War on the Streets

Despite his befuddled brain, Nigel’s face was instantly suspicious. His eyes narrowed. ‘Charlie? Charlie who?’

Glynis shuddered again. Her voice was edgy and irritable. ‘Aw, come on, man. Don’t piss me about.’ She paused briefly. ‘Look, I was at Annabel’s tonight. A guy called David told me I could score here tonight.’

So it was out in the open; no need for any further pretence. They both knew exactly what Charlie she was looking for. C for Charlie – the code word for cocaine among the Sloane Ranger set.

Still grinning, Nigel shook his head. ‘You’re too late, darling. Charlie’s been and gone.’ He spread his hands in an expansive gesture, giggling stupidly. ‘Hey, can’t you tell?’

Another violent spasm racked Glynis’s body. A look of despair crept over her face. ‘Oh, Jesus!’ she groaned. She looked up at Nigel again, her eyes pleading. ‘Come on, somebody’s got to be still holding, surely? The money’s no problem, OK?’

Nigel shook his head again. ‘Not a single snort left in the place. We all did our thing a couple of hours ago.’ He reached out, grasping her by the arm. ‘But don’t let that bother your pretty head, darling. We’ve still got plenty of booze left. Why don’t you just come in and get chateaued instead?’

Glynis shook free of his grip with a sudden, violent jerk. The sheer intensity of her reaction wiped the grin from Nigel’s face for a second. He stared down at her more carefully, noting the perspiration starting to show through her make-up, the nervous twitching of little muscles in her face.

‘It’s really that bad, huh?’

Glynis nodded dumbly. She looked totally dejected and pathetic. Nigel looked at her dubiously for a while, finally coming to some sort of a decision.

‘Look, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Got a pen and paper?’

Glynis nodded again, this time with a flash of hope on her face. She rummaged in her handbag and fished out a ballpoint pen and an old clothing store receipt.

Nigel took them from her trembling fingers. Holding the scrap of paper against the door-frame, he began to scribble.

‘Look, this guy is strictly down-market, and he charges way over the odds on street prices…but he can usually come across, know what I mean?’

The girl nodded gratefully. ‘Yeah. And thanks.’

She turned to go back down the steps. Nigel called after her. ‘Hey, look, don’t forget to tell him Nigel M sent you. It puts me in line for a favour, know what I mean?’

Glynis didn’t answer. Nigel remained in the doorway for a few moments, watching her as she climbed into the Porsche and backed hurriedly out of the narrow street. A slim female hand descended on his shoulder, and a pair of red lips which smelled strongly of gin nuzzled his ear.

‘Hey, come on, Nigel. You’re missing the party.’

Nigel turned away from the door, finally.

‘Who was it – gatecrashers?’ his companion asked.

Nigel shook his head. ‘No, just some junkie bird chasing Charlie. I sent her to Greek Tony.’

His girlfriend pulled an expression of distaste. ‘Ugh, that slimeball? She must have been pretty desperate.’

Nigel nodded. ‘Yes, I think she was,’ he muttered.

Detective Sergeant Paul Carney sat at his desk, sifting through a growing pile of paperwork. Several empty plastic cups from the coffee machine and an ashtray filled with cigarette stubs testified to a long, all-night session. There was a light tap on his office door, and Detective Chief Inspector Manners let himself in without waiting for an invitation. There was a faintly chiding look on his face as he confronted Carney.

‘Didn’t see your name on the night-duty roster, Paul,’ he observed pointedly.

Carney shrugged. ‘Just catching up on some more of this fucking paperwork, when I ought to be out there on the streets. Bringing this week’s little tally up to date.’

Manners clucked his teeth sympathetically. ‘Bad, huh?’

Carney let out a short, bitter laugh. ‘You tell me how bad is bad. In the last four days we’ve snatched five and a half kilos of coke at Heathrow alone. That means a minimum of twenty-five kilos got through. This morning we pulled a stiff off an Air India flight. Two hundred grand’s worth of pure heroin in his guts, packed in condoms. One of ’em burst during the flight. What you might call an instant high.’

‘Jeezus, I thought those things were supposed to stop accidents,’ Manners said.

‘Not funny, Harry,’ Carney muttered. ‘Christ, we’re under fucking siege here. Provincial airports, the ferries, commercial shipping, private boats and planes, bloody amateurs bringing back ten kilos of hash from their Club 18-30 holidays on Corfu. And we haven’t got a fucking clue yet what’s going to come flooding in through the Channel Tunnel. There’s shit coming at us from all sides, Harry – and we’re being buried under it.’

‘We…or you, Paul?’ Manners asked gently.

Carney shrugged. ‘Does it matter? Caring goes with the job.’

Manners conceded the point – with reservations. ‘Caring, maybe. Getting too personally involved, no. You’re getting in too deep, Paul. Maybe it’s time to think about a transfer out of drugs division for a while.’

Carney blew a fuse. ‘Dammit, Harry, I don’t want a bloody transfer. What I want is to get this job done. I want every dealer, every distributor, every small-time school-gate pusher out of business, off the streets, and in the nick.’

‘That isn’t going to happen, and you know it.’

Carney nodded his head resignedly. ‘Yeah. So meanwhile I’m supposed to just tot up the casualties without getting uptight – is that it?’ He paused, calming down a little. ‘I suppose you know we’ve got a batch of contaminated smack out on the streets in the SW area?’

Manners shook his head. ‘No, I didn’t,’ he admitted. ‘How bad is it?’

‘Bad bad,’ Carney muttered. ‘Two kids dead already and one more in a coma on a life-support system. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. We don’t know yet how much more of the stuff is out there, or how widely it’s already been distributed. And on top of that, there’s this new synthetic shit which has started to come in from Europe. Early reports say that it’s really bad medicine.’

Manners smiled sympathetically. ‘OK, Paul, I’ll get you what extra help I can,’ he promised. ‘Meanwhile, you go home and get some sleep, eh?’

Carney grinned cynically. ‘We don’t need help, my friend – we need a bloody army. That’s a fucking war out there on the streets.’

‘Yeah,’ Manners said, and shrugged. There was nothing he could say or do which would make the slightest amount of difference. He turned back towards the door.

‘Oh, by the way,’ Carney called after him. ‘You think I get too personally involved. You want to know why?’

Manners paused, his hand on the door-knob.

‘The kid on the life-support system,’ Carney went on. ‘His name’s Keith. He’s fifteen. His parents live in my street.’

Glynis Jefferson studied the row of sordid-looking tenements through the windscreen of the Porsche with a distinct feeling of unease. This was definitely not Sloane Ranger country. This was ghettoland. Under normal circumstances, she would have jammed the car into gear and driven away as fast as she could. But tonight she was not in control; all normal considerations were driven out of her mind by her desperate craving. She checked the address on the slip of paper, identifying the block in question. Glancing nervously about her, she stepped out of the car and walked up to the front door. Rows of bells and small cards identified the building as divided into numerous bedsitters and flatlets.

The door was slightly ajar. Cautiously, Glynis pushed it open, wrinkling her nose in disgust at the stench of filth and squalor which wafted out. She stepped gingerly over the threshold into a dark, dingy and filthy hallway, littered with junk mail and other debris. For a moment her instincts screamed out at her to turn back, run away. But then the shudders shook her body again, a pain like a twisting knife shrieked through her guts. She walked down the hallway past a row of grimy doors, most with bars or metal grilles over the glazed top half.

She stopped at the fifth one and knocked urgently. There was a long pause before the door opened a few inches and a pair of shifty eyes inspected her through the crack. Obviously they liked what they saw. The door opened fully to reveal Tony Sofrides, grubby and unshaven, with dark, oiled hair hanging down to his shoulders in greasy, matted strands. He was wearing only a soiled T-shirt and a pair of equally filthy underpants. His eyes ran up and down Glynis’s body as though she were a prime carcass hanging in a meat warehouse.

‘Well, you’re a bit out of your patch, aren’t you, princess?’ he drawled, noting her expensive night-club apparel. ‘What’s the matter? Lost our way to the Hunt Ball, have we?’

Glynis thrust the piece of paper under his nose. ‘Nigel M sent me. I need to score.’

Sofrides snatched the paper out of her hand, scanning it with suspicious, furtive eyes. ‘Did he now? Presumptuous little bastard, ain’t he? So what did he tell you?’

‘That you were a reliable supplier. I need Charlie. You holding?’

Sofrides leered at her, revealing a row of yellowed teeth. ‘I’m always holding, baby,’ he boasted. ‘Regular little mister candy-man to those who know how to treat me right.’ He stepped back from the door, inviting her to enter. ‘Come on in, sweetheart.’

Glynis hesitated, despite her urgent craving.

Sofrides shrugged. ‘Look, you wanna score or not? I don’t do business in hallways and I ain’t got time to fart about. Now you either come in or you fuck off. Your choice.’

Glynis made her choice. Reluctantly she stepped into the sordid bedsit, glancing around at the filth and mess in disgust as Sofrides closed the door behind her.

Catching the look on her face, Sofrides glared at her. ‘No, darling, it ain’t your daddy’s country house in Essex, but it’s where I live. So don’t turn your pretty little nose up, OK?’

Glynis rummaged in her handbag and pulled out a thin wad of notes. ‘Look, can we get this over with? I just want a couple of hits to tide me over, but I’ll take more if you want to make a bigger deal.’

Sofrides glanced at the money contemptuously, returning his eyes to her body. ‘Actually, darling, I’m not exactly strapped for cash right now,’ he said. He paused, jerking his head over to the grimy, unmade bed in the corner of the room. ‘But I am a little short on company, if you know what I mean. Wanna deal?’

Glynis shuddered – but this time it was mental revulsion rather than the desperate need of her drug-addicted body. ‘No thanks,’ she spat out, turning towards the door.

Sofrides jumped across the room, cutting off her retreat. ‘Wise up, kid,’ he said, grinning wickedly. ‘It’s four in the morning and I’m your last chance. Do you really think you can hold out for much longer?’ He raised his hand, extending one finger and running it slowly across her lips, down her throat and into the cleavage of her breasts. ‘Now, are we going to play or not?’

3

The sex was quick, violent and sordid. Afterwards Glynis felt dirty all over, and it wasn’t just the accumulated sweat and grime clinging to the grey bedsheets. Thankful that it was over, at least, she dressed hurriedly as Sofrides lay back on his pillow, grinning with post-coital pleasure.

Glynis glared at him, undisguised loathing in her eyes. ‘Right, you’ve been paid in full. Now what about my score?’

Sofrides leered at her. ‘I got bad news for you, princess. Apart from having me tonight, you’re right out of luck. Ain’t a snort of coke in the place.’

It took several seconds for the words to sink into Glynis’s mind. When it finally did, her first reactions were of shock and sheer panic, quickly followed by a wave of pure hatred. ‘You lousy little bastard,’ she screamed. ‘You told me you were holding.’

She hurled herself across the room in a blaze of fury, her arms flailing wildly. Sofrides uncoiled from the bed like a snake, warding off the attack by grasping her by the wrist and twisting her arm savagely. Drawing back his free hand, he smashed her across one side of her face and backhanded her on the other. He pushed her to the floor, where she lay sobbing.

The dealer looked down at her without pity. He crossed slowly to a chest of drawers, opened it and pulled out a flat tobacco tin, which he tossed on to the bed. ‘I got some smack, that’s all. Take it or leave it.’

Glynis crawled to her feet, shaking and in pain both from the violence of his attack and her appalling craving. Uncertainly, she moved towards the bed and opened the tin. She stared dumbly at the loaded hypodermic syringe it contained.

‘Well, come on, darling. I ain’t got all night,’ Sofrides challenged her, seeing her hesitation. He moved up beside her, taking out the syringe and thrusting it into her hand. ‘Shoot up and get out, before I change my mind.’

Glynis stared at the syringe in horrified fascination. Her face was a mixture of desperation, fear and bewilderment. She glanced up at Sofrides, her eyes almost pleading.

His lips curled into a scornful sneer as he identified her problem. ‘You little silver-plated spoon-sniffers. You’ve never shot up before, have you?’

Glynis could only nod.

‘Here, I’ll show you,’ Sofrides said. He clenched his fist, pumping his forearm up and down half a dozen times. He pointed to his slightly throbbing vein. ‘Just there, see? Just stick the needle in and push the plunger. That’s all there is to it.’

Awkwardly, Glynis copied his movements, holding the syringe clumsily in a trembling hand, almost at arm’s length. Fumbling and shaky, she pushed the gleaming point of the needle towards her arm.

Sofrides looked away, letting out a little snort of disgust. ‘Oh Christ! Go in the bloody bathroom and do it, will you?’

Still unsure, Glynis slunk into the poky bathroom and closed the door behind her. Sofrides threw himself back on the bed, propped himself up with a pillow and lit a cigarette. He plumed smoke up at the ceiling, grinning. He felt very pleased with himself.

The cigarette had burned down to a stub before he thought about the girl again. After crushing it out in the ashtray he pushed himself off the bed and strode to the bathroom door, rapping on it with the back of his hand. ‘What the hell are you doing in there?’ he demanded irritably. There was no answer.

He tried the door handle. It was unlocked. Sofrides pushed the door open to find Glynis sitting stiffly on the toilet, her head lolling back against the pipe from the cistern. The empty hypodermic dangled loosely from her fingers at arm’s length. Her face was ghostly white, her eyes wide and staring and her body twitching convulsively and obscenely.

Sofrides looked at her without sympathy. ‘Feel rough, huh? Don’t worry. A couple of minutes and you’ll be high as a kite.’ He reached down to seize her by the elbow, and hauled her roughly to her feet. The empty syringe dropped from her fingers, shattering on the tiled floor.

‘Come on, I want you out of here,’ Sofrides told the girl curtly, as he tried to drag her out of the bathroom.

Glynis took a couple of shuffling steps and stopped, her legs sagging beneath her. She would have collapsed to the floor but for the dealer’s grip on her arm. He pushed her back against the bathroom wall, propping her up. There was the first trace of concern on his face as he noted her wildly rolling eyes, the tremors which rocked her body and the shallowness of her breathing. Even as he watched, Glynis seemed to be torn by a convulsion of pain which caused her body to jackknife and made her clutch at her abdomen with her free hand. She let out one long, shuddering groan and went limp, before sliding down the wall to sit on the floor like a puppet whose strings have just been cut.

‘Oh shit!’ Sofrides spat out in anger – but it was fear that registered on his face. He dropped to his knees, staring into the girl’s wide, but unseeing eyes. They were completely still now, and her body was totally motionless. Panic rising in him, Sofrides snatched up her wrist, feeling for the faintest hint of a pulse. There was nothing.

Sofrides pushed himself to his feet and stood there shaking for a few seconds, his brain racing. He turned towards the telephone, thinking briefly about calling an ambulance but rejecting the idea almost immediately. The girl’s face was already puffy and showing signs of bruising where he had struck her. He remembered the bite marks he had put in the soft flesh of her breasts during their brief sexual encounter. With his criminal record, reporting the girl’s death was tantamount to placing himself on a manslaughter charge at the very least.

He tried to think, as he paced round the small bedsitter several times, trying not to look at the girl’s lifeless form slumped just inside the bathroom door. He crossed to the room’s single window and stared out into the dark and deserted street.

There was only one choice, he realized finally. Somehow, he had to get the girl’s body into his car without being seen. After that it would be easy. London had hundreds of backstreets and alleyways where the body of a drug addict, drunk or vagrant turned up every so often. With nothing to connect the girl to him, she would be just another statistic.

His mind made up, as quietly as he could Sofrides began to drag Glynis’s body towards the door.

Paul Carney tidied up the paperwork on his desk and switched off the Anglepoise lamp. Rising, he crossed to the door and switched off the main light, plunging his office into darkness. Locking the door, he strode across the deserted main office towards the outer reception area.

The desk sergeant looked up at him, grinning, as he walked past. ‘Barbados for our hols this year, is it, Mr Carney? Or a world cruise, with all this overtime you’ve been putting in?’

Carney smiled at the man wearily. ‘Oh yeah, at least,’ he muttered. ‘Goodnight, Sergeant.’

The man nodded. ‘Goodnight, sir.’

Carney walked out into the night air, taking a deep breath before heading for the rear car park. On reaching his Ford Sierra, he climbed in and drove slowly to the main gates. He was exhausted, yet in no hurry to get home. Or at least back to the Islington flat, Carney reminded himself, thinking about it. It had ceased to be a home when Linda had walked out, over six months earlier. She’d even taken the dog.

The roads were almost deserted. Carney cruised past the rows of darkened office buildings for a couple of miles before turning off into the residential back-streets around Canonbury. He passed a small row of shops, some with their windows still lit or showing dim security lights in their rear storage areas.

The grey Volvo took him by surprise, shooting out from a small side road only yards ahead of him. Carney stamped on the brakes instinctively, allowing the car to complete its left turn and accelerate away from him with a squeal of rubber on tarmac.

Crazy bastard, Carney thought, reacting as a fellow road-user. Then the copper in him took over, asking the obvious question. What could be so damned urgent, at four-thirty in the morning? He stamped down on the accelerator, making it his business to find out.

Carney caught up with the Volvo at the next set of traffic lights. He pulled across the vehicle’s front wing and leapt out of his own car. He wrenched the driver’s side door of the Volvo open.

‘All right, you bloody moron. What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’ he growled, before he had even seen who was sitting at the wheel. There was a long, thoughtful pause as he recognized the driver.

‘Well, well, well,’ Carney said slowly. ‘If it isn’t Tony the Greek. And what particular form of nastiness are you up to tonight, you little scumbag?’

Sofrides looked up at him with a fearful expression, cursing the cruel vagaries of fate which had thrown Detective Sergeant Paul Carney across his path this night of all nights. They’d had run-ins before – almost every one of them to his cost.

‘I ain’t done nothing, honest, Mr Carney,’ Sofrides whined, desperately trying to bluff it out.

Carney grinned cynically. ‘You don’t have to do anything, Tony. Just being in the vicinity constitutes major environmental pollution.’ He held the door back, jerking his head. ‘Out.’

Reluctantly, Sofrides climbed out of the car, still protesting his innocence. ‘I’m clean, Mr Carney – honest.’

Carney shook his head. ‘You wouldn’t be clean if you bathed in bleach and gargled with insecticide,’ he grunted. He paused, staring at the young man thoughtfully. There was something wrong, something out of character. Sofrides was not displaying his usual arrogance. He looked frightened, guilty.

‘What’s wrong with you tonight, Tony?’ Carney demanded. ‘Where’s all the usual backchat, the bullshit? You’re scared, Tony – and that makes me very suspicious indeed.’

Increasingly desperate, Sofrides tried to force a smile on to his face. ‘I told you, I ain’t done nothing. I just don’t feel so good, that’s all. Must have been something I ate.’

It wasn’t going to wash. Carney was convinced he was on to something now. He peered at Sofrides’s face more closely.

‘I do have to admit that you don’t look so good,’ he muttered. ‘In fact, Tony, you look as sick as the proverbial parrot.’ He paused momentarily. ‘Know what I think, Tony? I think you’ve just made a collection and I’ve caught you bang to rights. I think you’re carrying a major consignment of naughties, that’s what I think. The question is: what, and where?’

Carney suddenly seized Sofrides by the arm, forcing it up around his back in a savage half nelson. He frogmarched him over to his own car, opened it and pulled a pair of handcuffs out of the glove compartment. Snapping the cuffs around the young man’s wrist, he pushed him back to the Volvo, wound down the window a few inches and clipped the other bracelet to the door-frame.

‘So let’s take a little look-see, shall we,’ he suggested, returning to his own vehicle for just long enough to grab a powerful torch.

The Volvo seemed clean, much to Carney’s disappointment. Sofrides watched him search thoroughly beneath and behind the seats, in the glove compartment and underneath the dashboard.

‘See, I told you I ain’t done nothing. So how about letting me go, Mr Carney?’ Sofrides suggested hopefully.

Carney shook his head. ‘We’ve only just got started, Tony. It’d be a pity to break the party up this early now, wouldn’t it?’ He straightened up from searching the interior of the car. ‘Right, let’s take a little look in the boot.’

A fresh glimmer of panic crossed Sofrides’s eyes. ‘Look, tell you what. Suppose I make you a deal?’ he blurted out.

Carney sounded unimpressed. ‘Oh yes, and what sort of deal would that be, Tony?’

Sofrides snatched at his slim remaining chance eagerly. ‘I know a couple of new crack houses which have just opened up. I can give you names…places…times.’

Carney grinned wickedly at him. ‘But you’ll do that anyway, once I get you nailed,’ he pointed out. ‘You’ll sing your little black heart out just as soon as you see the inside of the slammer. You’ll have to do a bit better than that, Tony.’

Sofrides was really desperate now, clutching at straws. ‘How about if I set someone up for you – someone big?’ he suggested. ‘I’m only a little fish, Mr Carney – you know that.’

Carney paused, tempted. ‘And who might you have in mind?’ he asked.

Sofrides picked a name at random. ‘How about Jack Mottram? He deals in ten Ks at a time.’

Carney sighed wearily. The little bastard was trying to wind him up, he thought. ‘Jack Mottram wouldn’t piss on you if your arse was on fire,’ he said scathingly. ‘Now stop jerking my chain, all right?’ He pulled the key to the handcuffs from his pocket, releasing them from the Volvo door. He grabbed Sofrides by the scruff of the neck, dragging him round to the back of the car and nodding down at the boot.

‘Right, just so we don’t hear any little whinges about planted evidence,’ he muttered. ‘Open it up and we’ll take a little look in Pandora’s box.’