The Face (Harry Tyler Book 1) (6 page)

By the time he met Kara Cooper, Harry Tyler was acknowledged to be one of a dozen key players in England who were regarded as the masters of their art. He was a consummate professional. A true thespian. Police colleagues called him “The Bushwhacker”.

J
ohnny Too couldn’t remember the last time his cock had felt this sore. Five times he’d fucked it, six if you count the time he didn’t come. Geri was worth seeing again. Dirty bitch. John smiled. He tucked into a fry-up in Mario’s cafe in Covent Garden, sipped a cup of extra-strong espresso with four sugars and started reading that morning’s
Sun
from the back page. He’d see what John Saddler had to say about Tottenham getting hammered 4-1 at home then bowl over to Mr Eddie’s in Dean Street and get measured up for a new whistle. Sweet.

Gary Shaw felt good. For the first time in years he was actually excited about the job, despite, perhaps even because of the hurdles he had to negotiate. Shaw knew the Bakers were flagged targets of just about every big squad in London and the national boys as well. Hitting their drinker was problematic for a number of reasons, the main one being getting permission from the major players. They were supposed to be watching the Bakers round the clock, waiting for them to go “hands on” the big parcel. Hands on, bollocks. Shaw knew Johnny was too smart ever to go up front for any serious dealing. They had plenty of soldiers for that. Problem two was could the local uniform be told in advance what was about to happen? How many owed it to their snouts to tip ’em the wink and keep ’em out of the Ned on the day?

Shaw went to his boss the first thing Monday morning. He wasn’t looking forward to it. Detective Chief Inspector Gordon Hitchcock was a nice enough bloke, it was just that … well, he was end-of-century man personified. Hitchcock was one of that breed who had done so well under Major and Blair. He didn’t believe in anything except management, order, and personal advancement, which meant toeing the PC line at all times, no matter how illogical or insane it might be. All his service, Hitchcock had been a good, honest uniform man, but not a crime fighter. Becoming a DO had been a career move. He didn’t want to be a detective but, like most modern policemen of rank, Hitchcock had viewed the move as a springboard to the Superintendent job he could ride out to retirement time. His experience of prosecuting publicans didn’t stretch beyond catching a landlord serving a couple of regulars ten minutes after last shout. Much easier to roast Albert and Mary for provoking the police by being up past their bedtime than to take on a pub that Tony Soprano would have thought twice about frequenting.

To his credit, Hitchcock knew about the Ned, and the grief that the Baker firm had been giving the police for years. Now was the time not so much for revenge, he said, as justice. Shaw listened open-mouthed as that word tripped off the DCI’s lips. He could almost hear the fanfare of trumpets and the heavenly chorus burst into song.

“Yes, sir,” Shaw said. He couldn’t bring himself to say “Yes,
guv’nor
” cos guv’nor was a term reserved for
real
CID men who warranted respect.

“Let’s get hold of the Licensing Inspector and the late-turn relief Inspector for Friday,” Hitchcock said in an Estuary drawl that positively screamed
Guardian
reader. “We can have a scrum down on Friday on how we’re going to do it.”

That was it. Gary Shaw’s interest evaporated as each familiar catchphrase came into play. “Hit the ground running … community consultation … operational co-ordination …” it just went on and on. The pub raid Shaw had envisaged to put away the worst gang of hardcore villains in London was turning into a promotional springboard before his very eyes.

“And you, DS Shaw,” Hitchcock was saying, “you organise the interview teams for the prisoners. Remind me, we must have an outer cordon to deal with drink-drivers who might try to flee the scene.”

Gary Shaw closed his eyes to keep his composure. Beam me up, Scotty, he thought.

Where better to celebrate your 21st birthday with all your mates and family than the Ned Kelly public house, Powder Mill Road, Rotherhithe, London, SE16? Cheap beer, plenty of puff and Charlie, loads of silly slappers ready to drop everything if you powdered their noses … all that and you’re just the lob of a brick away from the New Den, too. They even had a DJ in, Lucy Loud, to crank up the drum and bass till your eye-balls bulged out of their sockets and your chest physically vibrated. “It’s Friday night!” she hollered. “And we are game on!”

Johnny Too was renowned for his generosity. Easy to be when you’re spending other people’s money.

“Johnny, you old bastard,” said Trevor Richards as he ploughed through the throng. “Why you looking so happy? You diddled the VAT man again?”

“No, Unc,” Johnny Too smiled. “Me inflatable girlfriend finally said yes.”

He gave his uncle a cuddle. He was a lovely man –
diamond
! Trev had stood his ground when Millwall played West Ham, Arsenal, Spurs and the shitters from Chelsea, too. Johnny, Joe and Trev had been at Stamford Bridge the night Fashanu dumped Chelsea out of the FA Cup on their own turf. When it all kicked off outside, Trevor Richards had led from the front, jumping into eight Headhunters and showing them the business end of “Excalibur”. That was his pride and joy, a customised iron cosh liberally adorned with rusty screws. How Joey admired his uncle’s engineering skills. It was Trev who, back in the late 70s, had first come up with the idea of leaving calling cards which informed victims which particular firm had put them to sleep. “Congratulations,” they said. “You have just met Millwall Away.”

A meticulous master of detail, Trevor also planned and carried out armed heists on various security vans that deliberately invited robbery by their provocative habit of driving to the same banks and building societies at the same time every week. That, said Trev, meant they were just “gagging for a blagging”.

Trevor loved his work and he loved his play, but nothing meant more to him than his youngest son, Steven. Whenever he had been banged up, photos of his sons, Steven and Dougie, had always been fixed up just above the Millwall team picture. He adored both boys, but Steven, who had been a sickly child after a prolonged bout of pneumatic fever, was his favourite. Neither Trevor nor anyone else in the Baker circle had any idea he was gay.

Young Steven was bright, IT literate and business minded. At 14 he had been organising raves. It was Steven who had hooked the smarter of his two uncles on the Net and its unsurpassed money-making potential. Johnny had given him the readies to set up his own website, www.ftroopiway.com. F-Troop were a fictional crew of Millwall ruckers who
World In Action
had been duped into “exposing” in the 1970s. The website was a heavily coded events page for up-and-coming hooligan fixtures. Steven had visions of headcases in the near future organising via pocketsized computers – an intranet for nutters.

Like his pals, Steven had been born to be Millwall. The crowd attending his 21st could have probably filled the New Den, or that’s how it looked to Steven. There must have been, what, 100 of them in the bar, plus the birds.

Mostly in their early and late 20s, they were arrogant, swaggering yobs, foul-mouthed but frighteningly articulate. Young hounds, Johnny Too called them with something akin to paternal pride. “Look at all me young ’ounds.” The majority were white, but at least ten were black or mixed-race. Cockney blacks. Trevor had been NF through and through in the late 70s, but no one under 25 was in to race hate now, not in inner London at any rate. White powder, yes. White power? Forget it.

At 8.30 pm, Steven’s pal, Billy French, told Lucy Loud to turn down the music. “Important announcement,” he slurred. Like most of the young men present, French had an earring in his left ear. If his hair had been cropped any shorter, the Sioux would have claimed it as a scalp. “Very important announcement,” he slurred again. Then he took the mike and began to sing:

“Fuck’em all! Fuck’em all!

United, West ’Am, Liverpool,

Cos we are the MILLWALL and we are the BEST!

We are the MILLWALL so FUCK all the REST!!!!”

The whole bar erupted in song. If Johnny Too could have smiled any wider the top half of his head would have fallen off. This was going to be a great night. It had already started memorably when a couple of clearly deranged students, one female, one half-male, had come in the pub and tried to sell copies of the
Socialist Worker
. Dougie The Dog had looked at the paper.

“You support the IRA,” he’d said, stony-faced. “This is for Harry Shand!” –
The Long Good Friday
again! And he’d headbutted the greasy-haired man, knocking him out cold.

“Sorry, miss,” the laughing Dougie said to the student’s equally scruffy companion who screamed: “Don’t you ‘miss’ me, you bastard.”

“OK,” said Dougie, and he decked her too. Classic. That anecdote had spread round the party like wildfire.

Tonight, everyone was happy. Certainly the Taylor boys, Saunders and a couple of other licensed dealers were sending out for more Charlie than they had sold in many a week. It was pukka “Club Class” cocaine too, cut straight off the block. No wonder there was what seemed like a two-mile tailback in the gents.

At 9.17 pm barmaid Lesley Gore had to ask Johnny to tell the lads to stay out of the ladies. Not because the delicate flowers wanted a piss in private, but because they couldn’t get to the arse-level cisterns to toot their own gear. What a fucking night! The sounds were good, the gear was great, the River Ooze was flowing. Pint glasses were drained as soon as they were full. It was like the charlied-up clientele were out to drown themselves in one huge, gut-bloating cascade of fermented jolly juice. Johnny Too felt splendid, the King in his castle, surrounded by his troops, his ’ounds. “Staunch” to a man, every last one of them.

“Break out the bubbly, darlin’,” he told his wife, Sandra. “I’ve gotta ’ave a lash. Me back teeth are floating.”

“Ain’t ’e charmin’?” Sandra laughed. But as soon as John was in the gents he was on the mobile phone to Geraldine telling her exactly how he was going to make missing the party up to her.

Sandra was bottle blonde, an ex-model, wannabe cabaret singer heavily adorned with weighty but tasteless jewellery. She had ebony eyes, large breasts and less than perfect skin, and she was pregnant again with their third child. She went to the fridge and brought back a jeroboam of Moet which Pyro Joe popped open with a have-summa-that Grand Prix winner’s flourish to roars of approval from the older men gathered around him. Everyone was a face. Anyone who meant anything in South London was here tonight. If you were invited you turned up and put up with the “fuckin’ racket”.

You had to show respect, even if it meant just a glass or two of shampoo before it was off in the chariot up to a grown-ups’ club in the West End.

At 9.38 pm, Lucy Loud turned off the head-splitting drum and bass, and the Ned erupted in a raucous rendition of Happy Birthday – “’Appeee birfdayyy, dear Steven, ’appy birfdayyy to you-ah.”

The sense of event had lured the Bakers into dropping their guard. No sentries had been posted. No one had noticed the two unmarked removal vans pull up a street away, just behind the gas board van that had been parked up for a couple of hours. On other nights the van might have been spotted and given the once over but not tonight. Who would be mad enough to take on the Bakers when the whole firm was about them?

At 9.45 pm precisely, the rocket went up. The removal vans dropped their backs and disgorged 80 policemen. Four unmarked dog vans appeared from nowhere. Young PC Perry Jackson, 22 and keen, was the first to reach the Ned Kelly. His intention was to nick a Baker. Jackson booted open the doors and came to a dead stop. There was no way forward through the pilchard-packed punters. “What the fuck?” he said.

As the shouting started, the music went off. Girls screamed and bottles started to fly in the direction of the uniforms. For each cop who entered five wraps of cocaine hit the floor and were ground under foot. Some of the flying bottles smashed windows, officers were trading punches with revellers, dogs barked, girls sobbed, voices raised in hatred, and then CRACKKKK! The unmistakable sound of a handgun discharging silenced everyone. A policeman went down. It was Perry Jackson. Almost immediately it seemed like everyone present was trying to get out through the pub doors at the same time. It was like a boil bursting, one of those tough ones that spurts out and whacks you in the eye.

Now police and thieves were fighting toe-to-toe in the street as well as the pub. Car windows went in. The air was thick with shouts and screams once more, only now they were mixed with car alarms and sirens, and the acrid stench of CS gas. Inside, Perry Jackson, who had been shot in the shoulder, was kicked more than once as his colleagues attempted to form a human barricade around him.

Gary Shaw looked on open-mouthed. The street-fighting was in danger of becoming a full-scale riot. The Dixons in the nearby main-drag had just been ramraided. Aid was piling into Rotherhithe from all surrounding areas, but that meant opportunist thieves as well as the boys in blue. The Central London police reserve units were urgently pushing traffic out of their way.

In the midst of the fighting, Dougie The Dog was in his element. He always felt the same when it went off, like he wasn’t really there, like he was caught up in a film and totally invulnerable. The sounds, sights and smells at the eye of the storm filled his senses to overload and he lashed out every which way. Maybe this was what they meant by Beserker Rage.

It took the police over an hour to quell the disturbance. As the Police Inspector handed Johnny Baker the drugs search warrant, Trevor’s fist flew through what was left of the birthday crowd and laid him out cold. All the Baker clan were arrested. Prisoners were bussed to all nearby stations and hastily charged: assault on police, threatening behaviour, affray, criminal damage, possession of cannabis. “Everything,” Johnny laughed later, “short of being drunk in charge of a birthday party.”