Nine Foot Tall Read online

  ‘Hiya, gents, what yavvin?’ I couldn’t be more jovial if I tried.

  As mean and surly as they looked at first, I was pleasantly surprised to find that they were quite affable and cheery. There were two monstrous looking, fat fuckers and a skinny fucker with greasy hair and beady eyes. One of the fat fuckers was about six foot ten. Andy McBeth was his name. He had this mashed-in, flat nose as though he was either a boxer, or some fucker had cracked him across his mush with a frying pan. The other fat cunt had a great mass of curly hair all over his head and chin. Flopper they called him. I never found out the skinny beady-eyed bloke’s name.

  ‘I’ll have a pint of gravy for me and two pints of soup for the lads, mate.’

  Big Andy McBeth pointed to the beers that they wanted on the front of the bar as he said this, which is a good job coz I’d have been fucked if I knew what he meant by gravy and bleedin’soup! He was smiling though so I knew they meant no harm. They were just a bit pissed.

  I gave them their drinks and chatted with them for a while, laughing at their jokes, they laughed at mine, a bit of lively banter. The crack was good. They called me names, jokingly, a little twat and shit like that. No harm done. I called them names back, to the tune of much laughter by one and all. These guys are good fun. I like them.

  ‘Gizza cigarette, Gaz, ya little twat.’ McBeth smiled as he shouted across the bar to me.

  Pulling a pint for one of the other customers I shouted back that I didn’t have any cigs then I looked down to see if the pint was full yet.

  ‘Don’t fucking lie, cunt!’ He shouted this so loud that I dropped the drink I was serving, and it smashed at my feet, covering me in beer and glass. His face had changed from being kinda friendly and funny to as though he wanted to do me in. ‘I saw you smoking one earlier, ya little rat cunt. Gimme a fucking cig. NOW!’

  Now I was scared. This big fat gloyt was growling at me. Where’s me dad? Where the fuck is Hulk Dad when I need him?

  ‘Andy… mate…’ I was shaking like a shitting dog now. I knew it was gonna get ugly. ‘It were me last one that you saw me smokin’. Honest, mate.’

  At that, he didn’t say a word, just picked up his pint and threw it at the mirrors behind the bar, smashing everywhere, the pint and the mirror. I cowered in terror as the shards of glass exploded all around me. Almost on my knees behind the bar I looked up to see this brute of a man going fucking wild, destroying everything he could grab hold of – glasses, beer pumps, stools – he then picked up a great thick, glass ashtray, bounded over the top of the bar and sunk it into my eyebrow. THUD. It must have weighed at least two pounds. It hurt like fuck. Although dazed and amazed, petrified I leapt to my feet and ran, ran as fast as I could, blood spewing from the gaping wound in my eyebrow, through the pub, out the door and up the fuckin’ road I went. Frankie Goes to Hollywood were urging me to Relax and shit from the jukebox as I shot off. I didn’t stop running until the pub was out of sight, until I could no longer hear Frankie singing. Big McBeth didn’t follow, though. He must have still been in there. Demolishing the gaff. Aw fuck. My dad’s left me in charge and this fat fucker’s smashing the place to bits, and me mam and the kids’ll be back soon. No other way around it, I had to call the police. I sat in the road and waited what seemed like forever for them to come, all the while rivers of blood flowing from my crust.

  When they arrived they took me into the pub with them. He was still destroying the place. It was like a bomb had gone off. It took six coppers to hold him down. He was throwing them around like rag dolls. They eventually took him away screaming and howling. I’d never felt as safe in my entire life as when I saw that police car turn the corner with him in it.

  My poor mam got back from the supermarket to the devastation that was her new home, she called me a taxi and off I shot to the hospital, my eye still pissing claret.

  Mumtaz was right, it was only a flesh wound. Five stitches and a scar for life. A scar on me fuckin’ eyebrow. Bastard. My lovely face, ruined. I’ll never get a girl again.

  I was gutted that my dad wasn’t around to save me that night. I felt helpless. It was at that point that I realised I couldn’t rely on Hulk Dad anymore. He wasn’t always gonna be around, was he?

  Me and me mam decided not to tell him what had happened. We’d clean the pub up and tell him that the stitches on my eye were from falling down the cellar steps. He arrived back from Dublin the next day, full of the joys of spring; me grandad was getting better and there was a whole future ahead of us in The Fanny. He burst into the kitchen upstairs where I was nursing my sore head and shouted at the top of his voice:

  ‘Did I miss anything, guys?’

  September 1996– Aged 29

  Throughout the ’60s and ’70s, Leeds was what could only be described as a rat hole. A decaying, industrial wasteland whose only claim to fame was that the Yorkshire Ripper tested his grisly lustings in the back streets.

  And Jimmy Savile lived there.

  The late ’80s and the whole of the ’90s, however, saw the powers that be, the faceless “they”, knock down old Leeds in favour of an all-singing, all-dancing “bright new future for everybody”.

  They couldn’t have been more misguided.

  Yeah, sure, they knocked down the crumbling Leeds. But what they replaced it with was Fucking London!

  Shiny office blocks and apartments by the river selling for a million pound apiece. Shops and arcades spivving the smartest of cool apparel throughout the city centre. Clubs and bars where only the “beautiful people” could congregate and sip Mexican beer from the bottle with a tiny slice of lime in the neck. Fuckin’ lovely.

  Not.

  The extreme amount of wealth that was pouring into the city was made only too apparent by the abject poverty of the outskirts. The sprawling housing estates where going out after dark was for the badgers. The homeless fuckers on every other street corner. The smack heads on the ones in between. The shoplifters and burglars and prostitutes and pimps, the blaggers and robbers and smugglers and muggers and killers and joyriders and… Need I go on?

  Now, when the kids who have to live in these miserable shitholes, and the adults for that matter, see the untold wealth of the city types and top flight criminals, there are only three ways in which to go.

  1.Get a job. ‘Fuck that,’ they say. Working’s for fools and horses. Anyway, where y’gonna get a job when you come from the estates? As soon as you apply for something respectable “they” look at your postcode and tell you to fuck off, “they” don’t want “your sort”.

  2.Take enormous amounts of mind and body altering drugs in order to detach oneself from the world. This, my friends, is always a popular option. A dynamic release from the humdrum reality of your unfeasibly dreary existence. The only problem with this option is that it creates a no-win situation. No money to buy drugs, no job to get money to buy drugs, turn to crime to get money to buy drugs, get a criminal record for turning to crime to buy drugs, never get a job for having a criminal record, turn to drugs for not having a job and turn back to crime to pay for drugs to take your mind off not having a job and living on a crime-ridden estate. Or die of an overdose.

  3.Sell drugs. Wahey! We like the sound of this one. Not only can you make some cash and buy shit that you won’t need, you can get as high as a bastard kite. For free!

  4.But don’t forget, kiddiewinks, no matter how lovely a day it is, no matter how the wind catches the cloth, every kite has to come down. And when it flies too high and you lose a grip of it, it’ll come down with a crash. A crash from which it will never recover.

  Saturday Evening, 6:40pm

  ‘Aaaaaaaaaw fuck, where amma?’

  I forced one eye open to admire my new surroundings. It was like looking through binoculars, the wrong way round and with margarine smeared over the lenses. After pulling at my eyelids and much slapping of my own cheeks, I eventually came into focus and looke
d down at my watch. I spotted Steve in the corner of the room snorting the longest, fattest line of coke I had ever seen.

  ‘Stevie baby…’ I started to focus now, ‘where the fuck are we? Who’s gaff is this? It stinks. And it’s twenty to fuckin’ seven, man. At night!’

  He howled laughing at me and then, ‘Wow! That hit the spot…’ He shook his head around as though to make the Charlie go into his brain faster. ‘Don’t you remember coming ’ere this morning, Gaz man? We got ’ere about half eight, after Casablanca’s. It’s Clockwork John’s flat.’

  He leaned over and started to snort some more from his three foot line of coke. I’m fully focused now, I can see everything around me – a great big leather sofa on which I’m curled up, a monstrous looking hi-fi system in the corner, a built-in kind of kitchen in the other corner and empty beer cans and bottles strewn all around the place.

  ‘I don’t… I can’t remember… Fuck… Half eight this morning? Who’s Clockwork John? What sort o’ name’s that? Does he wear loads o’ watches or summat?’

  I sit up now and grab an unopened bottle of warm lager from the glass coffee table in front of me. There’s some crappy music playing in the background. Sounds like supermarket music or something you’d hear in a lift.

  Steve wiped the white powder from around his nostrils, gave me a huge smile and proceeded to tell me the what, why, when, where and who of the situation.

  ‘Gazzy, baby… you don’t remember? Not at all? Just stand up a sec. Go on. Stand up.’

  I leaned forward and placed my feet on the floor. I was about to stand up when…

  ‘AAAARGH! Fuck me. Me bollocks, man!’

  And I fell back down onto the sofa, clutching at my belly. I was in the most excruciating pain. I’d felt a throbbing in me knackers when I was lying down, but the pain I felt when I stood up was unbearable. Steve howled laughing at me.

  ‘Do you remember now, Gaz man?’

  I lay there trying to recollect the events of the night before when Ping! It started to come back to me. I gave a few of the details to Steve and he told his version of other parts of the story.

  What had gone on was this. The previous night I’d gone out without Steve. I was gonna meet him in Casablanca’s at about two in the morning. Casablanca’s was a seedy all-night dancing place where the dregs of the earth danced and ate drugs until dawn. Anyway, I’d gone out on me own to knock out a few Ziggys and some Billy before I went to meet Steve at Casa’s. I ended up getting wasted myself and heading to a club called Asia, a place where I was well known and I could make a bit of dosh. The bouncers always turned a blind eye. The trouble was, when I got there, there was a new set of bouncers on the door. No problem, I’ll just be a bit more careful.

  So there I am, off me nut, lots of people there who I know and lots of people who wanted gear. I was really sly about the deals, real secret agent stuff, slipping them a couple of pills under the table and when I went to greet them, shaking hands and shit. Real sly.

  Not fuckin’ sly enough.

  There’d been a problem with drugs in Asia for a long while now and the management wanted to put a stop to it, hence the new bouncers. They could sniff a dealer at a thousand paces these fellas.

  Before I knew what was going on I was being bundled out of the fire door. Three of ’em picked me up and used me as a battering ram. Opened the fucking door with me head they did.

  They got me out the back. Fuck. Not out the back. There is no feeling that sums up the fear you feel when you get taken out the back by bouncers. You know it’s gonna hurt. They went through me pockets and found my stash. About fifteen wraps of Billy and a bag with about forty pills in it. Now, normally what bouncers do when they find your stash is take it off you. That’s a dead cert. They then proceed to go back into the club and sell it themselves. Cunts. They then give you a couple of slaps and tell you to go on your way. Not nice at all. But the alternative is them calling the feds and you ending up doing the big bitch in some shitty hellhole of a prison. Bad option.

  So here’s me expecting to get a couple of punches and to have me gear stolen from me.

  There were six of ’em out there with me at this point and the ugliest of them, he looked like a pig, took my pills and emptied them onto the concrete. He smirked at me, then took his big dirty pig-looking foot and stamped all over me pills. Crushed ’em into powder. I was horrified. He could at least have just stolen them and sold them on to make some of the fuckers in the club a bit happier. That was just fucking mean and cruel. Pill-crushing bastard.

  He laughed in my face, and then, ‘Hold him, boys,’ he grunted to his mates. The pig.

  Two of them grabbed my arms and pulled me up to the wall. What happened next was awful. Awful, I tell you. I don’t like to use the word awful, but this was just, well, awful.

  Each and every one of the mad, fat, steroid-abusing, no-neck fuckers took a run up to me from about twenty yards and delivered a sickening drop kick to me bollocks, man. The first guy ran up to take his penalty and I screamed in agony and dropped to the floor, a terrible sick feeling coming into my gutty wutts. Coughing and spluttering, they brought me back to my feet and carried on, all taking a kick each. After six kicks they let me fall to the ground in a heap, rolling and writhing like a salted slug. One of them shouted at me to fuck off and never to come back and they slammed the door behind them, going back inside the club. I managed to shuffle to my feet and hobble to the main street where I could sit on a bench and compose myself. My bollocks had been kicked up inside my stomach. Unsolved Steve usually gets me out of these kinds of scrapes. All on me own again, no Hulk Dad and no Steve. What the fuck was I gonna do? I limped up to the hospital and, after waiting an hour surrounded by junkies and prostitutes who’d taken beatings from crazy punters, I was attended to. They assured me that my knackers would drop back down “in their own good time” and that in the meantime there was nothing else they could do for me other than painkillers. The tops of me legs and me groin would be bruised for a couple of weeks and to fuck off on my merry way.

  Charming.

  It was now about half three in the morning so I set off to Casablanca’s to meet Steve, still completely off me face. When I got there and told him what had happened he thought it was oh so hilarious and told everybody else within shouting distance. ‘Gaz’s knackers are in his belly, not in his knacker sack.’ Lovely. Now they all think I’m a bollockless cunt. I stood over a plumped-up beanbag and ate five more pills.

  Then collapsed.

  The sad thing is that no-one thought that I was dead or in a coma. They just left me to die, for all they knew. Even Steve. It wasn’t until closing time at around 7am that Steve lifted me up and took me to a party that he had been invited to at Clockwork John’s flat.

  Saturday Night, 7:35pm

  ‘So you see, Gaz, that’s what happened to you. And… and… I looked after you and brought you here to Clockwork John’s. So you could ’ave a kip.’

  I’m bewildered he thinks that letting me collapse in Casa’s is looking after me. Well, he was out of it himself, I suppose.

  I stood up the best I could and walked around a little, the pain in my Smooth Section still unbearable.

  ‘Me Smooths are killin’ me, Steve man, I can’t let them cunts get away wi’ this.’ I needed revenge.

  Steve crouched back down to his never-ending line of Charlie, took a huge shnerkel and then announced, ‘It’s all sorted, my son. We gonna get ’em for ya. Tonight!’

  He jumped in the air and did a karate chop against the door. He was goin’ mad. Too much coke, do you think?

  He was shoved out of the way when the door flew open. A crazy looking brute of a lunatic swaggered into the room swinging a walking cane. He had a black bowler hat on and a pair of white dungarees with a crisp white Ben Sherman shirt underneath. And he had a heavily mascarad false eyelash on one eye.

  ‘Hi d
i hi di hi hi hi there, my little droogy malchiks. What, pray tell, is occurring?’ Oh, I get it now. This must be Clockwork John. He stared straight at me, then at Unsolved, then at his watch. ‘We meet in Asia. Ten of the o’clock. Tonight. Must leave, many appy-polly-loggies.’

  He winked at me with his false eyelash then turned and left, just as fast as he had come in.

  ‘You know some nice fuckers, you do.’

  I shook my head as I directed this at Steve and plonked me self down beside him to help him finish his motorway sized line of Charlie.

  Steve was in a real agitated state now, hyped up and full of fuck, happy and crazy at the same time.

  ‘John’s a good bloke, Gaz. He’s gonna help us sort them fucker bouncers at Asia. The cunts. Look what they did to your spuds. It’s not on. It’s not fuckin’ on, man.’

  I pulled up from my line of powder. ‘Naw, man, it’s not on. Me town halls are bastard ruined. So what’s gonna happen, then? Tonight?’

  Steve fell back into the deep cushions on the sofa and relayed the plan to me. The plan was this.

  He was gonna go meet Clockwork at ten o’clock in some pub in town. John would be there with about twenty of his mad bastard Clockwork Orange loving mates, and they were then gonna come to Asia to meet me and to batter the bouncers to within an inch of their bollock-kicking lives.

  ‘Whoa… Steve man…’ I cut him short ‘…what do you mean meet me in Asia? Do you want me go back there on me own? Fuck that, man.’

  He grins like a Cheshire Cat. ‘You’ll be cush, Gaz man. Listen to me, calm down. Yes, you do have to go back on your own. But there won’t be any bouncers working till ten o’clock. You go in at nine. It’s free entry as well at that time. You’ll have no problem. I’ll give you a bag o’ pills to knock out so you can make up for what you lost last night, then we’ll come in at ten and knock the fuck out of everybody. Good style. It’ll be like the fuckin’ Alamo, man. They’re not gettin’ away wi’ bustin’ yer knackers in, man. No way.’