The Second Trilogy Of Johnny Two Kebabs: Johnny Two Kebabs, #8

By Johnny Two Kebabs

Journey through these memoirs with Johnny as he describes a world fraught with danger, mystery and questionable hygiene. With each page, he draws us deeper into his enigmatic realm as the truth behind each tale is unveiled.
Setting the stage for the three novellas in this collection, "The Prequel" chronicles his astonishing rise to fame. How, during an unforgettable contest at Achmed's kebab shop in south London, he achieved notoriety by devouring two doner kebabs in a jaw-dropping one minute and fifty-nine seconds, after already having downed thirteen pints of lager.

Next, his courage and resourcefulness are put to the test when he becomes entangled in an investigation into the murder of a Conservative MP, during which, he uncovers a sinister terrorist plot by a Cornish separatist group which propels him into a race against time to thwart a devastating attack.

Finally, his strangest investigation yet leads him into the eccentric realm of alternative therapies. He comes face to face with the ghost of a former British prime minister, and together they must unravel the mystery of a series of brutal murders.

In these pages, the 'conscious vigilante' opens up in a way he has never done before about realising the true power of the human spirit. He reveals what drives him and how his philosophy underpins his determination to vanquish evil. Brace yourself as you join Johnny Two Kebabs while he metes out justice on the mean streets of south London.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Johnny Two Kebabs
• Release date: Feb 19, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224883028

Johnny Two Kebabs

Who is Johnny Two Kebabs? There has been much speculation in recent years as to whether Johnny Two Kebabs really exists. Is it true that on 15th June 2011 after drinking 13 pints of lager, he polished off two doner kebabs in 1 minute 59 seconds? Is Johnny Two Kebabs just an urban legend? Is the song that was written about him and for which the video appears on the internet merely in the tradition of Irish blarney and storytelling? Now, for the first time Johnny has decided to recount his adventures and the events leading up to the historic achievement to which he owes his fame. The importance of Johnny's memoirs is beyond doubt as they establish him as one of the great ‘thinkers’ of modern times and they grant him the recognition he so justly deserves.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

TRUST NO-ONE BELIEVE NOTHING

Although Johnny didn’t really consider himself to be a gambler he spent a lot of time in betting shops. He made it his business to bet every now and then, especially if he had a reliable tip. However, Johnny knew that no tip could ever be 100% reliable. He was well aware that there were a thousand tricks to conceal the reality behind the appearances in gambling. After all, one of the guiding principles of his life was, Trust no one - believe nothing. As his father used to say, Remember lad, in a country like Ireland, where even if someone tells you it’s raining, you still have to look out the window to confirm it - you can trust no one, not even your own father. You’d know best about that, Johnny had replied but he had to agree with his father, the safest course of action was to always be extremely circumspect. Everything needed to be rigorously tested to see whether it had even a grain of truth in it. This was part of Johnny's philosophy and it had served him well over the years. Johnny considered himself to be a scientist and he approached gambling like any other subject - as something to be examined objectively before he could decide whether it would work to his benefit or not. Over the years he had, in general, not done too badly with his flutters, this was because he was well-informed. He knew quite a few people who were involved in horse racing and he kept his eyes on the sporting news. He wasn’t a big sportsman himself although he had played rugby for a short time in his school in Dublin back in the day.

That morning, he was in O’Reilly’s bookmakers on Brixton Hill. The owner, Paddy O’Reilly, had started his shop many years ago. It was difficult to compete with the big bookmaker chains but O’Reilly had done well. He knew Johnny and while they were both wary of each other they would be cordial as each one had a certain amount of respect for the other. Johnny had placed his bet and was sitting down to watch a race when in walked BlackJack.

He was a guy that Johnny and the staff of O’Reilly’s knew only too well. BlackJack grunted at Johnny, he stopped and looked at the odds being offered for the race about to start. He hung around the counter pretending to look for something in his pocket and then as soon as they were off he tried to place a bet. Of course, he had been waiting to see how his horse had started. It was an old trick and sometimes it would work with the younger staff who would accept the bet - but not today. The lad behind the counter said he couldn’t take bets after the race had started as the boss had warned him not to. BlackJack started getting nasty and menacing but the lad wasn’t having it. BlackJack huffed and puffed and just as he was leaving the premises the race finished and Johnny let out a yessss as his horse had come in first. Blackjack turned towards Johnny, he felt it like a personal slight that Johnny’s horse had won. He said to him, So the loser wins for once, Johnny turned and looked BlackJack straight in the eye and replied, No, BlackJack you didn’t win you didn’t even get to play. BlackJack was furious but he knew better than to mess with Johnny, he just looked him up and down contemptuously, then he left slamming the door behind him.

Johnny went back to his task of studying the form of the horses running in Cheltenham that day. He did this by reading the horse-racing pages of the sports newspapers which were pinned to the wall of the bookmakers. He was in the middle of studying this when all of a sudden the door burst open and a man with a stocking over his face burst in, he was armed with a sawn-off shotgun. He ran up to the counter and pointed the shotgun at the young clerk, Gimme the fookin' money, he shouted. The poor lad behind the counter had gone pale and seemed to have lost his voice with the shock of the intrusion. The man jumped over the counter and opened the till which he emptied into a bag he had with him.

The safe, get that fookin' safe open, he shouted. Indeed, there was a small safe behind the counter underneath the cash register. The lad pulled out the keys with shaking hands and gave them to the robber. He was quick, he opened the safe and had the entire contents in the bag within seconds. All this time Johnny hadn’t budged. There were three other customers in the shop and two of them had got down on the floor and put their hands on their heads while Johnny and another guy were still standing. Then the robber shouted out, Gimme yer fookin’ wallets or I’ll fookin’ kill ye. The guys on the ground and the other man standing fumbled in their pockets and produced wallets and even some notes and loose change. Johnny just stood there, he didn’t think the robber had meant him as well but the robber approached Johnny shouting, Gimme yer fookin’ money, who do yez think yez is, quick. Johnny was astounded, was he really talking to him? Did he not know who he was? Then Johnny struck, he tried his old martial arts technique of spitting directly in the eyes and aiming a kick to the groin. Unfortunately, however, the robber was lightning quick in his response and he evaded both of these manoeuvres, he raised the shotgun above his head and smashed Johnny on the forehead with the butt of the gun.

CHAPTER 2

CODE OF ETHICS

He had only been knocked out for a few seconds. When he woke up he could hear voices chattering excitedly. At first, he wondered what had happened and then it all came back to him. He sat up against one of the walls. A nasty bruise had appeared above his left eye, otherwise, besides an ache where he had been hit he felt OK. The sound of sirens and general commotion could be heard. It was a few more minutes before he attempted to move. He got up and walked slowly towards the door but when he reached it a man in uniform stopped him. Please sir, let us take a look at that wound, sit down here, and he pointed to a chair. It was a man from the ambulance brigade it seemed that an ambulance and the police had arrived at more or less the same time which seemed a bit strange to Johnny as, in his experience, it was always, fire brigade first, police second and ambulance last when something happened in London. A young woman had appeared now at his side and was rubbing his face with soft cotton. She was also wearing the ambulance uniform. How are you, Johnny?... I mean Mr Two Kebabs... sorry. She blushed. She obviously knew who Johnny was but that wasn’t surprising, Johnny was used to female attention.

I’m feeling a little peckish, Johnny replied.

You need to come to the hospital with us Mr Two Kebabs we have to check that you are all right, we will need to keep you under observation, The girl said.

If you wanna keep me under observation you can love, but you’ll have to come back to my place to do that, Johnny said.

Oh dear ... She had gone red again. Suddenly another stronger voice said. All right, Two Kebabs, we will wanna talk to you. It was one of the cops.

Seems like everyone wants a bit of Johnny today, Johnny declared. Well, you’ll have to wait your turn. I’m talking to the young lady here.

Oh, Johnny, she had turned pink once again.

I probably shouldn’t do this but I will, she said and she wrote a telephone number on Johnny’s arm with a black ballpoint pen. Johnny stood up, he was experiencing hunger pangs and he thought it was also high time for a couple of pints. A detective stopped him.

Oi, you’re a witness to a serious crime, we need to talk to you.

Am I under arrest? Johnny asked.

No, you are not under arrest but we want to talk to you to get information on this incident, The officer said.

Well, Johnny is not giving interviews right now, you’ll just have to arrange it for a later date. Johnny knew he’d probably have to talk to the police but he didn’t want to talk to them at that moment. He had answered the detective in a dismissive tone, largely because he wanted to impress the ambulance girl but also because he wanted to gather his thoughts. He was reminded of what Cardinal Richelieu had once famously stated: If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged. Johnny felt that this was applicable as much to the spoken as the written word. He knew it was best to keep one’s trap shut as much as possible around the police, so he preferred to have a little think first.

There had been something about the whole robbery that bothered Johnny. The perp had a Northern accent, but Johnny suspected that it was false, that he had been imitating a Northerner as most people would naturally suspect an armed robber of having his origins in that part of the country. He felt that in some way BlackJack was involved and while Johnny was rarely wrong about this type of thing he would never divulge this sort of information to the police. That would be against Johnny’s code of ethics. As far as Johnny was concerned, grassing on someone was one of the worst things anyone could ever do. Even if BlackJack had planned or carried out the robbery and despite the fact that he didn’t like him, Johnny would never grass to the police on anyone.

CHAPTER 3

WHY DID DOGS SNIFF EACH OTHER'S ARSES?

Abadge with NYPD written on a gold plaque was hanging from his neck, he was working homicide. Johnny’s piece was in his hands and the safety was off. He was instinctively following his training. He kicked open the door and lying there in front of him was one of the Marcello family. It looked like Gino but, of course, it is difficult to identify someone when half their head has been blown off. By the looks of it, with a pump-action shotgun, Johnny would later testify. He went into the next room, he knew the killer was still here, he could smell it. Now as they stalked each other through the house it was cat and mouse, it was like a choreographed performance. It was, in fact, a type of dance, as Johnny would later say, I asked him to dance with me - the dance of death. Then he saw a woman approach him, he opened his arms to protect her and instead of the feel of a warm feminine body, he found himself with a corpse in his arms. They started spinning round and round and round........ Johnny woke up in a sweat, he had dozed off after an afternoon in the The Auld Sod his local pub. His head was still a bit sore from the blow he had received. He had some serious thinking to do. It wasn’t the fact that O’Reilly’s had been robbed or that Johnny had taken a blow. No, it was the simple, undeniable fact that the robbery had occurred on his turf, on his watch. How dare they...how fucking dare they? It was no longer just a simple question of armed robbery or even of assault, it was the principle. Whoever had carried out the robbery, was now in Johnny’s debt and it was not just a simple monetary debt. It was what Johnny considered to be a blood debt, a question of honour that could only be settled by the drawing of blood. In a way, Johnny felt like a Gentleman whose honour had been impugned and who now thirsted for satisfaction, either in the form of a public apology or through a duel with the weapon of the offended party’s choice. If it were Blackjack this would mean that a final showdown, one that Johnny had often imagined, would at some point be inevitable. If the robber felt that Johnny suspected he knew who he was, Johnny’s life could even be in danger. Johnny, of course, couldn’t care less about danger, bring it on, was his attitude. Johnny even liked the idea of being in danger. He had always believed that in order to tackle evil, one had to take the fight to the enemy. Kill or be killed was his motto. Johnny, the hunter, unlike men who liked to stay in their comfort zones, welcomed the risk.

Maybe he had inherited this trait. He remembered how his mother back in Ireland was known to be a good, pious, church-going woman. However, when she read the newspapers or watched the news, she would always focus on the most heinous crimes that had been committed in Ireland and abroad. Of course, it didn’t surprise him, as Johnny well knew, some of history’s most vile despots have made a great outward show of piety, as people often like to feel that their leaders are god-fearing church-goers. Underneath her outward display of shock and outrage, Johnny knew that deep down his mother loved reading about gruesome crime, in fact, the more horrific the better. She would describe in detail a crime that had occurred and how she hoped the police would soon catch the culprit, to which Johnny would add, Yes, catch the culprit, please, but not too quickly, let’s see if he butchers anyone else first. Johnny would often egg her on at the dinner table by saying things such as, Did anyone read about that serial killer they have arrested in Russia? Terrible... just terrible what he did to his victims. This would start his mother off. First, she would bless herself then she would start lamenting the world we live in, with the lawless running around free to rape and murder. She always seemed to know all of the gory details of the crimes and sometimes she also seemed to know of details which hadn’t even appeared in the press but would later come out. She would even, at times, guess who the culprit was and what motivation they had. I know it was the mother-in-law, she was jealous of the son's wife. When he was younger, Johnny had imagined that maybe she was a type of seer someone who could lock into a highly emotionally charged event and see what had happened from afar, a sort of remote viewer. But, he had long since concluded that no, in fact, she just delighted in the macabre.

Yes, in some ways, Johnny was like his mother, he liked the action, he lived for the fight. If an armed robber were operating on his turf, he would have to hunt him down. If nothing else, it was just embarrassing. What if he targeted The Auld Sod or Achmed’s next? These were establishments on the Brixton street that was commonly referred to locally as The Strip after the main street in Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada. This was where it all happened, this was Johnny’s territory and he didn’t want outsiders marauding around bringing trouble to his area.

Johnny picked up his socks and sniffed them, he was going to track down this armed robber. Johnny believed that he had an especially acute sense of smell. Maybe he had been born with it, or maybe it was because he constantly practised. He believed that a sense of smell was the most important of all the senses and that he was able to smell guilt off a perp. Johnny knew that guilt, like fear, could be detected through the olfactory sense. After all, why did dogs sniff each other’s arses? The answer to this question was that dogs, like humans, have sweat glands or apocrine glands, as they are more formally known and these glands emit pheromones which transmit comprehensive information such as mood, sex, age and also mating information. Dogs have a large number of these glands and most are concentrated around the anus and genitals and this is why they like to have a good sniff around these parts when they meet a fellow canine. Johnny knew that dogs possessed about thirty times more olfactory receptors than a human and that they also had a much more developed vomeronasal organ called Jacobson’s organ which is situated at the top of their mouths. Johnny knew that a lot could be learned by sniffing an object and dogs gained much information not only by sniffing each other’s arses but also by smelling human crotches. People often feel embarrassed when a friend’s dog sniffs this area but actually, the dog is just being friendly and trying to glean information. In fact, for a dog, sniffing someone's crotch is like making small talk. Dogs can learn much from people by smelling this area, they can know, for example, if someone has had intimate relations that day or even if they are ovulating or have a venereal disease. This is why dogs are used not only to detect bombs and drugs but also for certain illnesses. Hounds can also know a person’s sexual orientation and a good deal about their recent sexual history from a good sniff. Johnny was a firm believer in the power of smell. He would know if he wasn’t well by the odour that his footwear emitted.