‘There’s a taxi driver who likes to bite.’

‘We’ve heard.’

‘That’s your lot then.’

‘Thanks,’ I say and see myself out.

I drop the coins.

‘Joseph?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Fraser.’

‘Bobby the bobby. Just a matter of time I says, and see if it ain’t so.’

I am in the phone box two down from the Azad Rank, watching a couple of Paki kids bowling at each other. Ellis is sleeping off his Sunday lunch in the car: two cans of bitter and a fat cheese sandwich. There’s Sunday cricket on the radio, more heat forecast, birds singing, lilting bass and sax from a terrace.

It can’t last.

The man on the other end is Joseph Rose: Joe Rose, Jo Ro. Another Paki kid joins the game.

I say, ‘SPG are coming to take everyone away, and not to Zion.’

‘Fuck them.’

‘See you try,’ I laugh. ‘You got some names for me?’

Joseph Rose: part-time prophet, part-time petty thief, full-time Spencer Boy with draw to score and debts to pay, he says:

‘This be concerning Mrs Watts?’

‘In one.’

‘Your pirate won’t stay away, no?’

‘No. So?’

‘So people be spooked anyway’

‘By him?’

‘Nah, nah. The two sevens, man.’

Fuck, here we go. ‘Joseph, give me some fucking names.’

‘All I hear is the ladies say it’s Irish. Same as befores.’

The Irish.

‘Ken and Keith know anything?’

‘Same as I say’

As I hang up two black SPG transit vans fly down the street and I’m thinking, fuck the Spencer Boys:

HEAVY DUTY DISCIPLINE COMING DOWN.

It’s going up to eight and the car is getting smaller, light starting to fade. Across Leeds 7 bonfires are going up, and not fucking Jubilee Beacons. Me and Ellis are still sat off Spencer Place, doing fuck all but sweat and get on each other’s tits.

Nervous, like the whole fucking city:

Ellis stinks and we’ve got the windows down, smelling the wood and Rome burn, cat calls and yells upon the hot black air: the ones we’ve not pinched building barricades, putting out the milk bottles for later.