Читать книгу One-Eyed Baz - The Story of Barrington 'Zulu' Patterson, One of Britain's Deadliest Men - Barrington Patterson & Cass Pennant - Страница 13

Todd: Barrington came from Handsworth and when he came up into the city he had the Handsworth mentality; they used to go up to the skinheads and take their boots off them, and their laces! But Barrington kind of turned. He left the Handsworth lot and started to hang around with us lot in town. He started going to the football, shoplifting, everything that we were doing as kids, which progressed into the football violence and meeting women, and his life kept on accelerating to where he is now.

Rupert: Barrington always had money, he always worked. I wish I was like that. Anyone he met or had a bond with, he would keep in contact with.

Todd: He had a job, he always had money, and he always had a missus. His only downfall at the time was gambling, he’d always be across the road in The Night Rider and he’d be playing cards: blackjack and brag. Barrington was our mate but we couldn’t get in the way of his gambling, because if we went to the pub where he was gambling with the older lot he’d tell us to piss off! But he was the only one who had a job and he was in a stable relationship; he thought so much of the girl he was with at the time, I’m surprised he never ended up marrying her. She was a blonde-haired girl from Erdington, wasn’t she?

As kids, we never really knew about designer clothes and, even if we did, we couldn’t afford those things. I remember your Adidas four-stripe and wearing an Adam and the Ants T-shirt. We’d go to school in plimsolls with the cardboard pushed down inside to try to stop the water soaking through, and side-pocket trousers with a big utility belt.

When the shops finally took notice of all this designer stuff and started to stock all these smart tracksuits, a big sports shop opened up. On the first day it opened, we broke into it and robbed all the tracksuits – Ecko, Ellesse, Sergio Tacchini. Before that I was wearing Adidas, with the four-stripe trainers, and in town people would be taking the piss out of me. People all around, including us, started to come out of wearing Sta-Press and brogues and became a bit more casually dressed.

It had mainly been a music scene, but then all the casual clothes started coming in. You had all these shops opening in Birmingham like Cecil Gee and other shops were selling Gabicci and all that. As soon as the shops opened, we were breaking into them and robbing them. On a Friday or Saturday, you’d just walk in and take a handful of clothes. You’d walk out and nobody could stop you. We continued steaming into designer shops and taking all the stock out – Armani jeans, Nevica skiwear, Tacchini and Fila tracksuits. In and out in one minute, that was our aim. Then there were all the guys coming from London wearing Tacchini and Fila. We just taxed them and took it off them.

Now that we’d started to go places, some of the ex-skinheads we knew would ask, ‘Why don’t you come to a game?’ So we started to go down to the football match; that was where it all began.