the leather hat rolled off the briefcase.
‘Please! Please!’ The ACC jumped to his feet. ‘Mr Watts, you will be given every opportunity to respond, in due course. If you will only let Mr Priest finish.’
‘I demand to know what evidence he acted upon!’ Watts insisted.
‘Right. Right. Mr Priest, could you answer that specific point before you continue?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Evidence about the movements of drugs is obtained at great danger to the officers and others concerned, and I cannot risk lives or prejudice enquiries by giving that information.’
‘Just as I thought!’ Watts insisted. ‘There is no information. This attack on my son and his young family, which took place early in the morning when they were all in bed, was nothing more than blatant racial harassment by a police force where racism is…’
‘Mr Watts!’ Partridge shouted, shutting him up. ‘These outbursts will get us nowhere. Let Mr Priest continue.’
‘Ask him if he had a warrant,’ Watts demanded.
‘Well, Priest?’
‘We didn’t need a warrant. We knew we couldn’t obtain access to the house until it would have been too late, so we didn’t try.’
Partridge shook his head. ‘If you didn’t have a warrant, why did you go there?’ he asked.
Watts jumped in first. ‘To inflict more suffering on my son and to terrorise his family — that is why they went, so early in the morning,’ he claimed.
I said, ‘We regret that any children were involved, but the total responsibility for any stress imposed on them must lie with Michael Angelo Watts and his lifestyle.’
‘What do you mean, his lifestyle?’ Watts demanded.
‘The lifestyle of a drugs dealer,’ I replied.
‘Where is your evidence?’ he shrieked, saliva spotting the desk like the first flurry of a snowstorm. I eased away from him.
‘Yes, Priest,’ Partridge said. ‘These are very serious allegations you’re making. I hope you’ve some evidence to back them up.’
I pulled the envelope from under the carrier. ‘It’s all here, sir. If I may…?’
Watts wiped his mouth and retrieved his hat. The ACC lounged back in his big chair, rotating a silver propelling pencil in his fingers. It looked as if the stage was all mine.
I said, ‘It is well established that pushers and dealers flush drugs down the toilet when they think they are in danger of being discovered. So we lift the cover of the manhole outside and try to catch whatever comes through the drains. The next step in the game is that they cover the manhole with concrete and reinforce the fall-pipe so we can’t break into it. Our progress is further impeded by iron grilles over the windows and steel barred gates outside the doors. The house at Sylvan Fields belonging to Michael Angelo Watts has all these modifications.’
‘Because of the crime rate in the area!’ Watts told us. ‘Why do you not address that problem, instead of harassing honest citizens? Tell me that.’
I ignored him. ‘I decided to make a mock raid on the house, acting on information that heroin from the Continent was being distributed from there.’ Watts waved his arms, but stayed silent. ‘We posted a team from the Wetherton laboratory at the next drain down the circuit, with other people at all the stench pipes coming from the block of houses where the Wattses live, and the next block of houses down the line. When we knocked on his door there was a flurry of action inside, accompanied by much flushing of the toilets both there and next door, where you live, Mr Watts.’
‘This is ridiculous,’ he said. ‘Fanciful nonsense. It is obvious to me, Mr Partridge, that by listening to this you are as prejudiced as he is. This is a waste of my time.’ He jammed the hat firmly on his head and rose to his feet.
‘Sit down, Mr Watts!’ Partridge insisted. ‘This meeting was called at your request. Please have the courtesy to hear us out.’ He inclined his head towards me, the signal to continue.
I pulled the report from the envelope, and studied it for a few seconds. ‘In a nutshell,’ I told them, ‘somewhere between one hundred and one hundred and fifty litres of water came from the two houses. None came from the other four drains that fed into that manhole. Samples were taken and checked for specific gravity, and then the water was boiled off and the residue analysed. The laboratory have given us low and high estimates which indicate that between six and twenty kilograms of substance were in solution in the water that came from the Wattses’ households. That substance, gentlemen, was fifty per cent pure heroin. Working on the lowest figures, it would have a street value of approximately a quarter of a million pounds,’
‘Lies, lies, lies!’ Watts shouted at me. ‘All lies. If any drugs were found it is because they were planted, by you.’ He reinforced his words by stabbing a finger at me. ‘Twice before my son has been falsely incriminated. Now he is not allowed to sleep in the safety of his own home without being persecuted by you. This is not over yet, Mr Partridge. I will take this up with my MP.’ He jammed the hat on his head again and grabbed the briefcase. His parting shot was, ‘This whole sad story has been motivated by jealousy and racism, purely and simply, but I will stamp it out. Believe me, I will.’
Before he reached the door I said, ‘I understand you have a shop in Lockwood Road, Mr Watts.’
He turned and took a pace back towards me.
‘Yes, I have. Are you now about to tell me that I am charged with peddling drugs from there, too?’
I pulled the T-shirt from the carrier and held it up for Partridge to see. ‘Make my day, kill a pig,’ I read from it. ‘A young friend of mine bought this, earlier today. A black friend, from your shop. Printed on your machines, no doubt. He’s as disgusted with it as I am.’ I hurled the T-shirt at him. ‘Take it back where it came from, Mr Watts, and never dare accuse me or my men of racial prejudice again.’ It draped itself across his shoulder, then fell slowly to the floor.
He yanked the door open. ‘You will be hearing from the Council for Civil Liberties about this!’ he shrieked at me.
‘And you will be hearing from the Crown Prosecution Service!’ I shouted after him.
Partridge had his head in his hands. As silence fell in his office he removed them and peered at me.
‘He’s gone,’ I confirmed.
He let out a long sigh. ‘You’d, er, better leave me a copy of that report,’ he said.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And, er, before you embark on anything like this again, er, have a word with someone, eh?’
‘We took at least six kilograms of heroin out of circulation, sir. Probably a lot more. At a conservative estimate it cost them a hundred thousand pounds, so they’ll be hurting. It’s called pro-active policing, sir.’ The ACC is big on proactive policing. He wrote a paper on it. He’s written papers on most things.
‘Quite,’ he said.
I sat there, feeling awkward, wondering if that was it, and I was dismissed from his presence. He didn’t exactly smile, but the frown slowly slipped from his face, like the shadow of a cloud passing from shrubbery.
‘I, er, might have a little job for you,’ he said, and nodded slowly and repeatedly, as if congratulating himself on finding just the sucker he’d been looking for.
‘Oh,’ I said.
‘Ye-es.’ He opened a drawer and pulled a big envelope from it. ‘In fact, you’re just the man. Next Friday — week tomorrow — I’m supposed to be delivering a lecture at Bramshill to a bunch of…a party of overseas officers. Unfortunately I can’t make it. I rang them and they said, “That’s OK. Just send someone else.” It’ll be a nice day out for you. You can have my first class rail warrant, too. How about it, eh, Charlie?’
Suddenly it was Charlie again. I thought about offering to wash his car every week for two years, but he didn’t look in the mood for bartering. I said, ‘Fine, sir. What’s the lecture about?’
‘Ethics. Here you are.’ He passed the envelope over.
‘Ethics?’
‘Yes. What do you know about them?’
‘They beat Yorkshire by ten wickets, didn’t they?’
I was still a policeman when I left his office, which was a surprise. I popped my head round a few doors, looking for Sergeant Kim Limbert, only to be confronted by shiny faces that I’d never seen before. She wasn’t in, so I missed out on a coffee and sympathy. I walked out of the building with my car keys in my hand, then realised I
