obvious every five minutes doesn’t help much either,’ Fay snapped.
Ning shook her head. ‘Does it matter if Eli’s crew buys the drugs? Hagar must still be mad that his grow house has been located and trashed.’
‘What about the money?’ Fay asked.
Ning shrugged. ‘We’ve got more than we can spend from the stash house rip-off.’
‘My whole plan is to make Hagar so mad that he does something rash. And nothing is going to make Hagar madder than knowing that I’m ripping him off and selling the gear on the cheap to his deadliest rival.’
‘What makes you think Hagar will do something rash?’ Ning asked. ‘He’s ultra-cautious. Warren’s never seen him, and he reckons that apart from Craig his lieutenants barely see him either.’
‘I know Hagar,’ Fay said firmly. ‘My mum and my auntie robbed him a dozen times. You don’t get into Hagar’s position in the drug business without being smart. But red mist is his weakness. When things go his way he’s cautious and methodical. But if something gets under his skin, he loses it. And that’s when I’m going to pop up and blast his nasty little head off.’
Fay seemed like her old self as she glared at Ning, but a chime from her phone put her straight back into an anxious frame of mind.
‘Is it Shawn?’ Ning asked.
Fay tutted and shook her head. ‘Warren’s texting from school. He’s asking if I want to meet up with him at lunchtime.’
*
The Year Sevens and Eights sat on the floor at the front of the school hall, while older kids filed into rows of metal chairs. It was the end of summer term. The mood was heady with the thought of six weeks’ holiday, while Year Thirteens had gone for all-out anarchy, throwing flour and eggs, stripping off shirts and staging school-tie-burning ceremonies.
‘Quiet,’ a deputy head roared. ‘Year Nine, I’m talking to you.’
But Year Nine collectively told the deputy head where to stick the idea of being quiet and a girl ran off yelping as someone stuck an orange ice pop down her back.
Ryan had made a few friends at school, but he ignored them as he entered the hall, cutting back amidst rows of chairs into an enclave populated by Year Eleven and Twelve kids.
A group of Year Thirteen girls started singing a rude song about one of their PE teachers, before collapsing in shrieks of giggles. A teacher waded in and plucked a titchy Year Eight boy who was whistling with two fingers in his mouth.
‘We hate Tottenham and we hate Tottenham,’ some Arsenal boys chanted.
Amidst all of this randomness, Ryan sat in an empty chair directly behind a stocky kid named Ash Regus. Ash was a typical Hagar recruit: a brighter-than-average kid, who wanted to make some money selling drugs at parties to ease his way through university.
Ash was beefy, with cropped hair and angry pimples all over his neck. There was a black Eastpack on the polished wood between Ash’s legs, and Ryan had just received a text message confirming that he’d collected a package from Craig during his lunch break.
‘I’m happy to wait all day,’ the head said, though most of his fellow teachers looked like they wanted a sunlounger and a cocktail ASAP.
A science teacher made a token effort to stop kids from leaving, but these lads weren’t coming back for Year Twelve so the school had no power over them, and a couple of guilty-looking girls followed.
‘Knoooob head!’ the last lad shouted, having a little tussle with the science teacher as he left the school hall.
Things calmed down slightly as someone dimmed the lights. A big group of Year Thirteens came in, looking a lot like they’d been boozing. They got shushed by a teacher, so they all started shushing each other noisily and grated seats as the headmaster began his drone.
‘. . . so we reach the end of another school year. Some of us have experienced their first year of secondary school, and are just settling into their lives here. Our Year Thirteens are at the other end of this journey and we wish all of them well as they begin adult lives and . . .’
As the headmaster droned in a voice that could have made a story about Jesus riding a unicycle naked down the school corridors seem boring, Ryan kept focused on the Eastpack. Ash clearly regarded the contents as important, with one strap gripped in a tight fist and the other hooked around his ankle.
Just as Ryan decided