I thought about it for ten seconds before making my pronouncement:
'Mariana,' I said.
Chapter Six
Nobody told me I was sacked, so I carried on as normal. We had a murder during the night and I was called from my bed. That's fairly normal. Neighbours had heard a couple having a violent fight and the husband had stormed off in his car. Definitely normal. Four hours later, when the eighth playing of Barry Manilow's Greatest Hits was still keeping them awake, the neighbours called the police. Playing Barry Manilow's Greatest Hits eight times on the trot is definitely abnormal behaviour our boys were there in minutes. They pulled the plug on the CD player, then looked for the wife.
He'd made a good job of her. In the kitchen there was a rack with enough chefs knives on it to equip the Catering Corps. I'd seen them advertised in the colour supplements. He'd found a novel use for the cleaver on the end. I drew on my years of police training and told Command and Control to find the husband's car. A bright constable recognised the number as being involved in an accident he had attended at the beginning of his shift. Our man had gone off the road two miles from home, and was now in the General, waiting to have his broken thigh placed in traction.
'He's all yours,' I told DS Willis, 'and if he won't confess, swing on his wires. But make sure his solicitor is looking the other way.'
There was no point in going home, so I hung around the station until the canteen opened. I was snoozing in the office when I received a call from a probation officer called Gav Smith. Could he come round to see me sometime?
'Come round now and I'll treat you to a bacon sandwich,' I said. My stomach hadn't seen food for twelve hours and was considering suing my mouth for desertion. The popular conception is that we catch criminals and the Probation Service try to get them off. It sometimes seems that way to me, too, but they have an important and difficult job to do.
Well, they say they have. I'd met Gavin professionally plenty of times, mainly at various committee meetings, but never socially. I was intrigued to know what he wanted: probation officers have a befriending role with their clients, and no doubt learn lots of stuff we'd find useful.
I met him at the desk and took him to the canteen. 'Two bacon sandwiches, please, one with all the fat cut off and cooked till it frizzles, in a toasted bun; the other as it comes. And two teas: one weak, no milk and three sugars; the other as it comes.'
I joined him at the table. 'What's it all about, Gavin?' I asked. I refused to join the Gav conspiracy.
'I had a client die of a heroin OD at the weekend. There's aspects of the case that I think the police ought to know.'
'Go on.'
'He was a pleasant lad, only seventeen. Brighter than most of our customers; very bright, in fact. He was in trouble for stealing to pay for his habit. An older man, about thirty, had made friends with him and took him to parties and discos. He introduced him to Ecstacy, said he could pay for it later. Jason got hooked on it. We think it must have been laced with something else; you don't get hooked on E like he was. Then they started chasing the dragon; it still seemed like good fun. Next he was having to inject, but by now he owed several hundred pounds to the pusher. He was caught robbing an old lady who had just collected her pension. In his right mind he wouldn't have dreamed of doing anything like that. That's when we got him. I tried to persuade him to grass on the pusher, but he wouldn't. Then during one of our talks, he let a name slip. Parker, that's all. He begged me to keep it to myself, and I had to, to maintain my credibility. I was working on ways of letting you know, but on Sunday he died. Massive overdose of uncut heroin. Somebody's poisoning our kids, Charlie. The streets are flooded with the stuff.'
The sandwiches arrived; they were both As They Come. Gavin was visibly distressed, but he wolfed his sandwich down; he seemed hungrier than I was. I thought about what he had told me.
'Parker, just Parker?'
'Afraid so. Doesn't narrow it down much, does it?'
'That's okay, it's a starting point.' Providing it's not just his pen name. I wrestled with my sandwich and sipped my tea.
'A couple of weeks ago we caught three youths trying to rob the owner of a Chinese restaurant,' I told him. 'They were all first-offenders and they all had syringe marks on their arms. They're doing cold turkey on remand now. Last week we caught three schoolgirls stealing handbags. When their rooms were searched no drugs were found, but they had all the paraphernalia associated with the scene: posters, weird records, that sort of stuff. Plus their parents and teachers were alarmed at the deterioration in the girls' behaviour recently. You're right, we're just seeing the tip of the iceberg.'
The other reason for talking in the canteen was to escape the constant interruptions of the telephone. It didn't work. 'It's for you, Mr.
Priest,' the manageress called out. I went behind the counter to take it.
'Is that Inspector Priest?' asked the voice, flatly. Male, northern accent, unemotional.
'Yes, who's that, please?'
'Never mind. I've some information for you, and for you only. Meet me at the Coiners Arms, tonight, seven o' clock.' And he was gone. Today was turning into Let's Tell Charlie Day.
'I'll have to go, Gavin. Thanks for the information, I'll let you know if we make anything of it.'
'I just hope you can catch whoever's pushing this stuff,' he answered.
'Do you think they'll let me have another bacon sandwich?'
I granted him the Freedom of the Canteen and went up to the office.
Mike Freer is an old boozing pal from the days before I found out that a crutch made out of liquid is about as useful as a blancmange stepladder. He's also an inspector on the city Drug Squad. His office told me he wasn't in, but they'd get him to ring me as soon as possible, night or day.
DS Willis obtained a confession from the husband, and statements from acquaintances and the neighbours. Our man had been thumping his wife for years, usually when he came home from the pub heavily under the influence. Last night one of his drinking companions had let it slip that the wife was having an affair with a work mate He'd drowned his sorrows, then taken his vengeance. On the wife, of course. That type has a strong opinion of where blame lies.
'Did you have to twang his wires?' I asked.
'No,' Tony answered, 'I just hung my jacket on the weights.'
'What about his solicitor?'
'No, just my jacket.'
I'd obtained copies of the depositions for the three youths we'd called the Mountain Bike Gang. These are the statements that are presented to court. I read the names out loud, then asked: 'Which of them would you say was the best-looking?'
'Lee Ziolkowski,' Sparky replied. 'He's the fair-haired one, a bonny lad. I've always wanted fair hair.' He looked wistful. 'Or dark hair. Any sort of friggin' hair, actually.'
I set to work on Lee's depositions with white paper and scissors and gum. Then, after a visit to the photocopier, I placed the results of my handiwork in the typewriter and let my imagination plummet.
Sometimes I can be so mean I frighten myself.
The Coiners is one of the oldest pubs in the area. There's never been much mining for minerals in the southern Pennines; all the lead and stuff was to the north. But there's supposed to be plenty of gold waiting to be found. The pub gets its name from a neat little scam that was carried out in these hills at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
The Industrial Revolution was giving local businessmen more money than they knew what to do with, but, true to form, they were ever on the lookout for opportunities to increase that wealth. Legally or illegally.
A gang living in the hills developed an ingenious technique for putting a gold sovereign in a mould and then
