The Dirty South by Alex Wheatle

what the fuck is Doosh on? Some East German steroid shit? This guy has pecs in his jawbone!
    I know Red Eyes was in a dangerous business but it was still very hard to imagine that someone that you used to sit with and watch kung fu films and have a laugh with is dead. Murdered in his own flat. His life taken in the very place where every week Noel and myself scored our skunk. Even Priscilla and Noel shut the fuck up for a second trying to take it all in.
    â€˜We better find a new dealer,’ said Noel after a while. ‘Anyway, I was thinking of getting our skunk from someone else for a number of weeks now… Red Eyes’ inflation’s as bad as London Transport.
Burn
London Transport and the price of their motherfucking Travelcards!’
    â€˜You don’t have to worry yourself about Travelcards, Noel,’ I said. ‘You’ve got a ride now. Anyway, wasn’t Red Eyes an ex of your mum?’
    â€˜Yeah, he was. But that was a long time ago. Mum was only interested in getting her ten pound of high grade off him every week. Let’s face it, he was reckless. I would never do shots from my own gates.’
    We went back to the car and once Noel had started it up he didn’t bother playing any music. For twenty minutes we just sat there in silence before Priscilla said something. ‘So what are we gonna do now? I’m bored.’
    â€˜I dunno what Dennis and me are doing but you’re going back to your gates now,’ Noel replied.
    â€˜But I don’t wanna go home yet.’
    â€˜If you don’t stop bitching in my ear you can step it to home from here. Are your trainers comfortable,
bitch!
’
    After dropping off Priscilla we sat in silence again for a while. I wondered if what happened to Red Eyes could be a reality check for Noel. Recently he had been thinking of moving onto the crack game. Think about the P’s we could make from that shit, Noel said. I had talked him out of it by telling him that crack shottas get at least five years bird. Noel reckoned he could do two years bird but five years? He couldn’t put his mum through that stress.
    With Red Eyes now dead I even wondered if Noel would want to carry on with the skunk game… He knew Red Eyes well. Hesaw him all the time when he was a kid and like me, he would try to sneak into his mother’s bedroom and watch them have sex… Sometimes I wondered if all young boys did this or was it a ghetto thing?
    â€˜Dryneck,’ Noel said after a long pause.
    â€˜What? Who?’
    â€˜Dryneck,’ Noel repeated. ‘A relative, cousin of cousin or some shit like that. Or he could be an uncle, not sure. He used to come around to my gates when I was young. He used to go to our school. He’s about ten years older than us. He’s got eczema or dry skin or something but it’s all cool ’cos he said you can’t catch it from him. It ain’t like other contagious shit like old school plague.’
    â€˜Noel, you can’t catch eczema or acne off anybody.’
    â€˜Anyway, he deals in ozes and shit and we could set up things with him neatly…’
    â€˜Can you trust him?’
    â€˜Yeah. I don’t think he’ll spill to my mum. He’s a Jehovah’s Witness and he was even there at all of his kids’ christenings. That makes him a decent brother in my ratings. He don’t deal on Sundays though… He lives on Lansdowne Green estate, you know, Stockwell ends, behind the tube station.’
    â€˜What? You wanna check him now?’
    â€˜Why not? He stays up late all night watching Dick Dastardly and
ThunderCats
cartoons so he’ll be awake.’
    â€˜Ain’t we gonna have a period of mourning for our former dead dealer? He was
stabbed
over forty times. I’m still trying to get my head around it.’
    â€˜Dennis, stop being a fucking pussy. Red Eyes would have wanted us to carry on. Trust me, he would have carried on the same