A Simple London Gangster

What Ho Proles!

Advice needed, PDQ. Does anybody have a good cure for a couple of black eyes as I’m loath to waste prime British steaks on somebody as ungrateful as My Man? Would a couple of rashers of bacon work as well? The fellow has a lovely pair of shiners, blacker than any Lancashire blood pudding.

He received them from a pleasant fellow we met in London, who goes under the sobriquet ‘Johno’. As you might remember, I’ve been into the city delivering a wad of cash to the aforementioned chap in order to settle some land deal up in Shropshire for my friend Siggy Randolph-Kelly, he of the badger bashing claim to fame.

As favours go, it was one of the easiest I’ve ever done for a friend. The Bentley made speedy work of the lanes and byways, clipping only a couple of ramblers as we went. Then we hit the city, which unlike the aforementioned hikers, did not bounce from the bumpers with points added for artistic merit. I’ve often wished that London would adopt the traffic policies of China and Russia where the better cars are given lanes of their very own. Perhaps there could be a point at, let us say, around 75,000 pounds, below which you are restricted to the prole lanes with their lines of cheap BMWs and much, much worse. Needless to say, anything less than a FIAT would be moved into the cycle lanes and cyclists would be forced onto the footpaths. Long experience has taught me that pedestrians are a resilient bunch. Most jump out of the way and those that don’t are hardly in a position to read your number plate. I’m sure you see how sensible the whole scheme sounds. It’s one of the only Lib Dems' plans I’ve ever agreed with. I believe Simon Hughes championed it in their last manifesto.

Despite London’s lack of foresight regarding its roads, we made good time to ‘Reggie’s Resting Place’, a fashionable theme bar in the East End with a pleasant nostalgia for the days when gangland violence came with a certain sartorial flair. I felt a mite underdressed in my best city pins, as the place was crammed with more camelhair coats and Italian suits than a Fellini film festival. The walls were covered with beautifully reproduced photographs of all the great bruisers, looking their best in smart collar and tie. There was Sam ‘The Butcher’ Lewis, Johnny ‘The Fingers’ Wilson, and the notorious Tony ‘The Cheerful Colon’ Anderson; memories of a bygone age and style, sure to turn the eyes a little misty.

It was a modern successor to those fine standing gentlemen I sought in order to deposit the thick bundle of notes smelling slightly of slurry.

Johno ‘Don’t call me John’ Johnson stood a good foot below me but was wider than My Man, who is himself built as solidly as a Luton underpass. A rather flamboyant scar ran the length of Johno’s face and terminated, quite aesthetically I thought, at his forehead where it met a neatly rounded whirl that looked not unlike a bullet hole. The effect was much more pleasing than you might imagine and I thought it delightfully baroque.

‘You’re a gorilla short,’ said this fine example of Britain’s underworld. He’d finished counting the money by giving his fingers a rather odd sniff but I thought it best not to mention the unusual places Siggy tends to hide his cash.

‘A gorilla?’ I repeated, looking over my shoulder and seeing only My Man who, I admit, when the light is easterly, can look a bit simian around the proboscis.

‘You know…’ he explained. ‘Two monkeys?’

Now, I was truly lost.

‘Look,’ he sighed, ‘you owe me another thousand quid. You going to hand it over or what?’

It was then that I grasped the man’s rather oblique meaning.

‘Ah! Well, I’m afraid I don’t have two monkeys on me!’ I explained. ‘Would you accept a cheque written out for a gorilla?’

‘What do you think I am?’ asked Johno. ‘The Bank of bleedin’ England?’

‘Not with that attitude,’ I assured him. ‘You’re much more like the National Westminster.’

‘Look, sunshine,’ he said. ‘You’re not leaving here until I get all my money. I’ve used expensive resources on this problem and I expect proper compensation.’

‘Then I’m afraid we’ve reached an impasse,’ I told him, firmly explaining the lay of the land deal. I then repeated what Napoleon once said in similar circumstances, but I don’t believe the man without the monkeys cared a hoot -- or indeed, whatever sounds a monkey makes.

‘Listen, I’ll do you a deal,’ he said. ‘You look a little out of your place, a city gent and all that, so I’ll be fair. You don’t have to give me the grand.’

‘Don’t I?’ I said. ‘Then that’s terribly decent of you.’

‘It is,’ says he. ‘And I’ll let you leave here, only I need some form of payment.’

‘Such as?’

‘Your suit.’

‘My suit?’ I said, looking down at well over a thousand pounds worth of Lakeland wool. ‘I really don’t think so…’

‘Then I can’t let you walk out of here without some pain. Is that what you’re after?’

‘In exchange for a gorilla, two monkeys, or my suit?’ I asked, having heard about people who made such deals with the devil and always thought it a most practical way of doing business. ‘What kind of pain would we be talking about?’

A terrible cast came over his features. ‘You trying to be funny?’

‘No, no,’ I assured him, knowing that I had a wonderful ace up my sleeve. ‘Let’s suppose I did owe you a gorilla. What retribution would you mete out before you considered the debt cancelled?’

‘A grand’s not much in my book,’ he said after some considerable thought. ‘I’d let you off with a severe roughing up.’

‘So,’ said I in the tone I reserve for some of my best business decisions, ‘so long as you get to inflict a roughing up, we can walk out of here and we’d both be happy as the day’s oblong?’

‘Precisely,’ said the gangster.

I clapped the Murgatroid hand on Johno’s shoulder. ‘Then if I might introduce you to My Man. He’s taken a few poundings in his time and I’m sure he’d be willing to accept any punishment on my behalf.’ I turned to My Man. ‘I’ll be waiting in the car,’ I told him. ‘Don’t take too long. I want to be at Siggy’s for tea.’

Ten minutes later, I congratulated My Man on the way he’d handled himself. But, as I told him: that’s why I pay him such handsome wages. Oh, he uttered a few choice oaths, but that’s to be expected of a man who spent so many years in the army. And all that training has paid off quite handsomely and I could only congratulate myself — and not for the first time — on having the foresight to hire a man fully trained by H.M.’s Special Forces to withstand hours of torture.

This afternoon we’re driving up to see Siggy, but first, I must really do something about My Man’s shiners. It gives his eyes an almost rebellious cast and I don’t like the way they make him stare at me.

TTFN.