In Jack’s day, there was honour among thieves, as much as that sounded like a contradiction in terms. Not any more though – now it was every man for themselves. And Jonny Parker wanted it
all for
himself, every pavement, and every earn.
It was nothing more than a recipe for disaster.
Jonny Parker was not as worried as he probably should have been, and that fact pleased him no end. He was taking a big chance and he knew it; he was putting his life on the line. But if he didn’t do this, he knew he would regret it one day. He had always gone with his instincts and they, so far, had never let him down. He could only hope that this was another one of his more lucrative ideas.
His instincts now were telling him the time was right. It worked on paper, admittedly, but paper never allowed for the reactions of the people involved. He was
always
wary of the reactions to his more outrageous business enterprises. But, where this one was concerned, he would do murder if necessary, because he was determined to see this one through to the very end.
He was a much harder fuck than people realised. But after this next coup – and it was a very audacious and dangerous scam – his real intentions and his real personality would be known to all and sundry. He had bided his time, and this was the moment he had been working towards. If he was honest, he was still a bit nervous about it but, as far as he was concerned, that nervousness was all to the good. It would ensure he didn’t take anything for granted. Didn’t let his guard down. It was when people became too sure of themselves that they tended to make mistakes, and he had no intention of fucking this one up.
‘You all right, Jonny?’
Celeste looked worried, and he forced a smile of nonchalance on to his face.
‘I’m fine, sweetheart, just thinking that’s all.’
Celeste grinned then. ‘You’re always thinking! What’s on your mind, mate?’
He cupped her face in his hand, amazed at the force of the love he felt for this woman. ‘Nothing for you to worry about. Now are you sure you’ll be all right tonight? I won’t be out longer than necessary, I promise.’
‘Stay as long as you want. I’m going round me mum’s anyway – she’s got the kids.’
Jonny grimaced and the look made her grin again.
‘She’s always got the fucking kids!’
Celeste was serious suddenly. ‘Not any more. Be fair, Jonny, she doesn’t have them half as much as she used to.’
It amazed him how this woman – because she was a woman when all was said and done, despite her childishness and her naivety – could still stick up for that sorry excuse of a sister. But, as his old mum always insisted, blood was thicker than water. Bollocks of course, but women seemed to think it was a valid excuse for their family’s treachery and skulduggery. Personally, he thought her sister should be six feet underneath a golf course somewhere. But that was only his opinion and, where her piece of shit of a sister was concerned, his wife was not going to listen to any arguments he might put forward, no matter how valid they may be.
‘I’ll retreat on this occasion, darlin’, because I don’t want to row about it. She ain’t worth rowing about, is she?’
Celeste shook her head, but he knew she was upset.
‘So I’ll see you later then, eh?’ He kissed her and, as always, she responded to his embrace with all her being.
‘I’ll hold you to that!’
When the door shut behind him, Celeste sat down and lit a cigarette from her secret stash. Jonny hated her smoking, but
she needed it to calm her nerves. She knew something big was going down tonight, and she feared in her heart that it was something that could go very, very wrong. She trusted Jonny, but she knew he was taking some big risks these days – at least as far as her dad was concerned he was, and her dad wasn’t a spinner. If
he
was worried, there was something to worry about. Her dad might not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he heard anything that was worth anything, and her husband should listen to him now and again. In fact, he ought to understand that he
should
listen to the truth sometimes even if he wasn’t in the mood for hearing it. She felt personally that it was always worth a quick listen to the local gossip. Nine times out of ten, they knew more than the Filth ever would and even more than the people involved in a scam. Gossip was a serious thing where they came from; it was the forerunner to a serious nicking. If it was known outside their workforce, it was dangerous to everyone involved. It meant that it wasn’t as secret as they all assumed. In fact, it meant it was common knowledge, in the public domain, and that meant that someone in his personal circle had a big mouth and that big mouth could cause more fights than John Wayne. She couldn’t talk to her husband about any of this because he saw local gossip as nothing more than fabrication, stupidity and idiocy. Those being his exact words.
Celeste loved her husband more than life itself, but she knew he wasn’t exactly kosher. In truth, she knew a lot more than he gave her credit for. She also understood what he was capable of, and that frightened her. Not for herself – he would never hurt her, of that she was sure. But he was capable of murder, she had no doubt about that at all.
She smoked the cigarette with shaking hands. Tonight was going to be a long one.
Jonny Parker was excited, but the excitement was tinged with worry. He might be a Face to be reckoned with, but he knew he was dealing with people who would never give him a second chance if he didn’t achieve his goal straight off. And the goal was to get what they had; he wanted every bit of it. He was legitimate enough to pass off his affluent lifestyle as above board. He also had a cache of fall guys who worked for him, unaware that if it went pear-shaped they would be the ones in the frame. That was the brainchild of his dear brother-in-law who, if it ever did go off, would be the first one nabbed by Lily Law. Jonny had enough safety features in place to keep himself out of stir. What he
didn’t
have, at least not one hundred per cent, was the guarantee that he wouldn’t be taken out before he achieved the more outrageous of his goals. But he was a planner and he was a plodder in many respects; he waited and he watched, and he thought through his business moves with precision. Still, you always had to allow for eventualities, such as the people you were dealing with being a bit fucked off that you were intending to wipe them out. That tended to give people the raging hump.
Jonny was respected for doing the majority of his dirty works himself; that was so people knew what they were dealing with. He never left a trail though, he was far too shrewd for that. But tonight was about some serious money, and meant having to cross some serious people. He was confident he could make the transition from supplier to managing director with no real
trouble. If he took out the main men, he was laughing all the way to the bank.
It was the taking them out that was the tricky thing. Taking them out and making sure the people who worked for them understood the economics of the deal. After all, his education had taught him that as long as people earned, they would happily work for whoever provided that earn. They lived in a Thatcherite society; you give me a good wage, and I’ll swallow my knob and work for you instead. It was the way things worked now. It wasn’t the sixties any more, and the sooner people realised that, the better off they would all be. It was like living in a fucking bubble; the old values were all right in their day, but this was the eighties, and anyone with a sawn-off and a few quid could walk in anywhere and get a decent hearing. The days of gentlemen villains was long gone; they were banged up, and wouldn’t see the light of day until the fucking Jews returned to Zion, that’s how remote their release dates were. They had been put away for the duration, judges had taken it upon themselves to rid the country of some of its best earners. Legal earners at that; for all their skulduggery they had been proper earners as well – good, decent taxpayers. None of them had ever signed on the dole or asked for a fucking handout.
It was a new world, with a whole new set of rules and regulations; the old guard were gone and forgotten. This was really about the survival of the fittest, and Jonny Parker knew he was fitter than most. He was going to play them all at their own game, and they would understand that this was not a dress rehearsal, this was the real thing.
He had planned it down to the last detail, and all he had to do now was make sure it was executed with the minimum of fuss and the maximum of terror. Fear was the best way to ensure the complete devotion of everyone concerned. Fear had its own rewards – that cunt of a sister-in-law had learned that the hard way. Without realising it she had taught him a good
lesson: it was the people nearest you who were the real danger. It was something he would never forget. The shock of her revelations to the Filth had made him take a step back and look at his workforce and their relatives very closely. In her own way, that two-faced ponce Cynthia had shown him the chinks in his armour. He had understood then just how easy it was for outsiders to know far too much about his businesses.
Not any more, though. It was now common knowledge that anyone who talked outside of their working circle would be treated with the response that such treachery deserved. Wives and girlfriends were now treated as scornfully as the Filth, were seen to be as dangerous as the law courts. They were not party to anything even remotely pertaining to the business of their husbands or partners. It was working out wonderfully. Jonny told his wife, the love of his life, fuck-all as well. She was a great girl but, like every woman, the less she knew the better.
Tonight he would be well and truly blooded; he was going to make his mark once and for all. He didn’t want to do this because it would be bloody and callous and it would become legend. He
needed
to do it because once he had, no one would be in any doubt who was the main earner in the Smoke. Now it was time. Every businessman comes to a crossroads, where they decide what route they’ll take – either the easy option (always the less lucrative), or the hard option, where they have to fight for what they really want. Well, he was going to fight, and fight with everything he had. He was going to make sure that no one, no one at all, would be left to queer his otherwise perfect pitch.
This was make or break time, and he was determined to break them, little by little, bit by bit.
Joseph Makabele was a large Rastafarian, who had not been near Jamaica even once in his long and eventful life. He was actually a Nigerian, who knew that his heritage would not help him in any way, shape or form. Not in the world of drug-dealing anyway. He knew the real Jamaicans were suspect about him, and that the white boys were even more so. Mainly because they had gone to school with the Jamaicans and the Tobagonians, and every other Caribbean boy in the neighbourhood; he had never gone to school with anyone who was worth anything. He looked the part and he talked the part, but he didn’t have the creds.
Joseph knew that meant he would not get the loyalty he needed; people worked for him, but they didn’t really trust him. He offered a good wage, but nothing more, because no one knew him years ago and, in London, unless you were able to hark back at least three generations, you were no one.
He understood that now, he also understood that if he didn’t win tonight with Jonny Parker, local hero, and all round likeable cunt, he was finished. But he had allowed for something like this, and he was sure he had enough get-out clauses to last him at least one lifetime. Joseph was handsome, he was charismatic, and he could supply enough drugs to keep the whole of the South East high until the next millennium, and at half the usual going price. But he also knew that being the outsider would always be his weak spot.
People in the south of England had a blind spot, and that was for others of their ilk. If Joseph had been born and bred here, he knew he would be all right. But he wasn’t, and he also knew that his pretending to be a Jamaican Rasta meant nothing to the people he had to deal with tonight. Jonny Parker was going to challenge him and that, in itself, was a serious challenge by anyone’s standards.
Joseph had seen this coming for a long time, but he had hoped, like many before him, that a good earn and good fringe benefits would see him safe. He had played the Rasta man, but it was an act and, deep inside, he was aware that everyone who worked for him knew it.
He was frightened. Tonight was the real deal, and how he reacted to it all would affect the rest of his life. But he was ready for the fight. He had surrounded himself with the best of the best, paid them more than they were worth, and now he had to hope that that would be enough.
He shrugged. He was letting the demons get the better of him, as his old grandma used to say. He wondered wistfully if she was still alive. He had been brought over to England by his mother, who had swiftly abandoned him and, eventually, he had ended up a Barnardo’s boy. Another reason he wasn’t trusted; after all, if your own family didn’t want you . . . Another East-End saying that he had to admit had the ring of truth to it.
He mentally shook himself. He had got this far, and he had the nous and the guts to get wherever he wanted to be. He had told himself that all his life, and it had worked up to now. He reassured himself that he had the right men beside him, and that they were paid enough to ensure their loyalty. That had to mean something. They knew as well as he did that Jonny Parker was not really meeting him to arrange a large shipment of drugs – he was meeting him to tell him that from now on his services would no longer be required. Well, Jonny Parker had a big shock
coming to him, and in a way he was sorry about that, because he liked Jonny Parker, he was a nice bloke.