Trainspotting - Irvine Welsh [138]
They squeeze into the Hackney cab, telling the talkative driver that they are down for the Pogues gig, which will take place in a tent in Finsbury Park. It provided ideal cover, as they all planned to go to the concert, combining pleasure with business, before heading to Paris for a break. The cab almost backtracks the way the bus had come in, prior to stopping at Andreas’s hotel, which overlooks the park.
Andreas, who came from a London-Greek family, had inherited the hotel on the death of his father. Under the old man, the hotel had predominantly housed emergency homeless families. Local councils had the responsibility to find short-stay accommodation for people in such circumstances, and as the Finsbury Park district was sliced up between three London Boroughs, Hackney, Harringey and Islington, business had been good. On taking over the hotel, however, Andreas saw that it could be even more lucrative as a knocking-shop for London businessmen. While he never really hit the top end of the market he aimed at, he provided a safe haven for a small number of prostitutes. Mid-ranking city punters admired his discretion and the cleanliness and safety of his establishment.
Sick Boy and Andreas had got to know each other through going out with the same woman, who had been mesmerised by the both of them. They hit it off instantly, and worked a few scams together, mainly petty insurance fiddles and bank-card frauds. On taking over the hotel, Andreas had started to distance himself from Sick Boy, deciding that he was now in a bigger league. However, Sick Boy had approached him about a batch of quality heroin he had got a hold of. Andreas was cursed with a dangerous fantasy, and a timeless one: namely that he could hang around with villains to boost his ego, without paying an attendant price. The price Andreas paid was getting Pete Gilbert together with the Edinburgh consortium.
Gilbert was a professional who had worked in drug-dealing for a long time. He’d buy and sell anything. For him, it was strictly business, and he refused to differentiate it from any other entrepreneurial activity. State intervention in the form of police and courts merely constituted another business risk. It was however, a risk worth taking, considering the supernormal profits. A classic middle-man, Gilbert was, by nature of his contacts and his venture capital, able to procure drugs, hold them, cut them and sell them to smaller distributors.
Straight away, Gilbert clocks the Scottish guys as small-time wasters who have stumbled on a big deal. He is impressed however, by the quality of their gear. He offers them £15,000, prepared to go as high as £17,000. They want £20,000, prepared to go as low as £18,000. The deal is clinched at £16,000. Gilbert will make £60,000 minimum once the gear is cut and distributed.
He finds it tiresome negotiating with a bunch of fucked-up losers from the wrong side of the border. He’d rather be dealing with the person who sold it to them. If their supplier was desperate enough to punt such good gear to this squad of fuck-ups, then he didn’t really understand the business. Gilbert could have turned him onto some real money.
More than tiresome, it was dangerous. Despite their assurances to the contrary, it would be impossible, he decided, for this bunch of wasted Jocks to ever be discreet. It was more than possible that the D.S. had stuck a tail on them. For that reason, he has two experienced punters outside in the car with their eyes peeled. Despite his reservations, he cultivated his new business associates. Anyone desperate enough to punt them this gear once, could be daft enough to do it again.
The deal concluded, Spud and Second Prize hit Soho to celebrate. They are typical new boys in town, attracted to that famous square mile like kids to a toy shop. Sick Boy and Begbie go to shoot what proves to be a competitive game of pool in the Sir George Robey with two Irish guys they team up with. London old stagers, they are contemptous of their friends’ fascination for Soho.
— Aw thill git thair is plastic polisman’s hats,