Read Online Powder Wars by Graham Johnson - Free Book Online Page A

Kato, la, off’ve the Pink Panther and that. No messing, there was always a big to do in the middle of the street; they just wouldn’t let it go.
    Two weeks later I was coming back from a Hole In The Wall job with my wagon full of swag. Sees Georgie Lawton driving his big American car round, sees red and tried to reverse over it. Then I jumped out and kicked fuck out of him. I hit him in the body with a metal bar, swinging at him with everything. Then when he went down I booted fuck out of his head. Smashed his skull. Left him for near-dead. But didn’t kill him.
    That happened a lot with villains. One day you’d be doing a bit of work together and the next you would be fighting. Way it goes. It was bad for business, in my book, but fellers like these lived and breathed violence. They were unpredictable. Even the big firms.
    We were doing a lot of business with the Bennett family on the docks. Making a lot of money, to be fair. But one part of their family decided to go to war with the doormen in town, trying to take over and that. Their tactic was simple: drive-by shootings. Just drive by in a car and shoot up the door. No back answers. They were psychopaths. Then on the side, one of them declares his own one-man war against us at the Oslo and a few other clubs. Just because one them knocked him back one night. One night he shot up the door at the Oslo. He was a fitness fanatic who trained like he was in the SAS. He used to run down the Dock Road with a haversack full of bricks. He pulled up in a car on his own, wound the window down and blew the doors off. It was time to get armed. If this one tried it again I wanted to slot him there and then at the wheel of his jalopy.
    A lad called Joey Duvall had started coming in the Oslo. I’d OK’d it. No sweat, he was. He just used to sit in the corner and play crib. He was an armed robber and gunrunner, a big hitter, in all fairness, and he’d started to do a lot of business in the Oslo. After the shootings, he told me come and see him at his flat in Picton Road the next morning. Joey pulled a load of guns out from under his bed and said: ‘You might need one of these. Take your pick.’
    There were loads – revolvers, automatics, Magnums, Berettas – you name it. I settled for a .38, a silver one with pearl hangles [handles]. Better it was. Nice and small, but flash enough to be noticed. Which is important, by the way. Saves you having to use it half the time, knowmean, if folk know you’ve got one. Goes without saying that he didn’t want nothing for it. Currying brownie points with yours truly, he was, Joey, buying himself a bit of a pass and that. Is right.
    â€˜Any food [bullets] for this or what?’ I asked. Joey gave me couple handfuls of ammo which I put in my kecks pocket: ‘Nice one.’
    When I got back to the Oslo I put the gun on top of a little shelf above the door. It was one of those high doors of an old bank. All kind seemed to be coming in the Oslo. Later that day Paul Conteh popped in to see Joey Duvall. He was John Conteh’s older brother. John Conteh was the world light heavyweight boxing champion at the time. Paul was an armed robber. They used to sit and plan armed robberies.
    The Fitzgibbons family were coming back in. Even though I’d had murder with them I’d met a couple of them in prison on remand for something or other and we’d made up, but they were always kicking fuck out of people in there for no reason. I could never understand that.
    On the first night they were allowed back in I found them kicking fuck out of someone on the door. I dragged one of these Fitzys into the toilet along with the feller they were twatting and stood between them. I couldn’t work this Fitzy out. He talked with an American accent. You do get a lot of eccentrics in the underworld, in all fairness, but you’d get that in those days especially. People would go to the States on the boats or