'Who wants him?' says Big Mac.

'Well here's a f.u.c.king clue,' says Frankie. 'It ain't Ronald McDonald.'

'You got a dog belongs to a pal of ours,' says Stevie.

'From the RSPCA then, are you?' says the silly big p.r.i.c.k, breaking into a watermelon grin.

Now if there's one thing I hate it's people that laugh at their own jokes. Danny casts me a sideways glance and I've seen the look plenty of times before. What it says is, let this c.u.n.t know the score. So without further ado I take a single step forward, swinging the two barrels of the d.i.c.k Turpin out from under my smother as I do so. As I move forward Big Mac turns his attention to me. At first he's still all smiles. Then he gawps down at the two protruding gun barrels staring him back in the face, and his mooey drops, twisting into a strange grimace of disbelief, like constipation giving way to diarrhoea. Then, moving extremely fast for a big man, he turns on a sixpence and dives back into his van, hitting the floor with an earth shattering thump.

Now for all I know he could be diving for a tool, so I take one more step forward and let off both barrels into the side of his hovel. BLAAM! Both cartridges. .h.i.t the side of the van in unison, peppering it with burning buckshot. The bricks holding it up begin to crumble like cookies dipped in coffee, and the whole s.h.i.+theap shudders, then crashes over on its side in a bellowing, puffing smokescreen of dust and flying debris.

Inside, Big Mac is screaming like a hungry baby at t.i.t-sucking time. As the dust starts to settle, a goat that was tethered to the rear of the van seizes its chance and makes a break for freedom into the nearby woods. Then all is still.

'All right, all right, no f.u.c.king more!' comes the strangulated screams from inside the caravan, as after a minute or so Big Mac's ugly mug works its way out of the open doorway, almost unrecognisable under a black mask of dirt and choking dust. I love it when old adages are proved true. The harder they come the harder they fall! Same with reputation. Toughest man on the cobbles and all that old b.o.l.l.o.c.ks. It's come on him and he's folded like a bit of s.h.i.+tty toilet paper. Stevie and Frankie both step forward, and Stevie grabs Big Mac by his haystack hair and pulls him, bleating like a lamb, from out of his van. Without saying a word Frankie shoves a revolver deep into his mouth, and together they drag him a few feet before laying him face down in a shallow puddle of oil and rainwater. Through gulps of mud and filth he manages to shout out for someone to bring out the dog. And in less than a minute, a tall, scrawny pikey appears with Perry Pomfritter's greyhound.

After relieving scrawny b.o.l.l.o.c.ks of the dog I lead it back to the Mercedes where I usher it onto the back seat. His prize f.u.c.king dog, I'm thinking, and it's tied up on a bit of old string without a f.u.c.king clue as to all the grief it's caused.

'What we going to do with this slag?' Stevie shouts to Danny, who's now also making his way back to the car. Danny looks down at his ruined Gecko skin loafers, then up at me, and I shrug, 'cos it don't matter what I think or say. I can tell by Danny's yocks that his mind's already made up. And his yocks scare the f.u.c.k out of me. They're f.u.c.king horrible, soulless pools of mindless killing, like those of a great white shark. If you're close enough to peer into their pitiless darkness, you know your time has come.

'Make him a f.u.c.king sergeant!' he says.

So, as me and Danny climb back into the motor, Stevie holds Big Mac down while Frankie gives him three deep stripes across his mooey with a razor-sharp machete. Three lovely, deep, stewing-steak gashes that penetrate the bully's pockmarked face all the way down to his cheekbones. And all he can do is scream the birds out of the nearby trees. As would you or me if we were having our face turned into a scarecrow, which is the only job he'll be fit for after Frankie and Stevie have finished with him. But then thinking about it, standing in a field shooing away birds ain't a bad job to do for a living, if you've got a f.u.c.ked-up face. To be honest he's got off rather lightly for a big fat horrible bully c.u.n.t. If Danny was in a real bad mood the back of his head would be hanging off by now. Job done, Frankie and Stevie climb back into the motor. As we start to pull away I take a glance back through the car's rear window and it's funny our man don't seem so scary anymore. Less of a Big Mac, more of just an ordinary cheeseburger dripping with las.h.i.+ngs of tomato ketchup. Danny hits the gas hard and we motor out of the site, scattering s.h.i.+t and pikeys as we go and leaving Big Mac's face and reputation in tatters.

FOLSOM PRISON BLUES by the man in black himself, Johnny Cash, is pumping out the truth from the two f.u.c.k-off sized Bose speakers buried in the car's rear shelf behind my nodding head. We hit the Dartford tunnel, Kent side but Ess.e.x bound and with me tapping rhythm to Cash's sharecroppin', psychobilly, redneck boogie. And every cotton-picking word of Folsom Prison Blues is burning into the back of my brain. It sets me to thinking that if I had listened to Johnny Cash when I was a kid rather than to rude bwoy reggae, then I might not be stuck in a speeding motor with three bloodthirsty boneheads and an anorexic dog which keeps sticking its tongue down my right earhole at every opportunity.

As we reach the tunnel's closed barrier Danny slows down and tosses the requisite coins in the slot. The automatic toll booth open-sesames and we drive on, disappearing into the mouth of the tunnel and away under the Thames. Twenty minutes from the east side we hit the tiny country hamlet of Great Hallingbury, cruising to halt outside the heavily fortified and overwrought iron gates that lead up to Perry Pomfritter's mansion. He bought it from a faded seventies rock star who shot his bolt on c.o.ke and groupies before blowing his brains out with a hunting rifle on Halloween. But the man obviously had taste, for the gaff boasts, amongst other things, a fully-stocked trout take, heated paddocks, a guitar-shaped indoor swimming pool and a fully-loaded gymnasium and sauna. Not to mention a secret dungeon where the former occupant liked to be strung upside down by his ankles and have his b.o.l.l.o.c.ks used as an ashtray.

As you might have sussed, Perry Pomfritter's not my cup of tea. But I'll tip my hat to any man that's come from skid-pants poverty to hit the dizzy heights, and has the b.o.l.l.o.c.ks to take his own 24-carat gold cutlery with him when he goes for pie and mash. And though he can't read or write, that ain't stopped him from making millions out of illegal turf accountancy, and funding some of the biggest gold bullion swindles in the country. You name it, he'll smelt it or lay down a bet on it. Tax-free, no questions asked. But a word of warning for any of you mug punters out there. Pomfritter's got the principles of a politician when it comes to bees and honey, so don't go betting on form at any of his dog tracks. He picks who wins or loses, not you. For sure, you'll be sitting up in one of the windowed boxes overlooking the track with your scampi in a basket and your tart in a short skirt, sipping your semi-chilled house white and thinking you're Frank Sinatra. You'll tell her you've heard a whisper from a pal, odds on favourite, dead cert in the next race. Then you'll bowl off and lay down all your hard-earned wonga, stroll back, give your tart the wink and wait expectantly for your winnings.

But Jonny will have already weighted the odds in his own favour. He'll have blown down the trainer's ear and the trainer will have given the favourite a quick squeeze of its b.o.l.l.o.c.ks while it's in the traps. And off they go, only your one won't. It'll roll in last with aching nuts, while the underdog, a real long shot outsider at 55 to 1, which will have been given a given a shot of Billy Whizz before the race, will come belting out after the hare, like it's got a rocket up its ringpiece. The conclusion of which will leave you in the doghouse, and you and your tart on the night-bus home. And did you ever wonder why greyhounds go garrity chasing after the track hares? Simple. A trainer will blood novice dogs by throwing it the occasional live pet shop rabbit.

After a minute or so we get the OK from a security camera, and the gates swing open. The drive is a quarter of a mile long and so Danny steers the motor slowly, hushed in reverence for the rolling, manicured lawns and their fringe of too-tidy woodland that apparently houses one of the county's finest herds of Muntjac deer. I look over at Danny and he's almost coming in his pants.

'This is the most properest gaff on the f.u.c.king planet. What d'you reckon, boys?' he says.

'Well over the f.u.c.king top though, ain't it?' I say. 'You've got to have delusions of grandeur to live in a gaff like this.'

'Make you right, Billy,' says Frankie, adding. 'He's only a f.u.c.king scallywag from off the plot. A gaff like this ain't no good for the likes of us.'

'Put it right on us with Old Bill,' says Stevie. 'I mean, nowadays the pigs go over the tops of your gaffs in aeroplanes and take f.u.c.king pictures, see if you got swimming pools and all that.'

'f.u.c.k all that,' says Danny. 'What I'm saying is, it's a proper gaff. Proper people deserve proper gaffs. We're proper people, well at least I am. It's a bit early yet, but in ten years' time this is what we all should be aspiring to.'

We reach the front of Pomfritter's house. The door is guarded by a solid steel portcullis topped with razor sharp points. It rises slowly as we stop the motor.

'f.u.c.k me!' I say. 'Who's he expecting, Robin Hood?'

'You've got no f.u.c.king cla.s.s, Billy,' growls Danny, as we all make to get out. 'And f.u.c.k me, we don't all want to go traipsing in after treading all over a pikey site. I'll take the dog in. Only be a couple of ticks.' Now this is starting to stink more than the goat s.h.i.+t on our shoes. We're being left out in the car like lepers. I ain't f.u.c.king pleased. We do the gory and that c.u.n.t gets the glory. No doubt he'll be telling Pomfritter that he's the big bad wolf that just blew the little pig's house down and got the dog back. It ain't supposed to work like this. And these other two dips.h.i.+ts are just sitting here, happy as sandboys, thinking about their poxy two and half grand apiece. But I just know that something else is going down. I'm being cut out of a big deal, and I hate being treated like a f.u.c.king div. The sort of c.u.n.t that plays pa.s.s the parcel with the IRA.

So Danny goes bowling in sparkling like a ninepin and with just a little bit of s.h.i.+t on his shoes. And not only has he not stopped bleating about it, but he's yanking the greyhound behind him on the bit of string like it's a rag doll. And that big lummox standing there with his hand out is Benny the Bull, Pomfritter's personal minder. He looks at Danny, then looks at us in the car. f.u.c.king minder? He'd be better off minding his own f.u.c.king business. Trying to look as tough as he can, Benny makes to shake Danny's hand, but Danny sticks the dog's lead in it instead and strolls in leaving Benny looking like a right f.u.c.king doughnut. Sweet, mugged him right off. The Bull's gutted, but he won't say nothing. He's terrified of our little firm. He's only a bodybuilder, anyway. I remember him when he was a nine stone pencil neck. Went down the gym for six months, got on the gear, started growling at himself in the mirror and now he thinks he's a gangster. Well he ain't, he's a f.u.c.king gonkster. Show me one single bodybuilder that can have a right proper tear-up, and I'll give you a pin to burst his biceps and send him crying back to his muscle mags.

Danny makes his way into the indoor pool area, where Pomfritter is floating stark b.o.l.l.o.c.k naked as usual, inside a lorry inner tube while practising his fly fis.h.i.+ng technique.

'h.e.l.lo, son,' says Pomfritter to Danny, paddling back to the side and climbing out to throw on a personally monogrammed bath robe.

'See us coming, Perry?' says Danny smiling, and looking up at one of a number of television monitors dotted strategically about the pool area.

'I see everyone and everything coming, Danny,' says Perry, as they both shake hands. 'That's how I get to live in a house with a half mile gravel drive. Sounds lovely when you drive over it, don't it?'

'Yeah, gotta say, Perry, this gaff is definitely a bit of me.'

After towelling himself down, Perry stands in front of a gold floor-to-ceiling mirror to work the front of his barnet into a Tony Curtis before smoothing the back into a duck's a.r.s.e, after which they stroll into an adjacent room, whose centre boasts a full-sized snooker table, guarded at each corner by a granite bust of the long-departed.

'Julius Caesar?' says Danny, stopping at the first one.

'Liberace,' says Pomfritter. 'The missus loves him to death. Must say, I'm more of a Slim Whitman man myself.'

'What's that there?' says Danny, pointing to an ornate, carved wooden throne with a large hole in the middle of its seat. 'Looks like an old-fas.h.i.+oned khazi or something.'

'Nah,' says Perry, a smile spreading across his mooey, as he walks over to the piece. 'That is an exact replica of a papal chair, direct from the Vatican. I got it from a Mafia pal. Ever heard of Pope Joan? Bird back in the olden days, made out she was a geezer and got elected pope. Got knocked up by a cardinal, popped out a sprog then kicked the bucket. So they built a special seat like this, and when a new pope came along, he'd have to sit on one of these and a cardinal would put his hand up through the hole and have a reef round. It was called "A Grope for the Pope". Once he was satisfied the pope had b.o.l.l.o.c.ks he would stand up and proclaim, "Testiculos habet et bene pendentes." Which roughly translated means, "He's got b.o.l.l.o.c.ks like a pair of plums and they swing nicely." We've had some f.u.c.king fun with that, me and the missus.'

'How is the missus?' says Danny, impatiently.

'Good as gold! Mind you she's ent.i.tled to be, she's dripping with the f.u.c.king stuff. Just treated her to a new pair of t.i.ts for her birthday. Over the moon she is.'

'Nice one, Perry. And looking around here I gotta say, it's all cla.s.s gear.'

'That's because I'm a cla.s.s f.u.c.king act, Danny. As my old man used to say to me, "Perry, if you fell into a s.h.i.+tpit stark b.o.l.l.o.c.k naked, you'd come up sporting a gold chain and matching diamond cufflinks." So anyway, messy job, by the look of your ones and twos.'

'You know yourself Perry, it can get a bit crabby climbing up the ladder.'

'Very true. Whoever the slag was, did he get the message?'

'We retired him.'

'Sweet, very sweet. Can I get you or your boys a drink?'

'Nah.'

'How about a lah-de-dah, then?' says Perry, flopping into a large leather recliner and offering up a handcrafted silver box stocked with the finest Cuban cigars.

'We're all sweet.'

'No problem. By the way, the spondoolies will be ready tomorrow. But tell me, you still interesting in having a trade with this gaff? I mean it's a f.u.c.king big step up, Danny. A gaff like this can make a man or break a man.'

'It's got my f.u.c.king name written all over it, Perry. You still moving to Spain?'

'Got to, son. Customs are so far up my bottle, I don't know whether to s.h.i.+t them out or clean their teeth. I don't need the grief. Besides, me and the old woman both love the suns.h.i.+ne.'

'Well I'll be honest with you, Perry. We got a couple of more coups in the pipeline, and both will be coming off very soon. Then I'll have the first bit of the dough ready.'

'Like I told you, son. You can owe me the rest. I don't mind waiting, I know your word's your bond. Why don't you come to the track at the weekend, all down to me. We'll talk further. And bring the boys. Let your hair down, and blow a bit of f.u.c.king steam out your lugholes.'

'Love to, Perry.'

DANNY'S OLD MAN'S knocking loudly on death's door, and he ain't happy unless the world and his friend knows about it. He's always been a cantankerous old b.a.s.t.a.r.d at the best of times, c.u.n.ting and f.u.c.king at all and sundry from sunup till sundown. But he's definitely got worse since Danny's old girl popped her clogs two stretch ago. The word around town is that her heart broke when Danny got pulled in for beating a publican and his missus half to death with a fireman's axe. She got religion then went round telling people she'd been cursed by giving birth to a monster. Not long after she pegged it, the old man also found out he hadn't got long left, and it's been downhill all the way since. Danny's just told me on the quiet that he wants to get his hands on the family house before any of his brothers come sniffing round. Not that it's much of a prize, being just a run-down ex-council gaff, but he knows he can nick it for crabs as the old man's been there all his life. And where we come from, you don't never look nothing in the mouth.

For some reason Danny hates his old man, but he's never told me why. Maybe it's because he sees too much of himself in him. Like Danny, the old man's a bigoted b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Always banging on about how the sun never used to set on the British Empire, as if any of us round here ever benefited from the plundering of the colonies. Great Britain? I'll show you Great Britain! Danny's old man fought in the trenches in the last big war, and now he's got one hobnailed boot in the grave, and his two-up two-down don't even have an indoor toilet or central heating. And because that c.u.n.t Thatcher decimated the NHS he's getting no proper home care. All they're doing is prescribing him enough morphine to keep Larry happy. So the coup's on, and me and Danny slip round the old man's in the dead of night like a modern-day Burke and Hare, with the intention of ghosting him into the spare bedroom at Danny's. Trouble is, Danny's only been in the house once since his old girl died because he reckons he can feel her spirit haunting the place. So, he's waiting outside in the car while Joe c.u.n.t here has to go in and do the dirty work.

As soon as I put the key in the lock and walk into the house a terrible mustiness. .h.i.ts me in the face straight away. A concoction I can best describe as death vying to get the better of decay. The hallway's lit by only a single forty-watt bulb that casts low eerie shadows along its short length and up the bottom half of the stairs. No sooner have I wedged the front door open with one of the old man's boots, when I hear a hacking, greasy cough coming from the front room.

The door's ajar, so I stick my head in and flick the light switch. Bulb blows immediately, plunging the room into darkness, save for an orange half-light emanating from the street lamp outside the window.

And the sight that greets me ain't exactly edifying. The old man's sitting bolt upright in his rocking chair and rocking back and forth, staring bug-eyed into an empty birdcage. Then, as if on cue, he throws back his head, looks at the ceiling and starts laughing like a lovesick loon. What with the cold and clamminess of the house, this whole scenario is starting to remind me of The Texas Chainsaw Ma.s.sacre.

After steeling myself with a quick charlie hit and checking over my shoulder for Leatherface, I take in the rest of the scene. s.h.i.+ne on Harvey f.u.c.king Moon! This gaff ain't seen a duster for donkey's. There's stacks of years old newspapers piled all over the place, turning from yellow to brown with age. The carpet's as threadbare as the old man's head, and all the furniture surfaces are littered with budgie s.h.i.+t and feathers, although I can't see any sign of a budgie. To top off the whole depressing picture, standing on a table beside the old man is a filthy, mildewed dinner plate boasting a half-eaten sausage, lying three quarters buried in a lake of congealed cooking fat.

Needing more fortification to see the sortie through I sniff up a charlie hit, then step quickly over to the old man and bend down to lift him up out of his chair in one fell swoop. Surprisingly, he feels warm to the touch, but he's more like a bag of bones than a human being. Plus, he's so far out of the f.u.c.king game he don't even know he's being moved. He laughs out loud once more and coughs, and a large parcel of congested grolley erupts from somewhere deep in the hollow of his chest, before bursting from his mouth and spattering the front of his already badly-stained granddad s.h.i.+rt. I wince and make hurriedly for the front door, only to feel a trickle of fluid soaking my right hand. Jesus Christ, the poor old sod's leaking at both ends!

'Sweet, mate,' shouts Danny, jumping out of the car, as he sees me coming down the garden path. 'Now I'll keep the rest of the family away from him while you sort out the paperwork for me.'

'I'll go straight round and see a brief tomorrow,' I tell him, laying the old man across the back seat of the motor as carefully as I can before climbing into the front. Without another word we slip away into the night and with the old man still giving it the Charlie Chuckles all the way back to Danny's.

We've got a few bent briefs on the firm and all of them are my connections, but the best one's a Chinaman. Not only is he an expert forger but he's as crooked as a packet of prawn crackers. He used to run stolen pa.s.sports for us for ten grand a throw to the Hong Kong Chinese that were having it on their toes from the communists. We weigh him off in either readies or s.k.a.n.ky bra.s.ses with c.u.n.ts that chuck up like fish and chip shops. I've done a lot of business with the Soho Chinese over the years. Mostly renting out bas.e.m.e.nts to local gangs for use as unlicensed mah-jong houses. Or slum tenements, where they fill every room with clapboard, pint-sized bunk beds and rent them out in rotating eight hour s.h.i.+fts to the mult.i.tudes of Chinatown's illegal restaurant workers.

PAPERWORK'S SORTED AND readies have been handed over, and the old man's signed away what's left of his life. To keep him sweet Danny hands him a holdall containing fifty grand. It's his half of the bit of dough we copped from topping Maltese Tony. So the gaff is now Danny's and everyone should be happy. Not quite. Stands to reason don't it that the old man's never had a pot to p.i.s.s in all his life. So now he's got the bag of dough under his sheets and thinks that everyone's out to nick it off him. Won't let anyone near him, and not only that, he's calling everyone in Danny's house everything from a pig to a dog. Danny tells me he wants to smother him. I persuade him to get a nurse instead. Two days later and Danny calls me and tells me to come over, as he's got a nurse for the old man just like I told him to. But as soon as I get round there I suss out straight away that something's moody. It's done up like a Streatham streetwalker. High heels, tight skirt hitched right up round its a.r.s.e, and not much change out of forty hard years by the look of it, even under the kindest light. Turns out its old man's banged up on a lagging and it's looking for a bit of pin money. And Danny being the gentlemen he is, is only too pleased to contribute to its old man's prison fund. So picture this one for the family alb.u.m. Tina and the kids downstairs in the front room watching a rerun of Pets Win Prizes. The old man, prostate and dentureless and smashed out of his skull, and gawping away into the ceiling, while me and Danny have got the night nurse stretched across the bottom of the bed, spit-roasting it like a stuck f.u.c.king pig. It don't come no better.

Unfortunately the old man only lasts for three more weeks before snuffing it. And don't you just know that while the poor c.u.n.t's still warm, Danny creeps into the bedroom and prises the fifty grand back out of his hands.

And so, having f.u.c.ked his old man out of his house, Danny buries him. Funeral arrangements were made on the quick but still word got out, and the streets of Canning Town are lined with the not very nice and the downright f.u.c.king nasty. If there's one thing London gangsters love more than weddings, it's funerals. Gives them the chance to put on their long black coats and sungla.s.ses and make out they're in the Mafia.

It's a grey, grimy, typically overcast English morning. An ideal day in fact, for burying the fathers of bad men. Our firm and immediate family members are travelling in a cortege of five black Mercedes, and wending our way past lines of heads respectfully bowed and faces appropriately grim, following four black horses drawing the carriage and its coffin. To add insult to injury for Tina and the kids, the night nurse is also in the cavalcade, bandy-legged, but bearing up well after the spit-roasting. But Danny's got the right f.u.c.king zig. Not because his old man's pegged it, but because there was five grand short out of the dough he s.n.a.t.c.hed back off him. Seems the old man was tipping the night nurse well for services rendered to him. Maybe he had the last laugh after all.

As our procession grinds slowly to a halt outside the chapel of grace, we're pleased to see that representatives of crime families from all four corners of the capital have seen fit to make the trip to pay their respects. But a couple of mooeys we don't expect have also turned up. Ronnie Olive and Smoothound are standing there as bold as bra.s.s with another couple of heavy looking bods we're not too sure about.

'What're them c.u.n.ts doing here?' I say to Danny, as we stop to get out of the car with Stevie and Frankie and a few close family members.

'Ignore them,' says Danny. 'They ain't got the a.r.s.ehole to say anything. They're only here to make themselves f.u.c.king look good.' But I ain't so sure. As my firm and the families move ahead I stop to shake the hand of a pigeon racing pal of my uncle Deaffy. As I do so, Smoothound, looking every inch the reformed junkie, takes the opportunity to sidle up beside me.

'We just came to pay our respects,' he says, offering me a hand of friends.h.i.+p.

'Sweet, Smoothie,' I reply, returning his handshake limply, which in criminal circles is a complete sign of disrespect. A slur he nevertheless chooses to ignore.

'Ronnie wants to have a word,' he then says, lowering his voice down to a whisper. 'It's the brothers up north. They're screaming their f.u.c.king heads off.'

'Not now, Smoothie,' I tell him, making to walk away. 'Not at a f.u.c.king funeral. It's a bad transgression, mate.'

Smoothound shuffles uneasily while taking sideways glances at Ronnie Olive, who's watching the pair of us like a hungry hawk.

'To be truthful, Billy,' says Smoothound, his top lip now quivering in time with his shuffle, 'Ronnie reckons you and Danny have f.u.c.ked us over, and he wants to set the record straight.' My stomach churns as a bolt of murderous anger shoots through me, stopping me dead in my tracks. Turning back to face Smoothound, the anger works its way in tight, knotted coils up through my body, causing a surge of power to twist my head to one side until a loud cracking of my neck bones can he heard. In the time it takes to shake a fair-sized k.n.o.b dry, I'm sizing up the situation and severely having to stop myself drawing my pistol and whipping this jumped-up, coffee-coloured little c.u.n.t into a Grande Latte right there on the spot. He knows full well you don't turn up at gangster funerals and carry on about getting f.u.c.ked over by other gangsters. Especially when they're burying kin. But right now, I'm torn between the required gangster protocol of instant retribution, and respect for Danny's old man. After all, this is his day. And so, as much as it kills me to, I clench down hard on my back teeth and smile like a simpleton, then turn my back on Smoothound once more and make my way back to my people.

'What did that mongrel-eyed c.u.n.t want?' says Danny, and already I can sense the tension starting to build.

'f.u.c.king liberty,' I say. 'The stinking little half-chat c.u.n.t pulled me about that bit of graft up north. Reckons him and Ronnie Olive's been f.u.c.ked.'

'Course they've been f.u.c.ked. But it's a f.u.c.king liberty bringing it up at my old man's funeral, G.o.d rest his soul. f.u.c.king h.e.l.l, mate, you should have just done him there and then on the spot. You're carrying ain't you?'

'Course I am, I just didn't wanna show disrespect, that's all.'

'It'll be disrespect if you do nothing, mate. You gotta put it right.'

So that seals it, I've got Danny's blessing. Never liked that little p.r.i.c.k from the day I sat behind him on the trip to Blackpool. So without saying another word I turn and make my way back over to Smoothound and Ronnie Olive, smiling like a politician out pressing flesh and kissing babies.

'Smoothie!' I say, tilting my head back and gently motioning him forward. Giving it plenty of south London chewitude, he bowls back towards me, his confidence obviously bolstered by my apparent about-turn, and I know that he's thinking he's cracked the nut. And I'm thinking this is one flash c.u.n.t. So I crack his nut with a powerful overhand sweep of my semi-automatic Beretta, that strikes him right between his greedy, half-chat eyes. Pistol-whipping is the way to go I reckon, more so than a right-hander. Not only does it save on knuckles, but if you get a tough c.u.n.t and they don't go down, you can always shoot them afterwards. But Smoothound does goes down, pumping satisfying spurts of the red stuff out of a lightning bolt of a slice that's cut him right down to the nose bone. As he slumps forward under a m.u.f.fled scream, his over-gelled head strikes the solid ground with a dull thud, opening up another head wound, this time on his slightly balding crown.

Then he just lays there, eyes agog and with the insides of his head spilling out all over the pavement. Moving in for the kill sees me stamping down heavily onto his face with my right heel, smas.h.i.+ng his right cheekbone to smithereens. A sickening crunch of splintered bone fills the sombre air, as the three hundred-strong crowd growls and moves forward as one, on my behalf. Taking a step backward to survey my handiwork I glance up and break into a satisfied smile, because Ronnie Olive and what's left of his firm are melting like cheese under a hot grill. Top south London gangsters they may be. But right here, right now, they're surrounded by three hundred or so east London heavy-duty lunatics, all pals of ours, and all willing to kill for the cause.

Ronnie Olive knows that him and his firm only walk away from this if we allow them to, and I watch with s.a.d.i.s.tic pleasure as the blood drains from the three of them and they back themselves tight up against a nearby wall, looking like three skittles ready to be rolled over at will.

The rest of my firm reaches my shoulder through the crowd, and between the three of us proceed to kick Smoothound half to death, while his pals, his good pals do nothing but watch on like w.a.n.kers. In less than a minute of kicking and c.u.n.ting, the beating winds down, and all that's left on the pavement is a pile of half-cooked mincemeat dressed in its Sunday best.

'You want a f.u.c.king war?!' screams Danny, turning to face Ronnie Olive. 'We'll give you a f.u.c.king war!' But Ronnie Olive ain't no Winston Churchill and he says nothing and does nothing. Just looks down forlornly at his shoes, hoping that they'll sprout wings and fly him the f.u.c.k back to the Elephant and Castle. His two pals meanwhile are s.h.i.+tting enough bricks to build the Great Wall of China, and Smoothound's cluttering up the pavement and not looking so smooth anymore. But Danny's on full throttle, his head having turned into a giant p.r.i.c.k, all purple and pulsing. Spitting large bubbles of angry foam he turns and points down at Smoothound, then screams at a nearby pal of ours, Nicky Sabini, 'Pick up what's left of this sack of s.h.i.+t and get it to the hospital. One funeral's enough for today!'

Nicky, a cousin of the infamous Sabini Brothers racetrack gang, and a man who commands a lot of local respect, takes over the duties, ordering a few of his firm to sc.r.a.pe Smoothound off the pavement and get him to Newham General, sharpish. Job done, our firm gathers itself together and the hovering crowd parts like the Red Sea, allowing us through, so as to make our way back to the chapel of grace, where we're cleaned up and consoled by an a.s.sortment of wives and molls. They're wetting our faces clean, while getting wet between their legs. They live for their men dis.h.i.+ng out vengeance. Round here the wages of violence is respect, and the best looking birds on the plot. Back at the wall meanwhile, Ronnie Olive and his two pals take the resumption of the funeral as an opportunity to slink into their motor and head back to south London with their tails between curled firmly between their legs. But what I need now is silence. I like to digest a beating or a murder I've been involved in, just to weigh up the pros and cons and get my head straight, so I'll be able to get my night's shut-eye.

I'm just about to slip off into a quiet corner to meditate when Danny calls me back into the fold with a smile on his face and a pat on my back for a job well done. So the meditation goes flying straight out of one of the chapel's stained gla.s.s window. Now I'm stuck in a death-smell church on an a.r.s.e-angering wooden bench having to listen to some local vicar with a nonce's sc.r.a.pe-over spout pious drivel, while I mouth along to hymns that no c.u.n.t in the congregation knows the words to anyway. And I mean let's face it, if there is a G.o.d, now would be his chance to wipe out a s.h.i.+tload of evil with one fell swoop. I mean there's over three hundred top notch sinners sitting in one of his shops right now. All he's got to do is send down a couple of lightning bolts and fry the f.u.c.king lot of us. After what seems like an eternity of pontification by the vicar we finally leave the sanctimonious sanct.i.ty of the church, and faking solemnity, file past vandalised graves to the old man's designated plot, the dignity of the already soiled service further marred by the arrival of an Old Bill chopper overhead.

TONIGHT AIN'T A good night to be driving coastwards on the M25. It's pitch black and p.i.s.sing down, plus, this rice-burning piece of j.a.p c.r.a.p I'm in keeps arsing every time I touch the brakes. It's a Mazda something or other, f.u.c.ked if I know. But I don't care what the manufacturers call it, the point is, I ain't happy to be in a motor made by a company that knocks out f.u.c.king light bulbs. I only borrowed it from Stevie and Frankie's car front because my Porsche is having the brakes done. Normally I wouldn't go near one of their motors with a bargepole. But they a.s.sured me that this one ain't one of their specialities, their specialities being cut and shuts. Cutting and shutting motors is a short cut to reasonably big bucks. It's semi-legit with no real bird, and a great way to launder crooked cash. Here's how it works. You keep your eyes open for two of the same type of motor, one which has been written off at the front, the other, rear-ended. You buy the pair of them for crabs then cut each one in half and re-weld both the good bits together. After which you respray them, tonce up the interiors then re-register them. Then you get one of your Sat.u.r.day boys to spick and span them inside and out, before knocking them on at full price to a mug punter, waving him off with a smile as he drives away happy as a sandboy in a potential deathtrap, his readies in your pocket. And you don't even get your hands dirty.

I get pals come up to me all the time, asking, ''Ere, Billy, what's the best way to spot a cut and shut?' I always tell them the same thing.

'You're going round a country bend, when all of a sudden you lose control of the steering wheel and find yourself smashed to pieces against an oak tree by the side of the road. Then, after you've come round and tried to dislodge the bits of shattered windscreen from out of your face, you look round, and luckily, your wife and kids are still strapped in safely in the back of the car. Only thing is, the back of the car is now 55 feet away on the other side of the f.u.c.king road. That's how you spot a cut and shut.'

The rain's now coming down heavier than ever, pounding incessantly against the car windscreen. And although the wipers are screaming at full pelt, their rubbers are worn and useless and are smearing the water across the screen, turning the road ahead into a confusing blur of winking tail lights and cat's eyes, and reducing visibility to nil. To cap things off there's some joker right up my bottle, flas.h.i.+ng his lights and trying to overtake me on the outside lane. After cursing the heavens and the slant-eyed b.a.s.t.a.r.ds that knocked up the piece of s.h.i.+t I'm driving, I swear to G.o.d I'm going to give this boy racer p.r.i.c.k a mouthful of choice c.o.c.kney c.u.n.ting when he goes past.

As he draws nearer the full beam of his headlights strike me in my rear-view mirror, dazzling me momentarily and shooting a searing pain into the back of my eyes. It causes me to swerve the car almost onto the inside lane. After quickly regaining my composure I pull the motor back to the middle lane, just in time to catch him drawing level. Contorting my face into a well-practised growl I turn to spit blood and fire, when all of a sudden a hooded figure sitting in the pa.s.senger seat levels a revolver at me out of the car's open window and lets off a single shot. The bullet obliterates my side window with a loud crunch, sucking in heaving gusts of cold and rain in its wake, before grazing the front of my head, ricocheting off the top of the dash and embedding itself in the pa.s.senger side front door. Instinctively I slam down on the brakes, causing the motor to a.r.s.e sideways left before skidding to the right and then ending up cras.h.i.+ng with a loud bang into the motor that has just shot at me, knocking it into the metal guard that splits the motorway. There's a teeth-sc.r.a.ping howl of metal scrunching against metal that sends showers of jagged sparks shooting into the black night sky, and now I'm thanking heaven for this piece of s.h.i.+t because it's probably just saved my life. Unfortunately the rear wheels lock and it goes into a Formula One skid, filling the car with a sickening stench of burning rubber. After shuddering to a halt for a split second the motor catapults forward into a hundred and eighty degree spin with the G-force pinning me back into my seat, and me screaming like some teenage tart on a fairground whip, before launching me forward like a rocket, crus.h.i.+ng my chest into the steering wheel and winding me badly, whilst at the same time plunging my forehead into the windscreen, smas.h.i.+ng a hole in it the size of a tennis ball and shattering the remainder of the window into a thousand jigsaw pieces.

A warm, sticky stream of blood seeps down my badly-bruised forehead into my eyes, but at least I manage to curl into a foetal position, as the car skids over the hard shoulder and strikes the kerb at the bottom of the embankment, after which, it rolls twice with me stuck inside, rattling like an egg in an empty egg-box. The next thing I know, I'm sitting bolt upright behind the steering wheel with my motor halfway up the gra.s.s verge, pointing down towards the motorway. But the danger ain't over yet, because the car begins to roll gently back down the gra.s.s embankment and on towards the road. Determined not to end up crushed into a docker's omelette under the wheels of a speeding artic on a Sainsbury's Brussels sprout run, I scramble blindly for the handbrake, pulling it up with all my strength and nearly yanking it through the floor in the process. Thankfully I come to a grinding halt, half on the embankment and half on the hard shoulder, but for the next minute or so I don't even know what day of the week it is, and nor the f.u.c.k do I care. But I do feel like I've been hit by an express train.

Gathering my senses I come to the conclusion that it's bang on me, and I ain't even tooled up. Plus, I've got twenty large in a carrier bag in the glove compartment. After fumbling down around the door and eventually finding the handle, I pull it up, only to find it jammed. Reaching across the pa.s.senger seat I try the door on the left, but it's so badly buckled it won't budge an inch. In a mounting panic I grab the twenty grand out of the glove compartment and start to crawl through the driver's window that's been shot out, only to be stopped in my endeavours by spiteful shards of gla.s.s sticking out from its edges, that begin to tear angrily into my flesh while wedging me in the tiny open s.p.a.ce. Through strangled cries I scream for help from pa.s.sing cars, but no one stops, 'cos no one cares. So I start the agonising process of dragging myself out through the window, howling like a woman in labour as I do so, before falling head first out onto the tarmac, my head thankfully cus.h.i.+oned by the carrier bag full of dough. After dragging myself up from the floor and wrenching a mess of shredded gla.s.s from my stomach, I pick up the twenty grand and stagger in dazed confusion towards a nearby emergency phone. But then, for some unfathomable reason, I turn back to check the car for damage. The thing's a total f.u.c.king write-off. Be ideal for a cut and shut!

A screech of tyres a little way up ahead on the hard shoulder alerts me to a car reversing backwards towards me at high speed. Gunless, and in no shape for any other kind of fight I decide to beat a tactical retreat. Trouble is, the blood that's seeping into my eyes is blinding me badly, I can hardly breathe, and my whole body is screaming blue murder. Staggering back onto the gra.s.s verge I collapse onto to all fours and rub my face in the wet gra.s.s in order to clear my eyes of blood, then scramble like a demented monkey up to the top of the embankment, slipping and sliding on the sodden gra.s.s as I go. Finally making it to the top, and with my breathing as laboured as a miner with black lung, it strikes me I've got no Plan B. What the f.u.c.k do I do now? In front of me there's temporary darkness. Behind me, eternal darkness. No f.u.c.king contest! So after struggling to my feet I start to leg it, landing straight into a field that's just been ploughed. From the very first step the sodden mud wraps itself around my shoes turning them into Frankenstein boots. That, and the driving rain that's turning the furrowed field to bog, means every step I take is sapping what's left of my strength and breaking my heart. But I got no choice I must keep moving.

About two hundred yards in, my lungs finally give up the ghost, and I collapse face down into a large puddle before surfacing and gasping greedily for air. Turning back to face the motorway, I can just about make out the outline of two figures standing silhouetted against the road lights. Keeping my head down I turn and move forward once more, this time crawling for some fifty feet, until managing to drag myself back upright, to move off again across in the field in a slow painful trot. After what seems like miles but is probably only a few hundred yards, the ground begins to even out and the mud slowly changes to the well-tended gra.s.s of a school playing field. Stopping once more to take a breather I scan around, relieved to see the flickering lights of a tiny village ahead. But all of a sudden, through the hissing of the pelting rain, I make out the sound of a helicopter approaching. It can mean only one thing. Old Bill knows something's gone down. On one account it means I'm safe from the h.e.l.lhounds on my trail. But on the other, the chopper carries an infrared night vision camera which narrows my chances of escape somewhat. And the last thing I need right now is time in the slammer trying to explain away a carrier bag full of wonga and a car with a bullet hole, registered to Mickey Mouse Motors on the Mile End Road.

Exhausted, I move towards the village, with the helicopter's flas.h.i.+ng lights closing in fast, and my slow painful trot now reduced to a Quasimodo limp. Scrambling out of the playing field I hit hard road, enabling me to step up the pace and make my way past a sub-post office to my left and a thatched-roof pub to my right, before coming to a large house, perched back off the road and fronted by a gravel drive.

Seizing the opportunity I dive to the ground and roll under a Volkswagen camper van parked up on bricks in front of its garage, where I lay still, fighting to regain control of my breathing. The noise of the chopper's blades intensifies, reaching deafening proportions. Peering gingerly out from underneath a gap in the b.u.mper of the vehicle that's sheltering me, I watch in awe as powerful arc lights sweep the nearby gardens, illuminating flowers and bending them double with the powerful swish of its rotor blades.