The Faithless - Martina Cole [33]
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.
Chapter Twenty-Five
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,