Barry Weiss was seriously pissed off. He’d had a market stall at Waterloo. Then the local beat cop had brought the VAT crowd down on his arse. Finished that enterprise. A traffic cop burned him for drunk driving and he’d lost his licence. A neighbour reported him for excessive noise and a black policewoman read him the riot act. Coming home from the Cricketers, he’d taken a piss against St Mark’s Catheral.
Guess what?
A blond fuck of a Scottish cop named McDonald did him for public indecency.
He’d had it.
At the arse end of East Lane, he bought a gun from some non-European fuck for fifty quid. A Glock, who hadn’t heard of those babes? Lightweight, reliable, sleek. He loved that piece. To celebrate, he shot a traffic warden in Balham, like anyone gave a toss. It wasn’t even reported in the South London Press. That he found seriously depressing. Who the hell did you have to shoot to get a review? He’d failed to score any charlie the past few days so you do what you can. Bought a bottle of vodka and six cans of Red Bull. The working stiff’s cocaine.
It was starting to happen, a nice buzz building and Iron Maiden on the speakers. Crank it up. Then it hit him: kill a cop. It was what Oprah called a light-bulb moment. No... no, hold on a mo’... kill lots of cops. And if he got caught? There’d be book deals, Sky News, mini series’... And fuck... hold the phones... Jerry Springer. Where was the downside? Fucked if he could find it.
Dressed to kilclass="underline" Nikes, Manson T-shirt (Charlie, not Marilyn), black 501s, black bomber, Glock. Nine in the evening, his brain electric, he went out. Darkness coming fast, he hit the Oval tube in five minutes flat. There, outside the pub, a policewoman doing up her tunic. He strode up, capped her, kept moving. On the Northern Line in six and out on Clapham Common in 15 minutes. Adrenalin surging up beyond the booze, heading to Nirvana, whispering: ‘I’m a player’.
Barry was a good-looking guy, or so two women had told him. Okay, so they were hookers, but didn’t that count? He was twenty-eight, six-foot in height, weighing in at close to two hundred pounds. Not a guy to fuck with. Few did, except for the police who seemed to fuck with him all the time. He had brown hair, shaved to a No. 1; gave his scalp a blond polished appearance. Blue washed-out eyes, a hook nose and a stab of a mouth.
He’d been a regular at a gym in Streatham and could bench impressively. A unisex joint, he liked to ogle the women in their spandex. What he’d do was oil all over, get the sweat rolling and flex the pecs. If the women noticed, they hid it well. A gay had come on to him in the saunas and he’d slapped him up the side of the head.
Slapped him hard.
That was all he sang.
Barry liked to read, but only crime, especially true crime. Had them alclass="underline"
Ann Rule
Joe McGuinness,
Edna Buchanan
Jack Olsen.
He’d studied these books. Sociopaths, psychopaths, serial killers, he couldn’t get enough. For him, those guys rocked. Focusing on their profiles, he found total identification. Bundy, Gacey were his role models. Their lives fascinated him, how they took it all the way. No fucking hostages, like never. Barry’s lucky number was eight so he decided to kill that number of cops.
Years ago, a particularly brutal one had given him a hiding. Outside a pool hall in Peckham, Barry had had one too many Supers. He’d gone upstairs and was giving it large to some Pakis over table number three. The cop had arrived.
Alone.
Barry had said,
‘Fuck off, pig.’
Turned to accept the approval of the pool punks. An almighty blow landed, rocking him from the crown of his head to the tip of his arse. Sprawled him across table ten. He couldn’t believe it — the cop had flattened him with a cue. What about procedure, civil liberties? Didn’t anyone read the fucking liberal newspapers? Then he was turned over and the pool ball jammed into his mouth, the cop saying,
‘It’s Sergeant Brant to you, fuck face.’
Grabbed Barry by the seat of his pants and pulled him down each painful step of the stairs. To roars of approval from the Pakis. On the street, he was bundled to his feet, the cop saying,
‘Here’s where I put me size nine up your arse.’
And did.
The shame, the humiliation, plus the task of ejecting the ball from his mouth, Barry hadn’t been back to that hall since. He’d bashed some Pakis though, every chance he got. Brant was the pinnacle of his list. When he’d killed the initial seven, he’d go for Brant with something spectacular. Made him hot just planning it.
Sometimes I think I know what it was about and how everything happened. But then, I shake my head and wonder. Am I remembering what happened or what other people think happened? Who the hell knows after a certain point?
Some years back, Brant had had the hots for the late Mrs Roberts. All that tight-ass Dulwich snobbery got him cooking. He’d caught her in bed with a young stud, did what he did best:
blackmail.
In return for saying nothing, she had to go out on a date. Brant got suited and booted, took her to a flash joint in Notting Hill, surprised her with his charm. Just as she felt her interest quicken, he was summoned away to a particularly Peckinpah case. The fall-out got him knifed in the back and he’d left her alone after that. An A-list villain had taunted Roberts about his Sergeant shafting the missus. One drunken night, Roberts asked him straight out if there was any truth in the story. Brant answered,
‘Aren’t we mates, guv?’
Managed to slide a sneer and a whine into the question.
The evening after the crematorium, Brant came to muttering,
‘Yeah, mates!’
His hangover was a classic. Big, roaring and merciless, he spotted remnants of green chicken under a chair, prayed:
‘Don’t let me have eaten that.’
Stomach lurch and he was on his knees over the toilet bowl. After the upchuck, as he cleared the tears from his eyes, he saw he had indeed eaten the green. The phone rang and he shouted,
‘Fuck off.’
It didn’t.
He snapped the receiver, growled,
‘What?’
Super Brown, who said,
‘Sergeant Brant, where on earth have you been?’
‘Giving succour to the Chief Inspector, as ordered, sir.’
‘Well, get your botty over to the Oval, an officer is down.’
‘Sir?’
‘On the double, Sergeant.’
Click.
Holding the dead phone, Brant said,
‘Botty?’
Falls had dressed to impress. Okay, so Porter Nash was gay, and this wasn’t like a date. But you never knew where an evening might take you. She wore a white sheath and gasped at how black her skin appeared, said,
‘Yo’ looking foxy, girl.’
She was.
Two stud pearls for that Essex effect; keep the punters confused, get them thinking,
‘High yaller.’
Then, a moment, what would Rosie say? Not anything, not any more. Her best friend, a white cop. Then an HIV junkie had bitten her and she’d killed herself. The loss washed over Falls anew.
Rosie’s pig of a husband had said — regarding the funeral arrangements:
‘No police, thank you very much, and especially none of those vulgar wreaths in the shape of helmets.’
Falls had thought then and still did: Fuck you, asshole.
Sent the biggest, most ostentatious one she could get. Shape of a big, blue, Met helmet. Now, she went to the cabinet, took out a bottle of scotch, said,