outs. From the birding point of view this was a serious disappointment but Faraday had enjoyed enough early mornings in this bedroom to draw a subtler conclusion. As a prelude to his working day, the clamour of warring scavengers was near-perfect.
The crack between the curtains suggested it was barely dawn. Rolling over, he checked the bedside alarm clock. 06.03. From the nearby living room, came a low murmur from the television. BBC News 24 again, Faraday thought.
Past midnight, with Eadie still working at her office, the news from the Gulf had finally driven him to bed. US and UK forces had been pounding the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr. Oil wells were blazing around Basra and there appeared to be every prospect of a counter-attack deploying Saddam's ample supplies of chemical weapons. By now, God help us, the Americans would be fingering the nuclear button.
Retrieving a towel from the carpet beside the bed, Faraday padded through to the living room. Eadie was kneeling in front of the television, wrapped in Faraday's dressing gown, consulting a clipboard on her lap. Paused on the screen, a single juddering image, was a face Faraday didn't recognise. Definitely not BBC News 24.
'Tea?'
Eadie spun round.
'Shit.' She was grinning. 'Watch this.'
She glanced down at the clipboard, then zapped the video recorder into fast forward. Seconds later, Faraday was watching the same figure dragging himself along a badly lit hall. He disappeared briefly through a door at the end. By the time the camera caught up, he was clawing his way into bed. Eadie froze the image again.
'There.'
'Where?'
Faraday followed her pointing finger as she touched the screen.
'It's an empty syringe,' She said. 'Guy's off the planet.'
Faraday at last recognised the barrel of the syringe hanging from the bloodied forearm and as Eadie pressed the play button again he found himself drawn into what followed. There was a terrifying helplessness in the sight of this young man's battle to capture the duvet on the floor. Time and again, he reached down for it. Time and again, he missed. Finally, he caught one corner, hauled it agonisingly up towards him, then barely half-covered gave up.
'You found your junkie, then?'
'Big time.'
'Pleased?'
'Just a bit.'
'Lucky, eh?' Faraday was watching the eyes slowly close. 'Got there just in time.'
'You're joking.' Eadie busied herself with the zapper again, putting the video into reverse until there was nothing on the screen but a bulging vein and the slow plunge of the needle. Eadie played the sequence twice. Faraday had never seen anything so graphic.
'You were there.'
'Obviously.'
'And this is for real.'
'Too right. Real is what I do.'
He nodded, still riveted to the screen. 'What happens beforehand?'
'I do an interview with him.'
'Good?'
'Better than good. Excellent. The guy was a gift, articulate, strung-out, totally blitzed. Watch this, and no kid in his right mind will go anywhere near drugs. Any drugs. Watch this, and you'd probably give up shandy. Are we whispering result here? Or is it just me?'
'You said you did an interview with him.'
'That's right. Little me.'
'So who was behind the camera?'
'J-J-'
'And the other stuff? Afterwards?'
'Me. J-J wimped out. Couldn't hack it. Major disappointment. Still' her eyes returned to the screen '- I think I did OK. No?'
Faraday didn't answer. Only when he'd filled the kettle and found the milk did he feel confident enough to continue the conversation. Anger would get them nowhere. Facts first.
'We're talking heroin?'
'Obviously.'
'And you know where this stuff came from?'
'Federal Express. Guy knocks on the door, you sign the little form, and, hey, it's candy time.'
'I'm serious.'
'OK.' Eadie was laughing now. 'You don't have to sign the form.'
'You're telling me you were there when it was delivered?'
'Of course. That's why the interview was such a knockout. These people run on tram lines Four hours between fixes is comfortable.
Anything over that, it starts to show. Six, seven hours, you start clucking. This guy?' She nodded towards the screen. 'Clucking fit to bust. The moment that entry phone went off, he was down the stairs.
You really think I'm going to ignore what followed? I couldn't have scripted it better. Give me an actor and a million dollars and you wouldn't get a result like that. People sense reality. They sit up and take notice. That's the whole point.' She stared at him a moment, uncomprehending. 'So what's the problem, Joe? You find all this offensive?'
Faraday shook his head. It was far too early in the morning to feel so weary.
'You want to know the problem? The problem is, I'm a cop.'
'I know that. You're after the bad guys. This guy's not a bad guy, he's a victim. That's the whole point. Give him a stage, let him make his case, show what this stuff really does, and you're going to have fewer victims. Trust me. I've just spent a year rehearsing that little speech. Something else, too.'
'What?'
'I fucking believe it. And so should you.'
Her anger was sauced with disappointment. She'd served up her tastiest morsels, the dish of her wildest dreams, and Faraday had dumped it in the bin. After all this, she seemed to be saying, you've copped out.
Literally.
'Let's start with the legal position,' Faraday said softly.
'Sure.'
'You were involved in supply. You were party to possession. They're both of fences 'Supply? Crap. I kept the lights on, sure, while he dived downstairs but it wasn't me out in the street. That would have happened anyway.
It's how all this stuff works.'
'Possession, then. You had a duty to stop him.'
'Stop him? If I'd strapped the guy down, he'd still have made it into that kitchen. We're talking chemistry, Joe, not rights and wrongs.
That man needed to shoot up. If that wasn't the case I'd still be making videos about Dunkirk fucking veterans. Need is what this movie is about. Need is what those guys out in the street trade on. Need is '
Faraday cut in.
'Guys? Plural?'
'Guys? Guy? Shit, I don't know. Stop playing the cop on me, Joe. I thought you understood. I thought we'd been through some of this together. It's open and shut, my love. It's means and ends. There's a problem out there, a problem like you wouldn't believe, and my little bit of the jigsaw, my responsibility if you like, is to try and put it on tape. That's what I do. That's my contribution. Get this thing right and I just might make a difference. Better that than playing the lawyer.' She paused. 'Any other crime I might have committed?'
'Aiding and abetting.'
