One Dark, Two Light, page 11
‘I’m looking for someone,’ I say, quickly.
The landlord and the woman both turn to fix their eyes on me.
‘I don’t know his name. He never told me it.’ I think quickly. ‘But when I see him, he helps me out…’
The woman and the landlord continue to look silently at me. My gut tightens as I feel their gaze intensify.
‘With bits,’ I improvise, remembering the transcript from the last drugs case I dealt with. ‘And bobs,’ I add, although I’m not sure I’ve got that last bit right. ‘He has short fair hair and very bright blue eyes,’ I continue, hastily. ‘And he’s got this scar under one eye, just here.’ I indicate my right eye. ‘You can’t miss it.’
The woman stares into my face, scrutinising me carefully. She has pencil-thin eyebrows which look like tattoos. ‘Who are you?’ she says, finally, her eyes boring into mine.
‘Anna.’ My forehead feels clammy, my mouth dry. I pick up my drink and take a sip.
The woman makes an irritated gesture, which says, So what?
‘Anna…’ My brain freezes. Montana? No! ‘Finch,’ I say, before I can stop myself. I hope Anna will forgive me if this ever gets out.
The woman shakes her head, the name meaning nothing to her, of course.
The landlord continues to glare at me in silence.
‘I don’t know what’s happened to him, and I kind of need to find him.’ I lick my lips and run my tongue around my dry mouth. ‘I met him in here on New Year’s Eve. But I haven’t seen him since.’
The woman shoots a look at the landlord, whose eyes connect with hers.
‘I was wondering if you know him. If you might know where he is.’
The woman says, ‘Have you been online?’
Online? Online? I think quickly. Ah. On ‘line’. I shake my head. ‘No. I… I changed my phone, lost the number. I was hoping I’d get a text to say he was back on, that he was… erm, shotting. But… there’s been nothing. Not for a while. I was hoping I might bump into him here.’
I pick up my drink and take another sip, conscious that my hand is trembling as my fingers grip the glass.
The woman continues to scrutinise me for a moment and then her face softens. ‘You’re clucking,’ she observes, kindly.
I look back at her for a moment as it registers: she’s mistaken my nerves for withdrawal symptoms. I moisten my lips again. ‘Yeah,’ I agree. ‘Yeah. I am.’
The landlord looks away across the bar.
The woman nods her head towards the back of the pub. ‘Come on then,’ she says to me.
She moves round the bar and I follow her, glancing over my shoulder as I go. The landlord is now out from behind the bar, collecting empty glasses. His interest appears to be elsewhere, but behind him, from across the pub, the man with the dog is watching me.
I follow the woman out through a door to the beer garden where a group of men is sitting around a picnic table on the wooden decking. It’s dusk now, and there are no outside lights; there’s just a small flame glowing on and off over the table as one of the group repeatedly flicks a Zippo lighter. The smell of petrol in the yard is strong, intermingled with the smell of weed.
One of the men shifts in his seat and turns to look me up and down. He’s white, probably in his early thirties. He has ear-length hair under a beanie hat and dark-coloured joggers with two lime-green stripes up the side.
The woman says, ‘Ozzy. This is Anna. She knows ST.’
The man lifts an eyebrow. ‘Yeah?’
All eyes are now on me. The male with the lighter has stopped flicking it.
‘Yeah, only I’ve not seen him for a while.’ My voice sounds hollow in the half-light. ‘Do you know where he might be?’
Ozzy shrugs, and starts to roll a cigarette. ‘He had a’ accident, innit?’
I can feel my knees weakening. ‘What accident?’
Ozzy lifts his eyes from his roll-up and gives me a smirk. ‘Car accident. That’s what they’re saying.’
‘Do you know what happened?’
Ozzy ignores my question. His mouth tightens. ‘So, you want something, or what?’
The men round the table are all still watching me.
‘Oh. Yeah.’ I take a deep breath. I’d better do this, I suppose. I’d better go through with it and do what I supposedly came for.
I’m about to ask for ‘weed’, but then I remember that I’m meant to be clucking.
Ozzy looks me in the eye. ‘I got best of both. Can do you three tens for twenty. Special.’
I think, quickly. ‘Three tens for twenty’. Three ten-pound deals – that’s what he’s saying – for twenty quid. And, ‘best of both’… that means he’s got both heroin and crack cocaine. I open my bag, pull out my purse and take out a twenty-pound note. Thank God I went to the cashpoint on my way to the opticians. Little did I know then that I’d be needing it for drugs.
‘OK.’ I inhale deeply, my chest fluttering. ‘Can I have… erm… one dark,’ I say. ‘And two light.’
Ozzy reaches into his jogger waistband and pulls out a sock, from which he extracts a handful of wraps. He selects three and hands them to me in exchange for the note in my hand.
The other men round the table are looking at me with interest. ‘You speedballing, love?’ grins a black male with short, tied-back dreads, wearing a camouflage jacket. He moves along the bench to make room for me. ‘You’d better come and sit down.’
‘Yeah, come and sit down,’ echoes the male with the Zippo.
I realise with alarm that they’re expecting me to take the drugs now, here – with them. I thought I could just extract a bit more information from Ozzy about Mark’s accident, get a phone number for the drugs line, put the wraps into my pocket and drop them down a drain at the edge of the road on my way back to the opticians. But I’m supposed to be clucking, aren’t I? Withdrawing. I need the drugs now. Obviously.
My heart starts hammering in my chest. I open my sweaty palm and peer uncertainly at the cling-film wrapped ‘bits’ in my hand – one brown-coloured, two an off-white. One deal of heroin and two of crack cocaine; he’s given me what I asked for. So, what do I do now? What are they expecting me to do – smoke them or inject them? And if I do neither, how’s it going to look?
‘You gonna chase it?’ one of the men asks me.
Foil. He means heating it up on foil. ‘Sure,’ I agree. ‘But it’s cold out here… I think I’ll just go in and use the toilet.’
The woman swings an arm out, abruptly, and blocks my path. ‘No way. You ain’t using inside,’ she snaps. ‘Larry’ll fucking do one!’
‘Oh. Right,’ I agree. ‘OK.’
I stand there for a moment, my knees trembling as I try to think up my next excuse.
Suddenly, Ozzy’s face falls and anger clouds his features. He leaps to his feet and, in what seems like slow motion, a metal tobacco tin crashes to the ground. In an instant, the rest of the men seated at the picnic table all leap to their feet as well. A knife appears, then two. The black man with the dreads and the camouflage jacket steps forward, menacingly. The woman – whose name I still don’t know – turns and flees into the pub.
A hand grabs my arm tightly, roughly. Before I know what’s happening, I’m spinning around and someone is yelling into my face, ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Huh? What are you doing, you fucking whore?’
The voice is so close that I can’t see who it belongs to. All I can see is a snarling, angry male face, pushed up into mine. ‘You fucking bitch!’ the voice spits at me. ‘Think you can mess with me, do ya? You think I’m a fucking dickhead?’
And then I’m being dragged off the decking area, one arm twisted up awkwardly behind my back. I stumble and trip. Two arms catch me, encircle my entire body, squeezing the breath right out of me, and lift me off the ground. I’m completely overpowered by the brute force of the man that has hold of me and so shocked and frightened – it’s all happening so quickly – that I can’t work out what’s going on. But I’m vaguely aware of Ozzy and the other men, still standing on the decking area next to the picnic table, watching in silence, all eyes on me. They continue to watch as I’m half-dragged, half-bundled into the alley, out of the gate and into a waiting car.
8
The rear passenger door slams and the driver’s door opens. There’s a thud against my back as my bag lands on top of me and the locks clunk shut. I experience a fleeting moment of relief as my phone tumbles onto the floor near my head, which is jammed hard against the armrest of the door. But as I reach for it, the engine starts and the car screeches away down the street so fast that I tumble forward into the footwell. I steady myself with one hand as we take a corner and then another, the car veering from right to left and back again.
My head begins to spin in confusion and a wave of nausea washes over me. I try to lever myself up, but the car continues to lurch across the road and I keep falling back again. I can just about see out of the side window and so I settle instead for staying where I am and trying to monitor the direction the car is heading, but it’s too dark to pinpoint any landmarks and the motion of the car, combined with my position, wedged onto the floor behind the seat, is soon too much for me.
‘Please. Stop. I’m going to be sick!’ I splutter.
The car swings round yet another corner and then comes sharply to a halt. The driver turns off the engine and gets out. A moment later, the back door opens and I take a grateful gulp of air, before pulling myself up onto the seat and lowering my head over the edge. As my stomach heaves and I throw up into the gutter, I’m conscious of the man’s feet standing on the kerb above me. He’s wearing dark grey Converse trainers with white stars and a yellow stripe. The feet disappear for a moment and I feel his weight in the front of the car. Then he’s back, crouching down and holding out a tissue and a bottle of water.
‘Sit up. Drink this,’ he says, gruffly. ‘And then pull yourself together.’
He has a strong Northern Irish accent. I make a mental note; dark grey Converse trainers, Northern Irish accent. Jeans. What else?
I take the tissue from him and wipe my mouth and the strands of hair that I’ve just been sick over, before pushing myself up into a sitting position. The man is crouching down beside the open car door and I take a good look at him. He’s wearing a battered brown leather jacket over a white T-shirt. He’s clean-shaven and has cropped, light grey hair, which is receding at the temples. There are bags under his hazel eyes and his forehead is lined. I’d put him in his late fifties.
He pushes the bottle of water into my hand. I glare at him, weakly.
‘Go on,’ he says. ‘Have a drink. Then get yourself into the front seat and I’ll take you home.’
‘Who are you?’ I continue to glare at him.
‘My name’s Burdie. Pete Burdess. I’m a police officer, and I’ve just saved your fucking neck. No need to thank me,’ he continues, as he glances up and down the street. ‘Just get yourself in the front of the car and let’s get out of here. I think you’ve drawn enough attention to yourself for one day, don’t you?’
He stands up, walks around the car and into the road. He opens the driver’s door and gets in, leaving me sitting on the back seat.
I peer out through the back door, which he’s left open. We’re in a residential street and there are houses within a stone’s throw. I could easily make a run for it if I wanted to; he’s not stopping me. It’s early evening and there are lights on in several windows. He’s right; anyone could be watching us. If he chased me, there’d be witnesses in double figures. I could dart out and knock on a door – two, even; the houses are terraced and close together – before he could catch me. It seems highly probable, therefore, that he’s telling me the truth.
I inhale deeply in and out, the crisp air gradually relieving the fear and sickness that has flooded my entire body. I reach down into the footwell to retrieve my phone from under the seat and drop it into my bag, before taking several more deep breaths and sliding out of the car and onto the pavement.
Burdie looks up as I open the passenger door.
‘So, where’s your warrant card?’ I challenge him.
He shoots me a scathing look. ‘I’m undercover. I don’t carry a warrant card.’
‘So, how do I know you’re a cop?’
He sighs heavily and rolls his eyes. ‘Fine. Walk home, if that’s what you want.’ He turns to face me and raises a finger, which he jabs at me accusingly. ‘But stay away from that fucking pub.’
I crouch down so that I’m eye level with him. My knees are still trembling with the aftershock. ‘Why? What’s going on there?’
‘I’m serious,’ he warns me. ‘You don’t know what you’re messing with. I don’t know what the fuck you think you were doing, but you were told to keep out of it. So, do as you’re fucking told.’ He starts the engine.
I open the door wider. ‘Wait. Wait a minute.’
I slide into the front seat next to him and put my seatbelt on. He glances across at me and sighs. ‘So where am I taking you?’
‘What time is it?’ I rummage in my bag for my phone.
‘Just before eight.’
God. Is that all? It seems like a million years since I walked out of the opticians. I find my phone and glance at the clock, but he’s right. It’s twelve minutes to eight.
‘Angel,’ I tell him.
‘Angel,’ he repeats. He glances at me. ‘You don’t want to say “please”?’
I unscrew the cap of the water bottle I’m holding and turn to face him. ‘If you’re a police officer,’ I say accusingly, ‘then presumably you know that false imprisonment is a serious criminal offence?’
A flicker of anger clouds his features. ‘Don’t be so fucking stupid.’
I argue, ‘You had no right to do what you did. You—’
‘Don’t be so fucking stupid,’ he says again, but louder. He glares at me for a moment, before swinging the car out into the road. ‘That lot in there that you were just shooting the breeze with might just look like a bunch of dickheads to you. But they’re making a lot of money for some other fucking dickheads, the kind who carry guns, not knives, and who really aren’t gonna like the sound of you.’ He glances across at me, sarcasm contorting his features. ‘You’re not their kind of woman, d’ya see where I’m coming from? You stand out a fucking mile.’
I shrug. ‘I don’t think I do. I work with people like them. I know how to fit in.’
‘You stupid bloody woman!’ Burdie bangs both hands against the steering wheel. The car jerks and veers off to the left and a slop of water lands on my knee. I grab hold of the door handle as he continues to yell at me, ‘You’re reckless! Completely fucking reckless!’
‘That’s rich,’ I say, ‘coming from the man who drives like Ayrton Senna.’
His eyes flicker towards me. ‘He was a great fucking driver.’
I glare back at him. ‘He killed himself.’
‘He had a broken steering column.’
‘He was driving at a hundred and ninety miles per hour!’
‘I was making sure that we weren’t being fucking followed!’ Burdie explodes, his face flushed with anger. He bangs one hand on the steering wheel again. ‘You could have got yourself killed!’
A hard silence settles between us. I screw the cap back onto the bottle and clutch hold of the door handle again. Burdie turns onto Pentonville Road and takes another left turn. I notice Lexington Gardens off to the right.
‘Why? What’s going on?’ I persist.
He continues to stare at the road ahead of him.
‘You’ve been watching the pub,’ I press him. ‘So, does that mean you know about Mark Felding? About what happened to him?’
Silence.
‘I’ll take that as a “yes”.’
He grits his teeth. ‘You need to stay out of it,’ he says, sharply.
‘That was the location, wasn’t it? The Hope and Glory is where Mark was meeting the informant on New Year’s Eve?’
More silence.
‘They told me he had a car accident,’ I tell him. ‘The dealers. They know what happened to him.’ I glance across at him and his eyes flicker to meet mine. ‘Did you know that? They talked about him. “ST”, they called him. Is that his undercover name?’
Burdie sighs and looks away.
‘So, was it them?’ I persist. ‘Was it them that ran him over?’
‘No comment,’ he says, smugly.
I shoot him a withering look. ‘You know who did it, don’t you? Why haven’t you arrested anyone?’
‘Again – no comment.’ Burdie swings the car round the corner into Chapel Market. ‘Where do you live?’ he asks, sharply.
‘This will do,’ I sigh. ‘You can pull over here. I need to go to the opticians.’
Burdie swings the car over and turns off the engine. He turns to face me, his face screwed up, incredulous. ‘You’re going to the fucking opticians?’
I nod. ‘I need to pick up my son’s glasses. They’ll be shutting soon.’
‘Well, it’s a good job I arrived when I did, then, isn’t it?’ His voice is loaded with sarcasm. ‘You might not have made it back to the fucking opticians before they fucking shut.’
I glance over at him.
‘Are you for fucking real?’ he splutters. ‘Were you worrying about your kid’s eyesight when you walked into that back fucking yard?’
‘Do you think you could stop swearing please?’ I wrinkle my nose in distaste. ‘I know you’re angry and once or twice is acceptable. It’s actually good for you, apparently; it relieves stress. But when you use it in every other sentence it’s really bloody offensive.’
Burdie exhales and looks at the roof of the car. ‘Un-fucking-believable,’ he says.
I turn to face him. ‘OK. I admit it,’ I confess. ‘I was scared. I got myself into hot water. And yes, I was worried for my son, if anything happened to me. So, thank you. Thank you for rescuing me. But there’s a man lying in a hospital bed with severe brain damage and he’s got kids too. So where were you then? Who’s looking out for him? Why the bloody hell has no one been arrested? What the hell is it that you lot are trying to hide?’
