Powder Wars by Graham Johnson Read Free Book Online

he was, was lining up tasty work, back to back, to take care of us.
    We got there about eight o’clock at night and set up an OP in a field opposite, waiting for the workers to clock off and that. It was snowing and I was freezing just lying in the snow waiting for them to leave. After we seen the last feller go, we went over the fence. We were going to put a hole in the wall to gain entry, but we found a wall made out of tin, corrugated sheets and that, so we just took them off. Bonus. Got two of the forklifts going and loaded one wagon up with coffee and the second with meatballs.
    Two of us were drivers. My forklift had no brakes on, so it took longer than expected and we had to graft all night to fill these lorries up. Sweating like mules and that, even though the air was icy cold. I had the meatballs. My drop off was on the M62 motorway under a bridge. It was only half built at the time. It was officially opened by the Queen in 1971. It would have been a whole lot earlier if it wasn’t for YT, but that is defo another story. McGorry’s brother was there. Handed over the keys, usual script. I got in a waiting car and got off. Got indoors and straight to the land of nod, dreaming of the eight bags of sand, which I’d figured were coming to me from that little caper, easy.
    The next day Ritchie met us to divvy up the dough. But he had a pure face on him, la. Says that McGorry wouldn’t take the meatballs. Pure knocked them back. Apologies sent and that, but pure could not get rid for the life of him. That was the riff anyways. Fussy twat, I was thinking, those meatballs are fucking gorgeous as well. Heinz they were. Fucking lovely on toast and all, too. Was half plotting whether it was worth it to get them back and punt them round the markets myself before Chrimbo. But, in all fairness, I had a lot on my plate already.
    Ritchie hands us over two grand. Bad one, la. Two bags – a pure waste of, knowmean? But the thing with Ritchie was you couldn’t trust the cunt. Sometimes if we got ten grand a piece for a bit of work, he’d say he’d only be weighed in two grand each and he’d make up a little fairytale like this to cover the difference. Even to his own brother Ronnie. No one trusted Ritchie. But that was the nature of the criminally minded, la. So there was no point in getting a cob on about it. We just sent Ronnie back to the drop off point to check that Ritchie wasn’t telling lies, and that he hadn’t shaded them off to another fence, knowmean? Ronnie reported back stating that the meatballs were still there, sitting at the side of the M62. We could have got them back. But who cares? We just went onto the next caper. Onwards and upwards, la. That was our motto. That kind of thing happened quite a bit, but in every industry there is always wastage and spillage to be accounted for and ours was no different, knowmean?
    We learned our lesson from that. From now on it was gonna be market-led targeting. The fences were screaming out for coffee. So that’s what we gave them. For instance, one time we got into a distribution depot and there was a fleet of wagons partly loaded up to be taken out the next day. Some had coffee in them. Others were half-loaded with hi-fi equipment in them, which was new out at the time and very expensive. There was no argument about what to take. The coffee. End of. We took all the hi-fi equipment out using a pallet-loader and filled the wagons with coffee. That’s what the fence ordered. That’s what he got. I remember that I personally got between £2K and £3K for each consignment on that one and there was a fair few.
    Then we found out about this new factory unit, which manufactured branded coffee, all bagged and tinned. Allday or what? I borrowed this huge, fuck-off furniture van off’ve a mate of mine so that we’d get maximum volume, knowmean? But was this place a no-gooder or what? Swear the place was cursed. To get