London Large: Blood on the Streets by Roy Robson, Garry Robson

from another. But as they approached Westminster Bridge
the city started to come to life. This was 24 hour London, the London the
tourist board sold to the globe, the London of iconic landmarks seen on
websites and picture postcards everywhere. Landmarks that were known all over
the world passed by them, half-noticed by the rows of sombre men sat in the
rear of the vans. Westminster Bridge, The Houses of Parliament, Trafalgar
Square, that monument to a deadly battle several lifetimes ago, remembered now
just as an innocent fable, distant and unreal. But the battle about to erupt on
London’s streets would be in the present, in the now, and, in its own way, as
bloody and as deadly as anything that happened in a far off time on a far off
sea.
    The vans
pulled up outside their destination, in a no parking zone.
    ‘Put
Balaclavas on’, ordered Dragusha, ‘cameras everywhere here.’
    Pete Abbot,
driver of one of the famous London black taxis that swarmed around this part of
London 24 hours a day, found himself trapped behind the vans and growled with
impatience.
    ‘Oi, what
you doing, you can’t park there…sort yourselves out.’
    But Pete
looked on in transfixed disbelief as twenty men armed with automatic rifles
calmly exited the vans. He had been working the streets of London for twenty
years. But this was a first, an absolute stonker of a first. Being a clever man
he quickly realised that the gentlemen with the guns were not very concerned
about parking illegally and, if he kept his trap shut from this moment on they
might hopefully not be too concerned about him mouthing off his thoughts on the
quality of their parking choices.
    ‘Fuck me’,
he said as he rolled up his window, ‘these boys ain’t here to party.’

30
    The music was too loud
for H, and too squawky, so they got a table at the back of the room. They’d been coming to Ronnie Scott’s for years now, for their annual
reunion. Since their paths had diverged - Ronnie’s into the aristocracy and the
world of high, global finance, H’s deeper into the same tough streets they’d
come up on - they always made a point of meeting here at least once a year,
partly to catch up, partly to relive their youth.
    The room was hot, crowded and
smelled of wine, perfume and Italian food. The music pulsed and clattered.
Ronnie liked his jazz, had done since he was a kid and used to come here,
amongst other hotspots, to hear the funked-up jazz/disco stuff they all loved
‘back in the day’ - a phrase he did not use in H’s company. H himself was not
so keen on the improvised, difficult stuff, preferring to hear a crooner
working with the standards.
    Like his father before him,
and as he still hoped his own son might one day become, H was a Sinatra man.
Through and through. End of.
    Since the funeral they’d made their way, through Soho’s rainswept streets, around the old watering
holes. Or those of them that had not yet been turned into high-end apartments
or frothy-coffee outlets. Both of them were, by now, the worse for wear. Both
were hurting, and hurting bad.
    They’d boozed and talked long
and hard, and were now almost talked out. How much grief, pain, anger, and
confusion can a man get through in one sitting? They settled into their chairs
and Ronnie ordered a bottle of wine that would have put a good-sized dent in
H’s weekly wages. H tried to move the conversation on a bit, to get on a more
normal
footing, and assailed Ronnie with some of his professional woes.
    ‘I’ll wring the soppy little
cunt’s neck one of these days. He ain’t half the copper I am, Ron. Not a
quarter. But he’s moving upwards like a rat up a drainpipe. Ten minutes out of
university and he’s already at my level. He’s got plenty of qualifications, and
he can Powerpoint you to death, but he couldn’t fight his way of a paper
fucking bag. That’s what they’re all like now…it’s a nightmare. All of a
sudden, I’m the dinosaur. They don’t want people like us no