The Toymaster's Castle

Chapter Twenty-One - Riot

About a week later, Daniel took me down, south of the river, to a Thai restaurant that he'd heard good things about. I'd never been to that sort of place before and I really enjoyed it. The flavours - and the smells - were completely different from anything I'd ever eaten before.

But, still, there was something playing on my mind and eventually Daniel laughed and told me to ask my question.

I hesitated for a moment and then came out with it. "Was it my fault that you chucked Mary out?" I asked.

"It's certainly not your fault," he reassured me. "However your presence... and your ongoing display of competence... brought home to me that Angus could no longer be trusted to deal with that side of the business. I had to take matters in hand personally"

"So the business isn't hitting money problems?"

Daniel looked around but the place was pretty empty so there was no danger of us being overheard.

"Over half of our profits come from the street sale of illegal drugs and that business is essentially countercyclical - that means that the worse things are, the more money I make."

"How can that possibly work?"

"I don't really know... and this is clearly not an area where there is a great deal of official research... but my guess is that, the more dismal the economic situation, the more people come to rely on the artificial crutch of narcotics."

I thought about this and it made sense but still... "And you don't feel guilty about using people like that?"

He gave a little laugh at that idea. "Why on Earth should I feel guilty about it?" he asked. "I'm not forcing anyone to take the stuff... and everybody knows how addictive it is... and yet weak people keep coming to me to buy it. And, believe me, if I didn't sell it to them, somebody else would! At least I try to ensure that what I deliver is fairly consistent in terms of quality and strength."

I didn't say anything but I might have given him a bit of a funny look.

"By ensuring my product remains consistent like that, I minimise the number of deaths because the users know what they are taking," he explained. "And that suits me because it keeps the police off my back."

Another funny look.

"The police are impossibly overstretched at the moment so, unless I start killing off significant numbers of my customers, they will essentially ignore me... particularly if I encourage the right senior officers to look the wrong way."

He laughed at my shocked reaction. I guess I was just a naïve little thing who had no idea about the way the world really worked.

But we had to stop our conversation because the owner of the place came over to ask us if we had enjoyed our meal. He and Daniel started chatting and suddenly tiny samples of all sorts of different puddings appeared.

And I forgot all about the countercyclical nature of the drugs business and even about police corruption. Instead, I concentrated on trying all those different puddings!

So it was late by the time we left and I was feeling contentedly full. George was waiting for us with the Limo and, as soon as we hopped in, I snuggled into Daniel's shoulder and started snoozing.

But I was shaken awake by George announcing that we had a possible security situation.

I looked up to see that, outside the car, everything was dark... like, really dark... so it took me a couple of seconds to work out what was going on.

We were moving slowly along a shopping street but all the streetlights were out... all the other lights too... some sort of power cut, I guess... and there were millions of people roaming around and some of them were spilling out onto the road. You could vaguely hear them chanting stuff... political stuff, I think.