Bristol is a bit special on Friday and Saturday nights. It’s a well-known venue for lads on the piss and, increasingly, girls keeping in step. My route to the ATM became a giant pavement slalom as I dodged and wove through discarded kebab wrappers and the odd splash of vomit. I maxed out for the day on my three cards and soon had fifteen hundred pounds in my jeans pocket.
A taxi rank served the Broadmead Shopping Centre and cinema. I joined the queue. Four or five groups of students were ahead of me. The girls’ skirts weren’t long enough to cover their goosebumps, and they weren’t carrying coats because they knew they’d get nicked in the bars and clubs.
When my turn came I jumped into an old Renault people-carrier. The sickly aroma of vanilla air-freshener did nothing to disguise the smell of the roll-up the driver had blatantly just finished. He was in his mid-fifties, white hair greased back. He didn’t need gel; not washing it for a month did the job just fine. His faded tattoos and big rough hands told me that, if it wasn’t for the recession, he would have been more at home on a building site.
‘Easton, mate. I’m after Barratt Street in Easton.’
‘It’s an extra fiver for a drop-off in little Mogadishu, boy.’
It was far enough from the centre of town to be a good fare, but even beneath the deep West Country burr I could tell he wasn’t too pleased.
We used Bristol for training because it was close to Hereford and as segregated as Belfast and Derry. The safe areas were very safe; the rough areas were very rough. But unlike in the Province, the segregation wasn’t religious. It was financial. A lot of places were in shit state. The local housing authorities used them as dumping grounds for the poor and dis advantaged. In the 1980s the St Paul’s area, near the city centre, became notorious for riots and drug-dealing. It all boiled down to lack of opportunity.
Easton had become a Somali ghetto, and it was no accident. Bristol lads were the original slavers, and for hundreds of years the dockland was populated by Africans, Indians and Chinese. Some of the graves in the local cemeteries contain the bodies of black businessmen, and they date back to the first half of the eighteenth century.
My iPhone vibrated.
‘I need to stop at a cashpoint, mate.’
He grunted something indecipherable in carrot-cruncher code but pulled over outside a building society. I added another fifteen hundred to the wad I’d taken out the other side of midnight.
14
The kebab wrappers and splashes of vomit gradually retreated as we moved into a more residential landscape. Every traffic light was red, but we were soon surrounded by terraced houses and little bay windows. They might have been nice and shiny when they were built during the Boer War, but Easton had definitely seen better days.
We followed the railway line, carried above us on a plinth of grime-covered brown brick. The roads were only just wide enough to take the people-carrier. They were designed for the odd coal cart to trundle up and down, not for the world of Grand Theft Auto. Vehicles were parked up on both sides, half on the pavement, half off.
We drove past three or four mosques and endless rows of dirty brown houses. All the old corner shops had become fast-food joints. Box-fresh knights sat astride rusty mountain bikes outside them, waiting to fulfil their delivery promise. But it wasn’t late-night pizza these kids in their immaculate white high-sided trainers and ball-caps were in the business of bringing to your door. It was something even more addictive.
We stopped at a junction, and he pointed to our right. ‘That’s Barratt. I can’t get down there.’
I paid my £17.50 with a twenty-quid note and told him to keep the change. A big old industrial building that had been converted into a gym stood on the corner. Lights glared from the first and second floors, but nobody was inside. I turned down the narrow and dimly lit street beside it.
15
There were no front gardens as such, just walls a couple of feet from the front windows. Some were slabbed, some had weeds springing out of broken concrete. One had a mattress decorated with Coke cans and McDonald’s wrappers. Most of the cars and vans alongside them were at least five years old. I walked past a jazzed-up 1.2-litre Peugeot with the world’s biggest exhaust extension.
I rolled the three grand as tightly as I could and shoved it down into the front pocket of my jeans.
All the windows had been fitted with plastic or aluminium double-glazing at some stage, the kind that meant you couldn’t possibly escape if someone torched your house. That was just the cheapest way to do it.
Black wheelie-bins and matching Sky dishes lined every front wall.
I checked my Breitling. I’d had a little bit of a spending spree with Anna in Moscow and thought it was time to step up a notch. Funnily enough, it told me the same time as any other watch, but it still gave me a kick every time I looked at it.
It was 01.35.
I slipped it off my wrist and out of sight.
Nadif had told me to keep an eye out for Ali’s convenience store. A car passed, stopped at the junction behind me, and then drove off. I was impressed. Frank’s lads had done really well staying with me.
Now and again a TV blared and light flickered in the gap between the curtains. The only other noise came from trains rattling past the end of the road behind me.
Back in Queen Victoria’s day, Ali’s front window would probably have boasted neat displays of coal-tar soap and jars of imperial jam. Now it was full of Chinese pots and pans and offers of a thousand tea-bags for 99p. Peeling stickers announced it was a gas and electricity pay point, sold SIM cards, Mars bars, the News of the World and fax and photocopying facilities.
The only thing they didn’t advertise was hawala broking services, but I had no doubt that if you wanted to send money to relatives in Karachi, Dubai or Mogadishu, Ali would be your man. You’d bring your cash along and give him a code word or phone number, which he’d pass to a broker at the other end. Your favourite uncle would turn up, say the magic word, and be handed a brown envelope of the local currency — minus commission, of course. The two brokers would sort that out between themselves.
Billions and billions of dollars had been moved all over the world in this way for decades. It’s the money-movement method of choice for criminals and terrorists, for obvious reasons, and a law-enforcement nightmare. Not that any of the lads round here would be financing the next 9/11. They’d just be slipping a few bob to their families back home so they could eat.
The shop was closed, but it wasn’t cut-price tea-bags I was after. It was the blue door to its left, which belonged to the flat above. The wrought-iron knocker was in the shape of a lion’s head. I tapped it three times. I didn’t bother checking whether Ant and Dec were breathing down my neck. I’d brief Frank as soon as I knew what he needed to know.
A light came on behind flimsy curtains on the second floor. The silhouette of a body moved across the room. A few seconds later, two lever locks were being turned and I had to step back as the door was pushed open. I soon saw why. There was an ornate wrought-iron security gate behind it, fastened through the first two bars with a D-ring bicycle lock.
I could tell the lock was an old one by its circular key well. It was probably another of Ali’s bargains — and a complete waste of time. Before manufacturers wised up and introduced flat keys, me and a couple of mates used to supplement our rifleman’s wages by nicking mountain bikes from Andover’s sports centre when we were squaddies in Tidworth. We’d hire a van for the weekend, throw as many in the back as we could liberate, and flog them on the London estates.