mornings, he uttered a polite good morning to an old man in a jogging suit flanked by two human four by twos. Only this time he took a small pistol from his coat and emptied the gun into the old man before running off.
I was now in charge of the UK and had no intention of stopping there.
Chapter 19
Sometime after I left hospital I was given a copy of Little Caesar starring Edward G Robinson to watch while I was laid up. Robinson plays Riko, probably one of the best known gangsters in movie history. I loved the movie. No — I adored the movie. Robinson became a bit of a role model. He took no shit.
There is a scene where he suspects that one of his gang is feeling guilty and about to go to confess all to the priest. Riko’s solution was to gun the gang member down on the steps of the church. I must have watched that movie a hundred times and I made it clear that I no longer wanted to be known as the bastard or Jock — and soon I was the new Riko.
People thought I was off my head but I loved it.
I had just entered my fourth decade and was one of the main players in my game. Life was sweet and I set about making myself comfortable. I called Martin down from Glasgow and put him and Spencer on the day to day stuff.
I thought Martin might object. After all he had happily grown roots in Glasgow and, apart from the odd phone call, he had been a stranger. He surprised me by jumping on a train and joining me.
I muscled up with bodyguards that were smart enough to know how to defend me and thick enough to do it regardless of the danger to themselves. I bought a pile in the country and adopted the landed gentry motif with consummate ease. Shotguns, wellies, hounds and a Land Rover Defender — I was lord of the manor — in true Only Fools and Horses style. I probably looked like a tit but I didn’t care — the money was rolling in and I was well smart enough to keep things on an even keel. At least I thought I was.
Eleven forty eight and twenty seven seconds — time flies when you’re telling a good story.
For five years I made hay and rolled in the folding stuff for fun. I had the sense to stay out of Ireland but Wales and Scotland were mine. The north east of England held out for a while but a face to face (by face to face I mean fifty odd on each side) in South Shields and we sorted it out.
I know I wasn’t the only criminal in the country. I was one of thousands but I was nearer the top of the tree than rolling in the manure at the base of the trunk.
A year later Carl Dupree rolled up at my manor. He stood on my lawn, took out a spray can and wrote in six feet letters, bright red six feet letters:: ‘The End.’
That’s when things got weird and I mean plenty weird.
Chapter 20
The sun rose on the red lettering on my lawn as three gardeners cut out the turf and replaced it with less offensive grass. Dupree had done a runner of extraordinary speed and grace. I didn’t know his name that day but I vowed to find out double quick. I ordered Martin and Spencer to the mansion and told them they had twenty four hours to find the man on the lawn and bring him to me.
They left, heads held high — the way they walked boosting my sense of well being. I would have the bastard in front of me in less than a day.
Three days rolled by and my blood pressure rose by the hour. I ranted and I raved. I screamed and I threatened. I blew a fuse, put in a new one and blew it again. All to no avail. Dupree had gone to ground and no one seemed to know who he was or where he had fled.
The lack of progress was starting to hurt. I had been dissed in my own home and I seemed powerless to act. That sort of story can gather legs and kick you in the nuts. I put thirty grand on the man’s head and let it be known that whoever brought him in would also get a boot up the promotion tree.
A week later and I had attained an altogether new level of apoplexy. All other matters were thrown to the wind as I upped the ante to fifty grand and a brand new five series Beemer.
Both Martin and Spencer told me to drop it but that just made me more determined to track the painter down. I set about it with a vengeance pulling in favours that should have been left owing. I dedicated 24/7 to the hunt and left Martin and Spencer to run the business.
A month later I woke up to find the red lettering was back only this time it was more specific.
‘The End. One week.’
I checked the CCTV cameras that had been installed but all I got was a grainy black and white picture of someone on the lawn at three in the morning. I had the fit to end all fits and threw everything I had at tracking the painter down.
A week sped away and seven days later I was sitting in the office when I heard a commotion down stairs. I stood up, just in time to greet an industrial quantity of police officers as they flooded into the room.
I was handcuffed and thrown in the back of a police car and taken to Paddington Green police station. It wasn’t the first time this had happened but it was the most heavy-handed. I asked for my lawyer as soon as I could and was left in a holding cell until he arrived. I told him to get me out and he duly vanished to do my bidding. When, after an hour, he hadn’t returned I hammered on the cell door demanding to see him again.
Twenty more minutes of sitting in the cell and he reappeared — the look on his face was not positive.
I can still remember his opening words in glorious Technicolor:
‘Someone has dropped you in it. I mean SERIOUSLY dropped you in it.’
Sixteen months later I was sentenced to twenty years. The charges were as deep and wide as the Clyde. The last five years of my life were paraded in front of the court like an open book. Accounts, photographs, witness statements, copies of correspondence — you name it — it was thrown at me. It was as if someone had recorded my every thought and gesture over the last five years.
My lawyer told me that only someone on the inside could have done this. I thanked him for that particular pearl of wisdom with a smack round the head. I had figured that out ten minutes after they started the questioning.
When Martin took the witness box, under immunity from prosecution, I stood up in the court and told him he was dead. The judge held me in contempt but I was going down big style and didn’t give a fuck.
Martin poured out damning evidence like a fresh torrent and by the time he finished I was so screwed my lawyer told me to try and cut a deal. I refused. It would have meant grassing up on my colleagues and even under threat of a life sentence I wasn’t going to roll on people.
I entered prison on the fourth of November nineteen ninety three. I served fourteen years across five prisons and was released one year and three days ago.
By then I had lost everything. Dupree — I had by now discovered his name — moved into the patch and Martin and Spencer vanished. Some of my colleagues stayed on but most left or met messy ends.
I had only one visitor in fourteen years.
It was two years from the end of my stretch. With no one returning calls, no one visiting or no one answering letters, I had been well and truly cut off years ago.
My status in the prison was worth shit and I had received a regular stream of kickings — mainly from people I had crapped on as I had risen up the scum pond. You would think that it would have stopped as the years rolled by but there was always someone new that recognised me and took delight in reminding me of what I had done to them.
Visiting time had long since stopped being a hope and, with freedom on the horizon, I should have been in a better place but I was so depressed that I was almost revelling in my pain. When the guard told me I had a visitor I laughed at him. I hadn’t had a visitor since day one. When Rachel Score walked into the visiting room I laughed again. I could fathom no reason for the visit.
She sat opposite me in a dress that was three sizes too small with five-inch stilettos that she struggled to
