JUNIPER’S DAUGHTER – FRONTIER TOWN A novel by Nick Armbrister

JUNIPER’S DAUGHTER – FRONTIER TOWN

A novel by Nick Armbrister
   Other groups of boys formed groups in Renford for many reasons: safety in numbers, for support in the many crises that dogged the town from one day to the next, to working with rival gangs, fighting them or running a hundred and one illegal rackets. Protection was one of the biggest earners with individuals, businesses and other organisations paying to be “looked after,” what this resulted in was peace of mind. Those who didn’t pay were warned by smart well groomed men in suits, if that didn’t work a brick through the window led to the premises being fire bombed, machine gunned or blown up. Individual’s received a similar visit, if this failed then they were knee capped or had their legs broken by masked men who couldn’t be traced, like they never existed and the injured party had just slipped on the soap.
   Gant ran the largest racket; he didn’t collect the payment, this was delegated to lesser characters than himself working their way up the gangster chain of command. The attacks on premises was carried out by keen young angry thugs as was the assaults on individuals, when it went wrong Gant or one of his boys had to discreetly sort it out. This often involved the actual attacker being taught a lesson to give him one more chance or simply him/her disappearing (it was an equal opportunities job).
   Most of the people who lived in Renford were local or displaced citizens like Gerald who after getting out of jail stayed with Gant and co, if he went back to independent Wales he would be put to death brutally for aiding the English gangs as an example to anyone else who wanted to live the gangster life style hand in hand with the enemy. A feudal society spread all over the mainland of England, Scotland and Wales, a land like the middle ages with death, disease and lots of deadly radiation poisoning blanketing the land. Guns and ammunition were in plentiful supply as were vicious wicked people with a death wish and the will to use weapons. Several generations had fighting experience, whole families that survived thrived on decades of fighting, killing, violence and gangster style behaviour.
   Of this, Gant’s family was an example; his mother was a weapons dealer with contacts ranging into the Irish Republic to Libya to the Continent (excluding France which was destroyed). She armed her son with the latest and deadliest weapons, explosives, knives and other evil tools, in turn Gant passed some to his group, sold others and kept some as a healthy reserve just in case big trouble kicked off. She was born into a working class family, in the decades following the civil war, nuclear war with France and the fall back to a medieval society, it toughened up Gant’s mother. Her husband was an idle drunkard who didn’t want to know about Gant, his mother Sheila told her son when he was five that daddy was dead, it was better than explaining the awful truth that surrounded the man she once thought she had loved. He had gone to fight a group of people in the Cornwall area of the country, which was the last his ex-wife had heard of him for twelve years until one day he returned. He tried to make it up to his forsaken family but it was all in vain, Gant had a nervous breakdown after seeing his father who was alive but hideously wounded from his Cornish battles. A psychotic episode followed in which Gant shot dead his own father in cold blood after years of lies that finally came out and at how upset and inconsolable his once strong willed mother once was. He grabbed a gun and emptied the entire magazine of sixteen rounds into his absent father’s face and then dragged the body into the front garden, poured cooking oil on it and set it alight. For nine hours he stayed there watching the body burn, as his mother wept indoors on the edge of an even bigger mental breakdown. Burying the blackened shrunken skeleton under a dead rose bush Gant returned inside with a face like thunder, he was a man now who vowed never to end up like his father – he would look after his mother no matter what. He didn’t even know the name of the man he had just murdered, he never wanted to know and he blocked this evil act out of his mind.
   Illegal actions would be the forte of his life. He set up a network of boys early on in his teens to do dug dealing, street robberies and selling knives (Gant had sold knives to forty year old men when he was eight years old); also professional attacks for money, sabotaging the English army’s communications and many other shady jobs were done, in the strictest confidence.
   Gant had a sister called Clair who was a prostitute for her main income, he found out about this when he walked in on her with a client in her small box room in the house, of all the places Gant angrily thought as he loaded his pistol and aimed it at the man who cowered in terror trying to hide behind Clair. Gant let the man run into the street with his jeans around his ankles before shooting him in each buttock cheek. Falling to the floor the man crawled into the gutter expecting execution that never came, without medical treatment the man would die from infection and gangrene before the week was out. Gant returned to his sister’s room to have a talk with her, either stop this wicked profession because you’re family or get out and never come back. Mum and I don’t want you doing this, you can leave home or work for me, what is it to be? He gave her five minutes to clean herself up and give him an answer; she would work for her brother doing illegal work especially when the skills of a woman were needed. Yes she would be part of her brother’s illegal business in ways that were yet to be determined. Clair could make new contacts especially with any woman led groups. These were few in number but key leaders in their field, one such group being The Sisters of Renford who controlled prostitution in the east of the city, backed up by all female pimps – Gant warned his sister not to join them as a pro or even a gun armed pimp, contact with them had to be established in case any trading deals came up, things like that and nothing more, an administration role.
   He was working on putting a whole new set of schemes together including: ringers, stolen English army four wheel drive vehicles with a new identity so they would pass off as original to everybody even on the English army computers; a new range of chemical made holistic drugs that mirrored the effects of the Devil Snail plant, ten times stronger and easily addictable; in a lock up unit the illegal making of English army coins to use in the stores on various English army bases (these coins were only ever issues to English army soldiers for sole use in the base stores). Other lesser cash earners were Gant becoming a personal trainer for people who didn’t have fitness/hand to hand fighting skills, showing his customers how to do basic intelligence gathering work on specific things like information concerning their rivals and simple one off trades, for example a weapon that could be traded like a single pistol with ammo that could be used once.
   A dozen other illegal ideas formulated in the depths of Gant’s brain, how many would see the light of day? He mused over the taking over of a complete English army base. A fortified one would be fun, if it had a prison that would provide him with willing manpower to give support against the army. Crims would love to get payback, when Gant took the base using English army vehicles that were ringers after infiltrating it and becoming a presence there for a couple of days, even buying crappy porno mags in the base shop with the fake coins, finally springing the prisoners and defeating the base from within. That plan was pure genius; one of Gant’s bigger ideas he could chose to do, he wasn’t definitely going to do it, it was back up in case his other schemes failed but it depended on the current status quo being maintained. What if the army chose to attack then? What would Gant do then?