Warren Preston had soon been processed, the victim of a gang conflict; a gang that was maintaining a low profile. Crime was marginally down on account of the gangs keeping their heads down, and any that poked them up soon enough found themselves at the police station and in the interview room.
Not that it gave the police any concern, although social services would soon be around, as would legal aid, including the female lawyer that had represented Preston before. All of the do-gooders, heads up high, vocal in their condemnation of the police and their heavy-handed tactics in dealing with the deprived and the disadvantaged.
Bill Ross wanted to say to them come out with me of a night, see the truth of it, where they live, but he didn’t.
As if somehow it was him and the police that were to blame, not the society that left them isolated, the government that had seen the short-term gain in cheap labour from overseas, the unwillingness to resolve the mess they had created.
But it was, he knew, the human condition. The cream rises to the top, the milk settles just below, and those who don’t make the grade are condemned to purgatory. That had been Warren Preston, from a council flat in a fifties red-brick monstrosity where the lifts smelt of urine, and in the area outside a few swings for the children, most of them broken, and graffiti on the building and inside the lifts and the common areas. A war zone that the police only visited in groups of four, with another two outside in a locked car, ready to call for backup if needed.
Waylon Conroy, the leader of Preston’s hoodies, lived in a similar monolith honouring depravity. Bill Ross had made the climb up eight floors – the lifts were not working, no one willing to repair them, knowing that soon enough they would fail again.
Bill Ross had banged on Conroy’s door, the bell no longer working. After a couple of minutes, it opened, a child of ten standing there. A pretty little girl, Ross acknowledged.
‘Waylon?’ Ross said.
‘He’s not here.’
‘Your mother? father?’
‘Not here.’
A child conditioned to lie, Ross knew. He entered the flat, the child following him. Inside was as expected: clean, basic and unloved. He placed the child on a chair and called over to one of his constables. ‘See if there’s any food in the house, otherwise go out and get her something to eat,’ he said as he handed over a twenty-pound note. ‘McDonalds if there’s nothing else.’
‘How long since you ate?’ Ross said to the child.
‘Not today.’
‘How long have you been here on your own?’
‘I’m not. Mummy’s in the other room, on the bed.’
Ross gestured to a uniformed sergeant to check around. He soon found the woman unconscious underneath a bear of a man. Two other uniforms went into the room and wrested the black man off the grossly-overweight woman, the mother of the small child and of Waylon Conroy.
The naked man lay flat on his back on the bed, a female constable administering assistance to the woman. ‘She’s not dead. Paralytic drunk, that’s all.’
The young child entered the room. ‘He’s not my father,’ she said. ‘That’s Ernie.’
‘He lives here?’ Ross said as he shepherded the child out.
‘He’s mummy’s boyfriend. I don’t like him. He hits Mummy.’
Generational, parent to child, Ross could have told social services. Waylon Conroy, beaten as a child by a succession of his mother’s men; the sister of Waylon, neglected at the age of ten, inured to domestic violence, almost certain to be abused by a drunken friend of the mother once she reached puberty, the cycle repeating itself ad infinitum.
Preston and Conroy, along with the young girl and the vast majority of young criminals in the area, were not the cause, they were the symptom.
The mother, semi-conscious, sat in a chair in the living room; her gentleman friend remained in the bedroom, his hands cuffed behind his back. A couple of uniforms had managed to put a pair of trousers on him. He was bare-chested and bare-footed; he would remain that way when he was taken to the station for further questioning. The man was known to police, and Bill Ross intended to throw the book at him, first questioning him about the little girl. She would be checked out by a doctor for malnutrition, neglect and abuse, and subject to his findings, social services would take the child into care, or return her to the mother, who would be carefully supervised; not that it would do a lot of good in the long run.
A uniform handed Waylon Conroy’s mother a hot drink, which the woman clasped with both hands as she lifted the cup up to her mouth.
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘My head, it hurts.’
She wasn’t an attractive sight, even after she had put on some clothes, an ill-fitting top too tight for her ample bust, a skirt too short for her age. Once, Ross could see, she’d had a pretty face, reflected in the young daughter, but time and multiple lovers had rendered the woman haggard. Black, as were her children, although the daughter was a couple of shades lighter than the mother.
The young girl sat in another bedroom munching a hamburger, grabbing the french fries with her small hands.
‘Waylon?’ Ross said. ‘We need to find him.’
‘He comes and goes.’
‘Your daughter?’
‘Gladiola, what about her?’
‘Neglected.’
‘I do my best, but it’s not easy. I can’t find work, and Waylon doesn’t help, other than to come here and shout at me.’
‘Hit you?’
‘Not Waylon, not that.’
‘The man in the other room?’
‘Sometimes, when he’s angry, but I love him.’
Ross felt like vomiting. He had heard it before, but he never got used to it. Next, it would be how the government had let her down,
