped out by an a.s.sortment of unseen fists and boots, we proceed to smash the granny out of him, stomping him to near death before carrying him outside and tossing him over a wall like a sack of s.h.i.+t. Then without a backward glance we climb into our motor and put down the pedal sharpish to get Frankie to Newham hospital.

'What the f.u.c.k was all that about, Frankie?' says Danny.

'Darkie George reckoned that Stevie was joeying for screws in the b.o.o.b. So I chinned him.'

'f.u.c.king black c.u.n.t, I'll do him,' says Stevie. But Stevie's out on home leave so he can't afford to get nicked. And so, after dropping off Frankie, we also bid our farewells to Stevie.

A few hours later me and Danny are plotted up not far from Darkie George's flat, hoping he's on his way home. Danny wants to do him properly, end of, pus.h.i.+ng up daisies. You see how this can escalate from nothing. For all we know, Darkie could have just been f.u.c.king about, but when you're on the charlie and booze, a careless word said in jest can quickly lead to paranoia.

'I hope that black c.u.n.t shows,' says Danny.

'Can't believe they ran and left Teroni,' I say. 'I heard that Darkie's fearless on the pavement.'

'Fearless! I'll show that black c.u.n.t fearless. His barnet'll turn f.u.c.king white. He'll end up looking like Uncle f.u.c.king Ben by the time I'm finished with him.' Our patience pays off. Just before sunrise, along comes Darkie, and like so many others about to become victims, he don't have a clue it's bang on him. Not only that, he's so f.u.c.ked up he can't see more than two feet in front of him. In the meantime we're ready to rock and roll. The other thing that don't bode well for Darkie is that Danny has a pathological hatred of black men. Not long ago, Stevie sorted out some grief for a black dude called Mongoose and brought him round the safe house for him to weigh us on. When he left, Danny went f.u.c.king garrity and ordered Kelly Amore to throw the coffee cup he used in the bin.

So now it's off, and we're into Darkie like a pair of jackals, ready to pull a wildebeest to pieces. The poor c.u.n.t don't have a chance. Using a small, silenced semi-automatic I lodge a bullet in the back of his left leg which smashes his kneecap, causing him to fall forward with barely a murmur. Then, with the moonlight dripping evil in his eyes, Danny weighs into him again and again, full pelt in the back and shoulders with a sharpened fireman's axe. Thirty-two times in all, carving deep, blubber-pink chunks out of Darkie's black skin.

'Let's ping, he's in a bad f.u.c.king way,' I shout, but Danny ain't listening. He's lost in his madness, the madness of a man possessed by demons that make mine look like angels of mercy. And insults from a black man are a transgression too far. And so to round the punishment off, he pulls out a Stanley knife and slices off Darkie's eyelids, handing one to me as a souvenir as we drive away and leaving Darkie wide-eyed and legless, less than two feet from the safety of his front door.

A BLOKE CALLED Hoggy wants to see me. Reckons he's got something that me and Danny might be interested in. We're partners with Hoggy in a dodgy sauna on the Ess.e.x Road, Canning Town. He's all right but he ain't one of your own. We suffer him because now and then he does come up with some interesting graft. Truth be told he's a bit of a gangster's moll. Loves a chap and goes around growling and terrorising the locals where he lives up on the Norfolk coast. And being swede-bashers who don't know their a.r.s.es from their elbows, they're terrified of him because of the way he paints himself as a London villain. But if you weigh the man up in stone cold daylight, what you see is a sweaty c.u.n.t, as fat as suckling pig and who dyes his head and chest hair aubergine. When Hoggy's in London he holes up at his moody sauna in King's Cross. I stroll in unannounced to catch him on the nest with a couple of sorry looking sorts, all spots and silly grins. Not only that but he's looking as sore as a weeping boil himself, being strewn, b.u.t.t-naked except for a red leather thong, across an ever so slightly leaking water bed, while sucking the life out of a bottle of snide champagne. All in all a sight about as edifying as discovering a short and curly in your sandwich.

'h.e.l.lo, Billy,' he says, dismissing the two birds with a wave of a fat pink hand, dripping in s.h.i.+t tom, which he then uses to sheepishly stash the bottle of snide plonk in a fridge that lets out a blast of sickening stink when he opens the door.

'Sorry for the interruption, Hoggy,' I smirk. 'But the bird downstairs told me to come straight up.'

'No problem, fancy one of 'em yourself, Billy? Right filthy little s.h.i.+tc.u.n.ts, they are. That blonde one could suck a golf ball through a f.u.c.king hosepipe. Swallows an' all.'

'Bit f.u.c.king young for a man your age, ain't they?' I say, patting my ticker.

'Nah, not at all. Eighteen and nineteen. It's gotta be pink, Billy. Can't be having none of the brown. Sure you don't want one?'

'Don't do sloppy seconds, Hoggy.'

'I'm rather partial myself. Anyway, cut to the chase. Pal of mine up north, Blackpool, got a casino. Right on the front between the two piers. Busiest plot in town. I can have a deal with it for crabs.'

'Us run a casino?'

'Peepshow.'

And off he goes trying to spiel me the deal. An upmarket peepshow, one side catering for blokes and the other side for birds. End of the pier stuff, sort of what the butler saw, but with flying s.p.u.n.k and d.i.l.d.os. Then he starts running off loads of facts and figures trying to blind me with science. Only the thing with Hoggy is, he's always too much of a minge to put his own dough in. What he'll want to do is set the deal up, get us to put in the readies, then ride on the back of it, and if it goes boss-eyed he ain't out of pocket and we are.

'It's like the third f.u.c.king world up there, Hoggy,' I say to him as he winds down his waffling. 'Might as well give our dough straight to Oxfam. At least it'll save an Ethiopian's life and us a lot of unnecessary grief.'

'Shame you feel like that, Billy,' he replies, throwing me a bone. ''Cos I was with Ronnie Olive yesterday, and I mentioned the deal to him. Told him that you and Danny might be interested, and he said he was dying to meet the pair of yous.'

'Really?' My ears p.r.i.c.k up because Ronnie Olive's old-school. Not only is he the head of a top south London crime family but he's also infamous, among other things, for being part of the firm that topped mad axeman Frank Mitch.e.l.l for the Kray twins back in the day. But what's giving me a b.o.n.e.r is that, as the whole underworld and his friend knows, Ronnie Olive is bringing in very big parcels of pills, powder and puff with the Mason brothers from Blackpool, the exact neck of the woods where Hoggy's punting his pony f.u.c.king deal.

Me and Danny badly need to get into large scale drug importation. Done properly, it's big dough for relatively little risk. Sure, we've dipped our greedy fingers into the drug trade already, but only on a small scale. Mainly we've made our dough in the p.o.r.n and protection game, putting the heavy on other firms and taking other gangsters out of the game, permanently. The problem for us is that most drug importers, despite their media profiles, are p.u.s.s.ies. They're absolutely terrified of heavy-duty villains like Danny and me. f.u.c.kers keep their distance. But Ronnie Olive is a heavy-duty warrior himself, which means he understands what we're all about. This could be a good punt. After kidding Hoggy along for a while I bell Danny and we lay on a meet to see Ronnie Olive.

A FEW DAYS later me and Danny are plotted up in a BMW on a petrol station forecourt at the top of the Old Kent Road, just down by the Bricklayers' Arms. Both of us are tooled up and keeping wary eyes on punters creeping in to refuel. We don't reckon Hoggy would have the b.o.l.l.o.c.ks to middle us up, but we both know that Ronnie Olive is a slippery, dangerous little c.u.n.t, and that he could have used Hoggy to unwittingly lure us into a trap. Being at the heavy end means we have to be on guard at all times because there are more than a few top London faces that would pay big dough to have our heads on a plate, or blown to bits on the front seat of a motor. Right on time Ronnie Olive pulls up beside us in a bulletproof Mercedes, and we climb out of our motor to greet a dapper man in his mid-sixties, but who nevertheless looks like he's carrying the whole weight of the world on his shoulders. There's a brief introduction and a bit of gangster b.o.l.l.o.c.ks about how pleased we all are to be in the company of other proper people, then we follow him as he jogs slowly ahead of us, leading as towards the spieler from which he runs all his operations.

And what a f.u.c.king khazi it is! Plonked on top of a second-hand furniture shop with security like Fort Knox. We wait impatiently as a buzzer allows us through the fortified front door, after which we follow Ronnie round a couple of flights of stairs that wouldn't be amiss on a helter-skelter. A coded tap on a steel door leads us into the main room, a flock wallpapered hovel, infested with a right sorry looking bunch of scruffy c.u.n.ts, smoking and gambling their poxy lives away. I flick a sideways glance to Danny, and his sly smile shows what we're both thinking. That if this is the cream of south London villainy, we'd hate to see the s.h.i.+t of the manor. Ronnie introduces us to one of his brothers, deaf and dumb Joey. By way of response Joey emits a high pitched whine like Flipper the Dolphin. f.u.c.king h.e.l.l, he must be one of the ugliest men that G.o.d ever blew breath into. Now I don't know if Joey's hung like a donkey, but he sure do f.u.c.king look like one. Ronnie then tells us that Joey punches a hole in the wall every time a horse he backs fails to make it first past the post. The walls of the spieler look like Swiss cheese.

Ronnie proceeds to introduce us to what we now realise are a few very well-known south London faces, some who've only just finished terms of very lumpy porridge, after which he leads us past a bashed-up goggle-box blaring out the afternoon's horse racing, down a rat run corridor and into a third world kitchen, where Kit, a tired looking old bird who looks like a bingo player, is cooking up an afternoon roast. At Ronnie's bidding we find our pristine clad a.r.s.es being forced to sit down on a stinky old sofa, that starts me to scratching, while Kit serves us up minted lamb sandwiches, which we wash down with over-sugared tea in cracked mugs.

'Nice little set-up you got here, Ronnie,' says Danny, comically straight faced.

'It ain't bad, Danny,' says Ronnie. 'I get a ten per cent cut off the card tables, plus I lay down tax-free bets. And I get my whack out of any crooked business that goes down as well. Most days it's like Aladdin's f.u.c.king cave in here. Can't move for hookey gear. All of it ream. Got a little firm of Scousers that slip over to Switzerland to cane watch and jewellery shops. Plus, anything else that moves through this manor has got to come by me first.'

'Sweet,' say me and Danny in unison, as I get up to carve myself an extra slice of lamb with the help of a wicked looking kitchen knife, and with Ronnie watching me warily out of the corner of his eyes.

'So what do you reckon about this bit of graft that Hoggy's got up north, boys?' he says.

'Sounds sweet, Ronnie,' I say. 'But we'll have to slip up there and have a nut round ourselves.'

'Make you right, son,' he says. 'By the way, how d'you two rate Hoggy, on the quiet?'

'We don't rate him at all, Ronnie,' Danny cuts in. 'He ain't like none of us three here. And we're only here 'cos we heard you wanted a piece of the pie.'

'I hear you,' says Ronnie. 'And I'd love to do business with you boys. But I have to let you know, I've got a bit of grief at the moment.'