Thing is, I sort of understand people wanting to stay where they were brought up, if they were raised in a big city anyway, I mean why would you want to stay in the country? You might want to stay where you grew up for sentimental reasons and your mates being around and so on but unless it’s a really, really great place that’s really, seriously going to add something to your life, you’re kind of being a mug, know what I mean? If you stay in a place like that when you know you could have a go somewhere bigger and brighter with more opportunities you’re giving more to it than it’s giving to you, aren’t you? You’re in a net loss situation, know what I mean? I mean, if you like feeling like an asset to your local community or something then fucking yahoo for you but don’t pretend you aren’t being exploited. People talk a lot about loyalty and being true to your roots and suchlike but that’s just bollocks, isn’t it? That’s one of the ways they make you do things that aren’t in your own best interest. Loyalty’s a mug’s game.

So I moved to sunny London. Was sunny, too, compared to Manchester or where I come from. Bought my first pair of Oakleys day I arrived. I say bought. Anyway, London was sunny and warm and balmy even and full of totty and opportunities. Moved in with a mate from back home, got a job behind a bar in Soho, got a girlfriend or two, met some characters, started making myself useful to the sort of people who appreciate someone with a bit of sharpness about them and the gift of the gab. Thinking on your feet, like they say. Landing on your feet. That’s useful, too. Better still, landing on somebody else’s feet.

Long and short, started providing the high-flyers with the means to get them high, didn’t I? Full of creative types, Soho, and a lot of people in the creative industries like to powder their nose, indulge in a bit of nasal turbocharging, don’t they? Very big thing with the Creatives, certainly back then. And amongst said Creatives I would most certainly include the financial wizards and their highly exotic Instruments and Products. Plus, of course, they have the funds to really get stuck into it.

So I worked my way up, in a sense. And along, sort of. Along in the sense of east, where the dosh is. East of Soho, to the City, to be precise, and Canary Wharf, where a lot of them highest of high-flyers perched. Follow the money, they say – well, I did.

See, I had a plan, right from the start. A way to make up for my lack of what you might term a formal education and letters after my name. (Numbers after my name, that might have been a different story, but I managed to avoid that.) Anyway, what do people do when they’ve had a toot or two? Talk, that’s what they do. Talk like fuck. And boast, of course, if they’re especially impressed with themselves. Which would cover just about everybody I provided for.

And of course if you spend all your time working, concentrating, making money, taking risks, being financially daring and so on, you’ll talk about that, won’t you? Stands to reason. Fizzing with testosterone and their own genius, these guys, so of course they talk about what they’ve been up to, the deals they’ve done, the money they’ve made, the angles they’ve got coming up, the stuff they know.

So a person who happened to be around them when they were talking about this sort of stuff, especially somebody who they knew wasn’t one of their own and so not a threat, not a competitor, but somebody they thought of as a mate as well as an always available deliverer of their chosen leisure-enhancing substance, well, that person could hear a lot of interesting things, know what I mean? If that person acted a bit thicker and even less educated than they actually were and kept their eyes and ears open and their mind sharp they could hear some potentially very useful things. Potentially very lucrative things, if you know the right people and can get the right bit of information to them at the right time.

Just being useful, really. Like I say, I’m part of the service industry. And once you know a few secrets it’s amazing how you get to know others too. People trade in secrets, and don’t realise they’re giving themselves away, especially if they trust you, or underestimate you, or both. So I found myself in a position where I could call in a few favours, use what our financial friends would call leverage to pick up some training, some recommendations, some patronage you might say, not to mention some working capital.

Long and short again, I went from being a dealer to being a trader. Swapped the powder for the folding, replaced the stuff that goes up the middle of the rolled note for the note itself. This was a deeply smart move, if I say so myself.

Don’t get me wrong. Drugs are great, obviously they are. Great business to be in in a lot of ways, and definitely enduringly popular in good times and bad otherwise why would people spend so much of their disposable and risk prison taking them? But it’s all a bit of a mug’s game dealing them, when you really think about it, certainly for any length of time. You have to watch your back constantly and even the profits get eaten into keeping the boys in blue happy. I mean, serious fucking profits, there’s still a lot left, but still, that’s exactly what attracts some very heavy and uncivilised people to the business and you can’t spend fuck all when you’re dead, can you? Get in, make some of the filthy and get out while you still got a set of balls and an unslit throat to call your own, that’s how you fucking do it if you’ve any sense. Use it as a leg-up to get into something just as lucrative but a lot less risky. That’s the smart way. That’s what I did.

Amazing what you can accomplish by applying yourself and making yourself useful.

Madame d’Ortolan sat in her orangery, discomfited. She had been accused of being a racist! And by someone she couldn’t take any immediate retributive action against, too. Of course she was not a racist. She not infrequently had black and Jewish people here in her town house, though naturally she was always careful to keep an accurate note of where they sat and what they touched and might have used, subsequently having everything so contacted thoroughly cleaned and disinfected. One could not be too careful.

But of course she was not a racist. To the contrary, as she could point out, in appropriate company (that would be to say, highly limited and avowedly discreet company), had she not tasted of what she thought of as the Dark Pleasures, with blacks, on more than one occasion? The epitome of such enjoyment was, for her, to be taken anally by such a Nubian brute. Privately, she thought of this act as “going to Sèvres-Babylone,” as this was the deepest, darkest and most excitingly, enticingly dangerous Métro station that she knew of.

Racist! The cheek of it. She had taken the call here in the orangery. The conversation had gone like this:

“Oui?”

“Madame, I’m glad I managed to catch you.”

“Ah. Mrs M. I trust we can return the compliment.”

Mrs Mulverhill had chosen to open by speaking English, always a sure sign that she wished to talk business and this was not a social call. It had been some long time since either had called the other for purely social reasons. “May I ask where you are?”

“I suppose you might, though not to any instructive consequence.”

Madame d’Ortolan felt herself bristling. “A simple No would have sufficed.”

“Yes, but would have been inaccurate. Are you well?”

“I am, as if you care one way or the other. And you?”

“Tolerably. And I do care, one way. Let me tell you why I’m calling.”

“Do. It’s been so long. I can’t wait.”

“Rumour has it you intend to divide the Council.”

“Beyond my powers, dear. And, anyway, I think you’ll find it already is.”