Free Cracking Up by Harry Crooks Page A

smashing it, making fortunes. From that moment on, I found myself treading warily in my unavoidable association with Dog Sick.
    “It’s strategy, mate,” he continued, as if to justify being a collaborator. “If it benefits us, then happy days. Fuck the Mug Fam. It’ll be all over the news tonight. The chief bummer will be boasting about his officers doing a great job, getting bangers off the streets, making the shithole a safer place and all that bollicks. So what if they come down like a ton of bricks on that lot. Takes the pressure off us for a bit. They’re doing us a favour, our kid, if you ask me!”
    I was gob-smacked by the outburst, but I was just going to have to get on with it for the time being. As much as I hated the idea of providing the bizzies with intel, he was the connect and supplied the devil dust and the brown powder from the East. It just served as a reminder that the drug business was a sick and schizoid ATM machine. A big, fuck-off public lavatory where psychos, snides and grasses shit on everyone, and good lads are used like arse wipes. The bastards smiled as they wiped their shit-stained bungholes with you, the crocodile smile.
    Dog Sick told me that all the boys should lay low until he said different. The bizzies were obviously having a crackdown. It would be getting on top round the estate, there would be the inevitable, high profile police operations. Although the Mug Fam would be the target one now, some of our boys would suffer in the collateral damage. Dog Sick would continue to stitch up the Mug Fam with planted shooters and anonymous tip-offs until the bizzies had covered themselves in enough media glory.
    In the meantime he was going to keep me well out the way because there were leaky bums everywhere. He had booked me on a flight to Malaga that evening. “You’re on a break, our kid! Don’t tell no one nothing about it, though. They’ll find out soon enough, when you get back.”
    “I’m fucking skint, mate,” I said. But I didn’t really give a fuck about such minor problems, to be honest. I was always on the bones of my arse and was used to living on my wits. I could always team up with other like-minded scallies from the Scouse nation out there and graft.
    He told me not to worry about a thing, he was giving us a sub of two hundred and fifty quid. Fucking brilliant! I was going to link-up with his mate out there and he’d put me up; so there was nothing to shell out for. Top one. I rushed up to my bedroom, stuffing some counterfeit clothes into a holdall and picking up my passport.
    My face and ear were still aching and swelling; so I spent the rest of the day with my head immersed in a bowl of iced water, trying to minimize the damage so that I could face the customs at the airport without drawing undue attention to myself.
    I wondered how I was going to break the news to my mum. I loved her to bits but, to be honest, I was getting a bit fed up staying at her house. Things were getting a bit too claustrophobic under her caring and watchful eye. I needed some space to breath and avoid awkward questions. After all I seemed to cause her nothing but trouble, anguish and grief. I thought if I frigged off for a week it would be like a holiday for her too. I scribbled a note, telling her I was off on a jolly to Blackpool for a week and left it on the kitchen table.
    As the day went by, phone calls were exchanged between crew members and it was obvious that the police were becoming a top fucking nuisance, patrolling the estate in their armour-plated Volvo 850 estates. Inside were hit squads of kick-arse coppers, butched up in paramilitary clobber, bulletproof vests, tooled up with H&K sub-machine guns and Smith & Wesson .38 revolvers. What a bunch of fucking dickheads! Giving it the biggun, as usual. Chomping at the bit, cruising around, looking for some fucking huge showdown. Turning the place upside down, making sweeps. Stopping and searching, doing random vehicle checks. Groups