Slow Burn (8 page)

 Like his parents before him, Salim was an Asian pioneer, but instead of settling down to the hard-working toil of previous generations of Asians, Salim and others had blazed a new trail into the violent world of drug dealing. Hard drugs had arrived in Britain's Asian communities, and were rapidly creating a social problem of spiralling crime rates and increased numbers of addicts. It had led to the emergence of Asian drug gangs who were willing to use violence to carve out territories and defend the enormous profits the trade can bring. On the streets of some northern towns, gang shootings had led to public killings, executions, and a climate of fear that the drug dealers were only too willing to encourage.

 Salim knew that it was not a problem confined to the North of the United Kingdom. The previous year, police in London smashed a huge crack and heroin dealing operation in the East End of the capital city that controlled a trade worth millions of pounds. The gang, based on several large Asian families, had run a twenty-four hour operation supplying drugs to thousands of the capital's users. Tower Hamlets, which has a large and deprived Asian community, had slowly become the 'heroin capital' of the country. If he could progress through the ranks of the organisation, and make money for his boss, then he would eventually be given his own area to manage. Drugs were everywhere, and where there are users, there is money to be made.

 Successful Asians left the rundown areas, as did the educated ones. Once they achieved a degree course at university, they up and left for pastures new, using their qualifications to escape the ghettos. What they left behind were poor, vulnerable and isolated communities: places that were easily invaded by gangs. They brought with them a culture of extreme violence and ostentatious wealth that seemed more at home in the ghettoes of Los Angeles. Salim knew who his role models were, and they were not his parents. They spent their lives slaving away in a small corner shop, which they called their family business. Salim could make more money in one night than they did in a week. His role models were the gold-chain wearing drug traffickers with their new BMW cars, souped-up hi-fi systems and latest designer sportswear. The only way he could achieve his material aspirations was through crime.

 Salim was a street dealer, near the bottom rung of the ladder, but he was highly thought of and he would soon reach the next level. The 'next level' is a violent place, where the culture of 'saving face' among drug gangs can lead to the slightest perceived insult being punished with horrific violence. Salim wanted to be as rich as his boss Ashwan Pindar was. Aspiring to be at that level, was like standing at the bottom of a mountain, and looking up at the peak. Malik Shah was the man at the top of this particular mountain. He controlled several successful crime families across the country. His gangs were highly organised and stretched from the inner cities of Britain to the poppy fields of Afghanistan. At the bottom of the pile were the 'runners', usually young teenagers who make drug deliveries on specially bought mountain bikes. Then come street dealers like Salim, supplying runners and customers with their fixes. Above him were the murky upper echelons of the gang world, often using family ties with Pakistan to arrange the courier routes that bring the drugs back to Britain.

The callousness of Malik Shah was staggering. He groomed girls as young as thirteen to be mules, bribing their families to be complicit. He sought the financially destitute people of his communities, and pressed them into service. Malik would offer them loans at impossible interest rates, and then force them to act as mules in order to repay their debts. Those that refused were terrorised. As his gangs grew, they became more sophisticated. Over the past months, Salim noticed crack cocaine make its first appearance among the Asian gangs. It led to friction with other drug gangs, but the potential profits were just too great to ignore.

“Salim,” a voice behind him disturbed his train of thought. He turned to see one of his young runners approaching from the blackness of the alleyway on his bike. He was a skinny Bangladeshi kid known as Rozzo. Rozzo looked up to Salim in the same way Salim respected his superiors, hoping one day to be working in his shoes.

“What?” Salim was angered by the fact that Rozzo had arrived unannounced. The rules of the business were clear. The runner sent a text message first, and then came for the drugs, carrying the buyer`s payment. Rozzo had broken the protocol. “What the fucking hell are you playing at, Rozzo?”

“A weird looking bloke has been asking questions in the park, Salim. Questions about you, I`ve never seen him before. Don`t think he`s a dealer. He`s not a pig, no way!”

“Take it easy,” Salim lowered his voice to try to calm his frightened associate. “What was he asking about?”

Rozzo spat on the floor, and a string of saliva hung from his chin. He wiped it excitedly away with the sleeve of his black tracksuit before answering. “He was asking who worked for Ash, but he`s not a pig. I swear he`s not a pig.”

“When was this?”

“Five minutes ago, Salim. I came straight here!” Rozzo smiled a toothless smile. He had lost his front teeth to an angry customer who wanted credit for a hit, but was refused. His line of credit was revoked when he failed to pay his debts on time. It was one of the hazards of the job. Rozzo was convinced that he had done the right thing by alerting his boss immediately. Salim was smarter, and he knew it was a mistake. Rozzo had led the inquisitor straight to him.

“What did you tell him?”

“Nothing, Salim!” Rozzo pulled a three hundred and sixty degree wheelie on his bike. “I told him to fuck off!”

“What did he look like?”

“He`s a fucking weirdo, mate! Army pants and boots, and he`s a real ugly motherfucker! Massive head like a caveman!”

“Did he follow you?” Salim reached into his white Nike windbreaker for his phone. White was his colour of choice. Salim thought it made him stand out from his colleagues, who always opted for black hooded shell-suits. He dialled quickly, looking left and right along the empty street. It was time to acquire his weapon. A young voice answered the call.

 “Bring me the ten, and bring it fast,” Salim spoke quickly, trying to keep his cool. His runner kept a reactivated Mac-10 machine pistol in a duffle bag. He kept the weapon safe, constantly circling the area on his bike, in the event that Salim would need it for protection. “Have you seen anyone wearing combats?” He asked the runner on the telephone. Salim nodded his head at the reply and ended the call with a stab of his finger. 

 “Could he have followed you?” He asked turning back to Rozzo.

 “No way, Salim, I`m too fast,” Rozzo bragged proudly, pulling the bike into a wheelie again. He was about to speak again when a nine millimetre hollow-point smashed into his back. It was as if he had been hit with an invisible sledgehammer. Salim thought that he had tumbled off his bike for a moment, but as a dark pool of blood spread quickly from beneath his body, realisation hit home.

 Salim froze to the spot in panic, it was every dealer`s worst nightmare. He was under attack, and unarmed. He couldn’t tell which direction the bullet had been fired from, because Rozzo had been spinning the bike when he was hit. Salim flattened himself against the wall and scanned the area for his attacker`s possible hiding places. The street was empty. He reached down and touched Rozzo`s neck, checking for a pulse. There was none, he was long gone. Salim looked down the alleyway, which ran between the tower blocks. The darkness was impenetrable. His mobile vibrated and he looked at the illuminated screen. It was his runner. He was a minute away, bringing Salim his machinegun. The sound of rubber tyres approached, a splashing drone as rainwater sprayed up from the tarmac. A mountain bike approached at high speed. The young runner was standing as he pumped the pedals as fast as he could. Salim felt adrenalin pumping through his veins now as his weapon neared. The Mac-10 would even things up. Whoever this clown was, he would be sorry that he crossed paths with Salim. He was destined to be a famous gangster. Malik Shah and Ashwan Pindar would be impressed when they heard that Salim had taken out a rival. He could taste the street-cred a kill would bring to him.

 Salim broke cover and sprinted to meet the runner. The runner reached inside his black hooded top, and pulled the weapon out. He lifted it out in front for Salim to grab it. A silenced shot spat from the darkness, and a nine-millimetre dumdum hit the cyclist straight between the eyes. A jagged black hole appeared in the runner`s face and the back of his skull exploded as the bullet exited carrying lumps of grey brain matter with it. The mountain bike carried on without the rider, and it clattered to a halt at the entrance to the alleyway. The runner was blasted backwards off the bike and he dropped like a dead weight onto the pavement. The Mac-10 clattered away into the night, lost in the shadows. 

 A second silenced dum-dum round hit Salim in the left thigh, the bullet flattened and fragmented on impact, ripping through muscle and sinew. A crimson pattern widened across the white tracksuit, a ragged black hole at the epicentre. Salim dropped his cell phone and it clattered across the paving slabs noisily. He leaned his back against the wall of the alleyway, and slid down it into a sitting position. Blood was pumping through his fingers as he tried in vain to stem the flow. Two figures emerged from the darkness. They grabbed the dead body of Rozzo, and pulled him out of sight of the road, and then they returned to Salim and his runner. Salim gritted his teeth together in agony as they dragged him by the legs into the darkness of the alleyway. His fingernails ripped and split as he clawed desperately at the concrete. He was badly wounded and helpless as they pulled him off the street and into the urine stinking blackness.

“What do you want, you bastards!” Salim cried through the pain. His question was answered by a hard punch to the bullet wound in his leg. He screamed and flailed helplessly at thin air, trying to grasp anything that could stop the men taking him further into the blackness. “I`ll tell you where the money is!”

 The two men stopped momentarily; they glanced at each other silently. Salim took their reaction as a positive. Blood had soaked through his underwear and saturated the back of his hooded top. He was losing too much blood to survive this attack for any length of time.

“The money and drugs are hidden in the bike frames,” he gasped. He thought that giving up the information would buy him some time. “Pull the seats off, it`s all in there. Take it and fuck off!”

 One of the men stopped pulling his injured leg and headed off in the direction of the discarded mountain bikes. Salim almost breathed a sigh of relief, until the other man began to drag him alone. He tried desperately to struggle, but his energy was fading as his life force bled away. The stabbing pain in his thigh was excruciating, and white-hot bolts of fresh agony pierced his brain with every movement.

 “Did you have to shoot him there?” A voice came from the darkness. Salim was slipping in and out of consciousness. “There will be blood everywhere.”

  “Shut up, Einstein!” The man dragging Salim replied abruptly. “That`s why we brought the plastic isn`t it?”

  “We brought the plastic because I told you to. There will be blood all over the alleyway.”

  “Bollocks, open the doors.”

  Salim heard vehicle doors being opened, and then the crinkling, crackling sound of a polythene sheet being dragged across the delivery bay. Another shaft of pain shot through him as he was dragged onto the plastic by the legs. He tried to scream but a choked gargle was all that he could manage. Time was running out, and there was nothing he could do about it.

 “Where is he?” Einstein asked angrily.

  “He`s getting the drugs and the money,” came the snarled reply.

  “What for? We`ve got what we came for.” Einstein moaned. “Can`t you two ever follow a fucking plan?”

  A hooded figure emerged from the alleyway. He had the bike in one hand and he dragged the body of the dead runner in the other. He dropped them on the loading bay and then returned for the other.

“What are you doing?” Richard Bernstein hissed, looking at the dead boys. He was shaking his head in disbelief.

 “Change of plan, Einstein.” The man replied calmly. “We`re going to leave these little bastards here, with the drugs, and a message for the police. I want everyone to think that this was a drugs hit. The scumbags will take this personally.”

 He rummaged through Rozzo`s pockets and recovered a small notebook and a biro. He ripped a blank page from amongst the illegible scrawling, and penned a note, sticking it to the dead boy`s forehead with a piece of discarded chewing gum. “That should put the pressure on Malik Shah and his friends for a while, anything that we can do to spotlight his activities is a good thing.”

  Einstein could see the sense in it immediately. If Malik, Ashwan and their associates had the police crawling all over them, then it would make it very difficult for them to step out of line. They would have to do as they were told, or face the consequences, just as Amir Patel and his wife had done. They didn’t follow the instructions they were given, and they paid the ultimate price. Malik Shah would realise that his dark empire was under attack, but he would be helpless to stop it while the police scrutinised his businesses. If this were a game of chess, then Einstein had all his strong pieces in the right places, and this game would have only one ending, checkmate. The dead boys were a bonus for now, and he could see the benefit. The big man couldn’t but he rarely did, he just followed orders. At first Einstein was worried about killing, but as the years went by and he watched Malik Shah and his empire grow, he realised that anyone connected to them was evil, and equally guilty. There would be collateral deaths too, but that was to be expected.