Free Cracking Up by Harry Crooks Page B

of innocent, unemployed lads loitering on street corners and shopping parades would be collared, trawled straight down to the police station in meat wagons where they would be taken to interview rooms and cross-examined by THE FILTH with the hidden agenda of pinning unsolved crimes on them. What a fucking palaver!
    John Lennon Airport, later that evening: I was queuing with all the other tourist and their many suitcases, decked out in our finest shell-suits and brand spanking new trainers. Everyone was smiling and the communal chatter was about basking in the sun and boss beaches straight out of holiday brochures. Whey hey! I thought. You’re going on holiday, son. I was buzzing. All I could think of was getting a suntan, getting away from the dismal winter weather.
    Then Dog Sick arrived, at the last minute. He strolled up, grinning, handed me an envelope with the cash and flight tickets inside. Then he promptly took the kitbag off his shoulder and hung it on mine with the instruction to hand it over to his mate at the other end.
    I checked in, slung my bag of snide clobber in the hold and took the mysterious kitbag on board as carry on. I’d been warned that whatever I did I wasn’t to let this bag out of my sight. I was fucking shitting myself going through customs. I didn’t know what was in the bag, of course, but I did have my usual suspicions, so I was double cacking my pants at the thought of getting a pull and missing out on spending a week in sunny Spain.
    I got through customs without a hitch and, before I knew it, I was on a two-and-a-half hour flight to Malaga, hunkered down in my seat, grinning from ear to ear. The kitbag was safely jammed into the overhead locker.
    The FASTEN SEAT BELTS sign was switched off and I unbuckled my seat belt, reached into the overhead storage, grabbed the bag and walked up the aisle to the lavatory. When I got inside, with the door locked behind me, I rummaged in the bag and found it contained a hidden compartment that concealed a mini-fortune in dirty cash. Thank fuck for that! I thought. For all I knew, it could have been five kilos of pure smack.
    I went back to my seat and, about ten minutes later, a Polish stewardess came along with the drinks trolley. I bought a couple of dumpy tins of beer and a mini-box of Pringles. I didn’t get much change out of a tenner, she pulled my pants down good and proper, but I was feeling golden, man, looking forward to the hot sun and praying the babes out there would be hot as well.

10.
    As soon as I hit the ground, I used a pay-phone in the airport to call the lad whose number Dog Sick had keyed into my mobie. Matey was a fellow Scouser and I sort of knew about him from back home. He gave me an address and I set off to God knows where. The taxi drove to the centre of Fuengirola and pulled up outside a towering block of high rise flats over-looking the Feria Ground. I spotted the lad stood by the entrance and noticed he was a big bastard with a streetwise swagger on him. He was decked out in designer shorts, Armani t-shirt and Louis Vuitton flip-flops, a nice bronzie, looking the part. He came bounding over, rolling his shoulders with a grinning kipper, we clasped hands and dipped our shoulders into each other. “Alright, I’m Rez.”
    “Alright, I’m Ow-wee.” Simple as that.
    He put a big arm arm around me. “Good to see you, lad. Dog Sick told me all about you. Bigged you up, man! Come up to the flat and let’s stash the kitbag.”
    We went into the block and took the lift up to his apartment. He showed me to the spare bedroom and I dumped my holdall in it. When I returned to the front room Rez was sat down on the couch and he’d emptied the kitbag all over the coffee table rummaging through the contents, which included a slab of Ulster Fry, Liverpool footie tops and bottles of health supplements from Holland & Barrett. He found what he was looking for and now he was smiling happily at the stacks of notes in his hand.