He found Tyler and Susie Sergeant waiting for him in the communal hallway. Unlike him, they had played by the rules and waited in the car until called forward.
“What are you like?” Jack said, shaking his head at Dillon’s antics.
Dillon blushed. “Sorry, got a bit carried away.”
“Have we found Marley?” Susie asked.
Dillon shrugged. “Haven’t had a chance to take a look at any of them yet.”
PS Brent emerged from the downstairs boudoir sniggering to himself like a naughty schoolboy. “I think I’m going to have to call an ambulance,” he informed them casually.
“Has someone been injured?” Jack asked, confused by Brent’s obvious lack of concern.
Removing his NATO helmet, the TSG skipper cackled in wicked delight. “Nah, it’s one of the blokes in there. He’s got such a stiffy that he’s literally crying out in pain. Reckons he’s had this monster erection for the best part of four hours now and, no matter what he tries, he can’t get it to go down.”
“That must be hard on him,” Dillon said, grinning at his little quip.
“Sounds like a load of cock and bull,” Susie joined in.
“Trust me,” Brent said, dabbing at an eye, “I don’t know about bull, but it certainly is a load of cock!”
Susie gagged at the thought.
Bob Beach jogged down the stairs and walked over to join them. “The top floor’s all secure,” he reported happily. “We’ve got one male under arrest for possession with intent to supply, and a black female who’s out of her head on drugs.”
Hope blossomed on the faces of the three detectives.
Beach saw this and quickly shook his head. “Sorry, it’s not the girl you’re looking for.”
“Of course not,” Dillon said. “That would have been too easy and we don’t do easy, do we Jack?”
“Not often,” Tyler said, ruefully. “So, we’ve got two detained upstairs, and I heard about the runner out back. How many have you got in there, skip?”
“We’ve got two men and two women in the living room,” Brent told him.
Jack considered this. “Jarvis reckons there should be at least seven or eight people in the house. How many people have we actually rounded up?” he asked the TSG skippers.
“Well, there’s the two Bob’s crew detained upstairs,” Brent said. “The four we found in the lounge, and the runner outside.”
“I make that seven,”
“Which is what your man said,” Brent pointed out.
Jack shook his head. “The number he gave us included Angela Marley, so unless one of the girls in the room where the party was going on is her, we’re one person adrift.”
“One of the girls is Asian, the other is black, but she definitely doesn’t have a scar on her face, so it’s not Marley,” Brent said.
“Are you happy every room has been thoroughly checked?” Jack asked, looking from one TSG skipper to the next. “Is there anywhere she could be hiding?”
“We’ll check again,” Beach said, “but I’m confident that she’s not upstairs.”
“Likewise, for downstairs,” Brent said.
“Get your troops to check again,” Tyler instructed, “and while they’re doing that, let’s have a word with the two hookers in there in case they can shed any light on where Angela bloody Marley is.”
Dillon was sceptical. “I don’t think the question should be if they can shed any light; I think it should be will they?”
“Well, we might as well try while we’re here,” Jack said, spreading his arms as if to say ‘what else can we do?’
Tyler and Dillon set off towards the lounge, but Susie lingered behind. “I think I’ll wait out here if it’s all the same to you?” she said. “I ate just before we came out and I think the sight of that poor man’s engorged member might make me chunder.”
“I wouldn’t feel too sorry for him,” Brent said. “He’s an obnoxious bloke, covered in tattoos of Nazi emblems and ICF slogans.”
Dillon paused when he reached the door, and after a moment’s contemplation, he turned to address Susie. “Strange,” he said, “I wouldn’t have thought that being in close proximity to a giant prick would bother you, not after having spent so much time working with Kevin Murray.”
Chapter 25
The LAS had arrived and the paramedic, struggling to keep a straight face, was checking out Charlie Dobson, the skinhead with the hard-on.
As Dillon had predicted, Lola had been totally uncooperative; she had never heard of anyone called Angela Marley and claimed no one of that name resided at the squat. It transpired that the male George Copeland had detained in the rear gardens was her younger brother, who lived there and acted as a house sitter when the girls were out so that the authorities couldn’t move in and repossess it.
The other sex worker in the room, a young black girl of Jamaican descent called Anita, had refused to speak to them, but Jack got the feeling she might have been a little less hostile if Lola hadn’t been staring daggers at her the whole time. It was obvious that she was the one running the show.
“It seems to me,” Jack said, looking at the bag of cocaine on the coffee table beside the sofa that Lola and Dobson had been cavorting on, “that you have a very simple choice to make, Lola.” He gestured at the drugs – in addition to the cocaine, there was some cannabis and a small bottle of blue pills. “From here, it seems obvious that you’re using these premises as a brothel and supplying customers with a selection of controlled drugs.”
“They’re not mine! You can’t fit me up with those,” Lola said defiantly. Her brown eyes simmered with hatred as they flicked from Tyler to Dillon to Dobson.
“They’re not mine,” Dobson said quickly.
Lola turned on him in an instant. “You dirty lying cun –”
“That’s enough,” Dillon bellowed, and the force of his outburst shut her up instantly.
“I’ll ask you one last time, Lola,” Jack said patiently, “where is Angela Marley?”
The sex worker stubbornly folded her arms and said
