Black Sheep Read Free Page A

nodding to the sick beats.
    I didn’t care what Tony said: there was no way he was going straight. Not while it was all going so well for us in RDS. Man would have to be a fool to turn his back on the streets when we
were running tings.

    RDS had been my crew since I was 11. Only we never called it that back then. We were just a group of friends who all lived on the Saints Town estate. Our mums all knew each
other and we all went to the same school. Trevor, Simon, Leroy, Nicholas, Ali, Ross, Baba, Tony and Marvin.
    Tony and Marvin Johnson were brothers – same mum, different dads – and I’d known them forever. Tony was six years older than Marvin and me and I looked up to him big time.
    Tony was always smooth, man, always on top of his game. From way back, I could remember seeing him waiting in the stairwell at the bottom of our estate, shotting, waiting for the junkies with
their wild eyes to come for their fix.
    In those days, we used to think it was good fun to shout out and warn the older boys if we saw or heard the 5-0 coming. We didn’t know that, one day, we’d be the ones standing in the
stairwell, listening out for the sound of a siren.
    But Tony didn’t stay on the street corners for long. Nah, Tony had bigger plans, bigger dreams. He was into fraud, Tony was. It came easy for him because he was a smooth talker and knew
how to con people. Plus he was good with computers and that. So, when Tony began to roll in a Jeep and flash a gold Rolex about, we youngers knew what was up: Mr Big Stuff Tony was scoring
big-time.
    Tony became a proper legend on the Saints Town estate. People told nuff stories about him: some said that he had a huge stash of coke hidden in his girl’s ground-floor flat. Others said he
had shot a policeman in New York and got away with it. Some said the police had even made a deal with him to keep the ‘hood under control and keep the drugs on the estates and stop it leaking
out into the suburbs, where the posh people lived.
    But those were all rumours at the end of the day. What I knew for sure was that Tony had a lot of money for watches, gold chains and diamond rings. And cars, of course, a new one each month.
Sometimes it was a Porsche Cayenne, or a Bentley convertible or a black Range Rover Sport with blacked-out windows and matching black rims. I learned to drive in that car.
    Tony was a natural leader: he knew how to get respect from people – and he knew how to keep us youngers in line. We all knew that Tony had our backs – we
trusted
him –
and that’s what made the RDS such a safe crew: mans were
loyal
to each other. Tony was the one who had made us that way. He was the big brother I never had.
    Then there was his little brother, Marvin, who we started to call Jukkie. He had been my mate since nursery school. I’ll never forget how one of the older kids had pushed me off my
tricycle after I had been at nursery for about a week. Marvin jumped that kid, pushed him to the ground, and beat him down with his fists, as if he was the senior and the older boy was just a
snivelling newbie.
    “That’s my friend!” he shouted, just before the nursery teacher came to haul him away. “Don’t you disrespect him, yeah?”
    As Tony’s younger brother, Marvin knew all about respect: who had it, how to get it and what to do if people didn’t give it to you. While the teacher told his mum what had happened
he bounced past them both and put his arm round me.
    “Don’t worry, Dee,” he said, his voice full of confidence. “You and me, we’re cool. I’ll look after you, yeah? Safe.”
    He was the same height as me, the same age, but to me, he looked six feet tall. He was Tony’s little brother and he had my back. What more could I ask for?
    But that was all back in the day when we could spend the whole time riding bikes, cussing each other, nicking stuff from shops, getting told off by each other’s mums. That was back in the
day, when we walked without fear wherever