Lone Wolf - Robert Muchamore Page 0,44

basketball vest and shiny green tracksuit bottoms over legs so long it looked like he was up on stilts. He sat at the plastic table and used a voice way posher than the gangsta look might have led you to expect.

‘Pleasure to meet two such fine-assed creatures.’

Fay and Ning had Cokes, fries from Burger King, and rucksacks stuffed with Hagar’s cocaine standing between their legs. Fay wasn’t sure she could trust Shawn. She’d arranged to meet somewhere public, but the mall was about to close so it felt pretty desolate. Shawn had also brought muscle, in the form of two guys standing against a shuttered Donut Magic stall.

‘You Shawn?’ Fay asked, sounding uncharacteristically nervous.

‘Who else?’ Shawn asked back. He seemed unnaturally chilled and Ning suspected that he’d been smoking weed.

‘I didn’t know you were bringing company,’ Fay said, pulling back her coat to show the holstered Glock, before making a nod towards the guys across the food court. ‘I don’t want any funny business.’

Shawn smiled like the gun didn’t mean a thing, and rocked his chair on to its back legs.

‘Don’t sweat,’ he said slowly. ‘Here’s how this goes down. I take a couple of tasters from your bricks and hand them to my pharmacist over there. He goes to the WC with his chemistry set, tests the gear and makes sure you’re not ripping us off. As soon as he gives me the nod, I’ve got the cash and we’ll be ready to rock and roll.’

Fay nodded, then pointed at Ning. ‘If your boy gets to look at the coke, my girl gets to check the cash.’

‘Fair play,’ Shawn said, as he produced a T-shaped probe from his tracksuit.

The tool was designed for farmers and geologists to take soil samples, but in the cocaine trade it was used to dig into packets of drugs to ensure that purity was more than skin deep.

Fay kicked her backpack under the table towards Shawn, who glanced around to make sure nobody was looking before furtively taking random samples from three out of the nine bricks of cocaine. He tapped each sample into a plastic tub, then went down Ning’s pack and took samples from a couple more bricks before taking a few of the one-gram bags.

Fay sounded tense. ‘I already told you, the bricks are eighty-five per cent pure. The one-gram bags between twenty and twenty-five.’

Shawn shrugged. ‘I’m not calling you a liar, but I don’t know you ladies and my butt’s on the line if I spend money on the wrong shit.’

The tattooed pharmacist walked between tables, took the sample bottles off Shawn, then locked himself in a disabled toilet behind the escalators. Shawn kicked a bag across to Ning. She opened up and saw five-thousand-pound bundles, made up of fifty- or twenty-pound notes and held together with elastic bands. As far as she could tell it was all genuine.

Shawn broke the tense silence that followed. ‘Pretty gutsy stinging Hagar’s stash house. I hear he’s going all out looking for you two.’

Fay shrugged. ‘That was just the beginning. I’ll be getting my hands on more of his merchandise if you’re interested.’

‘Always,’ Shawn laughed. ‘But if it was me in your sweaty Nikes, I’d take what you earned from this score and clear out. Hagar’s got a lot of bodies and you’ve only got to slip up once.’

Fay smiled. ‘I’ll be careful.’

Shawn didn’t respond because he’d just received a text from his chemist. ‘Eighty-four point six for the bricks, thirty-three on the gram bags,’ he said.

‘Told you,’ Fay said.

‘I’ll give you six thousand per kilo for the bricks. Three for the gram bags.’

Fay growled. ‘We agreed. Seven and four, seventy-five grand in total. Take it or leave it.’

Shawn laughed. ‘You’ve got a heap of merchandise and one of the biggest gangsters in north London hunting you down. Do you really wanna risk shopping this gear around to get a better deal?’

Fay didn’t like being knocked down, but tried to stay cool. ‘I’ve got connections in places where nobody has even heard the name Hagar,’ she said icily. ‘Manchester, Glasgow, Belfast. Eighty-five per cent pure at seven grand a kilo, they’ll be biting my arm off.’

‘If that’s how you roll,’ Shawn said, giving his goon a thumbs down gesture and pushing back his chair like he was about to leave.

Ning looked anxious, but Fay smiled. ‘You’re full of shit,’ she told Shawn.

Shawn raised one eyebrow. ‘How so?’

Fay smiled, as Shawn leaned back across the table.

‘First off, seven grand a kilo for coke this