The White Hart wasn’t near the docks. He didn’t like the pub where he met his supplier and he didn’t like his journey to and from it. He had chosen to meet his biggest customer in a more central and respectable tavern, much used by the middle classes for a drink after work. At this time in the evening it housed a more cosmopolitan group; the increasing number of tourists was another sign that the year was advancing. This ancient inn was almost in the centre of Gloucester and the streets around it were peopled more thickly than those near the dockside rendezvous where he bought his supplies. Sometimes there was safety in numbers.
The man he was meeting was a young solicitor — older than Sam, but still no more than twenty-five. Paul Martin was his name. You didn’t use names more than you had to in this trade, and Sam hoped that the client still didn’t know his. Anonymity was a key to safety in this lucrative but dangerous commerce.
The White Hart had numerous small alcoves, which dated from an earlier age. They were much appreciated by lovers and by anyone with a conversation they wished to conceal from a wider public. Sam glanced up at the illuminated sign depicting a young white stag and slipped quickly into the pub. It was nine thirty-five.
He found his man immediately, sipping nervously at a gin and tonic in the same niche they had used last time. Paul Martin said edgily, ‘You took your time. I’ve been here for twenty minutes.’
‘Your own choice, that. Nine thirty, I said. I arrived here precisely five minutes after that, as planned. The customer must always be there before his supplier. Rule of the game. You don’t hang around any longer than you need to, when you’re carrying more than you can claim is for your own use.’
‘All right. Let’s get this done as quickly as possible, then.’ Martin leaned forward to see a little more of the lounge bar of the pub, twisting his face first right and then left, to see if they were being observed.
‘You’re drawing attention to us. You should be acting as if you’d nothing to fear, as if what we’re doing was the most natural thing in the world.’ But Sam was secretly reassured. The man was more naive and unpractised than he was in the situation.
‘Let’s get it over with quickly then.’ The man looked into Sam’s face and repeated himself nervously. Though he was in his mid-twenties, he clutched notes in his closed fist, like a small child impatient to buy the sweets he had been promised much earlier. Something for the poet in that image, Sam thought automatically. The material for verse was all around you, in life’s rich ironies as abundantly as in its tragedies. But you must keep your senses alive to the richness and the absurdity of the human condition. Everyone used to take drugs, in times past. John Keats might have been a user and a dealer, not a doctor, if he’d been alive now.
He wrenched his attention back from that unlikely image to the sordid facts of the deal in hand. ‘Good stuff, this. The best coke you’ll get.’
It was the nearest he came to a sales pitch, and it was as successful as it was unnecessary. Paul Martin was too nervous even to register what he was saying. ‘Two hundred, we said. You’ll find that’s correct.’
Sam looked at the whiteness of the finger-joints as they clutched tightly round the twenties. The nails were immaculately clean. They didn’t see manual work, these hands, they didn’t grub for a living in the soil. Sam forgot for a moment that his own hands hadn’t touched the soil for many months. ‘I shan’t even count this, mate. Shows how much I trust the customer, that, don’t it?’ He wondered fleetingly why he was dropping into estuary English, when he spent most of his life exploring the richness of language. Role-playing, he supposed. He felt the notes thrust into his palm, felt the fleeting touch of those flawless fingers, leaping away from his flesh as if he had the plague.
Sam Hilton felt a sudden need to assert his power over the gilded young man, to expose the weakness at the heart of this popinjay. He stowed the folded notes in his pocket. ‘You said you wanted to double your order.’
Paul Martin made a belated attempt to assert customer rights. ‘I said that I might be able to take double the quantity of coke, if the quality remained the same and the price was lowered. That would acknowledge the increase in the order.’
‘“Would acknowledge the increase in the order.”?’ Sam parroted the phrase with Martin’s inflexion, as if storing it up for his future amusement. Then he deliberately hardened his tone. ‘Get real, sunshine! I run the risks, I get the supplies, I call the shots. And the shots I call include price. It will be the same as last time. If I find in the months to come that you’re able to increase your order consistently, I’ll consider an adjustment to my price in due course. If you don’t like my terms, try someone else. But don’t think you’ll be able to come crawling back to me when you get your coke cut with chalk.’
‘There’s no need for that. I know you’re providing good stuff. The best.’ He didn’t, because he’d no means of comparison. Like most users, Martin had been drawn into the habit from what he’d thought was a one-off, random use. ‘I was just trying to establish a good relationship between client and supplier.’
‘This isn’t like other trades, mate. The less we know about each other the better. I provide the goods, you pay for them. That’s as far as it goes. I’m lucky, because I have quality supplies of a rare commodity. That’s why I control the price.’
‘All right. I’m not going to argue.’ Martin’s flimsy resistance fell away and he was back where he had begun, a frightened man who wanted this over with as quickly as possible. ‘Did you get the Rohypnol?’
Sam relaxed a little, pressing his back against the shiny leather of the bench seat, savouring the power that he felt. ‘Rare stuff, this is. Much in demand. I have to ration it. Might mean you have to ration your shagging, you randy bugger!’
Martin smiled weakly, hating himself for his dependence on this creature. Another hundred pounds changed hands and he thrust his tiny allocation of the date-rape drug deep into the pocket of his jeans. He hated himself as he said, ‘Any chance of doubling the quantity of this as well?’
‘I shouldn’t think so. There’s massive demand, as I said. You might just have to keep it in your trousers a bit more. Or get her to sniff a line of the white powder with you. Unless it’s a him, of course.’
‘It’s not a him!’ the words were out before Paul Martin could stop them, vehement and indignant. He wondered why he needed to assert his heterosexuality to scum like this, who’d just been talking about the need for anonymity. ‘And if you can’t supply, it really doesn’t matter.’
Sam was tempted to parrot that last phrase again in the lawyer’s diffident tone, to assert how unconvincing it sounded. But he’d had his fun. It was time to be on his way and out of this. He glanced at his watch. ‘You leave first, as normal. I’ll see you here same time, two weeks from now. Anything different, I’ll let you know.’
Paul Martin wanted to tell him not to ring him at work again. But he was anxious to end a conversation in which he seemed to have lost every argument. He needed to be away from here. He wanted only to be safely at home with the wife he had told he was meeting a client who couldn’t manage a time in office hours. ‘Right. No complaints about the quality.’ He made a final attempt to assert himself. ‘See if you can find a way to adjust your prices and we’ll have a lasting relationship!’
Sam responded only with a sour smile. He’d give it ten minutes, as usual. That gave you the chance to check that users weren’t stopped and questioned as they left. It was one of the tiny number of precepts volunteered to him by his supplier and he’d always followed it. The idea was that it would at least give you notice of police attention. You would have perhaps three minutes to make your escape by whatever means and whatever route you could devise, if you heard or saw your client being questioned. Not long, but time to ditch your remaining drug stash before they searched you.