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

what have you and come back thinking they’re Steve McQueen, knowmean?
    So he’d started talking in an American accent. I told him: ‘You’re not a yank. You’re just one of us, you little tosser. Remember I used to protect you when you were on remand. I don’t want any messing about in my club.’
    Afterwards Mick’s like that: ‘Bad one, la. Do you know who that is? You’re going to bring it ontop talking gangster to that lot.’
    â€˜Mick,’ I said. ‘Forget about them beauties now. There’s a proper gangster in town now, knowmean?’
    Mick’s still looking a bit half thingy though. Arse had gone, to be fair.
    To keep things under control I put Joey Duvall on the door. I didn’t mind all his behaviour as long as it didn’t interfere with business, knowmean? At least he provided somewhere for the boys to sit and talk and not be interrupted.
    Paul Conteh’s firm were planning a big job in the Oslo. There was four of them; Paul, two brothers George and John Brown and Michael Maloney. They were all from Kirby. I didn’t rate them much, in all fairness. They were typical of the new breed of armed robbers coming up, chancers, if you will, but they were half-all-right fellers and they used to sit in the corner and play crib whilst scheming on their big job. No hassle, knowmean?
    It was going to be a bit of a mini Great Train Robbery. The plan was that they were going to rob a mail train chocca with registered goodies from London at a remote railway station on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall. They’d got the idea after John had lived with the postman in Cornwall for a few weeks. And for about three months they sat in Oslo planning it.
    Good plan and that, lads. But not going to happen for youse clowns. I only let them sit in the Oslo ’cos Joey asked me. I also warned him to tell his mates to give the work to someone who could hangle it, but they wouldn’t listen and one day in July they set off for Cornwall. About two days later I heard they’d been nicked by a roadblock. The pricks had got pissed before the job and held up the wrong train.
    Dickheads or what? Paul got three years and the others got fours and fives. I told Joey to stop letting in beauts like that, but by then he had started to think he was bit of a boy and that hisself, which he half was, to be fair. He gave Mick Cairns, the other lad on the door, a good hiding, to show him who’s boss. To be fair, Mick had had a few drinks and was easy to take advantage of. I was too busy out grafting to put Joey under manners for it, which I should have, mind you, but it’s fucking murder getting on top of these office politics. It’d take up most of your working day to solve just a few of these fucking playground disputes. So I told Mick to let it go.
    â€˜It doesn’t make you any dough, all this palaver, does it? Let’s get on with business,’ I said to him.
    The door was a bit tense for a few days after that, to be fair. Then to clear the air Mick and Joey Duvall decided to have a straightener, but in the khazi of all places. ‘Bit daft that,’ I thought. Mick got his leg caught in a pipe. Duvall held him down and took a running jump onto his knee. Just snapped in half like a lolly ice stick. Then he pummelled fuck out his grid. Looked like a dead body, in fairness, Mick did, afterwards. Could not let that go, at all, by the way.
    I gets the call informing me of this incident while I was in a meeting with Billy Grimwood. I’d been on the missing list for a few days – away on business with the Hole in the Wall crew. I’d just got back and Billy was filling me in on another bit of business. A big crew from London wanted to ‘invest’ a lot of dough into a large slice of Liverpool nightlife. So Billy was putting together a meeting between a handful of the city’s nightclub owners and this London firm’s top boy, a feller called