Jonathan Hosgood

Ordinary Joe

Novel extract

Part 1: London Hustle
Chapter 1: Switch Blade

We agreed to meet in that redeveloped part of Kings Cross full of overpriced oily street food. Raven was there before me, sitting alone on the granite steps overlooking the canal, and I made my way through the square, past the scattered office workers on coffee break, to sit beside her. The empty tables of the Big Easy diner lay across the water, the staff gossiping out back in the post lunch lull. Behind us tourists queued for ice cream and kids dared each other to run through the water fountains. None of them noticed us sitting quietly on the steps, or the canvas bag holding three Katana steel samurai swords by my feet. 

We had our backs to the sun and my neck started to burn a little. Raven tapped her foot and played with the ring on her middle finger before stopping, leaving the paste gem turned inwards. She was wearing black, offsetting the gothic with a cheap sparkly bracelet on her right wrist. I smudged her eyeshadow for a slightly more careless look and she reciprocated the gesture, pulling at the loose thread where my shirt was missing a button. I was wearing dirty burgundy chinos and sporting a heavy Omega watch borrowed from a pawnbroker. My shoes were brown brogues, deliberately scuffed and dirty.  

We stopped fussing and watched the crowd between us and the diner. Two steps down a man’s wallet bulged out of his back pocket. Raven followed my gaze. ‘Focus…,’ she said. 

We had more pressing business. Our mark, Krakatoa was due at the restaurant anytime. He was officially late when he messaged with an apology and the suggestion that we meet at the Turtle instead. 

It was one of the bars he owned. 

‘It’s still a public place and somewhere we know,’ Raven said.

‘His turf, he might be more confident.’

‘Or complacent. It’s just a handover.’ 

A pigeon flew close to us and pecked at a discarded burrito wrapper. The bird paid us no attention and concentrated its efforts on the food stuck to the foil. 

‘Maybe we’re overthinking this…,’ Raven said.

In truth talking around it didn’t convince us one way or another. What mattered was that we wanted to close the deal. There was probably a touch of pride involved in that, but in the end, it was mainly a money thing. 

We’d started the year flush with the proceeds of a crash test dummy scam. Through the winter we orchestrated half a dozen slow motion traffic accidents, sourcing sick notes from a friendly GP to back our whiplash insurance claims, but the loss adjusters cottoned on to the pattern and put an end to things. The payout money was already gone. Spent and inconsequential. 

Raven went back to bar work, scalping credit cards on the side. I gambled a little, dealt some poker and sniffed around for new opportunities. In early summer, I met a lawyer called Elder. He presented as an establishment type, but that was only a show, and it didn’t take long before I was digging around for samurai paraphernalia, and he was paying us to grift Krakatoa. 

Raven and I looked at each other. She smiled and nodded and we made the decision together. I picked up the canvas bag and slung it over my shoulder. Raven kissed the ring on her finger. ‘For luck,’ she said.

‘Break a leg,’ I replied.

We snaked our way through the crowd toward the Euston Road and bundled onto the tube at Kings Cross, getting out at Bethnal Green. The Turtle was ten minutes or so away, down Three Colts Lane and under the graffitied railway arch. The walk took us past the weathered black brick of the Fugitive Hotel and on to the gaudy exterior of the Turtle. 

As we got close an upbeat tune escaped the Turtle’s open doors, but not many people were there to hear the music. It was too early for the hipster types that thought the bar was edgy and while a few students decorated a corner table, clashing with the burnt orange walls, the centre of the floor was empty. 

Krakatoa sat in a raised area off to the left, lounging on dirty velvet seats with a couple of the square men he employed as bouncers.  I knew one of them, he was a decent sort, placid in the way large people sometimes can be, and he greeted us with a hesitant, toothy smile. 

Krakatoa saw us a moment later and stood. He raised his arms as we approached, as if he was bringing us into the fold. 

‘Well, here you are,’ he said.

He knew me as Jimmy – a dissolute man from a faded family, and Raven as Roxy – wild with rough edges. It wasn’t subtle, but the crude brushstrokes had seemed appropriate for a big, showy man like Krakatoa. 

I took the bag from my shoulder and opened it so he could see the swords inside. He grinned and invited us upstairs to conclude the exchange. We followed him out back and up the stairs, climbing three floors above the bar, until he stopped at a landing, pushed open a door and stood aside to reveal his office. 

It was a biggish room though I doubted much in the way of work got done in there. Pushed against one wall was a sofa wide enough to sleep two. A dirty blanket accessorized the sofa and a ceramic ice bucket was tipped against a cushion. 

Raven walked in and headed for the desk near the back wall. A gun metal safe and rack of weights stood next to the desk. There was a feature wall opposite the sofa, and just as we’d heard, it was decorated with a larger-than-life stencil of a Samurai in full battledress. 

The waiting staff in the bar downstairs traded stories that Krakatoa had played rugby for Samoa. We couldn’t verify that, but he had the build, and a kind of rolling walk, all hips and shoulders, that made the shaggy dog story believable. What we did know was that Krakatoa managed a few bars, threw more money around than seemed reasonable for a small-time restaurateur, and that at least one person, Elder, claimed it was misappropriated wealth. 

Krakatoa brushed past us and left the door open. I put the bag down in front of the desk and Raven leant on a chair next to me. 

‘Nice place,’ I said.

‘My own design,’ Krakatoa replied. 

‘This thing French?’ I asked, running a hand along the surface of the desk. It was a solid piece, polished mahogany wood with a red leather insert on top.

‘Yeah, yeah…of course,’ he replied.  

‘Can’t beat quality,’ Raven said.  

‘Only the best,’ I added.

Krakatoa eyed us up and I worried we were overdoing it. I took the swords out and placed them on the red leather of the desk. 

‘As promised,’ Raven said.

Krakatoa ran a stubby finger along the nearest blade. He picked one of the swords, raised it vertically, and eyed his reflection in the polished metal.

I looked past him to the far wall and spotted a couple of small marks where picture hooks might have been.  I swept the room again and saw a mirror tucked behind the weights. Raven saw it too. 

‘They’d look great mounted on a wall,’ she said.

Krakatoa treated us to a grin and gestured toward the seats in front of the desk. 

‘Let’s finish this,’ he said.

‘With pleasure,’ Raven replied.

She took out an invoice for vintage champagne designed to create a dummy paper trail for the swords, and pushed it across the desk. Raven had negotiated the deal over cocktails, starting at fifty thousand and letting him chip her down, cut by cut, to thirty-six grand in Euros, which was too much to conveniently settle in cash and a credible expense for ten cases of fictitious bubbly.     

The grift was a variation on the Bangkok scams that overcharge tourists for fake jewelry. We flipped the con, making a deal to sell the swords well below their market value, because they were only the bait – selling them a pretext to get access to the big man’s offshore bank account.  

Krakatoa glanced at the invoice, leant back, and stretched. His tight-fitting shirt barely contained his shoulders and his shaved head was a little too small for the width of his neck. The bar’s sound system reached the office with a dull thud. The swords lay on the desk, but there was no computer there, no laptop waiting for him to authorise the transfer.

‘You bank using the app on your phone?’ Raven asked.

Krakatoa sat with his arms folded and Raven tried a second nudge. 

‘Is your bank one of those that uses voice recognition to save on passwords?’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ Krakatoa said. 

He swung around on his chair and bent over the safe, opening the door. He took out six large bundles of used notes and dropped them one by one on the desk in front of us. 

‘Payment,’ he said.

Raven and I looked at the notes. They were all fifties, at least the ones we could see. It was a lot of money, but not what we’d agreed. The small pile of cash was tempting, but useless.  

‘Count it if you want,’ Krakatoa said.

‘We trust you, it’s just…,’ I said.

‘This isn’t the deal. You remember, we discussed it…over the cocktails,’ Raven said.

He sat there indifferent, as if the objection didn’t even register. 

‘You know we can’t use cash,’ I said. 

He turned to me. ‘Who doesn’t want cash?’ 

I shrugged. ‘Cash raises questions for us,’ Raven said.

‘The way I see it – cash avoids awkward questions.’

‘I get what you’re saying,’ I said. ‘But we need the digital trail to make it look like you’re buying champagne. It’s bad for both of us if my uncle’s lawyers start asking questions about the swords.’

He was unmoved. 

‘The lawyers aren’t my problem,’ he said.

Raven and I shared a glance. 

‘Look…,’ I said. ‘We could split the difference. Half cash. Half offshore. Fair enough?’ 

Krakatoa looked impassive. Raven was fidgeting with her ring, nervous energy pouring out of her. The best play was to take the swords and leave. Give him time to come round to the idea that we were serious and he was losing the Katana. 

‘Let’s cool down and sleep on it,’ I said.

‘There’s no need for that,’ he said.

‘We’ll keep them safe, then if you change your mind…’

‘I won’t,’ he said.

I reached to take the swords back and he slammed his hand over mine. 

My skin grazed the cold metal of the blade and I held the desk to steady myself.  

‘Don’t be so hasty,’ he said.

I managed to force a smile as though this was ordinary horseplay, part of a reasonable negotiation.  He waited a moment then let go of my hand. I balled it into a fist and stretched the fingers out to make sure the muscles still worked.  

‘Thing is…,’ he said.

I made myself meet his gaze.

‘Normally, people, I mean grifters, thieves, and the like…don’t want a paper trail.’

I tried to look offended. ‘It’s for probate…’

‘Yeah…so you said.’

‘We want you to feel good about the swords. If not, maybe you shouldn’t buy them.’ 

He tilted his head and eyed me at an angle. 

The tension in the room was all wrong. 

‘Or we could take the cash,’ I said. 

‘Yeah, about that,’ he said.

Raven backed away from the desk. One of the veins in Krakatoa’s neck started to throb. It was hard to look anywhere else. 

He picked up a sword and swished it back and forth. 

‘Feels good,’ he said. 

He swung the sword close to my face.

‘Do you think it’s sharp?’ he asked.