Killing Ground (6 page)

Her night had been unhappiness and confusion. Her day had been exhaustion and distraction.

It seemed God-given, a moment of mercy, when the bell echoed through the low-set prefabricated walls of the classroom. Perhaps the kids of 2B, the kickers and gougers and scribblers and bullies, felt the crisis and were afraid. They waited for her. Every day, at I he end of classes, she swapped jokes and cheerful banter with the ix-year-olds, not that day. She swept up the books and notes on her desk. She was first out through the door. It was her decision to go home, to apologize to her mother and father and to make believe that the tall American with the blond pony-tail of hair had never walked with her in the garden behind the bungalow, never propositioned her, never talked of necessary 'access'. Her decision . . . She stopped beside a rubbish bin outside the classroom, reached deliberately into her bag, took out the letter of invitation and ripped it to small pieces. She dropped the torn scraps of paper, and the envelope into the bag. There was a mass of children around her as she walked towards the lean-to shed where her scooter was left for I he day.

'Charlotte! Are you all right, Charlotte?'

The shrill voice bleated at her back. She turned. The headmistress faced her.

All right? Yes, of course I'm all right, Miss Samway.'

I just wondered . . . Charlotte, there are two men to see you. They're at the gate.'

She looked over the running and shouting and charging horde of children going from the playground to the gate that led to the street. She looked between the heads and shoulders of the young mothers with cigarettes at their lips, gum in their mouths, babies on their arms, bulging stomachs in tight jeans, who yapped about the night's TV. So much anger, fuelled by the tiredness. She saw two men leaning against an old Sierra car, not the last model but the model before that, and the door which took the weight of their buttocks was a recent addition and not yet sprayed to match the rest of the bodywork, that was scraped and rust-flecked. They were not like anyone she knew.

They wore old denims and T-shirts and one had a leather jacket over his shoulders and one wore a dirtied anorak. The hair of both men was cut short, and the one who was more slightly built had a silver ring piercing his right nostril, and the heavier one waved to her, and she could see the tattoo between the wrist and knuckle of his hand.

'I don't know if they're friends of yours, Charlotte, but I don't want people like that hanging round my school.'

She went to them. She stood her full height. The headmistress behind her would be watching, and others on the staff, and the mothers would be watching. Little Miss Parsons, stuck-up Miss Parsons, entertaining two low-life types who waited on the street for her. Something to talk about in the common room, and as they pushed the prams and led the kids back to the bloody little homes where the telly would blast all through the evening, and reading would involve the figures on scratch cards, and . . .

God, she was just so bloody tired.

'Yes? You wanted to see me. I am Charlotte Parsons.'

The one with the ring in his right nostril seemed to flick his fist open and in the palm of his hand was a police warrant card, and he said his name was Brent and muttered about 'Task Force', and the one with the tattoo showed his card and said his name was Ken and the quiet words were 'Drug Squad'.

A frail voice. 'What do you want?'

Brent said, 'It's what you want, Miss Parsons. We were told you were looking for the grand tour.'

Ken said, 'We were told you needed a run round our patch, so you'd understand better the end of the importation road, that your particular interest was skag and rock.'

Brent said, 'But, Ken, we shouldn't go too fast for Miss Parsons, 'cos a nice girl like her wouldn't know that skag is heroin, now would she?'

Ken said, 'Too right, Brent, and she wouldn't know that rock is crack cocaine. If you'd like to get in the back, Miss Parsons . . . Oh, don't go worrying, we squared it with the caretaker that he'll look after your scooter.'

'Who sent you?'

Brent said, 'Our inspector sent us.'

Ken said, 'The American gentleman . . .'

She shook. The trembling was in her arms, her fingers. The heaviness was in her legs, her feet. 'And if I say that it's bugger-all to do with me?'

Brent said, 'We were told that you might bluster a bit at first. ..'

Ken said, '. . . but after the bluster you'd be good as gold. Miss I'arsons, I've been on Drug Squad a bit over four years. Brent's been on Task Force, drug-importation team, for six years. All we get near is the creatures at the bottom of the pyramid. What we were told, sort of vague, you've the chance to hurt them right at the sharp end, nothing specific, but hurt the top of the pyramid. Now, if the bluster time's over, could you get in, please?'

She did as she was told. She was good as gold, as Axel Moen had said she would be.

She took the big step, and ducked down into the back of the old Sierra. Bloody man .. .

The car was a fraud, dapped out exterior but a high-performance tuned engine. Brent drove, and Ken was twisted round in the front seat so that he could la Ik to her. She thought she was tired, but as the car hammered on the lanes and then the fast road, she came to know the crow's-feet lines and the sack bulges at Ken's eyes. Something of a joke at first, about the tattoo only being a transfer that he could wash off each night, about a limit to the cause of duty, but old Brent had gone the whole hog and had his nostril pierced for the goddam job. They were not in the style of any policemen that she had met before. She l bought a part of the smell came from the discarded polystyrene last-food plates that were dumped on the floor in the back, under her feet, and the rest of the smell came from the clothes they wore. They smoked hard, and didn't ask whether she minded them smoking. Ken said they weren't interested in cannabis, nor in solvents, nor in amphetamines, nor in the benzodiazepines like Temazepam and the barbiturates like sodium amytal. They worked the world of heroin that was skag, horse, smack, stuff, junk, and the world of crack cocaine that was rock, wash. She listened . . .

They came into the city of Plymouth, where Charley went for best shopping, for a dress for a friend's wedding, for Christmas presents and birthday gifts for her mother and father, and they talked her through the street cost of skag and rock. She listened . ..

They turned out of the city centre and went north, climbing the long drag into the big housing estate. The name of the estate was familiar, from the local television, but she had never been there. Nothing urgent in the information they gave her, no passion, but the figures were beyond her comprehension. A worldwide trade in narcotics with a profit margin of 100 billion American dollars. Seizures and disruption of trafficking into UK the last year of £1.45 billion, and what was seized and disrupted, on a good day, was one in five shipments and, on a bad day, was one in ten.

Ken said, 'But they're the super-glory figures, we don't operate at that level. We work down here in the gutter, where the skag and the rock ends up. Down here a kilo of heroin, skag, goes for thirty grand, street price. Crack cocaine, rock, means £7,500

sterling, cheaper because of saturation. Out there in the big world they're talking thousands of kilos, tonnes - we're little people, we're talking kilos and grammes.' She listened . . .

Brent said, 'You being a teacher, Miss Parsons, you'd be good at arithmetic. Ten grammes doesn't give a big long high, ten minutes' worth for an habitual, but it costs, my sums, seventy-five quid, and it's addictive, so you get to need a lot of grammes, and that means you need a lot of cash, and you steal, fight, burgle, maybe kill, for the cash.'

She saw tower blocks of homes, and terraces of homes, and she saw the children, like the ones that she taught, running in dog packs. She thought she saw a poverty and a despair . . . She saw an old man hurrying, limping, heavy on a stick, and his face was frightened and she wondered whether he had £75 sterling in his wallet. She saw an old woman scuttling with a shopping bag towards the dark entrance of a tower block, and she wondered whether the old woman had £75 sterling in her purse, or in the tin under her bed, or folded into her pension book and hidden, and she wondered how many old men and old women needed to be robbed to make a crack cocaine high that lasted ten minutes. She felt sick.

The light was going. Where the street lights were broken, where the shadows clung, she saw ghost figures gathered. Brent cruised the car. Ken said, 'See over there, Miss Parsons? See the tall kid? Most days he's there, he'll do about a hundred grammes a week in rocks.' Brent said, 'He can do you skag as well, maybe some ecstasy. He's not special. He's one in a hundred, going on more. It's got hold of the place. Lift him, there's another ninety-nine.' She saw the boy. He wore good Reeboks and Nike leisure wear and the cap on his head was the wrong way round. The contact she saw was short and sweet. Hands moved, money given over by the customer, goods given over to the customer. Brent said, 'We're not even holding the line. The price is going down. It goes down when we're awash with it. The job of our young friend is to keep moving the rocks, getting new customers, creating demand. He's good in his market place.' She listened . . .

Brent said, 'I hope you're getting the picture, Miss Parsons. But I wouldn't want you to get the impression that this is C2 or C3 trade only. We could run you down to Plymstock or Roborough, up to Southway and round Goosewell. We can show you it anywhere.'

'I want to go home, please.'

Ken said, 'No can do, sorry. The American gentleman said you should have the grand tour.'

The unmarked police car slipped out of the estate. Charley looked i last time for the old people hurrying with their wallets and purses and their fear, for the kid with his Reebok shoes and Nike leisure suit, for the customers.

'Hi, Dwight, how was the vacation by the sea? How'd it go?'

I'd rate him as cold shit.'

His coat was flipped onto the hook of the stand, alongside the i oat of the Country Chief.

You'd better come in, you'd better talk.'

He look a plastic cup and filled it with water from the dispenser. He walked across the deserted outer office and through the open

door and into the Country Chief's office. It was a lowering, dark evening outside, and there was rain in the heavy cloud that settled over the square. He was waved to a seat.

Dwight Smythe shrugged. 'I reckon, Ray, I can cope with most sort of men. I failed with that bastard. Is he some sort of zealot? I thought Quantico was supposed to weed that sort. Right, he's rude, I can live with that. Right, he's aggressive, I can handle it.

Where we part company, he elbows into a small and unsuspecting life, a young woman's life, and puts together a web to trap her, and does it cold. Me, I'm surplus to requirements, the chauffeur that's no longer needed.'

'Did you read his file?'

'No.'

'Do you know about him?'

'Not before I picked him up yesterday.'

'Happy to make a judgement?'

'My assessment of him, yes, I feel comfortable with it.'

'My opinion, Dwight, you're a lucky guy.'

'How come, Ray, I'm a lucky guy?'

'A lucky guy, Dwight, because you have personnel and accounts and running this station to keep busy with.' The eyes needled on Dwight Smythe. 'You have fuck-all of nothing to worry about.'

'That is not fair.'

'And true as hell. You, Dwight, are promotion material. You keep the leave charts regular, you keep wiping your ass, you keep the budget and expenses in blue, you keep your butt clean, you keep us all in surplus paper-clips, and you don't have to worry because that is promotion material. It's the road, Dwight, to the big office back home and the pile carpet, but it's not that joker's road.'

'That is not fair, Ray, because without administration—'

'I have heard it before, I have practised it. You are talking with the converted. When did you last carry a sidearm?'

'The way to fight organized crime is through the intellectual deployment of resources, not—'

'I've made that speech, Dwight. You think if I'd preached on body confrontation, nose-to-nose, I'd have climbed the goddam ladder? Grow up.'

'I didn't expect to hear you, Ray, give out that sort of crap.'

'Your consolation, what should make you feel good, the likes of Axel Moen don't get to climb the goddam ladder. The ladder's for you and for me. It's you and me that like to collect the plaques for the wall, the photographs of the Director's handshake, the commendations and the bullshit.'

'Sorry, I spoke.' Dwight Smythe pushed himself up, drank the last of the water. He looked around him. The plaques recorded successful operations, the photographs witnessed the warmth of the Director meeting with a coming man, the commendations were polished print engraved on bronze. 'And I don't recognize bullshit, Ray.'

'You taking Melanie out tonight, something to eat?'

'Yes, why?'

'My advice, meant kind, call her, tell her to hold an hour so you can get your face into the computer, take a look at Axel Moen's file.'

'For what?'

'Did he tell you his target?'

'He did not.'

'Read his file so you get to know what sort of man gets put up .against a way big target.'

'Maybe in the morning . . .'

'Tonight, Dwight, read it.'

It was an instruction. They prided themselves, the Country Chief and the four special agents and the clerical staff working on the fifth floor of the embassy, that they were a close team, that harsh words were rare, instructions came rarer. He walked out of the office. He went to his desk. He called Melanie and he told her he wwas held up and put her back an hour and asked her to call the curry house on the Edgware Road to hold the reservation for an hour. He checked with the file that was kept locked in the drawer of his desk for the entry code and the password key. He went into the NADDIS computer for the file on the man he called cold shit.

'We've just got the one at the moment. There was another one last month but it died.