Chapter Two Razor
Chapter two
Razor
The alley stuck to me even after I yanked my hood up.
Piss in my nose. Smoke on my tongue. Heat clinging from a mouth too eager for a stranger. Fuck, he was different. Clean. Bit soft. Usually, they had hard edges and a desperation tasting bitter. Not him. He was almost…shiny.
I dragged hard on my fag, keeping my head down, trainers slapping in puddles, heart thudding as if I’d nicked something worth dying for. I tried hard not to look back. Not when I wasn’t sure if I’d just had a lucky night…or made a body-bag mistake.
Stupid move in the first fucking place, doing that so close to my patch.
But I had a weakness for pretty boys, and there ain’t many who still look pretty after dark standing in that alley.
And he’d been good. Too good for a gutter quickie.
I’d had my share, more than enough to know when one stood out.
And that one rattled me. I knew rent boys.
Knew the type. Jittery, hollow-eyed, hungry for coin or their next fix.
Him? He had polish. Worked me as if he’d learnt it between clean sheets, not on his knees on cracked concrete.
And when he looked up… fuck, that smirk. Got me right in the feels.
It didn’t add up.
Nor did it matter, though. Stranger’s a stranger.
I cut down the back road where Tyler sat in the passenger side of my motor, windows steamed, bass low in the speakers.
It wasn’t only him waiting either. A kid sat on a pushbike by his open window.
Boy couldn’t have been more than thirteen, with his palm out as if expecting pick ’n’ mix to be passed over.
But it wasn’t sweets he was after, and we both knew it.
Cause we didn’t sling Haribo. We didn’t move no corner-shop knockoffs either.
The food we handled was for heads chasing a different kind of sugar.
Not actual food.
Powder. Pills.
Gear keeping our customers up three nights straight then crawling back for more.
Y’know, the good shit.
And I ran this Hackney drug line. Me.
“Oi!” I barked, cutting across the road.
“What?” the little man shot back, lip curled, hood up, perched on a nicked BMX as if it made him bulletproof. Brazen. Someone had filled his head with that old shit: act hard, and you’ll get to roll with the mandem.
Not me, mate.
“Who the fuck you talking to, bruv?” I closed in, slamming my palm down on the roof of the blacked-out Audi.
The kid flinched.
And fuck. I knew him. Course I knew him. I knew every little fucker in the Badlands of Hackney. Few on the good side too. Not as many anymore, granted. Not since I’d chosen this career path. And when I say chosen, I mean it was handed to me with cuffs.
“Billy Amos.” I clicked my tongue, shaking my head in disappointment as I looked him over. “Ain’t you supposed to be at home? New little sister in the cot, yeah? Dad inside?”
His jaw tightened. Tried for indifference. Failed. “So?”
Course it bothered him. Kids like Billy always thought they hid it well.
I’d been him once, pretending it didn’t matter that no one at home gave a toss whether I came through the door or not.
My old man had never been around to shame me, but Billy’s dad?
Nicked from his postal job for stealing parcels.
That weren’t glamorous on the estate. If you were going down, it had to be for class A or GBH.
Something that stuck. All that did was leave this kid scrambling for respect.
For a name. That’s why he was here, wide-eyed and starving for someone like Tyler to hand him a scrap of credibility.
Smoke curled out of the open passenger window as Tyler flicked his fag to the kerb. “Chill, Razor. Kid’s collecting for me.”
No.
Fuck. No.
I bent down, getting my face level with my second. I ran this line. Tyler backed me. He didn’t bring in runners without my say. Nor did he answer back. That was a step out of line.
“I told you. No kids.” I fixed him with a glare, then took in his squat shoulders, cheap gold chains, half-faded ink crawling down his arm, along with the chipped front tooth torn from a fight I’d had to finish for him, the pale crescent scar by his jaw from another one, and asked myself, again, why I put up with his shit.
Tyler was a walking reminder of who dragged him out of his scrapes every time.
With his puffer slipping off one shoulder as if lifted from a charity bin, trainers scuffed to shit, fingers twitching for a swing, Tyler was desperate to prove he didn’t need me.
And yeah, he was hard. Brought up same as me.
Learnt how to survive the street because there wasn’t anything else for us to become.
But I was harder.
So I hammered the rule home. “Not from our estate. Ever.”
Tyler slammed back against the headrest. “Fuck, Razor. Ghost’ll scoop him up if we don’t. You wanna lose the patch? Tell Cormac you handed Hackney over for a thirteen-year-old kid?”
Ghost. That name boiled my blood. Real name, Leon Morris.
Why he had to have such a shit alias was beyond me.
He did the same work as me, only for a different boss.
Same rules too, only his were dirtier. He ran a line the way rot spreads: fast, careless, poisoning everything it touched.
Dealers, runners, corners. All feeding upward to a man I’d never meet and would hopefully never cross.
See, a line wasn’t just product. It was people.
Corners. Schools you didn’t touch, blocks you did.
Kids who ran packets for cash and men who enforced when someone got brave or stupid.
It was order. And this was my order. And Ghost had been bleeding into it for weeks.
Quiet at first, testing edges, whispering promises to lads who were too young to know better.
And now his boss had given the nod to worm his way onto our turf.
Which meant my boss would expect blood for it.
Cormac didn’t tolerate seepage. If another crew started shifting on our turf, I didn’t get to negotiate, I got to end it.
Fast. Clean. Public enough to make a point.
If Ghost took Hackney, even a slice of it, that failure would land on me.
That was how turf wars started. Not with gunfire.
With small encroachments. One missing runner.
One corner flipped. Then suddenly it was open season.
And I was slap bang in the middle of one.
I stood, then held out my hand to Billy. “Give it.”
He sniffed, chin wobbling. “I need the money.”
“I said give it.”
Billy dug in his joggers, hand shaking, and slapped two little bags into my palm. I didn’t waste time and chucked them through the open window at Tyler. “Sort it.”
“Fuck, mate!” Tyler barked, lunging for the stash.
I pulled a roll of cash from my pocket, the roll I’d taken fifty for myself from, and snatched a twenty.
“Take this.” I handed it to Billy. “Get your mum some proper chicken. Then go down Lennon’s boxing gym and tell him you want teaching.
But you go near Ghost again, I’ll crack your skull. You hear?”
Billy took the note, nodded with one part shame and the other relief, then pedalled off with that stupid chin-up swagger kids copy from the older heads. Out of my sight. No longer my problem or tugging on a conscience I couldn’t afford to have.
Tyler tutted. “No wonder we’re losing the line with your bleeding heart.”
I looked at him. Quiet. Calm. There he went again, mouthing off, thinking I’d gone soft.
Believing I’d lost my edge. That I’d misplaced it with rules and conscience.
So I proved I was still me. Razor. And before he could blink, I slid my hand through the window, splayed my fingers around the back of his head and slammed him face first into the dash. The smack echoed.
“You test me again,” I leered in through the window, pinning him to the plastic and watching the blood ooze from his nose, “and I’ll feed you to the fucking pigs. We clear?”
He swallowed, tried to nod and failed, so I let him stay still. And when I eased off, I walked around the car and dropped back into the driver’s seat, calm as you fucking like. I glanced at Tyler still face down on my dash.
“You’re making a fucking mess.” I yanked him back and saw the blood. “Jesus.” I popped open the glove box, grabbed an old cloth and shoved it at him. “You know the rules.”
“Man’s gotta eat.” Tyler held the cloth to his nose as if that’d fix more than the bleeding. Hopefully it’d patch up his insubordination, too.
“Yeah?” I kept my voice flat. “And kids feed you how? You planning to invoice them in guilt?”
Tyler snorted, thick with sarcasm. “Ghost’s boys are creeping onto our corners.
Clean runs, no bullshit. Pills cheap, powder loose.
They’re undercutting every price we’ve got.
If we don’t plug the gaps, we lose runners, we lose customers.
” He shot me a look. “But sure, let’s keep doing background checks.
Make sure the workforce have their NI number. ”
I tightened my grip on the wheel. I didn’t need the reminder. Didn’t need the tone either. But I needed the truth. “You found out what he’s moving?”
“Ecstasy.” Tyler dropped the cloth into his lap like a sulky toddler who thought he was above reprimand.
“Pressed bright, shaped like sweets. Fivers a pop to get school kids hooked. Bags of MD with it. And he’s pushing low-grade coke through the little ones for fast turnover.
Last week they were handing out free tasters outside the chemist on Kingsley.
Now half the estate’s kids think they’re starting a fucking collection. ”
He rattled it off as if dumping a bag of shit straight onto my lap and expecting me to thank him for it. Fair enough. I’d left him to handle the Ghost problem while I scratched my other itch.
“He’s got a couple Fenboys shifting tabs for him on the side,” Tyler went on. “Better markup, clean supply. If we don’t match or shut it down, we’ll get bled dry.”