Post Mortem, Gary Bell [best fiction novels .txt] 📗

later a con would walk up, cool as you like, and stuff it down his knickers. The birds were hollowed out, crammed full of gear, sewn up and given the old fast-bowl over the wall. Course, now there are drones that can do the same thing. The Smack Spitters, now they had a good system. These blokes would get loaded on heroin right before getting sent down so that it’d show up in their bloodwork and they’d get put on a rehab course inside. They’d queue up for their cup of methadone every morning, hold it in their gobs and then spit it back out in their cell. Save up a week’s worth of that and you’ve got a powerful dose to sell on to the junkies.’

‘And people actually wanted to buy that?’ Zara said distastefully.

Patch shrugged. ‘I’ve heard it all, me. There was this old biddy visiting her grandson up in Strangeways. When she got searched they found half a kilo of charlie stuffed right up her –’

‘All right, Patch,’ I said, settling him down. ‘Surely Macey can’t still be controlling the drugs in the Scrubs. People in his career don’t tend to last too long.’

Patch shook his head, smoking hard. ‘Roy’s been out on the Costa del Crime for twenty years now. There’s a Nando’s where his nightclub used to be, and all his bent coppers are either retired or dead. Whatever empire he’d built up the old way was dismantled and taken over by these smaller gangs dealing in local areas, every man ruthlessly defending his own corner. But word has it that Roy’s running out of money, and he’s spotted an opportunity back in London.’

‘Which is?’

He scratched the topmost of his chins and lowered his voice. ‘You ever seen that film The Warriors?’

‘Long time ago,’ I said. ‘Some dystopian New York City divided into dozens of street gangs?’

‘Exactly. Love that film. There’s this one bloke in it, Cyrus, who does the maths one day and realises that unifying all these separate gangs would create an army three times the size of the city’s police force. He figures that you don’t need to be wasting time squabbling for turf if you all join together instead. That way it’s all your turf, you know? So, this Cyrus calls a truce and offers the olive branch or what have you to all these different gangs. That’s the plan, anyway. One gang. One business. One army.’

I cleared my throat and tried not to sound too condescending. ‘You believe that Roy Macey, some old forgotten lag, has come back across the Channel after twenty years and asked these lifelong rivals to simply forget their differences, hold hands and work together?’

‘I didn’t say that,’ he hissed. ‘For a start, this is the twenty-first century, Rook. Roy will be running things from the comfort of his yacht in Puerto Banus. He’ll never step foot on English soil again.’

‘Then how would he maintain day-to-day control?’ Zara asked, apparently more impressed than I was. ‘Surely he’d need to be here on the street to keep discipline.’

‘The Macey name still carries a lot of weight around these parts,’ he said, his voice low. ‘Enough to get people listening. But could be scare stories.’

‘Scare stories?’ she asked.

‘Right.’ He leaned closer. ‘They say it’s his kids. Real chips off the old block. Twins. Personally, I don’t buy it. I know everybody, and I haven’t met a man who’s actually seen them. These twins, they’re myth, a couple of ghosts to make the Kray twins look like Girl Guides. But that’s how it works in this game. The Krays only ever killed two low-level gangsters fifty years back and they’re still legends. The Macey twins don’t even have to exist to incite terror.’

‘Urban folklore,’ Zara said.

‘Couldn’t have put it better myself. As for these gangs holding hands and putting differences aside, well, it never works like that. These Cutthroats you’re on about, they’re just kids. Disorganised before Macey’s offer came along, but game. Last year, the Yardies made a move on their turf. Now we’re talking about serious Jamaican gangsters here.’

‘Oh, I know the Yardies,’ I said ruefully.

‘As did they. These Cutthroats knew the danger. A few of these Yardie lieutenants were sitting in their M3 one night when two kids, and I do mean children, put so many bullets in their car that the fire brigade had to saw the roof off like one of them motorway pile-ups. These kids are fearless. Walk a mile down the road into E10, start asking your questions, and you’ll find that out soon enough.’

‘So, they are from E10?’

There were footsteps passing on the pavement beyond the building. Patch waited, statuesque, until they’d faded before continuing.

‘Started out there in the towers in Leyton,’ he said. ‘Each group alone is madder than a box of frogs, but unified … Used to be a risky little business, dealing, not that I ever indulged. You’d move a bit of gear and use the profits to buy more. Rinse and repeat. Eventually, you’d either get killed or get caught and do a bit of bird, and someone would take your place. Then it got so anyone could be a gangster, and all you needed was a phone line and a ready supply of drugs. The old boy Macey is changing that. Things are going back to how they used to be. Organised. Controlled from the top.’

‘Controlling the whole of east London, you mean, and using these Cutthroats as a front?’ Zara asked.

‘East London?’ Patch shook his head. ‘Think bigger. This is the age of instant communication. We’re talking about a system with the potential to swallow the country.’

‘Oh, like county lines offending?’ Zara said. ‘There was a National Crime Agency report I read last year. “County Lines Violence, Exploitation and Drug Supply”.’

‘I read that too,’ I added. ‘Inner-city gangs exploiting vulnerable people to branch out and sell drugs in small towns beyond the Home Counties.’

‘In a nutshell,’ Patch said. ‘After Macey left, the war went back