It never really made no difference that my mum kicked my dad out because he was in and out all the time anyway. He never stayed every night. He had a room at my granddad’s house so he never really lived with us. He used to come and drop off my school money but I never see him, coz he used to put the money through the letter box. He used to post my bus pass and school money. And once a month, like, he would get me a pair of trainers or something. He was there a little bit but he had so much kids elsewhere that I never really expected nothing from him, so …
Birdie
The Cross brothers lived in one of the twelve large council blocks that made up the Angell Town estate. Back then, before the boys took their street names of Inch and Biker, they were just Nathan and his younger brother Andrew. They lived with their devoutly Christian parents, older brother and three sisters in a small, four-bedroom flat in Pym House. Pym House, like the other council blocks, Marston House, Ireton House and Fairfax House, was a high-density council block, nearly 100 metres long and three storeys high with 130 small flats. It was at the heart of Angell Town. The estate had been designed and built in the 1970s as an attempt to regenerate the area. At the time it was thought of as ‘visionary’ architecture that would provide low-cost housing for 800 families and encourage community spirit. That’s why the blocks in Angell Town were connected by a labyrinth of raised pedestrian walkways which the architects tried to invest with some romance by calling them ‘pedways’. But already by the late 1980s the estate was sinking into decay and instead of being called Angell Town was referred to as ‘Hell’s Gate’. Residents had begun to complain that the network of open garages underneath the council blocks attracted rats and cockroaches and was a hangout for drug pushers, flashers and rapists. They complained that the ‘pedways’ provided an escape route for muggers and house burglars. Even the concrete football pitch at the centre of the estate came in for criticism. Kids used to come back with grazed knees from falling on the hard, gritty surface, and mothers complained that the high wall surrounding the pitch meant that they couldn’t keep an eye on what their kids were doing. Not that kids like the Cross brothers noticed. Even though their mother kept them on a tight rein, Nathan and Andrew Cross still enjoyed running around the estate, hiding beneath the pillars of the ‘pedways’ and hanging out with Fat Chris, Fat Si and Michael Deans on the estate’s solitary green space. It was a small, run-down park littered with broken glass and beer cans. For the Cross brothers, though, it was a place of pure romance, a gateway to another world where they could watch the older boys smoke dope and drink beer. Along with Fat Si and Michael Deans, they would spend hours on the broken, graffiti-scarred bench dreaming that one day they too would be flirting with the girls and showing off their latest pair of American trainers.
One summer, Nathan, the older of the Cross brothers, noticed a new kid hanging out in the Angell Town park. It was a kid with a strange accent. Nathan had heard strange accents before. He had family that came from Moss Side in Manchester but this kid had a different accent. A strong accent. He went up to the new boy.
‘Where you from?’
‘Birmingham.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Elijah.’
Nathan wanted to hear him carry on talking because the accent was so funny. Soon both the Cross brothers were asking him questions and getting him to talk more so that they could hear his accent. They found out he had a younger brother called Naja and that he had just moved into Marston House, the next block along the road from Pym House.
Nathan found himself being slightly surprised when, a week later, they all met up again and the boy’s accent was as strong as it had always been.
* * *
‘Who are those Sheffield kids?’
That was Michael Deans’s first question to the Cross brothers when he saw the new kids in the park. He’d been to Barbados to visit relatives with his mum and hadn’t been there during JaJa’s first week in Angell Town.
‘That’s Elijah and Naja. And they are not from Sheffield. They are from Birmingham.’
That evening, Michael Deans discovered that Elijah and Naja had moved into Marston House next door to the flat he lived in with his parents, two sisters and little brother.
Michael Deans, who would later go by the street name of Birdie, had known the Cross brothers for as long as he could remember. Michael’s father and Nathan’s father used to ‘roll’ or hang out together. Because the kids were the same age they used to hang out together too. They were different characters, though. Michael was quiet and thoughtful. The Cross brothers were wilder, more energetic. Michael Deans’ first shock in life was when his mother kicked his dad out. She didn’t say anything. She just left black bin bags with his belongings outside the front door. He’d been sleeping around and rarely came home at night. Michael was eight years old. But after the initial shock though, he didn’t really notice his dad’s absence.
My dad’s got a lot of kids all over. He never hid that we had brothers and sisters all over the place … and I had enough of that crap. There were never arguments in front of us, so it didn’t affect me much.
His dad had been born in Jamaica and was in the music business. He was a drummer who used to play old reggae stuff. His mum was from Barbados and they’d met and started their relationship in Balham, a few miles west of Angell Town. The only time Michael saw his dad was about once a month when he used to drop off the school money. After a time, though, he just posted it through the letter box. It was his mum who gave them all her energy. She made sure that they sat at table and said prayers before dinner like a proper family.
Nathan Cross and Michael Deans were pleased with their new friend, Elijah. They were pleased that they had someone else to muck around with on the estate. They were especially pleased because a few weeks earlier Fat Si had gone away. It was a shock. Fat Si had been with them on the Angell Town estate for as long as they could remember, often spending the night at Fat Chris’s in Pym House so that he wouldn’t have to go and live with his grandmother in Camberwell. But now Fat Si had gone. And nobody knew when, or if, he’d be back.
And that’s how it started. Four little boys, Elijah, Simon, Nathan and Michael, who would take the street names of JaJa, Phat Si, Inch and Birdie. Soon they would be joined by three others, Bloods, Ribz and Tempman. Seven kids who would grow up together in Angell Town and become the core of the most notorious gang in south London.
That’s how advanced I was as a little boy. I was forced to fend for myself. Ever since I was eight years old I’ve lived on the streets and had to look after myself.
Phat Si
Fat Si’s father hadn’t been able to cope with his son. Fat Si’s wild behaviour and constant truancy got too much for him. He paid for Fat Si to get on a plane