Rise and Fall (4 page)

“You know what, Les? For once in your life, you’re absolutely right...” Jamie slung down his tools. “I shouldn’t be standing here harping on about him to you. I should be saying it to his face, and you know what? I think I might just go and do that.” And with that, Jamie marched to the office where he assumed Gary would once again be skulking. Les could jog on if he thought for a second he would have any hold over Jamie, the bloke had another think coming if he thought that he would be the one to tell Gary what Jamie’s thoughts were. Jamie was more than capable of doing that himself.

Jamie stepped into the small, cramped office and was surprised to see his boss looking even more pale than usual. He could smell alcohol and noticed the slight shake in Gary's hand as he put down his pen and looked up at Jamie. It was the sort of shake that implied Gary had been up all night drinking. 

“Gary, can we talk? Is everything all right?” As bad as things had been lately, it worried Jamie to see Gary looking ill.

“Why wouldn’t I be okay?” Gary snapped, as Jamie took a seat. Gary had a horrible feeling that he knew what was coming.

Jamie wasn’t sure how to say it. “Gary, we need to talk. I don’t know what’s going on...”

“You want out, don’t you?” Gary didn’t have to wait for Jamie’s answer; the way the boy hung his head answered his question. “Well, to be honest, son, I’m surprised you stuck around this long.” Gary smiled affectionately at Jamie. Jamie couldn’t mask his surprise, and Gary laughed at the younger man’s expression. “What did you think I’d do, shoot your kneecaps off to prevent you leaving?”

Jamie smiled back but felt shame wash over him. He realised now, sitting opposite Gary that this was a man who had done nothing but look out for him over the past ten years and, as much as he had worked hard, he was in Gary’s debt for giving him his chance.

As if reading Jamie’s thoughts, Gary said: “This ship is well and truly sinking, mate, so if I was you, I would have jumped overboard like yesterday. I’ve lost it all, Jamie. I’m in deep shit.” Gary reached into his desk drawer and pulled out the remaining dregs of Scotch that were left in the bottle he had managed to put away last night. All night he had sat at his desk, pondering every avenue of options he could think of, but there was nothing he could do to sort the mess out. Things had changed too much in the past decade. People no longer played fair, and the game was too dangerous now: it was more trouble than it was worth. The fire he had had his belly when he first started the garage was burning out. The money and the kudos all came with a whole world of shit these days.

“What do you mean, you’ve lost it? What’s going on? We haven’t lost the garage?” Jamie felt bad that things had gone this far, that Gary had been left to shoulder whatever had been going on alone. He felt guilty that he hadn’t been there for his boss when he had clearly needed him.

“No, not the garage,” Gary said. “Not yet, anyway. But I’ve lost the deals; I’ve lost the fucking lot.” He rubbed his temples. Jamie noticed that he had a few days’ worth of stubble on his chin, and that his suit looked crumpled, like he had slept in it, although Gary’s under-eye bags told the tale that there had been no sleep achieved lately either. Gary normally prided himself on his smart appearance. The severity of the situation was dawning on Jamie, this was beyond bad.

“They’ve taken over our contract with the Ugandans.” Gary looked at Jamie. “Fuck knows how. We’ve been working with those men for years. We offered them the best prices, but they must have undercut us or got to them somehow.”

“Who’re you talking about?” Jamie asked.

“The contacts that fitted us up with those motors,” Gary said. “There’s some real nasty bastard running the show now. His name’s Jerell Morgan. Trust me on this, kid; he’s one fucker not to be messed with.”

Shaking his head, as he tried to take in what he was being told, Jamie couldn’t believe what he was hearing. The Ugandan contract was their main earner; it took up most of their time and resources and was practically their sole source of income. They would be royally screwed without it.

“Well, what are we going to do about it?” Jamie couldn’t let Gary sort this out on his own. He felt ashamed that he had thought about walking. At least now he understood why Gary had been the way he had this week: the man had the weight of the world on his shoulders. The way Jamie saw it, they had two options. They could let that thieving Rasta bloke walk all over them, or they could take back what was rightfully theirs. And Jamie had no intention of letting the piss-taking fucker walk all over them. 

Despite his misery and worry, Gary smiled as he recognised the fury and fight in the kid before him; he reminded him of how he used to be when he started out all those years ago. Who would have thought back then that at the grand old age of fifty-two, he would be thinking of jacking it all in.

“Look, kid, I know you want to help and all that, but I really don’t think we’re going to come back from this one. I’ve been wheeling and dealing for years, and never in all my time have I witnessed such a sorry state of affairs. There are so many foreigners getting in on the game nowadays, it feels like we don’t stand a chance anymore, we’re totally outnumbered. We can’t match their prices. It’s a whole other world out there now.”

Jamie could see where Gary was coming from. Gary’s main rival, when Jamie had started at the garage, had been the Turkish gangs in North London. But over the years, the Turks had lost interest in cars and shifted their attention to shifting drugs. Drugs seemed to be the main earner everywhere these days. But it wasn’t something that Gary had been keen on getting involved in. The money to be made was vast, but the risk involved was far greater.  

Gary had been fortunate enough to have been left with free rein with his business dealings around Lambeth with the motors and had become so well known for his astute business sense that he had managed to secure a very large contract shipping out high-end motors to a bigwig in Uganda. Gary had sealed the deal by offering prices that they couldn’t refuse: money in this game always talked. 

The Yardies had been coming over to England in their droves in the past year and were fast becoming prominent players, but they were right nasty fuckers and like no-one Gary had ever encountered. Unlike the Turks, they didn’t want to blend in and stay on their own turf to do their deals. The Jamaicans wanted the lot: the cars, the drugs, everything. Whatever was making the money, they wanted a piece of it. Instead of working their way up, they were just taking whatever they wanted, muscling in on the bigger firms and putting them out of business. And being the vicious fuckers that they were, they seemed to be getting away with it; no-one seemed to be capable of stopping them. They had already managed to muscle in on their contract, and the junk cars they had stuck them with had just been their way of fucking with their heads. Gary knew they had done it to antagonise him. They were giving him a chance to back down quietly.

“What if I can get the Ugandan contract back?” Jamie’s voice was filled with enthusiasm, as he thought how they could turn the situation around.

“You’re not listening, Jamie. This Jerell bloke is supposed to be a fucking animal. He eats people like us for breakfast. The word out there is he’s taking over the streets. Cars, drugs, the lot; he seems to have everyone in his pocket. The Turks only really wanted the drugs, and they keep to their own: always have. They have their own battles to sort out; even they don’t want to get involved with this fucker. We have no back up. We all have our roles to play, but these Yardies are fucking ruthless, and a ruck with them becomes personal; you pick one wrong fight and that’s when wars start.” Gary sighed. 

“There’s only one thing for it then, isn’t there?” Jamie had a glint in his eye but spoke in a cold, serious tone. “We don’t pick a fight.” 

Gary stared at Jamie in confusion, as he continued: “This Jerell Morgan… we’re going to have to take the fucker out.”

It was almost three o’clock in the morning and, once again, it was cold and wet. The temperature gauge in the car had shown that it was minus one, probably the average temperature for an icy January morning in England, but even after being here for almost two months, Jerell’s hot Jamaican blood still wasn’t used to how cold it could get. 

Just a few minutes’ drive up the Thames, the clubs would be closing and the last of the drunken partygoers falling out onto Lambeth’s busy lamp-lit streets. He could see the long stretch of the Lambeth Bridge far off in the distance further up the river, and beyond that he could just about make out the twinkling lights of the famous Houses of Parliament reflecting down onto the rippling murky waters of the Thames. The isolated spot he had driven to, this far down the river, felt like a million miles away from London’s infamous tourist spot. There was no one around; even the broken streetlamp next to where he pulled up was in darkness. In fact he couldn’t have planned it better; the eerily quiet, muddy verge was perfect for what he needed to do.

He dragged the suitcase from the boot of his flashy new Beamer 3-Series. His car was his pride and joy, the first thing he had bought with his newfound wealth. He saw it as investing into the image he wanted to portray; the boys back home in Jamaica would give their right arms to have a car as flash as this. In fact, he had seen a few boys take a bullet for much less.

He hoisted the bag out of the car using all the muscle power he could muster. He loved the way that he could intimidate people with his massive six-foot-tall frame; his huge body was pure muscle and his bulging arms had a way of doing the talking for him. 

He had taken the time earlier to line the boot of the car with plastic sheeting; there was no way he was risking getting it messed up: it had cost thirty-five grand, more money than he had ever seen; until now.

How quickly things had changed for him. It was a far cry from his backyard. England was definitely where the money was at. 

Jerell was smartly dressed in a pinstripe grey Armani suit, although because of what had happened earlier it was ruined now. He would have to burn it when he was done here. Overalls would have been a more practical option, but he had got caught up in the moment this evening and the suit he had been wearing hadn’t factored into the events that had taken place; besides, he had plenty more get-up where this one had come from.

He shivered once again, as the icy winds from the river swept over him as he walked. The verge was slippery and he struggled to steady his body, to stop himself from falling; the weight of the case pulled him down, but he managed to stay upright as he dragged it along the dirt track that led to the water’s edge. 

He had always known that he would love England, and he had been right. The two months that he had been here had flown by, and he had developed a taste for the lifestyle, even if the weather was shit; being cold was a small price to pay. 

His grandma back home in Kingston would not be happy if she could see what he was doing. She had raised him to be a good boy, after his mother had upped and abandoned him just days after giving birth to him, claiming she was too young for the responsibility of looking after a child. 

His grandma had been strict. She lived by the words of the Bible, believing: ‘If you spare the rod, you spoil the child.’ Jerell had religion drummed into his ears from the minute he was born, and as a mischievous child, he had been whipped more times than he could remember. 

His grandma’s efforts had been wasted on him, though; no matter how many times she had shoved the Bible down his throat while he was growing up, evil was in his bones.

As a boy, Jerell had been an inquisitive child, his energy boundless. On many occasions, he had wondered out loud what the shores of England would be like to visit: he had been obsessed with the place.

His grandma had disagreed. “England is too cold, only white skins can live there. We Jamaicans need sunshine on our bones, boy; we is black for a reason.” She made it her mission to drum it into him that being Jamaican was a privilege, and that he must grow to respect his black heritage and his culture. “A man without knowledge of his own history is like a tree without roots, never be ignorant ‘bout where you is from boy, dat is God’s truth.” 

The last few weeks before he left Jamaica had been difficult for Jerell. He felt bad that he couldn’t tell his grandma that he was finally going to the place he had grown up dreaming about, but he knew it would be against her wishes. Things were looking a whole lot better for him now than that he was here, though, and he was sure that she would understand one day why he had just upped and left without saying goodbye. He felt that he had made the right choice. Things seemed brighter for him on this side of the world. So the bad weather, as far as he was concerned, was a small sacrifice to make in return for the big money that was to be made here. England was a money pit, unlike back home where all the Rasta men sat around in the sun, stoned out of their minds, drinking rum all day and preaching shit to each other. No-one got rich by sitting around talking shit, he thought, that was for sure. 

The options for a man like him were limited, back home: there were two main paths that he had watched many others follow. You could live your life preaching the Lord's good name, dedicating your life to being a chilled-out religious brother, but after spending a lifetime listening to his Grandma’s preaching it wasn’t a route that he favoured. He had taken the other path, the more common amongst his like-minded peers, going in the opposite direction of working his way up the ranks in Jamaica’s ghetto as a soldier. Although they all thought they were bad men dealing with guns and drugs, he had learnt early on that he was just a soldier. He was always lining some top man’s pockets while putting himself in the firing line, stealing and fighting on someone else’s behalf and never getting anywhere himself. Violence and sometimes death were always present, and the rewards were relatively small considering the lengths he had to go to earn them. The wealthy ranks of Jamaica didn’t do their own dirty work; they got their soldiers to do that for them, and there were plenty willing to do it.