Cocaine by Jack Hillgate Read Free Book Online

very tight jeans.
    ‘ Enchante ’, I said as I kissed her hand.
    She nodded coquettishly. I held her hand for slightly longer than I should have done, but she smelt beautiful. The ring on her finger was very large, maybe ten carat. Bill, despite his tinnies, had an expensive wife, which meant he would be rich until she had a child and either divorced or killed him.
    ‘ What are you worth, George?’ Bill asked me, blundering on.
    ‘ Not much’, I replied evenly.
    ‘ Would you like to know what I’m worth, mate? Oy, Lord Jack! Jack! Come over ‘ere and tell this Englishman what I’m worth.’
    Jack Wiseman smiled and came over. He put his arm around the barrel-chested sixty-year-old Aussie and clinked tins of lager with him.
    ‘ Bill’s a talker, isn’t he George?’
    ‘ Yes he is. Very entertaining.’
    I watched Sylvie looking at me over her glass of Jacob’s Creek. It made me shudder to think of Bill’s furry old body heaving in and out of her, crushing her with his weight.
    ‘ Three hundred grand’, said Bill loudly. ‘That’s what I’ve given Jack to invest for me.’
    ‘ Really, Bill’, admonished Jack, 'you mustn’t tell everyone, or they’ll all want to be in on it.’
    ‘ You got any capital?’ Bill asked me. ‘Jack’s your man. Best in the business.’
    Before I could answer, and somewhat opportunely, the door-bell rang and Arabella arrived.

    October 1990

    We got a triple room at the Hotel Viajero at the junction of Calle 8 and Carrera (eighth street and fifth avenue). The streets of the old town of Popayan were laid out in an easily navigable grid, centred on the Plaza de Armas , the main square. The Universidad del Cauca was only two blocks from our hotel and the bus terminal was perfectly positioned just a few street to the south-west, with a direct route to Cali, Colombia’s fourth largest city and also, according to Juan Andres, its recently-crowned drugs capital.
    ‘Aren’t you worried about being recognized?’ I asked him.
    ‘No, Ryyy-an. I already shave my moustache, I dye my hair, I with two gringos. No es problema. They no look for me. They more worried about each other.’
    ‘Stop worrying, English’, said Kieran, rolling a joint. ‘Once we find you a nice Colombian girl you’ll calm down.’
    ‘ Dios mio !’
    ‘What?’
    ‘You should see the girls on the beach. Madre mio , they are so…so athletico .’
    ‘Listen to Juan Andres’, said Kieran, ‘he’s a local. Want some? Help you relax.’ He handed me the joint, which burned steadily. ‘Don’t worry, English, it’s good stuff.’
    I took it from him. It had been sitting in Kieran’s shorts all the way from Canada, accumulating moisture inside its shrink-wrapped environment. A grin spread across Kieran’s face.
    ‘Don’t let it out til you’re good and ready.’
    I knew, from the first moment that I tasted the sickly sweet taste of the class C substance, from that first exhalation. I knew. I lay back on the bed and took another toke. The joint was hot, as the filter consisted of a simple piece of cardboard that Kieran had torn off from an old plane ticket, but apart from the slight swelling that I could feel in my lips, the rest of me was deflating nicely, warming to the journey ahead and my two traveling companions.
    ‘It’s good’, I said, my voice a little higher than usual, handing the joint to Juan Andres.
    ‘ No, gracias ’, he said, passing the joint straight to Kieran, who took a big drag and then asked me if I wanted a blow-back.
    ‘C’mere.’
    Kieran sat close to me on the bed, took a big drag from the joint and blew it into my mouth. It must have looked like we were kissing, but it heightened the soporific effect of the drug and I shut my eyes.
    The first term at Cambridge had been a whirlwind of new societies and parties and ex-convent girls eager to experiment with their bodies and mine. The second term had been spent trying to get rid of my new acquaintances and the ex-convent