and drove to the General Hospital. She was propped up on her pillows. Apart from the dark shadows beneath her eyes, her face was as white as the bed linen. The ward was buzzing with visitors, but none were by her bed. She watched me approach.
'Hello,' I said. 'Remember me?'
She gave a little nod, but seemed unsure.
'I'm the policeman you duffed up in the New Mall a few months ago,' I explained. She stared blankly at me. There was a cage over her legs, holding the blankets off them.
'I, er, brought you a couple of magazines.' I put Just Seventeen andElle on her cabinet. 'The man in the news agent said they were suitable. I got some funny looks, reading them on the bus. Do you mind if I sit down?'
I pulled the chair alongside the bed. 'I haven't come to ask you any questions, Julie. I know your mam and dad can't make it at night, and I don't do much on a Saturday, so I thought I'd come to see you. It was either you or the telly, so here I am.'
She didn't say anything.
'Is it hurting?' I asked. She nodded. 'Do you want me to ask the nurse to give you something?'
She shook her head. 'No thank you,' said a little voice.
'Do any of your school chums come to see you?' Another headshake. I wasn't wording these questions very well.
'They don't!' I exclaimed. 'Why do you think that is?'
She shrugged her shoulders. 'I don't know,' she whispered. 'I think they don't know what to say to me.'
'Well, you've got a point. I'm not sure what to say to you myself.
Mind you, I've no kids of my own. The only time I speak to teenagers is to say 'Don't do that' or 'Put that back' or 'Bugger off or I'll nick you'.'
She gave a hint of a smile. I delved my hand into my jacket pocket and pulled out the little teddy bear. 'Oh,' I said, 'I nearly forgot. He said he was missing you, so I brought him along.'
She reached out and took him from me. This time the smile reached a little further. He was the scruffiest of all her teddies, so I guessed she'd had him the longest, loved him the most.
'I wondered about bringing you some chocolates,' I told her, 'but they didn't have any for under fifty pence, so I decided you were probably on a diet and wouldn't have appreciated them anyway; so I didn't buy you any.' I took a deep breath. 'That's my excuse.'
She looked downcast. 'There's no point, is there?' she mumbled.
'No point in what?' I asked.
'Being on a diet.'
'No, not for someone as skinny as you, but I thought you girls were always on diets.'
Her eyes flickered towards the cage over her legs. 'Nobody will want me now,' she said, her eyes filling with tears.
'Of course they will. There's someone waiting for all of us, somewhere. It's taking me a long time to find mine, but that's another story.'
'Not when you've only one leg.'
'Rubbish,' I told her. 'Did you ever hear of Douglas Bader?'
She sniffed and shook her head.
'Well, when I was a kid Douglas Bader was a big hero. He lost both his legs in a plane crash. Below the knee, like you. Both of them. He learned to fly again and shot down umpteen German aeroplanes in the Second World War. He played golf, learned to ballroom dance and married Muriel Pavlow. I was upset about that — I was in love with her myself. And he refused to walk with a stick. If he could do it, anyone can.'
She didn't look very impressed.
'Mind you,' I added, 'nobody liked him he was a complete arse hole of a bloke.'
She tried to laugh between the sobs. I think I cheered her up. I asked her if I could call again, and she said I could. Better still, I offered to send along some of the handsome young bobbies I worked with.
She blushed at that prospect.
I should have eaten, but I had no appetite. I rang Gilbert to give him moral support. A chief superintendent from Huddersfield was investigating the death of the youngster on the bike. There was plenty of evidence that our car was well back, not involved in a Hollywood-style chase, and the chopper hac videoed the whole incident, but no doubt we would be criticised from the usual quarters. I felt I needed a drink, so I poured myself a generous Glenfiddich. I don't like whisky, so it couldn't really be called succumbing to temptation.
Then I fell asleep in front of the television. TV does that to me I don't even have to switch it on.
Next morning my mouth felt like the inside of a dead marsupial's pouch.
I ate my favourite breakfast of double cornflakes, with six sugars and the top off the milk, with tinned grapefruit for pudding, and drove to the news agent for a couple of the Sunday heavies. Two hours later, as I was trying to decide which set of patio furniture to send for, Mike Freer rang.
'Hi, Sheepdip. Didn't think you'd be up yet,' he said.
'Then why did you ring?' I replied.
'Too much bed is bad for you. Did you know that Fangio said he was scared to go to bed, because most people died there?'
'He must have had a big bed. Did you ring for a reason, or are you just determined to keep me from pruning my herbaceous shrubs?'
'No, or to put it another way, yes. Talking about herbaceous shrubs, has it been a good year for your Gloxinias?'
'I don't know. You'd better ask our Gloxinia.'
'Ah, yes; wonderful girl. I tried to ring you yesterday, but you were up to the goo lies in it, from what I gathered. What happened?'
It sounded as if we were talking business now, so I related the story of the chase and its consequences to him. When I'd finished he said:
'It sounds as if Crabb has been growing desperate over the last few days. I'm not surprised. We got the analysis of that wrap you brought in, and it's not a pretty picture. That's what I rang to tell you about.' i, i 'Go on.'
'Well, for a start, it was about ten percent heroin.'
'That doesn't sound much.'
'It's not. Thirty or forty percent is the norm. Which means that your average everyday addict has to inject three times as much for a decent high.'
'Which is bad news for them.'
'It is. For a start, if they ever buy some of the good stuff they could accidentally overdose. Meanwhile, they're pumping vast doses of the contaminants into their bloodstream, which is even more worrying.'
'I see. Tell me what was in it.'
'Well, the main constituent is milk powder. Not too dangerous in itself. Dilute milk won't carry a lot of oxygen around your body, but it won't poison you. Then there was flour the stuff you make bread with; and, lastly, plaster of Paris.'
'Plaster of Paris!' I exclaimed.
'Yep, or something similar, such as Polyfilla.'
'But that could harden, couldn't it?'
'It tends to settle out. Actually the flour is just as bad. They both cause blockages.'
'Jesus. What's happening? Are the pushers growing too greedy?' I asked.
'Not sure. Maybe not. It could be that demand is so high that a few occasional users have decided it's a good way to make a quick buck, by cutting their own supplies with any white powder they can find under the kitchen sink and selling it on. Kids flogging it in the playground to finance their own habit, that sort of thing. It's called enterprise.'
'Market forces.'
'Exactly.'
I thought about what he'd told me and remembered the conversation I'd had with Billy Morrison of the Fraud Squad. I asked: 'Mike, what's the chances of hitting Cakebread with the Drug Trafficking Act?'
