Forbes stuck around for about a week. The first few days he sat around on the couch helping them conduct business and got as big a kick out of being a dealer as Kevin had at first.
On his second day there Forbes and Kevin were left alone in the house all afternoon and Forbes had a high old time with his dealer routine. He sat around wearing a pair of mirrored sunglasses he had found among the chip wrappers. To everyone who came in to buy weed he insisted on giving a complicated handshake and saying "Respect." He made rapper gestures with his hands and said things like, "This is some really cool shit, man. Give some to your bitches, ten seconds later they'll be down on all fours telling you to go for yours, you know what I'm sayin'? You'll see Jesus, man, you'll be able to count the straps on his fucking sandals, you know what I'm sayin'?" Or he would say, "This is a cheeky little number - lacking in breeding, perhaps, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption," as he handed the weed across. Or, "This is what Benny Hill was smoking when he died. Took them three hours to prise him off the ceiling, know what I'm sayin'?"
At one point an extremely nervous and softly-spoken and dopey-looking boy of around seventeen whom Kevin hadn't seen before came in. They looked at him expectantly.
"Do you...er...sell drugs?" he stammered after a while.
"What makes you think that?" said Forbes sharply.
"Well...er...I heard that...you did," the kid mumbled.
"Who's been talking?" snapped Forbes.
"Someone at college told me."
"Oh yeah?" sneered Forbes. "What's the password, then?"
"Er..." The boy's mouth moved but nothing came out. Kevin recognized himself the first time he'd come here, not knowing what sort of depravity and dangers to expect. He produced the weed and asked the kid how much he wanted.
"Don't sell to him," said Forbes. "He's a pig. I can smell it on him. I say we scrag him now. You're not leaving here alive, pig."
The boy swallowed and went pale.
"I'm not a pig," he said in a small voice.
"If you're not a pig," said Forbes, "say 'Dixon of Dock Green took it up the shitter'."
"W-what?"
"See, you can't do it, can you, pig? No pig can say that. Get the acid bath ready, Kevin, we've got a dismemberment job here."
"Ignore him," said Kevin. "How much do you want?"
But Forbes snatched the weed from him. "He's got to sit down and have a smoke with us first to prove he's not a pig," he declared.
So the boy reluctantly sat down and had a smoke with them. It was plainly only his second or third exposure to cannabis and he very quickly turned green. Forbes grinned at him weirdly and kept asking if he could see God yet and saying things like, "Bernie Winters died smoking this shit. It was hushed up officially but those of us in the business know the truth." Eventually Kevin made him let the kid go.
"Respect," said Forbes to the boy as he left. "You're all right for a square. You might even be a hepcat like us one day. But remember the password the next time you go to a dealer's house. 'I come from a strange land, but I am no stranger.' That's the password. Can you remember that?"
"Yes."
"Say that and you'll have no trouble. Then say, 'Have the herrings arrived yet?' and they'll say, 'Yes, what size of herring would you like?' Got that?"
"Yes."
"And remember, if anyone asks you is you've seen 'Badman Grenville' around these parts, you know nothing. You'd never live to spend the reward money."
For a while Forbes joined in Kevin's dreams of expanding the business and becoming a crime lord. But soon the squalor of Darren's house came to depress him and he started nagging everyone to tidy the place up.
Finally one day he suddenly announced, "Oh, God, may as well get it over with," reached for the phone and dialled his parents' number. He was on the phone for half an hour, most of which was taken up by a long interval during which Forbes' mother could be heard sobbing loudly at the other end and saying things like, "Where did we fail you?" while Forbes made periodic sniffing noises whilst manipulating the Sega joystick with his free hand. By the end of the phone call they were reconciled and Forbes' mother had said she would find him a job somewhere. Three days later a letter from her arrived containing Forbes' trainfare home and the news that she had prevailed on a Mr. Keats, an old flame of hers who had made good in business, to make a promise to find Forbes a position somewhere within his organization.
"I hope she didn't have to sleep with him or anything," said Forbes.
The following day Kevin went to see Forbes off. They had a farewell drink in a pub near the station.
"I hope your stay hasn't been too traumatic," said Kevin.
"No, no," said Forbes. "Houses full of chip wrappers and illegitimate babies was exactly the image I had of the North anyway."
"What is this job, then?"
"Mr. Keats didn't specify. It is merely the promise of a job. I shall probably be an office lackey of some sort. It won't last. I'll be back at another holiday camp before too long."
They both fell silent and thoughtful for a while.
"Forbes," said Kevin at length, "why don't you-"
"No," said Forbes. "No, I couldn't. Whatever you were going to say, I really couldn't. I thought we had been through this. Do you really think I would be pursuing this way of life if I thought I had a choice in the matter? Look at you. Why don't you whatever you were going to say to me yourself?" Kevin was silent. "Well, then."
A quiet gloom descended.
"Cheer up, though," Forbes said presently. "Things aren't that bad. Christ knows why I say that, but one feels obliged to." He drew thoughtfully on a cigarette. "There is a quote from Corvo's Hadrian the Seventh which I quite like," he said. "I sometimes used to paraphrase it to myself at the camp. 'Buck up, you ugly little thing. Ugly as you are, you are neither vulgar nor commonplace.' Ugly is not applicable, but if you replace it with some more appropriate adjective such as 'impoverished' or 'underachieving' or 'fucked up' or 'hopeless' I find it is something to cling to."
Presently Forbes rose and put on his coat. He wouldn't let Kevin come to the station. They solemnly shook hands and promised to stay in touch. Kevin watched him sadly out the door then slowly sank another drink.
As Kevin was leaving he caught sight of a familiar figure. It was Karen, who had said she was spending the day at Darren's younger brother's girlfriend's place. She was sitting in a secluded booth next to a burly man in a leather jacket whom she was snogging vigorously. Just then she broke the clinch and started to grope towards a drink. Kevin quickly looked away and hurried out, unsure if she had seen him.
Kevin and Karen had barely been on speaking terms since the day of the abortive seduction. Ever since then she had given him the cornered animal look all the time, only worse than before, and gone out of her way not to be left alone with him.
Kevin's first thought when Darren had appeared that day was that Karen had expected his return and had been trying to set him up, had planned to scream rape when she heard Darren come in and concoct some hysterical story. "It was horrible...He forced me at wrench-point...He threatened to unscrew my head." He had quickly rejected this. Even if she had known Darren was coming back soon there was no way she could have timed the seduction well enough to be sure of him catching her and Kevin in flagrante with no idea of what had led up to it. If he had appeared in the yard while she was performing her lapdance, for example, it would have been bad for her. Besides, there had been no mistaking her look of horror when she had come downstairs in her bra and, thankfully, jeans to find Darren home.
No, it was more likely that she had simply thought she would be safe from Kevin and his knowledge about her once she had slept with him. She would then have had something to hold over him. Or maybe she had just been bored and horny, or maybe she had simply taken pity on him, maybe even she just liked him. Whatever, it had all gone wrong and now instead of her having a hold over Kevin, he had something else to discredit her. And thanks to that priggish bollocks about his being Darren's lieutenant, and the whole rather repulsive false nobility of his failing to sleep with her - which had had more to do with his fears of the dangers and complications of the situation rather than any feudal code of honour or even his friendship with Darren, and which had come after he had led her on as much as she him - she couldn't be blamed for fearing he might find it his duty to blab. He was now a bigger threat than ever and she now looked at him with mingled hatred and fear. Perhaps too, he speculated fondly, she was consumed with spurned rage that he had managed to resist her charms, fortunate though that had turned out to be.
Anyway, she was now plainly his enemy and would probably do everything in her power to strike at him if she thought she could do so in safety to herself.
The first confirmation that she meant to make trouble for him had come a couple of days after the near-shag. He and Darren were alone playing on the Sega.
"Karen said something funny the other night," Darren suddenly said in a would-be casual voice
"Oh?" said Kevin with a similar failed nonchalance, already scenting danger. "What?"
"She said she thought you were trying to get off with her the other day."
"Me?" Kevin laughed nervously. "That's ridiculous."
"That's what I told her. I said you were probably joking. She must have misunderstood."
"Yeah." Kevin laughed weakly again.
"You got an appendix scar?" asked Darren after a pause.
"Er, yeah."
"She said you took your top off in front of her."
"I was hot," said Kevin. "Me taking me top off isn't an aid to seducing birds," he added. "It's like when the invisible man gets his kit off."
"A good-looking bird like Karen, people are always trying it on with her. I suppose you start getting a bit paranoid after a while."
"You can trust her, though."
"Oh, yeah. I can trust her," Darren said. "You too," he added belatedly.
This soon blew over and before long Darren was easy and natural with him again. Still, Kevin told himself that he would do well to get as far away from this situation as possible, for all their sakes. But go where?
It never occurred to Kevin to tell Darren about Karen and the man in the leather jacket, just as it had never occurred to him to grass her up over the letter. It would harm both her and Darren and it was none of his damn business.
Then two nights after the day of Forbes' departure Kevin and Darren were sitting in a pub when Kevin spotted the man in the leather jacket standing at the bar. A lot of people seemed to be giving him a wide berth.
"Who's he?" he asked Darren casually.
Darren looked round. "Him? He's a copper. Drug squad. Stay away from him."
Now this was something else again. Karen was free to systematically fuck her way through the electoral register for all Kevin cared, but this was something that might be a danger to them all.
For several days Kevin wondered what he should do. Tell Darren what he had seen? But that would destroy Darren and might lead to actual bloodshed. Seek Darren's mum's advice? She might attack Karen herself. Confront Karen and tell her what he knew? That would probably provoke her to make more substantial accusations against him to Darren in order to protect herself.
So in the end he fell back on his usual instincts and did nothing.
*
Two weeks later Kevin was making his way back from Tony's house with a fresh supply of drugs. His mood was upbeat and he feared nothing. This was not the first time he had gone on his own and these regular pick-ups were routine by now. Darren and Karen had gone to Blackpool for the day. His policy of doing nothing seemed to have paid off. Karen was being very affectionate towards Darren and had made no conspicuous absences from the house without him. She had even started being friendly towards Kevin again lately.
It was a sunny day and the two girls who had visited his first day on the job had just spent most of the afternoon on the couch with him flirting him out of some more free weed. He was serene and happy and he didn't have a care in the world until a car door opened behind him and he felt a hand on his shoulder.
It was the man in the leather jacket. With him were two uniformed policemen. They placed Kevin under arrest.
In his possession they found three ounces of cannabis, ten grams of speed, and two dozen Ecstasy tablets.
"It's for personal use only," said Kevin lamely.
*
He was held on remand for several weeks. He spent the time pacing his cell rehearsing his defence.
"The drugs were for personal use only," he would say. (Whether the drugs were for personal use or dealing would make a difference to the severity of his punishment.) "Quite a large amount was found in my possession, true, but think of it as bulk buying. Any housewives present in court will be aware of the advantages of buying large economy-size boxes of, say, washing powder or cornflakes."
Maybe he should make mention of his academic record and early promise to emphasize the fact that he wasn't really a criminal.
"The defendant asks that his excellent A-level results and impeccable service as a school prefect be taken into consideration. Remember also that at the age of five he won a Blue Peter badge for a poem celebrating Chris Bonnington's ascent of Everest. Furthermore, we have a sworn deposition from the defendant's mother testifying that when he was three years old he created a birthday card for her featuring a collage of heart shapes glued around a picture of Nanette Newman and the words 'This is you Mummy' written in an almost frighteningly mature hand. I ask you, is it really possible that such a person could actually be a hardened, blah, blah."
But no, they'd use that against him.
"The defendant is a man who has been given every advantage and opportunity in life. He has sunk to the level of a despicable bloodsucker preying on our nation's youth entirely by his own choice."
But no, no, he would not accept that verdict. He began to rehearse an impassioned final plea.
"Would I have chosen this path if I could possibly have avoided it? Would anyone choose such a way of life? I merely went where my conveyor belt took me. There never was a moment at which I could have stepped off...I am not a person who does things, I am a person to whom things are done...We are all at the mercy of our genetic destiny..."
Darren came to visit him once. After cautiously and codedly ascertaining that Kevin did not intend to drop either him or Tony in it, he made the announcement that he and Karen were getting married.
"I'd ask you to be the best man, but you'll be inside when the wedding comes off."
"Thanks anyway."
*
Then he was in court and one of the policemen was reading from his notebook.
"...When questioned as to whether the narcotics were for personal use, the accused replied, 'No, I don't use them, I only sell them. I'm a dealer, I am. I make more money in a week than you'll earn in a lifetime, copper. I've got loads of birds and a big car, all paid for out of kiddies' dinner money. I'm a big shot, me.' The accused then frothed at the mouth and screamed, 'You're dead, your family's dead, the Cali cartel will get you.'"
His lawyer made no mention of his A-level results and wouldn't let him give his conveyor belt speech. He got six months.