The Last Gang In Town

Book summary

After London gangster Mad Tony Cook tasks Big Jim and Kenny Rogan with collecting a briefcase from Half-Pint Harry, things quickly go awry when Harry ends up dead. In a wild and hilarious search, the aging thugs dress in drag to rob a jeweller’s shop, leading to a chaotic quest with fatal consequences.

THE LAST GANG IN TOWN is a foul-mouthed, violently comic crime caper filled with gaudy characters and sharp dialogue.

Excerpt from The Last Gang In Town

Even before he’d switched on the lock-up’s strip light, Big Jim Lawson knew that he was so far up the creek that on outboard motor wouldn’t help him, let alone a paddle.

He ran his fingers through his big ginger quiff and scratched his head with the barrel of his shotgun. The light buzzed and flickered to life, like Frankenstein’s monster in one of those old black and white films his gran used to love.

When his eyes adjusted to the glare, Jim looked down at Half-Pint Harry Hebb’s brains, which he’d only recently splattered across the grubby concrete floor. The blood and gunk looked black in the piss-coloured light and reminded Big Jim of the inkblot tests that the headshrinkers used to give him when he was in borstal. A smile crawled like a slug over his flushed face. Happy days. That smile soon disappeared, however, when he noticed splatters of blood on his powder blue Teddy Boy drapes and, usually pristine, white shirt.

‘Oh, what the bloody …’ he muttered to himself.

He looked around the lock-up. It was cluttered with crates of corned beef and stacks of faded ’70s porn mags. A dirty, spider-web cracked mirror hung above a rusted metal sink. Big Jim’s shiny black Jaguar glistened in the grimy surroundings.

He put down his sawn-off shotgun, took off his jacket, walked over to the sink and turned on one of the taps. It creaked and rattled before it eventually screamed and set free rusty brown water. He made a cup with his hands and splashed the dirty water over his sweating face. Muttering to himself, he put the jacket under the running tap and scrubbed it with a paper towel.

‘Oh bugger!’ he said, as he saw that he was only making more of a mess of it. He opened the Jaguar boot and angrily threw the jacket inside.

Big Jim looked at Half-Pint Harry and sighed. He took the corpse by the ankles and slowly dragged it across the floor towards the car, leaving a streak of blood.

‘What a bloody palaver,’ he muttered.

He stopped and looked up as the heavy wooden door creaked open.

* * *

‘Oh, bloody great!’ said Richard Sanderson.

He was soaked in crimson and a sharp, knife-edged pain sliced through the back of his neck. He twisted himself upright, looking around for a horse’s head.

The bottle of red wine that he’d fallen asleep clutching like a Teddy Bear fell to the ground, spilling what remained of its contents across the fluffy white rug. He rubbed the back of his neck and stretched. He was feeling more than a little worse for wear – and kipping on the basement sofa hadn’t exactly helped his New Year’s Day hangover a great deal, either.

He picked up his red Gretsch guitar and put it back in its case, then propped it against a box of old twelve-inch singles. Televisions’ ‘Marquee Moon’ – in green vinyl – was out of its sleeve and he slipped it back in and then carefully put it back into the box. Alphabetically.

He couldn’t remember playing the guitar at all. It wasn’t something he did that much, these days, but he could see blisters on his fingertips.

Moving like an arthritic Robocop, Richard trudged up the stairs from his basement office to the living room. He went to the window and peeled back the blinds. Outside, the tree-lined suburban street was deserted.

After a few minutes, Richard heard the squeak of wheels and saw Batty Betty pushing her shopping trolley full of broken dolls toward the graffiti-stained Ford Granada where she lived. In the distance, a constellation of streetlamps and a galaxy of Christmas decorations trailed Chiswick High Road and faded towards Hammersmith. He walked upstairs and into the migraine bright bathroom and turned the shower on as hot as possible.

‘What the bloody hell has been occurring?’ screamed Kenny Rogan, shivering and pulling up his fly. He was dressed head to toe in a cream Armani suit, which was a knock-off but the suntan and gold skull and crossbones ring were as genuine as the shocked look on his face. He scratched his flaking head, which glowed under the harsh light. He was a big man, and his body was muscular, although a beer gut had blossomed and bloomed a long time ago, along with a bulbous, boozer’s nose.

‘James, have you gone and croaked him?’ he said. ‘You have, haven’t you? You’ve put the Kibosh on Half-Pint Harry. What the hell did you go and do that for?’

‘Yeah, well, you see, I had a little accident... you see what happened was ...’

‘A little accident!’ said, Kenny pacing the room. ‘A little accident? This is not my idea of a little accident, James.’

‘Yeah, but that was it, though, Ken,’ said Big Jim, as he picked up a grubby bottle of bleach from below the sink. ‘See, it was dark when I came in and I tripped on that.’ He pointed accusingly at a rusty toolbox that stood in the doorway. ‘And then the gun just sort of went off and ...’

Kenny shook his head and held up an index finger. His skull and crossbones ring glinted.

‘Silencium!’ said Kenny.

Big Jim clammed up and started sulking. He took off his shirt and started dripping bleach onto it.

‘I’ll tell you what isn’t a little accident, James, shall I? Blowing Half-Pint Harry’s head off isn’t a little accident, is it? It’s a catastrophe is what it is. Do you know who Harry is? Or WAS, should I say?’

Jim shrugged. ‘Just some thick Northerner, wasn’t he?’

‘Ha! Just some bloody Northerner! Well no. Harry was not just some Northerner, was he? Harry was, in fact, the trusted factotum to one of the Northeast of England’s biggest villains, wasn’t he?’ said Kenny.

He took a packet of full-strength Marlboro and a box of Swan Vesta matches from his pocket. He struck the match on the lockup’s ‘No Smoking’ sign and lit up. He inhaled deeply and started coughing.

‘Oh, shite,’ said Big Jim.

‘Oh, shite, exactly,’ said Kenny.

‘No, not that, THIS,’ said Big Jim, looking down at the stain on his shirt. ‘The bleach has only gone and turned the blood on my clobber all green. Savile Row, that was. Classic cut too. Cost me a fortune, back in the day, it did.’

Kenny shook his head.

‘I can’t Adam and Eve it,’ said Kenny. ‘I pop into the boozer for five minutes and then I walk bang into a scene from Carry On Croaking.’

Big Jim opened the car boot and threw his shirt in.

‘Still, I’ve only myself to blame, don’t I?’ said Kenny, his foot tapping on the concrete floor.

‘I should have known better but it was a moment of weakness, wasn’t it? I came back from a lovely holiday of a lifetime in balmy Lansagrotty and I was as chilled out as an Eskimo’s knob.’

He puffed on his cigarette.

‘There I was putting up with the freezing English weather; Jack Frost was nosing at me nips something rotten. Then I got a phone call. And, since it was from Mad Tony Cook, I had no bleeding’ choice but to answer the call and do his bidding, didn’t I? Even if it meant working on New Year’s Eve, well, I did what a man’s gotta do, didn’t I?’

Big Jim started to strip.

‘So, Tony asked me to do a little job for him, nothing tricky but very important. Just meet up with a geezer and collect a briefcase. And who did I decide to take along on the job? Big Jim bloody Lawson, that’s who.’

He crushed the cigarette packet and threw it in a wastepaper bin.

‘Big Jim, of course, is not exactly the sharpest knife in the toaster, is he? In fact, he’s about as much use as a condom in a convent, most of the time.’

‘Leave it out, Ken,’ said Big Jim, who was stood in his shiny red Elvis boxer shorts and black socks, a big toe poking through a hole in the front of one of them. He pulled a large black Adidas holdall from the back seat of the Jaguar.

‘And when I say useless, I also mean daft,’ said Kenny. ‘After all, this is only a man who was once in a pub quiz and when the question ‘What is the Biggest Loch in Scotland?’ came up, he answered ‘Chubb’. So, yes, I suppose it’s my own fault, innit? I’ve only myself to blame.’

Kenny threw the cigarette on the floor and stamped it out.

‘Yeah, but if I wanted to kill a bloke, I wouldn’t shoot him, would I Kenny? I’d use my Thin White Duke,’ said Big Jim, tapping the Bowie knife that was fastened to his instep.

‘I like to pride myself on my knife skills, Kenny. I learned it all from them Andy McNab books my old mum used to read in the old gifs’ home,’ said Big Jim.

He pointed down at Half-Pint Harry’s mangled corpse.

‘You see, what you do is, you stab ’em under the ribcage, see? So the blade isn’t deflected by bone and then you puncture the heart and twist,’ he continued.

Kenny nodded.

‘Yes, there’s an art to it, Jim. I see that,’ said Kenny, calming down. ‘But I doubt Mad Tony Cook is going appreciate that.’

Big Jim picked up a scratched stainless-steel briefcase and handed it to Kenny.

‘This is what Tony’s after, then?’ he said.

‘That’s the lady,’ said Kenny. ‘All that glitters is not gold, eh? Looks like it’s been knocked about a bit, mind you. A couple of bullet holes there.’

He tried to open the briefcase, but it was locked firm.

‘There’s a load of tools over there,’ said Big Jim. ‘In that bloody box.’

‘Best not,’ said Kenny. ‘If Mad Tony finds out about this faux pas he’s going to do his nut. He’s been going on about getting this briefcase back for donkey’s years.’

‘What’s in it, then?’ said Big Jim.

Kenny shrugged. ‘Something that threatens the security of our nation, apparently.’

‘So what are gonna do with him?’ Big Jim nodded toward Half -Pint Harry. ‘Take him to the scrapyard and let Anarchy Al sort him out?’

‘No way. Al’s too well in with the Cook family. Naw. We want to keep this on the QT. Well, for as long as we can. I know a place to get rid of him but it’ll mean going out into the countryside.’

Big Jim grimaced.

‘Yeah, I know. Shit-stinking, cider-drinking Wicker Man territory it is, too. But Jed Bramble’s pigs will polish Half-Pint Harry off in no time.’

‘What about the other job?’ said Big Jim ‘Our job? The Brixton job. When are we gonna do that?’

Kenny thought for a moment.

‘Yeah right, we’ll do our job first. Should be quick. In and out of Brixton like a fiddler’s elbow. And then we’ll go and see Jed.’

‘Give us hand then, will you, Ken?’ said Big Jim. He crouched over Half-Pint Harry’s body and took hold the corpse’s ankles again. Kenny grabbed Harry under the arms and nodded as Big Jim lifted the legs. Kenny wheezed as they lifted Half-Pint Harry’s body from the ground.