#gse

The street outside the Abbey stood silent the day they carried him through it, West Ham scarves tied to iron gates and lamp posts, beer bottles left untouched. They laid him to rest in a wooden box carved and painted with claret and blue, draped in a firm’s love and a brother’s tears. To most, Pete was a casualty of war—a football war, but a war all the same. A king who’d bled for his crest, who died not with fear in his heart, but with fire in his fists.

They said it ended there. In the mud, in the blood, under grey London skies.

The GSE was never the same after that day. You could hear it in the hush that fell over the pub at kick-off. Feel it in the way fists flew with a little less fire, as if the soul of the fight had been buried six feet under with him. They drank to his memory until the lines on their faces hardened, until his name became a chant too sacred to speak outside the walls of the Abbey.

But every lad from the Mile End to Upton Park knew the truth in their bones—Pete’s death left a hole in the world no firm could fill.

Stevie Dunham stood by the grave of his younger brother and never once blinked. He couldn’t. His eyes had cried dry days before. They’d found him curled on the kitchen floor that night, blood on his knuckles from the hole he'd put in the kitchen wall, and Pete’s stone island jacket clutched to his chest like a shield.

Tommy Hatcher got what he wanted—an eye for an eye. Retribution dressed as honour. Pete went down swinging, and everyone said that was the way he would've wanted it.

But that’s the thing about stories passed down by broken men in boozed-up pubs.

They don’t always end where they’re supposed to.

Some ghosts don’t haunt graveyards.

Some just change their face.

Grief makes men foolish.

It turns fists into flinches and bravado into bitterness.

And for a while, it turned Stevie Dunham into someone he'd once recognised.

The Major.

For a few months after Pete’s death, he tried to reclaim the crown his brother left behind. He turned up at the Abbey before sunrise, made speeches with shaking hands, and threw himself into fights he had no business walking away from. He bled for the firm, not out of pride this time—but punishment.

He wasn’t Pete. Everyone knew it.

But no one said it.

Dave, with his forced grin and quiet loyalty, just kept showing up.

Bovver took over training the new blood—less out of duty, more out of guilt.

Ned drank too much and laughed too loud.

Swill fought harder than anyone, like rage was oxygen.

Even Ike, the gentle bruiser with the broken nose and a gut full of Guinness, stuck around like a ghost haunting his turf.

They stayed. Out of habit. Out of memory. Out of the belief that Pete might still be watching.

But Steve—he was adrift.

He’d stop mid-sentence sometimes, staring at the empty seat where Pete used to sit with his pint and his grin and that unshakable swagger. Some nights, he disappeared entirely. Took off walking with his hood up, roaming London like he was looking for pieces of his brother in the cracks of the pavement.

He stopped shaving.

Stopped smiling.

Stopped living.

The fights lost their rhythm. The firm lost its fire.

Eventually, Steve stopped turning up at all.

They never replaced Pete.

Couldn’t.

The GSE kept moving, sure—like a boxer on autopilot, throwing punches long after the bell. But the soul was gone. And without a soul, even the most brutal of firms becomes just another memory fading into the brickwork.

Matt returned to the States a month later.

He promised to write. And he did—for a while. Emails from Boston, scattered updates, the odd 'wish you were here'. But time is a thief, and distance doesn’t need an excuse.

Still, Dave kept in touch. Loyal as ever. He’d send Matt photos from match day, blurry snaps of the lads in the pub, bottles raised, eyes tired. Now and then, Matt would reply with drafts. Chapters. Words that tried to capture what London had carved into him.

It wasn’t long before the story took shape.

A firsthand account. Honest, brutal, filled with blood and tales of brotherhood born in the West End.

"Among the Hammers: A Yank’s Descent into the West End Underground."

It hit shelves under a pseudonym, of course. The legal mess alone would’ve been a nightmare. But those who read it— Read it—knew the names weren’t fiction. Knew the pain wasn’t dressed up for drama. Knew Pete’s death was more than just a tragic end—it was a fracture point. A moment that split time.

The book did well.

Critics called it “gritty” and “visceral.” Said it captured the violence of a subculture with poetic clarity.

Matt just said it hurt to write.

Back in London, the boys read it in silence. Each in their own time.

Keith threw his copy across the room when he got to the part about the grave.

Bovver didn’t speak for a week.

Swill cried and didn’t bother hiding it.

And The Major?

Steve never finished it.

He read the first line—just the first—and closed the book.

“Some leaders are born. Others are built. But Pete Dunham was carved—chipped from concrete, fire, and fury.”

Somewhere in London — Years Later

The tie is charcoal grey. Subtle. Conservative. The shirt, pressed to perfection, carries the scent of bergamot and bergamot alone.

No cologne. No fuss. Just clean precision.

Fingers move with clinical ease, straightening the silk knot with a tug. A silver tie clip glints against his chest, perfectly centred. Not a millimetre off.

He checks his reflection once. Then again.

The hair is slicked neatly back, not a strand rebelling.

The glasses—adjusted with thumb and forefinger, a brief pause as he meets his gaze in the mirror.

The face—unfamiliar to most, but not to him.

Behind those eyes sits something buried. Something that breathes only when the night is still and the suit is hanging off the hook. He exhales slowly, as though exorcising something. Or holding it back.

He looks every inch the gentleman.

But a gentleman is just a gangster in a better tailor.

He tucks the corner of a white handkerchief into his breast pocket and slips a cigarette case into his coat. The coat itself—dark wool, heavy, shielding.

He pours a neat scotch in a crystal glass. His fingers are unshaken. His jaw set. His world is clinical and clean.

They call him Raymond.

The space was quiet. Too quiet for someone who’s never quite managed to outrun the echo of shouting crowds and bone on bone.

The room was sharp. Polished oak floors. Soft leather furniture. A minimalist fireplace that hadn’t seen flame in years. Everything had its place—except for the book resting on the arm of the chair.

It was just… there. Waiting. Taunting.

Raymond stared at it for a long time before touching it. As if the cover might burn him. Or worse—wake something he’d spent years burying under bone and bespoke suits.

He didn’t sit like a man settling in for a good read. He perched forward, elbows on knees, the book loose in his grip. Detached. Clinical.

He flipped the pages—not quickly, not slowly.

Just… deliberately.

Paragraphs passed beneath his gaze.

Familiar phrases leapt out like ghosts:

"The Mighty Hammers."

"The GSE"

"Pete Dunham"

The book now slammed shut face down on the coffee table.

Containing the secrets held within, or at least for now.

He doesn’t linger. Just walks. Steady, smooth, silent.

Somewhere in the distance, a dog barks. A train clatters. And the man who left a grave behind him steps into the fog-drenched street, swallowed up by the city that once mourned him.

No one knows his name here.

They call him Raymond.

But now and then, when the adrenaline kicks in, when blood spatters the inside of a Bentley or a body hits the floor in a posh Mayfair flat—something flashes behind his eyes. Something born not of silver spoons and Savile Row, but from back alleys, football chants, and fists raised for pride.

Some ghosts aren't dead.

They're just hiding in plain sight.

Waiting to die twice.