voice and the bluster in her father's voice. She hadn't had her ruined tea, nor had she done her preparatory work for the next day's class with 2B. Later, she had heard her mother's footfall outside her door and a light knocking and she had not replied, and much later she had heard them going to bed beyond the thin partition wall. A tossing and restless and hideous night, with two images churning her mind. The twin images that denied her sleep were of the warmth and kindness of Giuseppe and Angela Ruggerio, and of the cold certainty of Axel Moen. They confronted her, the love shown her by Giuseppe and Angela Ruggerio, the matter-of-fact hostility of Axel Moen. She should not have given him the time of day, should have shown him the door. She thought she had betrayed the warmth and kindness, the love, of Giuseppe and Angela Ruggerio…
Her night had been unhappiness and confusion. Her day had been exhaustion and distraction.
It seemed God-given, a moment of mercy, when the bell echoed through the low-set prefabricated walls of the classroom. Perhaps the kids of 2B, the kickers and gougers and scribblers and bullies, felt the crisis and were afraid. They waited for her. Every day, at I he end of classes, she swapped jokes and cheerful banter with the ix- year-olds, not that day. She swept up the books and notes on her desk. She was first out through the door. It was her decision to go home, to apologize to her mother and father and to make believe that the tall American with the blond pony-tail of hair had never walked with her in the garden behind the bungalow, never propositioned her, never talked of necessary 'access'. Her decision… She stopped beside a rubbish bin outside the classroom, reached deliberately into her bag, took out the letter of invitation and ripped it to small pieces. She dropped the torn scraps of paper, and the envelope into the bag. There was a mass of children around her as she walked towards the lean- to shed where her scooter was left for I he day.
'Charlotte! Are you all right, Charlotte?'
The shrill voice bleated at her back. She turned. The headmistress faced her.
All right? Yes, of course I'm all right, Miss Samway.'
I just wondered… Charlotte, there are two men to see you. They're at the gate.'
She looked over the running and shouting and charging horde of children going from the playground to the gate that led to the street. She looked between the heads and shoulders of the young mothers with cigarettes at their lips, gum in their mouths, babies on their arms, bulging stomachs in tight jeans, who yapped about the night's TV. So much anger, fuelled by the tiredness. She saw two men leaning against an old Sierra car, not the last model but the model before that, and the door which took the weight of their buttocks was a recent addition and not yet sprayed to match the rest of the bodywork, that was scraped and rust-flecked. They were not like anyone she knew.
They wore old denims and T-shirts and one had a leather jacket over his shoulders and one wore a dirtied anorak. The hair of both men was cut short, and the one who was more slightly built had a silver ring piercing his right nostril, and the heavier one waved to her, and she could see the tattoo between the wrist and knuckle of his hand.
'I don't know if they're friends of yours, Charlotte, but I don't want people like that hanging round my school.'
She went to them. She stood her full height. The headmistress behind her would be watching, and others on the staff, and the mothers would be watching. Little Miss Parsons, stuck-up Miss Parsons, entertaining two low-life types who waited on the street for her. Something to talk about in the common room, and as they pushed the prams and led the kids back to the bloody little homes where the telly would blast all through the evening, and reading would involve the figures on scratch cards, and…
God, she was just so bloody tired.
'Yes? You wanted to see me. I am Charlotte Parsons.'
The one with the ring in his right nostril seemed to flick his fist open and in the palm of his hand was a police warrant card, and he said his name was Brent and muttered about 'Task Force', and the one with the tattoo showed his card and said his name was Ken and the quiet words were 'Drug Squad'.
A frail voice. 'What do you want?'
Brent said, 'It's what you want, Miss Parsons. We were told you were looking for the grand tour.'
Ken said, 'We were told you needed a run round our patch, so you'd understand better the end of the importation road, that your particular interest was skag and rock.'
Brent said, 'But, Ken, we shouldn't go too fast for Miss Parsons, 'cos a nice girl like her wouldn't know that skag is heroin, now would she?'
Ken said, 'Too right, Brent, and she wouldn't know that rock is crack cocaine. If you'd like to get in the back, Miss Parsons… Oh, don't go worrying, we squared it with the caretaker that he'll look after your scooter.'
'Who sent you?'
Brent said, 'Our inspector sent us.'
Ken said, 'The American gentleman…'
She shook. The trembling was in her arms, her fingers. The heaviness was in her legs, her feet. 'And if I say that it's bugger-all to do with me?'
Brent said, 'We were told that you might bluster a bit at first. ..'
Ken said, '… but after the bluster you'd be good as gold. Miss I'arsons, I've been on Drug Squad a bit over four years. Brent's been on Task Force, drug-importation team, for six years. All we get near is the creatures at the bottom of the pyramid. What we were told, sort of vague, you've the chance to hurt them right at the sharp end, nothing specific, but hurt the top of the pyramid. Now, if the bluster time's over, could you get in, please?'
She did as she was told. She was good as gold, as Axel Moen had said she would be.
She took the big step, and ducked down into the back of the old Sierra. Bloody man…
The car was a fraud, dapped out exterior but a high-performance tuned engine. Brent drove, and Ken was twisted round in the front seat so that he could la Ik to her. She thought she was tired, but as the car hammered on the lanes and then the fast road, she came to know the crow's-feet lines and the sack bulges at Ken's eyes. Something of a joke at first, about the tattoo only being a transfer that he could wash off each night, about a limit to the cause of duty, but old Brent had gone the whole hog and had his nostril pierced for the goddam job. They were not in the style of any policemen that she had met before. She l bought a part of the smell came from the discarded polystyrene last-food plates that were dumped on the floor in the back, under her feet, and the rest of the smell came from the clothes they wore. They smoked hard, and didn't ask whether she minded them smoking. Ken said they weren't interested in cannabis, nor in solvents, nor in amphetamines, nor in the benzodiazepines like Temazepam and the barbiturates like sodium amytal. They worked the world of heroin that was skag, horse, smack, stuff, junk, and the world of crack cocaine that was rock, wash. She listened…
They came into the city of Plymouth, where Charley went for best shopping, for a dress for a friend's wedding, for Christmas presents and birthday gifts for her mother and father, and they talked her through the street cost of skag and rock. She listened…
They turned out of the city centre and went north, climbing the long drag into the big housing estate. The name of the estate was familiar, from the local television, but she had never been there. Nothing urgent in the information they gave her, no passion, but the figures were beyond her comprehension. A worldwide trade in narcotics with a profit margin of 100 billion American dollars. Seizures and disruption of trafficking into UK the last year of?1.45 billion, and what was seized and disrupted, on a good day, was one in five shipments and, on a bad day, was one in ten.
Ken said, 'But they're the super-glory figures, we don't operate at that level. We work down here in the gutter, where the skag and the rock ends up. Down here a kilo of heroin, skag, goes for thirty grand, street price. Crack cocaine, rock, means?7,500 sterling, cheaper because of saturation. Out there in the big world they're talking thousands of kilos, tonnes – we're little people, we're talking kilos and grammes.' She listened…
Brent said, 'You being a teacher, Miss Parsons, you'd be good at arithmetic. Ten grammes doesn't give a big long high, ten minutes' worth for an habitual, but it costs, my sums, seventy-five quid, and it's addictive, so you get to need a lot of grammes, and that means you need a lot of cash, and you steal, fight, burgle, maybe kill, for the cash.'
She saw tower blocks of homes, and terraces of homes, and she saw the children, like the ones that she taught, running in dog packs. She thought she saw a poverty and a despair… She saw an old man hurrying, limping, heavy on a stick, and his face was frightened and she wondered whether he had?75 sterling in his wallet. She saw an old woman scuttling with a shopping bag towards the dark entrance of a tower block, and she wondered whether the old woman had?75 sterling in her purse, or in the tin under her bed, or folded into her pension book and
