Early one morning they burst in and got me, trashed the place, found nothing more than a bit of blow I was selling on the side. After twenty minutes on the ground I was hauled up, enduring the stinking breath of some fat copper with a grudge. This bastard thought he knew me well.
"You were there at the Farm that night, you black piece of shit. I've been reading up on you, right into your history, mate - you've been keeping your nose clean for quite a while, haven't you, you lowlife cunt."
It was 2005. The police had reopened the case. And here they were, raiding my flat on a supposed drugs bust. Maybe I'd been grassed up for selling a bit of blow, who knows, but in reality this had nothing to do with drugs and everything to do with Tottenham twenty years ago.
Broadwater Farm Estate, '85. The original investigation into the riot and PC Blakelock's murder had been a shambles. Like dozens of other teenagers, I'd been pulled in, stuck in a cell for three nights, taking slaps and threats, no lawyer. They couldn't prove anything - I was released without charge. I'd thrown a few bricks, ran a bit wild, but so had the police. Ammo was coming in from both sides.
Tension had been running high after a woman was killed in a raid. On the evening, the coppers were hemming us into the estate - Get back into your farm you fucking animals - swinging their batons, going mental. Pure provocation. As night fell we responded with our own violence. Shotguns, firebombs, craziness. Even murder. It was worse than Handsworth, Brixton, anywhere. Blakelock was chased and hacked to death with machetes.
The copper thumps me in the belly, hard, and the cunt holding me let's me spill to the floor. His boot starts hitting the back of my head and doesn't stop. I'm concussed and hear him telling me that Keith Blakelock was a friend of his, and though it might be twenty years since the riots he's going to see the murdering bastards locked up and rotting away if it's the last fucking thing he ever does.
A couple others pull him off. "Get this lump of shit out to the van before I kill the bastard!"
He'd been right about keeping my nose clean. I hadn't been arrested in years. They drove me from my flat in Ponders End down to Tottenham nick. These days I hated Tottenham. Too many bad memories, too much shit. The manor had gone to pot. Pubs boarded up, rotting away. Dereliction and waste. I'd tried to avoid the fucking place as much as possible for years. Here they were rubbing it right back in my face.
I grew up in Northumberland Park, a good mile from Broadwater Farm. I was into football, knocked around with a Spurs firm. Most of my mates were white.
But my connection with the Farm was my mate Dwayne. He couldn't care less about football, saw all the violence at the matches as a waste of energy, white dicks acting like idiots. He was more interested in the benefits of crime. Making money. He'd been through care homes, done borstal, the lot. Dwayne was pretty reckless. My bad influence, you could say.
Once at a party Dwayne was building a spliff and this Jamaican started giving it large. "Hand over the ganja, English boy!" Around this time there was a lot of Jamaicans coming over, strutting about like they were something to be feared. They thought British blacks were soft. Dwayne whipped out a gun and put it right in the guy's face. "Who the fuck are you calling English boy, you banana boat nigger!" The yardie had been all mouth and shat it.
But pretty soon the yardies gathered their numbers and became quite a force. Soon everyone was picking up the lingo, trying to speak like them, including Dwayne. Ever since, the accent has completely taken over.
It was a dark era. Thatcher's Britain. Everyone I knew was unemployed. That government couldn't give a fuck. Some blokes thought they had won the pools if they managed to get a job plucking chickens or packing meat in a factory. Fuck that. The best thing about the 80s was the IRA nearly doing Thatcher in Brighton. If they'd hit their target there would have been parties in the streets. There was nothing but hate for Thatcher.
The evening of the riot, we went up to Dwayne's flat and took a load of sulph. It was the first time I'd tried it. Things were revving up, little clashes sparking off across the estate. I remember feeling out of it, charged up for anything, kicking the walls as we headed out into the night. We were fuelled up on news footage, Handsworth, Moss Side, Brixton. Endless war in Northern Ireland. People were coming up from further afield, Stoke Newington, Hackney, even south of the river. Lots of strange faces. Quite a few whites. One paper even said the Russians were behind it. That was bullshit, but I do remember a skinhead bloke instructing some kids on how to make a petrol bomb; sounded like he'd been in the army. Everyone wanted a pop at the police, black, white, you name it.
The whole estate erupted. The Farm is like a maze, a self-contained closed-in world, not open streets like Brixton. Its layout certainly didn't help the police. Everybody seemed to go berserk. Anything I'd seen at the football seemed like kids' stuff. I've see coppers on the telly visibly cry just talking about it. They took one fucking battering that night.
A year later I did eighteen months for stashing stolen goods. Nothing could have prepared me for prison. At home it was just me and my mum. I had my own bedroom, own space. Suddenly I was bunking up four to a cell with frequent 23-hour lock up. I grew up fast.
I did most of my time in Wandsworth, the biggest shithole ever. The screws were brutal bastards, always barking like dogs, going mental over the slightest thing. In those days, screws were mostly ex-forces, rejects unfit for the field and fucked in the head.
One screw was known as The Butcher. I hadn't asked why. I should have. He frequently boasted about his two suspensions for brutality and was rumoured to have murdered men in the punishment block.
I was a new boy when he batted me across the head for not having my shirt tucked in. He started telling me what he thought should be done to niggers like me, the lowest form of life, ranting and raving about Jews and Hitler and mass-extermination. Frothing at the mouth saying he'd like to round up every pisstaking black bastard and white nigger-loving bitch and bury them all in the dirt where they belong. He said there was nothing worse than a half-a-nigger like me and my mum should be hung, drawn and fucking quartered. I butted him in the face with force. A broken nose can be a great leveller. And if anyone deserved it, this cunt did. But I came to regret it.
They dragged me down to the punishment block. It was like a dungeon, reminded me of a concentration camp. I was stripped naked, beaten to an inch of my life, tortured for weeks. My head filled up with so much hate I thought I'd explode. It changed me.
Back in the wing I became a bit of a nutter. I was game for any violence going. It felt good beating the living hell out of somebody, passing on the hate. There was this nonce that we had the eye on. He'd been arrogant enough to choose integration instead of the perverts' wing. He made out he was this big violent geezer not to be fucked with, playing out a fantasy, when really he'd been raping little boys. Three of us grabbed him, ripped his trousers down and threw boiling water over his bollocks. He was writhing round with his privates on fire when by surprise this Hell's Angel walks in and castrates the bastard. There was blood all over the walls. The biker had been missing his kids and apparently worked in the meat trade. Quiet bloke, never said much. Those are the ones to watch for, I suppose. The nonce was taken away, treated as an attempted suicide. He knew not to grass, even without a dick. The screws couldn't give a shit.
Something else that blew my mind in prison was hearing my mum had been mugged. She was set upon by three black kids on her way home from a cleaning job. Another implosion.
The first thing I did on release was head to the part of Edmonton where she was attacked. I prowled around the streets looking for revenge. After being locked away the outside world felt like it was on fast-forward. Edmonton was a mostly white manor in those days, hardly any black faces at all. But one thing was for sure, I wasn't leaving until I'd bashed fuck out of someone.
On a bench round the back of some flats, three black kids were passing a joint. They were slouching about, looked well stoned. One of them nodded at me as if to say Alright. I slipped out the baseball bat, didn't ask questions, couldn't really give a fuck. Two went down without a hitch, the other one had enough of his marbles to start waving a knife about, trying to stab me in the face. I laid into him hell for leather, carried on even when he was out cold, couldn't care less if I killed him.
Soon afterwards, my mum was diagnosed with cancer. She passed away before I knew it. I found it hard to accept, starting losing my mind. Prison was nothing compared to this. Friends would knock around, and I'd tell them to piss off, throw punches. I was ripping cupboards off the wall, carving slices up my arm. I hardly left the house.
Then one day I snapped out of it. Carried on as if nothing had happened. Thankfully nobody mentioned anything. I appreciated that. I started going back to the football, getting hammered, being stupid. But it wasn't the same. It seemed more like an act, going through the motions. Underneath were a lot of dormant demons. Nobody had to remind me: I'd become a different person.
Leafing through my mum's old stuff I found pictures of my dad. I'd never seen him, hadn't even thought much about him. I couldn't miss what I never had. The pictures intrigued me. He was a sharp dresser, confident-looking. I stared at his face trying to read into his thoughts, his life, what he was about. My mum's line had been that sometimes people just don't get on, so it's better for everyone to split. You can't argue with that. I wouldn't want some bastard hanging around the house slapping her about. Some of my mate's dads were right arseholes, gamblers and drinkers that were nightmares to live with. Sometimes I'd counted myself lucky.
But these photos drew me in. I found the divorce papers. When they broke up he'd moved to Willesden. I wanted to find him.
I went to the address, a decrepit looking place near Willesden Junction. Looked like it had turned into a squat. It was no surprise that he wasn't there. I knocked on every neighbour's door. One old woman actually invited me in for a cup of tea, must have needed the company. She remembered him, said he was a big drinker, used the pubs in the area, but had moved years ago.
The pubs were all black and Irish. I was relentless, asking around with my photographs, buying people drinks. Some remembered him, but it was as though he had disappeared. I started checking dosshouses, spread the search over a wider area. I'd go up to down-and-outs around Notting Hill, Camden Town, give them a can of Tennents and a bit of change, get them talking.
Finding the old man wasn't even difficult. I followed all the predictable routes and it paid off. I first met him in a drinking den in Kings Cross. It was full of crims and alkies, cards and dominoes going. It smelt of prison. I was shocked when I seen him. He was standing at the makeshift bar with a wasted thousand yard stare. A million miles from the suave Jamaican in the pictures. I had imagined him to be fairly big bloke, tall like me. But here he was in the flesh, small and frail, haunted-looking. He looked like he needed a wash. Some self-respect. I was embarrassed. I instantly wondered what my mum had ever saw in this wreck.
For a second I considered maybe leaving things be, walking away, leaving history alone. What's done is done. Move on. Instead I walked up and blurted out those words. I'm your son. He looked directly at me, then started laughing, slapping my back. I joined in, my arms around him. Then suddenly he went deadly serious, basically told me to stop having him on. I think he told me to fuck off. It took me quite a while to get it through to him. He went all quiet and I felt like I was dragging up something horrible from the past. I suppose it was the shock. We mostly stood drinking and watching the cards, meditating over the situation. Didn't say much. For me, the anti-climax set in fast, almost immediately. Finding the man had been a little obsession of mine, and now that I had I could see only a vast empty space before me. Looking back, I know that at this period I filled in this space with booze. Like father, like son.
After that I'd meet him fairly regularly. Kings Cross, Camden Town, anywhere. We'd sit in the quiet corner of a pub, the drinks on me. To get to know the man somehow seemed necessary. A shrink would have said I was trying to get to the root of myself - find out who I am. They would have been right. But I wasn't thinking about all that. I just got on with it, did what I had to do. My head was in a mess.
It was hard getting anything out of my dad. His mind seemed half stewed, he was always pissed, and on medication. I learnt he'd been in and out of jail. Minor stuff. Making a nuisance of himself mainly. He told me his cellmate, an IRA guy, had been battered to death by screws in front of him in Brixton Prison. My dad had jumped in. It explained his broken teeth and lazy eye. I wondered had they beaten the senses out of him as well, left him mentally ill.
He'd never asked about my mum once. One night I showed him some photos, told him how I felt now she wasn't around, the only person I had. His reaction wasn't what I wanted. He'd seemed more pissed off about his IRA mate. I felt like shaking some emotion, some response out of him. She's dead, you bastard, dead. But I left him sitting there, staring into space, headed out into the night.
I remember kicking over a load of bins, a tart asking did I want business, telling her to fuck off, and doing the same to some geezer asking did I want drugs. I heard him mutter something back; I lunged in, fists flying. A knife appeared, but I got it off him, slashed him across the face - one, two, three. He clutched his face, blood everywhere, screaming in shock. Suddenly I thought, What have I done? I almost felt like putting my arms around him and saying, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, mate, I didn't mean it. Instead I ran off, headed back to Tottenham.
I saw my dad one more time. He was dossing in a squat down the end of the Cally. The place was a mess, uninhabitable. We were playing cards, working through a bottle of whisky, heavily pissed. An argument started. I can't even remember what it was about. But the subject lead on to my mother.
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. He started slagging her off, cursing her name, saying how that bitch had ruined his life etc. I was stunned, knew the marraige had ended in a bad way, but he was taking the piss. I knocked the hat off his head, told him to shut the fuck up. He was bald as a bastard, a big scar across his scalp like somebody had tried to lobotomize him. He went crazy, mouthing off in thick patois I could hardly understand. If I'd been smart I would have walked away, laughed it off, some old waster that had lost his marbles years ago.
But I didn't. I stayed right where I was, gripping his lapels, glaring into his mad eyes as he told me I wasn't his son, he didn't have a son, he was sterile, my mum had ran around with other men, every fucking man in Tottenham and beyond, got herself pregnant, made a fool of him, he'd left and hit the bottle, turned into a wreck, she'd ruined his life, he should have killed the raas claat bitch long before the cancer had. I nutted him straight on the nose, felt the sickening crunch.
I went for him again but he was fast, grabbed the bottle and smashed it across my head. When I shook offf the shock he was swinging a knife and I could tell from his eyes his intention was to kill me. I managed to get it off him and we grappled across to the open window. I was surprised at his strength, fuelled up on pure hate, but it wasn't enough. He was hanging out, his back over the window-sill, my hands around his neck, three floors down to the back-yard below. With one hand I grabbed his legs and flipped him overboard. The last thing I heard him call me was a fatherless bastard. He disappeared into the black. I can't even remember how I got home.
Life carried on. Kings Cross was a rough old place, and I figured the death of a dosser wouldn't exactly be anything unusual, foul play or not. I convinced myself it had been self-defence, tried blotting it all out. Woke up in cold sweats. Lived in denial.
The council kicked me out of the flat I'd grown up in, and I moved to a dingy bedsit in Seven Sisters. I'd stopped going to the football, and was on strong anti-depressants, smoking alot of grass. I spent a lot of time walking the streets in a daze. Sometimes, in my paranoia, I imagined the police were watching my every move, waiting for their moment. I was wrong. It didn't happen.
I was lost, needed direction fast. Around now the Acid House thing was kicking off. For me it was a godsend. E cleared my head, brought me back to the land of the living. My depression lifted. I put a lot of shit behind me. I'd found a scene where I belonged.
I made some good friends and eventually had the amazing break of being taken on as a roadie with a soundsystem. We'd do all the illegal raves around the M25 but were soon getting bookings up and down the country. It was like I'd been rescued, like somebody up there was watching over me. These guys became big players on the scene and in the early 90s I was touring all over Europe. I was off my head every night and loving it. Best days of my life.
When it came to an end it was no surprise. On a lot of people drugs were taking their toll. Casualties left right and centre. People turning to the hard stuff. One of the main players had some dodgy dealings with an Essex firm and ended up buried in a gravel pit by the A13. For me the party ended there. It had been a dream.
Back in the real world I got out of London, didn't need the shit, moved out to Stevenage. I took up painting and decorating.
I had a decent run of work, nice car, a little flat. I met Siobhan, fell in love, and things were looking perfect. Her family were a Dublin crowd from Luton. My mum had been a Dubliner so there was a connection there. Good people. Siobhan and I moved in together, had a daughter, Charlene. It was the perfect set-up.
But things took a turn for the worse. The old demons playing up, wreaking havoc in my head. The rows would be phenomenal. She'd insist on seeing her old mates for girls' nights out and I'd be playing the jealous boyfriend, spying on her through the pub window, barging in throwing my fists at any bloke that had even looked her way. Also I started knocking her about at home. It was like I couldn't allow myself any happiness.
One day when I came back from work there were suitcases in the hall. Siobhan's old man was standing in front of her. "You ever lay a hand on my daughter again, I'll fucking murder you". He was raging, looking like he was going to burst. Siobhan's face was a mess. I hated myself. Hated my mad state of mind, the demons that haunted me. I watched them go. I didn't see my daughter for quite a while, didn't push it. When it all calmed down, I became a Sunday dad. A few hours doing McDonalds, the park, the cinema. It was all I deserved. As for getting back with Siobhan, I just hoped that one day it would happen.
When the decorating got slack I tried mini-cabbing. You could make money but only if you really put in the hours. I got a job on the door of a club in Luton. It seemed easy work, most of the punters friendly. Regular faces out for a good time. One night we had to throw out a couple of Asian kids that were being a nuisance. On the street one of them starts giving me attitude. I give him a smack and tell him to fuck off. They go, that's the end of that.
Half hour later a car pulls up, the same guy strutting out, his jaws grinding away like he's snorted up a gramful of dutch courage. I go to belt him again, pissed off now, but he pulls out a gun, points it in my face. At times like that, the world just stands still. I fought an urge to lunge at the bastard, what the hell. A part of me told me it was worth it, whatever the outcome. But instead I just stood there, unsure, as he played his power game. He dished out some verbal - nigger this, nigger that, don't fuck with the Pakis etc - and thankfully that was that, him and his mates driving off laughing.
But that was the end of bouncing for me. Wasn't worth it. All it took was one skinny little cunt out to earn himself some kudos and you were a goner. I walked away. And I was lucky. A couple weeks later one of the doormen took a bullet to the head, survived but was left with brain damage. I'd left London for a quieter life but it seemed as if the city's bad influence was following me.
Around this time, the black-on-black killing thing in London had reached a frenzy. I picked up The Voice once and saw my old mate Dwayne staring back at me. He'd been blasted away six months before and I hadn't even known, alot of the murders getting hardly any media. He was one in a gallery of victims. Something like: The Shooting Must Stop.
Dwayne had got into big-time dealing, all the usual shit. After the Carnival he went to a party in Kilburn. A Harlesden crew walked in and blasted him over the balcony. Down on the concrete, he was still alive. The gunman calmly walked downstairs, pumped four more bullets into his head.
When I thought about it I was surprised he'd lasted as long as he did. I was glad to be out of Tottenham. Away from all that shit. In London you had three-year-old kids talking like Kingston gangstas, the cockney thing I'd always known well out the window. I couldn't feel any real sympathy for Dwayne. He'd chosen that path. I had my own fucking problems.
The only good thing about the 90s was that I kept straight, worked like a horse, six, seven days a week. I needed my mind occupied, needed to keep moving on. The only thing near to illegal I did was sometimes sell a bit of puff to my mates down the pub.
In 2004 I moved to Ponders End. It was the wrong side of the M25 if you ask me, way too close in, but it was temporary, near to work. Maybe soon I'd move to Milton Keynes or somewhere. A year on I was still there. That's when the police burst in. That's when my life changed.
Sitting in the cell in Tottenham I thought I would face a petty drugs charge. But when I was DNA'd the National Database revealed I was wanted for the death of the man I'd thought was my father. The police on the new Blakelock case were over the moon, amazed they'd got me on something so major. I was eventually charged with murder. Technology had given my demons free reign to finally laugh in my face. With the new swabbing, people were getting busted for stuff they'd done lifetimes ago. Pulled in for that girl hitch-hiker they'd picked up and raped twenty years ago. Pulled up on that bloke they'd thrown out the window and tried to forget.
It's now 2006. I'm back in HMP Wandsworth after all these years. I've been offered a sum for a book. The ghostwriter has given me a tape recorder, told me to get lots of stuff down. Apparently there's a big market for this sort of thing. He tells me I have a lot to sell: the football hooliganism, early crime, the riots, acid house, the death of my dad. Tells me I could be publicized as an anti-hero. He could be right. I've certainly never done anything heroic. My life seems to have been anti-everything. It's landed me where I am today. But people love a story. Me, though, I'm the bastard who's had to live it.
As I try to piece my life together, separate the fact and fiction, it tends to blur into one. For years I've been kidding myself, living in denial, convincing myself that I've simply been unlucky. But underneath I wonder is there a psychopath deep inside me. I wonder if I'm actually evil. Maybe this book is my chance to confront the truth. The horrible reality that lies within the fog of my fucked-up skull.
My father never came at me with a knife atall. In court I had the audacity to claim self-defence. The judge called me "a wicked, despicable man". Maybe he was right. I simply beat the bastard and threw him out the window. It's amazing they never got me right away. Shows how far they were bothered to look investigating the death of a black dosser. As for Broadwater Farm, in reality I did more than throw a few bricks. I was in the posse lead by Dwayne that chased that copper out of the car park and descended on him like a pack of wolves. We ploughed into him, hacking away. He didn't have a chance.
Yet I tell myself it isn't true. It's all a bad dream. I'm just a normal bloke. I should be with my Mrs and kid, a regular Joe with a job, a car, an ordinary life. Yet I'm caged away and forced to stare at the walls. Forced to wonder what sort of person I really am. It fucking scares me.
IAIN SINCLAIR
MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ
J.G. BALLARD
JAMES KELMAN
JOHN FANTE
DAN FANTE
ALAN SILLITOE
