Buried

realised it would be, you know… God Squad.’

Neil Warren finished stirring the last of the three teas and lobbed the spoon into the sink. ‘It isn’t… necessarily,’ he said. ‘I am, though.’ He handed Heeney his tea.

‘Right,’ Heeney said.

‘Most people need to find something that’s more important to them than the drugs or the drink, you know? Something that isn’t going to fuck their lives up in quite the same way. Then they make a choice.’

‘Right,’ Heeney said again.

‘For me, it came down to God or cocaine.’

He handed Holland a mug, and Holland took it with a smile, enjoying Heeney’s discomfort just as much as Warren clearly was.

Nightingale Lodge was a privately run halfway house, owned by an organisation called Pledge. It was a large, double-fronted Victorian place on Battersea Rise, where up to six recovering addicts at a time – those who’d completed eight weeks of rehab but were deemed to be ‘still at risk’ – could readjust to a drug-free way of life while waiting for permanent accommodation. Though Pledge was a registered charity, the residents of Nightingale Lodge paid a decent enough whack to live there, and it seemed likely that someone was making a profit. Neil Warren was one of two full-time counsellors and admitted to being a little unclear as to exactly who was paying his wages. He did know that they were a damn sight higher than those he’d been paid back when he’d worked for the London Borough of Bromley, several years before.

‘Getting people off drugs is a boom industry,’ he’d said when Holland had spoken to him on the phone first thing. ‘There’s no shortage of customers.’ The voice was high and light, with a trace of a northern accent. Holland had imagined six foot something of emaciated hippy, in denim, with a ponytail.

Warren was in his late thirties, short and stocky, with dark hair shaved close to the skull. He wore a plain grey sweatshirt over khaki combats and Timberlands. He looked like he could handle himself.

‘Might as well call this an official fag break,’ Warren said. He produced a tobacco tin from his back pocket, took out a lighter and one of several prepared roll-ups. He offered the tin to Heeney, who declined but gratefully took it as a cue to reach for his own pack of Benson & Hedges. Holland shook his head.

‘You talk about cocaine or whatever,’ Heeney said, stuffing the cigarette between his lips. ‘I can’t even give these up.’

Warren lit up. ‘Harder to quit than heroin,’ he said.

‘Cheaper, though.’

‘Not by much…’

‘That’s the bloody truth.’

Holland looked at Heeney, leaning back against the worktop, with his fag and his mug of tea, like he was at home talking bollocks to his wife. It wasn’t often Holland yearned to be working with someone like Andy Stone, but it would have been a joy by comparison. Perhaps it was the Brummie accent. It had seemed as good a reason as any to take against his newest partner almost immediately, and first impressions had proved horribly accurate. They’d quickly settled into a pattern that saw Holland doing most of the work while Heeney stood around, made facile comments, and tried to pick his nose while no one was looking.

‘We’ll talk in here,’ Warren said. ‘Some of the residents are having an unsupervised therapy session in the living room.’ Heeney sniffed, and Warren saw it for the expression of disdain that it was. ‘Therapy doesn’t always mean “wanky”.’ The edge in his voice was clear. ‘It’s bloody hard work in here. They have to pull their weight and follow the regime, and if they don’t, they’re out. As it happens, I’m the nice cop. The other counsellor makes anyone who fucks up spend the day with a toilet seat round their neck.’

‘How does that work?’ Holland asked. ‘You share duties with the other counsellor?’

‘It’s one on, one off.’

‘Meaning?’

Warren slid the ashtray to within Heeney’s reach. ‘One of us is always here overnight and we each do a week at a time. I’m on days at the minute, so I get to sleep in my own bed.’

Holland looked at the Post-its stuck to the fridge door, the printed rota that had been laminated and pinned to one of the cupboards. ‘It’s how I imagine students live,’ he said. ‘Notes telling their flatmates to do the washing up and to keep their hands off the new pot of yoghurt. Like The Young Ones or something…’

‘It’s quite a lot like that,’ Warren said, ‘only with more violence and a lot less shagging.’

Heeney suddenly looked rather more interested. ‘Why’s that then?’

‘It’s single sex, for a start; not that that makes a lot of difference, of course. But residents are not really allowed to have any sort of relationship while they’re here. Dependency isn’t something we try to encourage, you see?’

‘How long are they here for?’ Heeney asked.

‘Anything up to eighteen months.’

‘Bloody hell.’

‘Depends if they stick it, if a council flat becomes available, whatever.’

‘I bet there’s a lot of porn knocking about…’

Warren smiled as he took a long drag, but it was at the policeman, rather than with him.

Through the kitchen window Holland could see a long, narrow garden. There was a shed at the far end, a table and chairs. The grass badly needed cutting, and when a large magpie dropped, screeching into it from a fence-post, the bird all but disappeared from view.

‘Why did you give up?’ Holland asked. He glanced towards the calendar and the words beneath. ‘What made you choose?’

‘I wanted to stop from the day I started,’ Warren said. ‘Actually, make that I knew that I should stop. I was a drugs counsellor who was also a drug addict, so I knew exactly how much I was fucking myself up. But you don’t stop until there’s nothing else you can do. Until some part of your body packs in or something terminal happens in your life.’ Outside, a cat with long, matted fur jumped up on to the window sill. Warren leaned across and gently tapped on the window with a fingernail; watched as the cat rubbed itself against the glass. ‘There’s rarely a specific moment, to be honest,’ he said. ‘But if you want one, it was probably when my mum died, and my brother and sister wouldn’t let me be alone with her body in case I nicked the jewellery off it.’

Holland noticed that even Heeney had the good grace to look at his shoes for a moment or two.

‘Yeah.’ Warren turned and stubbed out his cigarette. ‘That was a decent-sized slap in the face.’

‘That was when you decided to quit?’

‘No, not even then.’ He laughed gently at the ridiculousness of it all. ‘But that was when the family made me quit.’

‘Like an “intervention” sort of thing?’

‘Well, a British version of one. My sister cut me dead and my brother beat the shit out of me.’

Holland could not help but be impressed by the man’s openness, by his apparent honesty. He certainly seemed to be someone who’d given up hiding anything a long time ago. ‘So, when was that?’ he asked.

‘I’ve been clean almost exactly two years, which is just about as long as I was on drugs.’

Holland did the maths and got an interesting result. ‘So you started taking drugs when you were working on the MAPPA project.’

‘I started taking cocaine seriously in 2001.’

‘Around the time the panel was disbanded?’

Warren nipped a strand of tobacco from his tongue. ‘Somewhere around there, probably. I could check, but I don’t think “Took first line of charlie” appears anywhere in that year’s diary-’

He was cut off by a burst of shouting from the next room, which grew suddenly louder as a door was thrown open. A few seconds later, a skinny teenage boy, who could not have been much older than Luke Mullen, stormed into the kitchen, gesturing wildly and cursing at the top of his voice.

The cat fled from the window ledge.

‘Cunt Andrew grassed me to the group, fucking told everyone I’d been talking about gear… about gear I’d taken like I loved it. Fucker wasn’t even there… cunt, saying shit to make himself popular with you lot. I swear, you better take all the fucking knives out of this fucking kitchen, Neil, I’m telling you that…’