Cracking Up Read Free Page A

out, a trouble free exit. I scooted out of there and off down the balcony to my mates flat. I knocked on his front door. There were three bullet holes in the door: A frequent hazard of living on the estate. “Bangerz! Bangerz! It’s me … open up.”
    I heard someone moving something behind the door and saw an eyeball peeking through the spyhole, a latch was dropped and a key turned. “Come on, lad! Hurry up, will you,” I shouted, knowing he had barricaded himself inside because he had the good sense to be paranoid. Burglars were drumming gaffs and working round the clock on the estate, even when peeps were in their beds. They’d empty the place like a proper removals firm and even take the wallpaper.
    “All right, all right, mate … hang on will you…”
    He opened the door and we clasped hands and I walked in. “All right there, lar!” I said.
    “You got any smack on you, bruv?” He was twitchy and nervous, showing obvious signs of stress and withdrawl.
    “Fuck’s sake, lad. Give us a fucking chance, will you. I’ve only just put me fucking foot in the door.”
    There was a piece of ten-foot, four-be-two on the floor. He’d wedged it between the middle of the door and the skirting at the end of the hallway because somebody had tried to kick in the door.
    I went into the front room and sat down in an armchair. He followed and flopped down on the couch. The flat was a complete health hazard; a real druggies den with the front room littered with piles of discarded clothes that he couldn’t be bothered to clean, overflowing ashtrays and empty white cider bottles littering the floor and all sorts of rotting leftovers from takeaways were discarded on the tatty carpet. What a sad bastard!
    “What happened to your ear?” he asked.
    “What happened to your front door?”
    “Listen to this: I was sat here last night, having a dig up. Watching Shameless on the telly. About two in the morning. I heard some shitty goings on. Arseholes tried to boot the door in. I rushed to the hallway and warned them to fuck off out of it. Then, BANG! BANG! BANG! I fired the bullets through the door. They fucked off sharpish then …”
    “You’re a fucking mad man!”
    “Come on, Ow-wee! They’re fucking cunts, mate, you know that!” he said, shaking his head. “The bastards are taking the piss. Trying to bust in when you’re sat in front of the fucking telly. Total scumbags, mate.”
    “Yeh, I know. Piss takers and scumbags everywhere, lad. Just like the Mug Fam.”
    “You been beefing with that lot?”
    “Yeh. They’re treating us like knobs. Trying it on. We got to sort them out.”
    “Well, when you make the moves, count me in. I fucking can’t stand that shower of cunts,” he spat out.
    He hated them because they were the attempted housebreakers. He had a dirty, filthy smack habit and he was pulling smackhead stunts left, right and centre opening up lines of credit with opposition drug gangs like the Mug Fam and failing to settle up. His bad habit of swerving the payment had resulted in the drama last night. The Mug Fam were going ballistic, threatening to do him in if they didn’t get their dough, NOW.
    Bangerz was called that because not only did he liked to scoff sausages but he also had a hard-on for shooters. That’s how he had ended up in nick. Back in the day, he was a proper nutty lad: A hard case and he could handle himself. One day, he was plotted up by the community centre, dealing by himself. These two lads from another crew came up to him, giving it the biggun. They started arguing the toss over who should be grafting the patch: A trade dispute. Bangerz had a little something semi-automatic tucked into his trackie bottoms waistband. He pulled the thing out and popped it off above their heads. They scarpered and the plod landed. He got nicked and sent down, potted off to the Chokie for a year.
    He was only sixteen and that was the maximum sentence the Beak could dish out. When he came out of the