Mortal Taste Read Online Free PDF Page B

his contempt, forcing another of his thin smiles, raising his hand for a moment to his earring, as if it helped him in complex thought. ‘You can begin to test the ground. Carefully. If you’re not sure of someone, you don’t speak. Find a couple of punters who you’re sure will want the stuff and sell to them. Other people will find out and come to you. That’s the way it works. That way you don’t take risks.’
    â€˜Don’t take risks. That’s right. That’s the way we’ll go about it.’ Mark looked at himself earnestly in the mirror and nodded a few times, as if to tap home that message.
    The man looked at him for a long few seconds, wondering if there was danger in this young fool. But he knew nothing. If he was caught, he couldn’t tell the police a thing. He took the new recruit by the arm. Mark felt steely fingers pressing into his biceps, bruising him. He tried to twist away.
    The man held on, increasing the pressure until the boy groaned. ‘This isn’t a paper round, son. There’s easy money, but it doesn’t come for nothing. You go carefully. And if you’re stupid enough to get yourself caught, you say nothing. Absolutely schtum. Understood?’ He brought up his second arm to emphasize his point to the pot-hazed brain, increasing the pressure on the boy’s arm still further, his two hands like a band of iron on the puny bicep.
    â€˜Understood.’ Mark Lindsay couldn’t quite keep his voice steady on the word.

Five
    O n the Monday morning after his meeting at Shakers, Mark Lindsay looked speculatively round his fellow sixth formers, wondering which of them might become his first customers. He had come up with numerous possibilities over a frenetic weekend of consideration, but it was all more frightening, now that the time for actual decisions was approaching.
    He was quite clear about one thing. He must be very careful to keep well clear of Peter Logan. That bugger seemed to know everything that went on around his school. There’d been a couple of sixth-formers last year who’d been found doing cannabis, and the Head had given them very short shrift indeed. If you were planning an enterprise like the one Mark had been offered, you’d need to be very careful indeed.
    He would have breathed a little more easily had he realized that his head teacher was not even on the premises that day. Peter Logan was addressing a conference on Secondary School Organization in Birmingham. It was one of the penalties of success that you would be called upon for such things, as he had explained to his wife at some length on the previous evening.
    The conference was on the Birmingham University campus. The weather was crisp and clear. Peter Logan enjoyed his walk from the car park to the Faculty of Education with a still blue sky above him. He was not worried about the talk he had to give, despite the fact that his audience would be composed of fellow head teachers, prospective head teachers and university professors of education. He had given the talk before; all he had done for this occasion was bring it up to date with the latest figures from his own school and a couple of references to the new guidelines from the Department of Education and Science.
    Sure enough, when the moment came, his talk went well. He had set up the purpose-built Greenwood Comprehensive School from scratch and his address was basically an account of its development. He identified the initial problems he had faced and gave the details of how they had been solved. Then he went on to the development of the school over the last eight years. He catalogued the problems of growth. But growth, as he modestly pointed out, brought new resources, and his was basically a tale of success.
    You didn’t mention the ideas which you had tried and discarded when you found they did not work. You talked about the ones which had worked, and lit up the account with your own