Cop, Stock & Rock

CJ Homer

Description

After overhearing some customers chatting during his otherwise boring shift in South London, Gabe learns of brands that produce and sell clothes in limited quantities; where demand far outstrips supply. He tells his best mates, Omari and Tommy, and they decide to throw themselves into the money-making scheme. They start off slowly, just dipping their toes in by travelling into central London for in-store releases. They soon travel down to Bournemouth where they successfully queue up overnight for a pair of sneakers. Gabe wins another pair from an online raffle back in London, but on his way back he sells the pair he already won, only to find out the buyer paid in fake notes. After that fiasco he goes to buy the other pair; he almost gets mugged, but he manages to get away by the skin of his teeth. Later, Gabe, Omari and Tommy are invited to a house party by Gabe's older sister, Louise. There, Omari is introduced to Fran, who tries to recruit him to work for the same company as she does, marketed as a 'talent agency'.After a mad collaborative release in London that ends in police being called to control a frenzied mob, the story ends in Paris. With estimated resale profits to be in the thousands, it's a hectic event and the odds of having a successful entry is miniscule. Fran pulls some strings, so the trio manage to reserve their pair.At the release Gabe spots his sister, who admits that she is there because she is a prominent reseller. Once back at the hotel, Fran whisks Omari off to meet her boss. Omari, however, takes an instant disliking to him and rejects his business proposal to become a 'famous influencer' in return for signing away his life.

Sujets

• Children's

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 07 mars 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781838598525
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Copyright © 2020 CJ Homer

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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ISBN 9781838598525

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador® is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

For Mum, Dad, Issy and Freddie,
this book is a dedication to your unwavering support
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
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 1
Omari Johnson never meant to start selling weed, but he needed the money to pay for university. His family weren’t desperately poor, but they weren’t wealthy enough to make up the fees, even with the government’s help.
He had started selling occasionally in between helping his dad on-site at various locations across South London on his painting and decorating jobs. But after six months’ slogging away at weekends and in the holidays, Omari decided the trade wasn’t for him. Painting and decorating was backbreaking work, for not a lot of money. He told his parents he was getting a job as a delivery boy instead.
That was true to an extent, but he only delivered weed. The delivery job was a good pretext because it gave him an excuse to go in and out of the house constantly, claiming to be ‘waiting for another job’.
He didn’t like selling weed.
It was risky and illegal, yes, but that wasn’t the reason he disliked it. No, he’d been brought up better. While he was a through-and-through working-class Brit, he believed he’d had just as good an upbringing as any kid who went to Eton or Harrow. That was mainly due to his mum, a well-known figure in the local community. Of Nigerian descent, she worked as a waitress in a little local café near the family’s home in Peckham. It was her voluntary work at the local youth centre, however, that really made her a pillar of the community. She’d joined up with other local residents to save the place from closing. They secured backing from local businesses as well as making money with various fundraising events. His mum’s selflessness was a beautiful thing to witness, and it always made Omari feel guilty for selling weed.
His dad worked just as hard. Perhaps not for the community, but certainly for his family. He was an East Londoner originally, a proper old-school cockney bloke.
Trying to provide for his family, he’d work seven days a week, sometimes pulling eighty-plus hours.
Despite this, Omari knew he’d never be able to afford university if he didn’t find the money for it himself, and sharpish. His parents earnt just enough to reach the threshold for minimal student funding from the government, but in reality, couldn’t afford to give him any assistance. That was why they had sat him down and told him that unless he could pay his own way through university, he would have to enter employment directly after leaving school.
So Omari decided to work the part-time job with the highest returns.
He hated selling, though, and hoped one day he’d possess even half the decency of both his parents. Since he’d been selling the stuff, he had gone from a recreational smoker to totally cold turkey. There was a kid at his school who’d smoked a load of skunk and it had given him psychosis. Omari knew the risks to a casual smoker were slim, especially because he’d never touched skunk, but he didn’t want to chance it. His best mates didn’t smoke either, and would far rather save the money.
If selling £20 bags of marijuana was his main source of income, his side hustle was selling vintage clothes. Omari enjoyed the entire process of buying and selling stock: the journey from scouting out desirable bargains, to briefly wearing them and then selling them on at a premium. If only he could make enough from it to secure his future, he’d gladly drop the weed dealing.
There were similarities between his two pursuits, and there were obvious differences. For a start, he didn’t disclose his profits from either enterprise to the government, so outwardly he was just another teenage schoolboy.
Another parallel was that Omari was often on the move when he was buying and selling clothes. He’d go to car boot sales, or meet up with a buyer to collect items he’d found online; just like when he went to his weed connect’s house to get a re-up. Once he had a buyer for either of his products, he’d put that before anything else: Omari wanted to make the transaction as smooth as possible and increase the chance of the person buying from him again.
A big difference that did piss him off was that people wanting to buy his clothes would often try to undercut the stated price. It happened all the time, and every time he’d just reply: ‘The price is the price.’ The customers after his weed wouldn’t dare question him this way – it would ruin the entire dealer-buyer dynamic.
The culture behind vintage clothes-dealing appealed to Omari, and he’d often find himself scrolling through pages and pages of eBay listings. Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren, Burberry, Stone Island – that was all a bit of him. There were kids his age who wore brands like Stanton or Princess, but he couldn’t afford the prices of labels like those on a day-to-day basis. Besides, he liked the thrill of finding a bargain and flipping it for a profit.
After he’d set up an Instagram account to showcase his new bits, it had grown in popularity. He’d often take pictures of items on his travels around London, to give them an artistic backdrop.
While he knew he wasn’t the best photographer, and at the risk of looking like every other cliché-ed teen with a DSLR camera hashtagging ‘35mm’ on Instagram, he did enjoy exploring London and photographing his fashion finds.
Omari had fallen in love with art studies from an early age, but it was the place where fine art met textiles that really caused a fire in his belly. Painting was something he could appreciate, and had tried to succeed at, but it was not his natural forte. It was in textiles and fashion design that he excelled. Since stumbling across Stone Island blogs, he’d seen countless examples of the beautiful way different materials could be manipulated. It was from these sites that his passion for clothing design originated; the materials Stone Island had used over its history were truly unique and the designs it produced iconic.
His ambition was to study fashion design at degree level, and then go on to work as a designer for Stone Island or a similar brand. It was a long shot, but a guy can always dream.
For now, he tried to remain focused on his current day-to-day life, and not let himself be whisked away by daydreams of becoming the next Jean-Michel Basquiat or Massimo Osti.
The summer of 2018 had been a scorcher. Spurred on by England’s World Cup fever, even early September days felt like mid-July. That particular day had been brilliantly warm – one of those days when you can’t concentrate in school because it’s still so hot. All Omari wanted to do was get outside and play footy with his mates. But once school finished, he had to start work.
London’s sky had turned into a beautiful amalgam of orange and yellow hues, and Omari was happy to be out on his bike witnessing it. He had just dropped off to a regular customer and earnt £40 for twenty minutes’ work. Only half of that was profit, but it was a nice little earner to line his wallet.
His phone buzzed again: a punter was calling asking for a twenty bag.
“Yeah, safe, bruv, I’ll bike down now to collect the cash. Talk later,” he answered.
Omari’s business model was quite simple: established dealers would be on street corners dealing to local people, so he avoided those places. Luckily for him, he lived near a three-mile-long road that was home to three separate universities.
If there’s one thing university students do, it’s smoke weed. That may be a stereotypical view, but, hey, no smoke without fire. Or in this case, no smoke that didn’t come from a meticulously rolled, generously laced rollie.
When he’d first started out in the business, it had been as a favour to someone. He had been in a bar using a fake ID and went home wit