place were a bit crowded so she asked if Kay would mind if she joined her, they got talking, liked the look of each other and the upshot was they arranged to meet again. I knew Pal Maciver, not close, but we’d met, and I knew all about the Yanks taking over Maciver’s, of course, and him getting himself a Yankee wife as part of the deal, leastways that’s how the jokers down the rugby club saw it, so I were able to fill Linda in with what I knew, and I were dead chuffed she’d found a mate as it seemed likely to make her hang around up here a bit longer.
So everything in the garden were lovely. But it doesn’t matter how green the grass grows and how sweet the flowers smell, a man in our line don’t stop being a cop just because he enjoys a bit of gardening. That’s where some women get it wrong.
They think just because they can switch you to any channel they want by pressing the right buttons, they can do the same trick by remote control, but a man’s bollocks aren’t tuned to a zapper, and once her hands are off the controls, his brain clicks back in.
Two things began bothering me. One was I were pretty sure Linda was doing drugs. She weren’t blatant but I’d been in the business too long not to spot the signs. Can’t say I was surprised. Back then, recreational drugs weren’t a big problem yet in Mid-Yorkshire, but over in the States I’d seen and heard enough to know that if you lived in what they call the fast lane, they were there for the asking.
Second thing was, I’d met Kay Maciver. First time, I came home and found Linda had asked her round. Then we went out for a drink with her a few times. Pal too-old Pal, I mean. He obviously found it hard to understand what a gorgeous bint like Linda were doing shacking up with an old buffalo like me, which I found a bit offensive from a man in his situation. But Kay just took me and Linda in her stride. That’s what I liked about her. She saw everything, judged nowt. Having her around was very peaceful. We got on like a house on fire. I could really talk to her. If Linda had been the jealous type, it might have pissed her off a bit. But to get jealous, you need to give a fuck about someone and, while I hope she liked me a bit, I don’t think it got close to that.
Any road, this time I were sitting yacking with Kay while Linda were off in the bog probably having a pinch of white snuff, and Kay let drop that Linda had told her she’d once worked for one of the papers in Hartford, which were where Kay came from. This was something in common which had helped them get on so well to start with. The HQ of Ashur-Proffitt was in Hartford, and Linda, being a journalist, thought a nice human interest story about local firm conquering the world might go down well back there, and she’d been on to her newspaper contact and got the go-ahead. Kay, being Tony Kafka’s PA as well as being married to Pal, who was still on the Board of Directors, was well placed to smooth the way for Linda to take a close look at Ash-Mac’s and talk to people there for her piece.
Linda had mentioned nowt of this to me, plus in all the tales we’d swopped about our backgrounds, this Hartford place had never even been mentioned.
Next day I put in a call to Dave Thatcher. I think I told you about him. Captain Thatcher, this New York cop who’d helped me a lot when I were over there. Lovely man. Looked like Joe Louis’s sparring partner. I had a laugh about his name and tried to start a rumour he were Maggie’s love-child by Idi Amin… Any road, it were Dave who first tipped me off Linda worked for their funny buggers as well as being a journalist. I explained my situation with Linda. When he stopped laughing he said, “You two have a love-child, hope it don’t have your looks and Linda’s colour, else it could make Idi Amin look like Miss World,” so he hadn’t forgotten. He rang me back a couple of hours later, a lot more serious. His funny bugger contact said that to the best of his knowledge, Linda was still on the books. Her CV had no record of her ever having worked for a paper in Hartford.
And there was something else. You recall back in the mid-eighties there was a big political scandal in the States when it came out there’d been arms sales to Iran with the profits going to the Contra rebels in Nicaragua so they could buy guns to use against the government, who were too left wing for Ron Reagan and his chums? Of course you do. I bet that missus of thine were waving a banner outside the Yankee Embassy in Grosvenor Square. Seems that Ashur-Proffitt, who had a big network of contacts in the Middle East, were seriously involved here. None of their people ever got named, let alone indicted. Not that it would have made much difference if they had. Just about every bugger who was tried and found guilty either had his sentence quashed on appeal or got pardoned by old man Bush when he took over. Who put the mock in democracy, eh? Our own bunch of jokers, past and present, learned a lot from the way the Yanks handled things there.
But the white hats were riding around back then, guns blazing, and it seemed wise to the big nobs at Ashur-Proffitt to keep their heads below the parapet for a bit, and some people said this was why they suddenly got interested in finding outlets in Europe, particularly those bits of Europe with a nice sympathetic right-of-centre Yankophile government.
And it seems their funny buggers weren’t all singing off the same hymn sheet either. Not all of them were paid-up members of the Ollie North fan club. Couple of those who were went to jail, but there were plenty of others who’d have been only too delighted to pay off old scores and clear promotion channels by sending a few more to join them. Dave Thatcher reckoned that’s why Linda got sent over here to check out Ash-Mac’s and see if she could come up with a smoking gun. Me being in Mid-Yorkshire fell lucky for them. Linda must have mentioned how much I’d enjoyed working undercover with her in the States, so it gave her a perfect in to set up shop on Ash-Mac’s doorstep and look for a way of getting even closer.
OK, no need to look like that, it sounded like a right load of bollocks to me too, except that I’d met some of these people and I knew most of them had got such a distorted view of reality, they could easily have got jobs working in a telly documentary department.
So when Dave said take care, I said thanks, I would, and I meant it.
Only I forgot one thing. I said that having my head shagged off didn’t stop me being a cop. I forgot that it didn’t stop Linda being a spook either and she’d learned enough to spot I were getting suspicious of her, plus mebbe Dave Thatcher’s enquiries about her back in the States hadn’t been as discreet as he thought.
I’d like to think that what happened next weren’t her idea, that she took advice and got instructions. But I daresay I’m just fooling myself.
Realizing she couldn’t guarantee controlling me through my dick any longer, she had to find some other way of doing it. In fact I think she’d set up a fail-safe plan long in advance of me getting worried about her. I found out later that she’d been using her connection with me to make contact with some of the local pushers. “Andy Dalziel says give me a good deal or you’ll go out of business,” that sort of thing. There were a couple of occasions guys came to my door with packages for Linda, special delivery from the States, C.O.D. I took them in, handed over the money. Later I saw Linda open the packages and they were always what she’d said, items of clothing from some mail-order fashion house, or documents, whatever. What I didn’t know was I was on candid camera, taking packages and handing over cash to guys the Drug Squad had a long interest in. But the big sting came when I started feeling dodgy after dinner one night. I thought it were the prawns in this jambalaya thing she’d done. Everything went pear-shaped, then banana-shaped, then no shape at all. Then I seemed to be drifting in and out of these weird dreams. Only, next day when I saw the pictures, I realized they hadn’t been dreams at all. There I was in black-and-white and technicolour shooting up and I had the puncture marks to go with it.
These pics were on my pillow when I woke up about four o’clock the following afternoon. I felt like death warmed up. The phone rang while I was lying on the shower floor with the cold tap turned full on. It kept ringing till I got to it. I knew it would be Linda and it was.
She said she were sorry and she sounded like she meant it. She really liked me and believed I really liked her, but would that be enough to keep me quiet? She made it a real question and of course the answer was no it bloody wouldn’t, so already I was feeling partly responsible for what had happened. She were good at her job, Linda, I have to give her that. All of her jobs.
She hoped we could stay friends. In fact, she’d like to stay my very loving friend, she’d enjoyed it so much. But just now she thought it best if she took a little break to give me time to consider the situation which was that as well as the still photos, of which I’d seen a small sample, there was a video, plus pics of me handing over money for packages from known dealers, plus they had a sample of my blood, which analysis would prove was awash with drugs.
Then she said she’d be in touch later and put the phone down.
The door bell rang. I were still so out of things I went to answer it without even thinking.
It was Kay. Must have been a shock for her to see me standing there, bollock naked, dripping water all over the hall mat, but she didn’t blink an eyelid, just asked if Linda was around.
I think I said some rude things about Linda. Kay asked if she could come in. At this point I realized the state I was in and shot off to get myself dry and decent. When I came out of the bathroom into my bedroom, she were
