Too Cold For Snow

of film grammar.’
    Brennan hated overeducated thugs. Give him old school, no school.
    ‘Me? I did it? Did what?’
    ‘Well, we filmed someone who looked like you, setting about this poor man with all the righteous fury of a Jeremiah. Do you want to see?’
    Brennan shook his head. The creature that brought him bad luck was there in the haze, the amphetamine genie run amok.
    ‘So let’s talk turkey. Marty. He’s the one who’s brought us together. He is costing me a lot of money. My vans and shops aren’t selling shit all at the moment. And for every new van he puts on the streets I’m taking one off. Well, enough is enough. The deal is this. I want Marty’s imperium to end. Do that and your life will turn once more on a well-oiled axis. With me?’
    Luther was infamous for his fleet of vans, serving what the locals referred to as “death kebabs”, offering a salivating choice between shish made of condemned meat and doner made of abattoir off cuts: pigs’ lips and arseholes, left over gristle, bloody floor-sweepings. Many people woke up on Sunday mornings with caves of limpid fat where their mouths used to be.
    Brennan had no choice. Luther was an evil serpent, but this was a rocky path to be walked unshod. He liked Marty, respected the man’s ingenuity, his naked gift of scam. And the scale of his audacity. Like that time he sold tarmac and offered a special mix of marble which would make the owner’s drive stand proud in a long street of driveways. It would cost a bit more, mind. After they’d laid it the effect of the white chips ‘from a family run quarry outside Turin’ against the jet black of the mac was striking. He’d shaken hands, and packed the lorry. Come the first rain the Polo mints they’d thrown in the mix would melt and the drive would become a pockmarked mess.
    Or the bootlegging. Marty captured some of the all-time best gigs on his miniature recording equipment, made on the sly by his cousin Wilf who worked in a M.O.D lab somewhere near Aberdeen. He was the first to release Brian Wilson’s Smile, that work of dark symphonic majesty which, had it come out before the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper , would have made the Fab Four look like the Muppets they really were.
    Two months flew by at an amphetamine lick as Brennan made his plans.
    Meanwhile Marty’s success bred more success. He bought fifteen more vans with a grant from the Welsh Development Agency – scamsters themselves in shiny suits. He had the coolest of logos designed by Pete Fowler, the guy who does the Super Furry Animals’ artwork. It was a dining dragon, the creature resplendent in a white tuxedo and quite the apogee of monster sophistication. And over a round of Warsteiners in Chapter bar his friends brain-stormed a logo for him.
    ‘Enter the Dragon.’
    ‘Too Chinese.’
    ‘Or perverse.’
    ‘What about Marty’s Mess, like they have on ships?’
    ‘Or Perfect Taste?’
    ‘I like that.’
    And so was born the slogan that would wrap around the base of the dragon’s tail. A Chinese dragon breathes water and is fertile, making crops grow. A Welsh dragon spits flames fit to chargrill a quarter pounder. This one had those words curled up to sit on.
    Demand threatened to outstrip supply, and with a profit margin that made even the bloated one that fast food normally commands look quite anorexic against the four hundred per cent mark up at P.T’s. It was worth creating a small team who would trap underground and venture up the valleys to catch wood pigeons, carrion crows and rooks. They paid a farmer called Steve a lavish retainer for keeping quiet and laying the corn in stubble fields where they would use rocket-powered nets to capture a flock at a time.
    The menu expanded.
    ‘Perfect Taste’
     
Grilled spatchcock burgers (collared doves collared behind the bakery – same weight as a spatchcock only a damn sight cheaper) £4.00
Guinea fowl with grape foliage (woodpigeons by another name) £3.50
Wild rabbit with organic green leaf (sewer kill mainly and kids were paid by the carrier bag to collect dandelions) £4.50
     
    They sited the vans near office blocks at lunch time, drove to events in four counties, even went to agricultural shows where no one asked so much as a question. Lips were smacked. Taste buds were tantalised. They raked it in off the vans. One made eight grand in five days. There was a bad incident one night when a bunch of yobs overturned a van which caught fire and the man inside, Terry