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[still being worked on, as a sample chapter]
Extract: A Night Out With The Cops
Ghetto:
(ge˘t´®≠) , originally, a section of a city in which Jews lived; it has come to mean a section of a city where members of any racial group are segregated.
The streets flash by, a kaleidoscope of colour blurring through the night. The car shakes, snaking in and out of the traffic, before heading at speed down the centre of the highway. The driver is hard-faced, his control expert, eyes hooded, expression fixed as he flexes his hands on the wheel. A walkie-talkie sits in his lap; on it is stuck a Cross of St George. His partner has softer features, more rounded, but he too just stares straight ahead. The siren blots out all but snatches of sound: the muffled thump of hip-hop, swearing, tooting of horns, the catcalls and jeers as we pass, a patois of noise and languages, the call to Ramadan prayer fading into the distance.
Thursday night and the city is just warming up. The nightclubs in Shoreditch are opening their doors. Exotic smells drift from the curry houses and beigel shops at the top of Brick Lane. Crowds flood out of the local mosque – once synagogue, and before that Methodist chapel and Huguenot church – flocking to their iftar (fast-breaking) meals.
On Whitechapel Road, Amharic, Arabic and Bangla jostle for attention with English, Russian and a dozen other tongues. Altab Ali park passes with its ghosts of murder. Bouncers shift nervously outside a lapdancing club. Shredded stickers around the Royal London Hospital exhort Muslims not to vote, or burn as kufr. The traditional sweet shops are busy, too, young men crowding to buy ladoo from the famous Ambala bakery, jellaby or perhaps dates imported from the Gulf. 'Toms' ply their trade in the back alleys around Brick Lane or behind the trendy cafes and restaurants which have sprung up in Banglatown. Tourists on their Ripper tours and bohemian young whites rub shoulders with restaurant touts: “Come sir, come! Two pint of lager free: come!” oblivious to the white and brown being ‘shot’ up and down the length of the curry mile tonight.
As we head ever east, past cafés once used to recruit for the Spanish Civil War, now laden with heavy-lidded Somalis chewing 'khat', the cry for the dead rings out. It is a haunting, lonely sound. The Kaddish rasps from the throats of the shuffling, elderly men inside the fabled Congregation of Jacob: perhaps the last time that Rosh Hashanah, and ceremonies handed down for over 3000 years, will be celebrated here. The last time, too, that long-dead relatives, their names inscribed in fading gold leaf, will be remembered in the ghetto they made so famous.
As if in answer, as dusk draws down, the streets and alleyways around the massive East London Mosque swarm with the faithful. Arab, Bangladeshi and African flow like a river into the great building, ready to break the fast with water and dates like their Prophet before them. And for itikaf, the 10-day show of penitence and prayer undertaken by the most pious. The masjid (mosque) is now the centre of life, not the shul (synagogue); tawhid (oneness with God) and the Umma, the worldwide Islamic brotherhood, the lifeblood of the community.
Further to the east is Essex. The forgotten Britain some joke. Home, too, to flights of those same immigrants – Cockneys, Irish and Jews – that once dominated East End life. Sprawling interwar suburbs then the sea, and the age-old escape from the ghetto. Over the last two generations, it has become a haven to those whites who venerated the traditions of the East End: pie and mash, the Blitz spirit, and an England that once was.
*
‘What you up to? Kotchin' [chilling out]?'
'Yeah, kotchin'… officer.’
The words are 'Banglish’: English and Bengali (or Sylhetti) sliced with Jamaican patois and prison slang. The unmarked police vehicle has pulled into a small alleyway, crunching over mud and gravel, traversing a large flooded courtyard. It is pitch black. I can just make out a sign above us, offering salvation in the evangelical church behind.
The window slides down; a face pokes out from a red Ford Fiesta, bleary-eyed, confused, resentful. A haze of smoke wreaths the occupants: two young men, Bangladeshi, both with carefully-sculpted, thin beards, one with a baseball cap pulled low over blanched features. On instruction, they step unsteadily from the car. A third, a young woman, her bleached hair clashing with dark skin, is frozen to the centre of the back seat. The two plainclothes officers from the Robbery Task Force flash a torch inside, briefly illuminating the foggy interior.
'What's this, then?'
Ken is close-cropped. Spare-faced. Blunt. He emerges with a crack pipe in his hand. It is a simple Coke bottle, through which an empty biro has been pushed to form the pipe stem. It steams in the night air. The driver shrugs.
I'd seen cops silence a dealer before with swift, well-timed blows to the solar plexus. Or a knee in the right place. An elbow. Ken has that air of violence. At shift break I'd seen him run, pounding the night with quiet fury. Or smashing the weights in the basement of the station. He has three daughters and a wife in Essex. He once served in a circus touring Australia. He plays Aussie Rules and pins his hopes on promotion to the elite Flying Squad.
And here, on the mean streets of the East End, he is hated.
'Twenty quid will buy you a wrap,' he lectures, returning to his search, voice muffled. 'They usually come wrapped in different coloured plastic, depending whether it's rocks [crack] or brown [heroin]. You find this stuff on plots [drug stashes] all over the place.'
The pipe is of little interest, quickly discarded. Ken turns to frisk the youths, who are staring sullenly in my direction, one of them loudly proclaiming he will 'sue you all', while Dave, Ken's partner, calls through to Bethnal Green police station with a situation report. The car has been connected to a series of robberies, the two cops part of a 16-man squad combatting chronic street crime in London's Tower Hamlets district. Most youths recognise these unmarked cars with ease. A cat-and-mouse game usually develops as they cruise the tiny alleys and parks, travelling through the high- and low-rise estates, searching for troublemakers.
Gang members I met while travelling with the 'Robbery Squad', as the cornershop gangsters like to call it, were keen to tell me of the 'massives' and 'posses' they hung out with – 'We're Shadwell Massive!' one group proclaimed, as their friends were frisked by police – protesting to my face that they were indeed serious gangsters, these barely-men with their first beards, faces cloaked in darkness, eyes shining in the glow of reefers. From the corner of my eye I could see Ken and Dave taking an assortment of makeshift weapons from the boot of another suspect car – a piece of timber, a rope with a cruel-looking hook attached – the youths angry and bolshy at the disturbance to the night's 'kotchin'.
I thought back to Misbah, the tiny hijabi who had broken her back serving the shottas Ken was so keen to break. Of Jilu, the 'Flour Man', who had made his living ripping off other dealers and fought a private war with Lovekin, knees being smashed, people shot, houses firebombed. I thought of all these as we powered across the roundabout at Arnod Circus, once the feared Jago and now home to bars and George Galloway's upstart Respect movement.
*
‘Is Kelly there?’
We wait. Our breath steams through the open window. The wad of paan bought on Brick Lane is thick and aniseed in my mouth. It is midnight. Petticoat Lane is quiet. The most famous market in east London.
'Is Kelly there?'
The cops fall silent. There is nothing but the clink of chains scraping gently in the wind. The night has turned long, and sleep creeps at the back of my neck. An encounter with Danny, a Jamaican crack dealer with convictions for assault, armed robbery and attacking police, has left us drained.
'Who wants to know?'
'Alton.'
'Alton?'
There is wariness. And fear.
'Yeah.'
'Wait a minute.'
The clanking grows.
In the pitted gloom of a sodium light they begin to emerge. Under the meat racks and clothing stalls, the dank smell of piss and decay cloaking the cooling midnight: shapes. Cruel, muted shapes. Misshapen shadows.
‘You got any money?’
I start. A figure is at the driver window. I can barely make out the speaker. A beard. Cap. Angled cheekbones. Dirty fingers gripping the window.
It turns to me. In the light of the dashboard, Ken shoves a £10 note into its hands.
'Get Kelly. Tell her Ken is here. We need to talk'.
The figure shuffles off.
'Who's Kelly?'
'A tom'.
Dave looks bored. He takes a chunk out of the beigel and looks at his watch.
'Break soon.'
He looks at Ken, who in turn stares, willing and watching the shapes shuffle forwards as the lights of the car carve through their home.
Beside me, Harriet is silent. She has the darkest eyes, drawing you in. There is something eager about her. Her hand has slid, casually, to my lap.
In the darkness she turns to make sure we're not overheard, then puts her mouth close to my ear.
"Will you do heroin with me?" she rushes.
Outside a shriek builds to a cry, then cuts off. The door opens.
'Ok, here she is. Talk.'
*
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