The Pattern Mafia- 'This Is The East End Son'
The Story So Far … The Burning Bear gang know they are in deep trouble. They just hope that Ed the Ted’s Cockney Auction plan will pull them out of it. It’s all getting a bit tense down at the Bear …
I heard from Molly how it went down in the Bear.
The phone on the table chimes and Arret’s man picks it up. The snug of the Burning Bear stills, and in the church-like silence that follows every punter in the room is watching the phone in the big man’s hand. Then he picks up his Glock and he and his colleague get to their feet.
“Go tell Mr Ed,” The man says and his partner leaves, his pistol in his hand. The man turns to the bar.
“Monkeys, Mr Normal, five minutes out.” And he follows his partner out the door.
Molly bristles. She turns her back on the closing door and rings the last-orders bell hanging beside the till. Her sharp voice cuts lumps out of the air.
“Listen up. Those of you of a nervous disposition can make your way out now. No hard feelings from the management and staff of the Bear and there are plenty of lesser inns in this manor you can waste what’s left of your life and wages in. But those of you not inclined to piss yourselves at the first sign of trouble the drinks will be on Norm once the bother’s over. It’s up to you, no pressure from me, just a case of man or mouse.”
There is a small uncertain cheer from the crowd that collapses into a thoughtful silence.
“Well?” Molly snaps.
The noise in the snug returns to a faltering simulacra of a normal lunchtime.
Five minutes later a large dark shape shades the frosted windows of the Burning Bear.
The bar that greets the large men in dark suits is as silent as a church. The leader is a large blonde crew-cut man with a battered face twisted further by a sneer. He limps slightly as he walks into the snug and takes up a position in the middle of the floor. The audience that surrounds him pay close attention to their pints and phones, or whisper observations to their drinking partners. The clientele of the Bear could be described as baroque where they are not peculiar, and at this time of day mostly in retirement or fast approaching that age. The younger Faces and would be Wags appear during the evening, not the middle of the day. The faces that resolutely avoid the interrogating glare of Bleach Boy are closer to caricature than character, possessing so much lived experience it demands more than one face to carry it all. Gargoyles, Charli had thought on meeting the same crowd for the first time, and she was not being unkind.
Bleach Boy has inherited the role of team-leader after the Marriott massacre by being incapacitated at the time of the assault and declared a victim rather than a perpetrator by the City Militia. He is on a mission entirely of his own devising. Bleach Boy is after revenge. His need seeps from every pore, stirring the smoke laden air of the bar, spreading an even deeper silence about the snug.
The two men flanking Bleach Boy, impassive blank androids in regulation Armani street wear, are accessorised by shoulder holsters. They made a triptych of corporate force, the tip of a very sharp spear, or so they imagine on entering the bar.
“Hello boys. Let me introduce you to my gun, Jeeves. Jeeves is an L.W.Butler 0.41 calibre twin barrel sawn-off shotgun with tungsten shard shot. At this distance Jeeves has a spread of just under two metres. That’s six feet to you colonials. And if you fuck me about, I’m going to use both barrels, just to make sure. Jeeves here says the next step you are taking is out of my door, into your car, back to Heathrow and onto the next flight to the good old US of bloody A. Otherwise we might have an international incident on our hands and that’s far too much fucking paperwork.”
Bleach Boy raises a hand to pause his crew who have already decided stillness has great virtue. They are statues with eyes that flick from Jeeves’s barrel to Mrs Normal’s hard blue eyes, her long coral pink lacquered falsies, to the rest of the Bear’s clientele. Bleach Boy gives the diminutive figure a slow once over.
Normal’s tiny wife wields Jeeves with the ease that comes from years of experience, hip-firing mode, with her finger already on the trigger rather than along the action as recommended in all good gun safety manuals.
“Just in case you are wondering if a small woman can manage the pull on such a big gun our local armorer modded it for me so its lovely and light. Now, fuck-off outa my Pub!”
The locals, being only too aware of Mrs Normal’s similarly lightly triggered anger, shuffle out of the cone of violence with a scraping of chairs, seeking a safe distance. With Mrs Normal that was always challenging to estimate.
“That’s going to knock you on your butt, lady.” Bleach Boy judged.
“Norm!”
Normal heaves his bulk off of his stool and brings up another sawn-off shot gun from behind the bar.
“Vis is Jack. Jack the Ripper. You don’t wanna find out how ‘e got ‘is name.”
The physical reality of the situation is clear to all the professionals in the room. One sawn off-shotgun is capable of causing significant harm to a close packed target, like the three large men in tight formation. Not necessarily fatal, but seriously disabling. Two sawn-off shotguns already cocked and aimed, increased risk and consequences significantly. Then there was the rest of the clientele to consider. There is absolutely no guarantee that there aren’t additional firearms in the bar, which is entirely counter to the expectations of the three Americans who had considered the traditional British attitude to firearms dumb and irresponsible but were happy to accept the tactical advantage.
One of the rent-a-heavies voices a complaint.
“ I thought you Brits didn’t carry.”
“This ain’t Britain, this is the East End son. Well gentlemen, playtimes over, decision time!”
Bleach Boy runs the math one more time. The probable spread from four barrels, the potential mass of the four shots, the likely muzzle velocity. Tungsten shard shot was particularly unfortunate. Tungsten shard at this distance had significant Kevlar shredding capability, rendering their body armour ineffective. Bleach Boy radiates frustration the way a furnace radiates heat, and for one brief moment he wonders if his highly developed reaction time might overcome the reactions of this snarling Pitbull of a crone with her artificial hair and pink lacquered claws. But then there is the obese moron with the hooded eyes and the second sawn-off to consider and the certainty that he has no idea how his new crew will react in close quarters. Unlike his own team they owe him no loyalty. He has no idea of their actual capability, they have never worked together and hadn’t developed that instinctive understanding of what Bleach Boy did in circumstances like these. He has nothing that he can rely on.
Bleach Boy’s index finger twitches and his crew backs towards the door. One by one the big men exit the Bear and Mrs Normal follows them, eyes unblinking. One of the Bear’s regulars, Freddie Mack, a dipper by day and an opportunity burglar by night, holds the door open for Mrs Normal as the last man exits the pub. Normal, vast, and breathing hard in whistling gasps, follows his tiny wife his fat jowls larding over Jack the Ripper’s stock, its barrel square onto the back of Bleach Boy’s head.
Bleach Boy reaches the open door of the SUV and turns with exaggerated care to face the Bear’s management. He stares at Normal’s tiny wife, imprinting the memory of her peroxide hair, grit hard eyes, thin lips, and skinny frame for some imaginary future where he breaks her scrawny chicken-skinned neck before he steps back into the SUV and it pulls away.
“There will be more love.”
“I know Norm. We are going to need to call in more insurance.”
“D’jew load the Butler?”
“Forgot, didn’t I.”
“Fought as much.”
Normal broke his gun open. Both bores were clean and empty.
“Got a bit lucky then, ‘ey?”
“What happened to Arret’s boys? Fat lot of help they were.”
“Gonna pick em up in the high street.”
“How are they gonna do that then.”
“The usual. Front end impact and then towed away wiv Arrets breakdown truck.”
“They’ve got guns, Norm.”
“Very heavy front end impact. Wiv the breakdown truck. Big heavy bastard.”
There is a sudden crash of sound from the high street that might be made by many tonnes of toughened steel impacting an armoured SUV at speed. A woman screams. Car alarms start hooting. The roar of an exhaust as deep as a motorboat’s drowns out the shriek of tearing metal as two entangled vehicles are parted.
“That’ll be them then.”
“Any of your punters pissed on my floor you are mopping it up.”
“Yes love.”
What a corker, Steve!
Nice to meet you