‘You what?’ Harlan almost laughed. He knew all that shit. He’d had his first girl, a nobody, in the art cupboard at school, dreaming of Belle whilst he was doing it. And he would have Belle too, one day. Properly. He knew it. Her fucking father could say and do what he liked. Who did Terry Barton think he was, laying down the law to him, to Harlan Stone?

Terry Barton could go fuck himself.

‘Not those facts,’ said Beezer. ‘I mean the real ones. The ones that apply to the trade.’

‘OK. Go on then.’

Beezer told him.

‘There’s basuco, they get that as a by-product in the jungle labs of South America. Looks and tastes like shit. Nobody’ll touch that except the street kids in Colombia. Turns ’em into zombies. The Medellin cartel were looking for something as strong as basuco but nicer for smell and taste, you see? Then a chemist who worked for the Cali cartel got it. Dissolved cocaine powder in ammonia, added water and bicarbonate of soda, heated it until the liquid boiled off. And there it was. Crack cocaine.’

‘OK. Go on,’ said Harlan.

‘Crack is quick. You’re on the ceiling, like, instantly,’ Beezer enthused. ‘And the best thing? It lasts forty, maybe fifty seconds. That’s all. Heroin will give you three or four hours’ worth of high. Straight cocaine will give you half an hour. Crack takes you higher, faster. It’s a high like no other and you come down from it always wanting more. You can get cocaine users hooked – maybe ten per cent of them – within two years. With crack? Eighty per cent of them are hooked within a fortnight. A fortnight! Can you believe that, boy?’

Harlan believed it. He could see the years stretching ahead of him, all the money those poor stupid bastards out there on the streets or at their fancy dining tables would fetch him, because he was the sole heir to Charlie Stone’s manor.

He was going to rule the whole fucking world.

74

Nula always avoided Charlie’s so-called ‘petting’ zoo. Lizards, geckos, tarantulas, snakes, caimans – they were like aliens, she often said. Not like a cat or a dog, something you could stroke and relate to. So Charlie was amazed to see her coming in there.

He was feeding the caimans, tossing chicken carcasses into the water, when the door opened into the superheated interior jungle with its endless running waterfalls, wet moss-greened walls and tropical greenery. Seeing Nula there, he paused, chicken in hand. One of the caimans, the biggest one, George, eased closer, waiting.

‘What you doing down here, babe?’ he asked, distracted. There was only one buggy and he’d driven it down here. Nula must have walked, all this way. And she wasn’t much of a walker.