If there was one thing that made otherwise passive drug users rage, it was when they didn’t know where their next fix was coming from. And if there was one thing Scotty could sense the second he ventured out, it was when there was a shortage. From what Spanners had told him last night, he was expecting the opposite, even though, as Bob Heaton told him in no uncertain terms, six dubious fast-food deliveries were not grounds for any magistrate to issue search warrants. His gut feeling told him the city was about to be flooded with heroin, so why was everyone clucking?
He grabbed Saira and they drove up to Lifechoices HQ to see if there was anything they knew that might explain the phenomenon. As they turned the corner, Saira slammed on the brakes. ‘Christ, Sarge. Where’s this lot come from?’ The entrance looked like Wembley Stadium on Cup Final day, minus the revelry. Crowds of men and women of all ages, each wearing their pain across their face, jostled to get to the front of what was far from an orderly queue.
‘Park up here. We’ll kill someone if we try to drive through.’ They both alighted from the car and Saira locked the doors.
‘Excuse me,’ said Scotty as he forced his gym-toned frame through. 223‘Come on, out the way.’ Saira followed up close behind, offering the apologies Scotty forgot.
As he neared the door, Scotty accidentally on purpose stood on a few feet to encourage them to give way.
‘What the hell’s happening?’ he asked Trish Kenyon, one of those they’d been speaking to when Lizzie was murdered.
‘They ain’t got no Synthopate and they ain’t doing methadone no more. There’s none here nor at the chemist. I’m clucking man but can’t get my script.’
‘Is that the same for everyone?’ said Saira.
Trish looked around. ‘Reckon.’
‘Come on,’ said Scotty, ‘let’s find out what’s occurring.’
They muscled their way the final few yards to the door and nodded at the two security guys blocking it. Scotty made a beeline for Ayo, on reception. She wore her fear bravely but the tear-streaks gave her away. Saira dodged past Scotty and gave the woman a hug.
‘It’s OK,’ she whispered. ‘Just tell us what’s happening.’
They waited while she composed herself, then between sniffs said, ‘It’s been getting bad all week. Something to do with the supply chain, but we can’t get any Synthopate. The pharmacies are the same. There’s none in the city.’ She pointed out to the crowd. ‘This lot. They’re all doing well, or were. If we don’t get supplies soon they’re going to look for alternatives and all our work will be for nothing.’
‘Where’s Nicola Merrion?’ said Scotty.
‘I dunno. I tried to call her but she’s not picking up.’
Scotty took out his phone and found the number he was after. As expected, the Lifechoices CEO didn’t take her call either. ‘Jesus. Ayo, would you like us to get some bodies up here to clear this lot? They’re not going to get what they want just by hanging around.’
‘I know,’ she said, ‘but at least we know where they are. I’d rather them here hoping to get their meds than trawling the streets looking for whatever muck is out there today.’ 224
‘You and me both, but I’ll not have you intimidated. Is there any indication when you might get some more stock?’
‘No. I’ve been on to Respite Pharmaceuticals and they were about as much use as a waterproof sponge.’
‘It must be in their interests to speed things along,’ said Saira. ‘It can’t be good for business or the trial.’
Scotty turned to his colleague. ‘All the while this trial is going on, they’ve got the monopoly on heroin substitutes here. If they can’t supply for a few days, where’s the alternative?’
Just then a commotion rumbled outside. Scotty ran the short distance to the door and saw pockets of users gathered around each other’s phones, their angst swept away by excitement.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked one of the security guards.
‘I dunno.’
Scotty pushed his way out and found Trish. ‘What’s happening?’
‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’
‘Yes, if it’s police business.’
‘I ain’t no grass so fuck you, Scotty.’
He was about to grab her and give her a piece of his mind when a shout from the back went up. ‘Let’s go.’
The crowd turned and rushed back through the very gates they had been choking up moments before.
Trish was about to run when Scotty grasped her T-shirt. ‘Tell me what the fuck’s going on,’ he said as she writhed in his grip.
‘That’s assault. I’ll fucking have you.’ By now Saira was by his side. She forced her way between the two, breaking Scotty’s hold but replacing it with a judo collar-grip.
‘Trish, just tell us where everyone’s going and we’ll let you go.’
Now Trish was looking desperate as the crowd had all but dispersed. ‘Get off. I’ve gotta score before it’s all gone.’
Scotty and Saira glanced at each other, then he looked back at Trish. ‘Don’t do this. You’re making progress, don’t mess it up.’ 225
‘What choice have I got? It’s like the Lord’s given at the same time he’s taken away. I need myself a slice of whatever this new batch is.’
With that, Saira released her and Trish was sprinting to catch the others heading for the city centre.
For the third shift running, PC Wendy Relf had begged her sergeant for a couple of hours to write up the more urgent investigations he’d piled on her over the last couple of weeks. There were only six other officers on duty for this three to midnight shift and they were already deployed, but her sergeant had been true to his word. She’d never say the Q word, but things were looking promising as she sat down, opened her work tracker on the computer and browsed those with red flags to see which of the hopelessly overdue ones might be job-threatening if she left them any longer.
She clicked on a stalking case involving a particularly vulnerable victim. Her heart sank when she scanned down all the tasks she’d yet to complete. ‘God, we are so good at being shit,’ she muttered to herself. She was about to call the victim when her radio interrupted her.
‘Charlie Romeo Zero Two.’
She paused in case she’d misheard. She was, after all, marked on the dispatch system as unavailable.
‘Charlie Romeo Zero Two,’ the controller repeated.
Reluctantly she reached to her left shoulder and pressed transmit.
‘Go ahead, over.’
‘Charlie Romeo Zero Two, are you available for a suspected drugs death in New Steine Mews?’
‘Charlie Romeo Zero Two to Oscar. I am shown “on reports”. Can someone else go?’
‘Negative Charlie Romeo Zero Two, I’m afraid. Everyone else is tied up. I’ll try to keep you free once you’ve finished but, in the meantime, the details are on the CAD.’
Wendy looked up from her screen over towards the sergeants’ desks for some support, but they were empty. 226
‘For God’s sake,’ she mumbled, then pressed transmit again. ‘Roger, Charlie Romeo Zero Two, assign me. Making from John Street.’
The only positive from this deployment was that New Steine Mews was just a couple of minutes away so, with a fair wind, Wendy could get there and deal with it within an hour or so. But in all the time she’d been in the job, the winds had almost always been inclement.
Five minutes later, she was reversing into a ‘Loading Only’ bay half a dozen houses from the squat she’d been assigned to.
Without the luxury of a partner, she’d not only have to secure and preserve any evidence of drugs supply but render first aid, deal with grieving and irate friends, and give at least a nod to tracing any witnesses all on her own.
As she approached, she pressed record on her body-worn video, then pushed open the already splintered door. As expected, the stench of weed, sweat and stale cider hit her. She’d been to enough drugs deaths in her time to know that when she eventually found the room where the body was, it would be rancid – but no son or daughter deserved to end their days in such a wretched way. She remembered Chief Superintendent Jo Howe confiding in her how her own sister had died in a drugs den and the guilt she felt that even she couldn’t save her.
Once she’d waded through the river of flyers where a doormat should be, Wendy spotted a callow man, hunched up on the stairs, his hands clamping his head to his knees. ‘Oi, mate. I’ve been called to an OD. Do you know where it is?’ At once he sprung up, turned and ran up the stairs out of sight. Her instinct was to chase after him, but she needed to focus so she could get back to her stalking victim.
Having checked the downstairs rooms of this once-elegant Regency townhouse, she risked the stairs that the scaredy-cat had taken two at a time. As she reached the first landing, she sensed movement in the room to her right. ‘Hello, it’s the police,’ she called out. ‘You called us?’
She inched the door open and saw two young women, both dressed in stained T-shirts and leggings, crouched over a vaguely familiar third on a 227threadbare mattress by the window. She’d struggle to age any of them but as drug users generally looked much older than they were, she’d bet next month’s rent on none of these being much over twenty.
She rushed forward and knelt, shouldering one of the others aside while she snapped on her nitrile gloves. The trail of vomit running from the side of the victim’s mouth, across her bra strap and to the floorboard did not bode well. Nor did the alabaster skin – although that might be normal – or her icy touch. She wiped the muck from her face with a grimy towel which looked like it was culturing something radioactive. While frantically searching for a pulse, Wendy said, ‘How long has she been like this?’
‘Dunno,’ the two girls said in unison.
‘Well who found her?’
‘Dunno.’
Unable to detect any sign of life, Wendy spotted a mirror nestled among a pile of used needles and scorched foil on a small unit by the single bed. ‘Get me that.’
‘What and put my prints all over it …’
‘Fuck your prints, just pass it to me.’ The girl nearest tried to pinch it by the edges but kept dropping it. ‘Get out of the way,’ said Wendy and grabbed it herself. She held the mirror in front of the woman’s nose and mouth, praying against the odds that it would steam up, even just a little.
It didn’t.
She could try CPR but years of experience told her that all that would achieve would be to break bones and knacker her. The woman was dead, there was no getting away from the fact. She reached for her radio. ‘Charlie Romeo Zero Two.’
‘Charlie Romeo Zero Two, go ahead.’
‘To confirm, re the job I’m at, this is a G5. Can we have CID, coroners’ officers and undertakers to the scene, please?’ Using the code G5 for a sudden death avoided blurting out the obvious to loved ones, or in this case, those who had the misfortune to end up at the same rock bottom. 228
‘Roger.’ After a couple of minutes, the controller was back. ‘Sorry Zero Two, I’ve just checked, there are no coroners’ officers available. They are deployed at the others.’
‘Others?’
‘Yes, unfortunately this is the fourth drugs death today.’
‘What about CID?’
‘Same problem I’m afraid, although it seems DI Heaton is attending them all on his own. He’s asking you to gather the evidence and take photos. Package it all up and return it to him. For the same reason, we’ve got a three-hour wait for undertakers. Apologies for that.’
Wendy rested back on her haunches and sighed. She knew that three hours would become four and any hope of updating her stalking victim evaporated. As she looked up, she realised she was on her own.
‘Oi. Come back,’ she shouted, more in hope than expectation. The two women must have slipped out when she was updating comms. Any hope of finding out how the girl had died had left the room with them. If only she was double crewed, then her partner could stay with the body while she chased them down. But single crewing was the price of austerity.
Wendy looked at the woman, then she remembered.
‘Charlie Romeo Zero Two,’ she said.
‘Zero Two, go ahead.’
‘For the log, I’ve dealt with this G5 victim before. Her name’s Trish Kenyon.’
It was when the fourth overdose came in that Bob realised an unstoppable flow was hitting the city. He’d called Scotty and told him to meet him in Gary Hedges’ office in ten minutes, wishing that Jo could be there too. She had other priorities though, trying to reconfigure her family’s lives in the wake of Darren now cowering on remand.
‘Thanks for seeing us so soon boss,’ said Bob, shutting the door then taking Jo’s chair. 229
‘No worries. It’s me who should be thanking you for picking up on this so quickly. Where’s Scotty?’
‘He’ll be here in a mo. I just need to update you on something before he arrives. Last night he called me saying that this unofficial snout of his …’
‘Spanners?’
‘Yep. Spanners was forced into running some fast-food deliveries and he was convinced he was delivering drugs.’
‘Scotty or Spanners?’
‘Well, Spanners but he called Scotty and he agreed with him.’
‘Hold on. Just rewind. How does dropping off fish and chips suddenly become drugs supply?’
Bob explained.
‘Do you reckon this was the task Spanners had been allocated in exchange for his bonus when he left prison?’ said Gary.
Bob shrugged. ‘I can’t be sure but it seems to fit. Sounds like the lorry driver who crashed on the A23 when I was heading to court was one of them too.’
Gary raised his hand. ‘Hang on. Are you thinking the lorry crash was staged to force the judge to dismiss the trial?’
‘Why not? It seems he didn’t need much persuading. Someone at the court told me that he was practically gagging for a reason.’
‘Had he been bought then?’
‘It’s hard to buy judges. Much easier to find something in their past they’d rather not get out. We need to dig more, but it is beginning to look as if there is some conspiracy going on …’
‘Don’t let our leader hear you say “if”.’
‘Fair dos. As there is a conspiracy going on, then whoever is behind it has some serious pull at very high levels.’
Just then there was a tap at the door. Gary looked up and beckoned Scotty in.
‘Sorry I’m late, boss.’ 230
‘Don’t apologise. Bob was just bringing me up to speed. Now you’re here I might as well hear it from the horse’s mouth. Tell me what happened once you’d spoken to Spanners about his deliveries.’
Scotty looked at Bob and the DI saw the conflict in his eyes.
‘That’s OK,’ said Bob. ‘I’ll explain. Scotty rang me and said we should get warrants to search where Spanners had dropped off to.’
‘Sounds reasonable.’
‘Possibly, but we had six addresses with at least six unknown people behind each door, including a child. Spanners says he thought he recognised them as the defendants in the drug trial.’
‘Some of them,’ Scotty said.
‘Yes, some of them. In any case, if we were going to get warrants we’d need an idea what was in the packages and more on the addresses themselves. That’s before we tried to find the dozens of staff we’d need for simultaneous raids.’
Gary had a chilling look in his eye. ‘What did you do instead then?’
Bob had been on this hot seat many times before, but that didn’t make it any more comfortable. ‘I told Scotty to write it all down and I’d allocate it to a development officer in the morning.’
‘And did you?’
‘Yes, we’re working on it as we speak but it’s a massive task. In my defence, if we’d jumped too soon we’d have spooked the whole network.’
‘Instead the streets are awash with what’s probably a lethal batch of heroin and we’ve had three months’ worth of drugs deaths in one afternoon.’
Bob wasn’t sure whether Gary was genuinely angry or just rehearsing for the inevitable press and public kangaroo court when all this got out. He was about to come back when Scotty interrupted.
‘Boss, one thing I hadn’t got round to telling Mr Heaton was what Saira Bannerjee and I found at Lifechoices treatment centre this morning.’ Bob and Gary listened intently while he spelt out the crush at the gates, the Synthopate drought and the desperation in the eyes of all 231the addicts who, up until then, had been making all the right progress on their road to recovery.
‘Bit of a coincidence, isn’t it?’ said Bob. ‘The day we get this fatal batch is the day our users can’t get their scripts.’
‘There’s more,’ said Scotty. ‘I’ve checked and all our pharmacies are suffering the same shortages. But out of county, those not on the trial who also get their medicines from Respite Pharmaceuticals are seeing no problems.’
‘So it’s Synthopate that’s in short supply?’ said Gary.
Scotty nodded.
‘Maybe it’s a production issue. Can’t they just switch back to methadone?’
‘Apparently not. I’m not sure whether that’s for clinical or contractual reasons though.’
The pieces of the jigsaw swam around in Bob’s head. He was all too aware of confirmation bias but this was looking intuitively obvious. All he needed to do was prove it.