'He reckons he don't wanna be doing any business with us. Not only that, he called Danny a psychopath.'

'Yeah, well f.u.c.k The Bug,' says Danny, cutting in. 'That slag's had his chance to get his bit of dough back first, but instead he wants to c.u.n.t me off. Psychopath? I'll give him f.u.c.king psychopath.'

'Why don't we just take over the Rite brothers' Southend showroom and get our dough back that way?' says Stevie.

It's a good idea and one on which we all agree. So, after a bit of cud chewing and some more deliberating we bid farewell to a few pals, slip out into the street and into our firm's Mercedes, and hit the A13 towards Southend-on-Sea.

'Why don't we just take The Bug anyway?' says Danny, once we get rolling.

'Whadd'ya mean?' I say.

'He lives down in Spain, right?'

'Yeah.'

'So the only time he's comes over here is when his s.h.i.+pment's in. That means he comes here just to oversee the gear and collect his dough. So all we've got to do is find out when he's gonna be here, take him away and hold him to ransom.'

'Sounds all right,' says Frankie. 'But don't forget he'll have Skinny O'Neil minding him off.'

'f.u.c.k that Mick bag-of-bones c.u.n.t,' growls Danny. 'If he f.u.c.ks with us he'll lose his nut.'

'How we gonna know when The Bug's here?' I say. 'He's a slippery c.u.n.t. No one ever knows his movements.'

'You just watch me graft,' says Danny.

We hit the outskirts of Southend in stony silence and with Danny wound up like a cheap watch. Behind us the sun is struggling to break cover from behind a large cloud full of p.i.s.sy rain, and in front, a WELCOME TO SOUTHEND sign, made up of multicoloured flowers on a small gra.s.s roundabout, heralds our arrival and the start of the sea-front. There ain't nothing I hate so f.u.c.king much as English tweeness, so the unreconstructed yob in me winds down the car window and flicks a lighted cigarette at the floral display. It lightens my mood a little but don't detract from the fact we've got a lot of dough laid down with the Rite brothers, and if it ain't forthcoming, they'll be fis.h.i.+ng at least one bloated body out of the estuary down this neck of the woods in the not too distant future. Moving on down toward the business end of the front we pa.s.s the usual glut of c.o.c.kle and muscle stalls, and then a tiny fairground full of inanely grinning parents waving like r.e.t.a.r.ds at their sprogs as they go round and round in pointless circles on silly little kiddie roundabouts. There's even a crazy golf course. You don't have to be crazy to play crazy golf. You just have to be a sad f.u.c.k with f.u.c.k all better to do.

Back in the good old days Southend was still a khazi but at least it rocked. You could slip across to the Gold Mine on Canvey Island, drop a couple of blueys and dance the night away at a soul all-nighter. Or if you liked your music hard-edged, you could get down and bop to The Kursal Fliers or the Feelgoods. Lee Brilleaux and the boys, blowing out barrel-loads of s.h.i.+t-kickin' British R'n'B. Getting down with the Doctors would make you feel good all night! The ponced-up local civic dignitaries have tried to take it upmarket, but it's still got about as much cla.s.s as a boot sale. Now at weekends it's infested with flash-c.u.n.t c.o.c.kney cowboys with melted brains, walking arm in arm with over-baked tarts dripping in horrible tom. You've got to feel pity for people who wheel in from their poxy provincial p.i.s.s-hole towns behind the wheels of s.h.i.+tty little souped-up soup cans, and who cruise up and down the seafront thinking they're in Las Vegas.

The Rite brothers' car showroom hovers into sight and we pull up onto the pavement directly outside its highly polished windows. Climbing from the motor, all of us to a man catch our reflections in the windows and self-consciously preen ourselves before following Danny into the premises. And I'm thinking to myself, what a menacing sight it must be to see four sharply-dressed men with don't-f.u.c.k-with-me mooeys climb out of a top of the range Kraut motor. But the second we stroll into the showroom we're all taken aback at the flash on offer. Gleaming beneath a row of tungsten arc lights is a breathtaking array of prestige motors, simply begging for a good home. Behind a large teak desk at the far end of the showroom under a signed photograph of Jack Dempsey, The Mana.s.sa Mauler, and resplendent in a navy blue blazer bearing his family's crest, sits Jacko, the youngest of the Rite brothers, whose face drops when he sees us bearing down on him. On reaching his desk Danny refuses his offer of a handshake, which upsets me because I genuinely like young Jacko, and had hoped this could be dealt with in a civil matter as befitting men of our status. I also know that a cigar and a brandy and a cosy fireside chat is Jacko's normal style of doing business. But Danny's in charge here and he's in no mood for smoking jacket diplomacy. Without as much as a please or thank you, he gives Jacko fifteen minutes to get his stuff together and get out, telling him that, what with the two hundred grand's worth of cars in the showroom plus the value of the property, that's our debt covered and that him and his brothers can go shovel s.h.i.+t for a living.

'These cars ain't all ours,' protests Jacko, doing his best to appear optimistic under a hangdog expression.

'You're right,' says Stevie. 'They're all ours.'

'Give us a squeeze, boys. This is our livelihood.'

'What about our f.u.c.king livelihood?' screams Danny, gob spitting out of his mouth, as he moves close to Jacko's desk.

'Sorry, Jacko,' I say, also moving forward in an attempt to calm the situation. `All we're doing is making sure we get what's ours before The Bug gets his. I mean you can't expect us to line up like we're in a f.u.c.king bus queue.'

'How the f.u.c.k am I gonna make a living, Billy, if I ain't got no tackle wrapped round me?' says Jacko.

'I hear Southend council's looking for someone to chew bread for the seagulls with no teeth,' says Frankie, breaking into a s.h.i.+t-eating grin and starting to lap up the proceedings.

'Look,' says Danny, half-sitting himself down on the front of Jacko's desk. 'We've been patient but enough's enough. This gaff stays closed and everything in here is ours. I'll tell you what to do if you wanna stay in business. You go speak to The Bug again and let him know your situation. Tell him we're good people and that all we wanna do is buy on with him fair and square on his next big load. You do that and you can have the showroom back and we'll ride with you on the debt for a while.'

'He ain't over here at the moment,' says Jacko, eyeing Danny nervously, as he leans in close to pick up a letter opener.

'When will he be over here then?' says Danny, using the knife to pick at the underneath of his fingernails.

'He, er, er, normally just turns up out of the blue. But I've heard he'll he here sometime soon.'

'Well as soon as he gets here, you make a meet and then you phone me. I'll tell you what to do from there. It's f.u.c.king easy. We have a trade, and you get to keep your car front.'

So Jacko's sitting there sweating like a junkie going cold turkey and his head nodding up and down like one of them toy dogs on the back seat of a car, leaving me to tip my hat to Danny. He's grafted a grown man like a naughty schoolboy and The Bug's fate is now in our hands. But we've still got to do what we came to do. So, after taking the showroom keys off of Jacko, we order him to leave, then arrange with a pal of ours to come down with a couple of transporters to take the cars out of the place, just in case they go walkies. After watching Jacko crawl off pig-sick we then have to kick our heels for a couple of hours until the transporters arrive, after which, we oversee the showroom being emptied of most of its stock, lock it up and then head back to London, well pleased with how the day has gone and knowing that the trap's been set and all we have to do now is sit tight and wait.

But there's one thing we all agree on, and that is that no one can know about the kidnapping. You see on our level, kidnapping a fellow criminal is a complete dog's stroke, and if rumbled, will result in a well-deserved bullet in the back of the head. So, after chewing over the implications of taking and tying up one of our own, the four of us fall into contemplation for about twenty minutes, until Stevie breaks the silence.

'Here, answer me this one, boys,' he says. 'What's the last thing that goes through a bug's mind when it hits your car windscreen at seventy miles an hour?' We rack our brains, but none of us can come up with the answer.

'Its f.u.c.king a.r.s.ehole!' he says, causing us all to crack up, because that's some funny s.h.i.+t.

JUST HAD TO slip over with Delroy in his motor to pacify Mutton-eye about the Spud Murphy coup. Not only was the man not looking a picture of health, but he tried to play up the old wounded soldier angle and put the bite on me for his full fifty grand share of the f.u.c.k upfront. I told him straight.

'No f.u.c.king dice, Mutton-eye, we ain't playing f.u.c.king Monopoly. This is real dough.' But what I did do was weigh him off with a ten grand sweetener instead. I then rea.s.sured him that he'd get the other forty once the graft had gone down sweet. I also told him that if he's out to f.u.c.k with us and this coup don't turn out to be kosher, then I'll personally take the ten grand back out of the one good eye he's got left. Bowel cancer or no f.u.c.king bowel cancer. So, after squeezing one annoying pimple, there's another spot of babysitting to be done. To that end we're heading over to south London to the Pepys estate, Deptford, one of the worst p.i.s.s-hole housing projects in the whole country. Colditz, but without the humour or hope of escape. They don't hang light bulbs from the flexes in their front rooms here, they hang themselves.

Delroy's got his hands full at the minute trying to keep an eye on one of his cousins, Shakesy. The kid's old man's in and out the nick every five f.u.c.king minutes, but never nothing big, always crabs. At this very moment he's holding down a lagging for flying moody kites down the local high street. He ain't exactly a genius. He got hold of some hot plastic from a 'reliable source' and off he went to have a spend-up. He'd hit about two shops and was thinking, sweet. When all of a sudden Old Bill appeared from nowhere, felt his collar and carted him off to the processing shop. Turns out the name on the plastic was Seamus Fitzpatrick O'Donnell, which didn't quite fit with the fact that Shakesy's old man is as black as the ace of spades and speaks with an almost indecipherable Jamaican accent. Honestly, brains of a f.u.c.king rocking horse! And the kid's out all hours and up to all sorts. And his mother can't control him. Well not from the back of the local bingo hall anyway. As we pull round into the flats where Shakesy lives, my heart sinks like a meat-filled t.u.r.d, as I soak up the depressing scene that greets us. A drab, featureless gulag of prefabricated grey concrete blocks, plonked on top of each other to form a horrid vista of rabbit-hutch housing. Dotted about their fronts is a depressing acne of broken or wonky satellite dishes. Numerous windows are boarded up with graffitied chipboard, and those that ain't have been smashed and left open to the elements and roosting pigeons. To add to the despondency there's a binman strike, which means that the rubbish chutes are overflowing with stinking piles of half-eaten dinners and rotting waste. Living in a gaff like this must be like being stuck in the bottom of a toilet bowl and being continually shat on by someone with amoebic dysentery. I got into crime to get away from khazis like this but there's always some p.r.i.c.k manages to drag me back. And I f.u.c.king hate being reminded that I come from this stock. Mind you, it's the coffin-dodgers stuck here I feel most sorry for. Some of those poor f.u.c.kers fought for freedom in the last great war and came home with their s.h.i.+rtsleeves flapping in the wind, only to get f.u.c.ked over by a succession of ungrateful and patronising governments.

As that Kraut c.o.c.ksucker Queen Mary succinctly remarked when she made her one and only foray into the ghettos of the East End to rally support from the working-cla.s.ses: 'My G.o.d, what an awful place! Why on earth do these people live here?'

''Cos they got no dough to get out, you stupid Kraut s.h.i.+tc.u.n.t!' would've been my answer to her. It's got to be a crying shame when eighty-year-olds are too terrified to open their front doors because they'd get raped or robbed. Granted, the council has made a bit of an effort to rid the place of sc.u.mbags by hiring wardens and equipping them with walkie-talkies. They'd have been better off giving them f.u.c.king flamethrowers. Fifty feet away we spot Shakesy hanging loose with a ragtag bundle of sore-looking herberts, propping up a wall as they shoot the s.h.i.+t and occasionally grolley onto the cracked pavement in attempts to make themselves look hard. Delroy winds down his window and sticks out his head as we come to a stop some twenty feet away.

'Oi!' he shouts at Shakesy, causing the kid and his firm to look up suspiciously, like they've just been rumbled shoplifting. After dropping a lit f.a.g onto the floor and stubbing it out under the sole of his trainer, Shakesy stuffs his hands deep into the back pockets of his jeans, scrunches up his shoulders and starts walking towards us with an exaggerated John Wayne swagger, his face split in two by an ear to ear grin.

'f.u.c.king h.e.l.l,' I say to Delroy. 'He needs some f.u.c.king fruit for that bowl, don't he?'

'Rebel without a f.u.c.king clue,' says Delroy.

'I've seen more fat on a butcher's pencil.'

'I f.u.c.king hate playing happy families, Billy,' Delroy then says, quietly out of the side of his mouth, as the kid reaches the car door, slides onto the back seat and sits there looking like a sack of s.h.i.+t while staring up at the both of us.

'You doing f.u.c.king gear?' growls Delroy.

'Nah!' says the kid defensively, dropping his head to stare down at the floor.

'f.u.c.king little liar. I just saw you throw a reefer away.'

'It was a f.a.g.'

'It's skunk, I can smell it all over you.' The kid looks up at me and I can't help but smile, at which, he smiles back and just shrugs.

'And what's those f.u.c.king strides you got on?' says Delroy. 'They're hanging right the way down your a.r.s.e. Looks like you f.u.c.king s.h.i.+t yourself.'

'It's the fas.h.i.+on.'

'What fas.h.i.+on's that then?' says Delroy.

'Ragam.u.f.fin.' I say, adding. 'Not to be confused with a blueberry m.u.f.fin.' The kid simply shakes his head and gives the pair of us an Elvis lip.

'For f.u.c.k's sake, Billy,' moans Delroy. 'I'm trying to be serious here.'

'So am I,' I say. 'Look at the little firm the kid's with. Shoulders like f.u.c.king milk bottles, the lot of 'em. Now listen to me, Shakesy. If you want to look like a proper firm, take my advice and tell your pals to keep their coat hangers inside their jackets when they put them on.'

'b.o.l.l.o.c.ks,' snorts Shakesy derisively.

'b.u.t.t out, Billy, for f.u.c.k's sake!' says Delroy. 'Now listen here, Shakesy, I'm supposed to be keeping an eye on you, son. It ain't easy for your mum, what with your old man in and out of the nick every five f.u.c.king minutes.'

'Shouldn't keep getting f.u.c.king caught then, should he?' snaps Shakesy, quick as a flash. The kid has a valid point.

'Anyways, how's me dog?' says Delroy, expertly changing the subject and by dint, s.h.i.+rking his family responsibilities.

'All right,' says Shakesy.

'You feeding him proper?'

'Yeah.'

'Walking him?'

'Yeah.'

'Good boy.' And with that, Delroy reaches into his jacket, pulls out a large wad of cash and counts out a wodge of crisp notes. 'Here's a gorilla for your mum and a monkey for your dad,' he says, stuffing the lot into the kid's open hand. 'And a pony for yourself. And if you're gonna get up to mischief, don't s.h.i.+t on your own f.u.c.king doorstep.'

'I don't.'

'b.o.l.l.o.c.ks!'

'Got two of 'em.'

'Yeah, well when they drop come and see me and I'll sort you out some proper graft.'

'OK.' I myself also shove a pony into the kid's hand, and after a shy thank you, he climbs out of the car and makes his way back to his firm, a little bit older, a little bit richer, but certainly none the wiser. After watching him for thirty seconds, Delroy clicks the car into reverse and we pull out of the estate.

'Whadd'ya reckon?' he says, as we make our way towards Creek Bridge, Blackwall Tunnel-bound.

'He's f.u.c.ked,' I say. 'But it's OK, 'cos he don't know it yet.'

JUST GOT A message from two sweet-as-a-nut brothers who've got a bit of graft that's been hanging in the air for a while. I'm slipping over to see them at a muscle-head gym in South London, owned by a bloke named b.i.t.c.h-t.i.t, so-called because that's what he's got from banging up too many steroids. b.i.t.c.h-t.i.t's good stuff, aside from the fact that he wears too-tight, see-through Lycra tops and thinks he looks the b.o.l.l.o.c.ks. In reality, he looks like a johnny bag stuffed with pickled eggs. But he ain't no p.r.i.c.k, even though he looks like a c.u.n.t. As well as running his gym, b.i.t.c.h-t.i.t promotes bare-knuckle prizefights, and is also the main man for punting out jack-up-juice to bodybuilders the length and breadth of the country.

Sunbed Terry and his brother, Heart-attack Jack, are already there when I arrive. Over a cup of stewed tea in a quiet corner we get down to chewing the fat. The two brothers control the charlie runnings pretty big on the southside, and until now it's been smuggled in from California inside the engines of cla.s.sic American sports cars, which is the brothers' other obsession. And although their gear's ream tackle, to be honest it does sniff up a bit petrolly. Plus, they've been getting striped up on the price, and it just so happens I've got a Cuban down in Miami who can deliver premium grade rock at well under the odds. All I have to do is make the introduction and I get ten grand every trip they make without even getting my hands dirty. It's a proposition that only a mug would turn his nose up at, which is why I'm sitting here with my lugholes pinned back against the side of my head.

'When d'ya wanna get started?' I ask them.

'Whenever you fancy, Billy,' says Heart-attack.

'I can go anytime,' I say.

'How about this weekend?' says Sunbed. 'We've got everything in place.'

'Sweet,' I tell them.

And it's as easy as that. We shake on the deal and I excuse myself, slipping out to the changing rooms to have a much-needed p.i.s.s. And lo and behold, as I stroll in with my right hand already on my zipper, not looking where I'm going, I almost charge straight into the prizefighter Lennie McClean, who's prowling the changing rooms stark b.o.l.l.o.c.k naked and with a face as red as a gang-raped a.r.s.ehole. It ain't a sight for sore eyes, for as well as being a terrifying looking man, what with his bulldog head plonked on top of an albino ape body, he's also got, dangling out of the left cheek of his cottage cheese a.r.s.e, a spiteful looking syringe, half-filled with some dubious liquid, tinged with his own blood, and that's dripping onto the tiled floor of the changing room. His back, which is as large as a side of prime beef, is smothered in its entirety with red-raw, pus-filled steroid spots, and it gets worse because when he bends down to pick up a roll-up that's just dropped out of the corner of his mouth, I get an unwanted flash of a horrible, yellowy ginger, yawning furry canyon of a.r.s.e, peppered with weeping buckshot holes.

'h.e.l.lo, son,' he says to me, wiping some blood off his roll-up and sticking it in his mouth, slightly taken aback to see me. After which he holds out a gigantic shovel of a hand for me to shake, before adding, 'Ain't seen you for ages. f.u.c.k me, you got a lovely colour. Been away?'

'West Indies, Len,' I say, tentatively shaking hands before surrept.i.tiously wiping myself clean on the back of my suit trousers.

'Smas.h.i.+ng,' says Lennie, who then, through a succession of grunts and growls, which in Lennie-land pa.s.ses for amiable conversation, sends his regards to my people. And I sort of feel sorry for him. Yeah, we all know he's a Bully Beef, but with us sort of people he minds his Ps and Qs. I mean he'll have a tear-up with anyone on the cobbles, and I don't know many men that could have it toe-to-toe with him in a straightener. But he knows we work wicked and he don't want none of that. To prove the point, since Denny Dalston filled his a.r.s.ehole full of buckshot he keeps a very low profile over east London, and that's why he's now training over southside.

'I'm off again the weekend, Len,' I shout to him from the p.i.s.ser.

'Where to?' he shouts back.

'Miami.'

'You're joking!'

After was.h.i.+ng my hands I stroll back into the changing rooms to find Lennie laying back on a bench, staring up at the ceiling and sucking the life out of his roll-up. One of seventy he gets through a day.

'Here, Billy,' he says. 'I was thinking. You know they're making a film of my life? Well, I'm supposed to give the script to Derry O'Dourke, 'cos he's interested in playing me manager. The thing is, I was supposed to fly out to Miami and meet him myself. But as you know I got shot recently, and well, the bullet holes in me a.r.s.e are giving me so much stick I can't even sit on the khazi, let alone on a plane for twelve f.u.c.king hours.'

'We heard about that, Len,' I say. 'Was it anyone we know?' Of course I'm f.u.c.king with him because I know perfectly well it was Denny Dalston that shot him.

'Nah,' he says. 'Couple of little toerags fired at me when I was working the door. Then they ran away, f.u.c.king cowards. You know what, Billy? In the old days people stood their ground and had an honest, old-fas.h.i.+oned tear-up. Now they hide behind corners and take f.u.c.king potshots.'

Poor old Lennie, I'm thinking. He can't even face up to the fact that he's been mugged off. But I say nothing because I don't want to embarra.s.s the man. Besides, he comes in handy for certain bits of graft that we don't want to do ourselves.

'It'd do me a favour if you could deliver it for me, Billy,' he continues. 'I mean, I'll lay it all on out there. Red carpet treatment, the works. f.u.c.king h.e.l.l, I'm in pain, son. I really am.'

'It's not a problem, Len,' I say. 'But I was under the impression that Derry O'Dourke was all washed-up, blacklisted because he gave that bit of potch to the IRA and then said he supported their cause.'

'It's all blown over, Billy,' says Lennie. 'He's back in the big time now, f.u.c.king facelift, the lot.' So, Lennie's going to make a phone call to Derry O'Dourke in Miami, and while I'm out there I'll drop the script in to him. Like I say, I like Lennie, even though he's a moaner and always feels hard done by. Makes me laugh the way he's always going on chat shows and banging on about how he's only a growler because he was born in Hoxton. And how, if he'd have been born in Hampstead he'd have been a brain surgeon. A f.u.c.king tree surgeon maybe, but a brain surgeon? I don't f.u.c.king think so. I remember getting in his motor one winter and there was this fly in there buzzing about and driving him f.u.c.king nuts. As he tried to swat it, he said to me, 'Just my f.u.c.king luck, Billy, ain't it? All the rest of the flies in this country have flown to Africa for the winter, and the only one that gets left behind ends up in my f.u.c.king motor.' And just looking down at him laying there under a bad light sets me to thinking, Jesus, this man's ageing badly. Jacking up too much snide juice, that's why. And he don't even know what he's putting in him. I mean the world and his friend knows that b.i.t.c.h-t.i.t is using him as a guinea pig. But then again, I don't think that Lennie worries about what that s.h.i.+t's doing to his insides, so long as it does the business on the outside. I also know for a fact that some of the gear b.i.t.c.h-t.i.t is jabbing him with at the moment is old Red Army stock from World War II, and that was used to help keep the walking dead alive after the Allies liberated the n.a.z.i death camps.

MIAMI, ON A wing and a prayer and a snide pa.s.sport. Whenever I go abroad on dodgy business I always stick up a moody moniker, just in case. And here the aim is to make sure there's no record of me being in the US at the same time as Sunbed Terry and Heart-attack Jack. International borders are p.r.o.ne to make any top criminal feel jittery, but I personally find the States to be the worst. Like most nothings that you stick in a uniform and give a bit of power to, Yankee immigration officials can be very hard work. They seem to thrive on keeping you waiting like a lemon behind a white line for what seems like an eternity, and then wanting to know the ins and outs of a cat's a.r.s.e before they'll let you into the Promised Land. As it turns out I'm bang on, and the immigration man's the usual jumped-up j.e.r.k.-.o.f.f. in an over-starched uniform. No matter, my pa.s.sport's a pearler, and that, combined with a bit of soft soap and discreet c.o.c.kney charm sees me breezing through with a nod and wink, straight out into a fabulous, subtropical south Florida night. There ain't a cloud in sky, but what with me dressed to kill and the humidity running at about ninety per cent, straight away I'm sweating like a racehorse, and so, after discarding my jacket I start to getting acclimatised. What I need next is a motor.

A car is a prerequisite in the States, because only nutters, the poor, and c.o.c.kroaches inhabit the suburban sidewalks out here. But what I specifically need more than a set of wheels, is a Ford Mustang convertible. Hitching a ride on a courtesy bus to the car-hire depot, sees me tipping the driver ten bucks, before climbing off and strolling into the reception area and sidling up to a tiny little Hispanic hottie sitting behind the jump. Smiling at me as though I once gave her the best f.u.c.k of her life, sees me whipping out my snide driving licence with matching credit card, and handing the pair over to her to run through computer check, after which she hands me a set of twirls, pouts like a p.o.r.n star and tells me to have a nice day. In less than twenty steps I'm firmly ensconced in the premium hide driver's seat of Motor City's finest muscle car, ignition on and with a straight V8 purring under the bonnet like a panther sitting in a tree at sunset. Clicking a switch on the dash allows the hood to roll slowly back, exposing me to the night sky. After gazing for a moment at an unending vista of twinkling stars, I flick it into gear, kick it down and roar out of the parking lot, my tyres spraying hot gravel over a sack-of-s.h.i.+t looking hen-pecked-Henry, standing with his fat c.u.n.t missus beside their rental people carrier.

Hitting Thunder Road towards South Beach with the roof down and the night wind blowing cool against my face, I kick it back big time and flick on the FM. As the quadraphonic speakers bring the inside of my motor to life with the heart-stopping rhythm of a Chicano radio station chunking out Cuban free-bob fusion, I smile a self-satisfied smile as in the distance looms the b.a.s.t.a.r.d son of Castro's revolution.

The faded splendour of Batista's Havana, transposed to the streets of Miami, in a drum and ba.s.s spectacular of screaming trumpets, nerve-shattering percussion and ghetto jive-talk. This ain't no white-bread, bible-bas.h.i.+ng, Stetson-wearing, Howdy Doody hick hop. This is through the blinds America, baby. My man Mr Sanchez, blasting out a murderous ba.s.sline from the c.o.c.k-fighting jalapeo barrios, and blowing away the headf.u.c.k and bulls.h.i.+t of a twelve hour transatlantic flight, from the cold p.i.s.sy sh.o.r.es of the fallen British Empire, on which once the sun never set, because G.o.d never trusted the English in the dark. I hit the causeway doing about eighty, with the salt sea air blasting up a nose already sniffing out the nearest cocaine hit, as Miami's art deco district, a zillion flas.h.i.+ng lights of joints jumping, c.o.c.ktails pouring, marriages being mended and hearts being broken, eases into view. It's all there, whatever you want, as long as you got the bucks to pay for it. In fact, the Yanks have got it so sown up down here that even the Kentucky Fried Chicken is forties retro.

America's where it's at, man, and dowdy old Blighty seems like Trumpton by comparison. You see the trouble with us English, is that our heritage is a lead weight around our necks, yet we cling to it like a drowning man will cling to a straw. We need to let go, move forward and forget about the past so-called glories and the tight-a.r.s.ed toffs that want our respect just because of the beds they were born in, and who demand we kneel down in deference before them. f.u.c.k them, and their ancestors. Think about it! Who would you rather hear singing the blues in a smoky little club, Ray Charles of Prince Charles? And where else but in the States can you get filled full of lead in a drive-by shooting, and then have your homies come pay their respect to you in a drive-in funeral parlour. Plus, you always have the feeling out here that anything could happen, anytime. Look at this for example. Two hundred yards ahead there's this right sort of a black bird in pink pedal pushers, six-inch f.u.c.k-me shoes and legs right up to her neck, hitching a ride. And believe me this sister can swing. You don't get sorts like this down the Bethnal Green Road. Impelled by inbred male predatory behaviour, I slam on the brakes and swerve over with the intention of offering the young lady a lift.

'Hi, I'm Candy,' she purrs, sliding in beside me, and man I'm telling you, this is one tall chick. Reckon she could play front-line for the Miami Hurricanes.

'Nice to meet you, Candy,' I say, kicking the motor into a show-off wheel spin, whilst surrept.i.tiously trying to check out the goods on offer.