London Large: Blood on the Streets Read online

  LONDON LARGE

  Blood on the Streets

  Garry and Roy Robson

  London Large: Blood on the Streets

  Copyright © 2015 by Garry and Roy Robson.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the copyright holders, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Published by London Large Publishing For more copies of this book, please email: [email protected]

  Cover Designed by CM Olavarria Front Cover Photograph by James Harrison Back Cover Photograph by Grace Seaton This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely co-incidental.

  Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and authors assume no responsibility for errors or omissions. Neither is any liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of this information contained herein.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part 1

  Part 2

  Part 3

  Part 4

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  1

  Goose Green, Falkland Islands: 28th May, 1982

  The decisions Harry made within the next few seconds would stay with him for the rest of his life - or result in his immediate death. And he knew it. His brain cells fired faster than the guns that cracked and exploded around him with ever-increasing intensity. Clearly, rapidly he assessed and reassessed the options, his alertness born from the survival instinct that burned deep within him.

  It was dark, wet and cold enough to freeze the bollocks off a brass monkey. As the biting wind slashed at Harry’s face bullets zipped and zinged all around him like millions of angry wasps on a murder hunt. The soldiers of 2 Para had scarcely slept for six nights and had walked for 24 hours without rest before being plunged headlong into the offensive. They were knackered even before the battle started.

  Mortar shells were exploding in every part of the compass; the saturated peat was muffling the sounds of detonating grenades and the air carried news of more casualties as the cries and screams of wounded soldiers drifted across the barren landscape. Dying soldiers disappeared like ghosts in the night as they sank into the peat, returning unceremoniously to the dust and ashes from whence they had come.

  Harry had been in some tight spots before but this was a whole new ball game.

  He found himself cut off from the rest of the men of 2 Para, in a cudweed-filled gully at the foot of Darwin Hill, with just himself and Private Rifleman Ronnie Ruddock in attendance. They had followed their impetuous commanding officer on a crazy, suicidal charge, and in the ensuing chaos had found themselves isolated from the rest of their unit. Harry liked his commander. He was a brave, decisive leader who liked to mix it with his men in the heat of battle. He now lay dead fifty yards in front of them. Harry and Ronnie had watched in horror as fragments from a mortar shell crashed into him and ripped his torso into crimson pieces.

  ‘Down Ronnie’, Harry had commanded in an instant. Luckily, if being stranded in the midst of a well dug-in and murderous enemy can be considered lucky, they had halted their charge before they had been spotted.

  From the briefings the soldiers had received before the battle a couple of things were absolutely, blatantly clear. The enemy had more troops and firepower than intelligence had estimated; reconnaissance had missed a string of entrenched mortar positions to the west of their current position and Her Majesty’s Royal Air Force were not going to show up and provide air cover. Basically 2 Para were outnumbered, outgunned and on their own.

  Harry assessed the options one last time. Option one - fall back. They would be picked off like pheasants on a country shoot. Fuck that, he thought. Option two – stay put and await reinforcements. He knew that was unlikely. He could see a group of 2 Para moving stealthily up from the south but to call out to them would reveal their position. They knew nothing of the mortar positions hidden in the curvature of the landscape, and would soon become sitting ducks. Option 3 – return fire from current position. The mortar positions were too well dug-in; opening fire and staying put would invite a barrage of mortar. This option was as good as suicide.

  A couple of zillion minor variations flooded his mind before Harry settled on a plan of action. Option four it was then - full frontal assault.

  2

  Harry’s mind was still buzzing like wildfire as the next steps crystallised. If he was going to get out of this mess alive he needed to do three things. Galvanize Ronnie into action, take control of the nearest mortar position and provide cover for the rest of the unit from it, so they could break through enemy lines and take this poxy hill.

  He turned to Ronnie, who was quivering with cold, fear and exhaustion in equal measure. The starless sky was casket black as a scar of dim moonlight broke through and exposed Ronnie’s desperate features. He looked wasted, capable of doing nothing more than curling up in a ball and dreaming of home. Harry looked deep into those piercing blue eyes that had always made Ronnie such a hit with the ladies, searching to see what was left of the man, examining, probing.

  Harry and Ronnie went back a long way. A strong and enduring friendship forged in the mean streets of Bermondsey in south east London - where they had come of age fighting in gangs and standing toe to toe with football firms from all over the country. Harry searched for a memory Ronnie could cling to and recalled the Battle of Stamford Bridge, 12th February 1977. The time when the two of them had stood side by side in the Shed, the part of Stamford Bridge stadium made famous as the haunt of Chelsea’s notorious football hooligans of the 1970s.

  Harry, Ronnie and a small band of brothers had taken their life into their hands and, outnumbered 100 to 1, infiltrated that part of the stadium where Chelsea’s top boys congregated. That was when Harry first saw Ronnie in action, and understood he was a force to be reckoned with. He’d watched as Ronnie, at the tender age of 15, surrounded by a sea of rabid, lager-fuelled nutters, stood tall as the punches rained down on him like a blizzard of arrows pouring out of the grey, dank London sky.

  Harry, of course, had jumped into the fray to help him out. They fought like Lions but were well and truly battered. But the glory! For the glory it was a price worth paying. The story became legendary in their patch. When recounting it Harry loved to tell the part where Ronnie, battered and bruised, never went down, and never submitted to the relentless force of superior numbers. Ronnie loved to tell the part where Harry had dived in to help him out. They loved to big each other up.

  Harry looked at Ronnie, fatigued and shell shocked beside him in the gully. Despite the cold he was sweating like a stray cat lost in London’s Chinatown. But the eyes told him all he needed to know. Ronnie was down, but he still had plenty of bottle left. Harry made his play.

  ‘Ronnie’ he screamed, ‘how the fuck you feeling mate?’

  Ronnie summoned the strength to talk.

  ‘Shitting my fucking self. Looks to me like we’re fucking finished this time H.’

  ‘Right my son, liven yourself right up, now. Here’s what’s going to happen; we’re both getting out of here alive. Remember Stamford Bridge, hundred to one? You didn’t bottle it then and you are not going to bottle it now. More importantly my life is in your fucking hands, so buck your f
ucking ideas up, sharpish.’

  Harry was using every possible angle his racing brain could come up with. He knew he was Ronnie’s hero, and that it was him Ronnie had just followed on this crazy, suicidal charge, not the Lieutenant. An appeal to their friendship was his best bet.

  ‘The odds are in our favour. There are only four of them in the nearest bunker. Two to one against. We can piss over odds like that. And remember when we signed up, what did we fucking say? If we ever see action we won’t fight because it’s a job, we’ll fight for the fucking glory, just like we’ve always done.’

  Not exactly a Churchillian rhetorical flourish, Harry would later reflect, but it did the job. Ronnie started to sort himself out.

  ‘What’s the plan then H?’ Ronnie said.

  ‘I don’t think those boys know where we are - it’s too dark and foggy. They’re training their guns the other side of the ridge. The mortar position is 150 yards away. We burst out of the gully, reach the bunker and then bob’s your fucking uncle, we have it large with ‘em. It’s them or us.’

  Not much of a fucking plan, thought Ronnie.

  ‘There’s a group of 2 Para coming in from the south’, continued Harry. ‘They’ll see us, see we have them covered. They’ll push on and take the hill, save our fucking bacon and win the battle. This is it Ronnie, do or fucking die my son.’

  ‘How the fuck do you know they’ll follow us’, said Ronnie. Harry had no real idea how option four was going to pan out.

  ‘Because lions eat hamsters, soppy bollocks’, he said.

  H was hard-core, thought Ronnie, full on and as gutsy as they come. If anyone had the qualities, the character, the sheer will to live needed to get out of a situation as hopeless as this it was him. Harry had calculated correctly. Ronnie would follow him anywhere.

  ‘Remember Stamford Bridge’, he screamed.

  The boys burst out of the gully. The bitter wind pierced their bodies as their destiny stared them full on in the face. In search of life they went hunting for death.

  3

  The friends hit the peat faster than Usain Bolt out of the blocks, as mortar fire thundered in their ears. Thirty yards out they saw the scattered arms and legs of their lieutenant. At forty yards out a stray bullet ricocheted off the butt of Ronnie’s rifle. Ronnie’s guts churned. Inside he was a mess, but intuitively he stayed close to Harry, the only hope he had. Harry, however, was in another place, his senses quickened, his alertness heightened. He was buzzing. He was in control.

  After seventy yards the bunker came into clearer view. They moved with speed and stealth and remained unseen, unheard, unknown. Need to drop at least one of the bastards before we make it to the bunker, thought Harry. Not yet, not yet.

  After a hundred yards Harry raised his rifle, with his heart pounding faster than an exocet missile honing in on its target. Fighting off the dull, aching pain in his legs he took aim at the gunner sitting astride the 120mm mortar, and let off two rounds. The first bullet bounced off the deadly rocket launcher. Ping. The second hit the mortar operative in the windpipe. He gargled, fell back, and gasped for the intake of air his bursting lungs would never again experience.

  The gunner’s mate and the two riflemen bunkered in their foxhole dived for cover as the two angels of death charged relentlessly onward. Ronnie and Harry didn’t know it but their luck was in. The bunker boys were conscripts, newly trained and poorly led. Fatally, they hesitated. At a hundred and ten yards out the spooked soldiers had fumbled their rifles into the shooting position. In total they managed to let off just three rounds between them. Two went wide and as the third grazed Harry’s earlobe he knew they would make the bunker.

  At another time, in another age, Harry would have the deepest sympathy for them. But not here, not now. Harry was choosing to live.

  The cacophony of fire from the raging battlefield meant Ronnie and Harry could barely hear each other. But barely was enough.

  ‘Ready son?’

  ‘Ready.’

  ‘Go left’, barked Harry.

  The friends launched themselves into the trench with speed and ruthlessness; professional training and instinct took over.

  Ronnie thrust his bayonet towards the head of the gunner’s mate, who parried and fell back, knocking his head on the mortar, dropping his guard as the pain kicked in. Ronnie seized on the opening. His bayonet pierced the throat of his enemy. A poppy-red deluge sprayed from the wound and Ronnie smelled and tasted the blood of another human being, as his demented face was bathed in a fountain of crimson.

  He turned, spitting red and gasping for air. The second of the three soldiers already lay dead. Harry was merciless as he repeatedly smashed the butt of his rifle into the crushed face of the third. As the soldier fell to the dirt, grasping his shattered features, Ronnie completed the rout with a bullet through his midriff. The action was over in less than ten seconds.

  The two soldiers took charge of the mortar and opened fire on the other enemy positions dug in along the bend of the hill.

  ‘You’re right H, lions do eat fucking hamsters’ said Ronnie as the soldiers of 2 Para descended on and overran the remaining mortar positions. Ronnie stared into the distance, relief flooding his body at the realisation he was still alive. The light of the sun was peaking over the horizon. Every dark night ends in light, he thought.

  But some dark nights have a sting in the tail. The breaking dawn alerted Ronnie to a small movement. Just north of their position a rifle glistened in the emerging sunlight. Ronnie looked on in horror as the situation clarified. Harry was in the direct line of an impending sniper’s bullet.

  No time. No time to warn. No time to think. Ronnie threw himself into the path of his hero and the silent bullet pierced his stomach.

  Part 1

  1

  St. James’ Park. A beautiful place for a violent death. Tara and Jemima turned right off the Mall and strolled uneasily into the park, along the narrow footpaths and past the elegant shrubs and flowers to arrive at the picturesque lake that dominates the Queen’s Gardens.

  It seemed so peaceful, a tranquil oasis at the centre of one the world’s great global cities. Today, however, something a little different would be on the menu. Today it would be the setting for a spectacular and colourful pageant the likes of which it had not seen in hundreds of years.

  It was a crisp, cold autumn morning as they arrived at a bench opposite Duck Island, in the centre of the lake. The ducks sat huddled together in the middle of their private dwellings, bored and motionless like tourists waiting for the final scene of a three hour Shakespeare play.

  Multitudes of international visitors, wrapped warmly in their autumnal coats, were doing what tourists do. Smart phones, tablets and digital cameras snapped and chirped away, recording their slice of olde-worlde history, which would immediately become part of their own personal histories on the cloud, or whatever was the latest term to describe that nebulous mountain of information that people now shared their lives through.

  Tara had rung her sister early, the desperation in her voice palpable as she asked for the meeting that would turn out to be the last conversation they would ever have.

  The sisters were rich, filthy rich members of the British upper classes - proper posh totty. Tara was the sassier and cleverer of the two, and the sense of superiority of the expensively educated elite rested easily on her shoulders. Her marriage to a wealthy city trader had driven a wedge between her and the rest of her family. They didn’t mind the wealth. The problem was she had fallen in love with an outsider, a self-made millionaire who lacked the blue blood of the aristocracy. Put simply he was from wrong side of town - from south of the river.

  ‘Tara, how delightful. What’s it been, two months?’ Jemima said when she recognised her sister’s voice on the phone.

  ‘I need to talk to you. Privately’, replied Tara.

  ‘My diary’s frightfully busy. How about next...’

  ‘No. Now. Today. Let’s meet in St James’s Park. Please.
I need to see you.’

  Tara had often played in St James’s park as a child and always felt safe and secure in its pleasant, manicured grounds. She now lived in one of the wealthy shires that encircled the capital, and journeyed by train to the terminus at Charing Cross. She took the walk past Trafalgar Square and down The Mall to Buckingham Palace, where Jemima was waiting for her by the imposing metal gates that guarded that great symbol of power and privilege.

  ‘So what’s the problem?’ asked Jemima, as they sat down on a bench. She was a sunny, glass-half-full kind of girl who liked her sister and regretted how Tara’s marriage had driven them apart. From the distraught tone of their earlier conversation she’d clearly understood that her sister was into something way over her head - like a baby seal cornered by a phalanx of club-wielding fisherman.

  ‘I’ve stumbled across something awful. I barely know where to begin’, said Tara.

  ‘Well, just start at the beginning and keep going.’

  ‘Oh, Jemima.’

  Tears started to roll down her face as she grasped her sister’s hand. ‘I have such a thing to tell you.’

  The rows of silent ducks were still passing their time in carefree oblivion, their stomachs stuffed to the rafters with stale bread.

  Two seconds to show time.

  2

  Elemes Aliyev was known for his discreet working methods, at least among the very few people who knew him at all. He moved unnoticed through the world, like a shadow gliding through the air. He had followed Tara, unseen, from her lavishly decorated eight-bedroom home, set in fifteen acres of beautiful garden in Royal Tunbridge Wells.

  He boarded the nine thirty train and sat unobtrusively amongst the public. Glancing casually to his left and right he checked out every passenger before nonchalantly picking up a discarded copy of The Guardian. The morning rush hour was over so the train was full of day trippers and exhausted and bored looking wage slaves running late for work.