The Faithless - Martina Cole [50]
The old affable Jonny P, always ready to buy a round of drinks, always the first with a good joke, and always the first to arrange a big party, was long gone. He was a serious, rather dour man now, who occasionally reverted to his old ways while in his cups. He had still never touched a drug – alcohol being his only real vice – and he took his job and its responsibilities very seriously indeed. As his father-in-law always said, getting to the top was the easy part, it was staying there that took the real hard graft.
The truth of the statement was not lost on Jonny now as he sat working. He had fought to get the top prize and it was getting harder and harder to hang on to it. London in the nineties was run by him and a few other Faces – they had minor roles, of course. But it was being swamped by Eastern Europeans, Russians, and the like. They were like no other adversary seen on these turfs before; they had unlimited money and they were ruthless, and that meant he had to become more ruthless. That was the law of their game, but it was a hard graft all the same.
The girls in many of his clubs were Eastern European. The men he dealt with had a constant supply, and the girls were brought over, relieved of their passports, and then told they had to work off their debts. Jonny also had fingers in more than a few pies concerning some Eastern-European brothels. These were constant money-spinners and, though he had found the whole thing distasteful at first, he knew if he didn’t become a part of it some other enterprising fucker soon would. That would mean a serious rival for him and he could not allow that.
All the same he didn’t like the business – but then he didn’t bet and he still had plenty of betting shops. Betting was a fucking mug’s game as far as he was concerned; only fools and bigger fools thought they could really beat the odds. If they had a win, it was rarely enough to cover the years of spending in his shops that preceded it. Still, each to their own and if the Good Lord had not invented lust, greed and all the other vices, he would not have been able to live the life of a biblical king. And live like a king he did, though he was clever enough not to live too ostentatiously. He did though have property all over the world, and that was thanks to his Eastern-European connections. They were masters at the long game and he was learning shitloads of stuff from them.
Jonny bought properties for cash, and laundered the money by remortgaging them, not just in England but all over the world; it was like a licence to print legal dosh. He was also amazed at the amount of money to be made in whoring, because it was the whoring that had been the most lucrative of all his new ventures. The only real drawback was that he had no real control over the money and, if caught, the sentences were heavy. That was because the girls were there against their will and that often led to charges of white slavery – even though many of the girls were West African – and kidnapping. It was costing a fortune to grease the right palms but, thanks to his connections, they were pretty safe. At least as safe as those kind of deals can be. It was taking its toll though, and he knew that the happiness he should have been feeling from all he had achieved was not there.
The reason for this was his Celeste. Yes, she was better than she had been, but she was still scared of her own shadow. In fact, the only time she was remotely happy was when they were out in Spain. She loved their house in Majorca and she seemed to relax there. It was up in the mountains, and the greenery and the dramatic views seemed to calm her soul. Personally, he liked it for the first week and then felt