“Posh C***s. They buy big, I mean seriously big, for their carousels—orgies, pimp fests—but you don’t need to know about that, cos you’re too young for it all, and it don’t involve you. You just have to make the delivery while I wait on double yellows, then I take you to the next drop-off, and same thing happens. Never, never hand anything over to the client until you’ve got the cash in your hot little hand. Understood? Whatever excuse they give for not having any on them, we’re not NatWest with the telephone banking, so you do not part with the goods until they’ve paid. If they start kicking off, you just leg it back to me, bringing the stuff, and I’ll sort it out. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“You’ll be expected to keep your mouth shut about this, so don’t go bragging to your f***wit mates and playing the big man when you get home. If you do I’ll know and I won’t be happy. And you know what happens if I’m not happy. Your old lady gets it, that’s what’ll happen, and you don’t want that now, do you?”

I began earning some decent cash almost from the get-go, and you should have seen some of the places we delivered to. These PCs lived in some serious houses all over the West End, down by the river, around the City . . . I never knew where we were half the time, or what the areas were called, I only got to know that later when I was older and able to get the Tube on my own if BJ wasn’t available. I understood by then that the dudes he worked for were based in North London—sorry, no names or exact places, info classified—and that what I was delivering was mostly chem-sex drugs, which can be crystal meth, GHB, miaow miaow, that sort of thing. Sometimes though it was cash or phones—that was more intergang stuff—and later, when I got myself a reputation as someone reliable, it was shivvies and even toolies (that’s knives and guns to you).

Yeah, I moved weapons around the country, sometimes going as far north as Manchester or even Glasgow. I slipped between the cracks like a shadow, they said, meaning no one ever really noticed me. It seemed I had a knack for keeping my head down, or looking harmless, or just plain dumb. The other kids didn’t have it so easy and a few got caught. If that happened and the PCs heard about it, all hell would break loose with the dudes because business would have to shut down for a while. But everyone knew to keep their mouths shut; if they didn’t, someone close to them would pay and they’d never snitch again.