On the Money Read online

  Ryan Kaine: On the Money

  “By Strength and Guile”

  by

  Kerry J Donovan

  ©Kerry J Donovan, April 2019

  The right of Kerry J Donovan to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this novel may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system without prior written permission of the Author and without similar conditions including this condition being imposed on any subsequent purchaser. Your support for the Author’s rights is appreciated.

  All characters in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Published by Human Vertex Publications, France.

  Head shot image, David Ilic ©2015

  This book uses UK English, grammar, and punctuation.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Ryan Kaine: On the Edge (Sample)

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 1

  Tuesday 24th January – Barcode

  Walthamstow, NE London

  Thou shalt not steal.

  Bible said it loud and clear, and Bible was Goddamned fuckin’ right. One of them Ten Commandments.

  Byron Arlon “Barcode” Codell didn’t know which one exactly, but that didn’t matter a damn. What it meant mattered. It mattered big time.

  Steal something, anything, food to survive even, and the thief would suffer in the flames of hell for all eternity. Thieving fuckers would burn forever.

  Yeah, that’s right, stealing did a person’s soul no good in the afterlife, no good at all. But who gave a shit for souls? If that same thief took from Barcode, bad things would happen in the here and now, right away. To hell with God’s delayed wrath, no one stole from Barcode.

  No fuckin’ way.

  Ain’t no one gonna mess with Barcode no more. The ink lines on the back of his neck were a permanent reminder of what happened to anyone who tried to fuck him over. Barcode wasn’t never gonna take no disrespec’ from nobody no more.

  Which was why he was aiming to climb up on the garage roof in the middle of the night. Again.

  Someone happened to be dipping his evil, greasy fingers into Barcode’s pie, and that certain someone was gonna lose more than the same sticky fingers. Yeah, more’n just his fingers. The thieving pig-fucker was going to die.

  Wrapped up in his heaviest parka and dressed all in black, apart from the white lines on his shit-hot trainers, Barcode pulled the fur-lined hood over his shaved head. He cinched the string tie tight under his nose to cover his mouth. The side flaps and fur threw his face into deep shadow.

  He stuck his head over the top of the shoulder-high wooden fence, and checked out the sloping back garden.

  Nothing much had changed since the last time he’d been there, or since the old man kicked the bucket. Such a shame, but old people died. Nothing shocking in that. Nothing at all.

  Unlike last time, the crib was dark.

  No lights shone from the kitchen window over the shitty patch of land that had once been an okay back garden, with flowers and vegetables and shit. Back before the old man took ill and his wheelchair became his legs.

  Stupid old man thought he was still relevant, still worthy of respect. Not in Barcode’s books. Cripples were a waste of space. A waste of oxygen. A blight on the world. Should be swiped from the area, moved into homes. Culled or somethin’.

  But the old geezer was pushing up the daisies now. Nothing mattered to him no more.

  The old man’s grandson, Darwin Moore. He mattered, though. Still stayed in the house, but only on weekends. Never on a Tuesday. Darwin, the college boy geek, spent the week studying somewhere up north, which was the reason the house was empty.

  Perfect.

  Even if the old boy was still alive—sitting behind his net curtains, in front of his TV screen—he’d have been lost in his favourite soap. The TV was his stand-in for “product”, the street drugs Barcode and his posse shifted by the baggie load. Gramps would have been sitting with his back to the window and the sound turned up loud enough for a deaf fuckin’ dog to hear the dialogue from a couple of houses away. Nah, the old sod wouldn’t have noticed an armed assault force scrambling over the fence, let alone a stealthy black dude with a barcode tattoo on the back of his neck.

  After pulling on his leather gloves, Barcode grabbed the top of the fence and jumped over, landing in a patch of soft, sticky mud. He scuffed his tracks as he headed down the slight hill. Although the old bastard hadn’t been in the back garden for years before he croaked, on account of his wheelchair, no telling when Darwin would venture out for a look-see. Didn’t make no sense to leave a clear trail.

  The crib—a two-bedroomed, end-of-terrace house—had to be worth a fuckin’ mint, even in a shitty area like Brooke Street. Darwin shoulda sold up as soon as Gramps kicked the bucket. Fuck knew why he didn’t. Prob’ly wanted to keep it in memory of his dear departed grandpa and his murdered mother. Stupid sentimental fuckwit should be living for the moment, not dwelling on the past. No profit in it.

  The mother wasn’t all that bright neither. Shouldn’t have left the crippled old man on his own to fly off on a hen’s night. Why Amsterdam, for fuck’s sake? What was wrong with London? She could’ve had a hell of a time down the West End for the same price of flying to Dutch-land.

  Paid the price though, didn’t she? Mrs Moore and the others who died on that flight. Served her right. Served them all right. Blown out of the sky in a fireball.

  Barcode smiled. Wished he could’ve seen the explosion for real and not just in some shaky mobile phone footage.

  Man, it must have been a hell of a firework show.

  Eighty-three dead. Either burnt to charcoal, crushed on impact or—much worse—drowned in the freezing North Sea.

  Yeah, Barcode would’ve loved to have seen it in real life. It’d have been such a buzz.

  Ah well. Can’t do nothing ’bout that now.

  Keeping close to the fence, staying in the deep shadow, Barcode crept around the garden, the tall grass swishing up to his knees, soaking the legs of his jeans. He made it to the rear of the garage. The metal wheelbarrow was exactly where he’d left it, leaning against the garage wall. He used it to boost himself onto the flat roof.

  Again, keeping close to the end wall of the house, Barcode scrambled on ha
nds and knees to the front of the garage and squatted.

  Simples.

  He had the perfect view.

  One of his own crew, the fuckin’ scumbag, had been dipping his fingers in the till, which meant the total take was coming up five percent short. Not much, but significant. In any other business, the shortfall might have been explained away by bad weather keeping the punters off the streets and out of the shops. But in his industry, the clients would crawl over shattered glass and sell their babies as sex slaves to raise the cash to cover the next fix.

  Nah, a drop in revenue meant only one thing.

  Thievery, plain and simple.

  He first noticed the shortage a couple of days ago. Up front, he thought about running to Top Man, but that would only have reflected badly on Barcode. It would prob’ly have dropped him well and truly in the slime. No telling what TM would’ve done. The invisible fucker might even put the evil eye on Barcode for dropping the ball. After all, the thievery was happening on one of Barcode’s pitches, which made him responsible for clearing up his own mess. In the end, Barcode made up the shortfall from his personal cut, but that couldn’t last forever. If the thieving fuck kept getting away with it, he’d only get greedier. Eventually, Barcode wouldn’t be able to cover the losses and that wouldn’t do. Not at all.

  It had to stop, and stop now.

  If he didn’t flush out the scumbag and deal with him before TM sussed out the losses, TM would prob’ly decide Barcode wasn’t up to the task of running his own crew. And that would put a cramp on his plans to move up in the Tribe and reach his ultimate goal.

  Move TM aside and take over.

  Complete and utter domination. The only thing that mattered to Barcode. But he was smarter than them mugs who tried to take over by playing hardball, all gung-ho but no smarts. Barcode played the long game. Stealth was better than the shock tactics.

  He sucked air between his teeth, smiled, and settled down to study one third of his crew. This week’s evening shift. If he’d worked it out right, it wouldn’t take long to prove.

  Barcode pulled a pair of stolen binoculars from the pocket of his parka and sat cross-legged on the tar-covered roof, hidden deep in the shadows. He raised them to his eyes and started in on the spying.

  As he watched, his anger built.

  He fed on it. Used it. Enjoyed it.

  If emotions made the man, Barcode was a man built of fire and rage. The world saw him for what he was—big, powerful, angry. But there was more. Below the surface, hidden deep, lay ambition and a brain to take him to where he wanted to be. And a street level middle manager wasn’t nearly the place.

  He’d go further. Much further.

  Barcode was going to the top. Wouldn’t be easy. There were plenty of faces standing between him and TM’s spot. Yeah, plenty of wannabes, but none with Barcode’s patience or smarts.

  To TM and his lieutenants, the Goons, Barcode weren’t nothing special, not yet. But he was worth more. Even his handle meant more than he let on. The tat on the back of his neck—the barcode that gave him his tag—actually meant something. It wasn’t just a random load of fat and thin vertical lines. No way.

  At aged twelve, he’d been turned on by a movie about a hired assassin who wore a barcode tattoo on the back of his neck. The young Byron wanted one of his own. Thought it would be cool. Saved up his hard-earned money for months and spent hours each week in the school gym, building his muscles with weights, and his reflexes with the speed bags.

  According to the rat-faced, broken-toothed tattoo artist who inked him, the vertical black lines he’d etched into young Byron’s dark skin displayed nothing but his name, his handle—Hitman #48—and his date of birth.

  “Barcode” was reborn that day, and he was totally fuckin’ psyched. But, weeks later and after the scabs had healed, when he ran a Tesco’s barcode reader over the lines, the code gave a different result. It spewed out an insult to his mother and her love life. Even though he was fired up and spitting bullets, Barcode never told no one about how he’d been screwed over. Kept it to himself. Never allowed no one to run a scanner over the tat again, neither. Nobody could never accuse Barcode of being shit at keeping secrets.

  Months later, someone out walking their dog found the same rat-faced, heartless fucker who thought it funny to play games with his needle gun and mess with a teenage kid. Found him floating face down in the Thames, missing his eyes—and his heart.

  Barcode didn’t tell no one he’d done the deed, neither.

  Yeah, Barcode could keep a secret all right.

  Since then, he could’ve paid another inker to cover the lines, change them, but he left it untouched as a lesson to himself not to be so stupid again. And ’sides, Barcode was, as the tat actually said, a Big Black Bastard.

  Too fuckin’ right I am. And nobody’s ever gonna say different.

  In the dark and the cold, Barcode watched and waited.

  #

  Brutus.

  Yep.

  It fuckin’ well had to be Brutus.

  Couldn’t have been no one else. No one else on his crew had the balls, or the stupidity.

  The minute he discovered the pilferage, Barcode knew it had to be Brutus, the third mini-leader of his posse.

  It had only taken a few seconds to rule out everyone else.

  First, he cleared Petey. No way his blood, his bruv, would do anything to drop Barcode in the brown stuff. They’d known each other since nursery. Grown up together. Petey was as honest as any dealer had a right to be. Petey would die for Barcode and, what’s more, Barcode would let him.

  Ha!

  As for Rhino, the second stringer, Barcode cleared him almost as fast as he cleared Petey. Rhino didn’t have the stones, or the need. The musclebound cretin didn’t partake of the product, not even occasionally. Fine upstanding member of the Tribe, he was. Didn’t even smoke normal cigarettes. Treated his body as a fuckin’ temple, and worshiped his pregnant squeeze, Ariel. Top of all that was the clincher—Rhino didn’t have the smarts to rip no one off without giving himself away in seconds.

  That left Brutus. The third wheel. The third deputy. The bastard in charge of the pitch Barcode was watching through the binoculars.

  Brutus.

  You stupid, greedy, selfish fucker.

  He had to go, but …

  Barcode couldn’t deal with the thief without proof. The Tribe had its rules, and any member who pointed an accusing finger without proof was liable to find hisself in as much trouble as the tribesman he accused.

  Nah, Barcode needed evidence, which was how come he ended up sitting, cross-legged, on the flat garage roof freezing his nuts off, risking butt cramp and piles.

  As it happened, it only took twenty-five minutes to eyeball the act.

  Slimy bastard!

  Barcode spotted it when the fifth customer of the evening handed across her small bundle of creased notes—probably earned from lying on her back and spreading her scrawny legs. As the be-atch scurried away, her daily fix held tight in a grimy fist, Brutus handed the cash to his rider, Lil’ Aran, who slid the notes into his backpack.

  Lil’ Aran, ten years old, no more, spent the shift pedalling up and down the lanes between all the pitches, ready to make a lightning split the moment the bacon shoved their noses into Tribe business.

  The routine was slick and simple. Barcode designed it for the purpose and it worked real well.

  Customer arrives.

  Money passes from customer to dealer—in this case, Brutus.

  Dealer tips the nod to rider.

  Rider—Lil’ Aran—rolls up on his BMX, takes cash, hands product to Brutus, and buggers off up the lane in a flat out, wheel-spinning sprint.

  Dealer passes product to junkie.

  Junkie buggers off, happy as shit, transaction complete, and no outsider any the wiser.

  Only this time, while the client buggers off, baggie in her hot little fist and Lil’ Aran sprints away, Brutus stoops to tie his shoelace.

/>   Again, no real issue, but, through the high-powered binoculars, Barcode couldn’t see nothing wrong with the piggin’ laces in the first place. They sure didn’t seem loose to him.

  First time it happened, Barcode didn’t think nothing of it. After all, no self-respecting crewman would allow his brilliant white laces to go slopping in the puddles, but seven deals later, same thing happened, this time with the other shoe.

  Once was all right, twice maybe, but it kept happening. Over the course of two hours, Brutus tied his laces five fuckin’ times.

  The big guy either hadn’t learned to tie his laces proper, which meant they kept coming undone, or he had another reason to fiddle with his sneakers.

  Yeah. Another reason, right enough.

  So fuckin’ simple. When Barcode first sussed the shortfall, he’d credited Brutus with more brains. He expected the bastard to hand off the stolen money to an accomplice or an unwitting stooge. Maybe even hide it under a rock for a pickup in the middle of the night when even the hardest-bitten junkies crawled into their shitholes and the Tribe had shut up shop for the day. He didn’t expect something so blatant. How long did Brutus expect to get away with it for?

  So simple and so stupid.

  A fiver here and a tenner there, but over a week, it would mount up. In the two months since Top Man gave Barcode the patch, the fucker could have syphoned off fuckin’ hundreds.

  Plain old sleight of hand—or rather of foot. No accomplice. His fuckin’ shoe! How careless to have missed it for so long.

  Jesus fuck.

  Barcode chewed his thumbnail down to the skin.

  Disrespec’. Brutus was dissing him. Laughing at him.

  For Brutus to treat him that way showed more than greed. It showed contempt. Contempt for the Tribe and, worse still, contempt for Barcode.

  Brutus is gone. End of.

  Barcode crawled backwards along the roof and retraced his steps through the garden.

  #

  Barcode timed his approach so Lil’ Aran was heading towards the furthest point on his ride but before making his turn. The rider would be far enough away not to interfere if he was working the scam with Brutus, but close enough to act as witness and confirm Barcode didn’t plant the cash.