Futures

John Barker

Description

Carol is a small-time cocaine dealer in 1987 London. She’s on her own with a young daughter, a good mother who is especially careful in her working life. For some punters, this involves being Simone. One of these customers is Phil, a financial analyst in the City who, with his longtime pal and fellow analyst Jack, fantasizes a cocaine futures market while on a coke binge. They look at it as they would look at any other commodity.

At the top of the wholesale business are Gordon Murray and his brothers, who have an “in” with the Drug Squad and are prepared to shop anyone to keep it that way, on top of the violence they use as and when needed.

When the cocaine futures market becomes a reality, Carol has an opportunity to go for the big deal that could get her out of the business altogether. Meanwhile, a stock market crash creates havoc, and a once-in-a lifetime hurricane sweeps across London, ripping down trees and the communication systems of the stock market itself. Carol must make her choice, as three very different worlds are about to collide.

Sujets

• DRUGS
• Underbelly
• Crime
• Thriller

Informations

• Publié par: PM Press
• Date de parution: 01 mai 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781604869859
• Langue: English

Extrait

"The year is 1987, the traditional commodity traders have gone and the new boys with their free market doctrines of unfettered competition have taken over the commodities asylum, two of them, the profligate protagonists of the story, with a not-too-fantastic plan to develop a cocaine ‘futures’ market. In Futures, John Barker has produced a fast-paced, ‘hardboiled’ novel that pulls you back, effortlessly, into morally corrupt Thatcherite London in the dramatic aftermath of the ‘Bosh, Bosh, Bosh’ ‘Big Bang’ creatively mining the rich vein of extraordinary characters, situations, dialogue, and experiences distilled during the eight years he spent banged up at Her Majesty’s pleasure. Coupled with his later European journeyings and travails, Barker’s crisp, laconic prose, eye-for-detail storytelling, command of the art of narrative, and his ear for fluid and convincing dialogue makes him, in my view, Hackney’s worthy successor to Tom Wolfe."
Stuart Christie, coauthor of The Floodgates of Anarchy
"John Barker’s prose is so downbeat he leaves even the most gritty of crime novelists looking like they’re aiming for the preteen market. But if you want to get beyond the fairy-tale version of the sordid underbelly of life, then you gotta check Futures out."
Stewart Home, author of The Assault on Culture and 69 Things to Do with a Dead Princess
"In this fast-paced, streetwise take on 1980s London, boundaries blur between the cocaine trade and newly deregulated financial markets. High and low life don’t look so different, as everyone tries to make a killing. Barker’s portrait of a cynical, money-hungry culture skewers a moment in history that for good or ill (and mostly for ill) made Britain what it is today."
Hari Kunzru, author of Gods without Men
"It’s great. Rollicking, uncompromising stuff. The prose grabs you by the throat and squeezes. The characters are by turns reckless, ambitious, vulnerable, and weak. The story is set in the past but couldn’t be more relevant. Futures is funny, frightening, and very dark."
Ronan Bennett, author of The Catastrophist and Havoc, in Its Third Year

Futures
John Barker
© John Barker 2014
This edition© 2014 PM Press
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be transmitted by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.
ISBN: 978–1–60486–961–3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013956918
Cover artwork by Ines Doujak and Markus Wörgötter.
Cover design by John Yates / www.stealworks.com
Interior design by briandesign
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PM Press
PO Box 23912
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www.pmpress.org
Printed in the USA by the Employee Owners of Thomson-Shore in Dexter, Michigan.
www.thomsonshore.com
To the memory of Noreen "Noni" Macdowell (1951–2011) and for Philippe Garnier without both of whom …
CHAPTER ONE
I wanted to say: Look pal I read the papers, I know the flavour of the month when I see it, and I’ve got a body to offer. What else do you want?
That’s what I wanted to tell Graham Curtis. He’s the DCS who came out smelling of roses when they had the stampede out of the Robbery squad and on to the Drugs. You know, just to speed the whole thing up because I had a lot on my mind plus the Italian at six, the Iranian at eight and a social function at which nine was the latest I could show my face. What I said was, Quite Graham, quite. You’ve got to be reasonable, Graham’s got to talk in code. Him and his dad, maybe even his grandad, they’ve been at it a long time and he likes a bit of respect for the form or maybe he’s just forgotten how to talk any other way. But this time the thing was it was so simple, and I was busy. That’s what was giving me the hump.
I waited for him to say his next bit, to put it on the line, and stared at the pastel colours on my office wall. It’s a bit of a joke this particular place of mine, a wine bar top end of Commercial Road, but my property advisor tells me it’s a good bet for the long run. How long’s the long run I ask myself. I mean Docklands Development, millionaire’s enclave and all that, all very well but the Commercial Road? The Pakis have got most of it for one thing. But when all’s said and done I like having my office here. It’s modest and if there’s one thing I don’t like it’s flash.
I sat there waiting for Graham to get down to business and carried on looking at the walls that are in ochre and light olive green. They’re supposed to be calming. That’s what my Design Advisor told me. Funny thing is while I was staring I remembered that even as a young jack-the-lad I’d known how to say, Is-there-anything-we-can-do-about-this-guv to a Curtis clone. There was as it happened. Cost me but it kept me clean and that’s the way I still am. A bit of Borstal that’s all, and who gives a monkey’s about a youthful transgression these days. Some places it’s a plus.
"You see Gordon, it’s a social evil," Curtis said.
I nodded and told him how true that was. Chasing dragons on council estates, I said, they ought to put a stop to it. That and the spades, they’re making themselves busy just lately.
"Which is exactly what we’re trying to do Gordon, but to do that it’s no good just hitting a few pathetic users. We’ve got to hit the suppliers and hit them hard."
I nodded again, said Quite and resigned myself to more bollox. What it is, is maybe Curtis half thinks I’m taping our little chats. Which I’m not. I’ve dabbled with the idea. Several times. But in the death there’s something gives me the creeps. Like these mobile phones things.
I looked at those walls again. When that Design Consultant of mine said they create a relaxing ambience I wanted to say, A relaxing ambience you cunt. But I didn’t. It might be true, and if so it can only benefit my brothers, Keith and Derek.
"We’re looking for the public’s help on this one Gordon, to combat this evil."
Now that is code for you. Now I was a member of the public, what I call an MPP, a mug of preposterous proportions. I asked him if he thought I could help while I livened up his drink and felt a sudden impulse to drag him down the gym for a workout all scotched up. He’s as sharp as a rat, Graham is, but he’s overweight and not very healthy which does no one any good. I mean who wants the cardiac arrest of a guy you’re paying grands to; of a guy who can ridicule the suggestion that Gordon Murray has got anything to do with anything from behind a plastic cup of scotch; of a guy who can convince any junior zealot that Gordon Murray isn’t worth a moment of anyone’s attention, which is what counts when manpower shortage is the name of the game. I mean who wants it? Keith maybe. Wouldn’t mind Curtis stiff and purple at the bottom of the wall bars because that Five stretch did embitter him. Think of your wife and kids I keep telling him. Two he’s got, Keith, a boy and a girl. Plus I drop hints to Graham, I even thrust a BMA report under his nose one time but it didn’t do any good. It’s like the cunt actually likes having a belly.
"That’s up to you of course Gordon," he said.
And I wondered. I have to say that at that moment in time I did wonder about Graham’s long-term viability. It wasn’t just the health question but knowing that Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise Branch have recently received a large injection of capital and Graham doesn’t cut much ice with them.
I looked at his shifty eyes across the table and decided that a long-term investment couldn’t be dumped, not just like that. If there’s one thing my nearly ex–Investment Advisor’s emphasised it’s to keep your nerve with an investment you really fancy. Besides which I could expect some short-term gains from Curtis at a time when Mickey White was giving me the hump like he was. Mouthy bastard. Robs this and fences that and with enough bevies inside him calls me a no-good cunt in the Ripened Hop.
So I started to tell him how it was, being a club owner. One of my first investments in fact. At one stage I had my doubts but the last two or three years it’s come up trumps.
His eyes were greedy out of his pudgy cheeks.
"With a club up West one can’t help but pick up a few bits and pieces," I said.
"It’s exactly the bits and pieces that can help make the whole picture, like a jigsaw," he said filling his pipe. It may be good for the image but I wanted to say, You don’t have to come that pipe shit here Graham, have a Dunhill. I checked myself, at the end of the day you’ve got to go by the rules. If there were no rules where the fuck would we be. It’s something I’ve been telling Keith for years. As for Derek, I’ve got to tell him at least twice a week.
"Well Graham, it so happens that a barmaid in my employ reported something directly to me. This very morning in fact."
"Yes," Graham said lighting his pipe in a drawn out way that would have had Derek going potty. But he’s still young Derek is and in certain aspects of our business he’s a good operative.
"She happened to overhear this conversation at the bar and she’s a girl can put two and two together."
"Yes?" Graham said trying to make his eyes twinkle and that’s not easy when you put away the scotch he does. I looked at my watch. Ten to four, just one hour and ten minutes before I had to meet Mario, which is what he calls himself. Still he’s all right Mario is and if I do have to pay a bit over the odds it’s worth having him there in the middle. Who wants to do business direct with Colombians. Now they are headbangers. South Americans, and you remember what old Sir Alf said about them when we won the World Cup. Animals he called them. Yes, ten to four and I sud